PROTEST: 300 Residents of Latei Fight Eviction

By Christian Kpesese

300 residents of Lartei, a superb of Nsawam in the Akwapim South Municipality have vehemently expressed their opposition to attempts to cite a quarry at the centre of the community without regard to laws and the negative health and environmental implications of the project.

This was contained in a petition addressed to the Municipal Chief Executive, calling on the government to stop the situation from degenerating into a conflict.

The residents expressed shock at the assembly`s accusations that they were encroaching on a quarry site after the same assembly had issued them with building permits to develop the lands.

 The community numbering about 700 households claimed they have dully purchased the parcels of land from three families namely, the Nokoyedzen family, Clottey family and Nii Armah Kotey family who are the owners of the land.

They argued that they have fully registered the lands and lawfully obtained permits from the municipal assembly before putting up their buildings hence the encroachment accusation by the assembly against them was baseless and unfortunate.

The residents are also of the firm believe that, the land commission would not have registered their lands for residential purposes if it were to be a mineral concession.

According to the residents, they kicked against the idea of citing a quarry in their midst when they were initially informed by the land owners because of the health and environmental hazards.

The quarry if allowed to be cited there would cause damage to the about 105 buildings around the piece of rock , the new Nsawam by pass which is just few metres away and the electricity transmission lines and transformer would also be adversely affected.

The aggrieved residents are deeply troubled by the commencement of work on the quarry cite even before the assembly holds a stakeholders meeting with them as was promised by the assembly.

Their anger was further worsened when some of their structures were pulled down for the commencement of work which is steadily in progress amidst the protection of land guards.

The residents are therefore appealing to the relevant state agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Minerals Commission, the Ghana High Way Authority, the ECG and the Ministry of Energy to act as a matter of urgency in assessing the impact of the illegal quarry activity on human lives and the environment.

They also called for the prompt compensation of affected residents whose buildings were pulled down to avoid confrontations.

The residents of Lartei have also called on government through the Akwapim South Municipal Assembly to organize an all stakeholder meeting to explain matters to help address the issue amicably.

Editorial

Fraud?

Over the last week, scores of people from all walks of life have virtually poured into the office of The Insight to complain about what they claim is fraudulent.

The common thread in their complaint is the allegation that they have been duped by a company called US Group of Companies.

The company has put out adverts urging people to invest in the production of Tilapia in return for huge profits.

Some of the very ordinary people who came to The Insight have invested between GH¢10,000.00 (Ten thousand Ghana cedis) and Gh¢20,000.00 (Twenty thousand Ghana cedis).

The problem is that none of them has had any return on their investments.

Cheques issued by the company to be cashed at the Fidelity Bank have bounced.

To make matters worse, some of the victims claim that when they made complaints to police stations around Accra they were told that their cases can only be handled at the police Headquarters.

The Insight believes that it is time for the security agencies to fully investigate these claims in order to establish the bona fides of this company.

The rate at which citizens are claiming to have been duped by this company is alarming and the truth needs to be established once and for all.

Fighting Graft And Corruption

Martin Amidu

By Martin A. B. K. Amidu 

I have expressed my apprehensions about the sincerity of the Government to fairly and impartially prosecute the bundle of criminal offences committed by the National Democratic Congress’ alleged businessman and bankroller Alfred Agbesi Woyome, his foreign collaborators, Ghanaian public servants, and political ministerial collaborators in creating, looting and sharing gargantuan millions of Ghanaian Cedis, United States Dollars, and Euros. No less a person than a distinguished, honourable, and upright Supreme Court Justice said so forthrightly in his judgment that there was collusion and collaboration between the State and private persons to create loot and share in the constitutional case presented by me at the Supreme Court.

As the Attorney-General of Ghana I had pleaded in my application for leave to amend the Writ and statement of claim in the High Court, fraud and fraudulent misrepresentation involving not only Alfred Agbesi Woyome but also his foreign collaborators and co-conspirators - Waterville Holding Company Limited, and Austro-Invest Management Services Limited (Austro Invest) - with the intention of joining them in the suit. I was also in discussions to prosecute all three suspects for various offences before the High Court when I was relieved of my post, amongst other things, for daring to exercise the independent powers imposed on me under the Constitution to prosecute. For the doubting Thomases, there is a living Member of the former Council of State who was sent to me by the President on 18th January 2012 with express instructions to demand my withdrawal of my press statement of 11th January 2012 alleging the Gargantuan crimes against the people of Ghana in which some Ministers were implicated. I refused. The next day, as expected, I was relieved of my appointment apparently to kill the case with the deceitful propaganda that my successor will prosecute the cases. 

I was never surprised when the Government decided to prosecute only its businessman and bankroller, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, who had over exposed himself in interviews to the press and eclipsed the involvement of the foreign co-conspirators. Others, including myself expressed our misgivings at the time whether “We the People” were not being taken for a window dressing and smokescreen exhibition to kill the case. My views on this matter are already in the public domain.

My fears were heightened again when the acting Chief Director of the Ministry of Justice was called as a prosecution witness, in spite of the availability of Attorneys who handled the docket on the collusive and fraudulent settlements and mediations. I wrote a letter on 10th June 2013 to the Attorney General on this matter which will not be made public because the trial is on-going. During the cross-examination of the acting Chief Director by counsel for suspect, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the Chief Director was reported to have stated that “the former Deputy Attorney General, Mr Ebo Barton-Odro justified the payment of judgment debt to Alfred Agbesi Woyome in a letter copied to President J. E. A. Mills” when he was confronted with the letter and the attached report.

The Chief Director was not reported to have been re-examined on the alleged covering letter submitting a report written by Chief State Attorney, Samuel Nequaye-Tetteh, who was one of the facilitators of the payment of the monies not only to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, but also to his foreign collaborators the Austro-Invest Management services Limited, and Waterville Holding Company Limited. The letter under reference written and signed by Hon. Ebo Barton-Odro, MP purportedly on my behalf as the Attorney-General but which was written without any constitutional authorization whatsoever is No. D45/SF/173/10 dated 16th December 2011 and addressed to H. E. the President and copied to J. H. Martey-Newman, the Chief of staff. 

On the previous day, 15th December 2011 the President had instructed me at a meeting with him in New York to brief him in person on the case on 23rd December 2011 on my return to Accra and submit a report to him thereafter. I dutifully briefed the President in the afternoon of 23rd December 2011 after the President’s interview with Radio Gold. I also submitted the written report to the President in my letter No.D45/SF 173/10 dated 6th January 2012 which is stamped as received in the President’s office on 9th January 2012. I discussed my report to the President with the President in the presence of the Chief of Staff on 9th January 2012. I also discussed the same report with the National Security Co-ordinator who was a copy addressee in his office the same day. My report was one of the documents handed over to the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) for its uncompleted investigations. The interim report of EOCO agreed with most of the findings and recommendations contained in my report to the President.

It was within this period that the National Security Co-ordinator asked me in my capacity as the Attorney-General whether I was aware that Samuel Nequaye-Tetteh, the Chief State Attorney handling the Woyome cases had been paid some GH₵400,000.00 in cheque by Alfred Agbesi Woyome, half of which he used to purchase a house at ridge and the other half he used to invest in treasury bills. We are now told that the money was a loan even though the reliable officer who passed the information to me by way of a question and confirmation has not withdrawn his information to me. The EOCO investigation has also been put into abeyance and the officer returned to post and trusted by the Government to act as Solicitor-General during the period the Supreme Court gave judgment on 14th June 2013.

Be that as it may, my fears are further heightened by the fact that my unclassified report dated 6th January 2012 to the President at his express request was not the subject of evidence-in-chief of the acting Chief Director, the only staff from the Attorney-General’s office who has been called as a witness in the case. And even when the accused sought to create the impression that Hon. Barton-Odro’s letter forwarding the attached report written for him by Samuel Nequaye-Tetteh supported the case of the accused, the acting Chief Director was not even re-examined on the existence of the Attorney-General’s own report (my report) stating clearly the collusion and collaboration between the suspect and his foreign co-conspirators in the commission of crime. 

Ghana News of Wednesday, 30th October 2013, with its source as the Daily Guide, reported that the Attorney-General had called ASP Edward Odame Okyere, the police investigator to testify in the case in the High Court. It came as no surprise to me when ASP Okyere was reported to have said that the companies involved, including Waterville Holding Limited, and Woyome’s Austro-Invest in which Woyome was alternate director, were not registered with the Registrar-General’s Department at the time of the commission of the crime. Ghanaians now know through the Supreme Court proceedings which law firm acted for Austro-Invest even when it knew that the company had been liquidated in Switzerland and had never been registered in Ghana. Ghanaians can also infer the associations and consequences of the foregoing on those who are today in charge of the power to prosecute and the fairness and impartiality of the exercise of that power in furtherance of obtaining substantial justice.

The Courts of law give judgments based only upon the evidence that the parties present to them. Courts of justice deal with legal truth and not factual truth. When the prosecution suppresses material evidence, the Court will give judgment in accordance with the available evidence. The Court of Appeal will also hear an appeal based only on the legal evidence on the record of appeal and nothing else. It does not matter what the factual truth is, the Courts as human institutions cannot divine it! Therein lies the power of unethical Attorneys-General wishing to help what I called in my press statement of 11th January 2012 “hard core criminals in our society today [who] have made it a habit to hold paid membership cards of major political parties in the Republic as an unconstitutional insurance against crime and criminal prosecutions”. 

I have heard several promises and commitments to fight graft and corruption by Governments that present themselves as espousing the national democratic creed of politics. In the Governments of the PNDC, NDC1 and 2 these commitments were taken as articles of faith and abided by like Gospel truths. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for the manner the Woyome case was electively commenced and is being prosecuted with the suppression of the Attorney General’s report while highlighting the unauthorized letter and attachment of Hon. Barton-Odro, the very person who signed the settlement agreement on behalf of the Government for the monies to be paid to Alfred Agbesi Woyome. He is now my Honourable NDC 1st Deputy Speaker of Parliament! Can it, therefore, be any wander why a Government claiming to believe in the social democratic creed and taking its roots from the PNDC, NDC 1, and 2 Governments has brought the economy of Ghana to its knees by entrenching impunity? “We the People” must stop this create loot and share syndrome that has reared its ugly head in Ghanaian politics in spite of the record of probity, accountability and transparency left behind by the PNDC and NDC 1 and 2 Governments. 

This is the time for all patriotic citizens who believe in accountability, probity and transparency to speak out for the fair and impartial prosecutions of all crimes, particularly those involving graft and corruptions by associates of governing political parties in Ghana by insisting on putting Ghana First. All patriotic citizens have the right and duty under Article 3 of the Constitution at this time, more than any other, to defend the Constitution. The diversionary propaganda of persecuting non-Government associates while invidiously protecting hard core associates suspected of crime must be stopped.

Why Vladimir rules and Obama bombs

Russian President Vladimir Putin

On both the NSA saga and the Syrian crisis, Putin played chess while Obama played checkers with himself – and lost.

Every year, Forbes magazine publishes its list of the heads of state, financial titans and business moguls who “truly rule the world.” Predictably, a sitting US president – the commander-in-chief of the most lethal armada in the history of the world – usually gets the top spot.

Not in 2010 though, when Barack Obama was overtaken by then Chinese President Hu Jintao in the aftermath of the Wall Street-provoked financial crisis. And not in 2013, when the winner is Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Not by accident, China and Russia are the most influential among the BRICS group of emerging powers. The US corporate media’s rankings such as Time’s Person of The Year may be irrelevant, and usually extremely provincial. But as a PR coup, American recognition of Putin’s soft power is priceless, even coming after de facto recognition by the overwhelming majority of the real ‘international community’: the developing world.

To its credit, Forbes stresses how “anyone watching this year's chess match over Syria and the National Security Agency leaks has a clear idea of the shifting individual power dynamics."

But it goes way, way beyond that. Putin let the extremely sensitive Edward Snowden case be handled with total, absolute legality and transparency, and on top of it without gloating over American impotence. Putin literally saved the Obama administration, at the last minute, from yet another Middle-East war of potentially devastating consequences – a geopolitical juncture as dangerous as the Cuban missile crisis.  

Predictably, US Think Tankland – with its collective IQ atrophied by decades of hubris and the normalization of the Orwellian/Panopticon complex – has had a hard time facing the facts. Moscow does not need to try to portray the hyperpower as weak and/or untrustworthy. The facts speak for themselves – from the galloping towards war because of a fictitious ‘red line’ recklessly concocted by Obama to the ubiquitous spying on ‘friends’ and potential foes alike.

During a House Intelligence Committee hearing, National Intelligence Director James Clapper was adamant that the NSA and the CIA cannot spy on any political leader via his/her private mobile phones without permission from the White House. So no matter the spin, Obama knew, among others, about the spying on Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff and German Chancellor Angel Merkel. You don’t need to have read Orwell to note this is yet another instance of the imperial Masters of the Universe worldview. It’s ‘legitimate’ to spy on Americans. It’s ‘legitimate’ to spy all over the global South – including the more influential BRICS.

Call it electronic neo-feudalism – where no one, anywhere is a real citizen fully capable of exercising his/her rights; just some sort of un-glorified peasant. With Merkel the story is slightly different; she’s part of the Masters of the Universe club, and that’s the only reason why some in Washington are wondering if – in a very mild way – the NSA may have gone too far.

Enough exceptionalism

That famous September op-ed  in The New York Times, in which Putin blasted American exceptionalism, reverberated wildly all across the developing world because it worked like a primal scream. The Chinese, naturally cautious, would never be the first to articulate it so blatantly (they did it only later, when they called for a ‘de-Americanized’ world, with an economic emphasis rather than political). Forget about the Europeans, or even Brazil. Only Putin had the authority to announce what the overwhelming majority of the planet had been thinking for quite a while.

Nobody can stand US exceptionalism anymore. Yet another example; the duly spied-upon UN General Assembly has voted - overwhelmingly - to condemn the US commercial, economic and financial embargo against Cuba for the 22nd year in a row. The vote was 188-2, with three abstentions. Only the US and Israel voted against it.

While the dogs of war and surveillance bark, the silent Russian caravan passes. Putin is extending Russian influence in Central Europe as well as solidifying the partnership with Germany. The Chinese-Russian strategic partnership is proceeding smoothly. Russia is back as an influential player in the Middle East. Putin is trying to create a viable, multilateral alternative to imperial US diktats. This is as much about soft power as hard power.  

The proverbial US Think Tankland Cassandras will be left endlessly carping about the ‘stagnating’ Russian economy, ethnic and religious ‘tension’, ‘political atrophy’ because of Putin’s ‘authoritarianism’, and assorted ills. Nonsense. This essay by top blogger The Saker meticulously outlines the key plot twists and undercurrents of the past 20 years of US-Russia relations – including the now-proverbial Putin demonization.

Back to the facts on the geopolitical ground. Putin has seized the moment and now is arguably the key actor trying to build an emerging, alternative multilateral order. As for imperial lame duck Obama, he seems destined to keep bombing in more ways than one. 

New World Order unmasked!

By Kevin Barrett

Is the New World Order crumbling before our eyes? Are people everywhere rising up against the all-seeing-eye of “total information awareness”?

The Snowden-triggered NSA spy scandals have thrown a monkey wrench into US-NATO plans for the world empire. Apparently, the world's seven billion people do not want their every email stolen and stored, every phone call wiretapped and recorded, every pore on every face under the permanent scrutiny of spy satellites ... and every world leader blackmailed and controlled. 

This Monday and Tuesday, November 4th and 5th, rallies will be held around the world unmasking the global surveillance state. 

On Monday, November 4th, all across Iran, people will be rallying to commemorate the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy, otherwise known as “the Den of Espionage.” 

And then on Tuesday, November 5th, the “Million Mask March” will bring together supporters of Anonymous, Wikileaks, Occupy, Oath Keepers, whistleblowers, and hacktivists in more than 430 locations around the world. 

The Iranians - who have been rallying against the “Den of Espionage” since 1979 - are ahead of their time. Today, 34 years after the US embassy seizure, the whole world is following in their footsteps and protesting against American spying. 

Western corporate media, whose mission is keeping people ignorant and confused, are peddling lies and half-truths about these events. Big media tells us the students who seized the US embassy in Iran were scary-looking fanatics, as depicted in the film Argo. And big media will also portray the Million Mask March as a frightening, confusing phenomenon. 

But what are these protests REALLY all about? 

The Iranian embassy seizure was a response to a long series of crimes committed against Iran by the American National Security State. The CIA and its corporate masters had seized control of Iran in their 1953 coup d'état against democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, installing a brutal puppet dictator - the Shah - as their front man. 

During the reign of the CIA-backed Shah, many thousands of Iranians were tortured in CIA-built torture chambers, using CIA-supplied torture equipment, by CIA-trained torturers. If the makers of Argo had shown this, audiences would have cheered for the Iranian students, not the US diplomats. Those “diplomats,” after all, were directly or indirectly complicit in the torture. 

This year, exactly fifty years after the event, the CIA finally admitted that it was behind the 1953 coup. According to the internal CIA history of the coup, released to the National Security Archive and published August 19th 2013: “The military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.” 

Europeans, unlike Iranians, did not have to wait fifty years to see official US documents proving that an American “den of spies” is conspiring against their nations' sovereignty. They can thank Edward Snowden for that. 

The official US response is that “everybody spies on everybody, so it doesn't really matter.” Nothing could be further from the truth. 

No other country, with the exception of the Israeli regime, has the kind of surveillance capability the US has. And the only reason Israel has it is that the Zionists own the US and can force the NSA to feed them its raw data. 

The New World Order empire, run by the global financial elite and its US-British-Israeli military and intelligence communities, is developing the capability to spy on everyone on earth. They are using this capability to build a world government based on “total information awareness.” Once they are able to instantly intercept anyone's communication, they will be able to blackmail everyone of consequence and prevent anyone from moving against them in any way. Once this surveillance-based global dictatorship is established, they will tell us: “Resistance is futile.” And they will be right. 

The Million Mask March aims to stop the rise of the global surveillance state. 

Why the masks? 

By wearing a mask, marchers will be symbolically insisting on their right to privacy and anonymity. The spy satellites watching the marches, and feeding their satellite photos into computers running facial recognition-based tracking systems, will have difficulty identifying and tracking masked marchers. 

But the marchers will not be wearing just any masks. The mask of choice is the Guy Fawkes mask popularized by the film V for Vendetta. 

By referencing V for Vendetta and holding the Million Mask March on November 5th - Guy Fawkes Day - the marchers are sending a message: “We know that 9/11 was an inside job designed to create an Orwellian total-surveillance dictatorship.” 

The film V for Vendetta is a thinly-disguised 9/11 truth allegory. It depicts a society transformed into an Orwellian dictatorship by a spectacular act of false-flag terror. The hero - the guy in the mask - leads a revolution against the false-flag terrorists and their dictatorship. 

In like fashion, the Million Mask Marchers will be revolting against the false-flag terrorists who orchestrated 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, Mumbai, Boston and other deceptions in hopes of establishing an Orwellian global dictatorship. 

The Fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Day, is an auspicious date for such a protest. Guy Fawkes Day commemorates the first spectacular act of state-sponsored false-flag terror in modern history: The Gunpowder Plot of 1605. 

The Gunpowder Plot was orchestrated by Robert Cecil's war party. It was designed to drag England into a century of wars against the Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal. 

The Gunpowder conspirators found a “radical Catholic” patsy, Guy Fawkes. They claimed Fawkes was about to blow up the Parliament with a few barrels of soggy, low-grade gunpowder. They whipped up anti-Catholic hysteria and launched a century of war against Catholic nations. Those wars led to England's rise as the world's leading superpower. 

In 2001, the PNAC neoconservatives did almost exactly the same thing. They orchestrated a spectacular attack and blamed it on a “radical Muslim” patsy, Osama Bin Laden. They whipped up anti-Muslim hysteria. And they launched what they hoped would be a century of war against Muslim nations, in order to make the US and its master, Israel, the world's sole superpowers. 

But the PNAC false-flag plotters didn't count on the rise of the Internet. By 2004, anyone with an Internet connection could watch Netanyahu's close friend, World Trade Center insurance fraudster Larry Silverstein, confessing to the obvious controlled demolition of Building 7. 

Every American who sees the videos of Building 7 coming down will agree with the masked hero of V for Vendetta: “There is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?” We are living in a strange time. 9/11 and the 9/11 wars have been exposed as big lies. The alleged “terrorist threat” has turned out to be a hoax. It turns out that the real reason the NSA is spying on world leaders (and everyone else) is not “to protect us from terrorists” but to grab absolute power. 

And as Lord Acton said, power tends to corrupt ... and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

The New World Order global surveillance dictatorship is absolutely unacceptable. 

I look forward to seeing you at the Million Mask March on Tuesday, November 5th. 

CIA agents on way to Syria

By Tony Cartalucci

A recent Daily Telegraph article reveals that armies of Al Qaeda terrorists are using NATO-member Turkey as a springboard for their invasion of neighboring Syria.

NATO is the chief executor of the so-called "War on Terror," started in 2001 after Al Qaeda terrorists allegedly flew four passenger planes into various targets on America's east coast, including the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. Nearly 3,000 people died in a single day. The invasion of Afghanistan promptly followed based on the pretense that it was "harboring" members of Al Qaeda. The invasion and nearly decade-long occupation of Iraq followed shortly thereafter. 

Yet despite all of this, Turkey, a NATO member since the early 1950's, appears to be guilty of the very crime Afghanistan was allegedly invaded and to this day still occupied for, harboring Al Qaeda terrorists. An army of Al Qaeda is (and has been for nearly 3 years) using southern Turkey as a safe-haven and staging ground for the invasion of Syria - disingenuously portrayed by the Western media as a "civil war." 

Worst of all, these terrorists, literally carrying Al Qaeda's banner into battle, are passing CIA outposts, US, British, and French special operations training camps, and through Western-funded refugee camps, on their way to commit a wide array of atrocities along and within Syria's borders. 

This defies all explanations except one - the "War on Terror" is a fraud, and the very terrorists thousands of Western troops have died chasing across the planet, have been armed, funded, trained, propped up, and reconstituted by the West itself as a perpetual excuse to engage in global aggression, occupation, and wars of immense profit in both terms of wealth and geopolitical power. 

The Daily Telegraph, in its article, "Al-Qaeda recruits entering Syria from Turkey safe houses," has recently reported: 

Hundreds of al-Qaeda recruits are being kept in safe houses in southern Turkey, before being smuggled over the border to wage “jihad” in Syria, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

The network of hideouts is enabling a steady flow of foreign fighters - including Britons - to join the country’s civil war, according to some of the volunteers involved. 

These foreign jihadists have now largely eclipsed the “moderate” wing of the rebel Free Syrian Army, which is supported by the West. Al-Qaeda’s ability to use Turkish territory will raise questions about the role the NATO member is playing in Syria’s civil war. 

Turkey has backed the rebels from the beginning - and its government has been assumed to share the West’s concerns about al-Qaeda. But experts say there are growing fears over whether the Turkish authorities may have lost control of the movement of new al-Qaeda recruits - or may even be turning a blind eye. 

Of course, the Telegraph is plainly deceiving its readers. The use of Al Qaeda as a militant proxy against Syria is not an unpredictable and unfortunate result of the ongoing Syrian conflict, but instead a well documented Western plan exposed as early as 2007 by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh in his article, "The Redirection," which stated (emphasis added): 

"To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."

Clearly, the only thing NATO, Turkey, and the Western press have "lost control" of, is the narrative used to deceive the public.

The CIA Not Only Watches Al Qaeda Pass, But is Clearly Arming Them 

The New York Times in their March 2013 article titled, "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid," admits that: 

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders. 

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports. 

The New York Times piece attempts to spin America's role in arming militants in Syria.

The Times continues by stating: 

The American government became involved, the former American official said, in part because there was a sense that other states would arm the rebels anyhow. The C.I.A. role in facilitating the shipments, he said, gave the United States a degree of influence over the process, including trying to steer weapons away from Islamist groups and persuading donors to withhold portable antiaircraft missiles that might be used in future terrorist attacks on civilian aircraft.

Just like the Telegraph, the Times is overtly lying to its readers. So-called "Islamists" constitute the summation of armed aggression against the Syrian government specifically because the plans outlined by Hersh in 2007 are now being executed by the CIA, within NATO-member Turkey's territory, along the Turkish-Syrian border. 

Western Special Forces are Training Al Qaeda Terrorists 

In addition to the CIA, Western special forces are also operating along and within Syria's borders. A June 2013 LA Times article titled, "U.S. has secretly provided arms training to Syria rebels since 2012," admitted: 

CIA agents and special operations troops have trained the rebels in anti-tank and antiaircraft weaponry in Jordan and Turkey.

The LA Times continued: 

CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have been secretly training Syrian rebels with anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons since late last year, months before President Obama approved plans to begin directly arming them, according to U.S. officials and rebel commanders.

The covert U.S. training at bases in Jordan and Turkey, along with Obama's decision this month to supply arms and ammunition to the rebels, has raised hope among the beleaguered Syrian opposition that Washington ultimately will provide heavier weapons as well. So far, the rebels say they lack the weapons they need to regain the offensive in the country's bitter civil war. 

Al Qaeda's Al Nusra front has established itself on Syria's battlefields allegedly because of its martial prowess, in contrast to the bumbling "moderates" allegedly trained by US special forces. How is it possible that the West, along with their regional partners, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are arming, funding, and admittedly training armies of "moderates," and yet Al Qaeda has still managed to prevail? Who is arming, funding, and training them? The answer is simple - there were never any meaningful "moderates" despite ham-handed attempts by the Western media to insist otherwise, and the West is intentionally assisting Al Qaeda, just as was planned in 2007. 

Thousands of Western troops have died, and are still dying in the so-called "War on Terror." Many more have been maimed and/or psychologically effected. Evidence suggests that there was no lapse between US backing of Al Qaeda in the 1980's in Afghanistan and today - and that even as US troops fought on in Iraq, the West and its partners in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel were arming and funneling terrorists into the country to fuel sectarian violence designed specifically to set up the strategic assets necessary for a covert/proxy war versus Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. 

Eisenhower's drones and Dulles Brothers

President Dwight Eisenhower is often admired for having avoided huge wars, having declared that every dollar wasted on militarism was food taken out of the mouths of children, and having warned -- albeit on his way out the door -- of the toxic influence of the military industrial complex (albeit in a speech of much more mixed messages than we tend to recall).

But when you oppose war, not because it murders, and not because it assaults the rights of the foreign places attacked, but because it costs too much in U.S. lives and dollars, then your steps tend in the direction of quick and easy warfare -- usually deceptively cheap and easy warfare. 

President Obama and his subordinates are well aware that much of the world is outraged by the use of drones to kill. The warnings of likely blowback and long-term damage to U.S. interests and human interests and the rule of law are not hard to find. But our current warriors don't see a choice between murdering people with drones and using negotiations and courts of law to settle differences. They see a choice between murdering people with drones and murdering people with ground troops on a massive scale. The preference between these two options is so obvious to them as to require little thought. 

President Eisenhower had his own cheap and easy tool for better warfare. It was called the Delightfully Deluded Dulles Brothers, and -- in terms of how much thought this pair of brothers gave to the possible outcomes of their reckless assault on the world -- it's fair to call them a couple of drones in a literal as well as an analogous sense. 

John Foster Dulles at the State Department and Allen Dulles at the CIA are the subject of a new book by Stephen Kinzer called The Brothers, which ought to replace whatever history book the Texas School Board has most recently imposed on our children. This is a story of two vicious, racist, fanatical jerks, but it's also the story of the central thrust of U.S. public policy for the past 75 years. 

The NSA didn't invent sliminess in the 21st century. The Dulles' grandfather and uncle did. Cameras weren't first put on airplanes over the earth when drones were invented. Allen Dulles started that with piloted planes -- the main result being scandal, outrage, and international antagonism -- a tradition we seem intent on keeping up. Oh, and the cameras also revealed that the CIA had been wildly exaggerating the strength of the Soviet Union's military -- but who needed to know that? 

The Obama White House didn't invent aggression toward journalism. Allen and Foster Dulles make the current crop of propagandists, censors, intimidators, and human rights abusers look like amateurs singing from an old hymnal they can't properly read. 

Black sites weren't created by George W. Bush. Allen Dulles set up secret prisons in Germany, Japan, and the Panama Canal Zone, the MKULTRA program, and the Gladio and other networks of forces staying behind in Europe after World War II (never really) ended. 

The Dynamic Dulles Duo racked up quite a resume. They overthrew a democratic government in Iran (Mohammad Mosaddegh), installing a fierce dictatorship. Delighted by this -- and intimately in on it, as Kinzer documents -- Eisenhower backed the overthrow of Guatemala's democracy as well -- both of these operations being driven primarily by the interests of Foster Dulles' clients on Wall Street (where his firm had been rather embarrassingly late in halting its support for the Nazis). Never mind the hostility generated throughout Latin America, United Fruit claimed its rights to run Guatemala, and who were the Guatemalans to say otherwise? 

Unsatisfied with this everlasting damage, the Dulles Brothers dragged the United States into a war of their own making on Vietnam, sought to overthrow Sukarno in Indonesia, teamed up with the Belgians to murder Lumumba in the Congo, and tried desperately to murder Fidel Castro or start an all-out war on Cuba. The Bay of Pigs fiasco was essentially the result of Allen Dulles' confidence that he could trap a new president (John Kennedy) into expanding a war. 

If that weren't enough damage for two careers, the Disastrous Dulles Dimwits created the Council on Foreign Relations, shaped the creation of the United Nations to preserve US imperialism, manufactured intense irrational fear of the Soviet Union and its mostly mythical plots for global domination, convinced Truman that intelligence and operations should be combined in the single agency of the CIA, sent countless secret agents to their deaths for no earthly reason, unwittingly allowed double agents to reveal much of their activities to their enemies, subverted democracy in the Philippines and Lebanon and Laos and numerous other nations, made hysteria a matter of national pride, ended serious Congressional oversight of foreign policy, pointlessly antagonized China and the USSR, boosted radically evil regimes likely to produce future blowback around the world and notably in Saudi Arabia but also in Pakistan -- with predictable damage to relations with India, failed miserably at overthrowing Nasser in Egypt but succeeded in turning the Arab world against the United States, in fact antagonized much of the world as it attempted an unacceptable neutrality in the Cold War, rejected Soviet peace overtures, aligned the U.S. government with Israel, built the CIA headquarters at Langley and training grounds at Camp Peary, and -- ironically enough -- radically expanded and entrenched the military industrial complex to which "covert actions" were supposed to be the easy new alternative (rather as the drone industry is doing today). 

The Dulles Dolts were a lot like King Midas if the king's love had been for dogshit rather than gold. As icing on the cake of their careers, Allen Dulles -- dismissed in disgrace by Kennedy who regretted ever having kept him on -- manipulated the Warren Commission's investigation of Kennedy's death in a highly suspicious manner. Kinzer says no more than that, but James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable points to other grounds for concern, including Dulles's apparent cover-up of Oswald's being an employee of the CIA. 

Lessons learned? One would hope so. I would recommend these steps: 

1) Abolish the CIA, and make the State Department a civilian operation. 

2) Ban weaponized drones, and avoid a legacy as bad as the covert operations of the 1950s and 1960s. 

3) Stop the disgustingly royalish habit of supporting political family dynasties. And rename Washington's international, as well as its national, airport.