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Synthesis: The book they don’t want you to read!

Synthesis doesn’t claim to be neutral; it’s intended to put the other, seldom-heard point of view across to the reader. It speaks for the poorest one-third of humanity, on whose heads thirteen 9/11s rain down 24/7 in the form of hunger and poverty and disease and squalor, murdering 40,000 of their children and adults every day. Besides the gritty analyses, there’s some cynical dry humour here too.

About Synthesis

Synthesis is an epic sized book (198k plus 56k references), and is set out in five volumes. It spans some 13 years from 2004 to 2017 and covers many different but related issues, which individually and collectively reveal the big picture of how the world turns.

 

Pass the word: 

If you like Synthesis – pass the word. Your Internet, Facebook, Twitter etc recommendations can and will defy the publishing industry’s stranglehold over what can and can not be published today.  Thank-you. – Shahbaz Fazal.

I welcome your feedback about the book or the Synthesisbook.com site-

Contact me via the site or directly:           shahbazfazal@talktalk.net

Synthesis Launch:

 Pricing Principles:

Nine FREE sample chapters are available here.

In the best philosophy of the Internet, I would love to be able to give the book away free, but my financial predicament simply will not allow it. Synthesis, has taken me thirteen years, including lengthy gaps in between when I ran out of money and had to get a job – any job!

 

Facts and data:

I have tried to be accurate with the references but readily accept that I may have unintentionally got some things wrong and welcome corrections. I’m also aware some people, (those that want to define what you can and can not read), will want to claim certain fictional parts of Synthesis to be actionable. I consider these to be “artistic licence”, and/or fair comment, based on real events. Whereas my only intentional malevolence is to expose the big picture.

Pass the word:

Synthesis poses the question of what kind of a world we want, and more importantly, of what we’re prepared to do about it? If you agree with me – pass the word. Your Internet, Facebook, Twitter etc recommendations of Synthesis – will defy those who want to define what people are allowed and now allowed to read.

Cuba:

Though I have visited Cuba three times, I completely concede, my knowledge of the country and its people is that of a naïve tourist, supplemented with some specialist reading. To my shame, I still speak virtually no Spanish, but I do have eyes and ears and did a great deal of walking and observing every day, while mainly living within Cuban family Casa Particulars.

The Book

Volume One – Chapters 1 to 18: Escape from US Gitmo to arrival in Havana.

Synthesis begins with the backdrop of the warm glow of a tropical night faintly lit by the waning full-moon of 31st October, 2004. The opening scene of a miraculous escape by five people from Camp Delta, the US military’s high-security prison located on the island of Cuba.

The escapees are: Sergeant Randy Reagan, a US military intelligence interrogator – the organiser of this incredible escape; his 20 year friend, Zulfiqar, a former mujahideen freedom fighter; Iftekhar, an Oxford PhD graduate on an intellectual journey; Mubarak, a Kenyan young man caught up in the war on terror; and Roxana – a Palestinian woman from Gaza.

It’s an adventure story that unravels from the five escapees asking a local Catholic priest for sanctuary to applying for political asylum from Partido de Communista (PCC) – the Communist Party of Cuba. Amongst the five, there are growing tensions between Zulfiqar and Roxana, and there’s an instant attraction between her and Iftekhar – the PhD academic.

The cast list also includes two talking birds, a North American eagle named X-Ray, and a Cuban White-Dove. The latter, exposes the entire big picture story. She even explains E=mc².

Imprisoned again within 24 hours, all five reflect on events and how they ended up in Camp Delta. We also learn about Cuban systems as two new central characters emerge, Mariela a PCC officer and Luisa, the chairperson of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR).

There’s a dramatic turnaround as the Havana PCC takes control and the five escapees, as well as Mariela and Luisa are secretly flown to Havana. During the journey we learn about Iftekhar’s 27-hour handcuffed, shackled and hooded journey to Camp X-Ray three years earlier.


Volume Two – Chapters 19 to 38: Protective custody to first ending of escapees’ story.

Landing in Havana, the five learn of a US missile attack on the Guantanamo police station – aimed at them, that has killed and injured numerous Cuban citizens, including the Chief of Police. Under tight security, the PCC begins interviewing the five about their backgrounds. Simultaneously they hold secret negotiations with the US about the five, in exchange for Cuban agenda items.

This part of the story reveals what made Randy – the US army interrogator, organise this escape and the CIA Afghanistan Operation Cyclone, where Randy and Zulfiqar first met. We learn from Roxana about the Palestinian people’s 60-year conflict with Israel, from Mubarak about his CIA rendition tortures, and Iftekhar gives us his physical and analytical experiences of Camp Delta.

Running alongside the interviews are the US-Cuban secret negotiations, the blossoming love between Roxana and Iftekhar, the safe-house scenes, and build up to Luisa’s special CDR event. This turns out to be an open discussion between the five and Havana university students, covering many of the issues of God versus atheism.

Secret negotiations fail and US President George W Bush accuses Cuba of organising the escape. Amidst frenetic 24/7 media hype and tensions, international developments explode as in the prelude to Iraq invasion of 2003. Cuba is accused of possessing WMDs and having links with al-Qaeda.

The Cuban government’s worst fears are staring them in the face – as they prepare for full-scale North American military invasion. – The dramatic point, of the first ending of Synthesis.


Volume Three – Chapters 39 to 45: New world order to second ending of escapee’s story.

Volumes three to five are mainly the polemical chapters showing the facts and data big picture, which is related by White-Dove, a mythical talking bird and international ambassador for peace. She even takes us on a flight of fancy over Havana and explains E=mc² in easy bite-size terms.

The first three chapters are linked and cover the events leading up to and the consequences of the 2008 banking crash. This starts with the new world order, a 40-year neoliberal project imposed by the top 1% and multinational corporations, against the interests of 99% of humanity.

For this project to succeed, it needs strong states and weak citizens. Hence, the war on terror, leading to loss of civil liberties and mass surveillance, alongside a relentless transfer of wealth and democratic power to the top 1%, and their corporations.

This volume exposes the links between the Project for the New American Century, the neocons, the war on terror, the military-industrial complex and the banking system.

Given such revelations and the 1% versus the 99% analysis, Synthesis will be denounced and torn to shreds by the establishment and its media, though some parts of it will also jar and shock progressive minded people. For instance, the global warming theory is questioned and challenged with evidence from equally eminent scientists – who no longer have careers to worry about.

Volume three ends with the second, alternative ending to the five escapees’ story and is symbolic of a world order in transition; moving from a uni-polar American domination to a China-led multi-polar world of different options. The very idea – US leaders can’t get their head round.


Volume Four – Chapters 46 to 55: New millennium to multi-polar world.

Synthesis spans 13 years, while the polemical chapters run from 2008 to 2017. They were (mostly) written as events unfolded. The issues and evidence is contemporary, (though some evidence is later). Some events have panned out quite differently, but the big picture remains the same.

Volume four covers the period 2011 to 2015 and starts by taking stock of the situation at the start of the new millennium, before examining how the banking system actually works.

Then the 14-year war on terror is examined in terms of its results. Not only have the numbers of terrorists increased a hundred-fold, US-NATO policies have created new, far more blood-thirsty terrorists. This shows there never was a war on terror, but an excuse for US-NATO divide-and-rule regime change policies, and regional Israeli and Saudi domination strategies.

In the process, the 2011 Arab spring – the ordinary Muslim people’s uprising against decades of dictatorial rule has been subverted into cut-throat Sunni and Shia Muslim sectarianism. As that’s what suits the best interests of the Saudi royals and Western leaders.

Alongside this the Pentagon’s full spectrum dominance agenda has been encircling Russia with ever-encroaching US-NATO bases and regime changes, as in Ukraine; ensuring its greatest past enemy remain its greatest future reason for ever-expanding Pentagon and NATO budgets.

The Ebola fever epidemic in West Africa in 2014-15 starkly contrasted the opposing ideological perspectives of US leaders’ bombs and bullets and Cuban international medical diplomacy.

While UKs 2015 general election reconfirmed the first-past-the-post, as a rigged system designed to ensure only mainstream voices are heard, and all alternatives ruled off the agenda.


Volume Five – Chapters 56 to 65: Failure of war on terror to End Game.

Volume five covers the 2015-17 period. The consequences of US-NATO regime change and war on terror policies, the European refugee crisis, the Three Big Ts (trade treaties), Russian intervention in Syria, ISIS’ November 2015 Paris atrocities, and President François Hollande’s responses to it. Last, but not least – the utterly dire situation of 26 million Yemeni people – right now.

It shows how UK premier David Cameron seized the Paris atrocities to ram through a snoopers’ charter, huge increases in military and security spending, and the nuclear-armed Trident system.

Essentially, the war on terror and the banking crash has enabled Western governments to use the politics of fear, to drive their neoliberal agenda.

They’ve been able to blame all the problems caused by austerity and the war on terror on to foreign enemies from Saddam Hussain, Mummar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad to Vladimir Putin, as well as to internal scapegoats from immigrants and refugees to work-shy benefit cheats etc.

The last two chapters are a summary of the entire Synthesis big picture story and specifically, the culmination of a 40-year neoliberal project to dictate the future of humanity, in the interests of the world’s top 1%. If allowed to continue, this will most certainly lead to the end of democracy.

The war on terror, the hysterical Russo-phobia, ever-more pervasive attacks on civil liberties, while the super-rich grow richer – are systematic frontal assaults on dissent and democracy.

Western leaders have learned from China – they don’t need democracy, only a one-party state. This explains why all the mainstream political parties have turned neoliberal today.

As Noam Chomsky has said, ‘the question in essence is: whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved, or threats to be avoided?’ Theresa May unwittingly gave the British people the chance to answer this crucial question, in the June 2017 general election.


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The Author

I’ve done the rounds, been a political and community activist for over 25 years. I’m proud to have spent three consecutive Christmas Days picketing outside the South African embassy in London, calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid.

Readers Comments

– I have to say Synthesis was an education for me.

– There are a lot of shocking facts in there that I never knew, and a lot of connections that I had  – never made before. Certainly I have developed a great deal of sympathy for the Cuban people, and of course for all the poor, blameless individuals caught up in the US-inspired conflicts around the world.

– Personally speaking, I felt the story of the five escapees was an inspired way of getting the message across. It makes it much more accessible than a dry political text would.

– Re. ???

I was completely shocked and horrified. I never saw it coming. – You have some really good ideas, and I especially liked the way you handled this.

– The plot is also interesting and engaging, its not predictable, the pace is good, etc, so it also reads well purely as a story. That’s a pretty good achievement, especially for a first-time author.

Free Sample Chapters

The free chapters are snapshots of the five escapees’ adventure story, how the Cubans deal with them and what happens to them.

They also give a flavour of the kinds of issues that the polemical chapters deal with and show the big picture of how the world really turns.

Synthesis book FREE Chapters (PDF)