Bharat Rakshak

X-posting from GDF

Ralph Peters geopolitical map of the Middle East is being given a legitimacy through this report on Resource Distribution. Resource Distribution in a New Middle East

It is a wonder as to how the US Geological Society is also used to provide data for the Anglo-Saxon think-tanks. The advisor is a high school academic, it shows how deep the culture of critical thinking for the interests of one's own MIC goes.

Am I missing something or petroleum is not included among resources?

Had multiple email IDs; each meant for specific persons
Shaurya Karanbir Gurung
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 5
Terror mastermind Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, used multiple email IDs and SIM cards, each meant to communicate only with specific persons.

Jundal’s pan-India network of sleeper agents and modules in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are being slowly unearthed as sleuths have fanned out across the country to follow up on leads emerging from his interrogation. He had also set up a new module of the Indian Mujahideen (IM).

A special cell of the Delhi Police has found that Jundal had been using nine email IDs and four SIM cards (one from Pakistan and three from Saudi Arabia). “Call details in respect of various SIM cards have been obtained through diplomatic channels and the same are being analysed. The mirror images, a technical term for call details available on SIM cards, have been converted into DVDs and are being analysed,” the special cell told Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vinod Yadav today.

The magistrate extended the police remand of Jundal and allowed the Delhi Police to retain him till July 20. The claims of the National Investigation Agency and the ATS, Mumbai, seeking his custody were turned down.

Investigators are now clear that Jundal was part of a larger conspiracy and he is in knowledge of several plots and plans being hatched by Pakistan-based terror groups under the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

The Delhi Police has dispatched special teams to various places in India to gather further information. Jundal had been running several small modules. Just ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, he arranged for the shootout at Jama Masjid. A motorcycle-borne youth had fired at a bus carrying foreign tourists. Shooter Mohd Adil, a Pakistani youth, was arrested in November last year. He had named Jundal as the key member.

The Delhi Police told the court, “Information gathered from Jundal needs to be analysed in a centralised manner with a view to establish his links with other invisible handlers of the LeT and the IM.”

The probe

n Call details of various SIMs have been obtained and are being analysed

n It is also being established how he managed to collect a big haul of weapons

n He is in the know of several plots being hatched by Pak-based terror groups

n His police remand has been extended till July 20

The Syrian opposition: who's doing the talking? - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... he-talking

This article from the Guardian takes a deeper look into the backgrounds of many of the Syrian opposition figures. Here is a an excerpt about the SNC's most senior spokesperson Bassma Kodmani.

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Syrian conflict declared a civil war by the Red Cross
The conflict in Syria was effectively declared a civil war by the Red Cross on Sunday, as the "most intense" fighting since the start of the uprising was reported in Damascus.

By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent and Alex Spillius
15 Jul 2012

The Red Cross had previously designated Idlib, Homs and Hama as war zones, but the change in status means international humanitarian law applies wherever fighting occurs throughout the country

Combatants will now be officially subject to the Geneva Conventions, and will be more exposed to war crimes prosecutions, after the ICRC declared that the conflict was a "non-international armed conflict", or in lay terms a civil war.

Sean Maguire, a spokesman for the ICRC, said that both sides would be reminded of their obligations "to protect civilians from fighting, treat the wounded and sick without discrimination".

The categorisation was made after the ICRC determined that the armed opposition to Bashar al-Assad's regime had reached a sufficient level of organisation and capability.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy clashes in the capital in what was described as the "most intense" fighting there since the start of the anti-regime revolt in Syria.

"The regular army fired mortar rounds into several suburbs" where rebels of the Free Syrian Army are entrenched, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "They have never been this intense."

Kofi Annan, the international envoy of Syria, and Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general, set off on a trip to Russia and China on Monday in a bid to persuade them to back tougher action against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, but hopes for a breakthrough are slender.

The Syrian government went on the offensive yesterday by attempting to claim a propaganda victory after UN observers called into question opposition claims of a civilian massacre in the village of Tremseh.

Local activists had accused regime forces of slaughtering as many as 220 civilians in what would have been the worst massacre of the 16-month uprising against Mr Assad.

Although a team of monitors that reached the scene encountered scenes of heavy destruction and found evidence of mass fatalities, they concluded that the vast majority of the dead were rebels or opposition activists.

Their findings were swiftly trumpeted by the Assad regime, which accused Western leaders and Mr Annan of rushing to draw fallacious conclusions.

But while the observers' report suggested that the government's narrative was closer to reality than the opposition's, the events that unfolded in Tremseh last Thursday remain murky.

Nor was the regime's position entirely vindicated. The UN stood by its accusation that government forces had used tanks and helicopter gunships in breach of a pledge made by Mr Assad a week ago not to use heavy weapons.

Reaching the village 48 hours after the killings, the observers spoke of encountering scenes of devastation and seeing chilling traces of the ferocity of the government's onslaught amid the ruins.

"There were pools of blood and blood spatters in rooms of several homes together with bullet cases," said Sausan Ghosheh, a spokesman for the monitoring team.

"A wide range of weapons were used, including artillery, mortars and small arms."

The findings appeared to suggest that a number of the victims were shot at close range, echoing opposition claims of execution-style killings carried out by the pro-Assad Shabiha militia, whose ranks are largely drawn from president's Alawite minority.

But the observers also reported that the attack appeared to target "specific groups and houses, mainly of army defectors and activists" -- a significant departure from the narrative of some opposition activists.

Tremseh lies along the same sectarian fault line as two other Sunni villages – Howl and Qubeir – whose inhabitants were allegedly massacred by army soldiers and militiamen from surrounding Alawite communities.

In both cases, photographic evidence was produced to show a large number of women and children among the dead. But video footage from Tremseh indicated that nearly all the dead were men of fighting age.

If, as now seems likely, the killings were the result of a lopsided battle, they would represent one of the most catastrophic rebel defeats of the campaign.

Opposition sources conceded that most of the dead were fighters and confirmed that the battle had been triggered by a rebel ambush on an army convoy.

But they claimed that few of the dead were formal rebels, saying that most were male inhabitants of the village who had taken up arms to prevent an Alawite attempt to "cleanse" Tremseh.

Lacking the sophisticated communications equipment that most rebels in the Free Syrian Army have, the rebels were unable to call for reinforcements resulting in a heavily one-sided battle, one activist said.

The death toll remained in dispute, with the government saying that 37 opposition fighters and two civilians were killed. Opposition activists said that between 100 and 150 died, but conceded that they only knew of "at least seven" civilian fatalities.

Presented with a rare opportunity to portray itself as misrepresented, the Syrian government launched a public relations offensive to absolve itself of guilt.

"What happened in Tremseh was a military operation, not as massacre," Jihad Makdissi, the Syrian foreign ministry's spokesman, told a press conference."

He also furiously denounced a letter written by Mr Annan to the United Nations Security Council that urged members to unite in action against the regime for its use of heavy weaponry in Tremseh. A similarly worded letter was sent to the Syrian foreign ministry.

"The least that can be said about this letter about what happened in Tremseh is that it did not rely on facts," Mr Makdissi said. "As diplomatically as possible, we say that this letter was very rushed."

The dispute over Tremseh is likely to complicate international efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis, with Russia almost certain to seize on it as evidence that the opposition, rather than the regime, is responsible for most of the bloodshed.

The mandate for the 300-man observer mission to Syria is due to expire on Friday with no sign of an end to international divisions.

Russia wants the mandate to be renewed for a further three months. But it is resisting Western efforts to bolster it with a Security Council resolution threatening the Assad regime with sanctions if it fails to take steps to end the violence and form a transitional government with the opposition.

Meanwhile, the president of Syria's main opposition group, the Syrian National Council, stepped up pressure on America to take action by accusing President Barack Obama of stalling so as not to jeopardise his November re-election prospects.

"We cannot understand that a superpower ignores the killing of tens of thousands of Syrian civilians because of an election campaign that a president may win or lose," Abdelbasset Sayda told CNN.

The only problem with this article is that it fails to address how utterly irrelevant the SNC is to what is going on *inside* Syria.

The Local Coordinating Committees (LCC) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are the ones driving the Syrian civil opposition and armed resistance respectively.

US facilitating arms flow to Syrian rebels - http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/7389

What are the chances that Syria might be broken into Alwaites and Sunni nation , where Alwaite , Christians ,Shiah and others can have their own niche and Sunni majority would have their own.

I suspect most Alwaites , Shiah and Christian wont be too happy to be under Sunni majority led nation where it might be another Saudi Barbaria type ruler ruling over Syria with backing from West but under guise of democracy

Above posts have shown how the entire Arab Spring has been a sinister plot by vested western entities with their own agenda.

The string of uprisings in the Arab world boils down to Saudi Arabia and Qatar using money and influence to hijack public dissent and bring Sunni Islamists to power, says John R. Bradley, British author and expert on the Middle East.
­He argues that the turbulence that saw several governments overthrown in 2011 came from sectarian divide among Muslims, which the West played on, to support its own allies.
“What we’re seeing is a Sunni-Shiite divide reemerge in the Middle East with Washington clearly backing the Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, a close American ally. And Saudi Arabia in turn along with Qatar has taken control of the revolutions elsewhere.
“For example it’s funding the Ennahda, the main Islamist party in Tunisia. The Muslim Brotherhood and more extremist Salafi groups in Egypt on the record were saying they received substantial funds from Saudi Arabia. The Yemeni government has openly criticized Qatar for interfering in its internal affairs and funding radical Islamists. And of course in Syria the main civilian opposition is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the so-called Free Syrian Army is dominated by not only radical jihadists from within Syria, but also by jihadists from throughout the region,” the expert told RT.
Bradley has little doubt that citizens of the countries hit by the Arab Spring had reason to criticize their authorities, but contrary to western audiences’ beliefs, the lack of political rights was far from being the most important factor.
“The motivation for these revolutions was economic. In Tunisia for example it started with the impoverished and neglected deep south. In Syria it started in Daraa, a city near Jordan, which has been experiencing drought for three years. And in Egypt an extensive opinion poll carried out among those who went to Tahrir just after Mubarak fell showed that only 19 per cent of them put free and fair election and free expression and so on, on top of their agenda. The main priority for 65 percent was the economy,” he said.
People more concerned with a power grab than improving lives were quick to seize the opportunity, Bradley explains.
“Now the people who provoked these revolutions foolishly declared their revolutions leaderless and they didn’t have an agenda. Anyone who knows anything about revolutionary uprisings in the past… knows that what happens in the post-revolutionary chaos is that the groups that are most disciplined and most ruthless politically then fill the vacuum. When you couple that with the funding that we were talking about from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, able to manipulate the electoral process, they were perfectly poised to step into the gap and fill the vacuum and that’s what they’ve done,” he says.

Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring: the West’s counter-revolutionary force
Posted on May 21, 2012 by socialistworkercanada
—Obama signed an arms deal giving the Saudi dictatorship $60 billion of weapons
By Ahmed El Bassiouny

Recent human rights violations in Saudi Arabia highlight its role in countering protesters. During the whole of the Arab Spring, the Western-backed Kingdom has played a counter-revolutionary role across the region.

First, Saudi Arabia provided shelter for Western-backed Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, after being over-thrown. Riyadh refused to give up Ben Ali for trial in Tunisia, proving the Kingdom’s strong opposition to the uprising in Tunisia and acting as a solid wall standing between the Tunisian protesters and their demands for justice. A very similar incident happened in Yemen: after the injury of Ali Abdullah Saleh during the bombing of his presidential palace, everyone could safely bid that Saudi Arabia would kick in to save him. Saleh fled to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, and then to the US.

It’s unforgettable that Saudi Arabia (armed with US and Canadian weapons) sent troops to Bahrain to “deal” with the Shia-dominated demonstrations. The main goal was to amputate any uprising action in the gulf area, and protect the US Fifth Fleet.

When it came to Egypt—another Western-backed dictatorship—Saudi Arabia rushed into trying to strengthen their ties with the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), by offering financial support. At the exact same time, Saudi Arabia offered financial, political and media support to the major parties in Egypt—the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis. That was in an attempt to win an ally, one that would allow shaping of the region’s politics to their liking. Saudi Arabia has also been arming sections of the Free Syrian Army tied to the Western-backed Syrian National Council, in order to undermine the revolutionary movement in Syria and pave the way for confronting Iran.

Surprisingly, Saudi Arabia’s counter-revolution measures did not stop at backing corrupted regimes; it extended to manipulation of the media. The resignation of Wadah Khanfar, the director general of Al-Jazeera, happened after a week of extensive visits between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Al-Jazeera provided outstanding coverage of the political changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. Khanfar was replaced by a member of the Qatari Royal family, as punishment to the satellite network’s independent coverage.

Testifying before a Senate committee a few months ago, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented that America was "in an information war, and we are losing that war." This week, she blew a fuse at the "Friends of Syria" meeting in Paris, saying that Russia and China should "pay a price" for not supporting regime change in Syria.

Here's a thought: How about using the power of truth to get things done rather than cover and manipulation?

Russia and China aren't following America's script for one reason: They have major economic interests in Syria and rightfully see any attempt at regime change as America trying to steal their lunch. This isn't like the Libya situation, where Muammar Gadhafi, who essentially became America's ally of convenience in fighting terrorism in the wake of the Iraq invasion, signed his own death warrant when his iron fist started quivering as the Arab Spring roared all around him and ousted his pal in Tunisia, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, and the leaders of Egypt and Yemen. The subsequent uprising in Libya fit within that climate of mass outcry. If Western forces were involved in sparking the unrest at the outset, then at least the West had plausible deniability in appearing to be intervening under humanitarian pretext.

As Gadhafi began to feel control slipping away, he did what all control freaks do: He flipped out and started cracking down. This provided the window for NATO countries to invoke the U.N.'s "responsibility to protect." The end result was regime change The cause was Gadhafi's crackdown -- at least by all appearances.

What's clearly frustrating Clinton is the fact that the urgency of the Arab Spring is long over, and so are all the favorable optics. All we're left with now is overwhelming evidence of Western-funded, Western-trained mercenaries causing trouble for Bashar al-Assad, thereby making it difficult for the world to tell if military crackdowns are just self-defense against what might be perceived as terrorists. Meanwhile, the State Department has been funding various groups to drum up the humanitarian cause for regime change.

But why even bother with all this cover and pretext? Hasn't Clinton seen the unemployment statistics? She should stop acting as if economics isn't a valid reason for military action. There's never been a better time to come right out and say that America and the West are in an economic war against China and its sphere of influence, and that Americans are losing jobs and the country is losing its manufacturing base to the Chinese, who only make a few cents an hour and live together in dormitories until the day they jump from a window because their lives are so miserable.

Just be honest about the fact that oil and gas are huge cash cows and growth industries of the future, and will provide economic expansion opportunities abroad, around which other industries will prosper. Explain that China, America and each of their respective allies are dividing up the global pie, whether people like it or not -- and that it's time to decide who you'd rather have as a boss.

As military strategist Carl Von Clausewitz once said, war is just an extension of politics by other means. No one can doubt that the West is in a perpetual war with the Chinese sphere for global economic influence and supremacy.

Of course, there is one problem: China is largest foreign owner of publicly held U.S. debt, holding about 8 percent of it, or $1.2 trillion. But either way, a Syrian invasion -- via mercenary proxies or otherwise -- is going to anger China because it won't like the end result. Obama and Clinton just have to decide whether they're going to rip off the Band-Aid slowly or quickly. But one thing's for sure: If they continue to lose sphere and influence to China, that situation will only continue to deteriorate, with China owning increasingly more debt.

But why not explain all this to people?

This process of trying to convince voters, through pretexting and mental manipulation, to get on board for each military action is getting tedious. It's tiresome to watch people fronting for the State Department, petting goats and kissing babies in foreign countries while pretending that any resulting economic opportunities would just be icing on the cake. We're not stupid. Back away from the goat, put down the baby and simply tell the truth. You might be pleasantly surprised at the reaction.

Then, when the battleground moves to Iran, Sudan, Nigeria or elsewhere for the exact same reasons -- as it inevitably will -- your lives will be much easier because you'll at the very least have truth and reason on your side.

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More fighting in Damascus. Closer to the ministries and closer to the presidential palace.

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"Revolutions" are a matter of extremely small, well organized groups, who also manage the covert support of sections from the ruling regime as well as from outside. ...

I have gone through the records of almost all such movements typically dubbed successful or failed revolutions - and not a single one is an exception.

In an era where even conscripts can record, send and watch MMS clips on their phones, the regime lies that these were 'armed terrorists' collapsed quickly and destroyed rank and file morale. After that point defections were inevitable.