What Syria and the Financial Crisis Have in Common

(Syria/Wikimedia CIA)

At the eve of President's Obama televised speech to the American people, developments on the "ground" about Syria appear to be changing dramatically. Russia has made a proposal today to avoid a U.S. military strike on Syria by having international monitors take control of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons, while Syria's foreign minister Walid al-Moallem welcomed this proposal. This may turn out to be just a ploy to play for time or it might offer the Obama administration an unexpected way out of this political and diplomatic mess. Whichever it is, it's causing confusion in Washington: the U.S. Senate postponed a vote authorizing an attack, and President Obama's speechwriters will be having a hard time coming up with a speech that will be truthful, up-to-date, and effective. One can also wonder what effective would mean in this increasingly complicated war game.

Against the backdrop of the developments in Syria crisis, Danny Schechter, filmmaker, author, media critic, aka the News Dissector  wrote an article on the disinformation website (published before Russia's proposal became public), titled: Financial Crisis and Impending War Are Converging As Failed Policies Become Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. In this article, Schechter is making an interesting connection about the convergence of two events, the Syria crisis and the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 on the one hand, and on the other hand the anniversary of the financial crisis. Schechter says:

"And, then, there’s the anniversary of the financial crisis which all the military bang-bang is sure to drive off the front pages even as New York Times economist Paul Krugman noted Friday:

“In a few days, we’ll reach the fifth anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers — the moment when a recession, which was bad enough, turned into something much scarier. Suddenly, we were looking at the real possibility of economic catastrophe.
And the catastrophe came.”....

.....You can be sure that Obama does not intend to speak about the economic crisis next Tuesday, because he has no real answer to Krugman’s indictment of failed economic policies. One of the architects of that policy, Larry Summers is apparently about to be appointed to head the Federal Reserve Bank for TEN years, despite his pathetic record, with Obama’s support."

Schechter continues: