Image by Al Jazeera English via Flickr
stimulator on Feb 11, 2012
This week:
1. #stim4prez
2. The Egytian revolutions is not over
3. Brazil pigs attack the poor
4. Syrian resistance gets shelled
by Finian Cunningham
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
East Africa
9 February 2012
It’s an intrigue befitting the machinations of classical colonialism in past centuries, such as the Sykes-Picot carve-up of the Middle Eastern Levant territories, or the betrayal of the Arabs after World War I, or the theft of Mesopotamia’s oil by British capitalists.
Only this time, it is Arabs who are helping the neocolonial powers to deceive and subjugate other Arabs. Enter the Arab League.
with Gareth Porter
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Feb. 10, 2012
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
RussiaToday on Feb 10, 2012
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has accused NATO of killing eight children in an air strike on the country’s territory. The incident adds to the already strained relationship between Afghanistan and its Western allies.
Last week the United Nations released a report stating there had been a rise in civilian casualties in Afghanistan from 2,790 in 2010 to 3,021 in 2011. It noted that most deaths were caused by insurgents.
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
February 7, 2012
I have had a number of debates and discussions recently, largely through various social media networks and similar avenues, on some issues that are of major concern to those who seek to confront the challenges of the present and construct a better path for the future. So I thought I would take this opportunity, with ideas fresh in my mind, to simply share some thoughts on these subjects and issues. There is also a relevance between these thoughts and The People’s Book Project, for it is the research for the book which has shaped the conclusions and/or directions of these ideas, and which will be supported with historical facts throughout the book(s).
By Rudo de Ruijter
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
Independent researcher
www.courtfool.info
Netherlands
February 8, 2012
A new version of the treaty has been signed on 2 February 2012. This time it was not a EU-treaty in which the EU illegally TAKES more powers (like I exposed in ESM, a coup d’etat in 17 countries), but an international treaty signed by official representatives of the countries (the ambassadors of CoRePrem), in which these countries GIVE more powers to the EU. (This was just away to avoid the conflict with article 48.6 of the Treaty of the EU, that says that the EU may change articles of the treaties as long as they don’t increase their powers.)
by Daniel N. White
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
February 4, 2012
Palgrave Macmillan’s publicity department saw what I wrote here on Dandelion Salad and sent me a free copy of their newly published book, The Favored Daughter: One Woman’s Fight To Lead Afghanistan Into the Future in exchange for a review of it. Got to wonder if the folks actually read what I’ve written about us and our adventures abroad before making me this deal. Shoot I am flattered to actually get some recompense of sorts for the writing I’ve done, but I aint pulling any punches on this turkey. I’m calling it as I see it, now as always.
by Ed Ciaccio
Dandelion Salad
Featured Writer
February 6, 2012
Image by LianaAn, on Flickr
We’re really all in this together,
Every color, gender and age,
To help each other survive
The fierce storms which will soon rage.
Storms of money and climate and fear
Will threaten to drive us apart,
So we must always remember
Deep in both mind and heart
by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
February 12, 2012
Image by Shrieking Tree via Flickr
(SOAPBOX #120) – Cindy remarks: Journalist/activist, Chris Hedges, caused quite a stir this past week when he wrote a column for Truthdig saying, in essence, that the “black bloc anarchists” were killing the Occupy movement. The response was immediate and sometimes fierce. Although, I agree with Chris that violence for the sake of violence is counter-productive, it’s been my experience that the violence usually begins with law enforcement, with little, if any, provocation. Continue reading
3tch3r on Feb 10, 2012
On February 5, 2012, President Obama invoked the NDAA, which authorizes the use of military force, and issues an executive order declaring the “threat” of Iran a National Emergency. The video shows this issuance of President Obama’S executive order which declares Iran’s threat to cut off oil supplies a national emergency.
by Philip A. Farruggio
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Feb. 7, 2012
You all recall what happened in China during the 60s and 70s? They had this ‘Cultural Revolution‘ whereupon:
“The Revolution was launched in May 1966. Mao alleged that bourgeois elements were entering the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. He insisted that these “revisionists” be removed through violent class struggle. China’s youth responded to Mao’s appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself. Continue reading
by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
7 February 2012
“’The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950.)
For anyone in two minds about what is really going on in Syria, and whether President Assad, hailed a decade ago as “A Modern Day Attaturk”, has become the latest megalomaniacal despot, to whose people a US-led posse of nations, must deliver “freedom”, with weapons of mass, home, people, nation and livlihood destruction, here is a salutary tale from modern history.
Have the more recent sabre rattlings against Syria* been based on US-UK government papers, only discovered in 2003 – and since air brushed (or erroneously omitted) from even BBC timelines, on that country? (i)
In late 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, Matthew Jones, a Reader in International History, at London’s Royal Holloway College, discovered “frighteningly frank” documents:1957 plans between then UK Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and then President, Dwight Eisenhower, endorsing: “a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion (of Syria) by Syria’s pro-western neighbours.” (ii)
At the heart of the plan was the assassination of the perceived power behind then President Shukri al-Quwatli. Those targeted were: Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, Head of Military Intelligence; Afif al-Bizri, Chief of Syrian General Staff: and Khalid Bakdash, who headed the Syrian Communist Party.
The document was drawn up in Washington in the September of 1957:
“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, reduce the capabilities of the regime to organize and direct its military actions … to bring about the desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals.
“Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.”
In the light of President Assad’s current allegations of foreign forces and interventions, cross border incursions (as Colonel Quadddafi’s before him, so sneered at by Western governments and media – and so correct) there are some fascinating, salutary phrases:
“Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.
“Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus … care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.”
Further : a “necessary degree of fear .. frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention”, by Iraq and Jordan – then still under British mandate.
Syria was to be: “made to appear as sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments … the CIA and SIS should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”
Incursions in to Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, would involve: “sabotage, national conspiracies, and various strong arms activities”, were, advised the document, to be blamed on Damascus.
In late December 2011 an opposition “Syria National Council” was announced, to “liberate the country”, representatives met with Hilary Clinton. There now seems to be a US – endorsed “Syrian Revolutionary Council.”
The Eisenhower-Macmillan plan was for funding of the: “Free Syria Committee” and “arming of political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities”, within Syria.
CIA-MI6, planned fomenting internal uprisings and replacing the Ba’ath-Communist-leaning government, with a Western, user-friendly one. Expecting this to be met by public hostility, they planned to: “probably need to rely first on repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power.”
The document was signed off in both London and Washington. It was, wrote Macmillan in his diary: “a most formidable report.” A Report which was: “withheld even from British Chiefs of Staff …”
Washington and Whitehall had become concerned at Syria’s increasingly pro-Soviet, rather than pro-Western sympathies – and the Ba’ath (Pan Arab) and Communist party alliance, also largely allied within the Syrian army.
However, even political concerns, were trumped by Syria then controlling a main pipeline from the Western bonanza of Iraq’s oil fields, in those pre-Saddam Hussein days.
Briefly put: in 1957, Syria allied with Moscow (which included an agreement for military and economic aid) also recognized China – and then as now, the then Soviet Union warned the West against intervening in Syria.
Syria, is unchanged as an independent minded country, and the loyalties remain. It broadly remains the cradle of the Pan Arab ideal of Ba’athism, standing alone, since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
In 1957, this independent mindedness caused Loy Henderson, a Senior State Department official, to say that:“the present regime in Syria had to go …”
Ultimately, the plan was not used, since, British mandate or not, neighbouring countries refused to play. However, the project, overtly, bears striking similarity to the reality of events over the last decade, in Syria – and the region.
In a near 1957 re-run, Britain’s Foreign Minister, William Hague has said President Assad “will feel emboldened” by the UN Russia-China vote in Syria’s favour.
Hilary (“We came, we saw, he died”) Clinton, has called for: “friends of a democratic Syria”, to unite and rally against the Assad government:
“We need to work together to send them a clear message: you cannot hold back the future at the point of a gun”, said the women filmed purportedly watching the extrajudicial, illegal assassination of may be, or may be not, Osma Bin Laden and others – but certainly people were murdered – by US illegal invaders – at the point of lots of guns.
Supremely ironically, she was speaking in Munich (5th February) historically: “The birth place of the Nazi party.”
The Russia-China veto at the UN on actions against Syria, has been condemned by the US, varyingly, as: “Disgusting”, ‘shameful”, “deplorable”, “a travesty.”
Eye opening, is the list of US vetoes to be found at (iii). Jaw dropping double standards can only be wondered at (again.).
Perhaps the bottom line is: in 1957, Iraq’s oil was at the top of the agenda, of which Syria held an important key. Today, it is Iran’s – and as Michel Chossudovsky notes so succinctly: “The road to Tehran is through Damascus.”(iv)
(All emphasis, the writer’s.)
2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2012.
Notes
i. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14703995
ii. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/27/uk.syria1
iii. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4237/us-on-un-veto_disgusting-shameful-deplorable-a-tra
iv. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25955
see
Rick Rozoff: Syria Crisis: UN Hijacked By U.S. And NATO
Rick Rozoff: Obama’s attitude main threat to world peace
Sibel Edmonds and Pepe Escobar: Back Story on Syria, interviewed by Peter B. Collins
The Destabilization of Syria and the Broader Middle East War by Michel Chossudovsky
Image by Cory M. Grenier via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Feb. 7, 2012
Note: replaced video Mar. 26, 2012
RTAmerica on Feb 8, 2012
The United States Supreme court’s passing of Citizens United has changed the political game. Citizens United allows corporations to pump endless quantities of money into political campaigns and prohibiting any American from doing so would be an obstruction of the first amendment. Chris Hedges, columnist with Truth Dig, tells us why thinks voting is a dying practice.
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?”
by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
February 7, 2012
I often ask Congressional Democrats these days is: “If you agree that your Republican counterparts in Congress are the most craven, corporatist, fact-denying, falsifying, anti-99 percent, militaristic Republicans in the party’s history, then why are you not landsliding them?” Their responses are largely in the form of knowing smiles and furrowed brows.
Image by Andrew Rusk via Flickr
TheRealNews on Feb 11, 2012
Noam Chomsky delivers speech at the University of Maryland Friday, January 27, 2012
