Military chiefs urge raid inside Pakistan (Following bad US example)

“PAKISTAN was bracing last night for a retaliatory airstrike by India against the sprawling headquarters of the al-Qa’ida-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organisation near Lahore…an attempt would be made to justify the action by pointing to the way in which the US was launching pre-emptive strikes inside Pakistani territory using unmanned drones to kill al-Qa’ida and Taliban targets.”

Military chiefs urge raid inside Pakistan

Bruce Loudon

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PAKISTAN was bracing last night for a retaliatory airstrike by India against the sprawling headquarters of the al-Qa’ida-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organisation near Lahore.

As Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned the LET militants “had the power to precipitate war in the region”, India demanded that Islamabad hand over a list of about 20 people, including India’s most-wanted man Dawood Ibrahim.

India’s military chiefs were exerting strong pressure on the country’s political leaders to give permission to attack the headquarters, an 80ha site at Muridke, close to the Punjab capital of Lahore, just across the border from India.

The reports came as the Indian Government summoned the Pakistani high commissioner in New Delhi yesterday to demand “strong action” against the Pakistani militants who it says were responsible for last week’s attacks on Mumbai.

New Delhi warned Shahid Malik that India expected Islamabad to take “swift action” to deal with the evidence of involvement by LET operating from bases inside Pakistan.

India demanded that Islamabad extradite Ibrahim, a fugitive Mumbai mafia don who it believes has links to LET, the terrorist group long allied to Pakistan’s ISI spy agency.

India also asked for Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the LET founder, and Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, who was freed in exchange for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines flight in 1999.

Ibrahim, Mumbai’s most notorious underworld don, is the head of D-Company, a feared crime syndicate, and one of the world’s five most wanted men. He is widely believed to have worked closely with al-Qa’ida. He is also thought to have masterminded the 1993 Mumbai bombings, a series of 13 explosions that claimed 250 lives.

New Delhi issued its demands after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Pakistan to co-operate with India as she prepared to visit New Delhi to mediate between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

The heavily guarded LET complex near Lahore, known as the Markaz-e-Taiba (Holy Centre), includes mosques and madrassas with more than 3000 students. Theoretically it is the headquarters of the Jamaat-ul-Dawah Muslim welfare organisation that is closely identified with LET.

Saeed, the LET founder and spiritual leader, lives in the complex.

Reports yesterday said that if India attacked the complex — possibly to kill Saeed — an attempt would be made to justify the action by pointing to the way in which the US was launching pre-emptive strikes inside Pakistani territory using unmanned drones to kill al-Qa’ida and Taliban targets.

Indian sources have confirmed that investigators have established strong links between the group of terrorists who attacked Mumbai and the LET leadership inside Pakistan.

Intercepts of calls made on a satellite telephone used by the group before they disembarked from the “mother ship” that brought them from Karachi shows a series of calls made to Muridke.

Indian officials said that all the militants were from Pakistan and that the only one captured alive had admitted to being part of LET.

Yesterday, the surviving terrorist, Ajmal Amin Kamal, in a new interrogation by Indian investigators, again linked the Mumbai attack to LET, saying he had joined the organisation at the behest of his father to raise money for his family.

He named an LET commander who, he said, paid his father for his services.

Pakistan reluctantly announced a formal ban on LET in 2002 after coming under strong international pressure to clamp down on the organisation. This followed a spectacular attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, launched by LET together with the Kashmir-based JEM.

Although still technically outlawed in Pakistan, LET has managed to expand its membership and activities and has also established itself in other countries.

To get around the formal ban on its activities, LET renamed itself Jamaat-ud-Dawah, which gained considerable influence across Pakistan as a result of the “welfare” work it did after the devastating 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. The US Government has also classified Jamaat-ud-Dawah as a terrorist organisation and said it is no more than an “alias” of LET.

Indian investigators are convinced there is no doubt of LET’s involvement in the Mumbai outrage.

Mr Zardari insisted the militants who attacked Mumbai were “non-state actors” with no links to any government.

Reports yesterday said India received warnings in October from US intelligence of a possible terrorist attack “from the sea” on targets in Mumbai.

Unnamed American intelligence officials told US television news service ABC that they had warned their Indian counterparts in mid-October of a potential attack “from the sea against hotels and business centres in Mumbai”.

One intelligence official even mentioned specific targets, including the Taj Mahal hotel, ABC said.

DOGS OF WAR- excellent compilation

Jews Must Face ‘Dark Side’ Of Judaism

Henry Makow

Stephen Bloom has a love of justice typical of many liberal American Jews. A journalism professor, he saw the opening of a Kosher meat packer in Postville Iowa in 1987 by Hasidic Jews as an opportunity to study the Jewish-gentile dynamic in microcosm. He discovered more about Judaism and the causes of anti-Semitism than perhaps he wanted to know.

His conclusion is from “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America” published in 2000:

“Initially I had gone to Postville to learn from the Hasidim [orthodox Jews], to share with them a sense of identity and belonging. Instead, what the Postville Hasidim ultimately offered me was a glimpse of the dark side of my own faith, a look at Jewish extremists whose behavior not only made the Postville locals wince, but made me wince, too.

I didn’t want to partake in Hasidim’s vision that called on Jews to unite against the goyim and assimilation. The world, even in Iowa, was too bountiful to base my likes and dislikes solely on religion. The word Hasid …literally means ‘the pious one,’ but the Postville Hasidim..were anything but pious. You couldn’t become casual friends with them…They required total submission to their schema of right and wrong, Jew vs. Christian — or you were the enemy.” (291) -In other words, if you’re a Jew but don’t buy their insanity, then you’re no better than the goyim.

ROCKY RIDE

The influx of hundreds of Orthodox Jewish families into a tiny (pop. 1465) Christian farming community in northeast Iowa was rocky from the start. Yes the Jews had a seemingly wholesome family life and a pretense of piety. But it soon became apparent they wanted nothing to do with their Christian neighbors. They were there to make money and the non-Jews, (goyim) whether Postville merchants or migrant workers, were barely distinct from the cattle on their assembly line.

The meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors, filed for bankruptcy last month after the owner Sholom Rubashkin was arrested for bank fraud regarding a $35 million loan. This after the State of Iowa levied $10 million in fines for 9000 violations involving illegal wage deductions and child labor. Then, in June, the company was accused of forging documents for illegal aliens. Four hundred hapless laborers from Guatemala to Palau were arrested and jailed.

When the plant closed, hundreds of workers were left destitute while turkeys languished unfed in trailers outside the plant. The town struggled to regain its footing, probably relieved to be rid of this mixed blessing.

In August, a delegation of distinguished rabbis and communal functionaries spent three hours touring the plant, met briefly with local Christian clergy and activists, and gave the operation a clean bill of health. They found no evidence, as one rabbi put it, to suggest that “someone should not buy things from Agriprocessors.”

“A three-hour tour could not uncover the extensive, “egregious” child labor violations that the Iowa state labor commissioner reported… The labor commissioner said he had “never seen anything like it” in his 30 years in the field…” the Jewish Daily Forward wrote in an Editorial August 7.

“Three hours wouldn’t turn up the voluminous evidence of abuse gathered by the Forward when we first broke the Agriprocessors story two years ago. We found compelling indications of sexual harassment, shorted wages, favoritism and bribery in work assignments, inadequate safety training and horrific work accidents in the place we called a ‘Kosher Jungle.’”

http://www.forward.com/articles/13930/

IN DENIAL

This editorial suggests that the rabbis were ignoring the precepts of the “Babylonian Talmud.” This reflects the naivety of assimilated Jews about the true nature of the Talmud, which is the central document of Judaism. The Talmud regards Gentiles as cattle and preaches hatred against Christians.

http://www.cephas-library.com/israel/ israel_the_talmud_against_jesus.html

This is confirmed by the behavior of the Postville Hasidim. Stephen Bloom was put under the tutelage of one “Lazar”, a “model Lubavitcher, a mensch as well as a tzaddik” (wise man.)

“I am a racist,” Lazar told Bloom right off the bat. The Jews have persisted throughout history because “we are better and smarter.” (192)

“Wherever we go, we don’t adapt to the place or the people, Lazar preached…”It’s always been like that and always will be like that. It’s the place and the people who have to adapt to us.”

Bloom reflected: “Lazar’s comment underscored the Hasidim’s contempt for non-Jews, which wasn’t limited to Postville gentiles but to all Christians…Hasidim like Lazar have a total disinterest in anything or anyone who isn’t Jewish…The Hasidim were waging a cultural holy war…Their world was Jew vs. non-Jew…If you didn’t agree, you were at fault, part of the problem. You were paving the way for the ultimate destruction of the Jews, the world’s Chosen People. There was no room for compromise…no room for anything but total and complete submission.” (196-198)

This extends to business, which is a form of aggression against gentiles. “I don’t feel like a Jew unless I bargain,” Lazar told him. “A Jew has to feel he got something for the absolute lowest price or he feels rotten.” After reaching a deal with a gentile, the Hasid boasted of not keeping the terms or taking his time to pay. Bloom compared it to hunting: “The Hasidim not only [bargained] with alacrity, but enjoyed boasting about the terrain, equipment, first sighting and ultimate kill.” (211)

Bloom relates a particularly shameful incident told by store owner. A Hasid pretended he had paid in advance for some merchandise, grabbed it and ran out of the store.

Despite being shunned by the Rabbis, a Rev Miller organized an ecumenical service with two other clergymen from Postville’s other two churches. No Jews showed up. “Reverend Miller got stiffed,” Bloom writes. (146)

Evidently, tolerance, ecumenicalism, anti-racism, diversity etc. is to dilute the goyim not the Talmudists.

CONCLUSION

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that Talmudic behavior is the real cause of Anti-Semitism.

But the implications are far more serious. Meyer Amschel Rothschild was a Talmudist. This Satanic hatred of humanity, and Christianity in particular, is driving the New World Order. There is a direct line between the Crucifixion of Christ, who represented the God of Love, 9-11 and the New World Order in terms of the degradation of humanity through war and depression. If this logic is correct, humanity’s fate is to be crucified like Christ or otherwise slaughtered or enslaved.

Like Stephen Bloom and myself, 90% of American Jews are secular and ignorant of the Talmud. We find its views abhorrent. But these attitudes are the hidden agenda of Zionism and organized Jewry. A gentile elite consisting of Freemasons (the Illuminati Order) has been created to advance this agenda. Barack Obama and most Western “leaders” belong to it.

(See “Historian Demands Acytion on Doomsday Cults” http:// www.henrymakow.com/historian_demands_action_on_do.html)

The New World Order imperils humanity and assimilated Jews. As conditions deteriorate, anti-Semitism will become rampant. Jews must recognize that Judaism is not a religion but a conspiracy against humanity. It is also a conspiracy against Jews, whose security is endangered by its secret agenda. Zionism, Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, Neo Conservatism, Feminism are all deceitful means to establish the Masonic/Talmudic/Cabalistic central bankers in a thinly veiled “world government” tyranny.

Society has been brainwashed to reject the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which explains the methodology in detail. This document is not anti-Semitic; it is Satanic. I first recognized it was authentic when the author celebrated that a “cold and forlorn” mood had taken hold of Europe’s cities. This is something no “forger” would think of.

Assimilated Jews need to dis-associate from the Jewish enterprise and re-invent themselves as a people, recognizing how, like other peoples, they have been deceived and exploited by their so-called leaders. Like Stephen Bloom, assimilated Jews have a strong sense of truth, justice and God’s bountifulness, and must join their Christian neighbors in putting America back on track.

•••••

See “Zionists are the Worst Anti-Semites” http://www.savethemales.ca/the_biggest_antisemites_of_the.html

Daily Forward Coverage of Agriprocessors http://www.forward.com/articles/14157/

Ted Pike “Pedophilia Rampant in Orthodox Judaism” http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/pedophiliarampantorthodox.htm

Henry Makow Ph.D. is the author of “Illuminati-The Cult that Hijacked the World.” (www.cruelhoax.ca) His articles can be found at his web site www.henrymakow.com He enjoys receiving your comments, some of which he posts on his site using first names only. hmakow@gmail.com

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Source: http://www.rense.com/general84/mustface.htm

Connecting the Dots: The War of Terror and Zionism take the Lead

© Cassiopaea.org
Denver Airport Mural

As the world falls asleep under the spell of Obama’s supposed change, the Zionists sneak onto his staff roster and take the opportunity to siege Gaza. With astoundingly accurate timing, India gets its own shocking 9/11 and the fingers are pointed at Pakistan.

More blood is expected to run, as we keep seeing signs of war and hearing predictions of catastrophic terrorism.

As this happens, Mother Nature takes notice of the human madness and gives the world a very cold shoulder. As above, so below: the cosmic weather responds with fireballs and other mysteries.

India’s 9/11: The Previously Unknown Terrorists Strike Again

Another bizarre episode of utter evil and madness has just taken place, this time in Mumbai.

We have been told that a group of only ten trained terrorists armed to the teeth with assault rifles, grenades and plastic explosives, came off boats in Mumbai, randomly killed more than 200 people on the street, in and around the tourist hot spots, captured hostages in two luxury hotels, a hospital, a train station and a Jewish center, and managed to keep the Indian elite forces in check for more than three days. Oh, and we were initially told that they were part of one of those mysterious “previously unheard of” terrorist groups (recall the recent Marriot bombing in Islamabad), this one calling itself the “Deccan Mujahideen“. We must assume that they just happened to be very lucky and shockingly good at military commando tactics.

© Lorenzo Tugnoli /AFP/Getty Images
Fire engulfs the top floor of the Taj Mahal hotel

On top of that, the terrorists happened to be equipped with BlackBerrys which they used to surf the web and keep track of police movements and global reaction to the attacks. Maybe we are supposed to believe that their lethal web surfing abilities enabled them to single out Hemant Karkare, the chief antiterrorism officer in the Indian police, and kill him.

Is it only us who think that there is something very wrong about this story?

Indeed, the terrorists were also exceedingly cool. According to witnesses

:

“Their audaciousness was breath-taking,” he says.

“One man loaded the magazine into the gun, the other kept shooting. They appeared calm and composed. They were not in the slightest hurry. They didn’t seem to be afraid at all.” [...]

Locals say the orgy of killings in Mumbai began [at the Leopold Cafe]. Three men walked into the cafe, drank beer, settled their bills and walked out. Then they fished out guns from their bags and began firing.

Gaffar Abdul Amir, an Iraqi tourist from Baghdad, says he saw at least two men who started the firing outside the Leopold Cafe.

He was returning to his hotel from the seaside with a friend when he saw two men carrying bags and brandishing AK-47s walking in front of them, shooting.

“They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed,” says Mr Amir.

Yep! That’s your average beer drinking, cool headed, sharp shooter, blond, punk and rookie Islamic fanatic terrorist! Add to that the interesting observation made by Ahmed Quraishi on the photograph of the train station terrorist. According to Qurashi, the armed man “is wearing an orange-colored wrist band very common among religious Hindus… The band is sacred to fundamentalist Hindus who believe wearing it shows devotion and brings good luck from gods.”

© Unknown
Azam Amir Kasab, 21, is said to be the man pictured at Mumbai’s train station carrying an assault rifle and grenades – and the only terrorist survivor.

We read from the UK Guardian how the official story of the events is finally taking shape:

“Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated last night after it was claimed that the only terrorist to have survived three days of deadly battles in Mumbai was from Pakistan, and that his nine fellow Islamist militants were either from that country or had been trained there.”

Hold on! Just a day before, the papers in Britain were talking about up to seven terrorists being British – from Leeds, Hartlepool and Bradford. It was also mentioned that “two Britons were captured with eight other terrorists after commandos stormed two hotels and a Jewish centre to free hostages.” That is ten captured terrorists. But now we have only one survivor, by the name of either Azam Amir Kasab or Mohammed Ajmal Qasam, coincidentally said to be the one whose picture appeared on every front page, and who in spite of his fanaticism and willingness to engage in a suicidal mission, decided to betray his alleged cause by placing the blame squarely on Pakistan!

[...]

Public anger in India has been mounting following allegations linking Pakistan to the attacks. They include:

- Kasab’s claim that militants were trained in two camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.

- Allegations that phones found on a trawler suspected of ferrying the gunmen to Mumbai had been used to contact Pakistan. Shades of the “pristine passport” of 9-11.

- The claim by India’s minister of state for home affairs, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, that ‘the investigation carried out so far has revealed the hand of Pakistan-based groups in the Mumbai attack’.

In response to the claim that the attackers were either Pakistanis or had been trained there, a senior Pakistani official said troops would be sent to the border if tensions continued to rise.

…which is probably the whole point of the operation: to stimulate the confrontation between India and Pakistan. Notice the mention of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group which according to The Times had connections to the Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI). What The Times fails to mention is that the ISI also had connections to the CIA, but when the purpose of propaganda is to blame Pakistan as a whole, these details do not matter.

However, despite initial claims, it became increasingly certain that there was no involvement of British-based fundamentalists. Police forces across the UK denied they were investigating named individuals and Gordon Brown said there was no evidence linking any of the terrorist to the UK.

Of course there won’t be any “evidence” of anything that contradicts the narrative intended for public consumption. Given the anomalies in the already unbelievable story of the attacks, and that Pakistan and Muslims in general had nothing to win and everything to lose as a result, plus the timing which nicely matched Israel’s siege of Gaza and diverted the world’s attention, please excuse us if once again we smell a false flag operation.

The attack could have been only carried out by either elite units sponsored by a government and who had a secured escape route amidst the confusion (for example, by surrendering in the knowledge that they would be later quietly released); by mind controlled individuals in disregard of their own lives; or by a combination of both.

It is important to understand that when we talk about mind control, we are not really saying anything more extraordinary than what the mainstream media is already telling you. Even if you believe the official narrative, you would have to accept that anyone capable of randomly murdering as many people as possible in a suicidal mission has been brainwashed into doing something against reason, moral, nature and common sense. Whether mind control is performed by social indoctrination, Pavlovian conditioning or some technique that the public is unaware of, the fact is that people can be lead to believe and do things against their natural inclination. So in reality, the how is not really the issue; what is important is the why. As always, in order to understand this, we need to ask: cui bono? (who benefits?).

© Unknown
Detail from Denver Airport mural.

We need some context. As we explained in our September installment, the ex Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf – an unconditional supporter of the United States – recently left the government and was replaced by Asif Ali Zardari, who decided to stand up for the rights of his country and challenge the US’ military incursions into his territory. Most likely as a result of his stance, the Marriot hotel in Islamabad was bombed on the night that Zardari was planning to have dinner in there with all his ministers. Nevertheless, Zardari keeps representing a challenge and the US has responded by making Pakistan a target of its rhetoric and drone plane missiles. Thus, the military-intelligence complex of the US has motive to carry out a terror attack and blame it on Pakistan – bearing in mind that Pakistan’s intelligence, the ISI, may be more loyal to the CIA than Zardari.

The second (usual) suspect is Israeli intelligence. With Pakistan now a rebel against the Axis of Evil, they become a target by virtue of being Muslim players with nuclear capabilities. Following the reasoning that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, they may be ‘helping’ right wing elements within the Indian establishment to bring about a confrontation with Pakistan – whether their Indian counterparts know it or not. Recall that back in 2000 Indian intelligence officials in Calcutta detained 11 foreign nationals for interrogation before they were to board a flight to Bangladesh, on suspicion of being hijackers, but then released them after they were thought to be Islamic preachers. However, they turned out to have Israeli passports and the Israeli government “exerted considerable pressure” on Delhi to secure their release. Intelligence analysts suspect that they were working for Mossad.

Finally, we should not dismiss Quraishi’s hypothesis that “a core group of secular ideologues and Hindu nationalists are executing a ‘soft coup’ in New Delhi to bring to power hawks who want to pursue America’s agenda of grooming India as a regional policeman, sort out Pakistan and confront China.” According to Quraishi, the antiterrorism chief killed in the recent attacks, Hemant Karkare, was the man who uncovered the plot as he “had been in the midst of a high-profile investigation of a suspected Hindu terrorist cell.”

Naturally, these three suspects do not exclude each other.

Emboldened bullies enter Gaza

The attacks in Mumbai had the unfortunate (and perhaps intended) effect of steering the world’s attention away from the tragedy of the people of Gaza. In case you missed it, here is the link to Windmill Knight and Joe Quinn’s analysis on the Gaza siege. Lets recap the events and add some updated information.

On the day of the US election, while everyone on the globe was glued to their TV sets, the Israelis decided that it was a good time to break the truce with Hamas, invade Gaza, kill six Palestinians, and blame them for breaking the ceasefire when subsequently, Hamas retaliated by launching rockets into Israel. There is no doubt that the Zionists read Obama’s choice of Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff (see below) as a green light to go on with their plans, as things have only got worse.

© Unknown
Jews against Zionism

Israeli aircraft fired missiles at targets in the northern Gaza Strip, injuring two Palestinians, allegedly in response to rockets from Hamas. The cease-fire was broken a week before when the Israeli military raided what the army said was a tunnel that militants planned to use for a cross-border raid. Of course, one cannot be a bully without an excuse, and that is why those largely inefficient and mostly harmless rockets from Hamas are so convenient. Why would Hamas make use of a tactic that results in overwhelmingly negative effects for their cause? In fact, a month and a half ago, Hamas blamed ‘Israeli collaborators’ for launching the rockets.

The UN was forced to close Gaza aid centers, after a strict Israeli border closure depleted UN food reserves, nearly a month ago.

The UNRWA, the UN agency that caters for Palestinian refugees, has described the consequences of the Israeli rejection of trucks of food as “catastrophic“. Indeed, we are talking about three quarters of a million of people without access to food!! Now how would you call that: genocide, terrorism or both?

John Ging, the director of the UN operations in Gaza, declared:

“We cannot describe the situation in Gaza Strip except as a terrible and terrifying one.There are 750,000 refugees who depend on what we offer them in food supplies, and the Israelis are preventing us from distributing these supplies [...] The Israeli closure, collectively punishing civilians, is a violation of international law.“

As with all crimes, the criminals do not like witnesses. Twenty European consuls whom had planned to visit Gaza were denied entry at the Erez border crossing. Aid workers were also turned away at the border, and medical patients were prevented from leaving the Strip for treatment. Likewise, foreign journalists were prevented from entering for at least a week.

So what is the Zionist plan? There is no need for much speculation this time; Israeli Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Vilnai, has explained what’s going on for us: a large-scale invasion of Gaza is only a matter of time and the army is already prepared. As Jonathan Cook writes

:

All of these moves[removing setters; withdrawing the IDF to just outside the Gazan boarder] are designed with the same purpose in mind: persuading the world that Israel’s occupation of Gaza is over and that Israel can therefore ignore the laws of occupation and use unremitting force against Gaza.

Cabinet ministers have been queuing up to express such sentiments. Ehud Olmert, for example, has declared that Gazans should not be allowed to “live normal lives”; Avi Dichter believes punishment should be inflicted “irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians”; Meir Sheetrit has urged that Israel should “decide on a neighbourhood in Gaza and level it” – the policy discussed by ministers last week.

And here’s the sick irony to this sorry story: while Gaza was being starved to death, Bush unexpectedly met in New York with Foreign Minister (and former Mossad agent) Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres, who congratulated him for “advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace hopes”, and for “standing up to terrorism and extremism.” Pass the sick bag.

Likud MK calls for using Palestinian prisoners as human shields against Qassam rockets.

Although the blockade was released temporarily, Barak then decided to keep the crossings closed, creating a health disaster in Gaza due to chlorine depletion. Clean water has become a distant dream for those Palestinians.. Furthermore, a Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tons of supplies for the Gaza Strip has been turned away by the Israeli navy Monday morning, although naturally the Israeli navy denied it.

This new offensive of Israel’s genocidal racism looks serious. With the world political climate as it is, it is no wonder that among other inhuman statements we find a Likud member of the Knesset proposing the use of Palestinian prisoners as human shields for the Israeli army. The deputy defense minister Vilnai reminded us that this sort of words represent real intentions and not just rhetoric: Israel is “very close to a large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip,” he said.

Why is the tragedy of Gaza largely ignored by the media and the world population in general? Why do world leaders shy away from their responsibility towards the most vulnerable of people? Why will they not even dare to condemn these new Nazis? Oh yes, we forget: nobody messes with Zionism.

Gangster wars

With all these human tragedies going on, we almost forgot to mention that a guy called Barak Obama won the elections in some “First World” country and that he’s supposed to bring change and save us all.

In order to understand what took place in the US elections, consider Simon Davies & Donald Hunt explanation of the behavior of elites:

The members of the inner circles are hardly ever seen in public life and generally do not hold public office. Our presidents, prime ministers, government ministers, politicians, business leaders, banking heads and other public figures belong to the intermediate and outer circles. They might migrate inwards but only after leaving public office.

By their very nature these circles are secret and the members, particularly of the inner circles, known only to a few. With whom the ultimate power lies is a matter of much debate. While there are undoubtedly those whose families have remained at the top for many generations, membership is not necessarily perpetual; there are always challenges and always intense competition especially at the lower levels. For members or ‘players’ to rise through the layers they have to be cunning, ruthless and ultimately, survivors. To retain power the members of the elite have to always ‘be in the game’. It is crucial to understand that while we are all excluded from these circles such that they may seem like a cozy club from the outside; on the inside the competition is intense. What we see on the world stage is the result of these competing forces. While the general direction has been agreed upon by the members of the inner circles of power, the details are always being fought out between themselves at the highest, strategic level, and between the members of the intermediate and outer circles at the tactical, territorial level. This is exactly what is happening with the current “financial crisis”.

Anybody who has seen the inner workings of a global corporation or bank will attest to the manifestation of these two forces within such organizations. The 80′s American TV show ‘Dallas’ is another good example — the Ewings were at each other’s throats all the time but were impenetrable and cohesive when any outside threat arose.

Thus, we can read the US electoral process as follows: Obama and McCain were only the outer faces of two groups of power struggling for the details of how to carry out a general agenda which was already decided by the inner circles. We had already noticed a couple of months ago the connection of the right-wing Evangelicals – Dominionism in particular – to Sarah Palin, and we took notice of Joe Biden’s link to Zionism. With Obama’s victory, we have had further confirmation of the Zionists supporting his campaign (see below).

In principle, the Zionists could have chosen to align themselves with the Republicans, as they have done in the past. But they probably took the Evangelic agenda into consideration and decided against it. After all, according to these Apocalyptic Christians, at some point of the End Days (which they think is now) Israel needs to convert or be destroyed. So Zionism decided to put its bet on Obama and help him into the White House – for a price, of course. It is yet to be seen if the Christian right wingers will try something else to compensate for their mistake of forcing a not very bright Sarah Palin into the Republican campaign.

By the way, did you notice how easily the media changed sides overnight? Even on the day of the election, Fox was still promoting the idea that Obama had to be feared because of his inexperience; and a few days later it was pushing the story about Palin not knowing that Africa was a continent. From this we learn something: that the media is not that high up in the power hierarchy; rather, it is a servant who is constantly guessing who are the real masters and what they really want.

China assures full support to Pakistan

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China assures full support to Pakistan

China has assured full moral, financial and material support to Pakistan in the wake of situation arose after terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

China in a message to Pakistan, said that the country would assist Pakistan in any situation to overcome the problems and challenges being faced by it.

The Chinese leadership is in constant contact with Pakistan to know the nature of assistance the latter requires and ensure its immediate availability.

However, according to officials’ sources, Pakistan is self-sufficient in defence and it is impossible for any state of the world to harm the country. They said Pakistan Army, Navy and Air Force are well equipped to protect the homeland.

“No Child Left Behind “: “Trojan Horse” for Pentagon Recruiters

Sherwood Ross

The Pentagon has used the No Child Left Behind Act as a Trojan Horse to propagandize vulnerable teenage students, invade their privacy, harass them, and get them to enlist.

Passage of the NCLB in 2001 has given Pentagon recruiters “unprecedented access to public high schools and to students’ personal information” and has “changed the landscape of military recruitment in public high schools across the U.S.,” the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) charges.

Section 9528 of NCLB not only permits recruiters to obtain students’ personal information without prior parental consent but guarantees them access to public high schools without parental consent, ACLU says.

As such, NCLB violates Article 3 of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty ratified by the Senate.

“Recruiters use the lists of students’ names and contact information provided pursuant to the NCLB to cold-call students for hours each day,” ACLU has found, adding the military is targeting “poor students and students of color.”

School districts that want to get Federal funds under Section 9528 of NCLB must provide recruiters with student information such as names, addresses, and phone numbers.

And while NCLB allows parents to “opt out” of providing the information, “many school districts do not have a clear process in place by which to do this,” ACLU says and don’t inform parents of this option.

The situation was brought to light in a 46-page ACLU report titled “Soldiers of Misfortune.”

Many parents are shaken to learn of the recruiters’ sweeping new powers. One parent of a freshman in a New York public school told the civil liberties group: “When I was informed about NCLB and the opt out provision, I was stunned. I would never have known that my child was open to this type of recruitment or that (recruiters) would be getting our information…I don’t like the idea that somebody would be contacting him independent of me, especially at such a young and vulnerable age.”

A joint survey by the ACLU and the Manhattan Borough President’s office of nearly 1,000 students in 45 high schools found that two in five respondents did not get a military opt-out form at the start of the 2006-07 academic year, in violation of City guidelines. Of those that did receive them, more than a third said nobody from their school explained the form to them or told them of their right to withhold personal information from the recruiters.

In Edison, N.J., Andrew Arnaldi, a high school senior, said the recruiter that contacted him even after he filed an opt out letter “mocked his pacifist views,” adding, “They’re becoming more aggressive.” In East Los Angeles, Sam Coleman, the father of a Fountain Valley high school student, said despite his request to the school district not to do so, they turned over information to the recruiters. His son was called several times and got frequent mailings. Coleman said, “for all I know his information could be floating around in any number of databases.”

ACLU surveys in Arizona and Rhode Island also turned up evidence that school districts statewide either were doing a poor job of informing parents of the opt-out procedure or not protecting the privacy rights of students in interactions with military recruiters.

“Public schools serve as prime recruiting grounds for the military, and the U.S. military’s generally accepted procedures for recruitment of high school students plainly violate the Optional Protocol,” the ACLU says.

One military recruiter in Los Angeles reportedly does push-ups with students during physical ed classes and distributes key chains and T-shirts and posters in the lunch room reading “Think of Me as Your New Guidance Counselor.”

The ACLU says such activities constitute recruitment and that the Army’s recruiting handbook does not advise recruiters to limit their activities to youths aged 17 and over as required by the Protocol. “Instead, recruiters are encouraged to target the entire high school population, grooming prospective recruits as early as possible,” the ACLU says.

Sherwood Ross has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and as a columnist for wire services. He currently directs a public relations firm for non-profit organizations. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com. Disclosure: Ross is a member of the ACLU but is not connected with them in any other way.

AMERICA’S CONCERN FOR LEBANON, SUBJECT TO ISRAELI APPROVAL

.btn { width: 22px; height: 22px; border: 1px solid buttonface; margin: 0; padding: 0; } .btnOver { width: 22px; height: 22px; border: 1px outset; } .btnDown { width: 22px; height: 22px; border: 1px inset; background-color: buttonhighlight; } .btnNA { width: 22px; height: 22px; border: 1px solid buttonface; filter: alpha(opacity=25); } .cMenu { background-color: threedface; color: menutext; cursor: Default; font-family: MS Sans Serif; font-size: 8pt; padding: 2 12 2 16; }.cMenuOver { background-color: highlight; color: highlighttext; cursor: Default; font-family: MS Sans Serif; font-size: 8pt; padding: 2 12 2 16; }.cMenuDivOuter { background-color: threedface; height: 9 }.cMenuDivInner { margin: 0 4 0 4; border-width: 1; border-style: solid; border-color: threedshadow threedhighlight threedhighlight threedshadow; } We Do Care…We’re Sending M-60’s to Face Merkavas! Mohamad Shmaysani Readers Number : 101 02/12/2008 “The Lebanese armed forces have a unique role. It’s one of the strongest national institutions in Lebanon. All Lebanese look up to it as a symbol of their state,” a senior Pentagon official said. In an article posted on the US Department of Defense internet site, Chris Straub, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Near East and South Asian affairs said that the United States and Lebanon signed a military cooperation agreement in October, establishing the U.S.-Lebanese Joint Military Commission to provide an official framework for the bilateral U.S.-Lebanese military relationship. Straub attributed the “weakness of the Lebanese military” to the 1975-1990 civil war and what he called “the Syrian occupation.” He, however refrained to mention that arming the Lebanese Army, throughout 60 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine, was subject to Israel’s approval which has never been given to the US. The senior Pentagon official acknowledged that since Syrian forces pulled out of Lebanon in 2005, the US provided the military corps with everything but arms to defend “this unique country that we care of”. “Twice since Syrian troops left Lebanon in 2005, U.S. Central Command officials have surveyed the Lebanese military and presented findings and recommendations. The most important one was that the Lebanese military needed a lot of help in the military basics, which are not always the most glamorous. They needed trucks, Humvees, parts and ammunition more than they needed high-end, expensive weaponry. They also need training. The 72,000-member Lebanese military needs basic help with training in marksmanship, urban combat, logistics and maintenance, and staff functions. Lebanese officers are attending several U.S. military colleges, and the International Military Education and Training fund for Lebanon has grown from $1.4 million in fiscal 2008 to $2.1 million this year,” Straub said. “It is national policy that Lebanon be sovereign, that Lebanon be independent,” Straub said. “Our part of that is to help build up the Lebanese armed forces so the Lebanese government can be sovereign in all its territory.” Straub also said that “the U.S. goal is for the army and police working for the democratically elected Lebanese government to exercise power throughout the country. That’s not going to happen tomorrow, or perhaps next year. But that is our goal.” In Straub’s dictionary, helping an army to protect the sovereignty and independence of its country, especially Lebanon that is subject to, literarily, daily Israeli violation of its land, sea and air, is by sending it unmanned aerial vehicles ineffective during a defensive action, trucks, Humvees and spare parts, not defensive weapons like air defense systems and defensive tanks or modern weaponry. “The United States has sent 285 Humvees to Lebanon, and another 312 will arrive by March. The United States has sent 200 trucks to the Lebanese and 41 M-198 155 mm artillery pieces. The Lebanese army also will get night-vision equipment and some tactical unmanned aerial vehicles. We want them to play their role in controlling Lebanese territory. We also want them to deter the terrorist threat.” Straub, therefore, has explained the purpose of aiding the Lebanese army: to play their role in controlling Lebanese territory and deter terrorist threat, but not to defend Lebanon against Israel’s violation of its sovereignty. The US has said it will provide Lebanon with a few M-60 tanks, yet he added: “We’re not trying to build up some juggernaut that could be threatening to anyone in the region, but to make the Lebanese armed forces capable in their own country,” Straub said. “We don’t have a conversation on these matters without considering the concerns of Israel and Israel’s qualitative military edge,” he said. “That’s a U.S. commitment that we take very seriously. For example, the Lebanese army M-60 tanks are no match for Israel’s Mekava 4 main battle tanks,” he explained. If neither new M-60 tanks, unmanned aerial vehicles, Humvees, trucks nor spare parts could possibly match Israel’s arsenal which it used to wage more than five bloody wars against Lebanon and is still using it to violate Lebanese sovereignty, then what possibly can create a balance of power between two countries at war? A US-backed aggressive campaign had been launched against Hezbollah to disarm it under the pretext of: “The Lebanese army should be the sole force to defend the country.” The resistance party agrees that the Lebanese army should assume this mission, but with what means? Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah called on all friendly countries to well equip the army, but his call went through deaf ears. He even urged the Lebanese government to buy arms from the black market to render the Lebanese army strong as it should be in the face of Israel, but this also seems to be materialized in perhaps another lifetime. In 2006, dozens of Lebanese army soldiers lost their lives while bravely defending the country with very modest means, yet with very high morals. Their barracks, far from the battle zone, were bombed at night while some of the massacred soldiers were asleep. Today Israel is threatening Lebanon with another war, apparently to avenge its defeat by the resistance in 2006, and this time Tel Aviv warns that all of Lebanon and its infrastructure will be on its list of targets. One can’t but really wish that a few Humvees will salvage Lebanon!

More evidence of CIA-backed syndicate involvement in Mumbai attacks

By Wayne Madsen

(WMR) — WMR’s Asian intelligence sources have provided additional information on the wave of terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Under pressure from Washington, this past May Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani cut a secret deal with the United States and India to turn over to Delhi a number of residents of Pakistan wanted by India for terrorism. One of those included in the deal was the CIA’s erstwhile asset, Mumbai-born Dawood Ibrahim, a veteran of CIA operations in Afghanistan during the mujahedin war against the Soviets.

Ibrahim, according to our sources, has been under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) intelligence agency since June. He is being protected in Quetta, near the Waziristan tribal region. The CIA is fearful that if Ibrahim is deported to India, RAW and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will obtain the entire dossier on the CIA’s sponsorship of criminal activities and terrorist attacks. ISI would prefer Ibrahim to move to the United Arab Emirates, perhaps Dubai, where he has extensive financial interests. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is a business rival of Ibrahim and the ISI would like Ibrahim to be at a distance from Pakistan’s president and “settle scores” with his old “allies” and new enemies in Langley from outside Pakistani territory.

Ibrahim is reportedly using his gangland “muscle” in India to send a clear message to Delhi and Washington that he is a force to be reckoned with. The son of a Bombay (Mumbai) police constable who, himself, dabbled in organized criminal activity, Ibrahim has his informants and agents peppered throughout the Indian police, India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), and Pakistan’s ISI. Ibrahim also knows a great deal about the CIA’s operations on the subcontinent, including having the “goods” on the CIA’s “Afghanist” agents, as well as agency veterans of Kathmandu who dabbled in personal loans from Ibrahim to pay off gambling debts, personal favors for the CIA, highly sought after prostitutes, and drugs. Many of these veterans of Nepal are now senior analysts and operational personnel at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The CIA has every reason to blame the Mumbai attacks on a coterie of “Islamist” groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, “Al Qaeda,” and a new group called “Deccan Mujahedin.” If the media takes a closer look at Ibrahim they will find links to Langley and that is something neither the CIA nor Pakistan or India wants to see happen lest other “dirty laundry” also comes to the forefront. Ibrahim’s joint casino interests with the CIA in Kathmandu apparently involves money laundering for top Indian politicians in New Delhi, as well as some of India’s more well-known “Bollywood” actors.

Indian police are now reporting they have seven small boats in their custody that were used by the Mumbai terrorists to sail from Pakistan to the Indian coast. WMR has learned the boats in question are inflatables used by Ibrahim’s commandos who landed on the Mumbai seafront from Karachi with AK-47s and walked down the sidewalk into the lobbies of 5-star hotels and simply opened fire. Part of Ibrahim’s motive is not only to send a message to Washington, London, and Delhi that he will not be traded in a double-cross engineered by the CIA but also to send a warning to the extremist Hindu Shiv Sena terrorist gang that he is not ceding Mumbai’s gangland turf to Shiv Sena without a fight.

Ibrahim also sent a warning message to Israel by seizing Chabad House in Mumbai, reportedly a haven for right-wing Jewish Orthodox groups and Israeli military “trainers” who pose as backpackers on holiday in Kashmir during their reconnaissance missions.

Apparently, the Israelis’ uncouth behavior toward Kashmiri locals, including cheating taxi drivers and lodges, became known to Ibrahim who figured he could also take advantage of his assault on Mumbai to teach the Israelis a couple of lessons. The Israelis are in Kashmir to train Indians on their side of the India-Pakistan Kashmiri Line of Control. The Israelis maintain a military training facility, known as the Ibex Center, outside of Leh, the capital of Ladakh. There, the Israelis train Tibetan exiles and local Buddhist soldiers who serve in the Ladakh Scouts, the mountain commandos who patrol the Indian side of the Line of Control and the Siachen Glacier. Also trained by the Israelis is the “Tibetan Army,” the Indian Army unit also known as the Special Frontier Force. The training takes place at the Mussorie parajump base in northern India. Kashmiri separatists claim Israeli trainers have served with Tibetan commandos in putting down insurgencies in Assam and Manipur in northeastern India.

The Israelis began operating out of Chabad House after receiving a contract in 1996, a year after a group of Western tourists were captured by militants in Kashmir. A Norwegian was beheaded in the incident. The attack was condemned by every mujahedin group in Kashmir and Pakistan. Some blamed Israelis for the kidnapping of the Westerners in exchange for the security contract and the use of Indian Air Force bases in Jammu, part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The Jammu bases are within a 20-minute striking range of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities and missile bases. Pakistani ISI alleges that Israeli fighter bombers at the Jammu bases are disguised with false Indian markings and are armed with nuclear weapons.

WMR’s Asian intelligence sources report that Chabad Houses are fronts for Israeli military intelligence and Mafia activities in other Asian cities. In Bangkok, Israeli military pilots and drivers who stay at the Chabad House there train Thai Army commandos, divers, and pilots who are fighting a Muslim secessionist movement along the southern border with Malaysia. Bangkok police have long suspected Chabad House as a center for the Israeli Mafia, which runs its Ecstasy and Ice trade from Bangkok for all of Southeast and East Asia. The Israeli Mafia also reportedly runs heroin labs in Myanmar, where an Israeli military officer serves in Myanmar’s feared military counter-intelligence agency.

By torching the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, Ibrahim has also earned a few extra points with Pakistan’s government. The Taj Mahal is owned by the Taj Group, an enterprise of the multi-billionaire Tata family of India. Tata stands to make a fortune from the U.S.-India nuclear technology sharing pact as a defense supplier for India’s future modernized nuclear arsenal. The targeting of the Tata-owned hotel was a stark warning, via Ibrahim’s gang, that America will pay dearly for backing India’s expanded nuclear ambitions. And for that, Islamabad obviously looked the other way as Ibrahim’s men deployed to Mumbai by sea from Karachi.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com

Breakdown of the Global Monetary System by summer 2009

Phase IV of the Global Systemic crisis: Breakdown of the Global Monetary System by summer 2009

- Public announcement GEAB [Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin] N°29 (November 17, 2008) -

The G20-meeting held in Washington on November 14/15, 2008, is in its essence a historical indicator that the Western – above all Anglo-Saxon – monopoly on global economic and financial governance, is coming to an end. Nevertheless, according to LEAP/E2020, this meeting also clearly demonstrated that this kind of summits is doomed to inefficiency because they concentrate on curing the symptoms (banks’ and hedge funds’ financial difficulties, derivative markets’ explosion, financial and currency markets’ dramatic volatility, …) rather than the fundamental root of the current crisis, i.e. the collapse of the Bretton Woods system based on the US Dollar as sole pillar of the global monetary system. Without a complete overhaul of the system inherited from 1944 by summer 2009, the failing of the current system and that of the United States at the center, will lead the whole planet to an unprecedented economic, social, political and strategic instability, and more specifically to a breakdown of the global monetary system by summer 2009. In light of the technocratic jargon and calendar of the declaration released after this first G20-meeting (totally disconnected from the speed and scope of the unfolding crisis (1)), it is more than likely that the disaster will have to happen for the fundamental problems to be seriously addressed and for the beginning of a reply to be initiated.

Four key-factors are now pushing the Bretton Woods II (2) system to collapse in the course of the year 2009:

• Fast weakening of the central players: USA, UK
• Three visions of the future of global governance will be dividing world’s largest players (United-States, Eurozone, China, Japan, Russia, Brazil) by spring 2009
• Unbridled speeding-up of the last decade’s (de-)stabilizing processes
• Increasing number of more and more violent backlashes.

LEAP/E2020 already extensively described factors 1 and 4 in previous editions of the GEAB. Therefore we will concentrate on factors 2 and 3 in the present edition (GEAB N°29).

The agitation that has seized global leaders since the end of September 2008 indicates that panic has struck at the highest level. Worldwide political leaders have now understood that the house is on fire. But they have not yet perceived something obvious: that the very structure of the building is involved. Improving fire-regulations or reorganizing emergency services will not be sufficient. To use a strong symbolic image, the World Trade Center’s twin towers did not collapse because firemen were late or because water was missing in the automatic fire-system, they collapsed because their structure was not meant to support the shock of two airliners hitting them in just a few minutes.

Today’s global monetary system is in a similar situation: the twin-towers are the Bretton Woods system, and the airliners are called « subprime crisis », « banking failures », « economic recession », « Very Great US Depression », « US deficits », … a whole squadron.

First year of major correction (Dow, as percentage, since 1900) – Source ChartoftheDay

Today’s leaders, who all belong to the collapsing world (including Barak Obama (3)), cannot possibly imagine how to solve the problem, just like central bankers in 2006/2007 could not possibly imagine the scope the unfolding crisis could reach (4). It is their world which is disappearing under their eyes, their beliefs and their illusions (sometimes similar) (5). According to our team, a 20 percent renewal of worldwide leaders is required to begin to see sustainable solutions (6) appear. This is indeed, according to LEAP/E2020, the « critical mass » needed to permit any fundamental change of perspective in a complex not very hierarchical human group. Today we are still far from reaching this critical mass: in order to contribute to finding solutions to the crisis, those new leaders must accede power in full awareness of the crisis’ specific nature.

According to LEAP/E2020, if global leaders fail to realize that in the next three months and to take actions in the next six months, as explained in GEAB N°28, the US debt will « implode » by summer 2009 under the shape of the country’s defaulting or the Dollar’s dramatic devaluation. This implosion will follow closely a number of similar episodes affecting less central countries (see GEAB N°28), including the United Kingdom whose already huge debt is ballooning at the same pace as Washington’s (7). In the same way as the US Federal Reserve saw, month after month, its « Primary Dealers » (8) being swept away by the crisis before it was itself confronted to a real problem of capitalization and therefore survival, the United States in the coming year will witness the implosion of all countries too-closely integrated to their economy and finance, and of their allies financially too-dependent on them (9).

Monetary authorities with the largest foreign reserves in 2008 – Sources FMI/BRI/Wikipedia , 10/2008

The role the Europeans can play in the matter is essential (10). The Eurozone in particular must send out a strong message towards Washington: « The United States will fall into an economic and financial pitfall in 2009 if they cling to their past « privileges ». Once the world has given up on the Dollar, it will be too late to negotiate ». With more than 550-billion USD, the Eurozone owns the third largest reserve (ex-aequo with Russia who is not very accurate on that aspect) after China and Japan, and before the Gulf oil-monarchies (see table above). It therefore has the diplomatic weight, the financial weight, the economic weight, the commercial weight and the monetary weight required to compel Washington to face realities (11). The EU altogether will follow because non-Euro EU countries are all on the verge of a severe crisis of their currency or economy or both (12). Without the Euroland, their outlook is very gloomy in the short and medium term. As a matter of fact, the Euro is the only currency a growing number of initially reluctant (Iceland, Denmark…) or skeptical (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary…) countries now wish to join (13).

Sign of the times, the Financial Times has started to list the US federal state’s tangible assets: military bases, national parks, public buildings, museums, etc… everything has been evaluated for a total amount of approximately 1,500-billion USD, i.e. more or less the probable amount of the budget deficit in 2009 (see the detail of these assets in the chart below). No wonder why Taiwan, despite its dependence on the security provided by Washington, decided to stop buying one of the three great components of the US public deficit, the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac securities (despite the fact that they were « rescued » by the government (14)); or why Japan is now a net-seller of US T-Bonds.

All those who, despite our advice in the past two years, invested in Fannie and Freddy securities or in stock markets or in large US private equity banks or in the banking sector in general, have no reason to worry: it will not happen because « they » will prevent it! A problem remains however: “they” are now panic stricken and “they” understand nothing to this situation “they” were never prepared to face. Like we explained in the GEAB N°28, 2008 was only the detonator of the global systemic crisis. Now comes Phase IV, phase of the aftermath!

US government balance sheet (09/2007) – Source US GOA / Financial Times

———
Notes:

(1) Here is the final communique released and a first non-committal analysis from the French press (Journal du Dimanche, close to the Paris government) which gives an idea of the opinion of the media throughout the Eurozone. Obviously the G20-Summit did not manage to calm down the crisis, it could even result in enhanced worry, seen the US refusal to agree on addressing the real problems.

(2) Whatever may think Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as some rather unprofessional media, Bretton Woods II dates back to the 1970s. In 1971 indeed, the US unilateral decision to give up the Dollar/Gold peg, soon followed by the Jamaica agreement in 1976, put an end to the initial Bretton Woods framework and marked the beginning of a system of floating exchange rates (Bretton Woods II).

(3) The future president of the United States seems to have for sole aim the implementation of his campaign program (social security, infrastructure, middle-class tax reduction,…), listed before the crisis, and requiring major expenses, when the US federal state is already over-indebted. It was a perfect program… for an America that no longer exists except in electoral speeches.

(4) On this subject, read our anticipations in GEAB N°17 and N°18.

(5) This goes for the USD-reserves of many countries such as China, Japan and the Gulf oil-monarchies. Today’s leaders are not able to imagine that the hundreds of billions of USD piled up in their reserves are only worth 50 or 30 percent of their face value. It will belong to their successors to make rational conclusions and invent a different global system.

(6) That is to say conceptually relevant and efficiently implemented.

(7) As a matter of fact, because of its strong recession, the United Kingdom is already accounting for a large part of the EU’s slowdown in 2009. Great-Britain will be the « sickman » of the EU in the years to come.

(8) It is informative to read on Wikipedia the history of « Primary Dealers », those banks chosen by the US Federal Reserve as privileged partners and sole ones allowed to deal with the Fed. Indeed after a few decade-long period of stability, the list has suddenly begun to shrink as « primary dealers » began to be swept away by the crisis in 2008.

(9) Talking about dependent allies, Pakistan and Ukraine are already under IMF perfusion, and Turkey’s credit rating is about to be downgraded. Egypt, Israel and Colombia should soon join the list.

(10) Joseph Stiglitz also underlines this point in his article dated 11/11/2008 in the Telegraph

(11) Our team is far from believing that the Eurozone is not confronted to severe difficulties as well (on the economic outlook, see GEAB N°28 in particular), but in a historic crisis such as the one currently unfolding, these problems are minor compared to those the US, the UK or even Asia will face in the next year.

(12) For instance Latvia has just nationalized as a matter of urgency the country’s second largest bank, Hungary is under ECB and IMF perfusion, Polish growth is collapsing, Denmark and Sweden will join the Eurozone in the couple of years, UK is in distress…

(13) Source: NRC, 11/13/2008. Unlike the US, currency faced to a general move on the part of countries willing to « un-peg » from the Dollar, or even create alternative currencies such as the Gulf’s oil-monarchies and their project of common currency by 2010. Source: GulfNews, 09/22/2008

(14) Fanny Mae’s announcement of a new record-high loss in the third quarter (29-billion USD) might provide an explanation. Sources : Barron’s, 10/24/2008; MarketWatch, 11/10/2008

Confronting the Terrorist Within

Confronting the Terrorist Within

By Chris Hedges

December 01, 2008 “Truthdig” — – The Hindu-Muslim communal violence that led to the attacks in Mumbai, as well as the warnings that the New York City transit system may have been targeted by al-Qaida, are one form of terrorism. There are other forms.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when viewed from the receiving end, are state-sponsored acts of terrorism. These wars defy every ethical and legal code that seek to determine when a nation can wage war, from Just War Theory to the statutes of international law largely put into place by the United States after World War II. These wars are criminal wars of aggression. They have left hundreds of thousands of people, who never took up arms against us, dead and seen millions driven from their homes. We have no right as a nation to debate the terms of these occupations. And an Afghan villager, burying members of his family’s wedding party after an American airstrike, understands in a way we often do not that terrorist attacks can also be unleashed from the arsenals of an imperial power.

Barack Obama’s decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan and leave behind tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines in Iraq—he promises only to withdraw combat brigades—is a failure to rescue us from the status of a rogue nation. It codifies Bush’s “war on terror.” And the continuation of these wars will corrupt and degrade our nation just as the long and brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank has corrupted and degraded Israel. George W. Bush has handed Barack Obama a poisoned apple. Obama has bitten it.

The invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were our response to feelings of vulnerability and collective humiliation after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They were a way to exorcise through reciprocal violence what had been done to us.

Collective humiliation is also the driving force behind al-Qaida and most terrorist groups. Osama bin Laden cites the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which led to the carving up of the Ottoman Empire, as the beginning of Arab humiliation. He attacks the agreement for dividing the Muslim world into “fragments.” He rails against the presence of American troops on the soil of his native Saudi Arabia. The dark motivations of Islamic extremists mirror our own.

Robert Pape in “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” found that most suicide bombers are members of communities that feel humiliated by genuine or perceived occupation. Almost every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent—carried out attacks to drive out an occupying power. This was true in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Chechnya and Kashmir, as well as Israel and the Palestinian territories. The large number of Saudis among the 9/11 hijackers appears to support this finding.

A militant who phoned an Indian TV station from the Jewish center in Mumbai during the recent siege offered to talk with the government for the release of hostages. He complained about army abuses in Kashmir, where ruthless violence has been used to crush a Muslim insurgency. “Ask the government to talk to us and we will release the hostages,” he said, speaking in Urdu with what sounded like a Kashmiri accent.

“Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir? Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims? Are you aware how many of them have been killed in Kashmir this week?” he asked.

Terrorists, many of whom come from the middle class, support acts of indiscriminate violence not because of direct, personal affronts to their dignity, but more often for lofty, abstract ideas of national, ethnic or religious pride and the establishment of a utopian, harmonious world purged of evil.  The longer the United States occupies Afghanistan and Iraq, the more these feelings of collective humiliation are aggravated and the greater the number of jihadists willing to attack American targets.

We have had tens of thousands of troops stationed in the Middle East since 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The presence of these troops is the main appeal, along with the abuse meted out to the Palestinians by Israel, of bin Laden and al-Qaida. Terrorism, as Pape wrote, “is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.”

The decision by the incoming Obama administration to embrace an undefined, amorphous “war on terror” will keep us locked in a war without end. This war has no clear definition of victory, unless victory means the death or capture of every terrorist on earth—an impossibility. It is a frightening death spiral. It feeds on itself. The concept of a “war on terror” is no less apocalyptic or world-purifying than the dreams and fantasies of terrorist groups like al-Qaida.

The vain effort to purify the world through force is always self-defeating. Those who insist that the world can be molded into their vision are the most susceptible to violence as antidote. The more uncertainty, fear and reality impinge on this utopian vision, the more strident, absolutist and aggressive are those who call for the eradication of “the enemy.” Immanuel Kant called absolute moral imperatives that are used to carry out immoral acts “a radical evil.” He wrote that this kind of evil was always a form of unadulterated self-love. It was the worst type of self-deception. It provided a moral façade for terror and murder. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a “radical evil.”

The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many in the United States with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. It had its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, who invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi.

Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, who bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb—a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on Sept. 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by an Italian immigrant named Mario Buda in protest over the arrest of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200.

Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaida and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon, during the attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Christians were responsible for three.

The dehumanization of Muslims and the willful ignorance of the traditions and culture of the Islamic world reflect our nation’s disdain for self-reflection and self-examination. It allows us to exalt in the illusion of our own moral and cultural superiority. The world is far more complex than our childish vision of good and evil. We as a nation and a culture have no monopoly on virtue. We carry within us the same propensities for terror as those we oppose.

The Muslim Indian Emperor Akbar at the end of the 16th century filled his court with philosophers, mystics and religious scholars, including Sunni, Sufi and Shiite Muslims, Hindu followers of Shiva and Vishnu, as well as atheists, Christians, Jains, Jews, Buddhists and Zoroastrians. They debated ethics and belief. Akbar was one of the great champions of religious dialogue and tolerance. He forbade any person to be discriminated against on the basis of belief. He declared that everyone was free to follow any religion. His enlightened rule took place as the Inquisition was at its height in Spain and Portugal, and in Rome the philosopher Giordano Bruno was being burnt at the stake in Campo de’ Fiori for heresy.

Tolerance, as well as religious and political plurality, is not exclusive to Western culture. The Judeo-Christian tradition was born and came to life in the Middle East. Its intellectual and religious beliefs were cultivated and formed in cities such as Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople. Many of the greatest tenets of Western civilization, as is true with Islam and Buddhism, are Eastern in origin. Our concept of the rule of law and freedom of expression, the invention of printing, paper, the book, as well as the translation and dissemination of the classical Greek philosophers, algebra, geometry and universities were given to us by the Islamic world. The first law code was invented by the ancient Iraqi ruler Hammurabi. One of the first known legal protections of basic freedoms and equality was promulgated in the third century B.C. by the Buddhist Indian Emperor Ashoka. And, unlike Aristotle, he insisted on equal rights for women and slaves.

The East and the West do not have separate, competing value systems. We do not treat life with greater sanctity than those we belittle. There are aged survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who can tell us something about our high moral values and passionate concern for innocent human life, about our own acts of terrorism. Eastern and Western traditions have within them varied ethical systems, some of which are repugnant and some of which are worth emulating. To hold up the highest ideals of our own culture and to deny that these great ideals exist in other cultures, especially Eastern cultures, is made possible only by historical and cultural illiteracy.

The civilization we champion and promote as superior is, in fact, a product of the fusion of traditions and beliefs of the Orient and the Occident. We advance morally and intellectually when we cross these cultural lines, when we use the lens of other cultures to examine our own. The remains of villages destroyed by our bombs, the dead killed from our munitions, leave us too with bloody hands. We can build a new ethic only when we face our complicity in the cycle of violence and terror.

The fantasy of an enlightened West that spreads civilization to a savage world of religious fanatics is not supported by history. The worst genocides and slaughters of the last century were perpetrated by highly industrialized nations. Muslims, including Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, have a long way to go before they reach the body count of the secular regimes of the Nazis, the Soviet Union or the Chinese communists. It was, in fact, the Muslim-led government in Bosnia that protected minorities during the war while the Serbian Orthodox Christians carried out mass executions, campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing that left 250,000 dead.

Those who externalize evil and seek to eradicate that evil through violence lose touch with their own humanity and the humanity of others. They cannot make moral distinctions. They are blind to their own moral corruption. In the name of civilization and high ideals, in the name of reason and science, they become monsters. We will never free ourselves from the self-delusion of the “war on terror” until we first vanquish the terrorist within.

Chris Hedges was Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. His Truthdig column appears on Mondays.

Normalizing unconventional warfare- Making Mercenaries and Hitmen Seem Moral

an expanded role for US specialforces,including,

as in the battle of Tora Bora, the “use of

non-state actors against other non-state actors.”

Normalizing unconventional warfare

A US Special Forces soldier during training activities in Rawah, Iraq.

In an era of persistent irregular conflict, one Washington think tank proposes to make special operations the norm, Peter A Buxbaum writes for ISN Security Watch.

By Peter Buxbaum in Washington, DC for ISN Security Watch

---

During the 2004 US presidential campaign, Democratic Party nominee John Kerry accused President George W Bush of missing an opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden when he “outsourced” the battle of Tora Bora to local Afghan warlords. The accusation set off a debate over whether bin Laden was actually present at Tora Bora at that particular time but skipped the issue over the outsourcing of US military operations.

The US military has partnered with surrogates in the past, but the history of this practice is a limited one. That may change, however, if the ideas of a Washington think tank expert hold sway.

Robert Martinage, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), advocated in a Washington briefing last month an expanded role for US special forces, including, as in the battle of Tora Bora, the “use of non-state actors against other non-state actors.”

The field manual for US Army special operations defines partnering with irregular forces as “unconventional warfare” during one of the missions of US special operations forces. Martinage’s proposal is in sync with army thinking: The special ops field manual, which was published in September 2008, emphasizes unconventional warfare over other special operations missions such as civil affairs, foreign internal defense (which involves direct aid to local government forces), information operations and psychological operations.

The historical examples of unconventional warfare given in the field manual – support of Nicaragua’s Contras and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s – represented conflicts with government, or regular, forces. Therefore, Martinage’s notion of partnering up with regular forces against other irregular forces is something relatively new, and is born of a global environment characterized by a persistent conflict against Islamist radicalism.

The same environment informs the approach taken by CSBA in other aspects of its recent briefing, which was designed to publicize the organization’s 15-volume series, “Strategy for the Long Haul,” through which it hopes to influence Pentagon and Obama administration thinking.

Besides Islamist radicalism, CSBA’s analysts believe the primary strategic challenges the US faces include hedging against the rise of a more openly confrontational China and preparing for more state and non-state entities possessing weapons of mass destruction.

If CSBA’s analysis is accepted, special operations forces – elite, highly trained military units that conduct operations that exceed the capabilities of conventional forces – will become increasingly mainstream in responding to all of these emerging threats. One reason is that the US does not have a good track record of predicting where military intervention will be required, according to Andrew Krepinevich, CSBA’s president and a retired army officer.

“If we can’t predict future conflicts,” he told ISN Security Watch, “we’ve got to adapt quickly to emerging threats.”

The flexibility and maneuverability of special operations forces, so the argument goes, provides one answer to that challenge.

Krepinevich posited an approaching era of “persistent irregular conflict” with an emphasis on manpower-intensive operations. He criticized the US Army for attempting to handle a full spectrum of military conflicts from high-intensity conventional combat to low-intensity irregular warfare. By trying to make the army equally effective in all conflict types, “it risks becoming marginally competent in many tasks, and highly effective at none,” Krepinevich said.

The answer, for Krepinevich, is that as warfare becomes increasingly complex, the army should produce specialized soldiers. That specialization should be weighted toward irregular warfare, he added, to improve the army’s ability to rapidly build partnerships with allied and indigenous forces.

“The army must maintain a significant standing training and advisory capability that can be deployed on short notice when necessary,” he said.

Along the same lines, Martinage recommended refocusing the deployment of special forces from an episodic basis to a persistent one.

He also explained how beefing up special forces would help the US meet the emerging threats identified by CSBA.

Defeating terrorist groups “will require a multifaceted approach,” Martinage said, “one in which the military instrument will often be far less important than effective foreign assistance, public and private diplomacy, strategic communications and covert action.”

Special operations forces can be postured, according to Martinage, to conduct sustained manhunting and disruption operations; to build ground, air and maritime capabilities among US partners around the world; to generate air and maritime surveillance in areas not under central government control; and to conduct unconventional warfare against terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism.

In the event of a future US-China relationship characterized by competition and conflict, the US would need to dissuade China from investing in capabilities that threaten US and allied interests in East Asia and to deter Chinese aggression. Special operations forces could be called upon, Martinage said, to conduct unconventional warfare operations on China’s periphery; clandestine reconnaissance missions to locate hidden or mobile targets; and information operations focused on penetrating communications and information systems.

In the effort to stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction, globally distributed special ops units could provide an intelligence collection infrastructure and act as a response force to interdict the movement of WMDs.

Special operations forces “could potentially conduct unconventional warfare to bring about regime change in states aspiring to develop WMDs,” Martinage said. “They will also need to be prepared to conduct counterproliferation operations against critical WMD-related infrastructure.”

Special operations, special implications

This kind of strategic thinking embodies some important implications for the future of the US military and will be the subject of some key decisions the Obama administration will have to take in its first year or two in office.

During his campaign for the presidency, Obama endorsed a plan to increase the army’s ground strength by 65,000 troops – a program that would cost US taxpayers US$100 billion over the next four years.

Krepinevich said Obama should forget about beefing up the army’s troop strength. The army depends on manpower more than on military equipment, Krepinevich said, and reports of the decline in the quality of recruits means that increasing the number of troops would be illusory.

Instead, the army should focus on quality over quantity, according to Krepinevich, and that means enhancing the kinds of specialized capabilities offered by special operations forces.

“There are risks in reducing the army’s projected force structure,” Krepinevich acknowledged. But the greater risk lies in “the flawed assumption that an army heavily weighted toward conventional warfare can easily shift to conduct irregular operations.”

An emphasis on the personnel capabilities of special operations forces also leads to a de-emphasis on technology, in Krepinevich’s thinking. The Obama administration, he said, should reconsider Future Combat Systems – the army modernization program which seeks to marry light and maneuverable vehicles with a next-generation communications and information network.

“So much of the success of Future Combat Systems depends on technology that has never been demonstrated,” he said. “As FCS is optimized for conventional warfare, it is not clear it represents the best use of resources in this era of protracted irregular warfare.”

Of course, shifting the US military’s orientation from conventional warfare to special operations will easier said than done. As Martinage pointed out, over 80 percent of special operations capabilities are now tied down in the US Central Command – in other words, in Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to array these capabilities against the future threats CSBA foresees, US special forces will require a major overhaul.

---

Peter Buxbaum, a Washington-based independent journalist, has been writing about defense, security, business and technology for 15 years. His work has appeared in publications such as Fortune, Forbes, Chief Executive, Information Week, Defense Technology International, Homeland Security and Computerworld. His website is www.buxbaum1.com.

INDIAN NEWSPAPER URGING REPETITION OF AMERICA’S MISTAKES

INDIAN NEWSPAPER URGING REPETITION OF AMERICA’S MISTAKES, PRIVATIZING MILITARY ACTION, HIRING MERCENARIES AND BOUNTY HUNTERS TO MURDER AND KIDNAP AT WILL IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.  JUST AS THE US COPIED FAILED ISRAELI POLICIES OF TORTURE, SEGREGATION AND TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS, INDIA IS CONTEMPLATING ACTION THAT WOULD ONLY INFLAME THE SITUATION.

“In 2005, Khan had decided to volunteer as an interpreter for Afghan detainees. American daughter of Afghan immigrants (her parents are Johns Hopkins-educated physicians), Khan thought they were entitled to prove their innocence. But after more than three dozen visits to the Guantánamo prison camp, Khan writes in ‘My Guantánamo Diary’ – “I came to believe that many, perhaps even most of the detainees, were innocent men who had been swept up by mistake.”A number of the men she met insisted they had been “sold to the US by bounty hunters,” after the American military dropped leaflets across Afghanistan promising up to $25,000, or nearly 100 times the annual per capita income, to anyone who would turn in members of the Taliban or Al Qaida.”

One view: Let loose the dogs of war
Man Mohan
Our Roving Editor

New Delhi, December 1
After witnessing “war on Mumbai”, India is examining various options, including hiring “bounty hunters” — like the US — to eliminate Islamic terrorist groups’ master brain in Pakistan or elsewhere.

The best officers of the Indian intelligence community and the Armed Forces are looking at various options available to eliminate the menace of terrorists from across the border.

They believe that only “fortune seekers” can come up with real-time information and deliver the most wanted terrorists and the mafia dons operating from Pakistan and India, especially in Kashmir.

The view is gaining ground among the officers of the country’s domestic and foreign spy agencies as well as the intelligence wings of the Armed Forces. They feel that such clandestine operations are now need of the hour as New Delhi will never allow the Army to chase terrorists and destroy their training camps across the border.

So far, barring a few cases, Indian spy agencies have not played the game of eliminating the enemy at foreign soil. Even at the height of militancy in Punjab, they did not go for “neutralising” the known faces that were sending funds from many western countries.

In this game, Israeli intelligence agency Mossad is always cited. After the killing of the Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympic Games village by Palestinian terrorists, Mossad had sent a dedicated team to Europe and certain West Asian nations to kill the “master brain” and conspirators and it succeeded in its mission.

“It is high time that India goes for this kind of operations or use bounty hunters, otherwise terrorists will continue to strike at their sweet will,” said a highly placed source in an Indian espionage agency.

“A war with Pakistan is not the answer. This time, terrorists deliberately selected big hotel buildings in Mumbai as their targets as they knew that Indian commandos would take several days to flush them out, and the whole world would watch their drama live. Although they died, they succeeded in their mission – creating tension between New Delhi and Islamabad,” the source said.

According to him: “It does not suit Pakistan’s new political leadership to invite India to attack it by carrying out the Mumbai-style terrorist operations. One has to first examine what was the motive of the terrorists. Tension between New Delhi and Islamabad suits only Pakistan’s army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which would like to be back in command.”

“Frankly, many of us see the shadow of General Musharraf lurking somewhere in the background. Through his trusted friends in uniform, he still may be calling the shots to let the army dethrone the political leadership once again by creating a war-like situation. Let us not forget the Kargil episode,” he pointed out.

Since August, reports started reaching here about the Taliban once again running weapon training camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. These camps house Pakistani and Kashmir Mujhadeein.

“In view of a sharp increase in terrorist activities across India, the country’s security agencies agree with the US strategic affairs experts that the time has come to ambush Islamic terrorist organisations’ planners at their base itself,” he said.

Unofficially, the US security and intelligence agencies are running “bounty hunting” operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to catch the Al-Qaida, Taliban and other Mujaheedin warlords.

“Why not? We should also run similar operations across the border and in Kashmir,” said a senior officer associated with electronic surveillance at India-Pakistan border.

With Washington’s blessings, the war on terror has thrown up all kinds of people in the race for bounty hunting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They include: Special Forces’ ex-soldiers and Green Beret commandos, mercenaries, army misfits, contract killers and criminals. They are given tactical support by American intelligence and security agencies. The US has offered $50 million reward for catching elusive Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden dead or alive.

“When the police can offer a reward for catching dacoits and history-sheeters, why not give a reward for nabbing terrorists, dead or alive, who kill not only for money but also for implementing their controllers agenda,” said a senior Intelligence Bureau officer.

Despite a major risk, many Indian intelligence officers believe that there is no harm in launching a “bounty hunting” operation for specific targets in Kashmir, Pakistan, PoK, Bangladesh or elsewhere.

India asks Pakistan for fugitives

PAKISTAN SHOULD TAKE IBRAHIM DAWOOD INTO CUSTODY AS A GOOD FAITH STEP.

India asks Pakistan for fugitives

Several key sites in Mumbai were targeted in the attacks

India has asked Pakistan to hand over 20 fugitives from Indian law who it believes are settled in Pakistan.

Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the names were given during a formal protest to the high commissioner of Pakistan over the attacks in Mumbai.

It was unclear what links the fugitives on the list had to the Mumbai attacks. Pakistan did not respond directly but offered a “joint investigation”.

Tensions have risen between the nations since the attacks that left 188 dead.

Twenty-two foreigners were among those killed and more than 200 people were injured.

Indian officials have repeatedly said in recent days there is evidence that the militants behind the attacks had Pakistani links.

KEY NAMES Dawood Ibrahim (above): Alleged underworld don blamed for serial bombings in Mumbai in 1993 that left at least 250 dead Maulana Masood Azhar: Muslim cleric freed from jail in India in exchange for passengers on a hijacked plane in 1999 Hafiz Saeed: Head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa group and regarded as founder and spiritual leader of militants Lashkar-e-Toiba How Mumbai attacks unfolded

One gunman survived and is in police custody. Indian media reports say Azam Amir Qasab is from Pakistan and linked to the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant group, Lashkar-e-Toiba, or Army of the Pure. The group denies involvement.

Islamabad has also denied any involvement and warned against letting “miscreants” inflame tensions in the region.

India’s new home minister has vowed to “respond with determination and resolve” to the crisis.

Palaniappan Chidambaram said: “This is a threat to the very idea of India, very soul of India.”

But Mr Mukherjee said on Tuesday that India was not considering a military option.

The attackers in Mumbai opened fire in several locations, including a railway station, a popular restaurant, a hospital, two hotels and a Jewish centre.

The attacks on the two hotels – the Taj Mahal Palace and Oberoi-Trident – and the Jewish centre resulted in nearly three days of running battles between elite commandos and the gunmen before the sites were secured.

‘Strong action’

“We have asked for the arrest and handover of those persons who are settled in Pakistan and who are fugitive of Indian law,” Mr Mukherjee told reporters in the Indian capital, Delhi.

Indian media reports say the names include alleged underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who Delhi says lives in Karachi. Pakistani officials deny it.

Much of the list appears to be based on one issued after the attacks on the Indian parliament in 2001.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi did not respond to the list request but said Pakistan was offering “a joint investigating mechanism and a joint commission to India”.

“We are ready to jointly go into the depth of this issue and we are ready to compose a team that could help you,” he said on Tuesday.

The BBC’s David Loyn in Delhi says the offer is unlikely to satisfy the demands made by India for a far tougher response towards militants based in Pakistan.

With embarrassing revelations about intelligence failures and general elections due next year the Indian government is under severe political pressure to be seen to be making a robust response.

On Monday, India’s foreign ministry told Pakistan’s high commissioner that Delhi expected “strong action would be taken against those elements, whosoever they may be, responsible for this outrage”.

A spokesman for the Pakistani high commission played down the meeting, saying discussions were held in a “cordial atmosphere”.

The Indian government has faced growing anger over its handling of the attacks. The home minister and the chief and deputy chief ministers of Maharashtra state all submitted resignations.

But Pakistan and India have refrained from the kind of rhetoric that led to the major military escalation after the 2001 Delhi parliament assault.

Targeting the ISI

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Anjum Niaz

Prime Minister Gilani urgently worked the phones to get through his counterpart in Delhi. Manmohan Singh finally came on the line after two days. Without diplomatic niceties, Singh curmudgeonly ordered the director general of the ISI to appear before his premier intelligence agency RAW in Delhi. India’s wish was Pakistan’s command. Our prime minister (read President Zardari) agreed to send Lt-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha without weighing the hurt caused to our national pride and honour. Pasha reports directly to Gilani, therefore Army Chief Kayani may merely have received an ‘FYI’ (for your information) from the prime minister house because of the manner in which the initial announcement was made.

The chorus against ISI’s role in Mumbai’s killings rises with every passing minute. The Indian government, India’s media and the man on the street blames the ISI. And hence Pasha must be put in the dock in Delhi and read out the Riot Act. The charge-sheet prepared by the British Scotland Yard and American FBI agents now in Mumbai to investigate ‘whodunit’ would likely tangle the ISI. The western print and electronic media and its blogosphere is also tying the knot between the ISI and Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, two outlawed groups in Pakistan, alleged to have a hand in the carnage and indirectly tied with Al Qaeda.

Peter Chamberlin, an American journalist and an expert on terrorism, warns Pakistan against the Indian ruse to involve ISI in the Mumbai carnage. He calls Al Qaeda an “imaginary force” created by Pakistan and the US. Other states in the region use the Al Qaeda card to their advantage. “Whenever any government wants to kill people, they send in an Al Qaeda cut-out to start the cycle of violence,” he says. “The leaders and the press in Pakistan must protest loudly and unveil the truth about Al Qaeda. Pakistani leaders must tip-toe out of the minefield that they have allowed themselves to be lured into by the US.”

Today, the ISI is our first line of defence against foreign and domestic attacks. Instead of weakening it, our civilian and military establishment should convert the 4,500 plus strong institution into another Mossad, the Israeli intelligence outfit, ranked among the most effective intelligence agencies in the world. While Prime Minister Gilani was on his way last July to the US, an order was issued to transfer the agency to the interior division. A furore ensued and very soon the notification was cancelled. “Rehman Malik wanted to run the political wing” says General Shujaat Ali Khan, who ran the agency’s political wing during Benazir Bhutto’s second government. Recently, the ISI quietly disbanded the controversial political wing which had over the years become a Frankenstein. Benazir Bhutto had openly blamed it for pulling their government down in November 1996, weeks before her brother Murtaza Bhutto was gunned down in Karachi. In her 2000 interview to an English monthly, Benazir Bhutto accused General Shujaat of “destabilizing” her government. She said that despite her trying to get the general sacked, the big boss of ISI, General Naseem Rana and the ministry of defence failed to dislodge Shujaat, perceived by Benazir Bhutto as her nemesis.

On a late November afternoon, I drive down to a deserted farmhouse outside Islamabad to meet General Shujaat Ali Khan. He has just arrived home after a minor surgery at CMH, Rawalpindi. As I sip my orange juice, freshly squeezed off the orchard in the general’s backyard, I wonder whether my host was really that lethal as made out by the two civilian prime ministers whom he served. “Before I answer Ms Bhutto’s charge, I have seen the Rafi Raza Report where in 1976, her father ordered the creation of a political cell in the ISI just by handwriting one line in the margin. The ISI thus was given a green light to bug politicians’ phones. Even Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto allowed us to listen in to conversations of politicians, judges and Dr A Q Khan.”

The former spymaster vouches that during his 2 ? years in the ISI as the DG internal wing which monitored the counter-terrorism and the political cells, he never “bugged” the phones of Prime Minister Bhutto or President Farooq Leghari. His task was to collect intelligence on the “macro-economic indicators; the stock exchange and the financial deals” affecting the economy of Pakistan. During the intelligence gathering, the general naturally came across allegations of corruption by the First Gentleman Asif Ali Zardari and appointments based on nepotism and favouritism. “I used to forward my reports to the PM and she would return the files with handwritten short remarks in green ink. At times she would sound irritated with repartees like: ‘Since when has the ISI become an economic expert?’ or ‘Oh, really!’”

General Shujaat met Benazir Bhutto a month before she died. “I explained to her that I had no hand in her dismissal and she told me that she understood.” Actually President Leghari in cahoots with the then army chief Jehangir Karamat had already decided to sack her long before General Shujaat arrived at the ISI. But Shujaat would get a pat on his back by Karamat and lustily cheered each time he wrote a damning report on BB. After Ms Bhutto’s exit, Karamat and Leghari got a wakeup call when Nawaz Sharif charged in with a ‘heavy mandate’. “Our (ISI) estimation on 1997 elections went haywire. Our assessment of the PML-N was totally off the mark!” Very soon Sharif picked up fights with both the gents and eventually showed them the door!

Shujaat makes another sweeping statement: Nawaz Sharif’s reign saw a much higher level of corruption than the two reigns of Benazir Bhutto. “Whenever I sent him dossiers on the motorway and other financial wrongdoings, he would get mad!” How did that happen? I ask the general. Nawaz Sharif made millions by importing two shiploads of steel and importing 400 BMW cars. He then raised the import duty thereby earning huge profits by selling the two items in the open market. Similarly, he bought big tracts of land at Rs5,000 per square yard and later converted it into the Chunian Industrial estate flogging it at ten times the price.

ISI head honchos like generals Hameed Gul, Asad Durrani, Javed Nasir, Mahmud Ahmed and Ehtisham Zamir have “monkeyed” with political governments and brought them down, thereby sullying the image of the army. They are on record saying so themselves. Ex-army chief Aslam Beg is yet another example of the black sheep that the army is infamous for. General Shujaat was privy to the sacking of Hameed Gul by the then army chief Asif Nawaz. Gul had refused his new posting as director-general of heavy industries Taxila which did not go down well with the chief who was told about it while on an official visit to Italy. “Gul has anger issues till today,” says Shujaat. While Zulfiqar Bhutto and Ziaul Haq maintained files on senior bureaucrats and politicians, “they never blackmailed them” he tells me. “Instead they’d just wave the files before the chap they wanted to bring in line. That was enough!”

General (r) Shujaat gives an elliptical answer when I ask him as to who really controls the ISI today. It’s under the “policy directive of the man who calls the shots [Gen Pasha?],” he says. “It may not be the prime minister, it may not be the president, but the army chief is always kept in the loop.”

As I get up to leave, dreading a long trek back home in the wilderness of the cold night, the counter-terrorism expert Shujaat makes a chilling prediction that gives shivers not cheer to my heart. If there is change, it will begin in Punjab’s biggest urban centre, Lahore. The army will only take over if the masses spill into the streets demanding a change as happened in 1977. “I am of the firm opinion that this time around issues like hunger and poverty will be sufficient catalysts for change. But the movement will be hijacked by the religious right who enjoy widespread support among the grassroots, have sophisticated weapons, foreign funding and abundant resources.” He talks of the Iranian revolution which was started by Tudeh (party of the masses) also called the Communist party, but got hijacked by the cleric Ayatullah Khomeini.

With the Americans, Indians, Israelis and God knows who else wanting to down the ISI, Zardari’s last resort and ours too, is the army and its intelligence agency. The impolitic Zardari-Gilani leadership should stop showing off to the world that they and not the establishment control Pakistan. Their false bravura and reckless statements can spell disaster.

The writer is a freelance journalist with over twenty years of experience in national and international reporting. Email: aniaz@fas.harvard.edu

AWAKE INDIA AWAKE!!! THE WORLD NEEDS YOU

AWAKE INDIA AWAKE!!! THE WORLD NEEDS YOU

Abdul Basit

The frequent innovative methods of terrorist attacks seem to leave us in a constant state of shock. While we were startled by the recent incident of hijacking of huge Saudi Oil tanker by the Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden that has been unheard of in the recent past, we were soon overwhelmed by the terrifying news of the assault on one of the largest metropolis in the world, Mumbai, with a population of 20 million by a group of 20 to 30 youths in their twenties who approached by boat. These terrorists not only silenced this metropolis teeming with activities round the clock to a standstill and took over high profile hotels and iconic landmarks, but also kept one of the largest and most powerful countries in the world with the most powerful armies at the edge for two days leading to the death of 185 innocents including three outstanding police officers. The terrorists attained this merely with AK-47s and grenades!!! We are stunned, confused and dismayed. What is happening?

While all eyes where glued to the TV as if watching a live thriller movie, the shock and desperation gave way to contemplation and in trying to make sense of these senseless incidents. What has infected our society and to where are we heading for? What were the target and motivation of the terrorists who meticulously planned this operation and fought for two days against around 400 NSG commandos?

The Target of Terrorists

While arguments and conspiracy theories continue to pour in about whom was behind the Mumbai attack, the most important factor to consider is about the aim of these terrorists. Although they targeted the high profile hotels and iconic landmarks of Mumbai, their aim was much beyond the physical concrete structures and innocent lives. Their aim was to destroy the spirit of oneness and unity in diversity for which the Indian nation stands. They wanted to destabilize this country by splitting the Indian people on the basis of religion and to create fragmentation in their minds and spirits. We should ensure that these enemies of humanity do not succeed. The actions of a handful of terrorists from any religious background should not create division and hatred among the different religious communities.

External And Internal Enemies

The Indian nation is much beyond the narrow comprehension of these terrorists and the divisive forces of hate that aim to destabilize this country. The inherent strength of India depends on the unity of a wide variety of religious, racial, geographical and linguistic communities. Here is a nation that is exclusive from other world nations due to it inclusive and accommodative nature and wherein all religions and cultures flourished and greatly contributed to the world in the field of spirituality, medicine, art, meditation and culture. This pluralism, tolerance and mutual respect between people of different religious, racial and cultural backgrounds is the strength of Indian nation and if any group of people try to manipulate or tamper with this diversity and attempt to create any type of uniformity, they are in fact trying to tear down the very foundation of the Indian nation.

This inherent strength and resilience has helped the Indian Nation that has a heritage of thousands of years (which include the Indus Valley civilization that goes back to at least 5000 year), to overcome extreme challenges during its long history and to become a beacon of diverse cultures that has been cherished throughout the world. Compared to the challenges that it has overcome during its long history, neither the recent stunts that were shown by some diehard terrorists nor any divisive acts of all or any of the neighboring countries including Pakistan will in anyway be able to disrupt or destabilize this great nation, as long as this nation stays united within.

But the greatest challenge to Indian nation came from within. Although these internal rift and conflicts date back to time immemorial, it was more evident during the freedom struggle against the British colonialists and the resulting partition of the country during the middle of the last century. And this process of destabilization and internal threat has particularly grown during the last two decades with the growth of Hindutva Nationalist forces represented by the present opposition party and its ideological parivar of RSS and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The greatest damage to social fabric of India has been done by Hindutva leaders like Narendra Modi, Bal Thackerey and Praveen Togadia and the resulting reactions by extremists to the actions of these leaders, which even the extreme enemy nations or groups could not dream of. Intentionally or unintentionally, the actions of the external terrorist groups and these communal and fundamentalist organizations are mutually supportive as the aims of both are to communalize the Indian populace. The greatest beneficiary from the Mumbai attacks will be the Sangh Parivar led by BJP who will reap the benefit in the upcoming election. The demolition of Babri Masjid and the ensuing communal riots, the Gujarat massacre that cost huge innocent lives, the attack on Christians minorities in different parts of India and the recent string of bomb blasts have created immense fragmentation in the Indian society. The issue of Kashmir that has been bleeding the subcontinent for many decades has also created much distrust among the neighbors and has been the main reason for most of the terrorist attacks that are taking place in India

An Appeal to Sangh Parivar

The actions of Sangh Parivar and its leaders like Narendra Modi and Praveen Togadia which has resulted in the lose of many innocent lives and deterioration in the relations between the different religious communities have only helped the enemies of India. If we want to prevent any further destruction and hatred, the Indian people require a total change of heart from the Sangh Parivar leaders and their ideologues. After all, change of heart is also part of the Indian ethos when the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka changed for the better and pledged not fight any more wars after the seeing the destruction in the battle of Kalinga, as revealed in Ashoka Dhamma.

We have to restore confidence among the Hindus, Muslims and Christians and strengthen the cohesiveness and trust between all the sections in the Indian society. For this we have to rebuild the lives of families affected by communal violence and bomb blasts so that their future generation overcomes the trauma and revenge mentality that sustain this hatred and instead unite to build a bright India.

Awake India, The World needs you…

The incidents in Mumbai are only one of the symptoms of the disease that has infected the global community in general and India in particular. If we have to prevent these terrorist attacks and conflicts, we have to address the whole problem in totality. The September 11^th incident and following wars have resulted in the worsening relationship between different religious, racial and ideological communities, as well as the growing social fragmentation and sectarian divisions in different parts of the world, leading to civil wars, violence and social unrest. There is a great deal of fragmentation, hatred and intolerance at the individual, social, religious and national level that has had an affect on all the sectors of the society. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan, the anti-Muslim feelings that are widespread in Western world and the worsening relations between religious communities; shows the gravity of the situation.

The attack on Mumbai is mentioned as India’s 9 /11. But what the world cannot endure is another “George Bush style” reaction from India especially when we can see the chaos he has brought to his own country. India is different from United States of America.

The recent financial recession and climate change crises that had repercussions on all countries and continents have emphatically proved that we as humanity have a common destiny. No part of this planet will escape the consequences of growing poverty and hunger due to the financial and climate crises. The Indian nation can help the world to organize beyond the confines of geographic, racial and religious boundaries and unite to address the common issues that concern existence of the humanity as a whole and sustaining habitability of earth and to overcome the infinite physical and mental boundaries that have divided mankind into many nations, religions and creeds, which is the basic reason for these conflicts.

With its vast religious, cultural, racial, geographical and linguistic diversities, India can contribute to the building of a one world where the mental, physical and geographical boundaries disappear based on tolerance, mutual respect and democratic principles. Contrary to the western approach of hegemony and subjugation of other countries, this “Unity in Diversity” and pluralism is the message that the Indian nation has to offer to the world and can be emulated worldwide. This diversity has helped India to be the home and birthplace of great religions and spiritual movements and has contributed some the most beautiful art and cultural forms.

In this hour of global crisis, to face the challenges to the humanity, the world must unite as one human community on the basis of peace, tolerance and mutual understanding and the Indian nation has a major role in this regard.

Awake India Awake!! The World needs you…

INDIA/PAKISTAN MUST READ HISTORY: Freedom At Midnight

FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT

By Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre

UNGOVERNABLE INDIA

“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”
Jawaharlal Nehru, in a speech to the Indian Constituent Assembly on Aug. 15, 1947.

Report: Mass media harms kids

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Report: Mass media harms kids

By Liz Szabo

Parents and policymakers need to take action to protect children from being harmed by TV, the Internet and other types of media, a report says.

Researchers have done individual studies for years to learn how media affect children. A review released today, which analyzed 173 of the strongest papers over 28 years, finds that 80% agree that heavy media exposure increases the risk of harm, including obesity, smoking, sex, drug and alcohol use, attention problems and poor grades.

Some of the links are particularly strong. For example, 93% of studies found that children with greater media exposure have sex earlier. Authors say the soundest studies are those linking media use with obesity, while the evidence linking media exposure to hyperactivity is weaker.

The study provides overwhelming evidence of the importance of limiting children’s use of media and teaching them to critically evaluate the ever-growing volume of text, images and sounds with which they are bombarded, says co-author Ezekiel Emanuel of the National Institutes of Health. He says the report also urges Hollywood and technology makers to create entertainment that is less toxic and more family-friendly.

“The idea that this is having a really measurable adverse impact on health makes it important to take this seriously,” Emanuel says. “Every year, we have 4 million new kids. How long are we going to wait?”

The average child spends nearly 45 hours a week immersed in media — almost three times the amount of time they spend with their parents, according to the report, commissioned by Commonsense Media, a non-partisan watchdog group. In comparison, children spend an average of 30 hours in school.

Keeping an eye on children’s media use is tougher today, says Jane Brown, a journalism and mass communication professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who was not involved in the report. In the past, families often watched TV together, and parents could easily change the channel or voice their disapproval. Today’s technology often isolates children, who may tune out their families to concentrate on a cellphone screen only they can see.

Even pediatricians struggle to stay connected to their children. Victor Strasburger, a pediatrics professor at the University of New Mexico who was not involved in the study, says he took away his 15-year-old daughter’s phone when he caught her text-messaging at Thanksgiving dinner.

Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist at the University of Maryland who also was not involved in the study, says the country needs to address the onslaught of negatives images. He says children today have greater exposure to online pornography and Internet “hate sites” that attack minorities and gays.

The study’s authors say policymakers also need to establish “clear limits” on marketing products such as junk food to children.

Ignoring these problems, Brody says, will only lead to even higher rates of childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes, violence and teen pregnancy.

“At some point,” Brody says, “we are all going to be paying for this.”

PARENTS: How do you manage your children’s use of the media? Do you think you need to learn more about new technology — such as cell phones, MP3 players or the Internet? Leave any related questions or comments for reporter Liz Szabo in the comment section below.

SET LIMITS

Experts offer these tips to protect children:

• Limit screen time to one to two hours a day. Consider ditching cable or TV altogether.

• Learn about new media, such as text-messaging or social-networking websites, and how your children are using them.

• Don’t rely on the ratings for video games. Instead, watch or play the games yourself.

• Don’t allow children to have computers, TVs or other media in their bedrooms.

• Set limits on how a child may use a new purchase, such as an iPod, from the beginning.

Sources: Emanuel Ezekiel, National Institutes of Health; Michael Brody, University of Maryland; Jane Brown, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Victor Strasburger, University of New Mexico School of Medicine

A note of caution to ISI and ISPR

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Abid Ullah Jan

Pakistan is as much in the line of fire as it is in the line of lies – not only the lies and deception by the Western propaganda machine which once focused its full attention on the Taliban government in Afghanistan but also the ISI-ISPR civilian wings, which are mixing truth with falsehood to an extent that it becomes hard for their audience to tell fact from fiction.

BrassTack, Ahmadqureshi.com, http://www.daily.pk/index.php are just a few prominent examples of these internal machines for mixing truth with falsehood. They would tell you that we now have a CIA sponsored democracy, but they would never tell that the road to this tyrannical, sold out regime is facilitated by no one other than General Musharraf and his chore commanders.

They would tell us that Zionists and neo-cons have set their eyes on Pakistan but they would never say that no one other than Pakistan army has served them to the best possible extent. They would lie that Musharraf destroyed the US foreign policy and he never agreed to the US conditions, but they would deliberately hide the fact that he had handlers in the CIA and Mossad, at least, since 80s.

The CIA’s manoeuvres vis-à-vis Pakistan were absolutely not against Musharraf as such. In fact, Musharraf was part of all those manoeuvres which first lead to a deal with Benazir Bhutto and then to her assassination with the full knowledge and participation of Musharraf (Musharraf and the Yellow Tape), Rehman Malik, et al. Even Bhutto’s husband said, al-ka-eeda didn’t do it. To him its was the Mush regime who did it. Those who could see beyond their nose saw it long ago that a thug, Zardari, was being shaped up to be the next king.

There is absolutely no resemblances to organised ‘people’s power’ the CIA unleashed during ‘colour revolutions’ and upheavals against Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez is a true patriot standing up to the tyrannical empire. It is misleading to compare the sold out general Musharraf with him.

When the CIA and other Musharraf handlers realized that it would be hard to sustain him in power as his term of service came to an end, they had no option but to think of a game plan to replace him with a favourable group of sold-outs who would continue his undermining Pakistan in the near future. It is not something like the Orange Revolution of Ukraine in 2004 and the Tulip Revolution of Kyrgystan in 2005 where pro-US rulers were established in power. In this case, Musharraf was part of the whole plan to bring about a kind of change that should minimally disrupt the process of undermining Pakistan.

Barbarism during Mush rule

Musharraf was part of the backroom manoeuvres by the US and British intelligence services to engineer panic about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. He was the one confirming all the lies by the CIA by issuing statements that he didn’t believe that Abdul Qadeer Khan was involved in the alleged nuclear trade until he was shown blue prints of Pakistani nuclear assets, etc. by the CIA during his short stay in the US.

Musharraf did not refuse permission to interrogate Dr. AQ Khan. In fact, what Musharraf did was part of the plan. He effectively participated in the propaganda campaign. Accepted responsibility and implicated Pakistan in the mess. All actions and statements on the part of Musharraf confirmed all allegations against Pakistan and Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. There was no point in interrogating Dr. Khan. Instead, Dr. Khan’s speaking and interrogation could expose Musharraf as a traitor and collaborator. So the best solution was to silence Dr. Khan, giving the impression that Musharraf is defending him as a patriot Pakistani.

For Musharraf’s handlers, it was absolutely impossible to imagine replacing him with another General without a transition to a different ruling mechanism. The only possibility for sustaining military rule was to assassinate General Musharraf and spread instability and chaos, which would pave the way for another General to continue the work for his CIA-Mossad and Neocons masters. However, that was also not a favourable option in the face of US tall claims for supporting democracy. Therefore, the US officially started pushing carefully worded articles in the corporate US media that Musharraf has done a great job but there is a need to make progress on the front of democracy.

Former State Department officials Richard L. Armitage and Kara L. Bue, signalled the shift in US policy with a joint article, outlining: ‘We believe General Musharraf…deserves our attention and support, no matter how frustrated we become at the pace of political change and the failure to eliminate Taliban fighters on the Afghan border.’ Translation: Musharraf has to go.

This was followed by a number of articles and reports from the US think tanks which started complaining and identifying short comings in the Mush’s war on Pakistan, called Pakistan’s own war by the new regime in Islamabad.  On the one hand, plans were chalked out with Musharraf for the kind of successor regime which will not prosecute him for war crimes and the crime against constitution and his nation, and on the other senior US State Department officials repeatedly accused Musharraf of ‘not doing enough’ to combat Islamists within Pakistan and prevent their infiltration across the Durand Line into southern Afghanistan. This double game gave the impression as if his masters are not satisfied with his life-long services. The same perception was pushed by the ISI through its mouth-pieces in Pakistani media, such as A

hmed Qureshi and his new lackey ZZ Hamid. Here we were witnessing an attempt to giving Musharraf a hero status; presenting him a victim of the US intervention as well as “destroyer of the US foreign policy” rather than a criminal who must be charged and punished for treason.

Benazir was the first and favourite pick by the warlords in Washington. She was contacted and subsequently she started issuing statements that if she were to become Prime Minister, she would gladly do their bidding. She underscored her enthusiasm to serve and ensured her party was fully responsive to the nihilists’ “war on terror,” a war on the alleged nuclear proliferation by Pakistan and a war for consolidating occupation Behind the door the future course of action was chalked out both with Benazir and Musharraf. Both of them even met a few times in secret. In public meetings were organized with the PPP thieves in exile.

Partners in crime: Same masters, different slaves

The US Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute (NDI) played a role in keeping the PPP top criminals on board. They had a briefing in Dubai on June 9, 2007 about the possible elections in Pakistan. On the other hand, Hussain Haqqani and Rehamn malik were groomed who had to take the charge after Musharraf departure and had to sustain the policies and war on Pakistan.

Although Benazir promised to offer the International Atomic Energy Agency access to Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan but this is not something on which Musharraf dragged his feet. This flies in the face of the reality on the ground. In fact, Musharraf had committed so many crimes against the nation that there he could not afford the proverbial last straw on the back of his sick and overloaded camel. His masters had realized that as well.

Similarly, Benazir promised to allow the occupation forces in Afghanistan to operate inside north-western Pakistan. But this was not something new. Mush had agreed to it long before her. The only difference is that he could not publicly say so. Instead he chose to shoulder the crime of the US occupation soldiers. He accepted responsibility for the US butchery in which 80 student were killed in Bajaur in 2006, whereas the evidence suggested the US carried out the attack. Musharraf taking the blame for this terrorist strike was in a way serving agenda of the US warlords as well because people were turning against the army as it was accepting responsibility for the US crimes against humanity.

So, the colonial warlords in the US and UK planned Benazir’s return from exile in full support and agreement of the most-favoured-slave, General Musharraf. At home, the ISI mouth pieces would tell the nation that this was done by arm-twisting Musharraf to promulgate the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). Instead of undermining the Supreme Court, booting out 60 judges and making a mockery of the Constitution, Mush could step aside and provide a fair election to take place. Instead, the retired general granted amnesty to the criminals and those whom he called as fascists in his book. He effectively wiped the slate clean of corruption, murder, drug running and other charges for Benazir, her husband Asif Zardari and all the thieves who were thriving under them.

There are factors which could go against the neo-colonialist plan for Pakistan in the case of Benazir’s victory and coming to joint power with Musharraf. It would not have been as easy to dislodge Benazir if she had come to power. Also she knew more about the way the fiction of al-Qaeda was being pushed around by the CIA and Musharraf. On the other hand pressure on Musharraf intensified to resign. To make the job easy for a more subservient regime and to give chaos and instability a further chance, Benazir was eliminated according to a plan that Mush and Rehman Malik knew about for sure. The evidence available in public domain confirms this collusion.

Haqqani-Mush, same masters, same approach, same lies, same agenda

There was no ploy to lull Musharraf into believing it would not remove him and install Benazir in his place. Mush was part and parcel of the plan. He was only interested in avoiding treason charged and trial in the Supreme Court. The crime he committed against Pakistan can hardly deserve mercy or pardon. He had to let other criminals take his place, so that they could let him live in peace after. That is exactly what we see today. Removing of an independent supreme court favours both Zardari and his mafia, as it helps Mush and his accomplices in crimes against the nation. That’s why Musharraf’s attitude towards Nawaz Sharif was totally different than the way he was welcoming Benazir and her criminal gang. Nawaz Sharif was sent back to Saudi Arabia when he tried to return. Later on he was allowed to return so that his party’s participation could to add some legitimacy to the sham election process which 38 parties refused to participate. Nawaz’s participation provided that much needed legitimacy to the final act on the plan to replace Musharraf with a pro-Mush and pro-US puppet regime.

Musharraf was and remains a lynch pin in the US totalitarian designs for the region in which occupying, pacifying, denuclearizing and blakanizing Pakistan is the top most priority. Musharraf is not an equivalent of Sukarno of Indonesia, Mosaddeq of Iran or Allende of Chille. He is the first commander in chief of Pakistan who acted like Ahmed Chalabi of Iraq, Najeebullah and Karzai of Afghanistan. Musharraf is the first Qadiani king of Pakistan. His association with Qadianis, his wife being a Qadiani, the Qadianis around him and Qadianis hatred for Pakistan and their unflinching determination to undermine the very existence of Pakistan are open secrets. Rehman Malik is another Qadiani put in place to serve the enemies of Pakistan. Musharraf was not a national leader which the ISI and ISPR puppets like ZZ Hamid and Ahmed Qureshi never stop promoting him as such. When gullible Pakistani listen to their passionate criticism of Zionist and the CIA plans for Pakistan, they fail to identify the pro-Mush and pro-mercenary-Generals-lies which they mix up with the facts.

Of course, Pakistan was not acceptable to India from one and the CIA used it for its strategic interests since 60s in particular. The Zionist designs are a fact which intensified since Pakistan’s embarking on the course to become a nuclear power. The military generals intensified Zionist influence in Pakistan. General Musharraf broke all previous records.

The colonial designs for the region are centuries old and even the creation of Pakistan was a strategic withdrawal rather than genuine independence. However, the point is, who is facilitating de facto colonization? Coming on talk shows and putting Zionists and the CIA on the chopping black every week is not a solution. The solution lies in identifying the black sheep within Pakistan. But these puppets of the ISI would never say a single word about the crime of IS such as handing over and selling hundreds of Pakistani, Afghans and other Muslims to the torture centres in Afghanistan and Cuba. They won’t talk about the army’s mercenary role and it’s destroying towns after towns in the US war of terrorism. They would criticise Zardari’s regime but they won’t say who started working on this agenda, facilitated it all along and why.

Instead they would prefer to lie to the nation and present Musharraf as a victim who stood up to Washington like Hugo Chavez. This is not correct and goes in the face of facts before our eyes. They follow the same propaganda of the warlords when they justify Pakistan army’s mercenary role. How else would one justify the massacre upon massacre of innocent Pakistanis unless they borrow themes from the corporate media that justifies these crimes by the Pakistani army. ZZ Hamid was leading the pack of those two-penny pen-pushers who gave Musharraf a hero status after his bloody drama in the heart of Islamabad.

The main theme of the ISPR mouth-pieces in their defence of Musharraf and Pakistan army is criticism of those who challenge Musharraf’s policies and the army’s mercenary role, which has caused Pakistan to lose far more soldiers than the occupiers in Afghanistan. Their criticism spread to include human rights and civil liberties organisations, journalists, analysts, lawyers and assorted professionals, who point out the crimes of Musharraf regime, from selling Pakistanis to the mysterious disappearances, invasion and occupation of parts of Pakistan, staging fake terrorist attacks and other bloody dramas to justify their importance and all other human rights violations.  The only argument they have is that general public is incapable to comprehend the geo-strategic context in which Musharraf manoeuvred to defend Pakistan’s interest. This means people are blind. They don’t see or understand the facts they live on daily basis.

So they slandered them an ‘American puppets’, working for neocons and Zionists. These baseless allegations cannot turn their fiction about the glory or Musharraf and greatness of Pakistan army into reality. Contrary to claims made of BrasTack and other outfits, Musharraf did not remove one excuse for the Bush Administration to ‘bomb Pakistan into stone age.’ With years-long effective participation in propaganda of creeping Talibanization and regurgitating the myths about the CIA-bogey-man al-ka-eeda, Musharraf, in fact, paved the way for what Obama now claims the US needs to invade. Armymen will attack the dictator. Army men will be charged and hanged for that attack. Yet Mush and his team will propagate the lie that al-Qaeda is in action and wants to take out the strongest ally of the US in the ‘war on terrorism.” All these lies and deceptions to keep himself a valuable ally, led to the toughest time Pakistan has yet to endure.

The puppets of ISI claim that the US got upset with Musharraf’s regime when he dodged committing Pakistani troops to prop up the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. In fact, even if Musharraf wanted to do so, he simply could not. Turkey had refused to join the US in such a war before Pakistan. We have mentioned all the relevant facts in this regard in another article that you can see here. This is what Musharraf could not do despite his earnest desire to make himself an even more committed slave. No credit is due to Musharraf for that.

Another fake feather that the ISI-outfits are trying to fit in Musharraf’s hat is their claim that he refused to isolate Iran. What a joke. None of the US closest allies have isolated Iran so far as such. They are all the biggest importers of Iranian oil. What is Pakistan’s leverage to isolating Iran. The energy cooperation with Iran is as much in the benefit of Pakistan as Iran and India.  It would have proven Musharraf totally insane if he had refused to move ahead on building the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Since India was part of the deal, there is no way we can say there was stiff American opposition to it.

Moreover, the US was hardly moved by the Pakistan’s historical relationship with China. Musharraf didn’t do anything unusual in deepening Pakistan-China bilateral relations or forging nuclear cooperation. Did we get anything on the civil nuclear front from china which India got from the US. Of course, not.  Musharraf did make any special move to offer Beijing naval facilities at the Gwadar port on Balochistan’s Arabian Sea coast overlooking the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic chokepoint through which passes approximately 30 per cent of world’s energy supplies. Musharraf has opened all Pakistani facilities, both military and non-military, both on shore and off-shore and on the ground are wide open to use and abuse by the US and NATO forces. The mere “offer” to China to use Gwadar port is yet another joke on the part of ISI-puppets to propagate is as a rebellion against his masters in the US. Gawadar port is as open to China as to any other country for the sake of legitimate transportation. This cannot even be compared with allowing  the use of Pakistan as a launching pad for aggression in the region and renting the whole army to be used as a mercenary force.

Yet another fake reason for promoting and defending Musharraf is Pakistan’s status as a mere observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Russia and China are spearheading the SCO, which includes four other countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran and India are also Observers. So what if Pakistan became a third one. Of course, the SCO is widely perceived as a rising eastern counterweight to western security and economic groupings. However, those who had Musharraf as well as Pakistan’s strings in their hands were hardly concerned with and Islamabad sitting as an observer at the SCO. This is a non-issue.

The lies go on and on. It is also being propagated that angered Washington the most when he took actions to wind down the ‘war on terror’ within Pakistan. Where is the evidence for this? Instead he intensified military operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan. Musharraf did not allow the mediation and negotiation process with the tribal leaders to take roots. Pakistan army would violate the peace treaties and the US would attack tribal areas as soon as there is an agreement in sight. Moreover, some treaties with the tribal elders were part of the divide and rule approach. Most of the dollars from the US were spent in widening these divisions. There is a consistent pattern of violations on the part of Pakistani army and terrorist strikes from outside in full understanding with Musharraf regime. The ISI went to the extent of killing journalists (Hayatullah Khan) when they would expose the terrorist attacks by the US forces.

To further support the divisions among Muslims on the larger scale, Musharraf promoted the mantra of ‘enlightened moderation’, which was nothing but a show of benighted opportunism and serving colonial masters. He took stabs at the very soul of Pakistan with attempts to promote Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy. He proudly held up Ataturk as his role model. He planned to ‘wean away’ the people from the original concept and two nation theory of Pakistan. He in fact undermined the raison d’être of Pakistan and the cause of Kashimis struggle of independence.  Towards this end, he introduced educational reforms and re-wrote school history text books; enacted laws and diluted Islamic identity of Pakistan. This is exactly the same approach that other Zionist agents, such as Hussain Haqqani have under taken. At times it seemed as if people like Haqqani and Musharraf were in competition to prove as to who is the best slave in promoting divisions among Muslims and intensifying a ‘war within Islam.”

It is absolutely impossible that Musharraf would be skilfully combining military operations against “Islamists” with a political front promoting secularism to ideologically disarm them, and still the US administration would see read. The warlords in the US knew that secularising Pakistani society is not something that is possible in one Musharraf tenure in power. In fact, he had two stints in power with his eight years rule. It is not the thought that Musharraf would de-fang the ‘Islamic threat’ within Pakistan and extricate the country out of the contrived orbit of ‘war on terror’ which led to the removal of Musharraf from power. It is the simple fact that Musharraf simply could not continue as an army chief and he could not survive the growing opposition to his rule. He simple could not make more progress on the agenda on which he worked with so much commitment for years. The thing to treasure and save was not Musharraf. It was continuation of the agenda on which he was working. Musharraf had done his job. He outlived his utility in the sense that people were totally fed up and he simple could not survive with brutal force forever to come.

The warlords in Washington, Tel Aviv and London realized that with Musharraf in power, they would not be in a position to effectively soften up Pakistan before the final onslaught. Musharraf stay would greatly diminish Washington’s leverage to intervene in the country, to further weaken its armed forces, to sow chaos and civil war and to finally neutralize its nuclear power and Balkanize the country to end the perceived threat of Islamic revival forever.

This realization pushed the colonial warlords into planning a regime change that would sustain the gains Musharraf had secured for them. Despite being part of the planning process to sustain his gain through another puppet regime after him, Musharraf did try his best to prolong his rule but all his late illegal and criminal actions back fired. His supporters at BrassTack and Ahmedqureshi.com are trying their best to show that the CIA showered dollars on the media, NGOs, lawyers and students to mobilize agitations against Musharraf. However, these claims are hardly supported by any evidence. And this is rather an insult to the millions who participated in the struggle and still try to achieve their objectives because removal of Musharraf is not the end in itself. It was perceived to facilitate restoration of independent judiciary and establishment of a rule of law which will further ensure the release of all the disappeared people and an end ot the mercenary armies butchery of its own people. Fake promises of Zardari and hope upon hope are still holding the tides that swept Musharraf, but the tides won’t be contained for long. That will be the time when the self-proclaimed security analysts and would see that the resistance to illegal and illegitimate ruler is not because of the CIA dollars but an indigenous resistance to tyranny and abuse of power.

Of course, the new mercenary Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani travelled to Kabul to meet NATO and Afghan commanders on August the 19th and about 10 days later Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen informed a Pentagon news conference on August the 28th that Kayani and his lieutenants held a ’secret meeting’ with their US counterparts on a US aircraft carrier. However, this has nothing to do with something that would never have happened if Musharraf was in power. Who brought Kayani to the fore-front in the first place? Who ran Musharraf secret detentions and selling of Pakistanis as the chief of ISI? It was no one but Kayani.

Kayani’s meeting with the US officials after the departure of Musharraf has nothing to prove that Mush was loyal to Pakistan and Kiyani is not. Both are buddies in crime. When Negroponte visited Pakistan the year before Musharraf’s resignation, he met Kayani twice in three days. So there is nothing new about Kiyani’s subservience or Musharraf’s departure. It is quite logical that the warlords had to put things in order through close and frequent meetings as things were evolving after Musharraf. Those meetings are not an indication that Musharraf was not on a tight leash or didn’t stab the soul of Pakistan.

For the recent progress in the war of terrorism, credit goes to Musharraf’s years long service and particularly his commitment to promoting the neocons-zionist cause over the past eight years. The aggressors’ frog-marching Pakistan into the US-created Afghan quagmire to further destabilise the country and justify intervention would not have been possible if Mush had not sold himself too early. If he had led to an impartial transition of government at the top and not allowed the criminal thugs to take cover of the NRO and a PCO supreme court, the nation wouldn’t be standing where it is today.

Musharraf facilitated what we face today. He rejected US demands that the Pakistani army assist NATO forces in Afghanistan because he knew his own troops will rebel against him. He could not afford sending Pashtun soldiers lead the war of terror in Pakistan, let alone sending them to facilitate occupation of Afghanistan. He had to remove the core-commander in Peshawar and governor in NWFP because of their criticism of the approach Mush was dictating to them. Of course, this is what the US wanted but Musharraf knew this would be suicidal. For that reason, even Zardari and Kayani would not accept such demands. Instead, Mush and his successors are fighting the most important fight on Pakistani soil, which is dividing the nation, draining on its resources, creating more and more “terrorists” and ultimately softening up the high value target. To Mush’s masters this war is more important than participation in the occupation of Afghanistan, where they love to see the pot boiling rather than the opposition totally pacified that will take the ruse for sustaining the brutal occupation.

It would be better for the ISI and ISPR to stop regurgitating the lies and deceptions and promoting Mush as the saviour of the nation through its mouth pieces, and condemning all those who expose his crimes against the people, the constitution and the polity of Pakistan.  This is time to get united against all culprits and traitors, whether they existed before and with Musharraf or those who are thriving today with the blessing of NRO and other unconstitutional measures of the tyrant. It is time to bring Mush. Zardari Rehman Malik, Haqqani and their cronies to justice. If we failed to do justice today, nature will settle the scores but that will take the nation through a lot of turmoil, civil war and a bloody revolution which is already in progress. The ISI sponsored lies are hardly able to make a dent when the facts are overwhelmingly aligned against them.

CIA, MOSSAD HAND BEHIND SANGH PARIVAR’S EXTREMISTS!

CIA, MOSSAD HAND BEHIND

SANGH PARIVAR’S EXTREMISTS!

Central Intelligence Agencies vigilant investigating in the aftermath of Malegaon blast; Enquiry being held into the February 2007 visit of prominent Israeli religious delegation and meetings with Hindutvadi Sadhu, Sanths and political leaders; Mossad infiltration a cause of deep concern for Intelligence officials

New Delhi, November 25: (Agencies) – According to an exposé in a national daily published from Madhya Pradesh and several other cities, in the aftermath of the arrests of Sadhu, Sadhvi, and other extremist Hindutvadis as involved in the Malegaon bomb blast, Intelligence agencies are now concentrating on foreign connections of the radical Hindutvadis.

In an special report published by the national daily, it has exposed this sensational news that in central intelligence agencies are to be believed, extremist Hindutvadis have got support and motivation from Israeli secret agency, Mossad’s operations against the Arab and Muslim countries in the past.

The newspaper writes that relations between Mossad and CIA are world known. Report mentions that intelligence agencies are worried about the infiltration of Mossad and CIA in the country. According to undisclosed sources, Indian intelligence agencies are now examining the full details of the visit of Israel‘s religious leaders to India and their meetings withSadhu, Sanths. Intelligence agencies are investigating all those Hindu and Muslim leaders that the Israeli religious delegation had met.

According to the newspaper, it was during the rule of BJP’s Atul Behari Vajpayee; a beginning was made for the visits of Hindutvadis, and especially Sadhus anddharam gurus of the Sangh Parivar to Israel. These visits have been on the increase. It was during Vajpayee’s time, that the visits to Israel and consequently the relations and contacts of Sangh Parivar Dharam gurus and Hindutva leaders with Israelincreased manifold.

According to the newspaper, for last ten years, the central intelligence agencies have been closely studying and analyzing the growing strength of Hindutvadi and Sangh Parivar organisations and the increasing violence through these organisations against Muslims, Christians, and minorities in Gujarat,Orissa, Karnataka and other states. Intelligence agencies have disclosed that the visits of Jews and Israeli rabbis was not very frequent in the past, but it has increased to worrisome proportions, during last few years. Of all, the most studied is the February 2007 visit to Delhi of the delegation of Israeli Jewish religious leaders. The delegation was headed byIsrael‘s Chief Rabbi, Yonah Metzger.

In this delegation, Jewish religious leaders from Israelas well as others rabbis from Belgium and Spain too were included. In India, the Israel Jewish religious delegation met important Hindutva leaders, which included especially the RSS Chief K. S. Sudharshan, President of VHP, Ashok Singhal, VHP leader Vishnu Hari Dalmia.

After the meeting of the Sadhu Sanths and Jewish leaders, both delegations had issued a common manifesto.

In this meeting, Jewish Rabbis expressed grave concern over the details of the terrorist attacks allegedly carried out by Muslims, as narrated by Hindu dharam gurus. Secret Service sources disclosed that at the invitation of Israeli Jewish religious leaders, a delegation of Hindutva leaders had visited Israel this year. In this, some leaders of Sangh Parivar too were included.

The national daily, published from Madhya Pradesh and other places, in its report has exposed that the officials of the national intelligence agencies have categorically stated that American secret service agency, CIA together with Israel’s secret organisation Mossad, has carried out several secret operation all over Asia.

And now that the bomb blast of Malegaon and Modasa had involved the names of the fake Shankaracharya Amaranand alias Dayanand Pande, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, enquiries and investigation of relations between Jewish and Hindutva religious leaders from Israel and India are being severely felt and is being analyzed. This was disclosed by the newspaper report.

(Translation from Urdu)

Rashtriya Sahara, Urdu Daily, Mumbai

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Front Page News

Why investigation of Israeli connection of Hindutvadis?

New Delhi, November 25: The way ATS has arrested Hindutva extremists belonging to Sangh Parivar, in connection with Malegaon bomb blast, facts have emerged of international networking and support to Hindutva radicals. This has alarmed national intelligence community. India’s internal and external intelligence agencies and RAW have got busy trying to figure out if there is some big international conspiracy is being hatched behind the activities of hardline extremists of Sangh Parivar. According to secret sources, back in February 2007, an Israeli delegation headed by Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Yonah Metzger, and accompanied by several high ranking Jewish religious leaders, had visited India. This Jewish Religious delegation held meetings with many Sadhus, Sanths and Dharam gurus. The delegation also met some Muslim leaders. Now intelligence agencies have started investigations of the meetings of the Israeli delegation and local Sadhus, Sanths and dharam gurus. It is mentioned that the delegation of Israeli Jewish religious leaders has met leaders and dharam gurus from RSS, Sangh Parivar, VHP and BJP. Lal Krishna Advani had arranged a dinner for the visiting Israeli Jewish religious leaders’ delegation and others included in the delegation, at his own residence. According to high official, though the meeting of Sangh Parivar’s leaders to Israeli delegation is not of undue importance, but the way America’s secret service, CIA and Israel’s secret agency, Mossad, are infiltrating in Central Asian and South Asian countries, it is giving strength to the suspicions that in such delegations, members of foreign intelligence get included and through interaction and infiltration, secret operations are carried out. Those organisations that organise and support such visits and meetings, may or may not be aware of the secret mission of foreign agencies, the truth can come out only on investigations. For this reason, the national agencies are now concentrating on investigation of Sangh Parivar and its connections with Israeli lobby and Mossad.

India’s CIA spy scandal

India’s external intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has launched a major internal investigation for possible moles following the apparent defection of a senior officer recruited by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The Indian government fears that the defection of Rabinder Singh, who held the senior rank of joint secretary and who headed the agency’s Southeast Asia department, is only the tip of the iceberg in a possible infiltration operation by the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service.

The focus of the investigation will be RAW, as well as the Intelligence Bureau, which handles counterintelligence and the Defence Intelligence Agency. The mole hunt is expected to extend to Indian embassies around the world where RAW personnel operate under diplomatic protection, particularly those who liaise with foreign intelligence agencies.

According to informed intelligence sources, several Indian operatives have already been suspended pending investigation. One senior intelligence official committed suicide on 13 June in New Delhi, although it is not yet clear whether this incident was linked to the current Singh investigation.

The scandal, which broke on 5 June, risks damaging India’s post-11 September 2001 strategic alliance with the USA and an earlier one with Israel, Washington’s key ally in the Middle East. It is also likely to result in New Delhi placing limitations on intelligence sharing with both the USA and Israeli, which could impact on the US-led ‘war on terrorism’.

India has decades of experience in combating such militants based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There is speculation that the current scandal, which could extend throughout the Indian intelligence establishment, will also result in a wide ranging shake-up and reorganisation of the Indian intelligence agencies.

Predictably, Indian security authorities are saying little about the Singh case, but domestic sources report that counterintelligence became suspicious of Singh about six months ago, putting him under surveillance and tapping his telephones. It is not clear what alerted security authorities, but he was confronted by counterintelligence officials on 19 April (shortly after he had been in the USA) and questioned about ‘sensitive files’ he had allegedly removed from RAW’s headquarters in south New Delhi.

352 of 875 words

The Consequences of Nuclear Conflict between India and Pakistan

The Consequences of Nuclear Conflict between India and Pakistan
NRDC’s nuclear experts think about the unthinkable, using state-of-the-art nuclear war simulation software to assess the crisis in South Asia.

The months-long military standoff between India and Pakistan intensified several weeks ago when suspected Islamic militants killed more than 30 people at an Indian base in the disputed territory of Kashmir. As U.S. diplomatic pressure to avert war intensifies, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is going to India and Pakistan this week to discuss with his South Asian counterparts the results of a classified Pentagon study that concludes that a nuclear war between these countries could result in 12 million deaths.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has conducted its own analysis of the consequences of nuclear war in South Asia. Prior to this most recent crisis we calculated two nuclear scenarios. The first assumes 10 Hiroshima-sized explosions with no fallout; the second assumes 24 nuclear explosions with significant radioactive fallout. Below is a discussion of the two scenarios in detail and an exploration of several additional issues regarding nuclear war in South Asia.
Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Forces

It is difficult to determine the actual size and composition of India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals, but NRDC estimates that both countries have a total of 50 to 75 weapons. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we believe India has about 30 to 35 nuclear warheads, slightly fewer than Pakistan, which may have as many as 48.

Both countries have fission weapons, similar to the early designs developed by the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. NRDC estimates their explosive yields are 5 to 25 kilotons (1 kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT). By comparison, the yield of the weapon the United States exploded over Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, while the bomb exploded over Nagasaki was 21 kilotons. According to a recent NRDC discussion with a senior Pakistani military official, Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons are mounted on missiles. India’s nuclear weapons are reportedly gravity bombs deployed on fighter aircraft.

NRDC’s Nuclear Program initially developed the software used to calculate the consequences of a South Asian nuclear war to examine and analyze the U.S. nuclear war planning process. We combined Department of Energy and Department of Defense computer codes with meteorological and demographic data to model what would happen in various kinds of attacks using different types of weapons. Our June 2001 report, “The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time for Change,” is available at http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/warplan/index.asp.
Scenario: 10 Bombs on 10 South Asian Cities

For our first scenario we used casualty data from the Hiroshima bomb to estimate what would happen if bombs exploded over 10 large South Asian cities: five in India and five in Pakistan. (The results were published in “The Risks and Consequences of Nuclear War in South Asia,” by NRDC physicist Matthew McKinzie and Princeton scientists Zia Mian, A. H. Nayyar and M. V. Ramana, a chapter in Smitu Kothari and Zia Mian (editors), “Out of the Nuclear Shadow” (Dehli: Lokayan and Rainbow Publishers, 2001).)

The 15-kiloton yield of the Hiroshima weapon is approximately the size of the weapons now in the Indian and Pakistani nuclear arsenals. The deaths and severe injuries experienced at Hiroshima were mainly a function of how far people were from ground zero. Other factors included whether people were in buildings or outdoors, the structural characteristics of the buildings themselves, and the age and health of the victims at the time of the attack. The closer to ground zero, the higher fatality rate. Further away there were fewer fatalities and larger numbers of injuries. The table below summarizes the first nuclear war scenario by superimposing the Hiroshima data onto five Indian and five Pakistan cities with densely concentrated populations.

Estimated nuclear casualties for attacks on 10 large Indian and Pakistani cities
City Name	Total Population Within 5 Kilometers of Ground Zero	Number of Persons Killed	Number of Persons Severely Injured	Number of Persons Slightly Injured
India
Bangalore	3,077,937	314,978	175,136	411,336
Bombay	3,143,284	477,713	228,648	476,633
Calcutta	3,520,344	357,202	198,218	466,336
Madras	3,252,628	364,291	196,226	448,948
New Delhi	1,638,744	176,518	94,231	217,853
Total India	14,632,937	1,690,702	892,459	2,021,106
Pakistan
Faisalabad	2,376,478	336,239	174,351	373,967
Islamabad	798,583	154,067	66,744	129,935
Karachi	1,962,458	239,643	126,810	283,290
Lahore	2,682,092	258,139	149,649	354,095
Rawalpindi	1,589,828	183,791	96,846	220,585
Total Pakistan	9,409,439	1,171,879	614,400	1,361,872
India and Pakistan
Total	24,042,376	2,862,581	1,506,859	3,382,978

As in the case of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in this scenario the 10 bombs over Indian and Pakistani cities would be exploded in the air, which maximized blast damage and fire but creates no fallout. On August 6, 1945, the United States exploded an untested uranium-235 gun-assembly bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” 1,900 feet above Hiroshima. The city was home to an estimated 350,000 people; about 140,000 died by the end of the year. Three days later, at 11:02 am, the United States exploded a plutonium implosion bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” 1,650 feet above Nagasaki. About 70,000 of the estimated 270,000 residents died by the end of the year.

Ten Hiroshima-size explosions over 10 major cities in India and Pakistan would kill as many as three to four times more people per bomb than in Japan because of the higher urban densities in Indian and Pakistani cities.
Scenario: 24 Ground Bursts

In January, NRDC calculated the consequences of a much more severe nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. It first appeared as a sidebar in the January 14, 2002, issue of Newsweek (“A Face-Off with Nuclear Stakes”). This scenario calculated the consequences of 24 nuclear explosions detonated on the ground — unlike the Hiroshima airburst — resulting in significant amounts of lethal radioactive fallout.

Exploding a nuclear bomb above the ground does not produce fallout. For example, the United States detonated “Little Boy” weapon above Hiroshima at an altitude of 1,900 feet. At this height, the radioactive particles produced in the explosion were small and light enough to rise into the upper atmosphere, where they were carried by the prevailing winds. Days to weeks later, after the radioactive bomb debris became less “hot,” these tiny particles descended to earth as a measurable radioactive residue, but not at levels of contamination that would cause immediate radiation sickness or death.

Unfortunately, it is easier to fuse a nuclear weapon to detonate on impact than it is to detonate it in the air — and that means fallout. If the nuclear explosion takes place at or near the surface of the earth, the nuclear fireball would gouge out material and mix it with the radioactive bomb debris, producing heavier radioactive particles. These heavier particles would begin to drift back to earth within minutes or hours after the explosion, producing potentially lethal levels of nuclear fallout out to tens or hundreds of kilometers from the ground zero. The precise levels depend on the explosive yield of the weapon and the prevailing winds.

For the second scenario, we calculated the fallout patterns and casualties for a hypothetical nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in which each country targeted major cities. We chose target cities throughout Pakistan and in northwestern India to take into account the limited range of Pakistani missiles or aircraft. The target cities, listed in the table below, include the capitals of Islamabad and New Dehli, and large cities, such as Karachi and Bombay. In this scenario, we assumed that a dozen, 25-kiloton warheads would be detonated as ground bursts in Pakistan and another dozen in India, producing substantial fallout.

The devastation that would result from fallout would exceed that of blast and fire. NRDC’s second scenario would produce far more horrific results than the first scenario because there would be more weapons, higher yields, and extensive fallout. In some large cities, we assumed more than one bomb would be used.

15 Indian and Pakistani cities attacked with 24 nuclear warheads
Country	City	City Population	Number of Attacking Bombs
Pakistan	Islamabad (national capital)	100-250 thousand	1
Pakistan	Karachi (provincial capital)	> 5 million	3
Pakistan	Lahore (provincial capital)	1-5 million	2
Pakistan	Peshawar (provincial capital)	0.5-1 million	1
Pakistan	Quetta (provincial capital)	250-500 thousand	1
Pakistan	Faisalabad	1-5 million	2
Pakistan	Hyderabad	0.5-1 million	1
Pakistan	Rawalpindi	0.5-1 million	1
India	New Dehli (national capital)	250-500 thousand	1
India	Bombay (provincial capital)	> 5 million	3
India	Delhi (provincial capital)	> 5 million	3
India	Jaipur (provincial capital)	1-5 million	2
India	Bhopal (provincial capital)	1-5 million	1
India	Ahmadabad	1-5 million	1
India	Pune	1-5 million	1

NRDC calculated that 22.1 million people in India and Pakistan would be exposed to lethal radiation doses of 600 rem or more in the first two days after the attack. Another 8 million people would receive a radiation dose of 100 to 600 rem, causing severe radiation sickness and potentially death, especially for the very young, old or infirm. NRDC calculates that as many as 30 million people would be threatened by the fallout from the attack, roughly divided between the two countries.

Besides fallout, blast and fire would cause substantial destruction within roughly a mile-and-a-half of the bomb craters. NRDC estimates that 8.1 million people live within this radius of destruction.

Most Indians (99 percent of the population) and Pakistanis (93 percent of the population) would survive the second scenario. Their respective military forces would be still be intact to continue and even escalate the conflict.
Thinking the Unthinkable

After India and Pakistan held nuclear tests in 1998, experts have debated whether their nuclear weapons contribute to stability in South Asia. Experts who argue that the nuclear standoff promotes stability have pointed to the U.S.-Soviet Union Cold War as an example of how deterrence ensures military restraint.

NRDC disagrees. There are major differences between the Cold War and the current South Asian crisis. Unlike the U.S.-Soviet experience, these two countries have a deep-seated hatred of one another and have fought three wars since both countries became independent. At least part of the current crisis may be seen as Hindu nationalism versus Muslim fundamentalism.

A second difference is India and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals are much smaller than those of the United States and Russia. The U.S. and Russian arsenals truly represent the capability to destroy each other’s society beyond recovery. While the two South Asia scenarios we have described produce unimaginable loss of life and destruction, they do not reach the level of “mutual assured destruction” that stood as the ultimate deterrent during the Cold War.

The two South Asian scenarios assume nuclear attacks against cities. During the early Cold War period this was the deterrent strategy of the United States and the Soviet Union. But as both countries introduced technological improvements into their arsenals, they pursued other strategies, targeting each other’s nuclear forces, conventional military forces, industry and leadership. India and Pakistan may include these types of targets in their current military planning. For example, attacking large dams with nuclear weapons could result in massive disruption, economic consequences and casualties. Concentrations of military forces and facilities may provide tempting targets as well.

Related NRDC Pages
The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time for Change
Bush-Putin Treaty Will Prolong Nuclear Standoff

Police State 2009: Pentagon to Militarize USA with 20,000 Armed Troops

Police State 2009: Pentagon to Militarize USA with

20,000 Armed Troops

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
In direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids military troops from playing a role in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has announced plans to station 20,000 armed, uniformed troops inside the United States where they will walk the streets, ready to “respond to terrorism events,” says the Pentagon.

It’s against the law, but since when did the Bush Administration or the Pentagon pay any attention to law in the first place?

Here at NaturalNews, we’ve warned about the coming police state for many years. Now it is upon us, with the mass militarization of our cities and streets. It won’t be long before we’ll start hearing “papers please” as we try to move about our own cities in a nation many people foolishly believe to still be “free.”

This recent push, of course, stems from the New York subway threat, which for all we know was entirely made up by the U.S. government for precisely this purpose — to scare the population into accepting 20,000 troops on the streets. It’s a lesson the Bush Administration learned well with the 9/11 terrorist attacks: People will gladly give up their freedoms if you scare them to death with real (or engineered) terrorist events first.

Oh, and don’t forget what the terrorist hate us for. “They hate America because it’s free,” say the war apologists. So their plan, it seems, is to take away America’s freedoms before the terrorists do!

So now, with 20,000 troops walking the streets brandishing military weapons, it is the U.S. population that will be terrorized by the aggressive military presence. Think about it: When you walk into an area with lots of military personnel sporting assault rifles, do you feel comfort, or do you feel fear? Normal people feel more fear. They intuitively think, “Gee, there must be something dangerous here, or there wouldn’t be armed military personnel standing guard,” and they feel a sense of apprehension.

The real reason for 20,000 troops?

It’s ridiculous to think that 20,000 troops can offer any meaningful response to a terrorism event. If a dirty bomb goes off, or a chemical weapons attack takes place, the only thing left to do will be to clean up the bodies, and you don’t need 20,000 military troops to do that (National Guard troops can handle it just fine).

20,000 troops also aren’t going to prevent a terrorist attack. Do you think the terrorists walk around in orange jumpsuits with the word “terrorist” painted on the back? No, they blend in like everybody else. They easily got by airport security in 2001, and they can easily make their way through the streets of the USA in 2009, regardless of a military presence.

So what’s the REAL reason for stationing 20,000 military troops in the U.S.?

Think about it. Historically, during what times have military troops ever been used to protect the centralization of power?

If you’ve read much history — especially European history — you probably suspect, as I do, that the real purpose of the 20,000 troops is to have a military force to prevent the breakup of the United States of America.

You see, a financial collapse in Washington is imminent. This Federal Reserve bailout is just short-term cover that accomplishes nothing. You can’t save an economy from endless bad debt by creating yet more bad debt. With the derivatives market hovering somewhere beyond $500 trillion, it will be impossible for the Fed to bail out all the failures without bankrupting the U.S. taxpayers and destroying the U.S. currency first.

With a defunct currency and the inevitable riots and social unrest that always follows the massive theft of money from the people, the U.S. will be ripe for Balkanization, or the breaking up of regions that will declare their own sovereignty. One Russian analyst famously predicted several weeks ago that the United States would break into seven new nations, each with its own laws, its own military and its own political power.

What’s the best way to prevent such a breakup? Show up with 20,000 troops and force the member states to back down at gunpoint.

But you might ask why wouldn’t the federal government just use the National Guard to accomplish this? Why does it need Pentagon troops? The answer is simple: Because the National Guard troops are controlled by the STATES.. It is, in fact, the National Guard troops that will be fighting for the freedom of their regions, fighting to break off from the tyrannical federal government that has already engineered the greatest financial swindle in history and now wants to maintain power over all the states, too.

This is the new civil war that will be shaping up: National Guard troops vs. the Pentagon’s troops. And that is why the Pentagon is calling 20,000 troops into the homeland right now: It’s preparing for a civil war and the potential breakup of the nation.

There will be a time when Washington is so bankrupt (both financially and morally), so corrupt and so far beyond saving that intelligent states like California will simply declare themselves to be sovereign nations. Although there may be the threat of military force to prevent such actions in the short term, ultimately Washington will be powerless to stop it because it will be unable to fund the military effort with worthless U.S. dollars. And if just one state successfully breaks away from the union, it will set a precedent that other states will follow.

Even today, Hawaii and Vermont are already talking secession. Many regions of Oregon and Texas are also in the same discussions. If Washington becomes weak, you can expect to see the fragmentation of the nation. It will likely be a bloody event, complete with Martial Law, food shortages, money supply problems and the works.

The person offering the best coverage on this topic is Alex Jones at www.PrisonPlanet.com

He’s been predicting this for many years, and although his radio show might be described by some as “inflammatory,” he’s been right on the money on issues like this one, and he has accurately predicted the mass militarization of the United States by the Pentagon. Check out his daily radio show to learn more about what’s really happening with the coming civil war in the United States.

His show starts at 11:00 central time, each weekday.