Memo to the Western war machine: Maybe, the United Nations says, it would be cool if you let the inspectors still actively working at the site of an alleged Syrian nerve gas attack actually finish their work inspecting the site of an alleged Syrian nerve gas attack, etc.... before you start in with the bombing, etc.?

The Arab League would be fine with waiting. In fact, they'd officially prefer no bombing at all. By the West. Once again. In their own backyard.

Whatever, the United States says. We have our own proof that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad gassed his own citizens and we might even show it to you. Maybe by Thursday? Because, sorry, but this is going down. We never could resist intervening in messy, intractable developing world civil wars that never, ever backfire in a tangle of unintended consequences.

The US has got the Saudis working over the only country whose opposition to war actually might matter: Russia. The Saudis, according to transcripts of a secret meeting between Bush family friend Bandar bin Sultan and Vladimir Putin, have offered all kinds of oil and gas and terrorism concessions to get Russia to stop backing Assad. Putin reportedly said he'd never help the rebels, calling them "liver eaters" (Why "liver eaters?" Oh, just because of some video allegedly showing a jihadist eating the internal organs of a dead Syrian soldier. That.)

Syria's hacker army continues to wage war against American websites, in the meantime. Twitter and the New York Times, which went down for a spell, still aren't quite right today after attacks by the Syrian Electronic Army.

Speaking of civil wars! Maybe Iraq is sliding back toward one. Another wave of blasts targeting Shiites has set off fears that the American puppet country is returning to the paroxysms of sectarian violence that killed thousands just before the Bush Adminsitration's "Surge."

Speaking of American intervention! Now that it's fully public knowledge that the CIA put the oil-friendlier Shah in charge of Iran during a coup in the 1950s, Iran is looking to haul our asses in front of an international judge.

How can we better spy on mosques? The New York Police Department has decided to secretly label them "terrorist organizations" whenever convenient.

It's been 50 years since the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Washington Mall at the end of history's famous march on Washington. What's changed? We're all less poor. But black Americans, compared to white Americans, are still just as poor, relatively speaking, as they were when King offered his soaring, hopeful rhetoric to a segregated nation. (That speech and its startlingly pro-worker message, by the way, got the FBI sniffing around King—something they did for the rest of his life.) Watch the whole thing.

Walmart has decided to give full benefits to all of its employees' same-sex domestic partners, no matter if the state those workers live in is backward (like Oregon, for now, not recognizing marriage rights) or humane.

FINALLY! ONE HUMAN MIND GENTLY ENTERING AND CONTROLLING ANOTHER HUMAN MIND! WE HAVE WON THE FUTURE!