The PANDA (People Against the NDAA) Mission Statement:
Our Mission is to nonviolently nullify, strike down, repeal, stop, void and fight the indefinite detention provisions, Sections 1021 and 1022, of the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year of 2012, to fight for American civil liberties, to combat laws restricting liberty in the interest of National Security, to support current government officials that are doing so and to engage a younger generation in the politics of the United States so this cannot happen again.
In an exclusive interview with RT, Syrian President Bashar Assad said that Syria is not going through a civil war, but rather a different kind of war — terrorism through proxies.
Assad told RT that the West creates scapegoats as enemies — from communism, to Islam, to Saddam Hussein. He accused Western countries of aiming to turn him into their next enemy.
While mainstream media outlets generally report on the crisis as a battle between Assad and Syrian opposition groups, the president claims that his country has been infiltrated by numerous terrorist proxy groups fighting on behalf of other powers.
In the event of a foreign invasion of Syria, Assad warned, the fallout would be too dire for the world to bear.
Using the same pattern as in each recent war, the United States formed a broad coalition to attack Syria. Bypassing the individual objectives of its allies, Washington has put forward a consensual discourse acceptable to all. But as the war dragged on, the initial plans have been replaced by others. Washington has revealed its cards and its allies are forced to go along. Hillary Clinton’s latest initiative shows that for the U.S. the objective is primarily economic.
U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton says Washington needs “an opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution,” [1] but fails to add that it must also be open to the United States doing the same.
Uprisings aimed at overthrowing governments are often divided between militants who do the heavy lifting on the ground and politicians who lead the fight in the political sphere. Outside powers scheme to anoint an acceptable politician as a leader-in-waiting to step into the void if and when the current government is toppled. The leader must be both acceptable to his or her foreign backers and to the militants on the ground.
Washington has decided that the Syrian National Council, which it “initially charged” to “galvanize opposition” [2] to Syria’s Ba’thist government is unacceptable to Syrian rebels and therefore has no hope of leading a successor government. As an alternative to the failed council, it has handpicked the leaders of a new government-in-waiting, to be unveiled in Doha on November 7, and soon after receive the pre-arranged blessing of the Arab League and Friends of Syria. Make no mistake. What emerges from Doha will be a US creation, intended to represent US interests in Syria and the Middle East.
At a press conference following an October 30 meeting with the president of Croatia, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton revealed that the Syrian National Council, Washington’s initial pick to lead the opposition to the Asad government, no longer had Washington’s support. The SNC, in Washington’s view, had become irrelevant. The armed opposition to the Asad government is happening outside the leadership of the SNC, an organization of exiles with no legitimacy within Syria and internally divided by incessant squabbling between its Islamist and secularist factions. The SNC, commented one armed rebel, “has been over with for a long time now; fighters only talk about it sarcastically.” [3]
Equally problematic for Washington was the SNC’s narrow base of political support. “From the beginning, the council was seen as a prime vehicle for the long-exiled Muslim Brotherhood” [4] and therefore “failed to attract significant representation from minority groups,” [5] including Alawites, Christians and Kurds. Its failure to win support from fighters on the ground, and to expand beyond a narrow sectarian base, hardly recommended it as a viable government-in-waiting. Sounding the council’s death knell, Clinton decreed “that the SNC can no longer be viewed as the visible leader of the opposition.” [6]
For weeks now, Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, has been putting together a plan to anoint a new US-approved government-in-the-wings. The initiative is known as the “Riad Seif plan” [7] named after a wealthy Damascus businessman and former Syrian parliamentarian who has long played an active role in the opposition to the Asad government. Acceptable to Washington owing to his businessman politics (as against the Ba’athist’s ideological commitment to state domination of the economy, marginalization of the private sector, and controls on foreign investment [8]), Seif has been endorsed by Washington to lead a post-Ba’athist government. It is hoped that his opposition credentials—he was jailed by the Syrian government for his activities—will put him in good stead with the rebels on the ground.
The plan calls for the creation of a “proto-parliament” comprising 50 members, 20 from the internal opposition, 15 from the SNC (i.e., the exile opposition), and 15 from various other Syrian opposition organizations. An executive body made up of 8 to 10 members—who have been endorsed by the US State department [9] — will work directly with the United States and its allies. [10] Washington and its subordinates, the Arab League and misnamed Friends of Syria, both democracy-hating clubs of plutocracies and oil monarchies, will attempt to make the body acceptable to Syrians by recognizing it as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
The Algerian ambassador to Tehran says the Israeli regime’s war rhetoric against Iran and other regional countries is in flagrant violation of international laws and the UN Charter.
Sofiane Mimouni said on Monday that according to the United Nations Charter, any threat against a UN member state is “forbidden and unacceptable.”
Mimouni said his country continues to support Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology, adding that the Islamic Republic has never violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“Algeria has constantly supported the legal rights of countries, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, to possess and use peaceful nuclear technology,” said the Algerian diplomat.
Tel Aviv has repeatedly threatened Iran with a military strike, falsely claiming that Tehran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Iran argues that as a signatory to the NPT and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.
Color Revolution’s Mystery Gunmen : Explains how opposition militants are used to stage violence against unarmed protesters to further expand violence and destabilize a targeted government.
A meeting was held in memory of Gaddafi. And this is excerpts from Sukant Chandan’s introduction. Stating that Gaddafi championed every anti imperialist cause, even wanting a SATO to counteract NATO. And how Africom never got a foothold while Gaddafi was around.
It is almost Guy Fawkes night in Britain which is when fireworks are let off. So if you hear explosions they are just fireworks.
Egypt has officially banned sexually explicit websites, three years after the country’s administrative court denounced pornographic content as “venomous and vile.”
The country’s Prosecutor General has ordered government ministries to block porn from the web, after ultraconservative Salafis launched a campaign called “Pure Net” to prohibit pornography online, according to an anonymous government official, AP reports.
The move by Prosecutor General Abdel Maguid Mahmoud has caused a split in Egyptian society. Conservatives welcomed the order as the first step towards an Islamic Egypt, while liberals denounced the move as a government crackdown on freedom of expression.
Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan described the decision as “a first step towards establishing a society based on ethics,” in a statement to Al-Ahram’s Arabic-language news site.
The Salafist Nour Party also welcomed the decision, adding that the ban would not impact personal and public freedoms. “Egyptian society is conservative by nature and rejects these websites,” Mohamed Nour, the party’s spokesman, asserted.
One politician called the move “a first step towards applying Islamic Law in Egypt,” MP Ali Wanis was quoted by news website ahramonline as saying.
Others in Egypt, especially from liberal circles, were quick to criticize the ban.
“Those who are preoccupied with banning websites (which they will not be able to block for technical reasons) should be more concerned about the drafting of Egypt’s new constitution,” Ayman El-Sayad, a liberal journalist and advisor to President Mohamed Morsi, tweeted.
The high costs associated with the blocking of thousands of websites have prevented the three-year-old ban ruling from being fully implemented.
In 2009, under the Hosni Mubarak government, a Cairo court ruled that “freedom of expression and public rights should be restricted by maintaining the fundamentals of religion, morality and patriotism,” condemning graphic websites and ruling to ban them.
A scheme of how the ban would be implemented has not yet been provided to the public.
