Guns & Glory in Syria: Al Qaeda, US recipe for disaster
Russia Today
February 17, 2012
The US spy chief has told the Congress President Bashar Al-Assad is fighting against Al-Qaeda of Iraq. James Clapper is the first top US official to acknowledge US might indirectly support insurgents.
Since December there have been Bombings in Damascus and Aleppo that “had all the earmarks of an Al-Qaeda like attack,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.
He added that Syrian opposition groups, fighting against the existing regime of President al-Assad may have been infiltrated by Al-Qaida. “However likely without their knowledge”, he said.
Clapper said the lack of a unified opposition group could leave a power vacuum that extremists could fill if the Syrian government falls, a potential development he called “troubling.”
His comments confirmed earlier reports that US officials suspected Al-Qaeda’s hand in the bombings last week which left dozens dead.
The leader of Al-Qaeda has voiced his support for the Syrian uprising. In an eight-minute video posted on Sunday on a jihadist website, Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan to aid the Syrian rebels.
However the US and its allies continue to hold on to a one-sided stance.
On Thursday, the UN General Assembly called on Syrian President Assad to step down.
The anti-Syrian government resolution addressed only one side of the conflict failing to condemn the opposition for their part of the violence as it does condemn the government. Washington and mainstream media insist the Syrian government is fighting against peaceful protesters.
Russia votes down Syria ‘regime change’ resolution [video]
Russia Today
February 16, 2012
The majority of the UN General Assembly has adopted a non-binding resolution, that piles more pressure on the Syrian President to step down. Russia was among those who voted against the motion. Moscow maintains the conflict should be solved through a gradual political transition, led by the Syrian people.
RT on Twitter http://twitter.com/RT_com
RT on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RTnews
The Road To Tehran Goes Through Damascus
By Nile Bowie
NileBowie.blogspot.com
February 15, 2012
Between the chaos and artillery fire unfolding in Homs and Damascus, the current siege against the Ba’athist State of Bashar al-Assad parallels events of nearly a century ago. In efforts to maintain its protectorate, the French government employed the use of foreign soldiers to smother those seeking to abolish the French mandated, Fédération Syrienne. While former Prime Minister Faris al-Khoury argued the case for Syrian independence before UN in 1945, French planes bombed Damascus into submission. Today, the same government – in addition to the United States and its client regimes in Libya and Tunisia – enthusiastically recognize the Syrian National Council as the legitimate leadership of Syria. Although recent polls funded by the Qatar Foundation claim 55% of Syrians support the Assad regime, the former colonial powers have made a mockery of the very democratic principles they tout.
Irrespective to the views of the Syrian people, their fate has long been decided by forces operating beyond their borders. In a speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2007 retired US Military General Wesley Clark speaks of a policy coup initiated by members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Clark cites a confidential document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2001 stipulating the entire restructuring of the Middle East and North Africa. Portentously, the document allegedly revealed campaigns to systematically destabilize the governments of Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Under the familiar scenario of an authoritarian regime systematically suppressing peaceful dissent and purging large swaths of its population, the mechanisms of geopolitical stratagem have freely taken course.
Syria is but a chess piece being used as a platform by larger powers. Regime change is the unwavering interest of the US-led NATO block in collaboration with the feudal Persian Gulf Monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This is being accomplished by using Qatar-owned media outlets such as Al-Jazeera to project their version of the narrative to the world and by arming radical factions of the regions Sunni-majority population against the minority Alawi-Shia leadership of Assad. Since 2005, the Bush administration began funding Syrian opposition groups that lean toward the Muslim Brotherhood and their aspirations to build a Sunni-Islamic State. The Muslim Brotherhood has long condemned the Alawi-Shia as heretics and historically attempted multiple uprising in the 1960’s. By arming radical Sunni factions and importing Iraqi Salafi-jihadists and Libyan mercenaries, the NATOGCC plans to topple Assad and install an illegitimate exiled opposition leader such as Burhan Ghaliun (leader of the Syrian National Council) to be the face of the new regime.
The recent example of implementing foreign policy by arming Al-Qaeda fighters in Libya has proved disastrous – as the rule of law passes from the NATO-backed Libyan Transitional Council to hundreds of warring guerilla militias. At a meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Hillary Clinton, Davutoglu pledged to find ways outside the United Nations Security Council to pressure Assad. In addition to bolstering longstanding sectarian divides in Syria, the US is smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkeyand providing financial support for Syrian rebels. Syrian opposition forces led by defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad have been trained on Turkish soil since May 2011. Exclusive military and intelligence sources have reported to Israel’s DEBKAfile that British and Qatari special operations units are assisting rebel forces in Homs by providing body armor, laptops, satellite phones and managing rebel communications lines that request logistical aid, arms and mercenaries from outside suppliers.
Although the UK has vehemently denied these reports, Qatar’s leader Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani recently suggested sending troops into Syria to battle Assad’s forces. Military bases situated near Turkey’s southeastern border with northern Syria have become a crucial hub used for the delivery of outside supplies. Unmarked NATO warplanes near Iskenderum have received fighters from Libya’s Transitional National Council wielding weapons formerly belonging to Gaddafi’s arsenal. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, (former leader of the extremist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group turned NTC military governor at the directive of NATO) is leading the infiltration of Libyans into Syria in person with the help of the Turkish government. It has also been reported that Mahdi al-Harati, resigned from his functions as deputy chief of the Military Council in Tripoli to oversee the Free Syrian Army.
Syrian press has also reported that armed terrorist groups brandishing up-to-date American and Israeli weapons have roamed the countryside of Damascus committing blind acts of terror by setting off explosive devices and kidnapping civilians. As the NATOGCC continue to insist that Assad is committing acts of genocide against unarmed civilians, one must draw correlations between events reported by the Syrian state media and recent statements released by the leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, praising the arrival of Iraqi fighters in Syria and advising rebels to use roadside bombs. Paradoxically, Al-Qaeda front man Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims from across the Arab World to mobilize and support the Free Syrian Armyafter the disappointing Russian and Chinese veto at the UNSC. Few things are more absurd than the notion of Al-Qaeda terrorists – unanimously portrayed as ostensible “savages” by virtually all-Western media sources – entrust the apparatus of the United Nations and their capacity to resolve the Syrian conflict. The true purpose of Al-Qaeda and its role in influencing foreign policy has never been more evident.
Surely, Assad accusing foreign-sponsored terrorist groups of fomenting violence in Syria is simply evidence of his illegitimacy – as Western and Gulf allies assert. Even as Syrian state TV broadcasts reports showing seized weapons stockpiles and confessions by terrorists describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources, the NATOGCC continues to draft legislation in an effort pressure the Assad regime into dissolution. In the face of an outright campaign of foreign-funded sabotage, Syrian hackers have targeted Al-Jazeera’s “Syria Live Blog”, which provides ongoing coverage of the unrest. The hacker-ring boldly denounced Al Jazeera for broadcasting “false and fabricated news to ignite sedition among the people of Syria to achieve the goals of Washington and Tel Aviv.”
Through the fiery rhetoric of Susan Rice and her relentless condemnation of Assad – like Gaddafi before him – the United States is again attempting to invoke the Right to Protect (R2P) doctrine to take direct action against the Assad regime. In another parallel to the Libyan conflict, the UN’s astounding official death toll in Syria is taken solely from human rights groups, backed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Criminal Court and the Syrian National Council. The official numbers rely exclusively on an obscure organization known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) – based in London, not Damascus – whose evidence is largely reliant on hearsay, pixelated YouTube videos and activist Twitter feeds. SOHR’s disputed reports present evidence that would not hold up in any court of law, much less should it be the basis of United Nations resolutions. The Observatory’s director Rami Abdelrahman collaborates directly with British Foreign Minister William Hague and derives legitimacy solely from connections with corporate/foundation-funded civil society networks. Claims that Assad’s security forces indiscriminately kill scores of newborn babies are palpably a product of Britain’s foreign office.
As a further indication of the on-going media war in Syria, none is more telling than the report produced by the Arab League’s observer mission into Syria. The contents of the report were completely ignored by the corporate-media after Qatar disputed its findings, the only nation to do so in the Arab League’s Ministerial Committee. The report unalterably concluded that the Syrian government was in no way lethally repressing peaceful protestors. Furthermore, the report credits armed gangs with the bombing of civilian buses, trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and the bombing of bridges and pipelines. During an interview with Arab League observer Ahmed Manaï, he praises the Sino-Russian veto at the UNSC and encouraged the Syrian leadership to implement reforms. Manaï states, “The Arab League is entirely discredited by burying the report of its own observers’ mission and its appeal to the Security Council. It missed the opportunity to participate in the settlement of the Syrian affair. All it can offer in the future will be worthless.”
While the initial observer report is predictably absent from mainstream media coverage and cited as inept (presumably for contradicting the official line of the allied Western-Gulf powers), Arab League mission leader Mohammed al-Dabi officially resigned, stating, “I won’t work one more time in the framework of the Arab League, I performed my job with full integrity and transparency but I won’t work here again as the situation is skewed.”The United Nations and the Arab League are now considering what was originally a joint observer mission – now referred to as a peacekeeping mission. The Arab League, in tandem with Saudi Arabia is preparing a nearly identical resolution calling for an armed peacekeeping council to present to the UN. Much like the indistinguishable saber rattling seen before Libyan intervention, the new resolution condemns Assad for lethal repression and calls for a transitional shift to democracy. The resolution is expected to create similar Sino-Russian divisions over its implementation, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, previously scorned the document as “the same unbalanced draft resolution text.”
The conflict in Syria has brought light to longstanding Cold War divisions between world powers. The Sino-Russian veto of the UNSC resolution calling for intervention has blocked the opportunity for Western powers to exert overt aggression, as demonstrated by NATO in Libya. Instead, it appears that the Assad regime will be destabilized through covert mercenary groups bent on committing blind acts of terrorism by means of sniper assassinations and roadside bombs. Learning from the Libyan experience, Russia and China perceive the UN Human Rights Report authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the Washington-based corporate-funded think-tank, Middle East Policy Council – to be explicitly comprised; victims among the civilian population are a result of armed paramilitaries doing battle with the Syrian military in residential areas. In an interview with former Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov pledges that Russia will protect Iran, Syria, and the world from American fascism. In a show of support for the Syrian government, Russia has sent a large naval force into the region and China has further warned against a strike on Syria.
It is truly a paradox that the countries least fit to dictate principles of human rights, do so largely unhindered on the world stage. Without hesitation Hillary Clinton proclaimed, “What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty” referring to the Sino-Russian veto. She then called for the formation of an international alliance between the war-profiteering elite of the West and absolutist Wahhabi Persian Gulf monarchies – amusingly titled, the Friends of Syria. International calls to abstain from violence have done little to influence the Gulf Cooperation Council and their brutal crackdown against Shiites in Bahrain. Incredibly, Saudi Arabia has entered the dialogue on human rights and democracy promotion – perhaps the world’s most defining feudalistic theocracy, a nation that prohibits political parties and national elections and executes those who apostatize Islam.
Iran’s Press TV news network has reportedly leaked intelligence exposing the American agenda in Syria. The report calls for the recognition of the Syrian National Council as the legitimate government and their positioning in Turkey to work against the Assad regime. Washington would then task Turkey with sending troops into Syria to arm the opposition forces, followed by Wahhabi fighters and Libyan mercenaries. Ominously, the intelligence stipulates that Israel will enter the fray to carry out military operations against Syria. If the regime fails to dissolve, Syrian state television channels will be taken down and Assad will be assassinated. Considering how other enemies of the West have faired in recent times, the sequence of events reported by Press TV would be largely unsurprising. The Wahhabis of the Persian Gulf are playing junior to American aggression in an effort to dominate the Shia-Alawi religious faction presently upheld by the leadership of Syria and Iran, but also to secure their places as regional powers.
Domestic affairs in Syria are of little consequence to the powers trying to topple the nation; the real priority is to further isolate Iran by eliminating its Shia-Alawi ally in Damascus. Israel reaps enormous benefit from toppling the Assad regime, as the Syrian Nation Council pledges to cut ties with Iran and discontinue arms shipments to Hezbollah and Hamas. If Syria falls and Iran is directly threatened, the potential for a regional conflict of the utmost seriousness exists, assuming China and Russia move in to defend Iran. Such a conflict would create detrimental implications for the global economy, potentially triggering a hyper-inflationary financial crisis. William Hague and billionaire financiers behind the civil society groups bestowing legitimacy to violent opposition actors are not the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. Although the reforms have been slow, the Assad government is in the midst of drafting a new constitution. Syria’s sovereignty has come under direct fire from powers claiming to be defending Syria’s people. An attempt on the life of Bashar al-Assad may have similar consequences to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As the Syrian National Council familiarly calls for the implementation of a no-fly zone, those members of the International Community with any integrity left must work diligently to diffuse conflict in the region.
—————–
[hat tip: Land Destroyer Report]
Syria to Hold Referendum and Enact a New Constitution in Less than Two Weeks … Will U.S. and Its Allies Attack Anyway?
Global Research
February 15, 2012
Syria to Hold Multi-Party Democratic Elections and Enact New Constitution on February 26th
Agence France-Presse reports:
Syria’s president decreed a vote this month on a new constitution that would effectively end nearly 50 years of single party rule, state media said, as troops reportedly stormed centres of dissent.
***
Bashar al-Assad called the ballot for February 26, in a move clearly aimed at placating growing global outrage over the bloodshed.
Under the newly proposed charter, freedom is “a sacred right” and “the people will govern the people” in a multi-party democratic system, state television said.
***
The new constitution also … prohibits parties based on religion.
Assad, who in April lifted a state of emergency in force since 1963, when his Baath Party took power, has made repeated promises of reforms that have failed to materialise since a popular uprising erupted on March 15.
The embattled president, who succeeded his late father Hafez in 2000, has said the constitution would usher in a “new era” for Syria, SANA state news agency reported.
This is what the U.S. and its allies have said that they want.
But – given that the U.S. government has been consistently planning regime change in Syria for 20 years (and dreamed of regime change for 50 years), and that the U.S., Britain, Qatar and other countries have already started a covert war in Syria – it is uncertain whether democratic elections and a new constitution can avoid a Syrian war involving the West.
Global Research Articles by Washington’s Blog
Bloodshed & Blame Game: Both sides spur Syria crisis [video]
Russia Today
February 15, 2012
A blast has ripped through an oil pipeline in the Syrian city of Homs, where clashes between regime troops and opposition fighters have continued for over a week. Thick smoke can be seen hanging over the city – activists say the explosion was caused by a government airstrike. Reports also suggest the army has sent tanks which are attacking residential areas in the country’s fourth largest city of Hama. And in the capital Damascus, troops are said to be raiding houses, looking for members of the Free Syrian Army. But with information hard to verify, there are concerns that some want only the regime painted in a bad light, and not the opposition.
RT on Twitter http://twitter.com/RT_com
RT on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RTnews
Fears Of Kosovo Or Iraq Fate For Syria
Global Research
February 13, 2012
Xinhua News Agency and Stop NATO
Escalating situation in Syria evokes fears of similar Iraqi fate
Syria’s private press reports have talked about a recent behind-closed-doors meeting held by U.S. President Barack Obama and the chief of the CIA, in the presence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, noting that the meeting called for the need to reinforce military preparedness for a unilateral military intervention at any time in Syria, and to implement a series of concentrated shelling of military sites…
DAMASCUS: The accelerated situation and the obsession of almost all world countries, including major powers, about the Syrian crisis have raised many question marks about the future of this small but influential country and evoked fears that it’s nudged towards becoming a new Kosovo or at least a new Iraq.
The Syrian government’s decision to harshly track down alleged terrorist groups in restive Syrian cities has been encountered by vitriolic criticism from world countries, accusing it of capitalizing on the recent Russian and Chinese veto at the UN Security Council that has blocked a resolution condemning the Syrian government’s violence against protesters.
The harsh crackdown also raised concern about new measures against Syria, including a possible military intervention or at least an imminent civil war.
Internally, terrorism is strongly beating. The northern province of Aleppo was rocked on Friday with two suicide blasts that claimed the lives of 28 people and the injury of 234 others.
Also, alleged gunmen assassinated Saturday the head of a military hospital in Damascus, the first incident in the capital since the outbreak of violence in mid-March of last year.
Externally, Arab foreign ministers huddled in Cairo to discuss the Syrian crisis and have agreed to halt diplomatic dealings with Syria’s representatives and called on the UN to endorse their calls to send joint Arab-UN troops to Syria.
Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbor that has recently maintained a quiet diplomacy, raised its anti-Syria rhetoric over the past days and its Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vowed Friday to work with Washington and like-minded European and Arab states to bolster humanitarian protection for Syrian civilians allegedly endangered by the Bashar al-Assad regime.
Davutoglu, speaking to journalists in Washington ahead of a Monday meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, threw support to Clinton’s proposed idea for a “Friends of Syria” international contact group to find ways to get humanitarian aid to Syrian civilians and support that country’s transition to democracy.
Furthermore, Syria’s private press reports have talked about a recent behind-closed-doors meeting held by U.S. President Barack Obama and the chief of the CIA, in the presence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, noting that the meeting called for the need to reinforce military preparedness for a unilateral military intervention at any time in Syria, and to implement a series of concentrated shelling of military sites, in a bid to bridle the alleged repressive crackdown of the Syrian government on protesters.
Reports said Obama’s lingering intervention is attributed to mounting concern that the Lebanese Hezbollah, a close ally of Syria, might open a military front on Israel’s northern borders and drag Tel Aviv into a long-standing war with unpredictable consequences.
In yet another serious escalation in the Syrian scene, news has been leaked that Qatar and Britain mull dispatching special forces to Syria in the context of the so-called “Friends of Syria” group.
Victoria Nuland, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman, said Washington is holding consultations with some countries on convening a meeting of the group to render humanitarian aid to the Syrian people.
In the same context, the White House spokesman said the U.S. plans to intensify consultations with its partners, including representatives from the Syrian opposition, to crystallize the next steps of the international community to stop bloodshed in Syria and to ensure a peaceful and democratic transition.
The worldwide plans and calls stirred concerns among Syrians that the situation, which is currently experiencing some kind of a cold war between major powers and even regional heavyweights, is getting closer to a new Iraq amid escalated violence and explosions that recall memories of what is happening in neighboring Iraq.
Syria has claimed that five major explosions that hit the two largest cities in the country, Damascus and Aleppo, over the past few months bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida.
Websites that have links to al-Qaida and other Wahhabi organizations have lately posted names of some of their members who were either killed or wounded in Syrian territories.
Al-Haqiqa, or Truth, website, said the so-called Free Syrian Army is no more than a “fictitious” cover that hides behind other Takfiri and fundamentalists, who flocked to the fighting in Syrian territory.
Libyan websites disclosed the death of three Libyan Islamists at the Baba Amro neighborhood in Homs last Monday. Other websites cited similar cases about the killing of a number of fundamentalists who came in from Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to fight in Syria.
Even the foreign press has reported the killing of five Wahabbi terrorists in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani, including the Kuwaiti Fuad Khaled, better known as Abu Hozaifa, during clashes with security men.
Media reports also said that no less than 1,000 gunmen from al-Qaida have infiltrated into Syria and most of them are stationed in Damascus suburbs and the central city of Homs.
The U.S. McClatchy newspapers said in a recent report that al-Qaida was behind the two explosions that rocked the capital of Damascus in December of 2011, raising the likelihood that it might also be responsible for the Aleppo blasts.
The paper said its account is based on CIA reports. It said al-Qaida wants to exploit the current turmoil in Syria to reassert its potency.
In a videotaped statement released Saturday, al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims in countries neighboring Syria to back Syria’s uprising against the “pernicious, cancerous regime.”
He said the rebels cannot depend on the West for help, spiking fears that Syria might meet Iraq’s fate.
Despite this fearsome development, Syrian officials are still trying to inspire hopes. Deputy Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad confirmed Saturday that the country will overcome all difficulties and win through reconciliation and through embarking on a dialogue with all spectra of the Syrian society.
Stop NATO e-mail list home page with archives and search engine:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages
Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com
To subscribe for individual e-mails or the daily digest, unsubscribe, and otherwise change subscription status:
stopnato-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Egypt: US-funded Agitators on Trial
US “democracy promotion” = foreign-funded sedition.
by Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
February 12, 2012
AP reported that US General Martin Dempsey has met directly with the military leaders of Egypt to discuss an Egyptian “crackdown on Western-funded pro-democracy groups.” Threatened with a cut-off from US aid, the Egyptian military is expected to abandon their campaign against US “NGOs.”
As usual, AP attempts to diminish the veracity of Egypt’s concerns with deceptive language and innuendos such as, “Egypt, which regularly blames anti-military protests on foreign meddling,” and “in an indication that authorities will continue to push the line that foreigners are stirring up trouble.” Of course it is not a “line” that the Egyptian government is pushing, it is a well documented fact.
Images: From Tunis and Tahrir Square to the Oval Office shaking hands with the US President and receiving the NED 2011 “Democracy Award,” the forces behind the “Arab Spring” not only weren’t spontaneous nor indigenous, but they most certainly were orchestrated, funded, directed, and finally celebrated and well-rewarded by the US State Department through their National Endowment for Democracy. Egypt’s crackdown on these disingenuous NGOs is long overdue and an example for all nations to follow.
AP goes on to explain the plight of the International Republican Institute (IRI) Egypt office-head, Sam LaHood, son of US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who is now on trail amongst 16 American “civil society employees.” They are charged with using US State Department funds to fuel unrest throughout Egypt.
Despite the feigned skepticism of AP, there is conclusive evidence that from 2008, the US State Department had begun a concerted effort to recruit, train, equip, fund, and in some cases arm, dissidents not only from Egypt, but from Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, and even North Korea. This was accomplished not only through the US State Department, but through a myriad of subsidiaries starting with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and including LaHood’s IRI.
Far from Egyptian Paranoia – Documented US Meddling in Egypt
In January of 2011, we were told that “spontaneous,” “indigenous” uprising had begun sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, including Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, in what was hailed as the “Arab Spring.” It would be almost four months before the corporate-media would admit that the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but “spontaneous,” or “indigenous.” In an April 2011 article published by the New York Times titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” it was stated (emphasis added):
“A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.”
The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):
“The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. “
It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous organizations including NED, NDI, LaHood’s IRI, and Freedom House and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. Preparations for the “Arab Spring” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.
In 2008, Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM’s various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report (page 3 of .pdf) states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman attended, as did Jared C0hen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.
Shortly afterward, April 6 would travel to Serbia to train under US-funded CANVAS, formally the US-funded NGO “Otpor” who helped overthrow the government of Serbia in 2000. Otpor, the New York Times would report, was a “well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.” After its success it would change its name to CANVAS and begin training activists to be used in other US-backed regime change operations.
The April 6 Movement, after training with CANVAS, would return to Egypt in 2010, a full year before the “Arab Spring,” along with UN IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei. April 6 members would even be arrested while waiting for ElBaradei’s arrival at Cairo’s airport in mid-February. Already, ElBaradei, as early as 2010, announced his intentions of running for president in the 2011 elections. Together with April 6, Wael Ghonim of Google, and a coalition of other opposition parties, ElBaradei assembled his “National Front for Change” and began preparing for the coming “Arab Spring.”
Quite clearly, it is not a “line” that the Egyptian government is “pushing” in regards to so-called “civil society employees,” rather it is a verified, documented fact that these “employees” are conducting espionage and political destabilization under the increasingly tenuous guise of “democracy promotion.”
An April 2011 AFP report would confirm that the US government had trained armies of “activists” to return to their respective countries and enact political “change,” when US State Department’s Michael Posner stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.”
That ripple effect of course, was the “Arab Spring” and the subsequent destabilization, violence, and even US armed and backed warfare that followed. While nations like Libya and Tunisia are now run by a BP, Shell, and Total-funded Petroleum Institute chairman and a US NED-funded “activist” respectively, Egypt has managed to ward off and expose the US proxy of choice, Mohammed ElBaradei, who’s own movement was forced to denounce him as a Western agent.
By striking at the meddling, seditious NGOs, Egypt seeks to undermine the source of destabilization, the conduit through which US money and support is funneled through to “activists,” and expose the true foreign-funded nature of the political division that has gripped the nation for now over a year.
The AP article reports that Egypt’s generals have stated, “we face conspiracies hatched against the homeland, whose goal is to undermine the institutions of the Egyptian state and whose aim is to topple the state itself so that chaos reigns and destruction spreads.” Clearly, this an accurate observation, not a political ploy, with similar US-hatched conspiracies documented and exposed from Tunisia all the way to Thailand.
Stepping Back from the Brink
Egyptians must step back and examine the obvious fraud behind their “Arab Spring” revolution, as well as ensure that this nationalist streak by the Egyptian military is genuine. All sides presuming ownership over Egypt’s destiny must exhibit through policy, programs, and action that they will be serving the Egyptian people, not opening doors to US free trade, bending to the will of Wall Street and London’s military ambitions throughout the region, or lending credibility to the West’s contrived international institutions.
Egypt’s military has made a promising first step by exposing and prosecuting foreign-funded sedition in their country, helping strip the deceitful veneer off of Western NGOs that have long operated with impunity under the cloak of humanitarian concern. Another step could be by showing support for Syria’s besieged government, facing similar foreign-funded destabilization and now foreign-funded terrorists vying to overthrow yet another Arab nation and installing a Western proxy regime.
For those in the streets of Egypt who genuinely seek better lives, they would be best served by exposing the foreign-funded frauds amongst them seeking to exploit the well-intentioned, and then developing a program of pragmatism rather than one of politics. Those merely calling for first Mubarak, and now the military to step down and make way for clearly US-backed proxies like ElBaradei and the MI6-creation, the Muslim Brotherhood, are only paving the way for another oppressive regime to lord over them well into the foreseeable future. However, unlike with Mubarak, there will be no foreign aid flowing in to overthrow this new foreign-funded proxy regime, only aid to ensure its endless perpetuation.
———————————–
[hat tip: Global Research]
PN 