Tunisia

[Magda Hassan]

Maggie said that the revolution only leads to death and destruction but she fails to realize that ALL of the revolutions now going on in North Africa and Middle East began as peaceful protests seeking reform, and only turned violent and demanding of regime change AFTER they were violently repressed.

And in the case of Syria, Libya and Tunisia after the use of foreign mercenaries to cause violence and chaos so that the government would be forced to step in and repress the violence and chaos to protect the people from the violence and chaos.....and so it goes.

Rumsfeld has been put out to pasture but certainly the CIA, USA as well as Al Qada and Muslem Brotherhood want to control the chaos, but the bottom line is - it is a popular uprising, a democratic revolution that the CIA didn't expect or spark.

Rumsfeld may be gone but the neo-con ideology lives on and on in the hearts of many in the State Department and the Pentagon. It may have started as a popular uprising but it has long been taken over by others who do not have the welfare of the people at heart and are just using the opportunity to impose their own dictatorship/theocracy on the people.

Syria especially was a repressive police state where journalists couldn't operate until over a year after the revolution began.

Quite ironic when the US is using all means to get Assange's head on a platter for reporting the news of what the US war machine is doing. To the extent that he has had to seek out and just received asylum in a safe country where his human rights and safety from political persecution will be protected because they cannot be guaranteed by the US, Australia , Sweden or the UK, supposedly all bastions of civilisation.

You really believe that USA CIA had "Sleeper Cells" in Syria and they responsible?

Why not? They usually have half the key military officers and government minister on the pay roll of all sorts of countries and the stay behind network is well established. But even if they don't have it on the ground it can always be imported from outside as they have done any way.

You really think that the "narrative" about the evil dictator is fiction?

And do you really believe that the "narrative" about the civilised west is true? For me the world is far less black and white but many shades of grey with occasional rainbows.

You don't believe that the Syrian police state cruelly abused children and teenagers who wrote graffiti, which sparked the revolt?

Yes I do. And I also know that the US used the Assad government to outsource their torture programme on various renditioned kidnapped victims.

It isn't the Mainstream message vs. the Police State Propaganda, it is the attempt to determine the truth that should be the goal

But that's not happening any where in the west. Truth is the first casualty as they say. And we could ask "Whose truth?"

....and the truth that can't be denied is that Assad is a tyrant, a dictator and a mass murder whose forces tortured children...

And what does that make Obomber? Incinerator of children from on high? Destroyer of wedding parties? The man for where the buck stops for the disappeared and rendered of the not so secret American gulag archipeligo?

....and you want to check with the CIA and NATO to see whose side they are on so you can be on the other side?

We know NATO and the CIA are always on the dark side. We don't want to be on that side.

[Lauren Johnson]

What she said.

Bill, read it and re-read it until you can grok it. No, wait. Not that many times.

[Keith Millea]

Weekend Edition August 17-19, 2012

Regime Change is About Establishing Sunni Dominance Not Democratic Freedoms

Syrian Australians Demand an End to Foreign Intervention

by CHRIS RAY
Sydney.

Around 1500 people, mostly Australians of Syrian descent marched in Sydney on August 5, calling for an end to foreign intervention aimed at destroying the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The Australian media gave the march almost no coverage, unlike well-publicised though much smaller protests against the Syrian government.

It should surprise no one that large numbers of Syrians support the al-Assad government, with its promise of peaceful reform in a direction indicated by the May 2012 parliamentary elections (when, incidentally, the communists won additional seats), rather than the civil war on religious lines now in progress. One does not have to be an al-Assad supporter to suspect that his government's immediate departure, as demanded by the rebels and their foreign backers, would create a power vacuum, fragment the country and result in far greater bloodshed.

For its Syria project the US has put together a powerful alliance embracing NATO through its Turkish spearhead, and Israel and its Gulf Arab de facto allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Intervention has ranged from sanctions and economic sabotage to funding and equipping foreign mercenaries and "boots on the ground" in the form of Western military advisers and trainers. The current goal appears to be regime change by promoting civil war rather than foreign invasion. But calls for a "No Fly Zone" along Libyan lines can now be heard no doubt a precursor to another "humanitarian" bombing campaign.

Foreign forces are playing a substantial role in the campaign to topple the government. According to some assessments, foreign jihadis including Al Qaeda units from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya and Jordan are more effective, and engaged in more significant combat than the so-called Free Syrian Army. Al Qaeda is once again enjoying the backing of the Great Satan' patterned on their 1980s relationship in Afghanistan.

Foreign jihadis have admitted that they formed brigades to infiltrate Syria well before the first protests in early 2011.

Also instructive is the testimony of two Western photographers captured and tormented by a rebel group comprising fighters from Bangladesh, Britain, Chechnya and Pakistan but no Syrians. Viewers of the ABC's 7.30 Report on 7.8.12 would have seen a Chechen combatant in Syria threaten an ABC reporter.

We are not only talking foreign jihadi cannon fodder: "It is highly likely that some western special forces and intelligence resources have been in Syria for a considerable time," says Colonel Richard Kemp, of the Royal United Services Institute which has strong connections to British intelligence services.

Some on the Left argue that the Syrian regime is unworthy of support because it is a dictatorship. Should the political form of the Syrian state absolve the Left of any responsibility to defend it against imperialist aggression? The al-Assad government is under attack by NATO, Israel and the Arab Gulf monarchies not for its denial of democracy, or harsh treatment of dissent, but because of its positive features: support for Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to Zionist expansion; refusal to join the US in isolating and impoverishing Iran; upholding a unique (in the Middle East) degree of religious tolerance and pluralism. For a visitor to Syria this commitment to freedom of religion and rights for women comes as a revelation in comparison to the reactionary US/British protectorates of the Arab Gulf. Such freedoms enrage the poisonously sectarian Sunni fundamentalists now sponsored in Syria by the West. Bin Laden always hated Shia Islam more than Zionists or the CIA.

For much of the anti-government opposition, regime change is about establishing Sunni dominance not democratic freedoms. They hate the regime because it is a heretical government responsible for a secular state with constitutionally guaranteed freedom of worship. The popular rebel slogan "Christians to Beirut, Alawites to their graves" raises the spectre of widespread ethnic cleansing already underway with the expulsion of tens of thousands of Christians by the NATO-backed Free Syrian Army'.

The fall of the al-Assad government is probably inevitable given the forces ranged against it. Some have predicted an Egypt-like power-sharing arrangement between the Muslim Brotherhood and secular nationalist democrats' will follow. However Syria's religious and ethnic make-up is far more complicated than almost anywhere else in the region: a Sunni majority with numerous Muslim minorities (Shia, Alawite, Sufi, Ismailis) as well as Druse and several strands of Christianity altogether about one third of the population. There are significant ethnic minorities such as the Muslim Kurds and Christian Armenians descendants of refugees from Turkish genocide as well as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, many of them Christians. These minorities do not share the cheerful assessment that the outcome of this war is likely to approximate post-Mubarak Egypt itself now a more dangerous home for minorities.

The Syrian government is widely blamed for starting the war with unprovoked attacks on peaceful demonstrators. Western media spent most of 2011 denying the very existence of armed opposition, until the media narrative was recast to that of peaceful protests gradually morphing into armed revolt as a consequence of regime brutality.

The authorities' initial response to opposition protests in March 2011 was brutal and inflammatory. But it is not contradictory to also acknowledge that government forces were under armed attack from the outset. Syrian TV was broadcasting footage of the funerals of military and police personnel killed by protestors in March 2011. My son who was living in Damascus viewed these reports and discussed them with locals. I saw similar Syrian TV coverage while in Jordan in April-May 2011.

Reporter Robert Fisk identified the murder of a boy by police as the spark for the initial March 2011 protest in Deraa. Fisk, no supporter of the regime, also pointed to the existence of video footage of gunmen on the streets of Deraa that same month and al-Jazeera footage of armed men fighting Syrian troops near the Lebanon border in April 2011. Fisk noted that Al-Jazeera television, cheerleader for the rebels, chose not to broadcast it. The station is of course owned by the emir of Qatar, a principal financier of the war against the Syrian government.
On 21 March 2011 Israel National News reported that seven policemen were killed in Deraa in mid-March.

As early as August 2011 the anti-regime, UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that soldiers and police accounted for about one quarter of Syria's death toll since the start of the uprising a casualty proportion not likely to be suffered by an army ranged against unarmed protestors. SOHR, in a rare moment of candour conceded that some of the dead civilians were tortured and killed by regime opponents. This was before Al-Qaeda bombers began their work in co-ordination with the Free Syrian Army'.

Most Syrians would possibly prefer a ceasefire and negotiations in order to avoid the catastrophic fate of Iraq and Libya. Yet the rebel leaderships and their foreign backers have sought only to prolong the fighting (). ) Four weeks into Kofi Annan's attempted ceasefire, the Washington Post reported: "Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials." CounterPunch's Patrick Cockburn was one of the few western correspondents to report the UN monitoring team's observation that during the ceasefire "the level of offensive military operations by the government significantly decreased" while there has been "an increase in militant attacks and targeted killings".

In Libya, war sold to the gullible as a humanitarian necessity has reduced North Africa's only welfare state to an ungovernable ruin: where rival tribal militias fight perpetual turf wars, blacks are ethnically cleansed, ancient archaeological treasures plundered and the social gains of the revolution systematically erased. All this mostly goes unreported a non-story now that Libya's oil contracts are in safer hands (China and Russia need not apply) and Western weapons sales rejected by the murdered Gaddafi are back on the table.

Only the terminally naïve would recommend the Syrian people risk a repeat of the Libyan triumph.

Chris Ray is a Sydney-based Asia business analyst and journalist.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/17/s...ervention/

[Lauren Johnson]

Bill Kelly:

it is a popular uprising, a democratic revolution that the CIA didn't expect or spark.

Bill, my position is that it is irrelevant whether this statement is true or not. It might well be true but I certainly wouldn't bet on it. If one's goal is to capitalize on turmoil, then it is possible to spin gold from whatever happens whether one can take credit or not. Whoever the sponsors are, the facilitators and mechanics seem to be bending and shaping things quite well.

Magda's position continues to persuade.

[Lauren Johnson]

Obama's Regime-Change Policy in Syria

Robert Dreyfuss on August 13, 2012 - 11:47 AM ET

The Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA are making war plans for Syria. And they're pretty much announcing them.

Over the weekend, on a visit to Turkey, a NATO member, to meet with Syrian opposition leaders and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explicitly declared that Washington's policy toward Syria is now in what she called the "operational" phase. "We have been closely coordinating over the course of this conflict, but now we need to get into the real details of such operational planning," she said, adding: "Our intelligence services, our military have very important responsibilities and roles to play, so we are going to be setting up a working group to do exactly that."

Make no mistake: this is regime change by force. It's not exactly like Iraq, and it's not exactly like Libya (yet)but it's regime change by force anyway.

In her statement with Davutoglu, Clinton said that the United States is doing the following:

First, supporting the opposition and their efforts to end the violence and begin the transition to a free and democratic Syria without Assad. The United States continues to provide the opposition with communications equipment and other forms of non-lethal assistance and direct financial assistance. We are coordinating our efforts with others who are also providing various forms of support.

Of course, the United States is not supporting the opposition to "end the violence" but to intensify it.

Second, it isn't known exactly what aid is being provided to the opposition, but it's certain that when Clinton talks about "communications equipment and other forms of non-lethal assistance," she means sophisticated spy gear and probably intelligence about Syrian security forces.

And third, when she says that the United States is coordinating with those providing "providing various forms of support," that means with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar that are supplying increasingly sophisticated arms via Turkey.

In case you missed it, the New York Times reported on August 4 about feverish war plans in Washington, in coordination with Israel:

The State Department and Pentagon planning efforts became more systematic last month after hopes for an internationally brokered resolution faltered in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition in the United Nations Security Council. The planning is being closely coordinated with regional allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel, and it coincides with an expansion of overt and covert American and foreign assistance to Syria's increasingly potent rebel fighters.

The article added:

Other countries, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are providing weapons, assisted by a small number of officers from the Central Intelligence Agency who are vetting the fighters receiving them and working with State Department officials trying to unify the fighters with political leaders inside and outside the country. Last month, the Treasury Department granted a waiver to let a new American organization, the Syrian Support Group, raise money for the rebels despite the sanctions that prohibit most financial transactions in Syria.

To cover its tracks the United States is wildly exaggerating the role of Iran and Hezbollah, an

ally of Iran and Syria, in supporting the government in Damascus.

Alon Ben-Meir, writing in the Jerusalem Post, warnedwithout evidencethat Iran might intervene directly in Syria, using military force. In tandem, the US State and Treasury departments this week accused Hezbollah, Iran's ally, of "actively providing support to the Assad regime as it carries out its bloody campaign against the Syrian people," though the Wall Street Journal reported that Middle East analysts believe that the idea that Hezbollah is playing an important role in Syria is overstated.

And a no-fly zone? Safe zones for rebels protected by NATO? Bombing of Syria? Stay tuned.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/169367/oba...licy-syria

[URL="http://www.thenation.com/blog/169388/regime-change-syria-part-ii"]

Regime Change in Syria: Part II[/URL]

Robert Dreyfuss on August 14, 2012 - 11:53 AM ET

On Syria, Pat Lang is asking the right questions. And unfortunately, writing for The Nation, Sharif Abdel Kouddous is missing the point.

Yesterday, I blogged about the Obama administration's regime-change-by-force campaign in Syria. (Not for the first time, as I've been writing.) The CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon are all involved, working with NATO's Turkey and the kleptocrats in Saudi Arabia to overthrow President Assad. Why? Not because they care about Assad (or the Syrian people, for that matter) but because they want to give Iran a black eye. It's all about Iran.

On his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, Langa former chief of intelligence for the Pentagon on Middle East affairsquestions the policy and legality of Obama's blatant interference in Syria.

Here's what he says:

Why is the State Department leading in the conduct of this war? Does this strange situation reflect a dvision of opinion withing [sic] the Executive Branch? Do Panetta, the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] and the CIA agree with what is being done or is HC [Hillary Clinton] leading the way because she and her allies among the neo-Wilsonians and neocons are the "pro" faction in such an argument?

What is [Obama's] actual position in this matter? Is he so pre-occupied with the election in November that he is no longer really in charge?

What is the US intelligence community [IC] telling the WH about the composition and nature of the Syrian rebel groups? On FNS today McCain told the world that [Al Qaeda] is increasingly present in Syria. He must have gotten that from the IC. What else is the IC saying about the rebels? … The Democrats should ask Clapper, Petraeus and Flynn the hard questions in open hearings.

What is the IC (particularly DIA) telling the WH about the actual course of the civil war in Syria? Has the message soaked in that the rebels are on the verge of defeat? If they lose in Aleppo, then their "sanctuaries" along the Turkish border will become vulnerable. Is that why there is now talk of a "no fly zone" over those parts of Syria. Will that be followed by a "no drive" zone? Such zones would require direct combat operations on the part of US and Turkish forces. Which US law would authorize that?

All good questions.

Meanwhile, Kouddous is writing on the ground from a town in Syria. His ground-truth reporting is good, but he doesn't exactly provide a birds'-eye view. Is the story in Syria really one of heroic rebel fighters against a regime of monsters, without international implications? How did the rebels transubstantiate from defenseless protesters (à la Iran's Green Movement in 2009), who were mowed down by the government's security forces, into an armed revolutionary force, if not for the outside assistance of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with the United States and NATO?

Kouddous quotes a Syrian fighter:

"The revolution became militarized," says Mohammed Abo Khattab, a 24-year-old media activist. "People that were unarmed at first decided to arm themselves. The regime made this happen."

Well, maybe the regime provoked it, but it was forces outside Syria who "made this happen." It's certainly true that early on, Assad did what Iran's leaders in 2009 were too smart to do, namely, gun down unarmed protesters. (Even Assad, in a recent interview, admitted that shooting down protesters in Deraa early in the conflict was a huge mistake, and it's at least open to question whether Assad himself have those early orders to fire on civilians, or whether it was local security-force hotheads.) But even then, there was a chance for a peaceful solution, and a big part of the reason it didn't happen is because Obama and Hillary Clinton started demanding Assad's head on a platter.

Back in 2009, Obama was right not to intervene in Iran or to egg on the Iranian Greens. Why did that change in Syria in 201112? Politics, maybe? Does the United States have the right to decide to force out of office anyone it doesn't like? Or only the ones that the Israel Lobby wants to get rid of, in an election year?

http://www.thenation.com/blog/169388/reg...ia-part-ii

[Bill Kelly]

Bill Kelly:

it is a popular uprising, a democratic revolution that the CIA didn't expect or spark.

Bill, my position is that it is irrelevant whether this statement is true or not. It might well be true but I certainly wouldn't bet on it. If one's goal is to capitalize on turmoil, then it is possible to spin gold from whatever happens whether one can take credit or not. Whoever the sponsors are, the facilitators and mechanics seem to be bending and shaping things quite well.

Magda's position continues to persuade.

You mean Assad's Police State continues to persuade.

BK

[Lauren Johnson]

Bill Kelly:

it is a popular uprising, a democratic revolution that the CIA didn't expect or spark.

Bill, my position is that it is irrelevant whether this statement is true or not. It might well be true but I certainly wouldn't bet on it. If one's goal is to capitalize on turmoil, then it is possible to spin gold from whatever happens whether one can take credit or not. Whoever the sponsors are, the facilitators and mechanics seem to be bending and shaping things quite well.

Magda's position continues to persuade.

You mean Assad's Police State continues to persuade.

BK

No that is not what I mean. But this IS what I mean. Fook off.

[Magda Hassan]

You mean Assad's Police State continues to persuade.

BK

Don't put words in people's mouth Bill. Just because others don't support foreign mercenaries in the Middle east doesn't mean the dictators are supported either. Like I said. it is far from black and white. Take your rose coloured glasses off and look at the small print. Big print actually.

[Bill Kelly]

Bill Kelly:

it is a popular uprising, a democratic revolution that the CIA didn't expect or spark.

Bill, my position is that it is irrelevant whether this statement is true or not. It might well be true but I certainly wouldn't bet on it. If one's goal is to capitalize on turmoil, then it is possible to spin gold from whatever happens whether one can take credit or not. Whoever the sponsors are, the facilitators and mechanics seem to be bending and shaping things quite well.

Magda's position continues to persuade.

You mean Assad's Police State continues to persuade.

BK

No that is not what I mean. But this IS what I mean. Fook off.

So much for intelligent discussion about what I think is an important subject, one that I recognized as a Deep Political Event when it began and started a blog on the topic:
[URL="http://revolutionaryprogram.blogspot.com/"]
Revolutionary Program
[/URL]
For those who don't know me, I have been fighting the US military police state since 1968 when I was 17 years old, tear gassed by the Illinois National Guard, beat with night sticks by Chicago Police and arrested for protesting the war in Vietnam. I have been an outspoken critic of the US coups in Guatemala and Iran, the US policies in Cuba and Nicaragua and actively opposed the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, although I think that the Taliban are an evil enemy that can be best opposed by creating schools for women.

When the revolution in Tunisia began, the USA, France, UK and other countries were in bed with the dictator there as well as cozy with Gadhafi and Mubarak. While I knew nothing about the situations in Tunisa and Egypt, I was very familiar with the history of US foreign policy in Libya, and started a blog about it in 2008 Remember the Intrepid. My goal of repatriating the remains of a hometown Naval hero - Richard Somers, who is buried in an unmarked grave at Martyr's Square - the only real martyr actually buried there, and had obtained the permission of the Gadhafis to permit the repatriation, but my efforts have been opposed by the US Navy Brass as well as US Sen. John McCain. I worked with Prof. Benjamin Barber, the only American on the Gadhafi Charities Foundation, who was an academic mentor to Saif Gadhafi, and almost convinced him to begin the reformation of the Libyan government, but the revolution interceded, ending both our efforts to repatriate the remains of our native son from Tripoli and Barber and Saif's efforts to reform their system of government.

While I began my blog as a spectator, attempting to discern and describe the once unfamiliar dictators and their cronies as well as the revolutionaries, it quickly became apparent that the dictators were the bad guys, and it doesn't matter if the police state is the USA or Tunisia, or Egypt, Libya or Syria, - or Bahrain, Iran or Saudi Arabia for that matter - it is still a police state, and I support the revolutionaries in the USA as well as Libya and Syria.

I have studied the situation in Tunisia in depth, and have yet to see how the Arab Spring was instigated by the CIA, NATO or the West, though I continue to compile information on this issue, and it has led to many disagreements with others who have worked with me on the JFK assassination research and other issues - especially Peter Dale Scott -who coined the term Deep Politics, as well as John Judge, my college mate, Cynthia McKinney (who I worked closely with on the Congressional 9/11 Briefing and the relief of Gaza) and Maggie, all of whom I admire, but can't understand their turning their backs on these brave revolutionaries who have deposed dictators without a principal leader and instead support the police states. Though they claim to oppose the American police state, they now embrace these tyrants, who they claim to be benevolent dictators. Rubbish. They are mass murders who will not be missed, and will have the same fate as Hitler and Gadhafi.

As I will continue to study and review the outcomes of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and follow the events in Syria, I will Fook off, and not bother to engage in any more discussion with those who would rather post Russian and Iranian propaganda about non-existent western covert actions and disinformation.

I also support the publication of the Wiki Leaks and believe Assage is being railroaded for his releasing these valuable records - and everyone should read them as they show the USA had nothing to do with the origins of the Arab Spring revolutions, though they loathed the dictators, they worked with them and were supported by the bankers and oil companies to continue working with them as they already had deals with them. If you read the Wiki Leaks documents you see the changes in US policies from support for the dictators to the morally correct change in policy of supporting the democratic revolutionaries.

I don't check with the CIA to see what side they are on before determining who the bad guys are - and if the CIA is against the dictators that these revolutionaries are trying to depose, then they are on the right side for a change - which is a deep political change in policy that nobody wants to discuss.

All the best to you all,

Bill Kelly
"Death to Tyrants" - The motto of the US Navy volunteers who fought the Barbary Pirates who enslaved Americans in 1800.

[Lauren Johnson]

So much for intelligent discussion about what I think is an important subject, one that I recognized as a Deep Political Event when it began and started a blog on the topic:

Now comes the part where you play the innocent victim. This is how it works. You state your case, but do not engage other explanations. You either ignore or misstate other arguments. And you resort to repeating your thesis over and over again. Finally, once your frustrated hopeful partners in debate become frustrated, you roll your eyes. What is the great Bill Kelly supposed to do when he is has to talk to idiots like these? Finally, you proclaim your expertise, which by the way is on full demo at your website.

Just seems like we just went through the same thing with someone else.

<a href="https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?10546-Martial-Law-Imminent-Arrival>Martial Law: Imminent Arrival"</a>

PS How does one make a hypertext link here. <a href=>