ADDENDUM OF RESEARCH NOTES AND SUPPORTING MATERIALS AND SOURCES Hidden History Alive Within the Present Quotations from “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (updated edition), by William Blum, Common Courage…
Tag: democracy
Who’s buying our democracy? Wall Street financiers, the Koch brothers, and casino magnates Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn. And they’re doing much of it in secret. It’s a perfect storm: The greatest concentration of wealth…
The latest exclusive by Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin is entitled “Inside the quiet effort to plan for a post-Assad Syria.” Two days ago, the reliable conduit for all the latest “democracy promotion” news blogged on The Cable: For the last six months, 40 senior representatives of various Syrian opposition groups have been meeting quietly in Germany under the tutelage of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) to plan for how to set up a post-Assad Syrian government. The project, which has not directly involved U.S. government officials but was partially funded by the State Department, is gaining increased relevance this month as the violence in Syria spirals out of control and hopes for a peaceful transition of power fade away. The leader of the project, USIP’s Steven Heydemann, an academic expert on Syria, has briefed administration officials on the plan, as well as foreign officials, including on the sidelines of the Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul last month. The project is called “The day after: Supporting a democratic transition in Syria.” Heydemann spoke about the project in depth for the first time in an interview with The Cable. He described USIP’s efforts as “working in a support role with a large group of opposition groups to define a transition process for a post-Assad Syria.”
In spite of being discredited by the economic recession of 2008, market fundamentalism has once again assumed primacy as a dominant force for producing unprecedented inequalities in wealth and income, runaway environmental devastation, egregious amounts…
The Times reports that the United Arab Emirates has shut down the offices of the National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit U.S. agency whose mission is to promote democracy around the globe. The NDI is often called an NGO,…
While regional organizations are going to be the mainstay in international politics in the post-cold war world, one of the old regional organizations Arab League (formed in 1945) has shown all weakness of a broken house with members failing to take coordinated position on any of the raging international issues. A simple juxtaposition of the Arab League summit with the BRICS summit, held on the same date 29 March 2012, brings stark contrast how coordination in one part of the world is failing acutely, while on the other part the rise of BRICS in global arena is a foregone conclusion. While the Arab League, as the recent summit at Baghdad revealed, has become known for all differences, whether on Syria or Iran or on issues of conflict resolution, the BRICS countries developed commonalities on many issues including that of Syria and Iran. That the summit schedule was shifted twice before this one at Baghdad, and that only 9 member countries out of total twenty two countries participated in the summit itself reveals a poor story of the League. Even the nine countries participating in the summit did not send their top leaders; rather the member countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar sent junior officials instead of head of states to participate in the summit.
On Saturday, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on her visit to Saudi Arabia, attended the first Strategic Cooperation Forum between the U.S. and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The six countries comprising the GCC…
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has nothing to gain and all to lose – especially their lives. -Eugene Victor Debs Few nations have such extensive borders or coasts as the United States. Few have borders as blessedly uncontested and unthreatened. Why, then, is the US so contemptuous of international law? Why does the US intervene in and invade other lands, often far from our shores, with such alarming frequency? Why does this nation squander trillions of dollars on “security” and “defense”? Why does this nation maintain fleets and hundreds of costly military bases all over the globe? Why does this nation dissipate its treasure deploying the world’s most massive killing machine?
Haneen Zoabi, an MK from the Balad party, speaks to Elsa Rassbach about Land Day and her relationship as a Palestinian to Zionism and citizenship. Since the 1980s, Palestinians have marked every March 30 with…
How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for Democracy? An organization which often does exactly the opposite of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan…