Waseem Kanjo's Blog

Summer 2011 - Saraqib – North Syria
The weather is too hot. I woke up this morning and turned the TV on. This channel shows movies 24 hours and I watch it to improve my English. I was still not awake from the stupor which covered Saraqib for the last few days.
Just a few days ago, my father came at the same time in the morning, telling me that the army entered the city with tanks and soldiers to implement the arresting campaign and inspection. He was afraid. He took our cash and hid it somewhere in the bathroom. We were not sure if the army might come to the farm area which is 3 Km away from Saraqib’s City center. A few hours later, heavy gunfire started nearby. My father got even more scared. Nothing justified such heavy gunfire. There were no weapons or armed people in the whole area. After a few seconds, there was a knock on the door. I dared to go out and invite him to the farm to “honor” us and enter, calling him as usual in Syria at that time “My Sir”. While he entered, he asked me about my name, my ID Card and my youngest brother who was very involved in the demonstrations against the regime. After the inspection were done, they left, taking one of our 2 cars as it was registered in my youngest brother’s name, and stealing some other stuff. A few minutes later, my mother called my father asking him to come as another army group was inspecting our house in the city center. When we went there, a third group stopped us and checked our ID cards comparing them to their lists. My father’s name was there. They arrested him. We could get him released a few days later along with the car. We paid some bribes and used some connections. He came home stunned, swinging between fear, anger, grudge, and courage.In this inspection, which was the first of two, nobody was killed. The army arrested some intellectual persons including my father, and released most of them later, after insulting and torturing them.
The movie is still playing. I feel as if I am drugged. I see scenes of inspections in rural areas by heavy vehicles and armed soldiers, I hear words like “minority” and “historical grudge.” I see that this minority is becoming armed and hectic. Yet I also see an unarmed, scared majority. They stay tuned to terrifying rumors that something horrible is coming soon. Propaganda channels broadcast with soaring tone and provoking content. International Organizations watch, helpless but aware of what is happening. The majority trusts that the international community is not going to allow massacre, hope for a western intervention that would arrive sometime, maybe at the last moment. It doesn’t.
At some point I asked myself, am I watching a film about what happened in Saraqib few days ago?  But the men are black and the scenes seem to be in Africa. But the scenario is so fucking similar. Am I still asleep or just raving? Which film is this? I read the title of the film in the corner “Hotel Rwanda”.Ah, Rwanda? Is that what happened in Rwanda? And why does that scenario look so similar to our reality?

In this world there are many rogue states. The most dangerous rogue states are those which accept the Billions of Dollars of Dictators from the third world. These money are responsible to the kill of millions of innocent victims and deserting nations of billions of inhabitants.  

Introduction: 
In the Iran-Contra Affair "the National Security Council (NSC) became involved in secret weapons transactions and other activities that either were prohibited by the U.S. Congress or violated the stated public policy of the government."  ”It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment.”  The president at the time, Ronald Reagan, “gave the impression of knowing little of what was going on.” Several investigations were conducted. Neither found any evidence that President Reagan himself was aware of the multiple programs’ details.“The funds were first sent to Saudi Arabia” . The Saudi businessman “Khashoggi was an important middleman in the arms deals behind the Iran-contra scandal”  .When we reflect upon this issue , we come to notice a few interesting details:The relations between the main players of this scandal were severely complicated. Iranian officials and citizens called the United States at the time “The Great Satan” and Israel “the Small Satan”. It was not unusual to hear declarations like “Israel should be annihilated”. The percentage of Iranian citizens who shared this view with Iranian officials was not small. The feelings that the Israelis and Americans harboured against the Iranians were not much different.When we talk about Saudi-Israeli or Saudi-Iranian relations, the landscape looks similarly messy.How can these countries meet and sign sensitive agreements when they are sunk in such grudge oceans?When we try to describe the relations between countries, we have to differentiate four different levels of power:1. The ordinary citizens who are not directly involved in political decision-making.2. The officials, i.e. the technocrats, ministers, government officers and so on. This level is supposed to care about the interests of the whole nation. However, the views and values of this level are not necessarily the same as that of most citizens.3. The military complexes and intelligence service agencies .4. A small circle of leaders and key persons who direct the military complexes and intelligence service agencies.  Of course, the four levels described above are not completely disconnected from each other. Important to remember here is: the relations between the countries at each level don’t necessarily reflect the relations at other levels.Just because the individuals of two countries have peaceful feelings towards each other, that doesn’t necessarily hold true for other levels. Vice versa, when war is declared between some countries, that doesn’t mean that the relationship between these countries’ top level power centers are in the same state of conflict. What we need to keep in mind is: the interests, values and views of each level are not the same. Thus, we shouldn’t talk about them collectively. Otherwise we would end up misunderstanding a lot of political issues today. It is too easy to be manipulated and fooled.When we say “the Americans invaded Iraq” we are committing a paradigm mistake, one which led to huge misconceptions. What happened was: the top level of decision-makers in the United States made the decision to invade Iraq. This means that the majority of Americans were not invading but were rather victims of this invasion. Furthermore, the US decision-makers responsible for this invasion conspired with figures from Iraq itself. These Iraqis were not among the invaded, but were in fact part of the invasion.Thus, the contradiction in international politics is not always between nations, i.e. Americans against Iraqis. Rather, the contradiction in many cases lies between, on the one hand, the politicians of all nations, and on the other, the general citizenry of those nations. Correcting this misconception is the first step towards understanding modern political events, and to finding solutions for the soaring wave of wars.






The acquisition of power by these bodies was not accidental. It happened gradually throughout history. It was an evolutionary process with roots going back to the middle ages and ancient times. However, this process witnessed its most dramatic leap during the world wars of the twentieth centurySince the World War II, these bodies have gained exceptional tools to retain their position as independent decision makers. These services gained organizational capabilities and structures that made them independent from the technocrat rulers. Their structure allowed them to maintain their power even after the wars ended.
These mechanisms are a mix of legal, political, and financial tools.  There also exist loopholes along with media “tricks.” Most important they have a wealth of studies, unlimited historical case studies and experience. In a phrase, there is a wealth of information.  
Mechanisms which were created at that time guaranteed them these exceptional privileges to the present. They have now their own view which doesn’t necessarily comply with the view of the majority of individuals or even with the technocrat politicians. Presently they are not now mere administrators for their countries’ leaders. They have an organic independent life on their own apart from their creators.

Later the intelligence organizations in the superpower countries developed similar structured organizations in the third world. The superpowers’ security services transmitted, conditionally and partially, part of their wealth of knowledge, experience and organizational capabilities to their counterparts in the third world. This way, the services in the developed world kept their domination over the third world. They own the knowledge which controls the crowds of these nations and they transmit it to specific groups which comply with their policies and goals.  

Historically, the human groups who were one step further in owning specific knowledge could dominate and control those who were one step behind.Some nations who owned the knowledge about gunpowder, though they were far fewer, controlled other continents.
What knowledge can justify the superior position of these organizations over a nation?Perhaps the long term accumulated and intensified knowledge over the short life-long divided ones.The power sources of these organizations come mainly from focused information and  a profound experience accumulated in key fields.  These fields include propaganda, control of the media and public perception.
If this is true, why don’t the common people of a nation gain the same knowledge?Here is the first tricky part in the story. When the nations were controlled by people using gunpowder, the people of the controlled nations actually knew that they were controlled. They strived to learn the nature of the control in order to restore their freedom. Those who are controlled by subtle weapons like manipulation, media or mind control don’t know that they are being controlled or manipulated. That is why they don’t have any motivation to learn about the nature of modern control.Individuals can’t build airplanes or operations systems. Only huge organizations can. These organizations use the knowledge and experience of thousands of scientists accumulated across decades or even centuries, focus them in one project, then it could be done.
However what kind of products do such organizations deal with?Here is the second tricky part of the story. While companies like Apple or Tesla rush to tell us about their products even before they produce them, the intelligence forces invest in products that they are keen not to talk about.  These products, if they would ever have names, they would be training programs called something like: “how to control minds” or a book called “how to influence nations’ opinions and direct them”, or software called “how to divide a nation, create a war and profit from it.”

“If the newspapers begin to publish stories about wars, and the people begin to think and talk of war in their daily conversations, they soon find themselves at war. People get that which their minds dwell upon, and this applies to a group or community or a nation of people, the same as to an individual.” Andrew Carnegie, circa 1908
“ The Prince ” was written in the early 16th century. In this book, Niccolò Machiavelli explained a series of “tips and tricks” to contemporary leaders in order to teach them how to control nations and dominate crowds.The title came from the principal person that Machiavelli wrote to, hoping for some favoritism. It could also be titled, “How the prince should behave to stay prince”.However, if such book was written in our time in the United States, a completely different title would be chosen for it. It could be called something like, “How to dominate nations and control the crowds,” or “Controlling nations for dummies” or something similar.The author would become a consultant and start big consultancy firm. He would start to target the wealthy governments who are thinking day and night how to maintain their superior position. The book could be taught in training programs. If the writer lived in Silicon Valley, he might consider developing an app called “how to control crowds.” If billions of dollars were invested to develop apps like Tinder or video games, how much money would you expect to be invested in such an app?The business related to such products is not estimated in the billions of dollars, rather in trillions of dollarsThe more artificial intelligence (AI) technology gets better, the gap between these Frankensteins and the common masses get bigger. Here is how Alon Ben David, defense reporter describes this view“How Israel Rules The World Of Cyber Security” “We're talking about here is a total revolution of the whole concept of war it changes everything we thought about war and how it's been conducted and what are the rules and who is the enemy and can you recognize the enemy at all many countries have very dangerous cyber tools some are using it viciously like the Russians like the Chinese and are not shy of using them against other countries we all understand the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure and we all understand the vulnerabilities of privacy but what troubles me is the ability to affect the mindset of masses the mindset of Republic the Russians were manipulating American public mindset that's scary and that I suspect would eventually undermine most of Western democracies in the coming decade I fear that the good 70 years post World War two of prospering democracies in the Western world and prosperity economic prosperity are over!”

The telling of the story of Syria remains incomplete without going through the role of the media and international organizations.  This means primarily the intelligence agencies, the military complexes, and some NGOs which are influenced and directed by the latter.
In this chapter I will describe some behaviors of these entities.
The role that these organizations played in the Syrian tragedy is not small. In one way or another, the behavior of these organizations is responsible for the massacre. It is the deadly part of the story. All other things which the media focused on were either distraction or the result of the behavior of these bodies. Without these organizations, the amount of Syrian bloodshed would not have reached such a horrible level.

But do I believe in the conspiracy or not?Well, here is how I see it: It is not most important to decide whether there is a conspiracy or not. No matter if events are part of a conspiracy or not, humanity urgently needs to be aware of the behavior of these organizations. Most important, the Syrian tragedy is not the last episode of this bloody series. It was not the first one either. The behavior of these organizations keeps multiplying the tragedy into unlimited copies. It is like a complicated product which needs a long time to be designed and manufactured. However once it starts to function, it quickly produces thousands of similar pieces in rapid succession. This is how it appears to me when I watch these organizations multiply what happened in Syria.  It spreads to other countries like Yemen, Venezuela, Jordan, etc. The Syrian tragedy itself was an updated version of the Iraq war and before that the Afghan war.

The Behavior of Syrian and Arabic Speaking Media
The Arabic speaking media polarized the Syrian nation telling completely different stories about the nature of the conflict. The opposition media talked about freedom, revolution, democracy, or the right of the Sunni majority to govern Syria. Meanwhile the media of  Assad’s regime was talking about the global conspiracy against the regime. Each party got tremendous support from its allies. The regime’s media was backed by the media sources of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. There were unlimited mercenary writers.  These journalists were reporting to the Arabic speaking and international media. The landscape on the other side was not different. Media channels like Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and others played a big role in preparing the Syrian crowds for the revolution. This role continued throughout the years of the revolution. These media channels chose the representatives of the Syrian opposition and their speakers. Again, I am not going to go through the question as to whether these channels acted as a part of a previous plan or if their acts were just a normal response to the events and circumstances. However, I might mention that the story of a polarizing media didn’t start in 2011, but instead many years before that.  The British Broadcasting Corporation BBC

Thanks to the role of these media channels, Syrians who lived together for decades ended up as complete strangers. In a few months the anti and pro-Assad Syrians became enemies and couldn’t trust or believe each another anymore. This plan was applied again in the opposition areas based on ethnic, ideological or sectarian factors. This was how the extremist areas were made to be so different from the moderate ones. The ultra-extremists started to defect from the less extremist ones and attack them. The Kurdish opposition didn’t want to stay in sync with the Arab Opposition. The media worked on splitting these groups into smaller ones based on tribal, regional and other bases.


The Behavior of the Western Media

Throughout the years of the Syrian crisis, the mainstream media explained the western failure as just a series of accidental mistakes, mere confusion and a lack of experience. This sounds to me simply not convincing. The western intelligence agencies have demonstrated a high performance level in many other events. It reached a very sophisticated level of organization and knowledge decades ago. Further, unintentional confusion can’t continue for many years like it did in the Syrian case and other similar cases like in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and others. The bill of each of these failures is estimated to be millions of victims. It is mysterious when these intelligence agencies become suddenly helpless and amateur.
Sibel Edmonds, the Ex-FBI agent illustrated this phenomenon when she described a similar case while she was employed by the FBI:   “Yassin Al Kadi was one of our guys, CIA guys, with the Turkish Network together, having these terrorist related operations going on. But every time FBI wanted to go and snatch the guy, the State Department and the CIA would step in and they wouldn't let it happen. Then we had 9/11 taking place, and this was when we had Robert Wright coming out talking about it and saying: “they stopped the investigation”, the United States government. We had one of the financers. Okay? During the Syrian crisis years, the mainstream media overwhelmed their followers with daily reports and explanations similar to the above story narrated by Sibel Edmond. I would call this kind of narrative “the oops” effect. It is a modern generation of manipulation and one of the most dangerous tools used by the media to distract the crowds from what is really going on. 
Doubting such a narrative might lead to thinking about a conspiracy. A conspiracy theory seems sometimes very stupid. However, insisting to believe all these “oops” and abstaining from posing any question about them seem to me even more stupid than thinking of the conspiracy theory way.
The “oops” way of manipulation is the exact inversion of “Aha effect”. Only when we reject believing these frequent “oops”, we might get to the “Aha” effect and start to understand what is going on.


The reader can explain these observations as “accidental” or that “events happened according to the nature of things.” I would also never mind if any conspiracy theorist took my observations to prove their theories and complete the missing part of the story (according to them), telling the readers about the one family/organization/country who rules the world. All I want to say is that this book is devoted to the events that I experienced and were in my research area. I mentioned to the reader in the beginning of the book that the book wouldn’t tell the Syrian story from A-Z. I don’t think that any one book can do that. Let's say that this book only tells the story from O to P.  Any work that tells the story before O or after P would be great.

In this chapter I will illustrate in facts what I called in the preface the “mysterious behavior of the Assad regime” during the Syrian crisis. . I will list 10 facts as examples of this ambiguous behavior and describe them briefly.This behavior was explained by the stream media as merely “stupidity” or “the expected reaction of a dictator trying to maintain his position”. Obviously, I don’t agree with this.This part is about FACTS, no theory here. I witnessed these facts first hand and added -when possible- references from various trusted sources. However, I would appreciate if the reader went even further and investigated these facts from other sources they might trust more.My own theory to explain this behavior will come in a later essay. That explanation is my own. The reader can contradict it. No facts there. However, I will also use several outside sources to support it.
***While thousands of foreign fighters were flooding into Syria, the Syrian regime’s army was working at full capacity to destroy Syrian cities one by oneFurther, and Soon after the rebellion started, the regime released thousands of arrested radicals who were detained in the famous prisons Sednaya and Palmira·         Abu Lokman, one of the founders of the Al Nusra front in Syria, who also worked as ISIS Leader (Emir) in Al Raqqa [North Syria, and the capital of ISIS in Syria]·         Mahmoud Al Kholaif, the security officer in ISIS·         Haj Fadel Al Agha, the relations officer·         Abu Abdul Rahman Al Hamwi, Al Nusra leader in Hama·         Abu Naser Darwasha, the cousin of Abu Mohammad Al Jawlani, the leader of HTS (Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, previously Al Nusra Front)·         Abu Hafs Al Keswani, the Islamist leader in Daraa, and others.
 “‘The reason the regime released them at the beginning of the Syrian revolution was to complete the militarization of the uprising,’ said Naser, who defected in late 2012. ‘And to spur criminal acts so that revolution would become a criminal case and give the impression that the regime is fighting terrorists’ […] John Kerry, the outgoing secretary of state, said in November 2015 that ISIS ‘was created by Assad’ and by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, both of whom released al Qaeda prisoners in their respective countries. Assad’s aim was to tell the world, ‘It’s me or the terrorists.’”Most analysts, opposition thinkers and writers agree with this analysis.
My objection to this simple explanation is: the Assad regime achieved this goal within the first two years. There is a big question mark hovering over this. By 2013 Isis occupied large parts of Syria and Iraq. With the news dominating international media and Syrians fed up with the Islamists and foreign factions, the Assad regime had the justification it needed to end the armed rebellion and restore its control over Syria. As I will explain in the following points, the Assad regime did the exact opposite.
The different headquarters of the armed opposition stayed unmolested during the seven years of the militarized rebellion. Armed rebels grew in number in each small town or city center across the area controlled by the opposition. The factions of this opposition, led now by unknown foreigner fighters, occupied government buildings and schools and turned them into military buildings. These headquarters were always surrounded with armed vehicles. They were completely visible and could be easily monitored and observed. The Syrian and Russian aircraft were flying over these headquarters on a daily basis while their raids attacked the civilian hospitals, markets, childrens’ schools and houses

In the Iran-Contra Affair "the National Security Council (NSC) became involved in secret weapons transactions and other activities that either were prohibited by the U.S. Congress or violated the stated public policy of the government."  ”It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment.”  The president at the time, Ronald Reagan, “gave the impression of knowing little of what was going on.” Several investigations were conducted. Neither found any evidence that President Reagan himself was aware of the multiple programs’ details.“The funds were first sent to Saudi Arabia” . The Saudi businessman “Khashoggi was an important middleman in the arms deals behind the Iran-contra scandal”  .When we reflect upon this issue , we come to notice a few interesting details:The relations between the main players of this scandal were severely complicated. Iranian officials and citizens called the United States at the time “The Great Satan” and Israel “the Small Satan”. It was not unusual to hear declarations like “Israel should be annihilated”. The percentage of Iranian citizens who shared this view with Iranian officials was not small. The feelings that the Israelis and Americans harboured against the Iranians were not much different.When we talk about Saudi-Israeli or Saudi-Iranian relations, the landscape looks similarly messy.How can these countries meet and sign sensitive agreements when they are sunk in such grudge oceans?When we try to describe the relations between countries, we have to differentiate four different levels of power:1. The ordinary citizens who are not directly involved in political decision-making.2. The officials, i.e. the technocrats, ministers, government officers and so on. This level is supposed to care about the interests of the whole nation. However, the views and values of this level are not necessarily the same as that of most citizens.3. The military complexes and intelligence service agencies .4. A small circle of leaders and key persons who direct the military complexes and intelligence service agencies.  Of course, the four levels described above are not completely disconnected from each other. Important to remember here is: the relations between the countries at each level don’t necessarily reflect the relations at other levels.Just because the individuals of two countries have peaceful feelings towards each other, that doesn’t necessarily hold true for other levels. Vice versa, when war is declared between some countries, that doesn’t mean that the relationship between these countries’ top level power centers are in the same state of conflict. What we need to keep in mind is: the interests, values and views of each level are not the same. Thus, we shouldn’t talk about them collectively. Otherwise we would end up misunderstanding a lot of political issues today. It is too easy to be manipulated and fooled.When we say “the Americans invaded Iraq” we are committing a paradigm mistake, one which led to huge misconceptions. What happened was: the top level of decision-makers in the United States made the decision to invade Iraq. This means that the majority of Americans were not invading but were rather victims of this invasion. Furthermore, the US decision-makers responsible for this invasion conspired with figures from Iraq itself. These Iraqis were not among the invaded, but were in fact part of the invasion.Thus, the contradiction in international politics is not always between nations, i.e. Americans against Iraqis. Rather, the contradiction in many cases lies between, on the one hand, the politicians of all nations, and on the other, the general citizenry of those nations. Correcting this misconception is the first step towards understanding modern political events, and to finding solutions for the soaring wave of wars.






The acquisition of power by these bodies was not accidental. It happened gradually throughout history. It was an evolutionary process with roots going back to the middle ages and ancient times. However, this process witnessed its most dramatic leap during the world wars of the twentieth centurySince the World War II, these bodies have gained exceptional tools to retain their position as independent decision makers. These services gained organizational capabilities and structures that made them independent from the technocrat rulers. Their structure allowed them to maintain their power even after the wars ended.
These mechanisms are a mix of legal, political, and financial tools.  There also exist loopholes along with media “tricks.” Most important they have a wealth of studies, unlimited historical case studies and experience. In a phrase, there is a wealth of information.  
Mechanisms which were created at that time guaranteed them these exceptional privileges to the present. They have now their own view which doesn’t necessarily comply with the view of the majority of individuals or even with the technocrat politicians. Presently they are not now mere administrators for their countries’ leaders. They have an organic independent life on their own apart from their creators.

Later the intelligence organizations in the superpower countries developed similar structured organizations in the third world. The superpowers’ security services transmitted, conditionally and partially, part of their wealth of knowledge, experience and organizational capabilities to their counterparts in the third world. This way, the services in the developed world kept their domination over the third world. They own the knowledge which controls the crowds of these nations and they transmit it to specific groups which comply with their policies and goals.  

Historically, the human groups who were one step further in owning specific knowledge could dominate and control those who were one step behind.Some nations who owned the knowledge about gunpowder, though they were far fewer, controlled other continents.
What knowledge can justify the superior position of these organizations over a nation?Perhaps the long term accumulated and intensified knowledge over the short life-long divided ones. The power sources of these organizations come mainly from focused information and  a profound experience accumulated in key fields.  These fields include propaganda, control of the media and public perception.
If this is true, why don’t the common people of a nation gain the same knowledge?Here is the first tricky part in the story. When the nations were controlled by people using gunpowder, the people of the controlled nations actually knew that they were controlled. They strived to learn the nature of the control in order to restore their freedom. Those who are controlled by subtle weapons like manipulation, media or mind control don’t know that they are being controlled or manipulated. That is why they don’t have any motivation to learn about the nature of modern control.Individuals can’t build airplanes or operations systems. Only huge organizations can. These organizations use the knowledge and experience of thousands of scientists accumulated across decades or even centuries, focus them in one project, then it could be done.
However what kind of products do such organizations deal with?Here is the second tricky part of the story. While companies like Apple or Tesla rush to tell us about their products even before they produce them, the intelligence forces invest in products that they are keen not to talk about.  These products, if they would ever have names, they would be training programs called something like: “how to control minds” or a book called “how to influence nations’ opinions and direct them”, or software called “how to divide a nation, create a war and profit from it.”

“If the newspapers begin to publish stories about wars, and the people begin to think and talk of war in their daily conversations, they soon find themselves at war. People get that which their minds dwell upon, and this applies to a group or community or a nation of people, the same as to an individual.” Andrew Carnegie, circa 1908
“ The Prince ” was written in the early 16thcentury. In this book, Niccolò Machiavelliexplained a series of “tips and tricks” to contemporary leaders in order to teach them how to control nations and dominate crowds.The title came from the principal person that Machiavelli wrote to, hoping for some favoritism. It could also be titled, “How the prince should behave to stay prince”. However, if such book was written in our time in the United States, a completely different title would be chosen for it. It could be called something like, “How to dominate nations and control the crowds,” or “Controlling nations for dummies” or something similar.The author would become a consultant and start big consultancy firm. He would start to target the wealthy governments who are thinking day and night how to maintain their superior position. The book could be taught in training programs. If the writer lived in Silicon Valley, he might consider developing an app called “how to control crowds.” If billions of dollars were invested to develop apps like Tinder or video games, how much money would you expect to be invested in such an app?The business related to such products is not estimated in the billions of dollars, rather in trillions of dollarsThe more artificial intelligence (AI) technology gets better, the gap between these Frankensteins and the common masses get bigger. Here is how Alon Ben David, defense reporter describes this view“How Israel Rules The World Of Cyber Security” “We're talking about here is a total revolution of the whole concept of war it changes everything we thought about war and how it's been conducted and what are the rules and who is the enemy and can you recognize the enemy at all many countries have very dangerous cyber tools some are using it viciously like the Russians like the Chinese and are not shy of using them against other countries we all understand the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure and we all understand the vulnerabilities of privacy but what troubles me is the ability to affect the mindset of masses the mindset of Republic the Russians were manipulating American public mindset that's scary and that I suspect would eventually undermine most of Western democracies in the coming decade I fear that the good 70 years post World War two of prospering democracies in the Western world and prosperity economic prosperity are over!”

I consider manipulation as the most homicidal weapon in our time. The reason why I think so is: There are few people in the world that are in favor of the continuance of wars. How could the warlords still start these wars against the will of the majority? The answer is simple: With manipulation they can! 
During the Syrian crisis years, I could observe and define many suspicious media behaviors and tactics which were used to distract the crowds from what was really going on or what should have been done.

Telling the crowds what they want to hear, not what is really going on

This sort of manipulation could be inherent to the media. The media does not necessarily practice such manipulation deliberately or consciously. It just responds to how people interact and react and what they would like to hear. The crowds are interested in listening to facts which back their view or their ideas about life and the world.The western audience, for instance, would like to believe that Middle Eastern nations are, finally, rebelling for their freedom. This came from their paradigms surrounding a historical development and their own view of life. They project their own history on current events and recall events like the French Revolution and the World War harbingers. The intellectual Syrians wanted to hear only this exact story. They ignored any other facts. The Salafists in Syria and in the Arab Gulf countries would like to hear a completely different story. They preferred to see the revolution as a rise of Sunni Islam against the Alawite or secularity. Each party found a media which responded to their wish and repeated the story that fitted their liking. The truth of what was going on was not important for any party.
But how much does it really matter to know the real reason and trigger of wars?
The importance of knowing “why the war starts” lies in the fact of “unless we knew the reason for the war, we wouldn’t be able to finish it.”All mankind has tried to stop wars but it has resulted to be useless…War-lords can let the media explain the reasons for wars by telling unlimited stories about the Sunni-Shia conflict, Dictatorship-Freedom conflict, Kurdish-Arabic conflict, and Turkish- Russian conflict. They also could talk about conflict over gas and oil, profit conflict between the Russian axis and NATO, competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran, between Capitalism and Socialism, or drought and desertification, Star Wars, Harry Potter, whatever… These reasons have existed for ages. I don’t deny here the fact that they are there. I just claim that they didn’t cause a war until “war-lords” used them to launch wars all over the world according to their own demand and profits. The media entertains its audience with what they would like to hear, while the war-lords complete the process by profiting from these wars and adding fuel to the fire. The point is: none of these reasons CREATED the war, the real creators and their motives hide somewhere out of this landscape and are rarely mentionedThe media tends to talk about persons or events: Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, 9/11, Deraa’s children, Tunisian policewoman, etc. while the real reason(s) for the war are somewhere else… The wars in our age represent the ultimate edition of organized crime, and it is not about men or events. Even if Assad dies the next morning (or his whole family, Putin or Erdogan), the war or crisis won’t end because it is not about them…
But even this illusion and misunderstanding doesn’t come spontaneously… In the Syrian war (for instance), thousands of sponsored social media groups and accounts, video channels, news agencies, and figures were devoted to keeping eyes on “persons” or events… focusing their eyes on some clan, sect, or party, while spreading news implying that these symbols were in their last days… By using this technique (among others), the Syrians (all fighting parties) have lived 8 years (so far) expecting that the end of the war will happen soon, while the country has been destroyed and gradually disappears!

'We Can't Solve Problems by Using the Same Kind of Thinking We Used When We Created Them'


Albert Einstein







Overwhelming the crowds with irrelevant details and narrative

This kind of manipulation is used almost all the time in our media, in the tabloids as well as more reputable sources. It distracts its audience with names, personal behaviors and minor details.We have to realize that we live in the age of international poles and axes. History can’t be decided solely focusing on the views of individual people or groups of people. Countries are now connected to each other and the superpowers won’t allow personal behaviors and views to threaten their interests or to risk the world order on which they worked. Some media tries to convince us otherwise by telling us unlimited irrelevant stories. 
Some media tends to explain international events based on people such as Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un and so on.   Other media explain huge events based on single events, while the real triggers of the events on the international stage lie somewhere else.  Noam Chomsky explained this idea by saying once:
“Trump's role is to ensure that the media and public attention are always concentrated on him. So every time you turn on a television set: Trump, open the front page of the newspaper : Trump, you open the front page of the newspaper: Trump. He's a conman, basically a showman and in order to maintain public attention you have to do something crazy, otherwise nobody's going to pay attention to you. If you do normal things you'll be way back somewhere. So every day there's one insane thing after another and then you know the media, he makes a crazy lie, you know, he had the biggest crowd in history or something, then the media looks at it and says “No, that isn’t the biggest crowed”, but meanwhile he's on to something else and then you go to that one and while this show is going on in public, in the background the wrecking crew is working. Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnel; the guys in the cabinet who write his executive orders, what they are doing is systematically dismantling every aspect of government that works for the benefit of the population, this goes from workers’ rights, to pollution of the environment, rules for protecting consumers, I mean anything you can think of is being dismantled  and all efforts are being devoted, almost with fanaticism, to enrich and empower their actual constituency, which is super wealth and corporate power.”
The Pepsi VS Coca-Cola trap


In this trap the media serve their audience two options as if there is no third one. It raises endless disputes in which people try day and night to prove which choice is better. “Who is the liar, the Western or Russian media?” “Is NATO good or the Putin-Assad-Iran axes”? “Should we destroy Iraq, or close our eyes and turn our back leaving the Iraqi tyranny to kill whoever he wants?”As if the rejection of one option necessarily implies acceptance of the other.
This trap played a homicidal role in the Syrian crisis. Many intellectuals, thinkers and even academic scientists fell in this trap. A wide range of the western audience found themselves in a pre-taken attitude and biased to Assad’s side. They refused to believe any reports about the Assad regime’s crimes against millions of civilians. Assad’s media and its allies, mainly the Russian, Iranian and their public relations arms made great use of this trap and profited from it until its last edge. After the Iraq war, the global mood was against any similar war. The media uncovered a lot of manipulation used by the western media to justify the war against Iraq and the Saddam Hussein regime. In the Syrian crisis this meant that the crowds automatically adopted the attitude of defending Assad and tending to hear only good things about him. This enabled Assad’s regime to go in brutality to the most severe edge. The crimes which were committed by Assad’s regime could exceed what the Nazi regime did in World War II.        However, but we need in each incident sort of answer, correct?Correct! There are always unlimited possibilities and answers. Nevertheless the media distracts the crowds from seeing any third answer or even posing a third question. In a world that we would hope for, it is not acceptable to leave a tyranny to slave or kill its nation. I have a complete disregard towards what “legal experts” wrote in the constitution of the UN Security Council.  The alternative option is not necessarily delegating to one or two entities like the CIA or the British military complex to destroy a nation without any responsibility.  The presidents and directors who dictated the invasion of Iraq or the operations in Syria were not investigated. The victims of this behavior in each case are in the millions.

To them:
The victims of the war princes, who couldn’t find another business except these children’s blood, limbs, future, and dreams.

In this chapter, I will describe some techniques that the Assad regime used to minimize the possibilities of any coup that could take him out of power and guaranteed that the Assad’s family govern Syria in a semi-Royal way for decades.
Multiplying the security services agencies

Hafez Al Assad had many security services agencies. He inherited some from past regimes, and created others. The main 4 security directorates are:

·         The General Intelligence Directorate (Amn Addawlah) was formed few months after Hafiz Al Assad came to power. ·         The military intelligence service of Syria (Al-Mukhabarat al-'Askariyya) was established in 1969. Hafez Al Assad was the minister of Defense at the time. Its roots go back to the French mandate period (1923–1943)Each of the above directorates has a branch in every one of the 14 Syrian provinces, except for several platoons in big cities. It is expected that there is a sort of distribution of roles between these directorates, but this is not the situation. Each of these services was given unrestricted power to oversee and report everything that was happening. For instance, the role of “Palestine division” was not really overseeing “activities of Palestinian groups in Syria and Lebanon “. It has been known as the most brutal division that tortured thousands of Syrians who were not necessarily connected to Palestine nor to Lebanon.In my opinion, the aim of creating multiple divisions was to make these services observers of not only the activities of any potential threaten of the regime’s power, but rather to oversee each other as well.Every general or director of these directorates could be a victim of reports written by a small spy in another directorate. With this technique, the Assad regime could minimize the possibility of any potential coup or rebellion. It created horrifying directorates which terrorized the citizens. However, terrorists were themselves terrorized by the ghosts of their counterparts and colleagues.
The above-described directorates were the secret police. There was the regular police directorate which was responsible for the regular issues and enjoyed much less power than the secret police. Other secret police divisions were added in Bashar Al Assad’s era like the Anti-terrorism division or Anti-drugs division. Again, they were just a replication of the main directorates with different names and same function. 


This is the other tactic which modern security services developed to complete their control over the nations. It is one step further. It implies not waiting until the opposition arise before facing it. Rather, the security services predict this raise and breakthrough any “potential” movement in the very early stages. In each potential rebellion there should be insider agents, and, in some cases, these agents even play the main role in starting the rebellion itself. This is a very advanced tactic but very smart as well. During the Syrian revolution’s years, thousands of such double-agents were discovered. Some of them were the main triggers and leaders of the rebellion.

In some advanced stage of this process, the services started to create some factions and movements in parallel with the natural ones and give them power or legitimacy. I mentioned some examples and will mention others throughout the book. Important here: These “Trojan horses” don’t necessarily need to be aware of this game. They play their role naturally. The services gave them possibilities in many ways. They trigger the media to create some Aurora and noise around them. It prevents their competitor to appear by assassinating them, arresting or using any other tools. The modern strategy is: There should be always opposition and we can’t prevent that. Let’s then create some opposition to keep it other control, while minimizing the influence of any other opposition which we have less control over it.
This is a common method which is applied by almost all international intelligence agencies. Throughout this book I mentioned many examples of this technique, applied by United States, the Syrian regime, Iraqi regime and others…


 Hizbollah–Syrian Intelligence Affairs: A Marriage of Convenience, a study by Carl Anthony WegeCollege of Coastal Georgia http://www.faqs.org/espionage/Sp-Te/Syria-Intelligence-and-Security.html

The Qatari role in the Syrian crisis is one of the most puzzling ones. I understand the profits that countries like Turkey or Russia achieved by intervening in Syria. Other countries like the United States, France or Great Britain have a long history of intelligence work and carry a colonializing mentality. Their intervention could also be understood.  The role of Qatar and other Arab Gulf states stays very puzzling and not completely understood.
“Doha’s leaders were particularly emboldened by the revolt in Libya, where Qatar had played the lead Arab role in the Nato-led intervention.”“Whether in terms of armaments or financial support for dissidents, diplomatic manoeuvring or lobbying, Qatar has been in the lead, readily disgorging its gas-generated wealth in the pursuit of the downfall of the House of Assad.” “Qatar’s influence over military supplies to the [Syrian] rebellion may be waning, as its role in weapons deliveries takes second place to that of Saudi Arabia. […] Mustafa Sabbagh […] is considered the most powerful man in the political opposition. The owner of a building material and contracting company, the 48-year-old secretary-general of the National Coalition […] he does oversee the coalition’s budget, to which the Qataris are the biggest donors, and is responsible, as one western official says, “for writing the cheques”. While seen by both friends and detractors as a shrewd man who appealed to Qatar officials’ business-minded attitude, Sabbagh has come under criticism for supposedly using his position to control the opposition and further Qatari influence. […] Claims of Qatari dominance of the opposition persisted, even after the coalition was created. True, the Muslim Brotherhood was no longer the main component, but a new bloc of more than a dozen members, brought in by Sabbagh as representatives of local communities in Syria, sparked new disagreements. It was seen as another bloc that was loyal to Qatar. Each of these members was supposed to represent a local council in Syria’s different provinces, and together the councils received $8m from Qatar soon after the formation of the coalition. Qatar was also the first – and possibly the only – country to provide funding for the coalition budget, to the tune of $20m, and it delivered the first $10m out of a pledged $100m package for the organisation’s new humanitarian assistance unit.”In the beginning of the revolution, there were a lot of analyses by speakers and writers explaining the intervention of Qatar and its axes with stories about gas and oil pipelines. There were a lot of rumors which gave the impression that that was the story, which the Syrian rebels didn’t mind. For them, they wanted to topple the Assad regime at any price. They wanted to end these long decades of dictatorship and knew that it was impossible without international help. Even if we accept such explanation, how could we explain other wars like the wars in Yemen where no gas or oil pipelines. These wars were created by same countries in the same time using the same tools and methods.
If the war was about gas or oil, Assad and Russia should and could behave in a completely different way. At least they wouldn’t need to kill babies or to torture the peaceful innocents. These indications indicated that the story was somewhere else away from oil, gas or any of the similar classic goals of regular wars.





Another explanation assumes that these countries which are ruled by conservative regimes need constant “holy wars“ to get rid of the extremists which might threaten their stability and legitimacy.  Wars like that of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Thailand all presented a greatchance to send thousands of radical fighters to places where they would happily die.This could also be an interesting point to western countries as well. The constant existence of holy wars contributed to the work of the western intelligence agencies in may ways, either by helping the “friend regimes” like the Arab Gulf countries or observing the extremists and their activities. The daily scenes in the media which provoke radicals and bring them to one point, was very helpful for these services.  I will relate this point in another way so as to be clear, as it is critical in this respect. If these wars were not based on a religious or sectarian basis, they wouldn’t acknowledge or attract these radical elements. If these wars were just classic wars for oil, gas or economic reasons, without daily news and scenes of rape and killing children, and without news amplified systematically, they would not attract billions of dollars in donations from all around the world. This money, which will be donated from individuals, governments and organizations, will not end up in the the Syrians’ pockets or mouths. It will end up in bank accounts in Turkey or willdisappear somewhere along the way.
If we go further in believing some conspiracy theories, these wars could be motivated and pushed by some complexes and cartels which profit directly from them. The bills of such wars are paid for by the tax payers of some countries, while the money ends up in the bank account of some narrow circle of weapons manufacturers and security companies. Countries like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are small countries with short-term experience in intelligence work. Furthermore, they have enough money and don’t need to invest in such industries, i.e. the wars industry.  Was their role just spontaneous reactions motivated by an adventurous attitude that developed reactively? Were they proxies to some other powers hidden behind them and instructing them?
“Qatar’s ruling family, the al-Thanis, have no ideological or religious affinity with the Islamists – they are simply not choosy about the beliefs held by useful friends. Qatar has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia’s Islamist al-Nahda party, which won the first elections after the popular revolts.” “It is this kind of dynamism and risk-taking at an executive level that has enabled Doha to act as a regional power only a few years after being a diplomatic nobody.”“[Qatar] hosted the US’s biggest military air base in the region, while maintaining cordial relations with Iran; it held contacts with Israel while simultaneously backing the Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbollah.”“One person who influenced the emir’s thinking at the time is Azmi Bishara, a prominent former Arab Israeli MP, exiled in Qatar […]An adviser to the emir and the crown prince, Bishara has become something of a court intellectual in Doha. He is said to have been involved in the formation of the Syrian National Coalition, now the main opposition umbrella group, and to have been used to “test” opposition figures. […](Bishara was not available for comment.)”
The Financial Times magazine published a very interesting report about the Qatari role in Syria beginning a few years before the revolution up until the most recent events. I will quote from this report the main milestones of this role, but I wish to draw the attention of the reader to an important issue. What the report describes is not restricted to the Qatari behavior in Syria. When we move to study the roles of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in countries like Egypt, Turkey, Balkan States, Yemen, etc… we see an exact similar scenario…  With some adaptation to the conditions of each country, the practices and tools are the same. These tools are mainly based on invading the targeted country with investment in media, the finance sector, espionage agents under titles like charity organizations, businessmen, and a huge tourism movement…
Ø  “It wasn’t long ago that Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma were regular visitors to Doha, as guests of the emir and his second wife, Sheikha Moza. Qatari institutions were big investors in Syria, with a $5bn joint holding company set up in 2008 to develop everything from power stations to hotels.Ø  The emir also championed the international rehabilitation of Assad during his gradual ostracisation by the US, Europe and his Arab peers; Sheikh Hamad was instrumental in restoring Syrian relations with France in the years before the uprising, when he counted the former president Nicolas Sarkozy as a friend. Back then Syria was part of an alliance – with Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbollah”.Ø  “As the Arab world’s bloodiest conflict grinds on, Qatar has emerged as a driving force: pouring in tens of millions of dollars to arm the rebels. Yet it also stands accused of dividing them […]Qatar has contributed – estimated by rebel and diplomatic sources to be about $1bn, but put by people close to the Qatar government at as much as $3bn.”