Syria’s Civilian Suffering – Western Imperialism Resorts to Medieval Barbarity by Finian Cunningham

Image by Nick Bygon via Flickr

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from www.strategic-culture.org
April 14, 2013

The human suffering in Syria, which has escalated from crisis to disaster over the past two years, is the nefarious work of Western governments and their regional allies.

It is a simple, provable, glaringly obvious truth. Yet, the thought-control Western mainstream media manage to somehow turn reality on its head, and make a virtue out of something vile and unspeakably villainous.

Dahr Jamail Returns to Iraq to Find Rampant Torture and a Failed State Living in “Utter Devastation” + Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers

Dandelion Salad

Image by mugley via Flickr

democracynow·Mar 20, 2013

www.democracynow.org/ - Investigative journalist Dahr Jamail reported for Democracy Now! throughout the early stages of the U.S. invasion of Iraq 10 years ago. Now with Al Jazeera, Jamail has just returned from Iraq once again, finding what he calls a “failed state” living in “utter devastation.” In part one of our interview, Jamail discusses the harrowing security situation for Iraqis living in fear of bombings, executions, and kidnappings, the widespread torture in Iraq’s prisons, and the breakdown of security in what he calls a “a lawless state.”

Are Palestinians Being Scapegoated Over Army Killings in Lebanon? by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
June 22, 2012

The killings of three Palestinian refugees this past week including Ahmad Qassim  from Nahr al Bared (‘cold river’) camp near Tripoli and 15 year old Khaled al-Youssef from Ein el Helwe (‘ the beautiful eye’)  30 miles south of Beirut in Saida, and the wounding of more than a dozen others by the Lebanese army were not, as some Lebanese  politicians are claiming, “accidental security incidents”.  They were avoidable negligent homicides as much so as Zionist occupation forces and settler/colonists in Palestine regularly commit.

World Refugee Day: “Crusaders” Collateral Damage by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
21 June 2012

Image by unicefiran via Flickr

“We travel like other people, but we return to nowhere …
We have a country of words.
Speak, speak so we may know the end of this travel.” (Mahmud Darwish, 1942-2008)

Wednesday, 20^th June was World Refugee Day.

This acknowledgement of the tragically displaced was declared an annual event on the 50^th anniversary of the establishment of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR.). Thus, in December 2000 the United Nations General Assembly unanimously designated June 20^th as annual World Refugee Day.

Lebanon’s Oppressed: Domestic Workers, Women, Palestinians by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
April 10, 2012

University students surveyed last month in Lebanon on the subject of how to improve their society and move it in the direction of meeting international human and civil rights norms identified three groups most in urgent need of immediate Lebanese governmental action.

Franklin Lamb: Majority of Syrians supportive of Assad + Perceptions of the Syrian Uprising from Shatila Camp

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
March 15, 2012

PressTVGlobalNews on Mar 15, 2012

A distinguished international lawyer says a Libyan-like foreign intervention against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government would be a ‘complete disaster’.

Press TV has conducted an interview with international lawyer Franklin Lamb to further discuss the issue.

The haunting of Daniel Pipes by Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart” by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
March 4, 2012

Daniel Pipes, the anti-Arab Islamophobe, is reportedly spooked these days. “Actually he has become an almost terrified man”; so says a colleague at Pipes’ Islamophobic Middle East Forum (MEF) and the McCarthyesque Campus Watch (CW) organization.

MEF was founded by Pipes in 1986, and the witch hunting anti-Arab McCarthyesque Campus Watch in 2001. CW’s function is to hound and intimidate faculty and students at colleges who are critical of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Pipes and CW create “dossiers” on professors, students and university administrations thought hostile to Israel.

What Iran Can Do for Lebanon’s Palestinians by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
February 18, 2012

“My friends and I like Iran. Maybe they will ask their friends in Lebanon to help baba (daddy) to be allowed to work and our family allowed to own a home outside the camps.” Hanadi, a precocious youngster at Shatila Camp’s Shabiba center on learning last week from her teacher that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameneiand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warmly welcomed Palestinian leaders to Tehran during the33^rdanniversary celebrations of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and that both committed Iran to a “religious and moral duty to alleviate the effects on Palestinian refugees of the Nakba’s ethnic cleansing.”

Why Did Palestinian Refugees Come to Lebanon? by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
February 10, 2012

During a workshop at the American University of Beirut last year on the subject of the right to  work and to purchase a home for Palestinian refugees, a young business major from the Christian village of  Bikerki posed a question that surprised some in the audience:   “Why if Palestinian don’t like it in Lebanon do they not go home?  Why did they even bother coming here in the first place?”

The Panama Deception (1992)

Dandelion Salad

Warning

This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

Image via Wikipedia

The Panama Deception is a 1992 documentary film that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.^[1] The film is critical of the actions of the US military during the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States, covering the conflicting reasons for the invasion and the depicting of the US media as biased. It was directed by Barbara Trent of the Empowerment Project and was narrated by actress Elizabeth Montgomery.

Tunisia, Shousha – We are dying slowly

Image by Jacob Anikulapo via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

msfuk on Jul 14, 2011

Since the start of the Libyan conflict in February, over 250,000 of people have passed through the Ras Ajdir transitory camps, located at the northern Tunisia-Libya border.

“Collateral Repair” – Turning Despair to Hope by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
9 April, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

Where did we leave our life behind?” I asked the butterfly circling round the light, and it burnt up in its tears.’ (Mahmoud Darwish, 1941-2008.)

As the US., and UK., rope in NATO and a few straggling cronies to bring freedom and democracy to Libya with Cruise missiles, and free the oil, water and gold bullion rich country of a “tyrant” – in the latest barrage of terror tactics, launched on 19th March, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, do they have a thought for the “collateral damage”, the scale, the horror imposed in 2003, and ongoing?

Noam Chomsky: U.S. Imperialism and Fake Democracy + transcript

Image via Wikipedia

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

Updated: Mar. 30, 2011 Added link to the transcript.

shantiq on Mar 15, 2011

Noam Chomsky (2011.03.13) – Amsterdam Westerkerk

Noam Talks About Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi, Bahrain, Iran, US Imperialism & Fake Democracy

Tawtin or Return by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
February 19, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

Lebanese opponents of civil rights for Palestinian Refugees often use less objective and more crude wording to define “tawtin” (“settlement”) than is normally employed in civil society discussions. During last summer’s debate in parliament, which failed to enact laws that would allow the world’s oldest and largest refugee community the basic civil right to work and to own a home, the “tawtin or return” discussion took on strident and dark meanings, which were largely effective in frightening much of the Lebanese public from supporting even these modest humanitarian measures.

2011: The year Lebanon Allows Palestinians Some Elementary Civil Rights? by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Shatila Camp, Beirut, Lebanon
January 11, 2011

Image by l'Ifpo via Flickr

Maybe it was the really loud celebratory Ak-47 Kalashnikov and small arms gunfire and fireworks in my South Beirut neighborhood that triggered the intense New Year’s Eve nightmare.  Or I guess it could have been the seemingly, just below my bedroom window, launched RPG-7’s which followed minutes past midnight on January 1, 2011.

Anyhow, in my News Year’s dream, I was back in my childhood home, Milwaukie, Oregon, nearly half a century ago. Our farming and lumber  town  on the Willamette River had a population of  around 2000 in those much simpler and less crowded days.