The Lutfallah II Arms-Smuggling Scandal by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Tripoli, Lebanon
May 5, 2012

It would be an incautious stretch to suggest any sort of parity between Watergate and the unfolding Lutfallah II arms shipment-to-Syria drama, that each day brings more revelations. But some of what we are daily learning about the who, what and why of Lutfallah II reminds some of us of a Watergate, type atmosphere including  “bit by bit, drip by drip” revelations,  denials, setting up fall guys and remarkable examples of incompetence.

They Can’t Stop Building Walls by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
April 21, 2012

It may be that researchers would want to examine as long ago as the period from the 3rd century BC until the beginning of the 17th century in order to find a regime so frenetically building walls and barriers in a hopeless quest to hold onto stolen lands as we in Lebanon may soon witness in the south of the country.  It was back in 221 BC that in order to protect China from the land claims of the Xiongnu people from Mongolia, the Xiongnu tribe being China’s main enemy at that time who sought the return of lands they claimed the Chinese had stolen, that the emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered the construction of a wall to guard China’s territorial gains.

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.

Feltman launches Lebanon’s 2013 Parliamentary campaign pledging he will defeat Hezbollah this time by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
March 23, 2012

One fellow who works at the Beirut US Embassy tells the story of how, each year around the time of the vernal equinox, since 2005, when Jeffrey Feltman became the American Ambassador—(given Jeff’s domination of US Middle East Policy, he is still essentially US Ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf, and much of the region, although other names appear from time to time on the local US Embassy doorplates)—the now multi-hatted US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs would perform a sort of ritual.

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.

Syria: It is a Conspiracy by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
1 March 2012

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” (Walt Kelly, 1913-1973.)

It was political analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, in November 2006, who wrote in detail(i) of US plans for the Middle East:

“The term ‘New Middle East’, was introduced to the world in June 2006, in Tel Aviv, by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East’ “.

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.”

Honoring Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, An Advocate for the Deprived by Franklin Lamb

Image via Wikipedia

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Dahiyeh, South Beirut, Lebanon
February 14, 2012

Rushing to an appointment last Saturday I passed the Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah Hassaniyeh (Mosque), which for many in my immediate Dahiyeh neighborhood is the religious institution we feel most connected to because of its long and continuing history of social and religious work in our community.

Nearly 18 months after the July 4^th, 2010 death of Lebanon’s preeminent Islamic scholar, the Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, but seeming more like three months ago, the ‘Fadlallah Hassaniyeh’ is an ever active beehive of social work and religious study and truly a working people’s institution.

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?”

On the 64th Anniversary of UN Resolution 181 Lebanon’s Palestinians Continue Their Descent by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Embassy of Palestine, Tripoli, Libya
November 29, 2011

Every year on November 29, as part of International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Palestinians in Libya as well as approximately a quarter million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the descendants of more than 129,000 who were forced into Lebanon during the 1947-48 Nakba, commemorate the infamous United Nations Resolution 181.

Spinning Invasions, from Nile to the Euphrates and Beyond by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
25 November 2011

“If a man seeks to understand Rome’s casuss reason for each foreign conquest, he needs only look into the Treasury.” (Tacitus, AD 56 – AD 117)

As the US and UK lead towards more illegal overthrows, invasions and destruction in Iran and Syria, a political pattern of manipulation and disinformation has become an art form.

Hariri Bombing Indictment Based on Flawed Premise + Tribunal Concealed Evidence Al-Qaeda Cell Killed Hariri by Gareth Porter

Updated: Sept. 7, 2011 and Sept. 13, 2011 added video interviews with Gareth Porter

by Gareth Porter
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at IPS
August 29, 2011

WASHINGTON, Aug 29, 2011 (IPS) – The indictment of four men linked to Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri made public by the Special Tribunal on Lebanon Aug. 17 is questionable not because it is based on “circumstantial evidence”, but because that evidence is based on a flawed premise.

NATO’S massacre of civilians including children at Majer, Libya by Franklin Lamb

Image by Jacob Anikulapo via Flickr

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Majer, Libya
August 12, 2011

Located about 20 miles east of the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna, six miles south of Zliten, and off Libya’s southern coast across the Mediterranean from Rome, Majer was a picturesque village known for the fine quality of its dates and is claimed by locals to produce the best tarbuni (date juice) in Libya.

Israel kills and wounds dozens of Nakba protesters

Image by Chris Beckett via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

StoptheWarCoalition on May 15, 2011

In Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, across the Middle East region and the world, Israel’s 63rd year long occupation of Palestinian land was commemorated on Naqba day. There is a new mood of resistance, inspired by the Arab spring of revolutions that has swept the region.

Predictably the protests in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria were met by the usual brutality of the Israeli armed forces, with dozens of protesters killed or wounded.

End the Land Mine Plague by Ralph Nader

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
May 13, 2011

Image by United Nations Development Programme via Flickr

Everyday around the world innocent people, many of them children, are killed or injured by millions of unexploded land mines and cluster bombs. Some of the cluster bomblets look like candy or a toy which attract a child in a field, orchard, schoolyard or by the roadside.

Powerful aggressor nations are responsible for most of these anti-personal weapons being laid from land or by air. Most recently, Libya’s rulers laid mines on the outskirts of Ajdabiya as part of its battle against the resistance.