part of the world is that you have to be very careful.....
بسم الله الر حمن الر حيم
years past by : beyond imagination .
May 27, 2007
Who is Franklin Lamb?
It’s Franklin Lamb suddenly all over the place. The man is right now inside the Palestinian camp Nahr el-Bared. While all of us journalists are sort of hovering on the outskirts of the camp, this man actually went inside. Or at least that is what he writes.
I ran into this man down south in September of last year( 2006 ). He was touring the south, like me, checking out the cluster bomb issue, and the extensive bombing damage of the Israeli war. He gave me his card. ‘Americans for a Just Peace in the Middle East’ it read. I remember thinking he was probably some type of bible wacko. You have them here; people that somehow see the light and come to the Middle East on a one-man-peace-mission-from-god. I ditched the card, but for some reason I remembered the name.
Well, he has surfaced again, and this time inside the Nahr el-Bared camp up north. No, he’s not a Fatah Islam member :) He is writing. He wrote an earlier article for Counterpunch (who’s behind the fighting in the north) on the situation in Nahr el-Bared, and he is currently writing from the inside.
Trouble in this part of the world is that you have to be very careful with people like this. As much as he could be genuine, he could be a massive fraud as well. If he is genuine, he’s pretty good.
The problem is, I cannot get much background on him. I googled him, but there is no information other than that he just released a book (The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons in Lebanon) and another book (Hezbollah: a Brief Guide for Beginners) is supposed to come out soon.
He does somehow seem to be related with an organization called If Americans Knew. (He was working for them when I ran into him) The mission of this particular organization is to ‘to inform and educate the American public on issues of major significance that are unreported, underreported, or misreported in the American media.’ That is a noble enough mission, I must say. Most reporters that work for an extensive time in the Middle East do seem to get exasperated by the Israelis, and all lean to the Palestinian side after a while. Let's rephrase that; they do not buy the Israeli side anymore.
There is a Dutch reporter, Joris Luyendijk, who recently published a very interesting book on his problems with reporting the Middle East. (They’re Almost Like Real People, it’s called). It’s in Dutch only for the moment.
Both organizations (Americans for a Just Peace in the Middle East and If Americans Knew) are looking at the conflict from the Palestinian side, and I doubt that the pro-Israel organizations in the States are very pleased with these people.
As I said, you have to be careful in this part of the world with the information you get. There is always AT LEAST two sides to it, and most probably more. And you've got to be careful where it is coming from. The line between information and propaganda is sometimes almost impossible to detect. For someone who seems to be so well-informed, and courageous to go into the camp right now, he does not seem to have published a whole lot in newspapers.
Franklin Lamb is like a Jack-in-the-Box. Where did he so suddenly come from? His case is the same as with all these obscure radical groups that appear out of the blue; ‘who’s his paymaster?” He could be one of those – what we call here – Hezbollah groupies. Hezbollah seems to like the man alright; they even posted one if his articles on their web site. They may have done this without his knowledge though.
And then again, he could be for real. And if he’s for real, he’s real good.
Update: Sorry, but no more commenting allowed on this particular post. Mr. Lamb - probably unbeknown to him - has created a little controversy though. It turned out that Lamb's name opened a can of worms that was a bit too much for some people who had nothing to do with the issue, yet did get mentioned. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Labels: war : source
A jack-in-the-box is a children's toy that outwardly consists of a box with a crank. When the crank is turned, it plays a melody, often "Pop Goes the Weasel". At the end of the tune there is a "surprise", the lid pops open and a figure, usually a clown or jester, pops out of the box.
Seeing, we don't see. Hearing, we don't hear. So we can't see the obvious which stares us in the face, perspective on everything changes.
subject 1/.
Franklin Lamb , a former Assistant Counsel of the US House Judiciary Committee at the US Congress and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil, and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.
subject 2/.
Franklin Lamb, a former Assistant Counsel of the US House Judiciary Committee at the US Congress and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil, and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Following three summers at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Lamb was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Center where he specialized in Chinese Law. He was the first westerner allowed by the government of China to visit the notorious “Ward Street” Prison in Shanghai. Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and works with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon and the Sabra-Shatila Foundation. His new book, The Case for Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon, is due out shortly.
'Bahrain, Saudi regimes to be sued'
Tue May 10, 2011 5:54AM
A group of international lawyers are to file a “serious complaint” against the Saudi and Bahraini regimes by the end of May over their violent clampdowns on Bahraini people, an international lawyer says.
“There is a lawsuit being prepared against the monarchy [of Bahrain] and the Saudis, naming individuals, being filed in the American court through the American legal system,” Franklin Lamb, an international lawyer, told Press TV on Monday.
“That will be a very serious complaint in the Federal district court and that will apply the standards of law,” he pointed out.
“We will get it filed before the end of this month,” and then a group of five international lawyers will go to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, to hold a press conference on the issue, he went on to say.
Lamb noted that the complaint will be filed based on “a very powerful law called the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act that requires all American aid cut off, in this case to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, if they engage in a serial human and civil rights violation.”
So far, the law has been applied 14 times against different countries and “Bahrain is absolutely vulnerable to this lawsuit,” the activist added.
Lamb pointed to another petition already filed with the International Criminal Court against the Manama regime, arguing, “I do not think it will go anywhere, because there were several defects in that filing.”
He criticized the United States over its role in violent crackdowns on the popular revolution in Bahrain.
“Obviously, the Americans are the ones most responsible indirectly because of the support [for the Manama regime]. Their fear now really is that if there is a regime change they will lose the base for the Fifth Fleet,” the activist added.
Lamb argued that even if their legal campaign does not succeed, it will still be beneficial to the popular movement in Bahrain, because “It will give the American public and the media of the world a chance to learn the details and because of the jurisdiction we can submit voluminous filings.”
Since mid-February, thousands of anti-government protesters in Bahrain have poured into the streets, calling for an end to the Al Khalifa dynasty, which has ruled the country for almost forty years.
On March 13, Saudi-led forces were dispatched to the Persian Gulf island at Manama's request to quell the countrywide protests.
According to local sources, dozens of people have been killed and hundreds arrested so far during the government clampdown on the peaceful demonstrations.
Bahrain is home to the US Navy Fifth Fleet.
Trouble in this part of the world is that you have to be very careful with people like this. As much as he could be genuine, he could be a massive fraud as well.
civilised vs uncivilised = superpower side shadow justly reminded !!!
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