Financial Disaster May Lead to Civil Disorder and Wars, Says Secret Citibank Memo

Financial Disaster May Lead to Civil Disorder and

Wars, Says Secret Citibank Memo

Gold is poised for a dramatic surge and could blast through $2,000 an ounce by the end of next year as central banks flood the world’s monetary system with liquidity, according to an internal client note from the US bank Citigroup.
By Ambrose Evans-Pri

The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world’s authorities to take steps that had never been tried before.This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.

“They are throwing the kitchen sink at this,” said Tom Fitzpatrick, the bank’s chief technical strategist.

“The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock.

“Or it will not work because too much damage has already been done, and we will see continued financial deterioration, causing further economic deterioration, with the risk of a feedback loop. We don’t think this is the more likely outcome, but as each week and month passes, there is a growing danger of vicious circle as confidence erodes,” he said.

“This will lead to political instability. We are already seeing countries on the periphery of Europe under severe stress. Some leaders are now at record levels of unpopularity. There is a risk of domestic unrest, starting with strikes because people are feeling disenfranchised.”

“What happens if there is a meltdown in a country like Pakistan, which is a nuclear power. People react when they have their backs to the wall. We’re already seeing doubts emerge about the sovereign debts of developed AAA-rated countries, which is not something you can ignore,” he said.

Gold traders are playing close attention to reports from Beijing that the China is thinking of boosting its gold reserves from 600 tonnes to nearer 4,000 tonnes to diversify away from paper currencies. “If true, this is a very material change,” he said.

Mr Fitzpatrick said Britain had made a mistake selling off half its gold at the bottom of the market between 1999 to 2002. “People have started to question the value of government debt,” he said.

Citigroup said the blast-off was likely to occur within two years, and possibly as soon as 2009. Gold was trading yesterday at $812 an ounce. It is well off its all-time peak of $1,030 in February but has held up much better than other commodities over the last few months – reverting to is historical role as a safe-haven store of value and a de facto currency.

Gold has tripled in value over the last seven years, vastly outperforming Wall Street and European bourses.

Indian puts air defence on high alert: Military sources

	Heightened tensions with India will cause Pakistan to pull-back from the western border, to reinforce the east. WHAT FORCE WILL THEN DETER AN AMERICAN INVASION IN THE FRONTIER? Indian puts air defence on high alert: Military sources
	Updated at: 1830 PST, Saturday, November 29, 2008
	ISLAMABAD: The Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and the Director General of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) met here on Saturday to discuss the situation prevailing due to the recent incidents of terrorism in Mumbai.Geo News senior correspondent Hamid Mir has said that Pakistan army officials held an important briefing session with a group of senior journalists. The military officials said that after Mumbai attacks, the Indian External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee called senior Pakistani officials and gave threats. The officials said that it seems as if Indian authorities wanted to ‘escalate’ the already fragile situation. Considering the gravity of situation, Pakistan has made it clear to the United States of America and its allies in Europe that if India keeps blaming Pakistan for Mumbai attacks, Pakistan would have no option but to pull back its troops from the Western border to Eastern border. India has also put its air defence on high alert, they added. According to well-placed sources, it has been made clear to the US and European Union (EU) that in case of any eventuality, India will have to suffer more than Pakistan. Mir said there are indications suggesting that Pak army is being pulled out from the Western border. Military sources also said that instead of pointing fingers at neighbours, India should address the root causes of terrorism inside its own territory.

Press and “Psy Ops” to merge at NATO Afghan HQ

sources

By Jon Hemming

KABUL (Reuters) – The U.S. general commanding NATO forces in Afghanistan has ordered a merger of the office that releases news with “Psy Ops,” which deals with propaganda, a move that goes against the alliance’s policy, three officials said.

The move has worried Washington’s European NATO allies — Germany has already threatened to pull out of media operations in Afghanistan — and the officials said it could undermine the credibility of information released to the public.

Seven years into the war against the Taliban, insurgent influence is spreading closer to the capital and Afghans are becoming increasingly disenchanted at the presence of some 65,000 foreign troops and the government of President Hamid Karzai.

Taliban militants, through their website, telephone text messages and frequent calls to reporters, are also gaining ground in the information war, analysts say.

U.S. General David McKiernan, the commander of 50,000 troops from more than 40 nations in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), ordered the combination of the Public Affairs Office (PAO), Information Operations and Psy Ops (Psychological Operations) from December 1, said a NATO official with detailed knowledge of the move.

“This will totally undermine the credibility of the information released to the press and the public,” said the official, who declined to be named.

ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Richard Blanchette said McKiernan had issued a staff order to implement a command restructure from December 1 which was being reviewed by NATO headquarters in Brussels, but he declined to go into details of the reorganization.

“This is very much an internal matter,” he said. “This is up with higher headquarters right now and we’re waiting to get the basic approval. Once we have the approval we will be going into implementation.”

But another ISAF official confirmed that the amalgamation of public affairs with Information Operations and Psy Ops was part of the planned command restructure. This official, who also declined to be named, said the merger had caused considerable concern at higher levels within NATO which had challenged the order by the U.S. general.

“DECEPTION ACTIVITIES”

NATO policy recognizes there is an inherent clash of interests between its public affairs offices, whose job it is to issue press releases and answer media questions, and that of Information Operations and Psy Ops.

Information Operations advises on information designed to affect the will of the enemy, while Psy Ops includes so-called “black operations,” or outright deception.

While Public Affairs and Information Operations, PA and Info Ops in military jargon, “are separate, but related functions,” according to the official NATO policy document on public affairs, “PA is not an Info Ops discipline.”

The new combined ISAF department will come under the command of an American one-star general reporting directly to McKiernan, an arrangement that is also against NATO policy, the NATO official said.

“While coordination is essential, the lines of authority will remain separate, the PA reporting directly to the commander. This is to maintain credibility of PA and to avoid creating a media or public perception that PA activities are coordinated by, or are directed by, Info Ops,” the NATO policy document says.

“PA will have no role in planning or executing Info Ops, Psy Ops, or deception activities,” it states.

The United States has 35,000 of the 65,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, operating both under ISAF and a separate U.S.-led coalition operation, but both come under McKiernan’s command.

Washington is already scheduled to send another 3,000 troops to arrive in the country in January and is now considering sending 20,000 more troops in the next 12 to 18 months, further tipping the numerical balance among ISAF forces.

“What we are seeing is a gradual increase of American influence in all areas of the war,” the NATO official said. “Seeking to gain total control of the information flow from the campaign is just part of that.”

Crimes against Humanity: Iraqi academics assassinated during the US-led occupation

Global Research, November 27, 2008

Pakistan Daily – 2008-11-26

Editor’s note

Pakistan Daily has published the list of Iraqi academics assassinated by US and allied occupation forces. The objective of these targeted assassinations is to “kill a nation”, the destroy Iraq’s ability to educate its people, to undermine its research and scientific capabilities in literally all fields of endeavor, to transform a nation into a territory, and ultmately to destroy civilization.

Of particular significance is the assassination of  prominent scientists and physicians, professors of medicine in the country’s leading academic institutions, its social scientists and historians, its physical scientists, its biologists, its engineers.

we are dealing with a carefully devised covert operation. The plan to kill the nation’s scientists and intellectuals emanates from US intelligence and the military. It is a deliberate process.

Is the new Obama administration going to turn a blind eye to this diabolical and criminal agenda?  (Read here)

The Last Shout

The Last Shout

By Michael James in Germany

11-29-8

It came to me as something of a surprise to learn that the German authorities and their Zionist puppet masters allowed me to remain online until Monday, December 1. So much so, that I could not resist writing one final article, one final shout aimed at the Zionist-Bolshevik takeover of the world we, as children of my generation, once knew as fertile soil for dissent and freedom.

America has just elected an avowed Marxist, aligned with the principles of British Fabianism, to be their president for at least the next four years. McCain would have been no different; for the Zionists and the State of Israel, who control America, stacked their cards to ensure for themselves a satisfactory outcome either way.

We in the European Soviet Union have become accustomed to the gradualism of a Jewish-Freemasonic dominated socialist bureaucracy that stifles freedom of speech and imprisons truth tellers as a matter of course under various strictures aimed at those brave enough to challenge historical orthodoxy and the Zionist manipulation of the usurious banking and financial system. On account of our weakness and cowardice to resist the encroachments upon our liberties, we are now easy prey for the Satanic elites who govern us by decree from Brussels.

At a whim, they haul us before their judicial synagogues in the same fashion as the Spanish Inquisition. No jury. No admissible defence. No escape from Gulag Europa. Case closed.

Now Americans must suffer the same plight. The corporate fascist enabling laws, most of which took shape under executive orders issued by the Clinton and Bush administrations, are now the purloin of the international socialist Obama government. It is my suspicion that the CFR and the Bilderberg cliques have determined that Obama will be a two-term president; and under his auspices Americans will be left disarmed, without any freedom of speech and devoid of the civil liberties they enjoyed prior to the treasonous Bush junta.

It is hardly a surprise to me that Obama has chosen former Clinton insiders, Zionist communitarians, treacherous Israeli dual-citizens and “Common Purpose” advocates as his main advisors. It was a done deal months before his (s)election. Once again, Americans have foolishly allowed themselves to be ensnared by the serpentine hypnotic trance of the City of London and its Zionist overlords.

The new American president may well be the “Black Pope” of which Nostradamus spoke, for the aforesaid recognised no higher authority than the Father of Rome; and America has, by its own volition and servitude to the parasitic Zionist entity, inherited every aspect of the empire that never died but was torn apart by civil war and internal strife. This curse has now been passed to the United States, which will soon experience nothing but disunity, repression, martial law, secession and massive suffering on a scale far surpassing that of the Great Depression.

I am simply an ordinary Englishman living in Germany under the shadow of a plastic Zionist dictatorship and the prospect of arrest and imprisonment due to the opinions I have published over the past few years. Yet I care deeply for my fellow ancestral Europeans in America, for they were always our last hope: comprising the great Alamo of resistance against global Jewish-Zionist tyranny and its much-heralded communist Noahide laws for the Goyim.

Now the Alamo has fallen, and with it nary a chance that the world can be truly free again.

And so the burden of responsibility for the future of our children and our grandchildren lies upon the shoulders of brave individuals in place of steadfast, free and independent nation states. You know who you are, and the decision to do the right thing is yours and yours alone. Nobody will help you. Like me, you’re a lone wolf pining for freedom. Look to no leaders, for there are none; and those who pose as such are merely tools of the state.

These are the days of which the great prophets and seers of all religions spoke. These are not the End of Times, but the beginning of a leaderless resistance: the turning of the tide.

[See: LEADERLESS RESISTANCE]

In the early hours of Monday morning, the parasitic Zionists will cut me off from the rest of the world by word and mouth, and I must trust that my letters pass untrammelled through the hands of the German Zionist police state, which has unerringly and successfully connived at depriving me of my income.

But I shall continue to fight to the bitter end, for this is my Alamo. They cannot and will not ever break my spirit. I shall never accept defeat, go down on my knees and lick the boots of the financial and political Master Race. I am, and shall always remain, a defiantly freeborn Englishman.

I refuse to be a slave to those who have torn our world asunder and who have despoiled our culture, our values and our noble heritage with their insane decadence and sneering disrespect.

And you? Will you go gently into the night?

It’s your shout.

__________

Mike James, an

Englishman, is a former freelance journalist resident in Germany since 1992 with additional long-haul stays in East Africa, Poland and Switzerland.

Evidence being deliberately ignored?

Evidence being deliberately ignored?

November 29, 2008 | Dan Qayyum | PakistanKaKhudaHafiz .com

Strange that none of the media (TV or Print) have picked this up at all. Or have they been deliberately ignoring it?

Have a look at the attached pictures of one of the terrorists. [Another angle]

Notice the orange thread / band on his right hand.

Tying a red thread or cord around the wrist is a Hindu practice and it is unlikely a Muslim, especially one politicized enough to carry out an attack such as this, would observe it. I think this provides more evidence that this was a false flag operation or at least an attack by a non-Muslim group. For more information about the significance of the red thread see wikipedia and this blog post. [Thanks to Uruk]

Additionally, the terrorists inside the Nariman House Building were reported to have stocked up on supplies on Wednesday evening, buying not just food items but liquor, among other things, from a local store [Source]. Again, it is highly unlikely that a Muslim, let alone a ‘Mujahid’, and especially one politicized enough to carry out such an attack, would consume liquor in normal life, let alone hours before his inevitable ‘martyrdom’.

Don’t let them ignore it. Circulate this to as many people as you can as we strongly believe it wouldn’t have been ignored if the terrorists were carrying a copy of the Qur’an, or a taveez.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RED THREAD TIED AROUND THE WRIST

It is customary for Hindus to tie a red thread – commonly called a mauli or kalava - on the wrist at the beginning of a religious ceremony. The thread is tied on the right wrist of men and the left wrist of women. The literal meaning of mauli is ‘above all’. Here the reference is to the head that stands high. With the moon perched on top of Shiva’s head he is referred to as Chandramauli.

A person often puts on the red thread on one’s wrist when doing a ceremony, ritual or puja, such as worship to the Ganga River, a deity, or for certain blessings. The thread helps preserve or imbibe those blessings when it is tied around one’s wrist during the ceremony. The practice of tying the thread dates back to the time when Vamana Bhagwan tied this holy thread on the wrist of the progressive King Bali to grant him immortality.

Clues nudge India to look beyond Pakistan

Clues nudge India to look beyond Pakistan

By Jawed Naqvi
NEW DELHI, Nov 28: The recovery of the bodies of a Brooklyn rabbi and his wife on Friday at the end of the seizure of a Jewish centre in Mumbai by terrorists could be as good a reason as any to start a discussion on India’s Middle East policy, among other questions the attacks raised.

Instead, as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi probably noted here on Friday, the penultimate day of his ill-

fated visit, that India — mainly its media, the leadership, and a middle class that easily acquires the demeanour of Shakespeare’s mob-like crowds — remained obsessed with a Pakistani hand in the horrific blood-letting.

Mr Qureshi, on his part, was adamant at a news conference hosted by Delhi’s women journalists that there were no longer training camps for terrorists in Pakistan. Few would accept that he had not overstretched the point. Asked if the killers of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the truck bomber of Marriott Hotel were trained elsewhere, he waffled, saying something about an international link, and named Iraq as a factor.

Between India’s threat of retribution against Pakistan for the Mumbai massacres and Mr Qureshi’s denial of terrorists thriving in his watch, lies an opportunity to clear the vision on both sides. There is a good chance that the chief of ISI, an institution hitherto blamed for all the ills of Pakistan and for bad blood with India, may yet clear the air with a promised visit to New Delhi to discuss Mumbai’s tryst with terror.

Mr Qureshi sought to allay Indian fears that the ISI was an untrustworthy rogue entity, telling reporters that the agency was today taking orders from an elected government, and not from anyone else. He did not, how-

ever, entirely rule out the presence of rogue elements “in your society and ours”.

In the meantime, the Indian media has picked up what it said was enough evidence from two or more men, apprehended from among the terrorists for questioning, to claim clinching evidence against “elements in Pakistan” for the act. A satellite phone was said to have been used to call Karachi a few times during the three-night standoff. Some incriminating credit cards were said to be found as well as a boat that apparently transported them from Karachi.

The Indian government threw its weight behind the reports. An Indian foreign ministry statement described a telephone call Mr Mukherjee made to Mr Qureshi in terms that could be seen as terse. Mr Mukherjee conveyed “the hope that the Government of Pakistan will take immediate action with regard to the terrorist attacks on Mumbai”.

“The Government of Pakistan has said that it wants a leap forward in our bilateral relations, (but) outrages like the attack on our Embassy in Kabul and now the attack on Mumbai are intended to make this impossible,” the statement quoted Mr Mukherjee as saying.

There was a glimpse of conciliation though. “The groups responsible and their supporters are, therefore, also acting against the direct interests of the Government of Pakistan.” But the bottom line was that India expected “Pakistan to honour its solemn commitments not to permit the use of its territory for terrorism against India”.

Dr Singh received a call from President Asif Ali Zardari, who assured him that Islamabad “will cooperate with India in exposing and apprehending the culprits and masterminds behind” the attacks in Mumbai.

Earlier India’s national security adviser M.K. Narayanan claimed a Lashkar-i-Tayyaba hand, which he said took the link right up to Al Qaeda. A key question, however, remained untended. If it was possible for the killers of Mumbai to have belonged to Pakistan, and who evidently harboured a specific hatred of Jews, Americans and Britons, as reports have suggested being the case, then was it not even more likely that the terrorists bore a greater grudge against President Asif Zardari’s policies for exactly the same reasons.

In his own way this was more or less the burden of Mr Qureshi’s fulminations in the meeting at the Indian Womens’ Press Club. “I have come here to build bridges. I am mourning with you,” he said. “I want to turn the tide from confrontation into cooperation.” Mr Qureshi recalled Pakistan’s woes with terrorism, saying he too had narrowly escaped assassination recently.

Yet neither the Indian establishment nor Pakistan appeared ready to address the mocking absurdity in the fact that Muslim extremists, whether originating in Pakistan or anywhere else, had chosen India to vent their anger with the West, even more tragically towards Jews.

Mr Qureshi did say that terrorism was a global phenomenon in which India and Pakistan were equal targets. But he did not say why this was so. The cold-blooded killing of the rabbi and his wife link the tragic events in Mumbai to the politics of the Middle East as much as they are rooted in the fanaticism breeding in our own region.

Pakistan holds crisis talks after Mumbai atrocity

1 hour ago

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan’s cabinet was on Saturday holding crisis talks to discuss a response to the Mumbai attacks after Islamabad reversed a decision to send the head of military intelligence to India.

The powerful chief of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency had been due to fly to Mumbai to help the investigation, amid Indian allegations of Pakistani involvement in the terror attacks that claimed 195 lives.

“The special session of the cabinet will take stock of the situation arising out of the allegations by India and the change in level of ISI participation into the probe,” a government official told AFP.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani rushed to Islamabad from the eastern city of Lahore late Friday to chair the special cabinet meeting and his foreign minister cut short a visit to India and returned home by special plane.

The meeting comes after an abrupt change of plan by Islamabad, saying it will send only a representative of the ISI to India, and not its head, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha.

No explanation was given in a short statement issued by the prime minister’s office for the change of plan. The chief was to have gone at the request of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

However, government sources here said the change came after reservations in top military circles over the unprecedented move.

“The military leadership was not consulted before an announcement was made to the media regarding the decision to send the ISI chief to India,” a senior government official said.

Before the government U-turn, chief army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas had told AFP that the decision to send the ISI chief had not been conveyed officially to the army.

Singh asked Gilani to send the ISI chief to India in a telephone conversation between the pair Friday, after New Delhi blamed the attack on its neighbour, something which the Pakistani premier has vehemently denied.

Gilani and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari talked to Singh separately and offered to cooperate in the investigation, amid concerns India’s accusations could undo improving relations between the neighbours.

New Delhi has in the past accused Pakistan, and particularly the ISI, of helping militants attack Indian targets, including the Indian embassy in Kabul earlier this year.

A December 2001 attack on India’s parliament in New Delhi, which India also blamed on Pakistan, brought the two countries to the brink of war as the neighbours amassed armies at the border.

The latest Indian allegations surprised Pakistan’s new democratic government, which has repeatedly vowed to work with India to combat terrorism in the region.

Tensions between the rivals have been easing amid a slow-moving peace process aimed at settling their decades-old feud over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which triggered two of their three wars.

Qureshi: no training camps in Pakistan

Qureshi: no training camps in Pakistan

Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI: Visiting Pakistan Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Friday said there were no terrorist training camps in Pakistan. The country was pursing a policy of cooperation to add a new chapter in bilateral relationship with India. Kashmir was an outstanding issue on which Pakistan preferred a “peaceful, negotiated settlement.”

Asked where terrorists were being trained if not in Pakistan, he said, “It is not confined to Pakistan. There have been attacks and suicides in Afghanistan, Iraq. This is an international network and has to be dealt with at an international level. It is a global issue and has to be tackled on that basis.”

Interacting with the media at the India Women’s Press Corps here, Mr. Qureshi said he did not cut short his visit in the wake of the terror attacks so as to express “solidarity” and “lend support.” “I have come here to build bridges. I am equally saddened by what has happened.”

Asked about India’s assertion that initial information had shown the involvement of Pakistan elements in the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Qureshi said, “How can you be so sure? You have to build trust. Without trust there can be no beginning. There are extreme and rogue elements in every society. In February the people of Pakistan spoke and rejected extreme fringe elements.”

To a question, he said the Indian government should have pondered more before pointing a finger at Pakistan. “The leadership must rise above politics and domestic compulsions.”

Appealing for cooperation and not accusations, he stressed the need for strengthening the anti-terrorism mechanism that had been set up between India and Pakistan. “Terrorists are barbaric and inhuman and we have to eliminate them collectively.”

On what action the Pakistan government had taken against Lashkar-e-Taiba, he said, Pakistan had banned LeT. “To give a value judgment during this moment is not proper. Experience shows that there should not be a knee-jerk reaction. When the Samjhauta Express bombing happened there were a lot of accusations, but today investigations have reversed that.”

Claiming that the Pakistan government was going after terrorists, he said such incidents were happening to disrupt the India-Pakistan dialogue process. He said the present government in Pakistan did not subscribe to the values of the Taliban and was looking at the curricula of all madrasas to discourage teaching of militancy.

Pakistan foreign minister cuts short India visit

NEW DELHI: Distressed over widespread charges of involvement of Pakistan in the Mumbai terror attacks, Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood

Qureshi cut short his four-day visit to India and abruptly left for Islamabad on Saturday morning.

Qureshi was scheduled to meet Leader of Opposition L K Advani, Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, at 10.30 am on Friday, but had to cancel his appointment due to a cabinet meeting in Islamabad later in the day, Pakistan embassy sources said.

He was earlier scheduled to go to Lahore in the evening.

Qureshi, who started his visit to India Wednesday on a positive note, was “quite upset” about what he saw as India’s “insinuations” pointing to the involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists in audacious terror strikes at in Mumbai that has killed over 150 people and left over 300 injured, diplomatic sources said.

Hours after External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee blamed “some elements in Pakistan” for the terror strikes in Mumbai, Qureshi Friday condemned the “barbaric, inhuman attack” and offered cooperation “at every level” with New Delhi. He also warned against “playing politics” with the terror attacks and said the two countries needed “to turn the tide of confrontation to cooperation.”

“The Indian government should have pondered more, reflected more before coming to a conclusion,” he said.

He, however, acknowledged that there could be “rogue elements” in Pakistan who would be working to create a wedge between the two neighbours.

“We cannot rule out anything,” he said.

Mukherjee rang up Qureshi Friday evening in the middle of his press interaction with women journalsits of India and impressed upon him the need for Pakistan to take immediate action over the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. He also reminded Islamabad to honour its pledge not to allow its territory to be used for terror attacks against India.

In a curious coincidence, terrorists targeted ten sites in Mumbai minutes after Mukherjee and Qureshi held talks in New Delhi and agreed to wage a joint fight against terrorism.

Attacks recharge India-Pakistan war of rhetoric

Indian PM’s decision to accuse Pakistani elements of involvement – before the fighting had concluded – alarms United States

DOUG SAUNDERS

LONDON — While the world’s attention was focused on the human victims of the Mumbai attacks this week, there is a looming fear that the real target of the attacks, and the most alarming victim, may be the emerging rapprochement between India and Pakistan and the possibility of peace between these nuclear-armed powers.

A war of rhetoric yesterday left many observers fearing a situation in which India’s moderate government, pressed by an angry public and influential Hindu-nationalist parties, might be forced to escalate military pressure on Pakistan, and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari may face similar pressures to raise the stakes lest he appear weak.

Such a conflict, which would defy the agendas of both George W. Bush’s White House and Barack Obama’s presidency-in-waiting, would reverse years of Western efforts to encourage both countries to put aside their long-standing military conflicts with one another and focus on the larger problem of Islamic militancy and terrorism in the region.

Indeed, the timing of the attacks has led Indian and U.S. observers to suggest that they may have been designed to undermine efforts by Mr. Obama and his aides to bring Pakistan and India together into a continent-wide trading and military bloc opposed to Taliban-linked forces in Afghanistan and other terrorist influences.

The attacks occurred as Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was on a peacemaking visit to India, aimed at defusing the long-standing military conflict over the contested Kashmir region and finding common military cause.

Pakistan’s nuclear program has been tolerated by the United States, which has long seen Pakistan as a key ally in the war on terrorism. More recently, India’s nuclear program has received support from the United States. (Canada is currently negotiating a nuclear co-operation agreement with India to re-establish business ties, despite concerns that India has not signed the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.)

Last month, Mr. Zardari announced his intention to institute a no-first-use nuclear position toward India and promised to disband the political wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, a branch of the military that has repeatedly been linked with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist forces, including groups accused of terrorist attacks on India.

Yesterday, Pakistan’s government repeatedly denied any ties to the Mumbai attacks, and agreed to send the head of the ISI to India to participate in the investigation in an apparent move to acknowledge that Islamist politics and terrorism are now a common enemy of both countries, which for the first time in a generation both have democratic, officially secular governments.

“Our expression, and our insinuations, need to be measured,” Mr. Qureshi said yesterday in what sounded like a message of caution to India. “Pakistan wants to co-operate. Pakistan wants a friendly relationship with India. And we have today a common enemy. Extremism and terrorism is a common enemy.”

But even as other Pakistani officials were reiterating that point, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his ministers seemed determined to undermine it, with repeated accusations of Pakistani links to the attacks and subtle suggestions that Islamabad was not doing enough to prevent them.

Mr. Singh’s decision to accuse Pakistani elements of involvement before the attacks had been investigated – indeed, before they were over – alarmed U.S. officials, diplomats said. Washington rushed a special investigative team to Mumbai yesterday, and a diplomatic mission was sent to New Delhi in an effort to prevent India and Pakistan from turning against one another.

But Mr. Singh’s position may have less to do with international alliances and loyalties than it does with the more pressing concerns of domestic politics.

Several major Indian states are in the midst of election campaigns, with voting due to begin next week, and Mr. Singh’s social-democratic Congress Party faces serious challenges in at least four states from the far-right Hindu-nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), whose leaders portray him as a sellout to Pakistan and a Muslim apologist.

Mr. Zardari of Pakistan, whose wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, reportedly by Islamists, has no such political compunction to increase tension with India.

But he is not in an easy position. If the attackers are found to have Pakistani links, it will either mean that Pakistan’s military and security forces are lax in pursuing al-Qaeda-linked groups bent on large-scale terrorist attacks, or that they are directly involved in the attacks. There are already widespread suggestions that branches of the Pakistani military, as well as the ISI and its former members, are beyond Mr. Zardari’s control – a suggestion that could further weaken him.

The response to this week’s attacks is a bad portent. Mr. Zardari, in another of his efforts to defuse the tension, issued a warning yesterday that is likely to be reiterated by leaders such as Mr. Obama with increasing frequency in coming days: “We should not fall into the trap of the militants.”

Who is Paul Volcker? Obama appoints a longtime enemy of the working class

Who is Paul Volcker? Obama appoints a longtime enemy of the working class

By Patrick Martin
29 November 2008

President-elect Barack Obama announced Wednesday the appointment of former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker to head a White House advisory board to oversee the new administration’s policies for stabilizing financial markets. The selection of the 81-year-old Volcker puts an inveterate enemy of the working class at the side of the new president, and demonstrates the class character of the right-wing government that Obama is assembling.

In the course of the week, Obama selected his entire economic team: Timothy Geithner, currently president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, who will become secretary of the treasury; Lawrence Summers, former Clinton treasury secretary, who will head the National Economic Council, the chief White House group for coordinating economic policy; and Peter Orszag, who will become budget director. Summers, Geithner and Orszag are all protégés of former Clinton treasury secretary Robert Rubin, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and now director and vice chairman of Citigroup.

These appointments have been greeted favorably on Wall Street, with a 1,200-point runup in stock prices since Geithner’s name was made public last Friday. Congressional Republicans hailed the selection of Geithner and Summers, and an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal November 28 by former Bush political adviser Karl Rove was headlined, “Thanksgiving Cheer From Obama: He’s assembled a first-rate economic team.”

But it is the selection of Volcker that is the sharpest warning to the working class. No other individual in modern US history is so closely identified with the deliberate creation of mass unemployment to drive down wages and smash the organized resistance of the working class to the demands of corporate America. He put into motion policies that led to the destruction of large sections of industry and the explosive growth of financial speculation in the US economy.

Volcker served as Fed Chairman from 1979 to 1987, a critical period in the history of the American working class, in which the official labor movement was effectively destroyed as an instrument of workers’ self-defense, and the unions transformed into what they are today: a mechanism for the suppression of workers’ struggles and the destruction of their jobs and wages.

Democratic President Jimmy Carter nominated Volcker—a former Chase Manhattan Bank executive—to head the Federal Reserve in August 1979, at a turning point for the American ruling class and world capitalism as a whole. The coming to power of Margaret Thatcher in Britain three months earlier first signaled the drastic shift to the right internationally on the part of big business. The selection of Volcker initiated a similar shift within the United States, which culminated in November 1980 when Ronald Reagan defeated Carter for reelection.

Runaway price inflation had sparked a series of bitter strikes by workers seeking to defend their living standards, and the Carter administration had suffered a humiliating defeat when more than 100,000 coal miners struck for 111 days in 1977-78 in defiance of a presidential no-strike order under the Taft-Hartley Law. The White House had been unable to cow the miners into submission—they publicly burned copies of the president’s back-to-work order on the picket line—and Carter was compelled to rely on the leadership of the United Mine Workers union to deprive the rank-and-file of any gains from their struggle.

Volcker was brought in to initiate policies that would suppress inflation—and the wages movement in the working class—by driving up the rate of unemployment. Under his leadership, the Federal Reserve rapidly raised interest rates to an unprecedented 20 percent, choking off home-buying and purchases of cars and other durable goods and triggering a series of corporate bankruptcies.

The economic turmoil contributed heavily to Carter’s defeat in the presidential contest, but that prospect did not faze Volcker, whose loyalty to the Democratic Party and the president who nominated him took a distant second place to his devotion to the long-term interests of American capitalism, which required the most draconian methods.

Once Reagan entered the White House in January 1981, Volcker worked closely with the new Republican administration, and was reappointed by Reagan in 1983 to continue his inflation-fighting course. In 1982-83, the US economy plunged into the sharpest recession of the post-World War II period.

The economic devastation was focused particularly in the industrial Midwest—steel mills, auto plants, coal mines were shut down, many of them permanently. The city of Detroit began the downward slide that has continued to this day, and Buffalo, Akron, Youngstown, Gary, Indiana and countless industrial towns followed suit.

The response to the attacks by big business and the Reagan administration was the biggest wave of strike struggles since the 1940s, beginning with the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in August 1981, where Reagan ordered the firing of 12,000 workers and made the firings stick. He had the backing of the entire US ruling elite, Democrats and Republicans alike, and critical assistance from the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, which blocked any large-scale mobilization of workers behind the PATCO strikers, leaving them to isolation and defeat.

Volcker famously praised Reagan for breaking the PATCO strike, calling his action the most important factor in bringing inflation under control.

PATCO set the pattern for the struggles which followed: Greyhound, Phelps Dodge, Hormel, International Paper, A. T. Massey Coal, Continental Airlines, and Eastern Airlines. Isolated groups of workers engaged in militant and protracted battles, in many cases against state repression and employer violence, all stabbed in the back by the AFL-CIO. The outcome was the destruction of union locals, the arrest, imprisonment and even murder of striking workers, the strengthening of the bureaucratic apparatus, and the emergence of corporatism—labor-management “partnership” —as the guiding philosophy of the American unions.

Throughout this period, there was a bipartisan anti-labor front in Washington: Republican Reagan in the White House, Democrat Volcker at the Fed, a Republican-controlled US Senate, and a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. Democratic governors and mayors worked hand-in-glove with unionbusting corporations, calling out the National Guard or mobilizing local police against strikes in Arizona, Minnesota, Kentucky, West Virginia and countless cities and towns.

Particularly relevant today is the role played by the Democrats in the bailout of Chrysler Corporation in 1979-80. The Carter administration provided loan guarantees to Chrysler in return for concessions by the United Auto Workers union, including the first-ever cuts in wages and benefits imposed by a major American trade union on its own membership—setting the pattern for the concessions bargaining of the 1980s.

Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, Volcker now goes back to Washington as a principal adviser to another Democratic Party administration preparing to bail out bankrupt auto manufacturers at the expense of the auto workers and the working class as a whole. He can rely on his direct personal experience with the UAW bureaucracy to demand that the union finish the job it began three decades ago: transforming what was once the most powerful section of the American working class into a super-exploited mass of low-paid, casual laborers, without any rights.

When Obama announced that he was establishing the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, with Volcker as its head, he praised the “sound and independent judgment” of the former Fed chairman. That “judgment” included early support for Obama’s presidential campaign—he gave $2,300 to Obama’s primary campaign last February, the most Volcker has ever contributed to any candidate, Democrat or Republican.

“Paul Volcker hasn’t been in Washington for quite some time,” Obama said, “and that’s part of the reason he can provide a fresh perspective.”

Volcker’s record from 1979 to 1987 suggests what this “fresh perspective” will consist of. Unemployment in the United States reached 11.3 percent in 1982, double the level of 1975. The average wage of young workers fell 30 percent by 1987. Infant mortality, family violence, drug addiction and other concomitants of economic hardship soared.

But the wealthiest 1 percent of the population saw a staggering 50 percent increase in their wealth during that period. That is why the American ruling elite remembers the Volcker years fondly, and why, acting through their servant Obama, the financial aristocracy has summoned the old reactionary for one last service in attacking the working class.

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Home-grown conflict stretches decades

Home-grown conflict stretches decades

Marika Vicziany

WE do not yet know exactly who is behind the Mumbai bombings.

But we can consider numerous scenarios, based on past bombings in India’s most cosmopolitan, commercial city.

An unknown group called Deccan Mujahidin has claimed responsibility. Deccan refers to the high plateau that rises behind Mumbai city – the hinterland of the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

There has been much violence between Hindus and Muslims in the hinterland.

If the Deccan Mujahidin have been recruited from that hinterland, it would not come as a surprise.

On the other hand, the adoption of this name could be a smokescreen.

Has al-Qaida been involved? The history of local community tension is sufficiently serious it does not need the hand of al-Qaida.

If it turns out that al-Qaida was involved, it would be because they were either invited into Mumbai by the deeply alienated Muslims of that city or because al-Qaida saw this as fertile ground for spawning its power on the Indian subcontinent.

In India claims about al-Qaida are often mixed up with allegations about Pakistan’s Intelligence Service, the ISI, or Lashkar-e-Toiba, a wing of the large non-government organisation, Jammat-ud-Dawa.

With Lashkar-e-Toiba there is some evidence of involvement in recruiting supporters in western India.

Might radical Muslim students be behind the bombings? Governments have placed radical Muslim student organisations under surveillance, so this seems unlikely.

We also need to consider another possibility — that this is the work of Hindu rather than Muslim terrorists.

The history of modern India and Mumbai is littered with violent acts, including terrorism by militant Hindu fundamentalists. But it is unlikely such terrorism would be aimed at foreigners.

The remaining possibility of suspicion falls on criminal or mafia gangs.

The Bombay bombings of March 12, 1993, are very similar to what has happened in Mumbai. A series of 13 explosions killed 257 people and injured more than 700.

Police arrested 123 suspects and at the top of the apex was one family of middle-class Muslims who formed part of a local mafia gang headed up by Dawood Ibrahim.

The terrible situation in Mumbai must be placed in the context of the politics of Hindu-Muslim conflict during the last decades.

Indian states have done little to promote peaceful Hindu-Muslim relations or community policing.

Angry Muslims, therefore, are vulnerable.

In essence, these Mumbai bombings are home-grown.

Professor Marika Vicziany is director of Monash University’s Asia Institute and is a specialist on Indian terrorism and security.

Is India reaping a harvest of hatred sown by Indians? We have seen it all before-a Sri Lankan perspective

To see what is happening in India today is to look in the rear view mirror of what we did wrong in Sri Lanka. When we suffered terrorist attacks, we blamed it on foreign interference, namely India. India does the same today: the Prime Minister in a televised message blamed a “group based outside the country”. Both countries have failed to realize that the root of the problem is not outside our shores; the problem lies within… So here’s a word of advice from a Sri Lankan to our big neighbour. Don’t go down the path we have taken. Don’t be tempted to sacrifice the freedom of another for your own safety. Be smarter than us. Look within and find the disease that is causing this fever called terrorism. For now, your terrorists seem to be ad hoc groups of lethal young men. With every attack in your country a new terrorist group with a new label takes credit. That’s how it starts. The day will come when a determined and motivated leader manages to coalesce the many fingers of extremism into a hard-hitting fist, with an ideology as compelling as it is evil. When that happens, you will pay a price in blood and sorrow for generations to come. We know this because we have seen it all before.

by The Under Dog

As I write this, Indian security forces are still fighting terrorists in Mumbai, the financial capital of India and centre of its glamorous film industry. Over a hundred people are dead, gunned down by young men in a crazed Columbine style shooting of unarmed civilians. A previously unknown group called the Deccan Mujahedeen have claimed responsibility. With the choice of this name-the Deccan valley being a large plateau in India-these guys are sending a clear signal: they are sons of Mother India. And they are not alone: a string of bomb blasts over the last year in Delhi, Ahmadabad, Bangalore, Jaipur, and Uttar Pradesh was claimed by another home-grown group calling themselves the Indian Mujahedeen.

India is the largest democracy in the world. They’ve got several hundred languages, they’ve got every major world religion in residence and originated four of them; they are multi-cultural and multi-ethnic, with a male Prime Minister of the minority Sikh religion and a female President. This is a kaleidoscope of people, all very proud of their individual cultures, and yet also very proud that they are one nation under one flag. This is the land held up as proof that no matter how large, how populated, and how diverse a country may be, democracy works for everyone; democracy protects everyone. So what the hell is going wrong now?

One of the terrorists spreading carnage at the Oberoi Hotel told Indian television via telephone: “Muslims in India should not be persecuted. We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody? Release all the mujahedeens, and Muslims living in India should not be troubled.” What is he going on about?

In 2002, over two thousand Muslims were massacred in the state of Gujarat. It was called a spontaneous communal riot, but the weight of evidence suggests that it was a premeditated attack against the Muslims organized by local authorities and politicians. The attack was particularly severe against women, with organized rape and mutilation of women and female children-”when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?”

The violence in Gujarat bares many resemblances to the landmark event in our own battle against terrorism: the 1983 anti-Tamil riot. It too was called a spontaneous communal riot, but as with Gujarat the weight of evidence suggested premeditated action by the then government. It is alleged that the government minister Mr Cyril Matthew organized gangs made up of the Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya to systematically target Tamil houses and businesses using voter lists which they had conveniently got access to. In Gujarat too, voter lists identified the Muslims and the chief minister Narendra Modi was accused of instigating and encouraging the attacks, and of being wilfully negligent in providing relief to the victims. The 1983 anti-Tamil riot swelled the ranks of militant groups in Sri Lanka with youth determined to exact revenge, and evidently the Gujarat riot has had the same effect in India.

Our response to 1983 was to ignore it and pretend that it was an isolated and spontaneous incident, rather than accept that there were deep-seated injustices perpetrated against the minority even prior to 1983. India did the same: investigations were sabotaged, no one was held accountable. Few saw the broader context of the problem: the ever-simmering violence in Kashmir, and the fact that the Indian economy-laudable though it is-had left out many Indians, many of whom felt that they had been systematically neglected because of their minority status.

To see what is happening in India today is to look in the rear view mirror of what we did wrong in Sri Lanka. When we suffered terrorist attacks, we blamed it on foreign interference, namely India. India does the same today: the Prime Minister in a televised message blamed a “group based outside the country”. Both countries have failed to realize that the root of the problem is not outside our shores; the problem lies within. Messages from the Indian public are scrolled continuously on NDTV, most of them blaming the government for inadequate security and calling for a severe crackdown on terrorism (as if they weren’t already trying all this time). Not one message asked the question: “what drove these Indians to do this to other Indians?”

In the interests of combating terrorism, it won’t be long before anti-terrorist squads ask Indians with Muslim names questions like:  what are you doing out so late? Do you have a legitimate reason for walking near that hotel? How can you prove that you live in this city? If you’re not from here, what reason do you have for being in this city? It won’t be long before Indian Muslims are arrested simply for being Muslims, and asked to prove that they are not terrorists. As for the public, the great majority will applaud these actions. They’ll say it is unfortunate, but it is necessary. We know this because we have seen it all before.

One of the police officers killed by the terrorists in Mumbai was an ‘encounter specialist.’ This is a euphemism for government assassins who shoot dead alleged gangsters and terrorists without bothering to collect evidence. Our equivalent would be the ubiquitous white vans that make ‘suspected terrorists’ mysteriously disappear and keeps adding to the tally of bodies that wash ashore or turn up in ditches. How does the public know they really are terrorists? We know, and that’s all that matters-who needs evidence anyway? In India these ‘encounter specialists’ are glorified by the media and cinema as heroes. Murderer equals hero. Isn’t that the same logic used by terrorists?

So here’s a word of advice from a Sri Lankan to our big neighbour. Don’t go down the path we have taken. Don’t be tempted to sacrifice the freedom of another for your own safety. Be smarter than us. Look within and find the disease that is causing this fever called terrorism. For now, your terrorists seem to be ad hoc groups of lethal young men. With every attack in your country a new terrorist group with a new label takes credit. That’s how it starts. The day will come when a determined and motivated leader manages to coalesce the many fingers of extremism into a hard-hitting fist, with an ideology as compelling as it is evil. When that happens, you will pay a price in blood and sorrow for generations to come. We know this because we have seen it all before.

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED PRESS SMEAR JOB

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U.S. Intelligence Focuses on Pakistani

Group

By MARK MAZZETTI and SALMAN MASOOD

Published: November 28, 2008

WASHINGTON — American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday that there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for this week’s deadly attacks in Mumbai.

The officials cautioned that they had reached no firm conclusions about who was responsible for the attacks, or how they were planned and carried out. Nevertheless, they said that evidence gathered in the past two days pointed to a role for Lashkar-e-Taiba or possibly another group based in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which also has a track record of attacks against India.

The officials requested anonymity in describing their current thinking and declined to discuss specifics of the intelligence that they said pointed to Kashmiri militants. In the past, the American and Indian intelligence services have used communications intercepts to tie Kashmiri militants to terrorist strikes. Indian officials may also be gleaning information from at least one captured gunman who participated in the Mumbai attacks.

According to one Indian intelligence official, during the siege the militants have been using non-Indian cellphones and receiving calls from outside the country, evidence that in part led Indian officials to speak publicly about the militants’ external ties.

Lashkar-e-Taiba denied any responsibility on Thursday for the terrorist strikes. American intelligence agencies have said that the group has received some training and logistical support in the past from Pakistan’s powerful spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., and that Pakistan’s government has long turned a blind eye to Lashkar-e-Taiba camps in the Kashmir region, a disputed territory over which India and Pakistan have fought two wars.

Officials in Washington said Friday that there was no evidence that the Pakistani government had any role in the attacks. But if evidence were to emerge that the operation had been planned and directed from within Pakistan, that would certainly further escalate tensions between India and Pakistan, bitter, nuclear-armed rivals. It could also provoke an Indian military response, even strikes against militants’ training camps.  (more here)

SO THE NEW YORK TIMES HAS ESTABLISHED THE LINK BETWEEN THE PATSY GROUP AND PAKISTAN’S SECRET SERVICES (ISI), STRIKING THE FIRST BLOW AGAINST THE “ROGUE” STATE.   THEN THEIR FELLOW CONSPIRATORS, REUTERS, DELIVERS THE KNOCK-OUT PUNCH, IMPLICATING PAKISTAN AS THE BIRTHPLACE AND HOME OF “AL QAIDA,” TURNING THE MUMBAI ASSAULT INTO A PAKISTANI/AL QAIDA OPERATION.

Kashmiri militant denounces slaughter in Mumbai

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) – A leader of militant groups in Pakistani Kashmir called the slaughter of civilians in Mumbai “reprehensible”, and denied that any member of his alliance was involved.

Sayed Salahuddin heads the United Jihad Council, an umbrella organisation banding together around a dozen ethnic Kashmiri militant groups.

Suspicion has fallen on a non-member, Lashkar-e-Taiba. Though it fights for the Kashmiri cause, L-e-T was founded in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab and mainly recruited Punjabis to its ranks.

“Let me be very clear once again that the United Jihad Council does not approve of civilian killings and under its code of conduct such an act is reprehensible,” Salahuddin said.

“I can say with utmost certainty that none of Kashmiri jihadi groups has any involvement with the events in Mumbai,” he told Reuters by telephone.

The targeting of Westerners and Jews as well as Indians in the attack supported views that the perpetrators subscribed to a global jihadi agenda, like al Qaeda’s, and not just a regional dispute like Kashmir.

Security analysts say L-e-T and Jaish-e-Mohammad, another Punjabi-based militant group fighting for the Kashmiri cause, have links with al Qaeda.  (more here)

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Mumbai Terror attacks: False Flag to target Pakistan?