BY Sandip Hor

“This is where India was sold to the British,” tells my omniscient guide Quadir when we visit an abandoned mango grove in Plassey, a small village in West Bengal, which for the last 250 years has remained as a silent spectator of a drama that changed the fate of India.

History books account that so called drama as “Battle of Plassey”, which in 1757 was staged between Nawab Siraj-Ud-Daula, ruler undivided Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa and Lord Clive of East India Company.

Murshidabad, located 150 km away from Kolkata was then the bustling capital of Siraj’s empire; now a shabby district town where almost every stone and brick has a story of lust and passion, obedience and conspiracy, power and greed to narrate. That’s enough to lure visitors like me to land there on a weekend and browse through the impoverish townscape, dotted with ruined palaces, mosques, monuments, mausoleums, tomb and graveyards.

The history during the golden period of Murshidabad is very interesting. Situated on the banks of the Bhagirathi, it was established in 1717 by Nawab Murshid Quli Khan as the capital of his province in Eastern India at a time when the might of Mughals in Delhi was on the wane. The British East India Company, established a century ago in Calcutta, was becoming more interested in territory than trade. They had organised an army of their own and built walled bastions in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Other European colonizers — the French, Dutch and Portuguese — were also trying to make their presence felt, but their scores were limited.

Siraj-Ud-Daula, ascended to the throne in April 1756 at the age of 26, after the death of his grandfather Ali Vardi Khan, superseding other princes, senior ministers and nobles. This aroused extreme jealousy among close family members and officials. From day one, Siraj was not in good terms with the British Company, particularly because of their strengthening the fortification in Calcutta. So in June 1756, he attacked the fort, captured it and held 146 British subjects in a small, dark chamber, recorded in history as the infamous “Black Hole of Calcutta”. Only 23 were said to have survived the ordeal. Revenge became the top of the agenda item for the British East India Company.

At the same time, a conspiracy to overthrow Siraj was growing exponentially in Murshidabad. His most senior minister Mir Jafar, aunty Ghasetti Begum and many others including wealthy merchants like Jagath Seth and Umichand, joined hands with Lord Clive, the commander of East India Company and struck a deal that if Siraj can be ousted, the throne will be awarded to Mir Jafar.

So on June 23, 1757, the 3,000-strong army of Clive met face-to-face with Nawab’s 50,000 men equipped with a train of heavy artillery at the tranquil mango grove of Plassey at the outer periphery of Murshidabad. However, the outcome of the battle had been decided long before the soldiers came to the battlefield. Nawab’s soldiers were bribed by Mir Jafar to throw away their weapons and surrender prematurely. So without many gun shots fired, the battle ended within a day and with Siraj fleeing for his life; but he was soon captured by Mir Jafar’s son and brutally murdered.

Nawabs for puppets

Mir Jafar and his descendants became the future Nawabs, but remained as puppets under the British, who wasted no time thereafter to establish their reign, not only in Bengal, but all over India. Years later Jawaharlal Nehru, in his book Discovery of India aptly described Clive as having won the battle “by promoting treason and forgery”, thus marking a sordid start to British rule in India.

A monument stands today in the ill-fated battle ground, perhaps to remind the generation of independent India and visitors as well, how sovereignty of a nation was lost and to make them think what would have India looked like today if a fair game was played.

Mir Jafar was never forgiven for his disloyalty to his motherland. He was nicknamed Ghaddar in Urdu meaning unfaithful traitor and remembered in history as another word for betrayal. It’s said people kick and spit on his decorated graveyard, of which nothing remains except the ornamental gate called the “Namak Haram Deorhi” meaning traitors gate.

There is also nothing much left to remember Siraj other than his grave in Khosh Bagh, located on the other side of the river. He rests there alongside his grandfather and wife Luft-un-nisa, inside an arcaded mausoleum, surrounded by a pleasant garden, peppered with 108 varieties of roses.

Hazarduary Palace

The town’s most tourist occupied venue is the Hazarduary Palace, which surfaced long after the era of Siraj and Mir Jafar. Built in 1837, it’s an Italian architectural styled three-storied edifice, fitted with 900 real and 100 artificial doors (hazarduary literally means thousand doors), guarding 114 rooms which now display an exquisite collection of Nawabi memorabilia. The 41-acre walled area that also houses a Clock Tower, a mosque, an impressive white- painted Imambara and a huge 4m long cannon, which has been kept idle after it fired its first shot. Its explosive sound was so loud that all pregnant women within a 15 km radius gave birth to their child prematurely.

The oldest monument of significance in Murshidabad is the Katra Masjid, a large mosque built on a 20-acre property in 1723 by Nawab Murshid Quli Khan. During heyday, this mosque could accommodate thousands easily and had numerous cave-type cells for worshippers to read the Quran. Though this monument, like few others is maintained by the Archaeological Society of India, unfortunately signs of neglect are evident everywhere

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, a staunch and ardent supporter of the Kashmiri cause, is an American citizen of Kashmiri origin, from Indian Occupied Kashmir. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on July 19, 2011 for allegedly accepting monetary support from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to lobby and influence the US government on the Kashmir conflict in violation of Foreign Agents Registration Act. His arrest came at a time when relations between Pakistan and the United States were already strained in the aftermath of the raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Dr. Fai, who has been pillar of strength for the Kashmiri cause, organizing seminar, roundtable discussions and colloquiums for creating awareness in the world regarding the sad plight of the Kashmiris in Indian Occupied Kashmir, is a harmless person, devoting his life to the cause of his downtrodden brethren.

The United States of America, which is a melting pot of different ethnic origins, has been magnanimous in welcoming them. In fact, the Statue of Liberty, located at the mouth of New York harbor on Ellis Island, faces outward toward the nations, holding aloft the torch of freedom, the flame of hope, the promise of the future. She holds this torch high in the daytime and during the night as well. She shines her light in the midst of darkness. This symbol of freedom and hope was presented by the people of France to the people of the United States in 1886 in honor of the friendship between the two nations. Yet, the Statue belongs to all people.  Her message is universal, speaking to the hearts of those who cherish freedom everywhere.

Liberty’s image is one of strength, majesty, and hope, visible in her eternally raised right arm which carries the torch of freedom.  Holding aloft a light that never fails, she represents hope to the hopeless, welcome to the poor, courage to the meek. Facing outward toward the ocean, her lamp is a beacon on stormy seas, drawing to her shores, those from afar who seek a better life.  For these, and for countless others who embrace her message, the Statue of Liberty represents the Golden Door, which is the entrance into liberty and freedom from oppression that is the promise of America—a land, a people, a way of life. It is also the freedom of spirit and of choice that was declared an inalienable right in the US Declaration of Independence—a document whose date of execution, July 4th, 1776, is inscribed on the tablet she carries. The Statue welcomes all to this door—the lost, the needy, the rejected, and the exiled.  She invites them to step through it into freedom.

Immortalized in the poem of Emma Lazarus, the Statue speaks eternally the words of compassion: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." These words from the "The New Colossus," written in 1883, appear on the Statue’s pedestal.

For a nation, committed to the oppressed and downtrodden, victimizing Dr. Ghulam Nabi, a dedicated and unswerving freedom fighter is extremely contemptible. The decision to arrest Dr. Fai was taken while the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was touring India. It is apparent that the famed social worker was taken into custody only to please India. The overtures to the latest US paramour India have compelled it to take a number of unpleasant decisions, to woo it. Pakistan has been victimized and targeted while Kashmiri freedom fighters are now being incarcerated at the behest of India. The US is forgetting that Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai was also in contact with Indian diplomats and other officials. Besides carrying out activities with their involvement, he has also been gathering their support in organizing various Kashmir related functions. This does not make Dr. Fai a criminal. On December 7, 2011 Fai pleaded guilty to felony, conspiracy and tax evasion charges, but not for being an ISI agent.

The action against Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai has exposed US sincerity towards resolution of Kashmir Issue. President Obama, during his run up to the US presidential elections, had taken cognizance of the Kashmir issue and had promised that if elected, he would use his good offices to help resolve the flashpoint of Kashmir imbroglio, which has the potential of erupting into a war between nuclear weapons equipped India and Pakistan. The rivals have gone to war thrice during the last six and half decades and been on the brink of war on numerous occasions. Unfortunately, President Obama reneged on his promise to help resolve the Kashmir issue and cut the Gordian’s knot and bring peace into the region. When President Obama visited India, he was presented a petition signed by 4500 persons including the Kashmiri Diaspora and parliamentarians from the UK and US but Obama chose to disregard the petition.   

A legal question that arises is that in case, US law was being breached, why US authorities have taken so long to take action against Dr. Fai. It is now amply clear that the Indo-US nexus has chosen to victimize Dr. Fai a harmless human being only to pressurize Pakistan. His arrest was condemned by separatist Kashmiri leaders including Syed Ali Shah Geelani who called his arrest "a conspiracy by India to weaken the freedom struggle in Kashmir". The sentencing of Dr. Fai is scheduled for March 2012. Fai faces a five year sentence for the conspiracy charge and an additional three years for tax evasion. As part of his guilty plea, Fai signed an 81-paragraph "Statement of Fact" cataloging his crimes, with specific details as to the instructions and payments he received. The US judicial system should take into cognizance, that in pursuit of drawing US and international attention towards the trampling of Kashmiris’ rights, Dr. Fai had obtained the support of US legislators and parliamentarians like Dan Burton, Joseph R. Pitts and others. To single out Dr. Fai for victimizing him and incarcerating him for pursuing his noble mission is despicable

CELEBRATED Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz described how the `fog of war` causes facts to be fudged. Indian army chief Gen V.K. Singh has surely studied von Clausewitz.

How then has he allowed himself and his force to become embroiled in fuzzy mathematics over the churlish matter of his age, that too in peacetime? V.K.`s predicament stems from three sources: (a) the contentious circumstances of his appointment as chief in 2010, (b) the resentment that many army personnel feel towards the neta-babu nexus, and perhaps most significantly, (c) V.K.`s tendency to shoot from the lip.

V.K. became chief against the wish of his immediate predecessor, Gen Deepak Kapoor. As Kapoor`s subordinate, he had recommended probing the alleged corruption of one of Kapoor`s pet staff officers, effrontery that would have stymied most military careers. Fortunately for him, Defence Minister A.K. Antony took his side, and what is more, got him the top job.

At this time, the discrepancy in his age records was noticed, but the matter was seemingly laid to rest. Kapoor`s tenure had been controversial enough, and the government wanted to move on. The handing-taking over ceremony between Kapoor and V.K. Singh, normally a bear-hugging affair between an outgoing chief and an incoming one, was so frigid, it might as well have occurred on the Siachen glacier. `War of the generals` shrieked the headlines.

Shortly afterwards, Kapoor was accused of misappropriating prime property in Mumbai when he was still chief. V.K. proclaimed on national television that Kapoor`s behaviour had shamed the army. Quick to implicate, V.K. forgot about the principle of presumption of innocence. Another cardinal rule, of a serving chief refraining from publicly condemning his predecessors, too was violated. Kapoor met Antony to clear his name, and while V.K. threatened to court-martial Kapoor, the government let the matter die.

If 2010 was bad for Manmohan Singh, 2011 was annus horribilis. Anna Hazare galvanised the nation`s anti-corruption rage into a gale, leaving Manmohan Singh teetering. Anna became afour-letter word for the government. V.K., unable to contain himself, came out in public support of Anna. Little did he realise then that he had just cooked his own goose.

If Indira Gandhi had been prime minister, loose lips as his would have been sealed quickly. Manmohan Singh is more deliberate. Behind wispy facial hair though, there are some fangs for sure, to be bared only every few years, as he did while pushing for India`s nuclear deal, or when he thwarted a nation baying for Pakistani blood after 26/11.

After becoming chief, V.K. sought a correction, from 1950 to 1951, to his date of birth. If granted, he would have secured an additional 10 months of service. But even his benefactor, A.K. Antony, was becoming wary. V.K.`s request was turned down.

He filed a formal complaint, which too was rejected. By now, the soap opera of age, starring birth certificates, enrolment forms, claims, counter-claims, had become all the rage.

Two camps pitted heads. On the one side were the retired army officers, who, almost to a man, supported V.K. A question of izzat, they fumed through their handlebar moustaches.

Ranged against them were the pot-bellied politicians and Indian Administrative Service bureaucrats, who cited chapter and verse ofrules andlines of succession.

Many in India`s military chafe at what they consider as shackles imposed upon them by the `bloody civilians`. It galls them that the army chief, head of the world`s second-largest army, is ranked 12 in the order of precedence of Indian officialdom, all the way down from two in pre-Independence India.

It rankles them when they see the coveted privileges enjoyed by armies to their west (Pakistan), north (China), east (Bangladesh, Myanmar), or south (Sri Lanka). Pakistan`s `womb to tomb` army culture is markedly absent in India, with officers often put to pasture in the prime of their lives, ill-equipped to cope with civilian life`s wheeling and dealing. So unattractive has the career become that India`s army faces a lacuna of over 10,000 officers, almost a quarter of the desired strength.

Since Nehru`s time, the government, fearful of a coup, has kept the army on a tight leash. Once in a while a charismatic army chief comes along, as was the case with K. Sundarji. His over-exuberance though almost precipitated a war with Pakistan, as well as nudged Rajiv Gandhi into a catastrophic misadventure in Sri Lanka, for which the latter paid for with his life subsequently. Even as India`s military seeks to break free, many abroad hail how assiduously the civilian government has tethered it.

`Don`t treat me as if I am Pakistan`s army chief,` V.K. has reportedly wailed to his government. Rumours abound that Manmohan Singh talks directly to Gen Kayani. Surely he accords him due courtesy! Jokes apart, Manmohan Singh promises a makeover this year. He has issued an unprecedented New Year`s resolution, and has visited the Golden Temple to steel himself.

Neither he, nor his patron, Sonia Gandhi, will allow an uppity general to waylay their plan for 2012, which is to ensure an orderly ascension to premiership for Rahul Gandhi. Successors to V.K. have already been short-listed, five months before his tenure is to end, rendering him a virtual lame duck.

Instead of making veiled threats of going to court, which step would in all likelihood invite the sack, or resigning in a huff, it would be best if he were to declare the matter as closed, and treat it as so. And if, to sweeten the pill, the government offers him an ambassadorship or state governorship, he should decline. He took charge promising to restore the army’s morale.

Climbing down and bowing to his political masters is the only way out now.

sunil_sharan@yahoo.com

The current Bharati claims on Aksai China are based on the arbitrary McMahon line which the British tried to impose on them. The Chinese Government claims that it never signed any agreement which the McMohan Line an unfair demarcation. The British officials designed such the McMohan line and then had taken 9 million sq.km.land from China to their other great colony–India . The old India maps of India did not show the parts as part of “India”.

One of the earliest treaties regarding the boundaries in the western sector was signed in 1842. At the instigation of the British, the Sikh Confederacy of the Punjab annexed Ladakh into the state of Jammu in 1834.

This period saw naked expansion of Britain–which was forcing China on all fronts. The First Anglo-Chinese War (1839–42), known popularly as the First Opium War pressured the Chinese to grant them more rights.

To continue this pressure in 1841, they invaded Tibet with an army but were defeated by the Chinese forces. The Chinese and the Sikhs signed a treaty in September 1842, which stipulated no transgressions or interference in the other country’s frontiers.[The Sino-Indian Border Disputes, by Alfred P. Rubin, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Jan., 1960), pp. 96-125.]

The British defeated the Sikhs in 1846 and took over sovereignty over Ladakh. The British commissioners and the Chinese officials were apparently sufficiently satisfied that a traditional border was recognized and defined by natural elements, and the border was not demarcated. The boundaries at the two extremities, Pangong Lake and Karakoram Pass, were well-defined, but the Aksai Chin area in between lay undefined.

The Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860 and China lost it too forcing China to import Opium into China. At the same time other stuff was happening on the Western front

W. H. Johnson, a civil servant with the Survey of India proposed the “Johnson Line” in 1865, which put Aksai Chin in Kashmir.[4] This was the time of the Dungan revolt, when China did not control Turkestan, so this line was never presented to the Chinese[4]. Johnson presented this line to the Maharaja of Kashmir, who then claimed the 18,000 square kilometres contained within,[Mohan Guruswamy, Mohan, "The Great India-China Game", Rediff, June 23, 2003.], and by some accounts territory further north as far as the Sanju Pass in the Kun Lun Mountains. The British government had some doubts on the validity of the Johnson Line[Calvin, James Barnard (April 1984). "The China-India Border War". Marine Corps Command and Staff College. Retrieved 2006-06-14.] and Johnson was censured

That would have been the end of it–but other events happened.

In 1878 the Chinese had reconquered Turkestan, and by 1890 they already had Shahidulla before the issue was decided(Mohan Guruswamy, Mohan, “The Great India-China Game”, Rediff, June 23, 2003.). By 1892, China had erected boundary markets at Karakoram Pass (Calvin, James Barnard (April 1984). “The China-India Border War”. Marine Corps Command and Staff College. Retrieved 2006-06-14).

By 1865 Yakub Beg, the Commander-in-Chief of the army of Kokand too advantage of the Hui uprising in Xinjiang Province, and captured Kashgar and Yarkand from the Chinese and gradually took control of most of the region of Eastern Turkestan, including Khotan, Aksu, Kucha, and other cities in 1867. After Begs death his state of Kashgaria rapidly fell apart, and Kashgar was reconquered by the Qing Dynasty.

In 1890s Britain was principally concerned that Aksai Chin not fall into Russian hands. In 1899, when China showed an interest in Aksai Chin, Britain proposed a revised boundary, initially suggested by George Macartney, which put most of Aksai Chin in Chinese territory. This border, along the Karakoram Mountains, was proposed and supported by British officials for a number of reasons:

1) The Karakoram Mountains formed a natural boundary, which would set the British borders up to the Indus River watershed while leaving the Tarim River watershed in Chinese control,
2) Chinese control of this tract would present a further obstacle to Russian advance in Central Asia.
3) The British presented this line to the Chinese in a Note by Sir Claude MacDonald.
4) The Chinese did not respond to the Note, and the British took that as Chinese acquiescence.
5) This line, known as the Macartney-MacDonald line, is approximately the same as the current Line of Actual Control
6) Both the Johnson-Ardagh and the Macartney-MacDonald lines were used on British maps of India until at least 1908, the British took the Macdonald line to be the boundary

In July 1, 1954 Prime Minister Nehru wrote a memo directing that the maps of India be revised to show definite boundaries on all frontiers. Up to this point, the boundary in the Aksai Chin sector, based on the Johnson Line, had been described as “undemarcated.”

Bharat historiography would have drawn the border of Bharat half into China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tibet-claims.jpg) and reduced China to the size of Sikkim. If Pakistan had no assisted China in the fifties, China had no land link to Tibet.

It was a matter of political survival for Pakistan to settle the boundary with China–in fact Pakistan got all the territory which was under its control and also got hundreds of square miles of additional territory from China. The boundary of Kashmir conjured by Bharat is an attempt to divide China into many parts. If Bharati “historians” are to be believed half of Afghanistan and all of KP also belongs to Bharat—from Kabul to Bali (Indonesia). Bharat’s dispute over Aksai Chin was really due to India’s unilateral interpretation of a previously undefined border.

A.G. Noorani writes in the Hindustan Times:

The McMahon Line is clearly shown as India’s boundary in the east. But for the entire western sector, right from the Sino-Indo-Afghan trijunction to the Sino-Indo-Nepalese trijunction, the legend reads: ‘Boundary Undefined’.

This legend was used for this sector in all the three maps attached to the two white papers on Indian States published by Patel’s ministry in 1948 and 1950 also. The Aksai Chin belonged to nobody. This was the position when the Panchsheel Agreement was signed on April 29, 1954. But on July 1, 1954, Nehru ordered: “All old maps dealing with the frontier should be… withdrawn… new maps should also not state there is any un-demarcated territory… this frontier should be considered a firm and definite one which is not open to discussion with anybody.” Unilateral changes are legally ineffective. [A G Noorani/Hindustan Times]

Aksai China connects to Nepal. “Eastern Turkistan” and Aksai China are Muslim areas of China and the world accepts them as such. We should work with the Chinese to ensure that Pakistan gets integrated with Kashgar, and Central Asia.

In our lifetimes, the best and brightest have been snuffed before our very eyes by the cowardly, unseen, shadowy exercise of pure evil and rotten ambition. The most prominent victims are John F. Kennedy who was, at the time, President of the United States, Robert Kennedy, a former U.S. Attorney General and candidate for his party’s Presidential nomination, Dr,. Martin Luther Kr whose ‘dream’ while liberating to right thinking persons was, in fact, a gauntlet thrown down in front of those who dare to enslave us. Those benefiting most from JFKs murder are most certainly guilty of it. It’s a question of motive, method and opportunity. The American right wing had all three. An analysis of the motives reveal a pattern, a constituency supporting murder as a means of achieving ‘regime change’.

JFK tried to strip the power of the FED, abolish the Oil Depletion Allowance, and ‘smash the CIA into a thousand pieces’. No President since has dared piss off so many powerful and ruthless people.

JFK tried to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. The move would have by passed the Fed by restoring to the government the power and authority to issue currency. Executive Order 11110 gave the US government the ability to create its own money –backed by silver! It just might have put the FED out of business.

Some background and basic economics: to pay it’s bills, the US government borrows money from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Federal Reserve Notes are not backed up by anything. ‘Silver certificates’ issued under the authority of JFKs order would have been backed up by government owned silver. The government would no longer borrow from the FED to pay its obligations. It would have done so with ‘silver certificates’ issued by the government itself.

Like any commodity, Federal Reserve notes are subject to the laws of supply and demand. The demand for Federal Reserve notes might have collapsed altogether and the FED itself might have been forced out of business.

Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level. It would have would have made it possible for the government to repay its debt without having to borrow worthless ‘notes’ from the Fed and having to repay them later at interest.

Executive Order 11110 was never repealed. One wonders why no other President ever bothered to utilize it. Could it have had anything to do with the fact that JFKs order made him very, very unpopular throughout the banking establishment? In fact, JFK was brutally murdered in Dallas just five months after issuing the order. No more silver certificates were issued. The FED’s gravy train was still intact.

The ‘scheme’ preferred by the Fed allows the Fed to create money which it loans to the government at interest. The private Federal Reserve owners don’t have a trillion dollars to lend the Government, nor do they need it. All they do is create it, via a bookkeeping entry, and write a check to the U.S. Government as the loan in exchange for the U.S. Bonds. The U.S. Government banks at the Federal Reserve Bank so cashing this check is very easy.

It’s a scheme, possibly a scam. Certainly –no hard currency is exchanged. Government agents are never seen walking out of the FED offices –under armed guard –carrying bullion, coins, or, indeed, anything of real value. The Fed makes an ‘entry’ in the books! The government makes an entry in its books! And you thought you had to work hard to make money!

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
–Thomas Jefferson

JFK Threatened to Repeal the ‘Oil Depletion Allowance’!

It’s always been about the ‘price of oil’ at the wellhead and the profits that accrue to ‘big oil’! Having grown up in Texas, I can vouch for the following very short, illustrative history: "Ross Sterling, the former owner of Humble Oil, was elected governor of Texas and took office on 20th January, 1931. The Texas Railroad Commission, under the control of the large oil producers, attempted to limit the production of oil (prorationing) in the new fields of East Texas. On 31st July, 1931, the federal court in Houston sided with a group of independent oil producers and ruled that the Texas Railroad Commission had no right to impose prorationing."

Large oil companies in Texas such as Humble Oil were in favour of prorationing and Sterling came under great pressure to intervene. On 16th August, 1931, Sterling declared martial law in Rusk, Upshur, Gregg and Smith counties. In his proclamation Sterling declared that the independent oil producers in these counties were "in a state of insurrection" and that the "reckless and illegal exploitation of (oil) must be stopped until such time as the said resources may be properly conserved and developed under the protection of the civil authorities".
Sterling now ordered the commander of the Texas National Guard, Jacob F. Wolters, to "without delay shut down each and every producing crude oil well and/or producing well of natural gas". Wolters who was the chief lobbyist of several major oil companies in Texas, readily agreed to this action. Wolters used more than a thousand troops to make sure that the oil wells in East Texas ceased production. The Texas Railroad Commission was now in firm control of the world’s most prolific oil fields. It now controlled the supply of the oil in the United States. As a result, the price of oil began to increase." –Texas Oil Industry and the Assassination of JFK

Humble later became "Exxon". It is not only prices but profits. Big oil was literally guaranteed huge profits by another bit of accounting legerdemain: the oil depletion allowance. the ‘oil depletion allowance’ is like depreciation but more abstract. Depreciation is often visible. Machines wear out, the loss of utility is real. From an accounting standpoint, the ‘oil depletion allowance’ is just a whopping write off, literally a pay off for the oil you will not find later! Now –how would like to be paid now for the money you won’t make later when the business you’re in now is no longer profitable?

Sweet deal, perhaps even better than the ‘sweet deal’ the FED got. I can think of no other industry that has managed to so effectively shake down the government. I can think of few businesses in which you are paid upfront the money you will not make at some point in the future.

By 1962, JFK sealed his fate. He decided to take on the Texas oil industry. He persuaded Congress to ‘remove the distinction between repatriated profits and profits reinvested abroad’. The law applied to all industries but seemed to affect the oil industry particularly. Texas oil fat cats watched earnings from foreign investments fall by one half –or from 30 per cent to 15 per cent.

As President, LBJ, abandoned plans to abolish the oil industry’s sacred cow, the cow it regularly milked. The oil depletion allowance was not disallowed until the Presidency of Jimmy Carter who is still reviled in Texas. One would never suspect that Carter is among the TOP Presidents in terms of economic performance. At that, Carter is among the fortunate; it is only his ‘record’ that has been assassinated.

JFK Threatend to ‘smash the CIA into a thousand pieces’

We know that the CIA had conspired with ‘cuban exiles’ in Florida to assist in the invasion of Cuba. Both entities acted without authorization from the government, without a declaration of war from Congress which alone has the power to declare war –or so says that ‘goddamned piece of paper’, the US constitution.

Certainly, because of Cuba, the CIA was more motivated to murder JFK than was Lee Harvey Oswald. The CIA saw Kennedy as a threat to "national security" and, from the CIA/Cuban exile perspective, he proved it when he refused to order air support during the Bay of Pigs invasion. The axis of CIA/Cuban exiles never forgave JFK this ‘act of betrayal’.

It is at this time in our history that the name George Bush comes up. It was in 1959 –the year that Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba–that George Bush set up Zapata Offshore in a Houston headquarters.

George must have been a frequent visitor to New Orleans. Because of his family’s estate on Jupiter Island, he would also have been a frequent visitor to the Hobe Sound area. And then, there were Zapata Offshore drilling operations in the Florida Strait. On all of these activities, the official "red Studebaker" biographical material and the Zapata Offshore annual reports are extremely cryptic.
…

According to Joseph McBride of The Nation, "a source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush started working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities." 1 By the time of the Kennedy assassination, we have an official FBI document which refers to "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency," and despite official disclaimers there is every reason to think that this is indeed the man in the White House today. The mystery of George Bush as a possible covert operator hinges on four points, each one of which represents one of the great political and espionage scandals of postwar American history. These four cardinal points are:

The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, launched on April 16-17, 1961, prepared with the assistance of the CIA’s "Miami Station" (also known under the code name JM/WAVE). After the failure of the amphibious landings of Brigade 2506, Miami station, under the leadership of Theodore Shackley, became the focus for Operation Mongoose, a series of covert operations directed against Castro, Cuba, and possibly other targets.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and the coverup of those responsible for this crime. The Watergate scandal, beginning with an April, 1971 visit to Miami, Florida by E. Howard Hunt on the tenth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion to recruit operatives for the White House Special Investigations Unit (the "Plumbers" and later Watergate burglars) from among Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veterans.
The Iran-contra affair, which became a public scandal during October-November 1986, several of whose central figures, such as Felix Rodriguez, were also veterans of the Bay of Pigs.

George Bush’s role in both Watergate and the October surprise/Iran-contra complex will be treated in detail at later points in this book. Right now it is important to see that thirty years of covert operations, in many respects, form a single continuous whole. This is especially true in regard to the dramatis personae. Georgie Anne Geyer points to the obvious in a recent book: "…an entire new Cuban cadre now emerged from the Bay of Pigs.

The names Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker, Rolando Martinez, Felix Rodriguez and Eugenio Martinez would, in the next quarter century, pop up, often decisively, over and over again in the most dangerous American foreign policy crises.

There were Cubans flying missions for the CIA in the Congo and even for the Portuguese in Africa; Cubans were the burglars of Watergate; Cubans played key roles in Nicaragua, in Irangate, in the American move into the Persian Gulf." 2 Felix Rodriguez tells us that he was infiltrated into Cuba with the other members of the "Grey Team" in conjunction with the Bay of Pigs landings; this is the same man we will find directing the contra supply effort in central American during the 1980′s, working under the direct supervision of Don Gregg and George Bush. 3 Theodore Shackley, the JM/WAVE station chief, will later show up in Bush’s 1979-80 presidential campaign.
…
This FBI document identifying George Bush as a CIA agent in November, 1963 was first published by Joseph McBride in The Nation in July, 1988, just before Bush received the Republican nomination for president. McBride’s source observed: "I know [Bush] was involved in the Caribbean. I know he was involved in the suppression of things after the Kennedy assassination. There was a very definite worry that some Cuban groups were going to move against Castro and attempt to blame it on the CIA."
–Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography — by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, CHAPTER VIII-b – THE BAY OF PIGS AND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

I recently quoted Albert Speer’s summation of the Third Reich which, for so long, he served admirably with the best fascist architecture Reichsmarks could buy! Speer summed up the Third Reich. He said that it had been built upon hollow, meaningless platitudes. The same can be said of the GOP in America: "George Bush’s inaugural address of January 21, 1989, was on the whole an eminently colorless and forgettable oration. The speech was for the most part a rehash of the tired demagogy of Bush’s election campaign, with the ritual references to "a thousand points of light" and the hollow pledge that when it came to the drug inundation which Bush had supposedly been fighting for most of the decade…
Bush’s performance during the Panama crisis was especially ominous because of the president’s clearly emerging mental imbalance. Several outbursts during the Noriega press conferences had resembled genuine public fits. Racist and sexual obsessions were reaching critical mass in Bush’s subconscious. These gross phenomena did not receive the attention they would have merited from journalists, television commentators, and pundits, who rather preferred studiously to ignore them. It was during these waning days of 1989 that Bush’s mental disintegration became unmistakeable, foreshadowing the greater furors yet to come." — Chapter XXIII, The End of History

How will we remember the ‘presidency’ since the murder of JFK? I will remember these years for what was not accomplished because JFK was murdered –the dreams that are still unfulfilled, the hopes that were dashed! I will remember an era of GOP dominance distinguished by its celebration of mediocrity. I will remember a GOP that rewarded crookery and made of evil a banality. It took a horrible war and millions of deaths to crush the Third Reich! What will it take to crush the oppressive GOP dominion of some fifty years? Please tell me! We have work to do.

"War with Iran is already here," wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing "the combination of covert warfare and international pressure" being applied to Iran.

Although not mentioned, the "strategic prize" of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. "Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself," Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, "nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria." [1]

By December, senior United States officials were explicit about their regime change agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National Security Adviser, explained that the "end of the [President Bashar al-]Assad regime would constitute Iran’s greatest setback in the region yet – a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran."

Shortly before, a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would "relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved". [2]

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime "more compatible" with US interests in the region.

The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009. The report – "Which Path to Persia?" [3] – continues to be the generic strategic approach for US-led regime change in the region.

A rereading of it, together with the more recent "Towards a Post-Assad Syria" [4] (which adopts the same language and perspective, but focuses on Syria, and was recently produced by two US neo-conservative think-tanks) illustrates how developments in Syria have been shaped according to the step-by-step approach detailed in the "Paths to Persia" report with the same key objective: regime change.

The authors of these reports include, among others, John Hannah and Martin Indyk, both former senior neo-conservative officials from the George W Bush/Dick Cheney administration, and both advocates for regime change in Syria. [5] Not for the first time are we seeing a close alliance between US/British neo-cons with Islamists (including, reports show [6], some with links to al-Qaeda) working together to bring about regime change in an "enemy" state.

Arguably, the most important component in this struggle for the "strategic prize" has been the deliberate construction of a largely false narrative that pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed in their hundreds and thousands as they protest peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime, a "killing machine" [7] led by the "monster" [8] Assad.

Whereas in Libya, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) claimed it had "no confirmed reports of civilian casualties" because, as the New York Times wrote recently, "the alliance had created its own definition for ‘confirmed’: only a death that NATO itself investigated and corroborated could be called confirmed".

"But because the alliance declined to investigate allegations," the Times wrote, "its casualty tally by definition could not budge – from zero". [9]

In Syria, we see the exact opposite: the majority of Western mainstream media outlets, along with the media of the US’s allies in the region, particularly al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV channels, are effectively collaborating with the "regime change" narrative and agenda with a near-complete lack of questioning or investigation of statistics and information put out by organizations and media outlets that are either funded or owned by the US/European/Gulf alliance – the very same countries instigating the regime change project in the first place.

Claims of "massacres", "campaigns of rape targeting women and girls in predominantly Sunni towns" [10] "torture" and even "child-rape" [11] are reported by the international press based largely on two sources – the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCCs) – with minimal additional checking or verification.

Hiding behind the rubric – "we are not able to verify these statistics" – the lack of integrity in reporting by the Western mainstream media has been starkly apparent since the onset of events in Syria. A decade after the Iraq war, it would seem that no lessons from 2003 – from the demonization of Saddam Hussein and his purported weapons of mass destruction – have been learnt.

Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations – the pillars of the narrative – all are part of the "regime change" alliance.

The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money (Saudi Arabia alone has, according to Elliot Abrams [12] allocated US$130 billion to "palliate the masses" of the Arab Spring).

What appears to be a nondescript British-based organization, the Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the narrative of the mass killing of thousands of peaceful protesters using inflated figures, "facts", and often exaggerated claims of "massacres" and even recently "genocide".

Although it claims to be based in its director’s house [13], the Observatory has been described as the "front office" of a large media propaganda set-up run by the Syrian opposition and its backers. The Russian Foreign Ministry [14] stated starkly:

The agenda of the [Syrian] transitional council [is] composed in London by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights … It is also there where pictures of ‘horror’ in Syria are made to stir up hatred towards Assad’s regime.

The Observatory is not legally registered either as a company or charity in the United Kingdom, but operates informally; it has no office, no staff and its director is reportedly awash with funding.

It receives its information, it says, from a network of "activists" inside Syria; its English-language website is a single page with al-Jazeera instead hosting a minute-by-minute live blog page for it since the outset of protests. [15]

The second, the LCCs, are a more overt part of the opposition’s media infrastructure, and their figures and reporting is similarly encompassed only [16] within the context of this main narrative: in an analysis of their daily reports, I couldn’t find a single reference to any armed insurgents being killed: reported deaths are of "martyrs", "defector soldiers", people killed in "peaceful demonstrations" and similar descriptions.

The third is al-Jazeera, whose biased role in "reporting" the Awakenings has been well documented. Described by one seasoned media analyst [17] as the "sophisticated mouthpiece of the state of Qatar and its ambitious emir", al-Jazeera is integral to Qatar’s "foreign-policy aspirations".

Al-Jazeera has, and continues, [18] to provide technical support, equipment, hosting and "credibility" to Syrian opposition activists and organizations. Reports show that as early as March 2011, al-Jazeera was providing messaging and technical support to exiled Syrian opposition activists [19] , who even by January 2010 were co-ordinating their messaging activities from Doha.

Nearly 10 months on, however, and despite the daily international media onslaught, the project isn’t exactly going to plan: a YouGov poll commissioned by the Qatar Foundation [20] showed last week that 55% of Syrians do not want Assad to resign and 68% of Syrians disapprove of the Arab League sanctions imposed on their country.

According to the poll, Assad’s support has effectively increased since the onset of current events – 46% of Syrians felt Assad was a "good" president for Syria prior to current events in the country – something that certainly doesn’t fit with the false narrative being peddled.

As if trumpeting the success of their own propaganda campaign, the poll summary concludes:

The majority of Arabs believe Syria’s President Basher al-Assad should resign in the wake of the regime’s brutal treatment of protesters … 81% of Arabs [want] President Assad to step down. They believe Syria would be better off if free democratic elections were held under the supervision of a transitional government. [21]

One is left wondering who exactly is Assad accountable to – the Syrian people or the Arab public? A blurring of lines that might perhaps be useful as two main Syrian opposition groups have just announced [22] that while they are against foreign military intervention, they do not consider "Arab intervention" to be foreign.

Unsurprisingly, not a single mainstream major newspaper or news outlet reported the YouGov poll results – it doesn’t fit their narrative.

In the UK, the volunteer-run Muslim News [23] was the only newspaper to report the findings; yet only two weeks before in the immediate aftermath of the suicide explosions in Damascus, both the Guardian [24], like other outlets, within hours of the explosions were publishing sensational, unsubstantiated reports from bloggers, including one who was "sure that some of the bodies … were those of demonstrators".

"They have planted bodies before," he said; "they took dead people from Dera’a [in the south] and showed the media bodies in Jisr al-Shughour [near the Turkish border.]"

Recent reports have cast serious doubt on the accuracy of the false narrative peddled daily by the mainstream international press, in particular information put out by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the LCCs.

In December, the mainstream US intelligence group Stratfor cautioned:

Most of the [Syrian] opposition’s more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply untrue … revealing more about the opposition’s weaknesses than the level of instability inside the Syrian regime. [25]

Throughout the nine-month uprising, Stratfor has advised caution on accuracy of the mainstream narrative on Syria: in September it commented that "with two sides to every war … the war of perceptions in Syria is no exception". [26]

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and LCC reports, "like those from the regime, should be viewed with skepticism", argues Stratfor; "the opposition understands that it needs external support, specifically financial support, if it is to be a more robust movement than it is now. To that end, it has every reason to present the facts on the ground in a way that makes the case for foreign backing."

As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov observed: "It is clear that the purpose is to provoke a humanitarian catastrophe, to get a pretext to demand external interference into this conflict." [27] Similarly, in mid-December, American Conservative reported:

CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] analysts are skeptical regarding the march to war. The frequently cited United Nations report that more than 3,500 civilians have been killed by Assad’s soldiers is based largely on rebel sources and is uncorroborated. The Agency has refused to sign off on the claims.

Likewise, accounts of mass defections from the Syrian army and pitched battles between deserters and loyal soldiers appear to be a fabrication, with few defections being confirmed independently. Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels who are armed, trained and financed by foreign governments are more true than false. [28]

As recently as November, the Free Syria Army implied their numbers would be larger, but, as they explained to one analyst, they are "advising sympathizers to delay their defection" until regional conditions improve. [29]

A guide to regime change

In relation to Syria, section three of the "Paths to Persia" report is particularly relevant – it is essentially a step-by-step guide detailing options for instigating and supporting a popular uprising, inspiring an insurgency and/or instigating a coup. The report comes complete with a "Pros and Cons" section:

An insurgency is often easier to instigate and support from abroad … Insurgencies are famously cheap to support … covert support to an insurgency would provide the United States with "plausibility deniability" … [with less] diplomatic and political backlash … than if the United States were to mount a direct military action … Once the regime suffers some major setback [this] provides an opportunity to act.

Military action, the report argues, would only be taken once other options had been tried and shown to have failed as the "international community" would then conclude of any attack that the government "brought it on themselves" by refusing a very good deal.

Key aspects for instigating a popular uprising and building a "full-fledged insurgency" are evident in relation to developments in Syria.

These include:

>> "Funding and helping organize domestic rivals of the regime" including using "unhappy" ethnic groups;

>> "Building the capacity of ‘effective oppositions’ with whom to work" in order to "create an alternative leadership to seize power";

>> Provision of equipment and covert backing to groups, including arms – either directly or indirectly, as well as "fax machines … Internet access, funds" (on Iran the report noted that the "CIA could take care of most of the supplies and training for these groups, as it has for decades all over the world");

>> Training and facilitation of messaging by opposition activists;

>> Constructing a narrative "with the support of US-backed media outlets could highlight regime shortcomings and make otherwise obscure critics more prominent" – "having the regime discredited among key ‘opinion shapers’ is critical to its collapse";

>> The creation of a large funding budget to fund a wide array of civil-society-led initiatives (a so-called "$75 million fund" created under former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice-funded civil society groups, including "a handful of Beltway-based think-tanks and institutions [which] announced new Iran desks)" [30];

>> The need for an adjacent land corridor in a neighboring country "to help develop an infrastructure to support operations".

"Beyond this," continues the report, "US economic pressure (and perhaps military pressure as well) can discredit the regime, making the population hungry for a rival leadership."

The US and its allies, particularly Britain [31] and France, have funded and helped "shape" the opposition from the outset – building both on attempts started by the US in 2006 to construct a unified front against the Assad government, and the perceived "success" of the Libyan Transitional National Council model. [32]

Despite months of attempts – predominately by the West – at cajoling the various groups into a unified, proficient opposition movement, they remain "a diverse group, representing the country’s ideological, sectarian and generational divides".

"There neither has been nor is [there] now any natural tendency towards unity between these groups, since they belong to totally different ideological backgrounds and have antagonistic political views," one analyst concluded. [33]

At a recent meeting with the British foreign secretary, the different groups would not even meet with William Hague together, instead meeting him separately. [34]

Nevertheless, despite a lack of cohesion, internal credibility and legitimacy, the opposition, predominately under the umbrella of the Syrian National Council (SNC), is being groomed for office. This includes capacity-building, as confirmed by the former Syrian ambassador to the US, Rafiq Juajati, now part of the opposition.

At a closed briefing in Washington DC in mid-December 2011, he confirmed that the US State Department and the SWP-German Institute for International and Security Affairs (a think-tank that provides foreign policy analysis to the German government) were funding a project that is managed by the US Institute for Peace and SWP, working in partnership with the SNC, to prepare the SNC for the takeover and running of Syria.

In a recent interview, SNC leader Burhan Ghaliyoun disclosed (so as to "speed up the process" of Assad’s fall) [35] the credentials expected of him: "There will be no special relationship with Iran," he said. "Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic, military alliance," adding that "after the fall of the Syrian regime, [Hezbollah] won’t be the same." [36]

Described in Slate magazine [37] as the "most liberal and Western-friendly of the Arab Spring uprisings", Syrian opposition groups sound as compliant as their Libyan counterparts prior to the demise of Muammar Gaddafi, whom the New York Times described as "secular-minded professionals – lawyers, academics, businesspeople – who talk about democracy, transparency, human rights and the rule of law" [38]; that was, until reality transitioned to former leader of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group Abdulhakim Belhaj and his jihadi colleagues.

The import of weapons, equipment, manpower (predominantly from Libya) [39] and training by governments and other groups linked to the US, NATO and their regional allies began in April-May 2011, [40] according to various reports [41], and is co-ordinated out of the US air force base at Incirlik in southern Turkey. From Incirlik, an information warfare division also directs communications to Syria via the Free Syria Army. This covert support continues, as American Conservative reported in mid-December:

Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian border, delivering weapons … as well as volunteers from the Libyan Transitional National Council … Iskenderum is also the seat of the Free Syrian Army, the armed wing of the Syrian National Council. French and British special forces trainers are on the ground, assisting the Syrian rebels while the CIA and US Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause, enabling the fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers. [42]

The Washington Post exposed in April 2011 that recent WikiLeaks showed that the US State Department had been giving millions of dollars to various Syrian exile groups (including the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Movement for Justice and Development in London) and individuals since 2006 via its "Middle East Partnership Initiative" administered by a US foundation, the Democracy Council. [43]

Leaked WikiLeak cables confirmed that well into 2010, this funding was continuing, a trend that not only continues today but which has expanded in light of the shift to the "soft power" option aimed at regime change in Syria.

As this neo-con-led call for regime change in Syria gains strength within the US administration, [44] so too has this policy been institutionalized among leading US foreign policy think-tanks, many of whom have "Syria desks" or "Syria working groups" which collaborate closely with Syrian opposition groups and individuals (for example USIP [45] and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy) [46] and which have published a range of policy documents making the case for regime change.

In the UK, the similarly neo-con Henry Jackson Society (which "supports the maintenance of a strong military, by the United States, the countries of the European Union and other democratic powers, armed with expeditionary capabilities with a global reach" and which believes that "only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate") is similarly pushing the agenda for regime change in Syria [47].

This is in partnership with Syrian opposition figures including Ausama Monajed, [48] a former leader of the Syrian exile group, the Movement for Justice & Development, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was funded by the US State Department from 2006, as we know from WikiLeaks.

Monajed, a member of the SNC, currently directs a public relations firm [49] recently established in London and incidentally was the first to use the term "genocide" in relation to events in Syria in a recent SNC press release. [50]

Since the outset, significant pressure has been brought to bear on Turkey to establish a "humanitarian corridor" along its southern border with Syria. The main aim of this, as the "Paths to Persia" report outlines, is to provide a base from which the externally-backed insurgency can be launched and based.

The objective of this "humanitarian corridor" is about as humanitarian as the four-week NATO bombing of Sirte when NATO exercised its "responsibility to protect" mandate, as approved by the UN Security Council.

All this is not to say that there isn’t a genuine popular demand for change in Syria against the repressive security-dominated infrastructure that dominates every aspect of people’s lives, nor that gross human-rights violations have not been committed, both by the Syrian security forces, armed opposition insurgents, as well as mysterious third force characters operating since the onset of the crisis in Syria, including insurgents, [51] mostly jihadis from neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, as well as more recently Libya, among others.

Such abuses are inevitable in low-intensity conflict. Leading critics [52] of this US-France-UK-Gulf-led regime change project have, from the outset, called for full accountability and punishment for any security or other official "however senior", found to have committed any human-rights abuses.

Ibrahim al-Amine writes that some in the regime have conceded "that the security remedy was damaging in many cases and regions [and] that the response to the popular protests was mistaken … it would have been possible to contain the situation via clear and firm practical measures – such as arresting those responsible for torturing children in Deraa". And it argues that the demand for political pluralism and an end to the all-encompassing repression is both vital and urgent. [53]

But what may have began as popular protests, initially focused on local issues and incidents (including the case of the torture of young boys in Dera’a by security forces) were rapidly hijacked by this wider strategic project for regime change. Five years ago, I worked in northern Syria with the United Nations managing a large community development project.

After evening community meetings, it wasn’t uncommon to find the mukhabarat (military intelligence) waiting for us to vacate the room so they could scan flipcharts posted on the walls. That almost every aspect of people’s daily lives was regulated by a sclerotic dysfunctional Ba’ath party/security bureaucracy, devoid of any ideology apart from the inevitable corruption and nepotism that comes with authoritarian power, was apparent in every feature of people’s lives.

Tuesday, December 20 was reportedly the "deadliest day of the nine-month [Syrian] uprising "with the "organized massacre" of a "mass defection" of army deserters widely reported by the international press in Idlib, northern Syria. Claiming that areas of Syria were now "exposed to large-scale genocide", the SNC lamented the "250 fallen heroes during a 48-hour period", citing figures provided by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. [54] Quoting the same source, the Guardian reported that the Syrian army was:

… hunt[ing] down deserters after troops … killed close to 150 men who had fled their base". A picture has emerged … of a mass defection … that went badly wrong … with loyalist forces positioned to mow down large numbers of defectors as they fled a military base. Those who managed to escape were later hunted down in hideouts in nearby mountains, multiple sources have reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that 100 deserters were besieged, then killed or wounded. Regular troops allegedly also hunted down residents who had given shelter to the deserters. [55]

The Guardian’s live blog-quoted AVAAZ, the citizen political advocacy/public relations group, which "claimed 269 people had been killed in the clashes", and cited AVAAZ’s precise breakdown of casualties: "163 armed revolutionaries, 97 government troops and 9 civilians". [56] They noted that AVAAZ "provided nothing to corroborate the claim".

The Washington Post reported only that they had spoken to "an activist with the rights group AVAAZ [who] said he had spoken to local activists and medical groups who put the death toll in that area Tuesday at 269". [57]

A day after initial reports of the massacre of fleeing deserters, however, the story had changed. On December 23, the Telegraph reported:

At first they were said to be army deserters attempting to break into Turkey to join the FSA [Free Syrian Army], but they are now said to be unarmed civilians and activists attempting to escape the army’s attempts to bring the province back under control. They were surrounded by troops and tanks and gunned down until there were no survivors, according to reports. [58]

The New York Times had, on December 21, reported that the "massacre", citing the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, was of "unarmed civilians and activists, with no armed military defectors among them, the rights groups said".

It quoted the head of the Observatory who described it as "an organized massacre" and said his account corroborated a Kfar Owaid witness’ account: "The security forces had lists of names of those who organized massive anti-regime protests … the troops then opened fire with tanks, rockets and heavy machine guns [and], bombs filled with nails to increase the number of casualties. [59]

The LA Times quoted an activist it had spoken to via satellite connection who, from his position "sheltering in the woods" commented: "The word ‘massacre’ seems like too small a word to describe what happened." Meanwhile, the Syrian government reported that on December 19 and 20, it had killed "tens" of members of "armed terrorist gangs" in both Homs and Idlib, and had arrested many wanted individuals. [60]

The truth of these two "deadly" days will probably never be known – the figures cited above (between 10-163 armed insurgents, 9-111 unarmed civilians and 0-97 government forces) differ so significantly in both numbers reported killed and who they were, that the "truth" is impossible to establish.

In relation to an earlier purported "massacre" in Homs, a Stratfor investigation found "no signs of a massacre", concluding that "opposition forces have an interest in portraying an impending massacre, hoping to mimic the conditions that propelled a foreign military intervention in Libya". [61]

Nevertheless, the "massacre" of December 19-20 in Idlib was reported as fact, and was etched into the narrative of Assad’s "killing machine".

Both the recent UN Human Rights Commissioner’s report and a recent data blog report [62] on reported deaths in "Syria’s bloody uprising" by the Guardian (published December 13) – two examples of attempts to establish the truth about numbers killed in the Syrian conflict – rely almost exclusively on opposition-provided data: interviews with 233 alleged "army defectors" in the case of the UN report, and on reports from the Syrian Human Rights Observatory, the LCCs and al-Jazeera in the case of the Guardian’s data blog.

The Guardian reports a total of 1,414.5 people (sic) killed – including 144 Syrian security personnel – between January and November 21, 2011. Based solely on press reports, the report contains a number of basic inaccuracies (eg sources not matching numbers killed with places cited in original sources): their total includes 23 Syrians killed by the Israeli army in June on the Golan Heights; 25 people reported "wounded" are included in total figures for those killed, as are many people reported shot.

The report makes no reference to any killings of armed insurgents during the entire 10-month period – all victims are "protesters", "civilians" or "people" – apart from the 144 security personnel.

Seventy percent of the report’s data sources are from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the LCCs and "activists"; 38% of press reports are from al-Jazeera, 3% from Amnesty International and 1.5% from official Syrian sources.

In response to the UN Commissioner’s report, Syria’s ambassador to the UN commented: "How could defectors give positive testimonies on the Syrian government? Of course they will give negative testimonies against the Syrian government. They are defectors."

In the effort to inflate figures of casualties, the public relations-activist group AVAAZ has consistently outstripped even the UN. AVAAZ has publicly stated it is involved in "smuggling activists … out of the country", running "secret safe houses to shelter … top activists from regime thugs" and that one "AVAAZ citizen journalist" "discover[ed] a mass grave". [63]

It states proudly that the BBC and CNN have said that AVAAZ data amounts to some 30% of their news coverage of Syria. The Guardian reported AVAAZ’s latest claim to have "evidence" of killings of some 6,200 people (including security forces and including 400 children), claiming 617 of whom died under torture [64] – their justification to have verified each single death with confirmation by three people, "including a relative and a cleric who handled the body" is improbable in the extreme.

The killing of one brigadier-general and his children in April last year in Homs illustrates how near impossible it is, particularly during sectarian conflict, to verify even one killing – in this case, a man and his children:

The general, believed to be Abdu Tallawi, was killed with his children and nephew while passing through an agitated neighborhood. There are two accounts of what happened to him and his family, and they differ about the victim’s sect.

Regime loyalists say that he was killed by takfiris – hardline Islamists who accuse other Muslims of apostasy – because he belonged to the Alawite sect. The protesters insist that he is a member of the Tallawi family from Homs and that he was killed by security forces to accuse the opposition and destroy their reputation. Some even claim that he was shot because he refused to fire at protesters.

The third account is ignored due to the extreme polarization of opinions in the city [Homs]. The brigadier-general was killed because he was in a military vehicle, even though he had his kids with him. Whoever killed him was not concerned with his sect but with directing a blow to the regime, thus provoking an even harsher crackdown, which, in turn, would drag the protest movement into a cycle of violence with the state. [65]

ISLAMABAD: Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militants have held a series of meetings aimed at containing what could soon be open warfare between the two most powerful Pakistani Taliban leaders, militant sources have said.

Hakimullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP), and his deputy, Waliur Rehman, were at each other’s throats, the sources said.

“You will soon hear that one of them has eliminated the other, though hectic efforts are going on by other commanders and common friends to resolve differences between the two,” one TTP commander said.

Any division within the TTP could hinder the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda’s struggle in Afghanistan against the United States and its allies, making it more difficult to recruit young fighters and disrupting safe havens in Pakistan used by the Afghan militants.

Despite multiple reports of the Rehman-Mehsud split, Rehman told Reuters on Tuesday there was no problem between the two.

“There are no differences between us,” Rehman said.

The TTP, formed in 2007, is an umbrella group of various Pakistani militant factions operating in Pakistan’s unruly northwestern tribal areas along the porous border with Afghanistan.

It has long struggled with its choice of targets. Some factions are at war with the Pakistani state while others concentrate on the fight against the United States and its allies in Afghanistan.

There has been a noticeable decrease in militant attacks in Pakistan, but there continue to be random acts of violence across the country.

Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban commanders are asking the TTP to provide more men for the fight in Afghanistan and are looking to smooth over the dispute between Mehsud and Rehman.

Long-standing feuds

Taliban sources said Rehman had ordered his fighters to kill Mehsud because of his increasing closeness with al Qaeda and its Arab contingent.

Mehsud’s former deputy has also confirmed that the TTP chief received money from Pakistan’s arch-rival, India, to kill former ISI official Colonel Imam, who was acting as a mediator between the Pakistani Taliban, Afghan insurgents and the Pakistani government.

The reported enmity between Mehsud and Rehman is not the only conflict within the TTP ranks.

Mehsud has a long-standing feud with militant commanders Maulvi Nazeer in South Waziristan and Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan, both of whom have non-aggression agreements with the Pakistani military.

Mehsud’s men have also fought with the militia under the control of Fazal Saeed Haqqani, the former TTP head in the Kurram tribal region. He has accused Mehsud of killing his commanders and innocent people and kidnapping for ransom.

Haqqani, who is close to the militant Afghan Haqqani network, broke away from the TTP last year.

A pamphlet distributed by militants in North Waziristan this week announced the formation of a council to try to resolve the conflicts.

“All jihadi forces have jointly, on the recommendation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, formed a five-member commission which will be known as the Shura Muraqba,” the pamphlet said, using the term by which the Afghan Taliban describe themselves.

“The Shura Muraqba will be working to resolve differences and problems between mujahideen.”

It said that any “mujahideen” found to have committed an “unlawful” killing or kidnapping would be punished under Islamic law. It is likely any attack on a fellow “mujahideen” commander would be considered “unlawful”.

“All mujahideen should respect the decisions of the council that has been set up,” a senior commander of the Haqqani faction in Kurram said.

“If people continue to do as they like, the situation will not improve. Things will instead get much worse.”

Role of intelligentsia has never been negated in any type of war. During World Wars (WW) I & II, the allies remained successful in number of operations because of timely receipts of information and clandestine operations. However, after WW-II U.S launched agency CIA against KGB. During Cold War period both the agencies remained dagger drawn against each other. Anyhow, Pakistan felt a threat on it western frontiers once in 1979, Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. At that time U.S and Pakistan came closer to each other despite differences over the development of our nuclear programme. The coincidence of interests also forced ISI and CIA to operate jointly against Soviet Union. Thus, CIA in collaboration with ISI have activated against KGB and finally able to defeat and disintegrate Great Soviet Union.

But just after the disintegration of Great Russian Empire, CIA has shaken hands with a new ally agency i.e. RAW. Change of ally was obvious since Pakistan can never be party to U.S. against China. CIA in collaboration with RAW and MI-6 again accelerated her campaign against nuclear programme and started overtly and covertly. At this occasion ISI unfolded the foreign conspiracy and security of the country.

The role of major intelligence agencies in international relations, threats are often addressed within the context of security studies — especially those focusing on nuclear deterrence, alliance formation and interstate conflict. In general, a threat perception is “understood as anticipation on the part of an observer (the decision maker) of impending harm – usually of a military, strategic or economic kind – to the state”. Thus, in international relations we talk about threats aimed at the territorial integrity, political sovereignty, major national interests and core ideology of the state and its regime. The truth of this quoted statement has been proved once Al-Qaida launched attack in U.S. on 9/11.

Pakistan was forced to become ally after 9/11 in Mushraf’s regime. Since then Pakistan has faced in fact two types of threat, e.g. external and internal. Foreign sponsored ethnicity, sectarianism and economic instability emerged as fundamental variables of internal security threats which gave birth to local Taliban and exploited by external forces. Religious extremism has created an unenviable image of Pakistan in the eyes of rest of the world and has affected the country adversely. CIA penetrated foreign agents along with sophisticated weaponry, suicide attacks and target killings have become everyday occurrence in the country. Indian intelligence agency RAW of under the garb of development programmes has established 13 consulates’ along the western border. It was ISI and country’s security agencies which came out to fight back the foreign sponsored covert and overt agenda against sole Islamic nuclear power.

It may be mentioned here that Pakistan security forces and ISI defeated foreign sponsored war on terror in FATA and Swat which was appreciated by the nation too. RAW, CIA, RAAM (of Afghanistan) and Mossad from 2005 onwards tried their best to destabilize Pakistan. Weapons like Kalashnikovs, MI-4 American rifles, Israeli sniper rifles, 12.7mm, 14.5mm and 107mm guns, mortars, pistols, RPG-7s, grenades, explosives, equipment like, remote control sets, jamming devices, sophisticated telephone and wireless sets, bullet proof and suicide jackets, kits, and currency of different countries have been provided to the militants. Terrorist have been sent to Pakistan through Indian training camps located at Afghanistan.

Almost four divisions of force have been involved in elimination of militancy in FATA and Swat area. Pakistan Army also managed to take care of her eastern border too. The forces came all out to undertake Operation Rah-e-Rast and her soldiers set the gallant examples while clearing Swat, Dir, Buner, Kanjoo, Shangla and other areas.

General Kayani and his team has displayed excellent professional capabilities, ISI unveiled the foreign agenda and fully supported security forces in eradication of terrorists. In this regards over 5000 civilians and 3000 troops including officers and men have laid down their lives. It also includes the martyring of over 78 intelligence officials while fighting in global war against terrorism. While addressing in-camera session General Pasha very loudly mentioned that 112 check posts of the allied forces as opposed to the 812 of the Pakistani forces. 2.8 million Individuals of Swat and surrounding area became IDPs. Pasha while addressing also maintained parliament that the actions of the United States were not expected from an ally in war against terrorism. He said that there is difference between India and the United States.
From 2007 till today, American and western media is alleging ISI for supporting Haqqani group against American forces in Afghanistan. In this connection, American, Western and Indian media has criticized ISI, instead of suggesting Afghan government to fence the border and carrying out negotiations with the true representatives of Afghan nation.

Notably, American military and civilian leadership has started irrational demand of restructuring ISI when Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha took over the agency as Director General in September, 2008. ISI chief instead of acting upon Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Boucher demand of forming and restructuring.The agency has took interest to improve upon the efficiency of the organization in the light of national interest. On rejecting the false and baseless allegations, US top officials intensified blame game again aftermath Osama’s death in a unilateral action of 2nd May 2011. Thus, relations between two capitals and their agencies went to its lowest level Pakistan. CIA intentionally did not involve Pakistan and her supreme intelligence agency in killing Osama, despite receiving information regarding a call made by someone from Osma’s Compound located in Abbottabad. It was ISI that first time interrupted and passed on information to the CIA for evaluation anyhow CIA mistrust over ISI, created vast distance between two agencies.

However, during a meeting with the CIA Director Michael Morell in July, 2011, it was Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha who categorically told that we will continue anti-terror and intelligence sharing cooperation between the two agencies but would never tolerate a private ‘network’ the CIA is secretly maintaining in Pakistan. ISI under the leadership of Gen Pasha very successfully exposed the American and Indian intelligence agencies activities in Kashmir,FATA and Balochistan. The local CIA Chief Jonathan Banks has been forced to leave his station after Pakistani Intelligence services exposed his identity. It was U.S embassy that where CIA started recruiting Pakistani nationals who were vulnerable and could work on their payroll. In this context, with the pre-information of ISI, Pakistan’s police and other security agencies arrested a number of agents. For instance, on September 19, 2009, police raided the Inter-Risk, a private security company in Islamabad, and arrested its two employees, namely Tauqeer and Muhammad Khan, possessing unlicensed shotguns, handguns and ammunition. On the other side, US embassy spokesperson Richard Snelsire pretended, “The US contract with the Inter-Risk is to provide security at the embassy and consulates. Moreover, U.S ambassador address to Balochistan Jerga in 2011 Quetta has also a great concern for responsible circle of Pakistan. In memo gate issue ISI again played very vital role to expose another CIA plan against Pakistan sovereignty which is under investigation at the right forum Judicial Commission structured by Supreme Court of Pakistan .

Concluding, I say that invisible warriors of ISI under the leadership of Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha with very meager resources have successfully proved their superiority while defeating CIA and her sister agencies RAW and Mossad. U.S. has been forced to resolve Afghan issue as suggested by Pakistan and its intelligence Agency. In short, Intelligence organizations are not a fighting machines in its conventional sense but no army can fight without the support of an efficient Intelligence Organizations, collect, collate and disseminate information in a most efficient and reliable manner that is the key to the success of any war or battle. The job of a good organization is not only to collect information but through its mechanism, it denies or feeds false information to the enemy to achieve its goals.

The writer can be approached through zameer36@gmail.com

A nation that formed and gelled through ten centuries of imperial rule, culture and religion was destined to emerge. The Quaid made it happen in 1947.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Pakistan was destined to emerge thanks to our history of a thousand years in this region. It was a matter of time. A destiny’s hand made it happen in 1947. That hand is Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Pakistan Independence Movement and the man who helped create modern Pakistan.
Pakistan’s ancestors, the Muslim dynasties of Central and South Asia, ruled the region for centuries. This rule came to an abrupt end in 1857 at the hands of British invaders. But it only took us 90 years to regain our power to rule our destiny again; 90 years from 1857 to 1947, gaining independence from imperial Britain. Modern Pakistan could not claim all the former glory of its ancestors. Most of the dominion ruled by our ancestors, the last of them the Mughal Dynasty, went to Indian Hindus who were in the majority in those dominions. That is how India gained independence from Britain one day after Pakistani independence. India came into existence for the first time in ten centuries as a nation ruled by its indigenous majority, freeing itself from both Muslim and British rule.

In Pakistan, 14 August 1947 marks the day when Pakistanis successfully ended British occupation and formalized their centuries-long history of successive empires in Central-South Asia. This history is credited at its peak with producing brilliant art and culture in three languages: Persian, Turkish and Arabic, and producing wonders such as the Taj Mahal, located in what is known today as India, and other countless magnificent historic buildings that stand today in Pakistan.

Pakistan is a long story that culminated in 1947 at the hands of a man chosen to do destiny’s work.

Haqqani came up with a book within two years and the controversial memo reflects many of the thoughts stated in his book.The think tank also claims that it funded another $175000 to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for developing a new US policy toward Pakistan in 2004 and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hired Husain Haqqani for the purpose. Smith Richardson Foundation is an American think tank whose mission is ‘to contribute to important public debates and to help address serious public policy challenges facing the United States.

The Foundation seeks to help ensure the vitality of our social, economic, and governmental institutions. It also seeks to assist with the development of effective policies to compete internationally and to advance US interests and values abroad. This mission is embodied in our international and domestic grant programs.’ The website of Smith Richardson Foundation shows under the link: http://www.srf.org/grants/grantsdb.php? username=&lg=1 that in 2003 a sum of $100,000 was given as grant to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace regarding ‘Mosque-Military Alliance in Pakistan and Implications for US Policy’. The website describes the usage of grant as, “Husain Haqqani will research and write a book on the relationship between Pakistan’s military and the country’s radical Islamic forces and assess the implications of that relationship for US security.”  Interestingly Haqqani came up with a book in 2005 titled ‘Pakistan between Mosque and Military’ and he wrote in the concluding paragraphs of his book: “Washington must not ignore Pakistan’s state sponsorship of Islamist militants, its pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles at the expense of education and healthcare, and its refusal to democratize; each of these issues is directly linked to the future of Islamist radicalism.”

Smith Richardson Foundation’s website further says that it granted $175,000 in 2004 to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Developing and explained that ‘Husain Haqqani will lead an effort to develop new ideas for US policy toward Pakistan.  He will organize working groups of US and Pakistani experts and commission papers. He will write a blueprint for a US policy to encourage Pakistan to adopt a more moderate and democratic political system. The project’s findings will appear in a series of monographs and a policy report.’

It is worth mentioning here that Haqqani in the concluding paragraphs of his book has also written “The United States clearly has few good short term policy options in relation to Pakistan. American policy makers should endeavor to recognize the failings of their past policies and avoid repeating their mistakes. The United States has sought short-term gains from its relationship with Pakistan, inadvertently accentuating that country’s problems in the process.

Pakistan’s civil and military elite, on the other hand, must understand how their three-part paradigm for state and nation building has led Pakistan from one disaster to the next. Pakistan was created in a hurry and without giving detailed thought to various aspects of nation and state building. Perhaps it is time to rectify that mistake by taking a long-term view. Both Pakistan’s elite and their US benefactors would have to participate in transforming Pakistan into a functional, rather than ideological, state.” Haqqani was tried to be contacted and an SMS was also sent on his number but no reply was given till filing of this report. A message was also sent on his verified twitter account but that was also not replied.