Thanks once again to the indispensable Moon of Alabama blog for highlighting, among other interesting facts, the amazingly open ties of the Syrian opposition to their Western paymasters. As the astonishing Guardian story linked in the MoA piece outlines, down to the person these Syrian engines of regime change are products of the US empire and its interventionist, Trotskyite foreign policy of “global democratic revolution.” I urge interested readers to click on the original piece for the full story. I am paraphrasing and quoting the Guardian story below by way of summary:

Syrian National Council (SNC):

Image: Bassma Kodmani leaving Bilderberg Group meeting, june 2012, Chantilly, USA

Bassma Kodmani — member of the executive bureau and head of foreign affairs, Syrian National Council. Two-time Bilderberg meeting attendee. Director of governance and international co-operation program for (CIA-front) Ford Foundation in pre-“Arab Spring” Egypt. Executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) — a research programme initiated by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Image: Ausama Monajed, Director of Communications, National Initiative for Change; Nadim Shehadi, Chatham House; Dr Radwan Ziadeh, Visiting Scholar, Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University; Dr Najib Ghadbian, Associate Professor of Political Science and Middle East Studies, University of Arkansas

Radwan Ziadeh — senior fellow at the federally funded Washington think tank, the US Institute of Peace (the USIP Board of Directors is packed with alumni of the defense department and the national security council; its president is Richard Solomon, former adviser to Kissinger at the NSC). In February he joined an elite bunch of Washington hawks to sign a letter calling upon Obama to intervene in Syria: his fellow signatories include James Woolsey (former CIA chief), Karl Rove (Bush Jr’s handler), Clifford May (Committee on the Present Danger) and Elizabeth Cheney, former head of the Pentagon’s Iran-Syria Operations Group. Close allies in US House of Representatives and Senate.

Ausama Monajed — Commentator on Al Jazeera, owned by the dictatorship of Qatar. Blogger for Huffington Post. Adviser to SNC president and “the Founder and Director of Barada Television”, a pro-opposition satellite channel based in Vauxhall, south London. In 2008, a few months after attending Syria In-Transition conference, Monajed was back in Washington, invited to lunch with George W Bush, along with a handful of other favoured dissidents. Recipient of large amounts of State Department funding through its front organization The Democracy Council.

Others:

Hamza Fakher — co-author of Revolution in Danger, a publication of the extremist neo-con “Henry Jackson Society Strategic Briefing,” in February of this year. He co-wrote this briefing paper with the Henry Jackson Society’s communications director, Michael Weiss.

Michael Weiss — One of the most widely quoted western experts on Syria — and an enthusiast for western intervention. Director of communications and public relations at the neo-con Henry Jackson Society. The Henry Jackson Society’s international patrons include: James “ex-CIA boss” Woolsey, Michael “homeland security” Chertoff, William “PNAC” Kristol, Robert “PNAC” Kagan, Joshua “Bomb Iran” Muravchick, and Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle. The Society is run by Alan Mendoza, chief adviser to the all-party parliamentary group on transatlantic and international security.

Tikun Olam Blog founder Richerd Silverstein calls “friend of Syria” Michael Weiss a “Pro-Israel Neocon” who “Authors Blueprint for Western Military Intervention in Syria Approved by Syrian Ex-Pats.”

Concludes the Guardian piece: