Glen Ford

"Obama withheld food from Somalia in order to weaken the Shabaab resistance, which set the stage for an even worse famine in 2011, killing hundreds of thousands.”

The White House has put in writing its policies for sub-Saharan Africa. The problem is, there’s hardly a word of truth in the document, and not a single mention of AFRICOM, the U.S. military command on the continent. The presidential paper repeats Obama’s 2009 lecture to Africans on “good governance.” He also warned that they avoid the “excuses” of blaming “neocolonialism” and “racism” for their problems. Meanwhile, AFRICOM is “positioning the U.S. to launch coups at will against African civilian, or even military, leaders that fall out of favor with Washington.”

President Obama, that imperialist son-of-a…um, Kenyan, last week unveiled what he described as a “new” U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The White House report does not once mention AFRICOM, the U.S. military command that has pushed aside the State Department as the primary institution of U.S. policy and power in sub-Saharan Africa. The report comes three years after Obama’s trip to Ghana, when he declared that Africa’s biggest problems were “corruption and poor governance,” rather than five centuries (and still counting) of Euro-American predation. African complaints about “neo-colonialism, or [that] the West has been oppressive, or racism” are mere “excuses,” said Obama, in a performance that scholar Ama Biney described as “imperialist lecturing” and “Obama-speak.”

Having effectively abandoned even the pretense of competing with China, India, Brazil and other rising economic powers in Africa, the Obama regime has turned the continent into a battleground, where AFRICOM is the principle interlocutor with the region’s governments and peoples.

In addition to conducting year-round military maneuvers with nearly every nation on the continent, AFRICOM handles much of U.S. food distribution and medical aid to the region, while the CIA monitors Africa’s vast expanses with a network of secret airstrips and surveillance aircraft.

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Stephen Lendman

Lyndon Johnson wanted war on Vietnam and got it. The August 1964 false flag Gulf of Tonkin incident initiated full-scale conflict after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. War was authorized without declaring it. It's an American tradition. Big lies launch wars. Manufactured pretexts initiate them. Mass killing and destruction follow. One nation after another is ravaged. Syria's next, then Iran, followed by other states on Washington's hit list.

On June 22, Turkey provocatively flew two warplanes at low altitude over Syrian airspace. It wanted a response and got it. On June 23, Syria's SANA state media headlined "Military Spokesman: Anti-Air Defenses Intercepted a Target That Violated Syrian Airspace Over Territorial Waters, Shot It Down West of Lattakia," saying:

"At 11:40 AM on 22/6/2012, an unidentified aerial target violated Syrian airspace, coming from the west at a very low altitude and at high speed over territorial waters, so the Syrian anti-air defenses counteracted with anti-aircraft artillery, hitting it directly as it was 1 kilometer away from land, causing it to crash into Syrian territorial waters west of Om al-Tuyour village in Lattakia province, 10 kilometers from the beach."

Syria's military spokesman also said naval forces from both countries were "searching for the two missing pilots." Some media sources said both crew members were rescued. Others said they're still missing.

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Peter Eyre

Any unauthorized incursion into national airspace by a foreign aircraft--or "aerial intrusion"--would thus violate customary sovereignty and the Chicago Convention. The affected State would then have the legal right to respond by intercepting the offending aircraft and turning it away; forcing it to land at a designated airfield; impounding the aircraft if it lands; or even shooting it down. - (Chicago Convention) Business Library

What we are looking at right now is clearly a possible “False Flag” incident to justify an action against Syria when the shooting down of the Turkish Air Force Phantom jet fighter was perfectly legitimate under international law and UN guidelines on the rules of engagement.

The BBC carried the following headline in its biased coverage of this incident when it said:

“Turkey calls NATO meeting on warplane downed by Syria - Turkey has called a meeting of NATO member states to discuss its response to the shooting down of one of its warplanes by Syrian forces on Friday. Ankara has invoked Article 4 of NATO charter, under which consultations can be requested when an ally feels their security is threatened, officials say. Earlier, Turkey's foreign minister said the F-4 Phantom was in international airspace when it was shot down.”

I find this entire episode truly getting very much out of control with even the Turkish Government now changing their story since the incident on Friday and even in this same BBC article one can read Turkey´s Foreign Ministry stating: “It knew the coordinates of the jet, which was in Syrian territorial waters at a depth of 1,300m (4,265ft), but has not yet found it”...So, why the hype and why is this escalating into a possible armed conflict between NATO and Syria, and why has the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today expressed “his deep concern” about the incident.

Clearly the scene is almost set for action against Syria that believe it or not was planned almost 20 years ago and has nothing to do with the current situation and clearly shows that the UK, US, France and Germany are hell bent into forcing yet another Libya style regime change all in the name of misinformation and whom are clearly arming, funding and assisting the rebel army in Syria.

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