India feels the pain: The US begs Beijing for money

Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | новости рупии | 卢比新闻 | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ルピーニュース | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | پاکستاني کھاتا | Moin Ansari | معین آنصآرّی |  اخبار روپیہ |  February 23rd, 2009 |

• China currently owns about $700 billion worth of our Treasury bonds — by far the most in the world.
• According to reports, State Department officials had originally proposed that India be included in the itinerary of Clinton’s current first official tour abroad, but she struck it out.
• Gold is hovering around a $1,000 an ounce, which is within striking distance of a record.

The US cannot ignore the Chinese. The battle between the dragon and the elephant has come to a head. There is a tectonic shift in international relations. China has woken up and for the first time in a couple of centuries can dictate terms. Kruschev is probably sitting up in his grave to take notice. He once said “We will bury you”. Karl Marx predicted that “capitalism would be sent to the dustbin of history”. Mao Ze Dung called the US “a paper tiger”. The British once said referred to China with the prodigious warning “Don’t wake the the sleeping giant sleep“. Well according to the signal—the Red Dragon in Beijing has woken. Those who thought that Communism was dead and Capitalism is kicking butt take a look at four cities–Beijing, Moscow, New York and London. There is celebration in two and malaise in two. The world take note.

Closing her maiden overseas trip as chief diplomat, Clinton urged Beijing to keep buying U.S. government bonds despite their declining value. And she defended the Obama administration’s economic stimulus spending package, saying the added debt load, though “drastic,” would benefit China.

Her plea was a reminder of the shifting balance of power between the longtime Western superpower and the Asian giant that finances its consumer and government spending with $1.9 trillion in foreign currency reserves.

In an interview with Yang Lin of Shanghai-based Dragon TV, Clinton said the Chinese understand that the United States “has to take some drastic measures” with the stimulus package to restore American spending, The Los Angeles Times, By Paul Richter, February 23, 2009

While President Barack Obama is funding bailouts, spending US Dollars like it is going out of style other realities are creeping into the picture. In a sign of the times, America is at the doorstep of the Chinese money lenders literally on its knees asking for help from the Chinese in propping up the government. Everything has a price.

But now, as a senior U.S. official, Clinton was recognizing a difficult reality, and pleading with China to continue the status quo. On Saturday, when the subject of Chinese bond purchases came up during a joint news conference with Clinton, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi stopped short of promising to continue the purchases. He said instead, as Chinese officials have before, that his government would continue to buy the bonds if they continued to offer the best combination of value, low risk and liquidity. The Los Angeles Times, By Paul Richter, February 23, 2009

For the first time, the center of gravity on finance has moved away from New York. From this day onwards, it will not always be the New York or Zurich bankers that dictate how the world will be structured.It’s not as if the switch has been turned on and the Chinese are in control–that reality is about 3 or 4 decades away. For now there is stoic quite celebration in “the Middle Kingdom” in the fact that some of the decisions will be made in Beijing.  This report in the New York Times is a poignant reminder of where the world of US-China relationship is headed. One never thought that we would see a US Secretary of State in Beijing literally begging the Chinese for “loans” (actually buying Treasury bonds). Its a new world–let the begging and groveling begin.

BEIJING — Hillary Rodham Clinton said she wanted to spend her first trip as secretary of state listening. But she ended up saying a lot, and in blunter terms, than many of her pinstriped predecessors. The Clinton Straight Talk Express made its last big stop in Beijing on Sunday, with Mrs. Clinton explaining to a Chinese talk show host why China had better keep buying United States Treasury bonds. “It’s a good investment, it’s a safe investment,” she told Yang Lan, the host of a show on Dragon Television.

The Chinese government, she said, has an even more compelling incentive to keep buying: it needs the United States to recover as a market for Chinese goods. To jolt the economy back to life, she added, the United States needs to be able to take on more debt. “We are truly going to rise or fall together,” she said. “We are in the same boat and, thankfully, we are rowing in the same direction.” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner could not have said it better.

Speaking of Mr. Geithner, Mrs. Clinton cleared up the question of how the two of them were going to divide China policy. Speculation about who would control China policy has crackled since it became clear she was not ready to cede it to the Treasury Department, as happened during the Bush administration. Mrs. Clinton said she and Mr. Geithner would share leadership of a high-level consultation between China and the United States that would be balanced between strategic issues like North Korea and economic concerns. The New York Times. A Clinton Listening Tour, but China Gets an Earful By MARK LANDLER Published: February 22, 2009

This has dramatic and long term implications on Asia and the world. Parag Khanna in his seminal book said it best “India has missed the boat”. The reality hasn’t hit home for most Indians— Superpower status was beyond reach!

Dollar courting yuan
But there is another aspect in Obama’s new foreign policy that worries India even more. Obama’s China policy renders obsolete the Indian strategic calculus built around the US containment strategy. Hardly two to three years ago, the Bush administration encouraged India to put faith in a quadrilateral alliance of Asian democracies – the US, Japan, Australia and India – that would strive to set the rules for China’s behavior in the region.

According to reports, State Department officials had originally proposed that India be included in the itinerary of Clinton’s current first official tour abroad, but she struck it out. As things stand, Clinton meant every word of what she wrote last year in her Foreign Affairs article that “our [US] relationship with China will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century”.

In a major speech at the Asia Society in New York last Friday before embarking on her tour of Asia, Clinton said, “We believe that the United States and China can benefit from and contribute to each other’s successes. It is in our interests to work harder to build on areas of common concern and shared opportunities”. She argued for a “comprehensive dialogue” and a “broader agenda” with China.

The Washington Post cited State Department officials as saying, “It is symbolically important that Clinton is the first secretary of state in nearly 50 years to intensely focus his or her maiden voyage on Asia”. The story is easily comprehensible. The US needs to have new opportunities to export more to China; it should persuade Beijing to accept a realistic dollar-yuan exchange rate; and, it should convince China to keep investing its money in America. But what is unfolding is also a phenomenal story insofar as a new chapter in their mutually dependent relationship is commencing where the two countries become equal partners in crisis. This was simply unthinkable.

Dennis Blair, the newly appointed director of national intelligence, in his testimony before the US senate intelligence committee on January 22, struck a fine balance when he said,

While the United States must understand China’s military buildup – its extent, its technological sophistication and its vulnerabilities – in order to offset it, the intelligence community also needs to support policymakers who are looking for opportunities to work with Chinese leaders who believe that Asia is big enough for both of us and can be an Asia in which both countries can benefit as well as contribute to the common good.

However, this is precisely where a serious problem arises for India. In the Indian perception, South Asia and the Indian Ocean just aren’t “big enough” for India and China. Asia Times. India grapples with the Obama era By M K Bhadrakumar. M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

The West careening from a debilitating financial crisis needed Chinese money and Pakistani soldiers. Without Chinese credit the US would be kneeling in front of the world. Without Islamabad’s active support, Washington would not have an exit strategy from the graveyard of Empires.

On Monday, President Obama hosted an economic summit where he talked about trying to cut the current deficit from $1.3 trillion to $533 billion by the end of his term. That story doesn’t make sense. He just doubled the deficit and now he’s going to cut it in half?

Unless you understand the next puzzle piece: While Obama was spending $787 billion here at home, Hillary Clinton went to China hat in hand to convince them to keep buying our debt. She said, “We are truly going to rise or fall together.” This story made the rounds, but unless you know the next story it also doesn’t make sense.

Last week, one of China’s leaders revealed that Hillary Clinton is exactly right and he can’t stand it. He was so frustrated about our financial mismanagement that he said — and this is an actual quote — “We hate you guys but there’s nothing much we can do.”

So now the last piece: Gold is hovering around a $1,000 an ounce, which is within striking distance of a record.

That means one of two things: Either people don’t trust that the dollar is going to keep its value due to our spending or they don’t believe that the U.S. can stop the inevitable consequence of running our printing presses 24/7 — which is massive inflation.

Put this puzzle together and the picture becomes clear: Time is running out and the key to it all is China.

Here’s why I say that:

China currently owns about $700 billion worth of our Treasury bonds — by far the most in the world. And though the Chinese haven’t said that they’d completely stop buying our debt, they did say they would only keep it up as long as the bonds continue to offer the best combination of value, low risk and liquidity.

That’s why the economic summit was held today, why Hillary Clinton went to China and why the price of gold is high.

Most economic experts say that China has to keep buying our debt — at least in the short-term — because it protects their investment. And while there might be some truth to that, I don’t have much faith in the so-called “economic experts” anymore.

So now China has a decision to make: When do they cut their losses and decide to stop throwing good money after bad?

Our decision: When do we change our behavior? What do you think? Send your comments to: glennbeck@foxnews.com, Putting Together the Pieces, Monday, February 23, 2009 By Glenn Beck

The die has now been cast–dump India build the strategic relationship with China and work with Pakistan to somehow harmonize the irreversible gains made by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Bruce Reidel, General Patraeus, Barack Obama, David Brown, David Milliband etc. all see Pakistan and Afghanistan as one entity–”PakAf”. Even sober journals like Newsweek quoting stalwarts have begun to seriously recognize the reality of the union and have been writing about the proposal to formally merge Pakistan and Afghanistan into one entity.

So why not just get out? As always, it’s not so simple. If the Americans pull their troops out, the already shaky Afghan Army could collapse. (Once they lost U.S. air support, South Vietnamese troops sometimes refused to take the field and fight.) Afghanistan could well plunge into civil war, just as it did after the Soviets left in 1989. Already, the Pashtuns in the south regard the American-backed Tajiks who dominate Karzai’s administration as the enemy. The winning side would likely be the one backed by Pakistan, which may end up being the Taliban—just as it was in the last civil war.

Some argue this wouldn’t be such a bad outcome, if the Taliban could be bribed or persuaded to not let Al Qaeda set up terrorist training bases on Afghan territory. According to one senior Taliban leader, a former deputy minister in Mullah Mohammed Omar’s government who would only speak anonymously, some Pakistani officials are urging the insurgents to do something like this now—in return for talks with the Americans. On the other hand, Islamabad could be playing with fire. Given the longstanding ties between the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, a jihadist state on its border is a threat to Pakistan, too. And here, U.S. national-security interests definitely do come into play. Newsweek. With Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai

Why the US gave up India as a Strategic partner? The answer to this complex question can be summed up in a Clintonian cliche “its the economy stupid”. The Obama Administration has taken a page out of the Nixon playbook–build a relationship with China at the expense of India. The Bush administration had tries to build up India as a counterweight to China with a strategic partnership with India “as a natural ally”.

The relationship between the “worlds largest democracies” has been sacrificed once again for the sake of the almighty Dollar and the other small irritant in West Asia–aka “defeat in Afghanistan”. India finds itself on the wrong side of history once again. For the first half century of its existence Bharat supported the Evil Empire. Then in the 80s when the USSR imploded and Yogoslavia imploded, the Indian policy makers worked overtime to come up with a strategy of survival on this third planet from the sun. Egged on by a Democratic Congress, Mr. Clinton encouraged India to explode a nuclear device. The Pokran explosions had a affect on India like the world has never seen. It allowed the youthful nation to being thinking big–beyond the confines of reality and beyond the realm of imagination. Within a decade of meager growth, Indian had not only proclaimed themselves a Superpower, but also convinced themselves of the death of Pakistan, the subservience of Bangladesh, the destruction of Lanka and the erosion of Nepal as a political entity. In this dream world, Bollywood stopped filming movies in India and brought world capitals, skyscrapers and modern amenities into the theatres and homes of ordinary Indians. Pretty soon a fog enveloped the nation–they actually started believing the Bollywood baloney and got swollen heads. Like the Michelins man full of air, the Superpower began to think of its borders beyond Uzbekistan and its Navy beyond the Pacific and Atlantic.

The Pakistani-Chinese relationship is growing by leaps and bounds. Mr. Zardari’s article in the capital’s main daily was a seminal event for China and for Pakistan.

“China is the glue holding the continent together – not only in terms of geography but in political and economic terms,” the Pakistani president said in a signed article in the state-run China Daily today. Entitled “Sino-Pakistan relations higher than Himalayas”, the article showered fulsome praise on China describing it as “an anchor of stability and peace not only in Asia but the world”.

At the same time, Zardari shrewdly played on Chinese fears about separatists in its Xinjiang province getting support from Islamic fundamentalists across the border in Pakistan. “We are determined not to allow the noxious fumes of this dangerous phenomenon and ideology to spread to other countries,” Zardari said. He claimed that “Pakistan is fighting terrorists not only for its own sake but for the entire region.”

“Given proper infrastructure, the Pakistani ports of Karachi, Port Qasim and Gwadar are nearer to the Chinese heartland than Shanghai and Hong Kong. Pakistan can also help channel energy supplies from the Gulf to China,” he said.

“The Pakistan-China friendship is a comprehensive partnership. China has been instrumental in helping Pakistan develop its civil and military infrastructure,” the article said and then went on to say that Beijing has helped in a wide range of construction projects from nuclear power plants to dams, roads and industrial estates. “The port of Gwadar on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast is a testament to China’s friendship with Pakistan” he said.

Relationship between China and his party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, spanned three generations from late prime ministers Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto to his son and PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, he said. Times of India. Zardari wants China to be arbitrator for India-Pakistan disputes. 23 Feb 2009, 1748 hrs IST, Saibal Dasgupta, TNN

India intoxicated by meager success is blind to real self-portrait of caste infested penury and balkanization. According to the Prime Minister Manmohan SIngh, the biggest threat facing Bharat right now is the Naxalite insurrection which encompasses more than 40% of Bharati territory. Entire swathes of land in the Northeast (7 sisters) and huge chunk of territory from Nepal down to Andhara Pradesh are in the hands of the Dalits, the Naxalites and the Maoists. Half the Bharati army is embroiled in Kashmir with no end in sight. Does this mean that the Bharati army has surrendered?

The world is moving ahead with the speed of light.

Looking ahead, Obama’s decision on Wednesday approving a troop buildup in Afghanistan constitutes a defining moment. He has put his presidency on the firing line. From this week onward, Obama’s war has begun. The war can well consume his presidency. Either he succeeds, or he gets mired in the war. Yet, the new US strategy is still in the making. Delhi takes note that it is at such a crucial juncture that the Pakistani army chief, General Parvez Kayani, has been invited to go across to Washington for consultations.

The message is clear: Washington will be in no mood to antagonize its Pakistani partner and Delhi is expected to keep tensions under check in its relations with Islamabad. Asia Times. India grapples with the Obama era By M K Bhadrakumar. Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Mr. Zardari was at the right time at the right place.

“My party and my government want to strengthen the ties [between China and Pakistan] … and we are proud of China’s progress,” he said. “I wish one million Chinese were in Pakistan and one million Pakistanis were in China and take this relationship to another level.” Zardari offers China access to warm waters. The Daily Times

China is the Key to America’s problems.

Gwadar Pakistan port opens 巴基斯坦瓜达尔港 [瓜達爾港] SEE PLANNED PIPELINE ROUTE IN INSET, THE REASON FOR AMERICA’S WAR ON PAKISTAN

China is the Key to the America’s problems.

By: Peter Chamberlin

China and America are locked into an economic pact of mutually assured destruction, if either side falls or falters, then the other side sinks as well. China and Pakistan are working on a pact of mutual assured opportunity. In their symbiotic relationship (a cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship between two people or groups), China needs the resources that Pakistan needs to sell, basically the same business arrangement shared by the US and China, only conducted with a less threatening intensity.

Obama must focus most intently on reversing the Bush policies towards US/Chinese relations, particularly attitudes about Chinese development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The current policies are more in tune with Taliban sentiments towards Chinese development projects in the Frontier Region (which were demonstrated quite clearly through multiple kidnappings and murders of Chinese engineers) than with the desires of the government or the people of Pakistan. In a 2004 interview with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in India’s Frontline magazine, the Taliban leader blamed mercenary forces bought-off by the United States for the acts of terror directed at Chinese technicians:

“It is not true. I cannot accept the responsibility if some miscreants have masterminded it at the U.S.’ behest. I believe it is the handiwork of the Americans. They have used some greedy mujahideens for this inhuman act to defame the true mujahideens. I suspect that the Americans have also masterminded the killing of Chinese in Gwador, Baluchistan. The U.S. agenda is to malign jehad and jehadis.”

Bush policies were based on violence and threats to cut other nations out of the developing energy markets of the Caucasus Region. Obama must embrace a new path that not only accepts other nations sharing in the limited energy resources, but encourages them to help develop the infrastructure necessary to process and move the products. If Obama chooses to remain upon the path of confrontation over these resources that Bush and Cheney have set us upon then it can only lead to the intended neocon destination of world war III, the ultimate resource war. He is smart enough to understand that such a war cannot be won; whoever is left standing will have won nothing, for nothing is all that will remain.

But, once again, the problem that remains in all this speculation is, how much freedom of action is Obama really allowed to have, anyway? The same as Bush, in that he is a creation of the money-masters (the grand designers of the evil play we are all trapped in), Obama can only do what he is told to do. He is, at best, an anti-hero (protagonist in motion pictures or literature who is conspicuously lacking in those qualities usually associated with heroism, but who often possesses a strength of character that others admire), someone whose character in the psycho-drama allows him to defend or represent the issues that are important to him personally, but is helpless to take a meaningful stand against the global dictatorship without being disempowered or killed.

We are still left at the mercy of the merciless international bankers’ conspiracy in this new administration, as the new China stratagem is launched to seize all of the world’s resources and to establish a new global economy dominated by the same people who have destroyed the old economic system. Admitting and accepting their need for China to fulfill their plans for world domination is not a setback for the bankers’ conspiracy which previously hatched the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) nut-jobs to destabilize the world for them; American dominance was never really the plan at all, unless you mean American bank dominance. If the web of conspiracy is playing the “China card” then that surely means that the web of influence reaches deeply into China as well.

As reported in the excellent analysis India feels the pain: The US begs Beijing for money:

“The Obama Administration has taken a page out of the Nixon playbook–build a relationship with China at the expense of India.”

Also in that article is a reference to a Times of India report on an article written by Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari:

“China is therefore in a unique position to use these attributes to help its neighboring countries improve relations among and between themselves…China is the glue holding the continent together – not only in terms of geography but in political and economic terms…the Pakistan-China friendship is a comprehensive partnership. China has been instrumental in helping Pakistan develop its civil and military infrastructure,… The port of Gwadar on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast is a testament to China’s friendship with Pakistan”

In another article in the Daily Times, Zardari effused even more praise on China:

“I wish one million Chinese were in Pakistan and one million Pakistanis were in China and take this relationship to another level.”

If the new administration really intends on fighting for America’s interests in the war that America wages across the world then Obama must rise above the role of anti-hero that he has been cast in and truly reverse the disastrous policies set by George Bush. This means reversing the entire war of terror, setting on its head, the very notion of “victory.” The war of terror has always been a resource war disguised as a war of “self-defense.” Under this guise the patriotic forces which will go to any length, pay any price to preserve the country that they think they know, have been tricked into supporting the criminal international financiers who have always planned the destruction of America.

In my opinion, the key to overthrowing the plot to create a “new world order” lies in awakening the patriotic core of war supporters (who drive the idea of our being engaged in a defensive war) to the truth about the real goals of the “war-monger” bankers who form the other half of the pro-war forces in this country and in Britain. Were it not for this patriotic core of diehard believers forming the backbone of war support, turning their sons into cannon fodder, faithfully paying their taxes and honoring every government edict, and most importantly, providing the moral support, then the conventional war could not go on. They are the true “sheeple,” unlike those of us who are awake to the nefarious plans of the one-worlders. They are the ones that we must reach, instead of our being satisfied with merely “preaching to the masses.”

The depth of our problem in setting this objective of reaching the patriots of this land is best explained by pointing-out the fact that American patriots are blinded to any other reality and deaf to the words that we speak. They can never be reached solely by reason, they must be subtly persuaded by other means of two things pertaining to Pakistan and the war on terror, that all the jihadi terrorism that Pakistan’s secret service (ISI) is currently being blamed for was a joint effort between them and the CIA, and the war on terror itself is a CIA-manufactured event.

Once the proof is seen, proving US guilt and complicity in the international terrorism that Pakistan alone is being indicted for today by the international community, then it will make it much more difficult to sell the idea of invading Pakistan to save it from its “Frankenstein monster.” The international jihadi network that has its “epicenter” in Pakistan has been created through an evil union of intelligence agencies (American/Pakistani/Saudi/Israeli), repackaged as “America’s terrorist enemy” and sold to the world as “al Qaida.” Pakistan is infested with the remnants of this militant network and the arms/drugs smuggling pipeline which was created to supply them is still intact, still importing and exporting terror from the bases built to train them. America is infested with the criminal spy-lords who created this Frankenstein and the ghosts of the millions of souls taken from this earth in the production of this tragic drama power play, in the process of convincing the people of the world that it is reality instead of a carefully crafted illusion.

Pakistan has to come to terms with their creation, as do we. Every nation in southern and central Asia is infested with elements of the jihadi network. They cannot be overcome by conquest by an outside force, no matter how much firepower they have available. Their real power lies in their faith in martyrdom, every mujahedeen who is slaughtered along with half of his family leaves behind enraged survivors who will eagerly take up the cause of those who were slain. The solution to taming the multiple insurrections is to be found by the individual governments of each inflicted nation. Like Pakistan, if they choose the path of negotiations then we must honor their more informed decision. Our task must be to provide the support they need to bring resolution to each of the little wars ignited by our CIA in instigating the anticipated global war, which the conspirators see as a solution to all of our economic problems. This belief, that we must fight a war to end all wars, and that it must be fought by lighting a hundred “brush fires,” is faulty immoral reasoning.

This is the line from Bush, which he inherited from his predecessors, which Obama must break, if he has ambitions to fill the hero’s role and save this free nation that has been clearly marked for extinction.

peter.chamberlin@yahoo.com

IDF Human Target Practice

The United Shame of America

Monday, 09 March 2009 07:19 Nancy Levant

The country is in flames. Everyone is pointing fingers, and 95 percent of the nation’s people are going down. Homes, private property, bank accounts, investments, retirement, automobiles, quality food, health, education, and faith in God are sinking like stones cast with ultimate vengeance. We say goodbye to what was a magnificent attempt to govern with a moral combination of faith, order, liberty, and freedom which, in the final analysis, required the people, themselves, to govern. It didn’t happen — the people didn’t want the job.

Today, I’m reminded of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and the message that I recall from that book, that it is a cruelty to expect people to live outside of slavery because most people choose slavery, being incapable of anything but slavery. And today, we witness another attempt at communism, albeit a green communism (communitarianism), enforcing slavery and its collection of all wealth, both national and global, all physical money, all national and natural resources, all current and future tax dollars, and all intellectual and creative potential from the world’s people. The “community” initiatives, which are all government initiatives, are nets and traps, sweeping up every dime, every inch of personal accumulated wealth from everyone. They call it “sustainability”.

We blame the democrats, we blame the republicans, we blame the housing market, we blame imported oil — fools that we are. We were given a governing structure, we were told that would be hard to keep, and that people, in order to remain free, were required to be the governing and responsible parties to ensure liberty and freedom for all. We didn’t want the job. So, once again, human history repeats its constant pattern of constant theft. Government, once more, takes everything from everyone and again recreates the slave-based economy of power and force over most.

We blame the industrial mobs, we blame the central banking cartel, we blame the politicians, we blame their system, we blame the ignorant rabble, preferring their entertainments and addictions to freedom and liberty. We blame mankind for mankind’s constant revolving doors. God’s will be done.

When tell-a-vision is truth, when education is partnership-funded video, when nature is big money, and when men are expected to be women, and women are expected to be men, when all of the above becomes normal and cultural, “change” happens. “Stimulus” happens. “Change” and “stimulus” are political forces. They are dialectical words of social manipulation. They are the words behind force.

And then, there are the children — the innocent victims of each and every blamed party, each and every generation. For them, I repeat the words of the former 13th amendment, section 1: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Involuntary servitude means enforced service. Our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are told they will, in fact, perform universal service, also called civil service. What a shame that the 13th amendment, like the others, have been changed by change agents and agencies. What do we say to our children? How can we look them in the eyes? And do we blame them for their disloyalty to God and country, family and nation when they are trained, universally speaking, to serve in military fashion under the authority and opinion of our change agents and agencies? Who will our children become? Certainly their beliefs will not fall far from the tree of government education, government media, and government entertainment. Unlike us, they will most certainly perform their service jobs.

In my life, I will never fully comprehend the constant desire for and resurrection of communism. Except for one reason which is its exceptional ability and history of mass producing slave labor. It has been called a potentially utopian system of government, though clearly it is not as it denies all human potential. It only creates cheap labor through force. Therefore, communism — or any communist hybrid such as communitarianism — is based upon the collection of wealth. This is not utopia. In order to be achieved, utopia would require the complete elimination of the profit mindset because all wars, throughout all human history, have been based upon the theft of valuables and the accumulation of greater wealth. And all wealth demands an enormous and constant slave base in order to survive.

So, here we are, resting on and facing our laurels as profit’s greed has now taken on global proportions through global-sized work forces. Welcome to the world of equity, of equal opportunity slavery, where much like China, you work slavishly for absolutely nothing, while “government” collects everything, owns everything, and dictates and enforces your laws, your beliefs, your value systems and makes mandatory soldiers of your children.

Who is to blame, America? The elites, or the rabble? You tell me. But one thing is for certain: here we go again.

You can doll it all up in artificial flowers like sustainability, community, the greater good, open spaces, world heritage sites and biosphere reserves, volunteerism, community service, partnerships and non-profits, organics, reproductive responsibility, gun-free zones, metrosexualism, carbon credits, ecology and global warming, multiculturalism, equal rights and feminism, equity, visions, consensus, facilitation, and democracy until the cows come home. But it won’t change the fact that all of the above are government-funded creations, funded with the stolen wealth of this nation’s people. You know it, I know it, they know it, media knows it, and arguably so does communist China, communist Russia, communist Europe, socialist Canada, and socialist South America. Equitably speaking, we join all brothers and sisters in service to the globalist communist regime. Never again, will our ignorance be bliss.

In closing, and to the republic, its one nation under God, indivisible and with liberty and justice for all, we are the united shame of America. Dostoevsky was right.

Join us this week on Govern America as our guest will be Ellen McClay, author of In The Presence of our Enemies. Ellen writes about the history of UNESCO and its malignant effects in American schools and its transformation of American society.

Govern America is broadcast every Saturday morning from 8AM to 11AM Eastern time on the Republic Broadcasting Network. Click here to listen live.

Source: News With Views

The Global Hierarchy of Race

The Global Hierarchy of Race As the only racial group that never suffers systemic racism, whites are in denial about its impact

by Martin Jacques

I always found race difficult to understand. It was never intuitive. And the reason was simple. Like every other white person, I had never experienced it myself: the meaning of color was something I had to learn. The turning point was falling in love with my wife, an Indian-Malaysian, and her coming to live in England. Then, over time, I came to see my own country in a completely different way, through her eyes, her background. Color is something white people never have to think about because for them it is never a handicap, never a source of prejudice or discrimination, but rather the opposite, a source of privilege. However liberal and enlightened I tried to be, I still had a white outlook on the world. My wife was the beginning of my education. But it was not until we went to live in Hong Kong that my view of the world, and the place that race occupies within it, was to be utterly transformed. Rather than seeing race through the prism of my own society, I learned to see it globally. When we left these shores, it felt as if we were moving closer to my wife’s world: this was east Asia and she was Malaysian. And she, unlike me, had the benefit of speaking Cantonese. So my expectation was that she would feel more comfortable in this environment than I would. I was wrong. As a white, I found myself treated with respect and deference; my wife, notwithstanding her knowledge of the language and her intimacy with Chinese culture, was the object of an in-your-face racism. In our 14 months in Hong Kong, I learned some brutal lessons about racism. First, it is not the preserve of whites. Every race displays racial prejudice, is capable of racism, carries assumptions about its own virtue and superiority. Each racism, furthermore, is subtly different, reflecting the specificity of its own culture and history. Second, there is a global racial hierarchy that helps to shape the power and the prejudices of each race. At the top of this hierarchy are whites. The reasons are deep-rooted and profound. White societies have been the global top dogs for half a millennium, ever since Chinese civilization went into decline. With global hegemony, first with Europe and then the US, whites have long commanded respect, as well as arousing fear and resentment, among other races. Being white confers a privilege, a special kind of deference, throughout the world, be it Kingston, Hong Kong, Delhi, Lagos – or even, despite the way it is portrayed in Britain, Harare. Whites are the only race that never suffers any kind of systemic racism anywhere in the world. And the impact of white racism has been far more profound and baneful than any other: it remains the only racism with global reach. Being top of the pile means that whites are peculiarly and uniquely insensitive to race and racism, and the power relations this involves. We are invariably the beneficiaries, never the victims. Even when well-meaning, we remain strangely ignorant. The clout enjoyed by whites does not reside simply in an abstraction – western societies – but in the skin of each and every one of us. Whether we like it or not, in every corner of the planet we enjoy an extraordinary personal power bestowed by our color It is something we are largely oblivious of, and consequently take for granted, irrespective of whether we are liberal or reactionary, backpackers, tourists or expatriate businessmen. The existence of a de facto global racial hierarchy helps to shape the nature of racial prejudice exhibited by other races. Whites are universally respected, even when that respect is combined with strong resentment. A race generally defers to those above it in the hierarchy and is contemptuous of those below it. The Chinese – like the Japanese – widely consider themselves to be number two in the pecking order and look down upon all other races as inferior. Their respect for whites is also grudging – many Chinese believe that western hegemony is, in effect, held on no more than prolonged leasehold. Those below the Chinese and the Japanese in the hierarchy are invariably people of color (both Chinese and Japanese often like to see themselves as white, or nearly white). At the bottom of the pile, virtually everywhere it would seem, are those of African descent, the only exception in certain cases being the indigenous peoples. This highlights the centrality of color to the global hierarchy. Other factors serve to define and reinforce a race’s position in the hierarchy – levels of development, civilizational values, history, religion, physical characteristics and dress – but the most insistent and widespread is color The reason is that color is instantly recognizable, it defines difference at the glance of an eye. It also happens to have another effect. It makes the global hierarchy seem like the natural order of things: you are born with your color, it is something nobody can do anything about, it is neither cultural nor social but physical in origin. In the era of globalization, with mass migration and globalized cultural industries, color has become the universal calling card of difference. In interwar Europe, the dominant forms of racism were anti-semitism and racialized nationalisms, today it is color: at a football match, it is blacks not Jews that get jeered, even in eastern Europe. Liberals like to think that racism is a product of ignorance, of a lack of contact, and that as human mobility increases, so racism will decline. This might be described as the Benetton view of the world. And it does contain a modicum of truth. Intermixing can foster greater understanding, but not necessarily, as Burnley, Sri Lanka and Israel, in their very different ways, all testify. Hong Kong, compared with China, is an open society, and has long been so, yet it has had little or no effect in mollifying Chinese prejudice towards people of darker skin. It is not that racism is immovable and intractable, but that its roots are deep, its prejudices as old as humanity itself. The origins of Chinese racism lie in the Middle Kingdom: the belief that the Chinese are superior to other races – with the exception of whites – is centuries, if not thousands of years, old. The disparaging attitude among American whites towards blacks has its roots in slavery. Wishing it wasn’t true, denying it is true, will never change the reality. We can only understand – and tackle racism – if we are honest about it. And when it comes to race – more than any other issue – honesty is in desperately short supply. Race remains the great taboo. Take the case of Hong Kong. A conspiracy of silence surrounded race. As the British departed in 1997, amid much self-congratulation, they breathed not a word about racism. Yet the latter was integral to colonial rule, its leitmotif: colonialism, after all, is institutionalized racism at its crudest and most base. The majority of Chinese, the object of it, meanwhile, harbored an equally racist mentality towards people of darker skin. Masters of their own home, they too are in denial of their own racism. But that, in varying degrees, is true of racism not only in Hong Kong but in every country in the world. You may remember that, after the riots in Burnley in the summer of 2001, Tony Blair declared that they were not a true reflection of the state of race relations in Britain: of course, they were, even if the picture is less discouraging in other aspects. Racism everywhere remains largely invisible and hugely under-estimated, the issue that barely speaks its name. How can the Economist produce a 15,000-word survey on migration, as it did last year, and hardly mention the word racism? Why does virtually no one talk about the racism suffered by the Williams sisters on the tennis circuit even though the evidence is legion? Why are the deeply racist western attitudes towards Arabs barely mentioned in the context of the occupation of Iraq, carefully hidden behind talk of religion and civilizational values? The dominant race in a society, whether white or otherwise, rarely admits to its own racism. Denial is near universal. The reasons are manifold. It has a huge vested interest in its own privilege. It will often be oblivious to its own prejudices. It will regard its racist attitudes as nothing more than common sense, having the force and justification of nature. Only when challenged by those on the receiving end is racism outed, and attitudes begin to change. The reason why British society is less nakedly racist than it used to be is that whites have been forced by people of color to question age-old racist assumptions. Nations are never honest about themselves: they are all in varying degrees of denial. This is clearly fundamental to understanding the way in which racism is underplayed as a national and global issue. But there is another reason, which is a specifically white problem. Because whites remain the overwhelmingly dominant global race, perched in splendid isolation on top of the pile even though they only represent 17% of the world’s population, they are overwhelmingly responsible for setting the global agenda, for determining what is discussed and what is not. And the fact that whites have no experience of racism, except as perpetrators, means that racism is constantly underplayed by western institutions – by governments, by the media, by corporations. Moreover, because whites have reigned globally supreme for half a millennium, they, more than any other race, have left their mark on the rest of humanity: they have a vested interest in denying the extent and baneful effects of racism. It was only two years ago, you may remember, that the first-ever United Nations conference on racism was held – against the fierce resistance of the US (and that in the Clinton era). Nothing more eloquently testifies to the unwillingness of western governments to engage in a global dialogue about the problem of racism. If racism is now more widely recognized than it used to be, the situation is likely to be transformed over the next few decades. As migration increases, as the regime of denial is challenged, as subordinate races find the will and confidence to challenge the dominant race, as understanding of racism develops, as we become more aware of other racisms like that of the Han Chinese, then the global prominence of racism is surely set to increase dramatically. It is rare to hear a political leader speaking the discourse of color Robert Mugabe is one, but he is tainted and discredited. The Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamed, is articulate on the subject of white privilege and the global hierarchy. The most striking example by a huge margin, though, is Nelson Mandela. When it comes to color, his sacrifice is beyond compare and his authority unimpeachable. And his message is always universal – not confined to the interests of one race. It is he who has suggested that western support for Israel has something to do with race. It is he who has hinted that it is no accident that the authority of the UN is under threat at a time when its secretary general is black. And yet his voice is almost alone in a world where race oozes from every pore of humanity. In a world where racism is becoming increasingly important, we will need more such leaders. And invariably they will be people of color: on this subject whites lack moral authority. I could only understand the racism suffered by my wife through her words and experience. I never felt it myself. The difference is utterly fundamental. Martin Jacques is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. The death of his wife, Harinder Veriah, in 2000 in a Hong Kong hospital triggered an outcry which culminated in this summer’s announcement by the Hong Kong government that it would introduce anti-racist legislation for the first time martinjacques1@aol.com

PLEASE DON’T RIOT …… IT’S JUST WHAT ‘THEY’ WANT

Some of us dismiss David Icke because of our perceptions of strange theories, or simply because everything he writes is so long…

In the following piece, he makes some very keen observations and connections between the many arms of the octopus-like conspiracy that has planned our enslavement.  Rioting and anarchy are not the way forward, like the author says, it gives them the excuse they have been looking for to crack skulls and roll the tanks into American and British streets.

The sickness of the mind shared by all the elite plotters is beyond belief or comprehension, which is the primary reason why the sordid tale is so difficult to communicate to simple folks, who cannot imagine that there are people who think such evil thoughts.  The quotes from Albert Pike on the three planned world wars is particularly illuminating, in that it clearly shows that the evil cabal has been planned the end of our world for a very long time.  The expanding world war and universal economic collapse are not accidents; they were both planned events

PLEASE DON’T RIOT …

… IT’S JUST WHAT ‘THEY’ WANT

‘What you fight, you become.’ – David Icke

By David Icke

As I travel around America it is clear that this country is on the brink of an economic catastrophe the like of which it has never seen. And, of course, it is not alone. A similar story can be told around the world.

The foreclosure figures are fantastic as families and others lose their homes through no fault of their own on a scale that, according to current projections, is destined to become a tidal wave.

The credit explosion was orchestrated through Illuminati agents and Satanists like Alan Greenspan, who represents the interests of the Illuminati’s Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and other far more exclusive and sinister secret societies.

Greenspan was the long-time head of the privately-owned ‘US central bank’, the Federal Reserve. Once his policies had manipulated as much personal and commercial debt as possible the plug was pulled on the system to trigger what is designed to be global economic meltdown.

Greenspan, who led ‘the Fed’ under Reagan, Father Bush, Clinton and Boy Bush, operates at a deeper level within the Illuminati network than most of their public figures, and I was told by a former Satanist, an unofficial offspring of the Rothschild family, how he remembered Greenspan at sacrifice rituals he attended:

‘I can recall the Rockefellers and the Bushes attending rituals, but never having the supremacy to lead them. I still regard them as lackeys and not real brokers of occult power. Except for Alan Greenspan, most of these fellows were camp followers in the occult, primarily for the economic power and prestige. Greenspan, I recall, was a person of tremendous spiritual, occult power and could make the Bushes and the younger Rockefellers cower with just a glance.’

This, then, is the man who was controlling the United States economy from 1987 to 2006 and who, as planned, oversaw the insane economic policies that led to the current global collapse. Go to another level of understanding and you can see that Greenspan and other Illuminati place-men throughout the world knew exactly what they were doing and what the outcome was planned to be.

Zionist Greenspan got out just before the true scale and consequences of his manipulation came to light. It has been left to others, including his Zionist successor at the ‘Fed’, Ben Shalom Bernanke, to offer the ‘solutions’ to the problems that Greenspan and his like created. All of these ‘solution’ people are controlled by the same force that was, and is, behind Greenspan. This is why Obama has named blatant insiders to his ‘economic team’ who were fundamentally culpable in the very collapse they have been appointed to ‘address’.

The Zionists Tim Geitner, Larry Summers, Paul Volcker etc., who are all stalwarts of the same Bilderberg Group-Council on Foreign Relations-Trilateral Commission network as Greenspan, have no intention of finding a ‘solution’ that will benefit the people of America or anywhere else.

Neither does Obama’s Budget Director, the Zionist Peter R. Orszag. It was Orszag who advised the Russian finance ministry at the time when Zionist oligarchs were raping the Russian economy and stealing its resources and he was a financial advisor to the Icelandic central bank just before the Iceland banking system crashed. Great ‘choice’, Barack.

During the Clinton administration, Orszag worked with Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, the ultra-Zionist Rahm Emanuel, on imposing the NAFTA ‘free trade’ agreement that has cost incredible numbers of American jobs – exactly as planned. Emanuel served in the Israeli army and is the son of a terrorist with the notorious Irgun, one the terror groups which bombed Israel into existence after World War Two. It was Emanuel who said after Obama’s election: ‘You never let a serious crisis go to waste’.

Emanuel, a cold and vicious piece of work, is directly controlling Obama and the White House in league with senior White House advisor, the Zionist David Axelrod, who ran the puppet ‘president’s’ election campaign and oversees the writing of the speeches that he reads from the teleprompter screens.

Emanuel: Obama’s puppeteer

Axelrod: Obama’s voice on the teleprompter screens

At least most of ‘Obama’s’ economic place-men are fundamentally connected to the Zionist Robert E. Rubin, the Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, who oversaw financial deregulation that led ultimately to the current crisis. Rubin recently resigned from Citigroup after encouraging the policies that led the company to the brink of collapse. In January 2009, Rubin was named by Marketwatch as one of the ’10 most unethical people in business’ and his proteges and close associates are now running the US economy under Obama.

Another massive blow to economic confidence came when the Zionist hedge fund crook, Bernard Madoff, revealed that he’d ‘lost’ $50 billion of his clients’ money. He says he acted alone. No bloody chance. Other financial disasters which have collapsed the markets include American International Group (A.I.G.), the insurance giant headed by the Zionist, Maurice Greenberg. It has just announced losses of $61.7 billion for the final three months of 2008 – the biggest quarterly loss in corporate history.

Greenberg is extremely close to the Zionist Henry Kissinger, one of the Illuminati’s most vociferous global manipulators of the last 50 years. Kissinger was appointed chairman of A.I.G.’s International Advisory Board in 1987.

Zionist Kissinger with Zionist Greenberg. Anyone see a common theme building here??

Are all these people just breathtakingly incompetent? No, no, no. Their role for the cabal is to destroy the economy and America in general by, among many other things, triggering the financial crisis and then wasting staggering amounts of borrowed money – trillions of dollars – to ensure that there is no way back.

A US TV ad apparently said that if you spent a million dollars a day every day from the alleged birth of ‘Christ’ to today you would still not spend as much as Obama is spending in borrowed money in his ‘stimulus’ package – let alone the other fantastic sums on top of that to ‘bail’ the banks.

They have worked super-fast, using fear and the Obama hype as their weapons, to throw more petrol on the fire in the full knowledge that this will make matters worse, not better. Bush’s ‘bail out’ of the banks has disappeared from the radar with nothing to show for it and now Bush Mark 11, Mr Change, is fronting up the spending of another three trillion.

The biggest recipient of bail-out money has been Maurice Greenberg’s A.I.G, which has been given $180 billion in borrowed money that the American taxpayers, and their children, are now responsible for repaying. Rubin’s Citigroup is in for $50 billion of borrowed ‘government’ money.

The idea is not only to collapse the American economy, but to throw so much money at the problem (the banks mostly) as quickly as possible so that the response options of the government are zero by the time the economy really crashes on the scale that is planned.

The same is being orchestrated around the world, as we see in Britain where the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is also hurling borrowed money at the banking system only for the situation to go on getting worse. Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer, in charge of the country’s finances, right through the Blair years when he pursued policies that mirrored those of Greenspan.

Now the man who was a major cause of the banking crisis in the UK is asking us to believe that he is the ‘saviour’ of the financial system. That’s like a guy smashing someone around the head with a baseball bat and then claiming to be a hero for driving the fellah to hospital. But these people have no shame.

The global economic collapse is designed to trigger a stream of ‘benefits’ to the Illuminati agenda. One, as I have said from the start, is to use this as an excuse to impose a global economic dictatorship controlled by a world central bank. But there are many other ‘solutions’ and connected ‘benefits’ that are planned to be exploited and we need to be streetwise to them.

The one I want to emphasise here is the need to stay calm and react peacefully to what is happening. This is not easy when there is so much stress and fear around with regard to the economic present and ‘future’, but we need to do it all the same or we will walk straight into a massive trap that has been set for us.

Let’s get this straight: They want you to riot in response to the unfolding economic catastrophe and we are already seeing people falling for this.

Riots in France over economic conditions

Why would the authorities want people to riot? Readers of my books over the years will see the answer immediately. They want an excuse to bring in a fully-fledged Police State all over the world and people who riot in their desperation (instigated invariably by agent-provocateurs) are just the excuse they are looking for.

Be very, very aware of anyone who starts rioting, or encourages others to do so, amid peaceful demonstrations. Who are they and why are they doing this when it is handing all the aces to the system to impose a Police State? They are either stupid or agents of that State.

Regular readers of my newsletters will recall the one about the UK traffic warden who was suddenly given new cards authorising him to do the work of the police and to enter property without permission. His job was supposed to be just handing out tickets for illegal parking and so on. His boss would not discuss why these new cards were being issued, but a police officer friend explained all to him.

The officer said the government was preparing well ahead of time for a coming ‘war’, during which they were expecting mass protests and rioting in the streets. The police and the military were going to be so focussed on dealing with this that other uniformed professions, like traffic wardens, private security guards, CCTV operators and many others, were going to be brought forward to do the work normally done by the police.

Soon after the traffic warden approached me, the government announced that his profession was being re-designated ‘civil enforcement officers’, thus disconnecting them from their sole role of dealing with traffic. A few months later the government announced plans for a new group called ‘accredited persons’ – private security guards, CCTV operators and many others who would be given authority to do some of the work currently confined to the police.

The officer told the traffic warden about a ‘war’, and that is planned for sure at some point. But the excuse of the war could also have been a cover-story for those people who were needed to work on the preparations, but were not to know the real reason behind it. That real reason, as we can now see, could include economic rioting after the financial collapse that the Shadow People have long known was coming because they were going to cause it – although, I stress again, a war is also being engineered involving the ‘West’, China and Russia.

I have been stressing this point about the plan to stir up civil unrest and rioting whenever I can and now the insiders are beginning to put that thought into the public mind. ‘There could be riots’ is designed to communicate the theme subliminally of ‘go out and riot’. It is the simple power of suggestion masquerading as ‘concern’.

And who should do just that than Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of the Illuminati Trilateral Commission and one of the chief mentors and controllers of Barack Obama. I won’t call him ‘President’ Obama any longer until he produces a birth certificate to prove he is eligible for the post. Brzezinski told MSNBC:

‘… there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots!‘

No, Mr. Brzezinski, you know there are going to be riots because the network you represent is going to do everything it can to make them happen. More and more we are seeing this theme appearing from representatives of the State. The U.S. Army War College has made the same warnings in a document called Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development.

It said the military must be prepared for a ‘violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States’, in the light of ‘unforeseen economic collapse’. Unforeseen?? You must be joking. The document talks of ‘purposeful domestic resistance’, ‘pervasive public health emergencies’ or ‘loss of functioning political and legal order’. It goes on:

‘Widespread civil violence … would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home.

Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States.’

As the traffic warden, now ‘civil enforcement officer’, found out, this is precisely what they are planning in the UK and the same will be the case in every country because they are all controlled by a world-wide web orchestrating a global agenda. The War College document said that the Department of Defense would be the ‘enabling hub’ for the ‘continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance’.

Put that through the Orwellian Translation Unit and you get ‘the military will control the country’. This has all been planned for a long, long time as I and others have been warning all these years, and the ‘hostile groups’ the document talks about will be anyone who is challenging the political/military dictatorship in any way, even verbally.

In the light of this, you won’t be surprised to know that the US military is currently seeking to spend another $6 million on ‘riot equipment’.

Dennis C. Blair, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence and Trilateral Commission member, has also said that the economic crisis could create civil unrest in the United States and around the world. He said the crisis was ‘regime-threatening’ if it continued over one or two years and this manufactured crisis is designed to be much bigger and longer than that. In the simple language that he seems to find so hard to summon, Blair says that there is a greater chance of war during economic turmoil and there’s no doubt they have just that planned in the wake of what is happening now.

Other establishment figures who have warned of unrest and rioting include the heads of the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund, both Illuminati organisations to their core, and anyone who heads them will be, by definition, gofers for the cabal.

In the UK, yet again confirming the validity of the traffic warden story, the head of the police branch dealing in public order has warned of a possible ‘Summer of Rage’ over rising unemployment and the economic crash. Superintendent David Hartshorn of London’s Metropolitan Police said that ‘known activists’ were planning to exploit the situation to mount mass protests and he pointed to the G20 Summit in London in April as a likely target, along with banks.

The London Sunday Express has also reported that UK police and ‘security’ services are preparing to deal with rioting and ‘the chilling prospect of soldiers being drafted on to the streets has not been discounted …’

Riots in Greece

Mass protests around the world are no longer simply predictions because they are already happening and, with the global economy yet to collapse on anything like the scale it is intended to, we have seen nothing yet. Some 120,000 people demonstrated in Dublin over the handling of the economic crisis in Ireland, a million protestors have been on the streets in France, UK oil refinery and power station workers launched a series of strikes in protest at the use of foreign workers, and the riots across Greece late last year were partly economic in nature.

Albert Pike

I can encapsulate what is going on here with part of a letter alleged to have been sent in 1871 by Albert Pike, a Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in America, to Giuseppe Mazzini, the Illuminati ‘revolutionary’ in Italy. In this letter, Pike is said to have detailed the background to three world wars the Illuminati was planning to bring about their global dictatorship. The first two happened as he predicted and this is what he said about the third:

‘The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the “agentur” of the “Illuminati” between the political Zionists and the leaders of the Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion …

… We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil.

Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view. This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time.’

Click here for more background …

Many dismiss the letter as a myth, but in the context I am using it that doesn’t matter. What it says is what is planned – an economic and social catastrophe in which the people turn on themselves in their engineered desperation and all morality is submerged in a mass battle for perceived survival.

The term ‘nihilism’, used in the Pike letter, has this dictionary definition:

* Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.

* The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.

That pretty much sums it up, really, and this is why they want people to riot all over the world to destroy the existing order, which, yes, the Illuminati created, but they now seek to replace that with the next stage of their tyranny – total global control. This means that national governments and nation states must be destroyed to allow a world government to assume its dictatorship.

Look at that definition of ‘nihilism’ again in the light of this: ‘The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.’

‘Rioter’ and police dealing with the ‘rioter’ – all wearing the same police-issue boots.  Just a coincidence, nothing to worry about.

Already waiting in the wings are the agent provocateurs and the useful idiots primed to start the riots and civil unrest that the idiots believe to be challenging the existing order. But the existing order was created by the same network of Illuminati families that are seeking to create the ‘new order’, the New World Order, which is planned to emerge from the turmoil and chaos they are now engineering.

To achieve this, as always, they need our cooperation and let no-one be in any doubt that those who choose to riot and loot in response to what is happening, and encourage others to riot and loot, are walking straight into the trap that has been laid for them. The government and military agent provocateurs will know that, the useful idiots will not, but it is time they did.

I have met few more concrete-minded or naive people than those that are termed the extreme end of the political ‘Left’. They have been played like a violin for hundreds of years to change the world in the image of the Illuminati blueprint in violent revolutions to bring down the established order. Now they are being gathered again to complete the journey to global tyranny and provide the violence and chaos that is designed to open the way to a world government, world army, world central bank, world electronic currency and a microchipped population connected to the global positioning satellite system, or GPS, among many other technologies of surveillance and control.

The riots and looting they want to see, the chaos, will be met with the installation of a Police State with curfews, jail without trial, the military on the streets, and the activation of the concentration camps for ‘dissidents’ that we have long warned about. They are officially called ‘military installations’, run by FEMA, the deeply-sinister Federal Emergency Management Agency, and it is no coincidence, of course, that a bill numbered H.R. 645 is passing through Washington ‘to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations’. No, concentration camps, and other countries will have them prepared also.

Look at what that War College document said: ‘Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States.’ Might? It’s a certainty because that’s the plan and all the laws are in place to allow them to do it. They have been passed by governments around the world as ‘anti-terror’ legislation, but they use the terms ‘terror’ and ‘terrorist’ in such a non-specific way that all these laws can be applied to the entire population of the country that the ‘laws’ were supposed to protect according to their advocates.

It was all a gigantic con, as some of us tired of pointing out. It had nothing to do with terrorists who are alleged to plant bombs and so on. All these laws have been put into place with the specific goal of controlling the mass of the people through a Police State when they triggered an economic collapse, together with new wars.

Add to all this a stream of presidential executive orders signed by successive presidents without oversight by either the House of Representatives or the Senate. These are unconstitutional and make the president a virtual dictator. Click here to see the powers that the State can activate, thanks to these orders, when martial law is declared.

This is why Obama’s Zionist Svengali, the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, is seeking to have gun ownership curtailed – to make the military takeover easier. Meantime, more people are seeking to be armed and requests for concealed weapon permits in Florida alone are up 42 per cent in 45 days with the consequences of the economic turmoil in mind.

The military on the streets of Iraq. How long before the same is seen on the streets of America and elsewhere?

The only way to stop all this is not to react as they want us to, with violence and hostility to both the State and each other. How many violent revolutions have led to just another tyranny, official or unofficial, to replace the one that fell? It has to be so because what is destroyed by violence will be replaced by the same energy. As I have said in my books, what you fight, you become.

John Lennon put it perfectly when he sang:

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out …

… You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait

Revolution (1968) … click here to watch …

Martin Luther King also put it brilliantly when he said of rioting:

‘The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.’

Those are the words of a revolutionary who succeeded through peaceful non-cooperation. Yes, they killed him, but what he created through non-violence and determination went forth to end segregation. Physical life does not matter when compared with what is right, for we are all eternal Conciousness having an illusory experience and the greatest illusion is death.

I would much rather die ‘early’ doing what I knew to be right than to eek out a few more illusory years as a slave to a tyranny.

But there is no need even for that to bring an end to this nonsense. There are billions of people being enslaved and a comparative handful doing the enslaving. Er, I think I see a way out of this.

We need to come together in mutual support, love, kindness and empathy. We need to put aside the manufactured fault-lines that divide us – religion, politics, race, culture and income bracket. That is not to say people have to reject their beliefs, just don’t let them be weapons of division.

We are all in this together and we need to meet the challenge together, not steal from each other, loot or riot, or look the other way because something happening to someone else is ‘not my problem’. They are not seeking to enslave Muslims, Jews, black people, or white middle class Americans and so on. They are seeking to do it to all of us and they are picking off different groups one by one, just like the Nazis did in Germany. Remember these famous words because they are so applicable now:

First they came for the Jews and I was not a Jew so I did nothing.
Then they came for the communists and I was not a communist so I did nothing.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I was not a trade unionist so I did nothing.
Then they came for me and there was no-one left to speak out for me.

Let us unite behind that which affects everyone – the loss of our most basic freedoms. And if this is being planned now, what kind of world are our children and grandchildren going to live in? Can you live with that thought while doing nothing or rioting as the authorities want? I can’t.

We need to start getting organised in communities and groups to support each other and stop cooperating with the system – not to fight it. The system can only exist with our cooperation and acquiesce. We are holding it together. They have their men and women of violence, called the military and ‘Swat’ teams, to deal with violent resistance.

But their worst nightmare is our non-cooperation – the refusal to pay taxes; refusal to leave homes when banks foreclose on them; refusal to ‘comply’ with our own enslavement in any form. The system couldn’t cope if this was done on a mass scale. And that’s the point: to do this we need to do it en-masse and those not immediately affected need to support those who are.

Instead of compliance, we need the non-comply-dance of people who beat to a different drum and will not comply with what is unfair, unjust, or targets their freedom and the freedom of others. This approach does not refuse to comply in a spirit of hostility, rage or violence, but with love, joy and laughter – and an unbreakable determination not to cooperate with their own enslavement.

We need a mass refusal join the military, especially if they try to introduce the Draft; a refusal to do the compulsory ‘community service’ for young people that Obama’s controllers want to introduce (as does the UK government); and a refusal to join, or accept the legitimacy of, Obama’s planned civilian security force, which is nothing more than a scam to get the people to police the people on behalf of the Elite in the midst of the economic collapse and war.

We need to start getting together local currency schemes that can operate outside the system and, yes, people should also have mass protests if they choose, so long as they are peaceful. But they need to be part of the campaign of non-violent, non-cooperation, not the focus of it.

How many mass protests have there been over the years around the world and yet everything just goes on as before, be it war or globalisation. We need to stop posturing and then heading for the bar to feel good about ourselves and start doing what will actually make a difference.

Mass protests can ease frustration – steam whistles as I call them – but what good do most of them do? Mass non-cooperation with the system is far more effective.

The protests need to be targeted at non-cooperation, refusing to accept laws that ban assembly by massive numbers turning up; surrounding the homes of neighbours when the bank bailiffs come to put them on the street; and so filling the locations of government and finance with masses of people that the system cannot function. Workers who provide essential services to government, police and financial institutions etc., can refuse to do so until Orwellian laws and financial injustice are removed. In this way the perpetrators are affected, not the mass of the people, as with all-out strikes.

And all of this needs to be good humoured and strictly peaceful.

I would say this also to those in uniform. You may think you have power, but you are just pawns in the game like anyone else. You don’t have the power, your uniform does, because that is an extension of the State. Those inside are just there to animate the uniform and do the bidding of those it represents. When you are useful to the cabal they’ll praise you and when you are surplus to their requirements as part of the bigger agenda they’ll show you the door.

You have children and grandchildren, too, who will have to live in the world you are policing into existence by ‘following orders’ and believing the manipulative nonsense fed to you by governments and cabal ‘training’ fronts like the UK-based Common Purpose. Wake up from the trance and stop building a Police State for your own children and grandchildren - and everyone else. Think about the consequences for those you love of what you are doing – and stop doing it.

More than anything, we all need to free our minds and become conscious. From that, everything else will come, including the intuition, inspiration and knowing that will guide us on how most effectively to deal with what we face.

If there are many things you would like to do in a room, but the room is dark and you can’t see, what is the fundamental first step to anything else happening? You have to turn on the light and then all the rest becomes possible. Without that you are thrashing around in the dark and falling over the furniture.

That is what ‘humans’ are doing today and have been for so long. They have been manipulated to believe they are their bodies and their names when those are just the experiences of who they truly are – eternal Consciousness. As the great American comedian, Bill Hicks, said:

‘… all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.’

The divisions between us are illusory to allow a certain kind of experience, but these illusions have been exploited mercilessly to divide and rule us.

ENOUGH!

When we awaken to the truth of who we are the world looks very different and so do the challenges that are put before us – or we put before ourselves. Move your point of observation and everything changes. Try it. Try ceasing to identify who you are with your body, your name and the reflection in the mirror. Try seeing those things as experiences and not who you are. Try observing your life and the world from the perception of the real you – eternal Conciousness, All That Is, Has Been and Ever Can Be in our illusion called ‘time’.

Eternal Conscious in awareness of itself doesn’t riot; it is not violent and it doesn’t loot. But nor does it ever do, or accept for itself and others, what is not fair, just, loving and kind. Crucially, Consciousness is without fear. When we operate on that level then we can truly claim to be Conscious and not trapped in the illusion called Mind. As Albert Einstein said: ‘You cannot solve problems with the same level of consciousness that created them.’

John Lennon also made this key point in Revolution about what needs to happen to really make a difference. We need to free our minds and become Conscious:

You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow

We are now fast heading for the eye of the storm that has been planned for so long to enslave the global population in a centralised tyranny. But we don’t have to accept it or acquiesce to it, meekly looking on as the walls of control close in by the day.

But that is what is happening and it has to stop. For everyone’s sake, it has to stop.

We can come together, we MUST come together, putting aside the fault-lines of race, religion, culture and income bracket. These are just illusory labels through which we are divided and therefore ruled. Believe in them if you wish, and enjoy them if they make you happy, but don’t let them divide us any longer.

We need to come together in mutual support at this time as those with sick minds and closed hearts are poised to throw everything at us to complete their agenda for total control. Whether their insanity prevails is not in their hands, but in ours. It is we who have the power if only we would choose to use it.

We are One Consciousness deluded into thinking we are ‘little me’. When we realise that we are all One – and act upon that with courage, love, kindness, peace and empathy for all who need support – the walls of oppression must fall.

But sitting on your arse hoping it will all go away is no longer an option.

It never was.

---

See DavidIcke.com for constantly updated information on the world as it really is.

www.DavidIcke.com/Headlines

Army tells Asif Zardari to behave

Amir Mir

Islamabad: With president Asif Ali Zardari busy settling political scores with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif even as Pakistan fast slips into chaos, the army has begun to flex its muscle. Army chief general Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, who has so far kept a low profile, has asked Zardari to clean up the mess soon.

Well-placed military sources in Islamabad say Kiyani has been asked by the United States to bring some order in the region. After his recent visit to Washington, Kiyani held a meeting with top Pakistani Army commanders on March 6 to share the concern of the US over the state of affairs in the country, especially after the dissolution of the Punjab government and the subsequent anti-government agitation that has plunged the country into another political crisis.

The general, a former head of the spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is learnt to have told president Zardari to set things right before the March 16 ‘long march’ called by lawyers and supporters of Sharif to demand reinstatement of Supreme Court judges sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf.

An apex court bench comprising judges appointed by Musharraf had barred Sharif from contesting elections and unseated his brother Shahbaz as chief minister of Punjab for alleged irregularities during elections.

The sources say the strife in the country, with militants and al-Qaeda steadily gaining ground in the tribal areas and the government busy settling scores with opposition parties, has compelled Washington and its prime contractor in the region, the Pakistan military, to bring some order.

Zardari’s bid to settle scores with the opposition led by Sharif has now gone down well with Washington.

In fact, one of the prime concerns of the US is Zardari himself.  Media reports say that though Zardari assumed the presidency last September as an iron man, he has been more subdued in recent months. One reason could be the recently formed United Front of Mujahideen putting him on its hit list, the only politician on the list.The president has already suffered a political defeat, a direct result of the military’s persuasion, when he lifted the ban on the Punjab assembly last week and allowed it to meet. The majority of members in the assembly belong to Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).

This military intervention and prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s increasing closeness to the army coincide with a drop in Zardari’s popularity within his own Pakistan Peoples Party.

Zardari has been particularly outspoken, if not rude, towards some parliamentarians, including some from his own cabinet. He is even in danger of losing control of the party as he is accused of surrounding himself with friends and associates, many unelected, as key advisers.

In these circumstances, the situation in Pakistan is fast becoming untenable. Though Kiyani has become more active, neither the Americans nor the Pakistani Army actually wants to change horses mid-stream. Yet the country is becoming less and less governable under the present arrangement and quick action is required.

This does not necessarily mean getting rid of Zardari, but he could well be forced to make further concessions to his political rival Sharif by giving him a share of power. If Zardari does not do this, the military’s hand may be forced.

A specter haunts the ruling elite

By Joseph Kishore Mar 9, 2009, 02:16

9 March 2009

The specter of socialism is haunting the American ruling elite.

One finds in the media increasing references to the prospect of socialism. The different factions of the bourgeoisie accuse each other of socialistic tendencies, while insisting on their own absolute commitment to the principles of free enterprise.

One of the central topics for discussion on the Sunday talk shows yesterday was Republican charges that Obama’s policy is somehow socialistic. On ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the assembled panel of regular columnists—E.J. Dionne, David Brooks, George Will and Cokie Roberts—debated the issue.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Democratic Senator Charles Schumer and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham discussed the possibility of government ownership of the banks. Schumer and Graham both supported some form of nationalization. However, they both hastened to distinguish between “bad nationalization,” where the government actually takes the banks out of the hands of private individuals, and “good nationalization”—which they said would be better called “receivership”—in which the government would clean up the balance sheets of the banks and quickly resell them to private investors.

Of the various references to socialism, perhaps the most extraordinary came from President Barack Obama himself. In an interview with the New York Times on Friday, Obama was asked to respond to charges from sections of the Republican Party that he is a socialist. Obama was taken aback by the question, but laughed it off and responded with a simple, “The answer is no.”

Following the interview, Obama and his advisers apparently discussed the issue, and 90 minutes later the president took the unusual measure of calling back Times reporter Jeff Zeleney. Evidently nervous about the implications of the question, Obama elaborated on his opposition to socialism and attempted to reverse the charge. “I think that it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that is entirely consistent with free market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can’t say the same,” he said.

The prospect of social unrest has become a frequent topic of discussion in the media as well. In the New York Times on Sunday, an opinion piece by Liaquat Ahamed entitled “Subprime Europe” cited the economic collapse of the region, which he compared to the collapse of the Austrian bank Creditanstalt in 1931. That event sparked a financial panic in Europe, setting into motion the Great Depression.

Ahmed wrote that the economic meltdown of Eastern Europe is “provoking social unrest.” Warning of the implications for the United States, he noted, “American subprime borrowers who have had their houses foreclosed on are not—at least not yet—rioting in the streets. Workers in Eastern Europe are.”

In another comment on the same page in the Times, Frederic Morton drew a comparison with Austria in 1913. He concluded his comment with a quote from Karl Kraus, who called Austria “the laboratory of the apocalypse.” Morton asked, “What would he say about America today?”

In a recent appearance on MSNBC, former national security advisor for Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brezezinski, worried about the reemergence of “class conflict.”

It is ironic that this discussion of socialism is engaging a political and media elite that for decades has promoted anti-communism and anti-socialism as a virtual state religion. No faction of the political establishment is advancing a policy that in any way challenges capitalism or the interests of the financial elite. Nor is there yet a mass socialist movement of the working class.

However, there is growing nervousness within this layer over the implications of the capitalist crisis and the potential for mass social opposition to the policies of the ruling class. Thus far, political discussion in the US has been contained within an extremely narrow framework. The diversity of views in the media and on the talk shows encompasses various shades of opinion within the wealthiest one tenth of one percent of the population.

Yet there is an objective logic to developments. At a certain point—sooner rather than later—discussion of policy will escape their tight grasp. The masses of people who are directly affected by the global depression will become involved.

There is a sense within the ruling class itself of an enormous anger building up, which, if unleashed, will assume the form of mass opposition to capitalism directed against the wealth and privileges of the financial elite. They are worried that socialism will then develop not merely as a specter, but as a living political movement embedded in the consciousness of millions of people. And they are right to be worried.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pers-m09.shtml

Gas pipeline blown up in Dera Bugti

QUETTA: Unidentified men blew up a 16-inch gas pipeline in Loti, area of Sui while three rockets were fired in a village in Jafferabad on Sunday. The men planted explosives near the pipeline supplying gas to a plant from Pirkoh. The blast damaged the pipeline and suspending the supply. Engineers reached the spot and started the repair work. In another incident, unidentified men fired three rockets at Goth Northern Bugti, a village in Jafferabad. No casualties were reported.

U.S. logistics chief attempts to reassure on Afghan supplies

Last week, General Duncan McNabb, USAF, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, was interrogated by a House subcommittee on the subject of supply routes into Afghanistan. General McNabb attempted to reassure his listeners about his command’s ability to keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan well supplied. This article from the AFPS revealed some new data about the logistics effort for Afghanistan operations:

“Today I use a measure of 78 containers a day to keep us even with what the forces we have there need,” the general explained. “But I try to keep the average above 78, which we usually do.”

Transcom’s most recent seven-day average was 138 containers per day, he continued. Since early January, troops in Afghanistan have received an average of about 90 containers daily. “We’ve kind of stayed ahead of the flow,” McNabb added.

By spring, however, the first wave of an additional 17,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines will be hitting the ground in Afghanistan to build up forces there, including at least 300 Stryker vehicles, among other vehicles and equipment.

The anticipated drawdown of forces in Iraq while increasing America’s military’s footprint in Afghanistan will be a difficult mission to manage, but Transcom has everything he needs to get the job done, McNabb said.

Hundreds of cargo planes are at Transcom’s disposal should they have to rely on that, more expensive, route, he said. Airfields in Bagram and Kandahar also are available for supply loads.

Assuming the additional 17,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines (about a 50% increase in current U.S. manning) requires a proportional increase in minimum average daily container deliveries (currently 78), a daily average of 90 containers will not be enough. 117 containers per day would be the new minimum daily requirement.

Yesterday, the New York Times had an update on the new rail supply route through Russia and the central Asian republics into Afghanistan, which U.S. officials opened yesterday. According to the article, U.S. planners anticipate shipping 500 containers per month through Russia, an average of about 17 per day.

90 per day through Pakistan plus 17 per day through Russia will fall 10 containers short of the minimum requirement. And this assumes that Taliban disruptions can be contained and looting along the rail line will be manageable.

We should expect the C-17 and C-130 fleets to be called upon to make up the shortfalls. Relying on an air bridge to maintain the minimum supply level relies on some assumptions, namely there will not be another contingency somewhere in the world that requires its own large-scale air bridge. Or that Taliban fighters lurking around the airfields at Bagram and Kandahar don’t get their hands on surface-to-air missiles such as those received by their fathers in the 1980s.

Even before the arrival of this year’s 17,000 reinforcements, U.S. logistics planning for Afghanistan was a close run thing. The Afghan surge appears to bring the supply situation to the brink. And what of General McKiernan’s unfulfilled request for 13,000 more soldiers to pacify Afghanistan? Or the external supply requirements associated with a doubling of the Afghan army? One wonders what General McNabb’s plans are for these scenarios.

Slide toward anarchy

Islamabad’s deal with the Taliban may be a turning point in a failing regional battle against extremism

AHMED RASHID

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail

February 27, 2009 at 11:29 PM EDT

LAHORE — A spate of ceasefires between the Pakistani army and government, on one hand and the Pakistani Taliban across northern Pakistan, on the other, are a watershed in the country’s steady slide toward greater anarchy and loss of state control over large areas of territory.

The ceasefires are a strategic attempt by both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to unify and concentrate their forces for a spring offensive against the expected arrival of 17,000 more U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan, where Canada also has nearly 3,000 soldiers. These fast-moving developments come as the U.S. and NATO struggle to find a common strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan before the NATO summit on April 2.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has sent a letter to the commanders of the Pakistani Taliban, urging them to immediately stop attacks on the Pakistani army. “If anybody really wants to wage jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan,” Mr. Omar reportedly wrote. “Attacks on Pakistani security forces by militants in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan are harming the war against U.S and NATO forces in Afghanistan.”

Mullah Omar, who is believed to be based in Quetta, in Pakistan’s southern province of Baluchistan, followed up by sending envoys to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) — the tribal belt adjoining Afghanistan — where the Pakistani Taliban leaders are based. His appeal was part of a concerted attempt by al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leaders such as Jalaluddin Haqqani, calling upon the Pakistani Taliban to unite.

Pakistani supporters of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif fought with police during demonstration in Peshawar on Friday. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad)

Related Articles

From the archives

• Pakistani courts bar opposition leader, sparking crisis
• Taliban extend ceasefire in Swat valley
• Military aid for Pakistan short of money
• Pakistani border province plans to arm civilians
• Pakistan, Taliban reach ‘permanent’ ceasefire

Their efforts have resulted in an unprecedented show of unity by the once divided Pakistani Taliban commanders, who have been fighting Pakistani forces in FATA since 2004. Three major warlords of the region, Baitullah Meshsud and his two rivals Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul have struck up a new alliance called the Shura-e-Ittehad ul Mujaheddin or Council of United Holy Warriors. They have called for a ceasefire with the Pakistani army in Bajaur, where the army has been carrying out an offensive since last August. Islamabad still has to respond to the offer.

The government and the army, however, have already ceded control to another branch of the Pakistani Taliban, further east in the Swat valley and Malakand district, just 100 miles north of Islamabad. Maulana Sufi Mohammed, a radical cleric who was freed last year after spending six years in jail for leading 10,000 Pashtun tribesmen in a futile attempt to oppose the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is now leading a peace march through the strategic Swat valley. He is trying to convince his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, who leads the Swati contingent of the Pakistani Taliban and is closely allied to al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, to accept the government’s offer of a ceasefire and enforcement in Swat of Nizam-e-Adl (an Islamic justice system).

While the government insists the legal change will be only a limited application of Islamic justice through the local courts, the Taliban interpret it as allowing the full application of sharia, affecting all aspects of education, administration and law and order in the region.

Mr. Fazlullah’s men, aided by Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs, have fought bloody battles with the army over the past two years, finally driving the army out and taking control of most of Swat last year. The fighting has led to some 1,200 civilian deaths and the forced exodus of an estimated 350,000 people out of a population of 1.5-million. Mr. Fazlullah has blown up 200 girls’ schools, hanged policemen and teachers and set up sharia courts. He now runs a parallel government. Rather than order the army to retake Swat, the Pakistan Peoples Party government in Islamabad led by Benazir Bhutto’s widower, President Asif Ali Zardari, and the Awami National Party, a Pashtun secular party that runs the provincial government of the North West Frontier Province, have capitulated to the Taliban’s demands in order to avoid more violence.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL BLOW

The deal has become an explosive issue in Pakistan. Right-wing, religious-minded citizens and politicians praise it for bringing peace to Swat, while liberals see it as an unmistakable turning-point in the country’s losing battle against Islamic extremism. Even Sufi Mohammed, who is touted as a moderate compared to his son-in-law, has vowed to impose sharia across Pakistan and has denounced democracy as an evil, Western model. The psychological blow to public morale has been devastating.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban now have the opportunity to create a new safe haven in Swat, well away from FATA, where they have been subjected to increasingly successful surprise attacks by U.S. drones. Sources in Peshawar say that extremist leaders are already moving to the safety of Swat, where drones have not been used so far.

The fallout in Swat will have long-term consequences. Although the military regime of former president Pervez Musharraf concluded several controversial short-lived ceasefires with the Pakistani Taliban, which allowed the Taliban to reinforce and widen their territorial control, the army never previously conceded major changes in the legal or political system. Even in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Taliban control several provinces, the Kabul government has never conceded the writ of the state, insisting that such provinces remain contested.

Mr. Zardari still has to sign off on the deal, and the ceasefire may not last, as others have not lasted before. This is, however, the first time that the government has surrendered an enormous area of northern Pakistan to extremists, who will govern by a separate set of laws and are dictating their terms to the state. Moreover the Taliban are unlikely to stop in Swat. From FATA, the Taliban have expanded their influence into the settled areas of NWFP and have virtually laid siege to the capital, Peshawar. The Swati Taliban will now have access to the heavily populated rural areas north of Islamabad.

The ANP were the first to insist upon the concessions. Besieged in Peshawar by Taliban suicide bombers who have vowed to eliminate its ministers and members of parliament, the ANP is paralyzed, divided and unable to govern. The ANP’s decline into ineffectuality will have far-reaching consequences. Secular and democratic Pashtuns voted for it in overwhelming numbers in the general election last year, when the ANP ousted a government of Islamic fundamentalists installed by Mr. Musharraf.

The hope in Kabul and Islamabad was that the populist ANP, being a Pashtun party, would be better at rolling back the Taliban tide. That is now proving to be a false hope. Similarly, the ruling PPP is a secular and democratic party, and Mr. Zardari has repeatedly vowed to stand up against extremism, but the PPP’s policy in Swat has not acted upon those promises.

The army is demoralized and overstretched and has declined to accept U.S. offers to retrain its regular forces in counterinsurgency, because it still believes there is a much larger threat from its traditional enemy, India. The army will not attempt to retake Swat unless it has the full support of the federal and provincial governments, while the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai have led the army to reinforce its positions on the Indian border.

The weakening of Pakistan’s resolve to counter extremism will further weaken an already devastated economy, which faces increasing joblessness, inflation and capital flight. The Obama administration has promised Pakistan $1.5-billion (U.S.) a year for the next five years, to be spent on social programs, but it will take many months before Congress will make such money available, while conditions Congress will impose — such as resisting the Taliban — Pakistan may be unwilling or unable to fulfill.

MAJOR SPRING OFFENSIVE

The ceasefires in Pakistan herald a major Taliban offensive in Afghanistan in spring, just as the new Obama administration is trying to conceive a new strategic policy toward Afghanistan, Pakistan and the whole region. The Afghan Taliban leadership based in Quetta is still largely untouched and freely able to provide logistics, ammunition, recruits and direction to the thousands of Taliban fighting Western forces in Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO are also tasked with providing security for Afghanistan’s presidential elections scheduled in August, but Kabul is beset with a constitutional crisis; President Hamid Karzai’s term expires in May and he is refusing to step down.

The crisis in Pakistan leaves the U.S. and its allies with very few policy options. Large injections of aid money are desperately needed to give the government and the army the time and space to re-establish the writ of the state and revive the moribund economy. Yet it is even less clear now whether the Pakistani state is willing or able to take on the Pakistani Taliban or co-operate with NATO forces to block the Taliban who are flooding into southern Afghanistan to take on the newly arriving U.S. troops. What is certain is that the region is rapidly descending into chaos.

Ahmed Rashid is the author of the best-selling Taliban and Jihad. His latest book is Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia (Penguin 2008).

Monsters & delusions

Monday, March 09, 2009 By Khusro Mumtaz

Apart from the expected horror and dismay at the attacks on the Sri Lankan cricketers, there was another reaction from a number of people that I talked to that added to my depression. They couldn’t believe that the attackers were Pakistanis. “No Pakistani could do this”, “Why would they do this?”, “What is to be gained?” they said, either implying Indian involvement or laying the blame on our neighbours outright. While nothing can be discounted outright in this murky world that we currently inhabit the refusal to acknowledge the monsters in our midst is perplexing and dismaying. Why can’t Pakistanis be behind this atrocity? After all, Pakistanis enter mosques and mow down other Pakistanis. Shias kill Sunnis and Sunnis kill Shias. Minorities are threatened and their places of worship are damaged, destroyed and blown up. Schools are razed. Women buried alive. Foreigners kidnapped and beheaded. The list goes on. There is much that is wrong within us (and much of the horror inflicted in the name of religion) and even if the majority of Pakistanis are peaceful and peace-loving, there is definitely a minority out there which aims to impose its obscurantist views on the rest of us and will go to any lengths to achieve its objectives. Murdering a visiting cricket team is not beyond the realm of possibility. The genie — manufactured and nurtured by men in khaki, originally encouraged by players in the great game, used as a bargaining chip by would-be tyrants, financed by petro-dollars — is out of the bottle and has been for a long time, and it is going to take all of our combined wills to contain it. But we first have to acknowledge the problem. Without accepting the problem we can’t fix it, yet many of us continue to delude ourselves that the genie doesn’t exist. These delusions are encouraged by right-wing, fascist nut-jobs (sometimes disguised as “enlightened moderates” and not to be confused with religious fundamentalists) who get on their soap-boxes (conveniently provided to them by media conglomerates that worship only at the altar of perhaps the most powerful god of all, profit) and on television talk shows and op-ed columns advocate retaliatory strikes and Mossad-style targeted killings, a la “Operation Wrath of God”, the Israeli covert plan to assassinate the killers of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. I wish I was making this up but I am not. Worse, this lunacy is propounded when we haven’t even been able to identify who was behind the attack on the Sri Lankan team and — many chest-thumping pronouncements (from the president on downwards) of leaving no stone unturned to capture the killers or the formation of the highest level inquiry committees notwithstanding — I am not holding my breath either that we ever will, given our past track record and considering the ease with which the terrorists were able to carry out their attacks and the even greater ease with which they managed to disappear from the scene. The lapses and the screw-ups by our intelligence agencies and security apparatus were shocking yet instead of highlighting these appalling failures or talking about the beasts in our midst and who is responsible for setting them loose, these delusional lunatics are talking about targeted killings and what-not. They must have seen too many Steven Spielberg Hollywood blockbusters for their own good or the good of their compatriots. “Operation Wrath of God” indeed! Post-script: I don’t have enough words of praise for the decency, dignity and grace exhibited by the courageous Sri Lankan players despite having every legitimate cause for complaint and anger after their terrible ordeal. Not one of them has yet expressed a bitter or acrimonious sentiment. If more of us exhibited this generosity of spirit the world would be experiencing much less strife than it is. I also salute their brave bus driver, Mehar Mohammad Khalil whose quick-thinking and courage prevented an even bigger tragedy. He is a real Pakistani hero as are the policemen who gave their lives in the line of duty. The writer is a banker and freelance writer. Email: khusro_m@ yahoo.co.uk

China’s thirst for copper could hold key to Afghanistan’s future

China’s thirst for copper could hold key to Afghanistan’s future

By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers

JALREZ VALLEY, Afghanistan — In this Taliban stronghold in the mountains south of Kabul, the U.S. Army is providing the security that will enable China to exploit one of the world’s largest unexploited deposits of copper, earn tens of billions of dollars and feed its voracious appetite for raw materials.

U.S. troops set up bases last month along a dirt track that a Chinese firm is paving as part of a $3 billion project to gain access to the Aynak copper reserves. Some troops made camp outside a compound built for the Chinese road crews, who are about to return from winter break. American forces also have expanded their presence in neighboring Logar province, where the Aynak deposit is.

The U.S. deployment wasn’t intended to protect the Chinese investment — the largest in Afghanistan’s history — but to strangle Taliban infiltration into the capital of Kabul. But if the mission provides the security that a project to revive Afghanistan’s economy needs, the synergy will be welcome.

“When you have men who don’t have jobs, you can’t bring peace,” said Abdel Rahman Ashraf, a German-trained geology professor who’s Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s chief mining and energy adviser.

“When we take money and invest it in a project like Aynak, we give jobs to the people.” Indeed, the project could inject hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties and taxes into Afghanistan’s meager coffers and create thousands of desperately needed jobs.

Beijing faces enormous challenges in completing the project and gaining access to the estimated 240 million tons of copper ore that are accessible through surface mining. Taliban-led insurgents operate in large parts of Logar and Wardak; the area is sown with mines; and China must complete an ambitious set of infrastructure projects

including Afghanistan’s first national railway, as part of the deal.

China’s willingness to gamble so much in one of the world’s poorest and riskiest nations testifies to its determination to acquire the commodities it needs to maintain its economic growth and social stability.

In Mt. Toromocho in the Peruvian Andes, for example, the only copper deposit said to be larger than Aynak, China is relocating a town and its inhabitants to get at a mountain of copper ore.

“Why the Chinese? Because they have money, they have lots of money,” Ashraf said. “One day, when there is no more copper elsewhere in the world, the Chinese will have copper.”

“If they (Chinese leaders) don’t feed their immense industrial complex, their populace could become disruptive,” said a Western official, who asked not to be further identified so he could speak freely. “We expect to see more such competitions” over Afghanistan’s huge untapped reserves of natural resources.

Although China is contributing a much smaller share of the more than $25 billion in international assistance that’s been pledged to Afghanistan since 2001 than the U.S. is, the Obama administration isn’t complaining. China’s investment in Aynak dovetails with the administration’s emerging strategy for ending the war in part by delivering on unfulfilled vows to better the lives of the poor Afghans who constitute the vast majority of the Taliban’s foot soldiers.

“The problem of security, the problem of the Taliban, we cannot solve these problems with the military,” Ashraf said.

Site preparation work has begun. But it’ll be some years before state-owned China Metallurgical Construction Corp. can begin the projected 15 to 20 years of production at the site 30 miles south of Kabul.

Copper is used in everything from batteries and electrical wire to computers and coins. International prices were high when MCC won the 30-year lease in April 2007 — one estimate at that time put the potential earnings at $42 billion — but they’ve fallen dramatically since. Still, China and Afghanistan stand to make a healthy profit, especially if demand recovers as expected.

The site was discovered by an Afghan-Soviet team in 1974. However, in the face of armed resistance during their 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviets were never able to develop the site or harvest the ore.

The main challenge to MCC is the Taliban, who moved into Kabul’s southern fringes after China clinched the deal, prompting the January deployment in Logar and Wardak of more than 2,000 troops from the Army’s 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, N.Y. On Tuesday, a roadside bomb injured three policemen protecting a crew building an access road to Aynak.

“We have stopped our work,” said Noorzaman Stanakzai, the road contractor. “The enemies of Afghanistan are preventing families from putting loaves of bread in their children’s mouths.”

Other challenges include transporting equipment and materials into the landlocked nation from Pakistan and Central Asia; Kabul’s inexperience in handling massive projects; endemic corruption — World Bank monitors, however, blessed the Aynak bidding process — lax enforcement of laws and the global economic meltdown.

Moreover, China must deliver the infrastructure projects that helped it snag the deal over six rivals, including Phelps Dodge Corp., which was acquired by Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. in 2007.

These include an onsite copper smelter, a $500 million generating station to power the project and augment Kabul’s electricity supply, a coal mine to fuel the power station, a groundwater system, roads, new homes, hospitals and schools for mine workers and their families, and a railway line from the country’s northern border with Uzbekistan to its southeastern border with Pakistan.

The deal, Ashraf said, is structured so that by the seventh year, the entire work force will be Afghan. Beginning in 2010, 60 Afghan engineering students a year will study in China, he said, adding that Chinese language courses have begun at Kabul University.

Employment projections vary, but there’s general agreement that as many as 10,000 workers could be hired at Aynak and the coal mine in central Afghanistan, which the Jalrez Valley road project will link to the copper field. The railway will need thousands more.

Tens of thousands of indirect jobs are also projected to be created.

“The big question is whether they (China) will deliver on all that or not,” said a second Western official, who requested anonymity to speak freely. “The transparency going forward will be all important. We don’t want this great resource potential to become a great resource curse, as has happened in other countries.”

There may be some cause for concern.

A January 2008 report by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a European research group, said that MCC extracted more copper than expected from a mine in Sandaik, Pakistan, but that the project has “had virtually no spillover effect on the local economy to date.”

The report also warned of the potential for an “environmental and social disaster” if Aynak isn’t properly managed, noting that the area is home to some 90,000 people and a source of Kabul’s water supply.

Ashraf said that the government will ensure that MCC takes rigorous precautions, including systems to store the highly toxic wastes produced by copper smelting.

“The sediment will go into a holding lake, and the water will be cleaned and then provided for agriculture,” said Ashraf, a veteran geologist who’s worked the world over, including in China.

China may hope that the Aynak deal will help it position it to compete for more projects in Afghanistan, where three tectonic plates converge. The region is thought to hold some of the world’s last major untapped deposits of iron, copper, gold, uranium, precious gems and other raw materials.

“It’s the last frontier,” said the second Western official.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that Afghanistan also has more than 1.5 billion barrels of oil — almost untapped since soldiers of Alexander the Great discovered pools of oil in the north more than 2,000 years ago — and 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Two other major copper deposits are close to Aynak, and the government is preparing to solicit bids for a lease to develop the Hajigak iron mine, which Minister of Mines Ibrahim Adil last year said contains an estimated 60 billion tons of ore.

Ashraf said that China and India have shown an interest in Hajigak.

“When we have a little security here, this will be a paradise to come and mine,” he said. “We are near the markets. Those markets are China and India. The transportation is not difficult. The difficulty is that everyone says, ‘We must have security and then we will invest.’”

ON THE WEB

Integrity Watch Afghanistan’s report on Aynak

Afghanistan Ministry of Mines

Serbian spy’s trial uncloaks alliance with CIA

HOW IRONIC, A MAN BEING CHARGED WITH WAR CRIMES AT THE HAGUE GIVES HIS EXPERIENCE IN HELPING CIA SET-UP TRAINING CAMPS FOR THEIR IMPORTED “MUJAHEDEEN” AS PROOF THAT HE IS NOT A MONSTER! CIA CAMPS ARE FOR THE TRAINING OF TERRORISTS, NOT PATRIOTIC “FREEDOM FIGHTERS!

Serbian spy’s trial uncloaks alliance with CIA

Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, March 8, 2009

(03-08) 04:00 PDT Belgrade, Serbia –

At night, when the lawns are empty and the lamps along the walking paths are the only source of light, Topcider Park on the outskirts of Belgrade is a perfect meeting place for spies.

It was here in 1992, as the former Yugoslavia was erupting in ethnic violence, that a wary CIA agent made his way toward the park’s gazebo and shook hands with a Serbian intelligence officer.

Jovica Stanisic had a cold gaze and a sinister reputation. He was the intelligence chief for Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and regarded by many

as the brains of a regime that gave the world a chilling new term: “ethnic cleansing.”

But the CIA officer, William Lofgren, needed help. The agency was all but blind after Yugoslavia shattered into civil war. Fighting had broken out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Milosevic was seen as a menace to European security, and the CIA was desperate to get intelligence from inside the turmoil.

So on that midnight stroll, the two spies carved out a clandestine relationship that has never been disclosed: For eight years, Stanisic was the CIA’s main man in Belgrade. During secret meetings in boats and safe houses along the Sava River, he shared details on the inner workings of the Milosevic regime. He provided information on the locations of NATO hostages, aided CIA operatives in their search for grave sites, and helped the agency set up a network of secret bases in Bosnia.

At the same time, Stanisic was setting up death squads for Milosevic that carried out a genocidal campaign, according to prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which was established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993 to try the people responsible for serious human rights violations in the Balkan wars.

Now facing a trial at The Hague, Netherlands, that could send him to prison for life, Stanisic has called in a marker with his American allies. In an exceedingly rare move, the CIA has submitted a classified document to the court that lists Stanisic’s contributions and attests to his helpful role. The document remains sealed, but its contents were described by sources to the Los Angeles Times.

The CIA’s Lofgren, now retired, said the agency drafted the document to show “that this allegedly evil person did a whole lot of good.” Lofgren doesn’t claim to disprove the allegations against Stanisic.

“But setting the indictment aside,” he said, “there are things this man did that helped bring hostilities to an end and establish peace in Bosnia.”

Through his attorney, Stanisic, 58, declined to comment, citing the tribunal’s ban on communications with the media. But Stanisic has pleaded not guilty, and denies any role in creating the squads or even being aware of the crimes they committed.

The CIA’s effort puts it in the unusual position of serving as something of a character witness for a war crimes defendant. The agency declined to comment on the document. Because its contents are classified, the letter could be considered by the court only in closed session. Court officials said it was unclear whether the document would be of significant use to the Stanisic defense, or mainly come into play in seeking a more lenient sentence if he is convicted.

This account is based on dozens of interviews with current and former officials of U.S. and Serbian intelligence agencies, as well as documents obtained or viewed by The Times. Among them are official records of the Serbian intelligence service, and a seven-page account of that bloody period that Stanisic wrote while in prison in The Hague.

In that memo, Stanisic portrays himself as someone who sought to moderate Milosevic, and who worked extensively with the CIA to contain the crisis.

“I institutionalized cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community in spite of the notoriously bad relations between our two countries,” Stanisic wrote. That collaboration, he continued, “contributed significantly to the de-escalation of the conflict.”

The chief prosecutor, Dermot Groome, says that Stanisic’s actions to help the CIA and counter Milosevic only underscore the power he had. In his opening argument, Groome said that the “ability to save lives is tragically the very same authority and the very same ability that (Stanisic) used … to take lives.”

Belgrade still bears the scars of war. Bombed-out buildings are scattered across the city, including a charred cement structure on Knez Milos Street that used to be the headquarters for Serbia’s State Security Service, known as the “DB.”

Stanisic used to occupy the corner office on the top floor. In his prime, he was in charge of 2,000 employees. He wore dark suits and sunglasses, like a Balkan James Bond. His nickname was “Ledeni” – Serbian for “icy.”

Stanisic joined the Yugoslav service in 1975, when the country was still under the communist rule of Josip Broz Tito. He was never regarded as an ideologue or rabid nationalist. But he had a rare aptitude for espionage.

“Stanisic was not an ordinary intelligence officer,” said Dobrica Cosic, a writer and former dissident who was president of Serbia in 1992 and 1993. “He is an intellectual, not a radical policeman. He was educated and skilled, and he knew how to organize that service.”

Because of those skills, Milosevic made Stanisic his top spy despite long-standing distrust between the two.

Milosevic had come to power by exploiting nationalistic fervor and religious animosity. He cast himself as the Serbs’ protector, a posture that resonated powerfully with people who still mark the day their ancestors were defeated by Ottoman Muslims in the 14th century.

In 1991, as ethnic violence escalated, Milosevic ordered the creation of secret paramilitary units, with names like Red Berets and Scorpions, that would roam the Balkans. They wore unmarked uniforms, were led by thugs and committed some of the worst atrocities of the war.

As the trial got under way last year, Groome showed photos of Stanisic posing with members of the special units. He played audio of intercepted communications in which Stanisic appears to refer to the units as “his boys.”

At one point, Groome introduced a videotape showing images of Muslim men and boys – their hands bound with wire – being led into the woods and shot, one by one, by members of the Scorpions.

“Jovica Stanisic established these units,” said Groome, an American lawyer. And Stanisic made sure “they had everything that they needed, including a license to clear the land of unwanted people, a license to commit murder.”

Former members of the State Security Service dispute those allegations. “We were doing our jobs, according to the law,” said Vlado Dragicevic, who served for years as Stanisic’s deputy. “We never committed acts of genocide. On the contrary, we were trying to stop that.”

CIA officers who served in the region said they assumed Stanisic was no choirboy, but that they never saw evidence he was involved in war crimes. Instead, they viewed him as a key ally in a situation spinning rapidly out of control.

From early on, Stanisic was eager to cement his relationship with the CIA. At one of his meetings with Lofgren, he turned over a sheath of documents, including diagrams of bomb shelters and other structures that Serbian companies had built in Iraq for Saddam Hussein.

But Stanisic also drew boundaries. He never took payment from the CIA, worked with the agency on operations or took steps he would have considered a blatant betrayal of his boss.

Over time, Stanisic sought to move his relationship with the agency out of the shadows. Well after his secret meetings had started, Stanisic persuaded Milosevic to let him open contacts with the CIA as a back channel to the West. The midnight meetings in the park gave way to daylight sessions in Stanisic’s office.

The two spies shared a dark sense of humor. Lofgren liked to wander over to the window, aim his phone at the sky and joke that he was getting GPS coordinates for a missile strike.

In the letter to The Hague, submitted in 2004, the CIA describes Stanisic’s efforts to defuse some of the most explosive events of the Bosnian war.

In spring 1993, at CIA prodding, Stanisic pressured Ratko Mladic, military commander of the breakaway Serb republic in Bosnia, briefly to stop the shelling of Sarajevo.

Two years later, Stanisic helped secure the release of 388 NATO troops who had been taken hostage, stripped of their uniforms and strapped to trees to serve as human shields against NATO bombing runs. In his own written account, Stanisic said he negotiated the release “with the support of agency leadership.”

Also that year, Stanisic tried to intervene when French pilots were shot down and taken captive. Mladic “refused to admit that he was holding the pilots,” Stanisic wrote. But “my service managed to discover the circumstances and location of their captivity,” and shared the information with the CIA and French authorities.

By then, the Clinton administration was engaged in an all-out diplomatic push to end the war. Stanisic accompanied Milosevic to Dayton, Ohio, for peace talks, then returned to Serbia to carry out key pieces of the accord.

It was left to Stanisic to get the president of Bosnia’s Serb republic, Radovan Karadzic, to sign a document pledging to leave office. And Stanisic helped the CIA establish a network of bases in Bosnia to monitor the cease-fire.

Doug Smith, the CIA’s station chief in Bosnia, recalled meeting in Belgrade with Stanisic and a group of disgusted Bosnian Serb officials. As Stanisic instructed them to cooperate with the CIA, Smith said, the assembled guests “shifted uneasily in their seats.”

Smith began meeting with Stanisic regularly, including once on a boat on the Sava. In typically dramatic fashion, Stanisic arrived late at the docks.

“He emerged out of the darkness with bodyguards,” Smith said, and spent much of the evening talking about his boss. “He intensely disliked Milosevic. He went off on how awful Milosevic was – dishonest and crooked.”

Asked whether Stanisic was capable of committing war crimes, Smith replied, “I think he would do as little bad as he could.”

At the time, CIA Director John Deutch was trying to clean up the agency’s image by cracking down on contacts with human rights violators. Years later, the “Deutch rules” were cited as a reason the agency hadn’t done better penetrating enemy groups such as al Qaeda.

But Deutch had no problems with Stanisic. He invited the Serbian to CIA headquarters in 1996, and an itinerary of the visit indicates that Stanisic got a warm welcome.

The Serbian spy chief was taken to hear jazz at the Blues Alley club in Georgetown, Va., and driven to Maryland’s eastern shore for a bird hunt. Deutch even presented Stanisic with a 1937 Parker shotgun, a classic weapon admired by collectors.

Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, declined to comment.

Stanisic’s expanding ties to the CIA became a source of friction with Milosevic, who worried that his top spy was plotting against him. In 1998, Stanisic was fired.

The ensuing years were chaotic. After a new campaign of violence against Kosovo, Milosevic was forced from office in 2000, arrested the next year and taken to The Hague, where he went on trial for war crimes and died of a heart attack in 2006. A series of political assassinations occurred amid suspicion that Stanisic was somehow still pulling the strings.

When Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic – who had sent Milosevic to The Hague – was assassinated in 2003, Stanisic was arrested and detained for three months. Then, without explanation, he too was sent to The Hague.

For the past five years, Stanisic has gone back and forth between Belgrade and the detention center in the Netherlands. His trial was postponed last year to allow him to return to Belgrade for treatment of an acute intestinal disorder that according to court records had caused substantial blood loss. If Stanisic’s health stabilizes, his trial is expected to resume this year.

Stanisic is still seen in Belgrade from time to time, occasionally greeted by well-wishers. But much of his life has crumbled. He is divorced from his wife, estranged from his grown children and spends alternating weeks in the hospital.

“The last time I saw him, he was connected to tubes,” said Dragicevic, Stanisic’s longtime deputy.

Sometimes Stanisic is in good spirits and talks of prevailing in his case. But most of the time, Dragicevic said, “he looks like a person who has already surrendered.”

“The person who was in charge of so many things, the person who was so very important and well known, is now a very lonely one.”

The Liberty massacre

—Shahzad Chaudhry

In all this, what might eventually stay obscure are the transnational linkages that seem to have entrenched themselves in the region; handlers in a different country control operations in another with effects which are manifested throughout. To lay the blame at one source only is a fallacy that will never deliver this region from the scourge

A daylight terror attack in Lahore on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team was showcased in the full glare of TV and CCTV cameras, and has been played out incessantly since. Apparently, six to eight young assassins trained far beyond amateurish levels replicated Mumbai almost to the last packet of nuts in an audaciously daring act. They mowed down policemen and others who came in their sight at the posh Liberty circle of Lahore, sprayed the stranded bus carrying the Sri Lankan team with automatic weapons, grenades and a rocket launcher, hurting and injuring some players, and then ambled across the normally busy roads and by-lanes of the area in full sight of passers-by and residents, hitched a bike, and simply vanished into thin air.

Seven members of the elite police force who accompanied the team were killed without even getting the opportunity to fire a shot back in defence; the ASP who led the security posse wheeled away from the head of the caravan into a side-lane as soon as firing started and was not to be seen thereafter. A couple of outriders who accompanied the caravan also disappeared, possibly one getting killed in cold blood. Not a soul was seen during or after the incident, firing, defending, attempting to apprehend or simply pursuing the perpetrators.

By mid-day, across Pakistan, heads hung in shame, there being no other way to exemplify the ineptitude. This was a typical Pakistani display of incompetence, lack of planning, callous disregard to all covenants and teachings of security and processing of information, crass neglect for any order, concern, or seriousness of the task at hand.

This is not cynicism; this is exemplification of what one has seen over decades of working in the system which is built around lies, false statements and undertakings, entirely misplaced assurances, managing and passing the moment, and somehow satisfying authority of all necessary actions while knowing well that nothing is assured nor is it ever likely to be assured. We are also past masters of telling the authority what it may like to hear.

With such casual approach to duty, and non-professionalism in an atmosphere of conceit and deceit, the results can only be catastrophic. Our history is littered with many more episodes of such nature.

Pakistan and all her institutions — the few that are still standing — must take the blame, accept our outright failure and hang our heads in shame before casting our eyes anywhere else to seek redemption. Only time and some committed recourse to remedy can help restore the nation’s lost pride.

Having so stated, let’s review the events in their entire context. Mumbai takes place in November 2008, and Lashkar-e Tayba and Jama’at-ud Dawa are implicated; Pakistan accepts partial responsibility with a likelihood that those who undertook Mumbai either belonged to Pakistan or were being handled from Pakistan. India seeks to recast Pakistan as a terrorist state, or at the least a state harbouring terrorists and using terrorism as state policy; it also carries out an unrelenting campaign to isolate Pakistan diplomatically. Some incompetent Indian diplomacy and a large pot of luck enabled Pakistan to struggle out of the bind.

However, what happens concurrently in a telling blow to Pakistan is the centrality that Pakistan assumes as the epicentre of terrorism in the Obama administration’s review of the region; a far cry from President-elect Obama’s considered view that problems between India and Pakistan, such as Kashmir, and their resolution hold the key to geo-political stability in the entire region.

One stroke, and Kashmir vanished as a central enunciation in the changing American policy; Richard Holbrooke, who was to have been the US Secretary of State’s Representative for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, was restricted in responsibility for Pakistan and Afghanistan only. An implicit advantage to India’s well thought out design, or an utter failure of Pakistan’s non-state elements to envision the adverse fallout of an undertaking that might place their mother country in an untenable position with the rest of the world.

The Liberty attack has brought the focus back on Pakistan. Where Pakistan had escaped without continued censure from Mumbai, the conglomeration of the forces of adversity in instability, strife, factional politics, and a lack of national cohesion have coagulated to form an even greater sense of a state in need of serious remedy. What Mumbai could not deliver, Lahore will, with even greater effect.

The threat of diplomatic isolation is not just that; it impinges upon trade, sports, culture, tourism and all such undertakings that connect people from different nationalities. On each of these Pakistan has a road to travel before normalcy can be assumed; and among these, cricket as a sport held out maximum promise for Pakistan to enable it to connect.

India defeated the option by opting out of a planned tour, while the ICC did its bit by cancelling the Champions Trophy. Sri Lanka, a nation of people with big hearts decided to fill the gap and undertook a hurriedly arranged tour. It certainly did not please India. The tour was going well, until someone somewhere decided to strike and end any hopes of normalcy for cricket in Pakistan. The World Cup planned to be concurrently held in Pakistan along with India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in 2011 is under threat as a consequence.

Sport is not the only casualty. Businessmen have long since stopped visiting Pakistan and prefer to hold any meeting, if at all, in Dubai. Countries around the world have issued travel advisories, as has indeed Pakistan’s own Ministry for Interior, for all diplomats and embassies to restrict movement.

Pakistan is being isolated in effect, if not through a diplomatic effort or a UNSC resolution. The world at large suitably echoed by the local media is asking the question whether anarchy is already knocking at the door. This would be too harsh a judgement. What is needed is drastic improvement in the efficiency of government. The political leadership must be seen to be leading; there is a need for promise and hope to be shared with the people.

The relationship between the state and society must be seen to be existent and relevant. There is a clear void in leadership. This is the moment for leaders to resurrect a sinking nation.

In all this, what might eventually stay obscure are the transnational linkages that seem to have entrenched themselves in the region; handlers in a different country control operations in another with effects which are manifested throughout. To lay the blame at one source only is a fallacy that will never deliver this region from the scourge. The negative forces of subversion have been used blatantly by all players of the great game in this region. This must end to make any headway in the effort to restore normalcy.

The writer is a retired air vice marshal of the Pakistan Air Force and a former ambassador. He can be contacted at shahzad.a.chaudhry@gmail.com

CIA — Capitalism’s Invisible Army

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Edited on Sat Mar-07-09 05:27 PM by Octafish

Most of what we see today — a failed economy based on indentured servitude, declining standards of living for the middle class and poor, wars without end, and a financially and morally bankrupt government — are the direct results of policies that benefit the financial elite of this nation.

This tiny fraction of the nation’s wealthiest people has owned government, pretty much continually, since the time of the first President Johnson. For those interested in learning more about the subject:

The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men

Bush Senior Early CIA Ties Revealed

Bush-Led ‘Disaster Capitalism’ Exploits Worldwide Misery to Make a Buck

The CIA and Riggs Bank

CIA Started by NAZI Sympathizers and Staffed by NAZIs…

I don’t have anything personal against the CIA, per se, just its bosses who’ve looted my grandkids’ future.

– Your Friendly Enemy of Fascism,

Octafish

Bahrainis injured, detained and tortured as ICC is urged to take action

Bahrain Freedom Movement (BFM)

March 7, 2009

Bahrainis injured, detained and tortured as ICC is urged to take action

The vicious attack on a peaceful demonstration in Sitra (http://www.answers.com/topic/sitra-1) left several people injured. The demonstration was organized by the citizens of Sitra to protest against the ruling family’s plan to occupy more of the island’s seashores through a process of reclamation funded by people’s money.

The protesters include families of the detainees who were calling for their release after months of illegal incarceration. The victims of the attack waged by the Zionist Al Khlaifa-directed foreign-staffed riot police include a citizen, Ahmad Abdul Hadi Al Basri, who almost lost his eye. His images in hospital stand as a testimony to the barbarity of the ruling family. He happened to pass near the area when he was hit with a rubber bullet. Another citizen from Sitra Al-Kharijiya, also received severe injuries when he was hit at the head by a rubber bullet. Among the injured were women and children whose injuries varies in severity. The aggressors used batons, rifles, tear and chemical gases to disperse the civilized protest.

Another peaceful protest was held yesterday at Hamad Town (http://www.answers.com/topic/madinat-hamad), organized by the families of the political prisoners in the group known as the “Al Hujjaira” group. Three Bahrainis from the village of Sar were arrested by the Zionist Al-Khalifa Death Squads; the son of Sayyed Aqeel Al Mosawi, Sayyed Majeed Al Asel (who is an elderly person) and a third person whose name is not yet available. Several women were also arrested, maltreated and released when it became clear that their detention would spark major unrest in the country.

In a sign of desperation, the Death Squads resorted to a new method of attempting to stem the rising anti-regime movement. In the past few days meetings were held with school children to urge them to “cooperate” with them by revealing names of the pro-democracy activists who write slogans on walls or take part in protests.

Last Thursday, children at the Sumayya Primary Girls School were called to a seminar organized by the police and, exposed to severe culture shock and threatened with sever reprisals if they did not report those who write political slogans on the walls, take part in protest or burn tires. They were given a telephone number and ordered to work as spies to the police of the occupiers. Pictures of the senior members of the Al-Khalifa were later distributed to them. Several young girls reported this institutionalized criminal act to their parents. Bahraini lawyers described this act as “shameful” and “criminal”.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights has issued a lengthy statement warning of extreme dangers to the Bahrainis as a result of the policies, aims and composition of the Al Khalifa-controlled security apparatus, originally formed by the notorious British colonial officer, Ian Henderson. Out of more than 1000 members of this corrupt system, 64% are foreigners, mostly of Asian origins. Less than 4% of the employees are from the Shia Muslim population which are more than 75% of the natives.

The recent attacks by this notorious system on villages have exposed the cruelty of its members. Extreme forms of torture are now practices against protesters after their arrest. The system has also resorted to dirty tactics to assassinate the characters of the activists. In the 2009/2010 budget the budget of this notorious apparatus has been increased by 34 percent! Its hierarchy is linked the ruler and the prime minister and is thus not a neutral body or a system that puts the security of the country and the people at the top of its priorities.

The extent of desperation of the Al-Khalifa has led them to send a delegation to the religious supreme authorities in Najaf, Iraq with the aim of limiting the anger felt by these scholars at their policies of genocide against the Shia Muslim population. The scholars had already been briefed about these policies and are unlikely to be influenced by these empty gestures. This move by the regime has come at the backdrop of a serious international move to indict the ruler of Bahrain and three of his closest lieutenants on crimes of cultural genocide of the Bahrainis. The move is gathering momentum with several projects to compile evidence needed by the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is taking the charges seriously. The office of the ICC’s Prosecutor, Mr. Moreno Ocampo, has already been notified and is following the case closely.

http://www.vob.org/?lang=english

Drawdown in Iraq begins: 12,000 Replacement Troops Going to Afghanistan

Drawdown in Iraq begins: 12,000 troops to return by fall

The two combat brigades that would have replaced them will go to Afghanistan instead.

By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 9, 2009 edition

Washington – The top US commander in Iraq is sending two combat brigades home from Iraq, marking the first major drawdown of US troops there since the “surge” ended last year.

The announcement comes just days after President Obama announced that the US combat mission in Iraq would end by September 2010, but left open the question of when they would begin to return.

The redeployment could be seen as a down payment on the promised withdrawal of forces. Administration officials have indicated that, as expected, most of the rest of the combat forces won’t return from Iraq until much later this year or early next, in order to ensure security for the Iraqi elections.

The Afghanistan mission also plays a role: The brigades that would have replaced the two returning from Iraq are being sent instead to Afghanistan, where Mr. Obama has promised more troops to deal with the deteriorating security.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, announced Sunday that over the next six months, two combat brigade teams and their supporting elements, or about 12,000 troops, would return home from Iraq without being replaced. An American F-16 fighter squadron will also be sent back without being replaced.

That will reduce the total combat force in Iraq from the current 14 brigades to a total of 12 brigades. General Odierno also formally announced that a British brigade of about 4,000 troops would be sent home without being replaced.

“The time and conditions are right for coalition forces to reduce the number of troops in Iraq,” Odierno said in a prepared statement. “The successful provincial elections demonstrated the increased capability of the Iraqi army and police to provide security.”

At the height of the surge of US troops in 2007, there were a total of 20 combat brigades deployed to Iraq, driving up the total number of American forces there to 166,000 in October 2007. When the surge ended last year, US commanders sent back five brigades, or about 20,000 troops.

The Pentagon then reduced American presence further by another brigade, leaving 14 combat brigades in Iraq and a total of 140,000 American troops.

“After we remove our combat brigades, our mission will change from combat to supporting the Iraqi government and its security forces, as they take the absolute lead in securing their country,” Obama said during a speech at a Marine base in North Carolina Feb. 27.

Iraq’s own security force has grown in recent years to more than 600,000 and become increasingly more capable.

The combination of US troops and Iraqi security forces has improved security in the country since the height of the insurgency in 2004. About 135 American troops were killed in April that year, according to icasualties.org.

Last month, 16 Americans were killed in Iraq, according to the website.

There remain pockets of insurgency in some areas, including in the north around Mosul and Baquba. US commanders are concerned that the drawdown of US forces is done carefully so as not to alter the security situation on the ground. Generally, US forces will pull out of the cities and back to more centralized bases before withdrawing altogether.

Although Obama pledged to end the combat mission in Iraq by September 2010, he has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 American troops in Iraq for another year or so after that to perform advisory and training roles.

The current agreement between Iraq and the US requires all US forces to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. But experts and military commanders believe new agreements will ensure that some residual American forces will reside in Iraq even after that time.