Tunisia

[Ed Jewett]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xncznvkB7S8 (9:36)(Dizzy and friends in Havana in 1985)

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/08/al...rists.html

[Magda Hassan]

I'll never be going there for any holidays that is for sure. I only go to places with a fair to good record of human rights and no fundamentalist religion of any stripe and where women are free and equal. I don't have many places I can travel so me and my money do better things than support crap regimes.

[Danny Jarman]

Under the new government, there has been an increase in food prices, poverty, unemployment, rioting and crime.

Sounds familiar.

[Bill Kelly]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xncznvkB7S8 (9:36)(Dizzy and friends in Havana in 1985)

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/08/al...rists.html

I wish someone would explain how the CIA instigated the Arab Spring. This is the town - Sidi Bouzid where Mohamied Bouazizi lit himself afire and sparked the revolts that have so far taken down three dictators and has others on the ropes. I have studied this incident, which went unreported in the west and mainstream media for almost a week after it happened, something that would not have occurred if the CIA Mockingbird media were on the ball.

In addition, the first three dictators were already in bed with the West - especially France and England but also USA, so why would the CIA or NATO want to throw the region into turmoil if they already had the dictators in their pockets.

I am just tired of hearing about this false flag Arab Spring and how the CIA and NATO and big bankers are behind the revolt when in fact it is a popular democratic revolution that is not over.

Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have already had their first elections in decades and while Islamists have won a majority, the radicals have not yet imposed Islamic law and appear to be open to diversity, including Christians and supporting tourism.

Am I the only one here who perceives the situation this way?

If so, will someone please show me how the CIA instigated this revolt and why they would want to?

Thanks,

BK

[Magda Hassan]

Bill, I suggest to look at the National Endowment for Democracy and their various fronts like Otpor to see how they work.

Have you seen General Wesley Clark's interview about military plans to invade all these countries?

Once the US has finished with their dictator or their dictator gets too uppity they get replaced.

[Bill Kelly]

Bill, I suggest to look at the National Endowment for Democracy and their various fronts like Otpor to see how they work.

Have you seen General Wesley Clark's interview about military plans to invade all these countries?

Once the US has finished with their dictator or their dictator gets too uppity they get replaced.

Hi Mag, I am familiar with NED and saw how it operated in Egypt but didn't see it in Tunisia or Libya. I know how they work.

I haven't seen Clark's interview but would like to. I do know that since Iraq, the US military policy is they will not invade to occupy a country again, as they have learned their lesson.

As for the dictators, I don't think they get rid of anyone who is working for them, and I can't see how the replacements in these countries benefts them or the multi-nationals any better than what they had before - a gravy train.

I am open to persuasion, but not the propaganda I have been reading from either side.

BK

[Magda Hassan]

I haven't seen Clark's interview but would like to. I do know that since Iraq, the US military policy is they will not invade to occupy a country again, as they have learned their lesson.

I am open to persuasion, but not the propaganda I have been reading from either side.

BK

Here is Salon's article on Wesley Clarke's interview with the video of it.

Wes Clark and the neocon dream

In 2007, the retired General described a necon "policy coup" aimed at toppling the governments of 7 countries VIDEO

BY GLENN GREENWALD

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(updated below)
In October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (seven-minute excerpt in the video below) in which he denounced what he called "a policy coup" engineered by neocons in the wake of 9/11. After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon's plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the "coup" being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called "a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century":

Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: "Why haven't we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?"
He said: "Sir, it's worse than that. He said he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk he said: "I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office. It says we're going to attack anddestroy the governments in 7 countries in five years we're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran."

Clark said the aim of this plot was this: "They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control." He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz back in 1991 in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: "But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. And we've got about 5 or 10 years toclean up those old Soviet regimes Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz's desires because, as Clark put it: "the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It's not to deter conflicts?"
The current turmoil in the Middle East is driven largely by popular revolts, not by neocon shenanigans. Still, in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya (the latter leading to this andthis), with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six count em: six different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it's worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam's rape rooms! Gassed his own people!). As Jonathan Schwarz (or, as he would be called by establishment newspapers: "a person familiar with Jon Schwarz's thinking on the subject who asked not to be identified") put it about the supposedly contentious national security factions:

As far as I can tell, there's barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars.

The difference between seven and four overt wars isn't non-existent or unimportant, of course, but it's a question of means. The neocon end as Clark reported them regime change in those seven countries seems as vibrant as ever. It's just striking to listen to Clark describe those 7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001, and then compare that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since then with regard to those precise countries.





UPDATE: Those unreasonable, inscrutable Pakistanis are angry just because the U.S. entered their country by air and killed 30 of their soldiers today. As a result, they have demanded that the U.S. vacate its drone base on their soil. What an outrageous over-reaction: I'm sure the U.S. would be extremely understanding if a foreign nation came and killed 30 U.S. soldiers on American soil from the air.

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/26/wes_clar...con_dream/

[Keith Millea]

Tunisian police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters demanding jobs in Sidi Bouzid, the site of the of the CIA false flag operation that triggered the CIA's Arab Spring uprisings.

Bill,

That quote is from the aangirfan web page that Ed provided.You have the right to express your opinion because Ed loves to post from unreliable sources.Yeah,it's bullshit!The CIA doesn't own the Arab Spring,but surely you can see the Neo-Con agenda is in full play.And,this has no other ending except death and destruction on a massive scale.

I WANT NO PART OF IT

[Lauren Johnson]

Regarding the binary "CIA managed vs. indigenous uprising":

I recall a Rumsfeld speech (which I cannot locate) in which he said something to the effect: 'you cannot control the chaos but you can manage and give it shape.' This is the kind of thinking that would apply to the Arab Spring.

So how might that apply? Riots break out in Syria. You have a long standing goal of cleaning up the old Soviet supported regimes. You activate sleeper operatives or send in some to stir the pot. Make sure that people know that they will be supported. Make sure there are plenty of victims and make sure the narrative is about an evil dictator cruelly abusing a single group seeking justice. Make sure the MSM gets the same story out; eliminate nuances. Etc.

[Bill Kelly]

Regarding the binary "CIA managed vs. indigenous uprising":

I recall a Rumsfeld speech (which I cannot locate) in which he said something to the effect: 'you cannot control the chaos but you can manage and give it shape.' This is the kind of thinking that would apply to the Arab Spring.

So how might that apply? Riots break out in Syria. You have a long standing goal of cleaning up the old Soviet supported regimes. You activate sleeper operatives or send in some to stir the pot. Make sure that people know that they will be supported. Make sure there are plenty of victims and make sure the narrative is about an evil dictator cruelly abusing a single group seeking justice. Make sure the MSM gets the same story out; eliminate nuances. Etc.

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.

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.

Syria especially was a repressive police state where journalists couldn't operate until over a year after the revolution began. You really believe that USA CIA had "Sleeper Cells" in Syria and they responsible? You really think that the "narrative" about the evil dictator is fiction? You don't believe that the Syrian police state cruelly abused children and teenagers who wrote graffiti, which sparked the revolt? The MSM was not even allowed in Syria until the revolt broke the borders.

It isn't the Mainstream message vs. the Police State Propaganda, it is the attempt to determine the truth that should be the goal, 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 you want to check with the CIA and NATO to see whose side they are on so you can be on the other side?

BK
Revolutionary Program