David Cameron called parliament back from vacation thinking that they would quickly approve a resolution giving him effectively a blank check to attack Syria. He argued that it was clear to him that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons and that the UN investigation was unnecessary, which is also the Obama administration position. When that ran into headwinds and he seemed likely to lose, he agreed to a watered down resolution that would revisit the issue later depending on what the UN inspectors reported. [Read more…]

According to an Israeli newspaper, the city authorities in Tel Aviv have decided to introduced kindergartens segregated by race.

When the children of south Tel Aviv head back to school on Tuesday, kindergarteners will attend facilities that are segregated by race. The children of asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa will go to their kindergartens and all the other kids will go to their own. As of this year, the municipality of Israel’s most liberal city decided that separate-but-equal for three-to-six year olds was the way to go—in 2013. [Read more…]

One of the surest signs that the US government is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public is when they manufacture an artificial sense of urgency. They are like the hucksters selling time shares who try to persuade people that there is a great deal of urgency and that a decision to buy must be made immediately. We saw this kind of pressure in the run up to the Iraq invasion, with ridiculous talk about how we could not afford to wait for evidence in case the ‘smoking gun’ came in the form of a ‘mushroom cloud’. It was inexcusable inflammatory hyperbole and those who made it (Condoleeza Rice and George W. Bush) should have been pilloried but of course they weren’t. [Read more…]

The retail giant Walmart has decided to extend its benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of its LGBT employees. Granted, Walmart is a terrible employer that exploits its workers and pays them poor wages but this move is symbolically important because the socially conservative Arkansas-based company is so huge and because it has stated that its policy will take effect in all 50 states, irrespective of whether that state recognizes same-sex marriage or not. It is a major step forward. [Read more…]

The article on US spying on the other governments and the EU and UN agencies is by Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark that originally appeared in German in Der Spiegel has now appeared in translation.. [Read more…]

The repetition of events that led up to previous US attacks on other countries gains pace. We are now at the stage of whipping up public support for yet another bombing campaign. It almost seems as if there is a standard script that is hauled out on such occasions in which just the name of the country is kept blank. [Read more…]

George Packer of The New Yorker covers both sides in dialogue form.

You may know Phil Mickelson as one of the top golfers on the professional circuit. But did you know that he is also a trenchant analyst of the hardships that the current tax system imposes on the real producers in this economyt? Gary Legum gives the appropriate response to the perennially oblivious Mickelson who really feels the pain of that persecuted underclass: corporate CEOs. [Read more…]