If The Russians Did This To Us, We’d Kill ‘Em

If The Russians Did This To Us, We’d Kill ‘Em

By David Michael Green

October 02, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — What if the Russians invaded?

It’s not so far-fetched an idea, you know. We spent half a century and trillions of dollars to make sure that it would never happen, so it’s really not such a strange notion.

So what if the Russians invaded?

What if they came and stole all of our money?

What if the Russians invaded and enslaved our children as cheap worker bee drones locked in dismal dead-end jobs?

What if the Russians invaded and excavated all of our natural resources, leaving only mountains of toxic debris in their wake?

What if the Russians invaded and they ruined our infrastructure, thrashed our educational institutions, and stuck us with a grossly inadequate healthcare system?

What if the Russians invaded and incarcerated a huge percentage of our people in for-profit jails? What if they ruined our military by sending it off on big-money colonial expeditions? What if they cut the legs out from under the middle class?

What if the Russians invaded and turned us against each other, tricking this tribe of Americans into hating that tribe, in order to keep any of us from realizing that they were looting our country?

If the Russians did any of these things, we’d kill ‘em. Dead.

If the Russians invaded, we’d send our army to crush them in defense of our country (or, at least, we hire somebody to do it).

If the Russians invaded, we’d be furious and raging and hateful and destructive – for good reason, too – and we would bring to them the full measure of American organized violence in order to take back our country from their plundering rampages.

Of course, the Russians haven’t invaded. But what’s astonishing about the moment we live in is that America has in fact been subjected to all these travails. We have essentially been invaded by those who wish us ill, and our national and private resources are being stripped bare. This country is being looted, and everything in it that isn’t nailed down is being carted away and sold off.

Our children are being saddled with enormous financial burdens. Our educational and healthcare systems, sucked dry as mere revenues sources, are falling to pieces. Our infrastructure is approaching ruin.

Our jobs, our industries and our community resources have been bundled up and exported to where the work can be done far cheaper, and the workers are compliant. Increasingly we are scrambling just to survive. Admittedly, our government remains absolutely dedicated to making sure that some of us do extremely well. It’s just that that ‘some’ doesn’t include anyone you know.

What is absolutely astonishing about the moment that we live in is that we have been essentially invaded, we have been absolutely looted, and yet we don’t seem to be the slightest bit angry about that.

If the Russians had done it, we would be absolutely furious. But in fact, it was our own overclass that did it, and not only are we not furious at them, we don’t even notice the crime. Or, if we do notice, we’re furious at some ridiculously inappropriate target, like a ‘liberal’ president who isn’t even remotely liberal.

America has always been a country with its full and fair share of flaws, but for quite some time during the middle part of the twentieth century, we got one thing reasonably right. There was a bargain then, between elites and the government and the public. According to the terms of the deal, the aristocracy would still be fantastically rich, but there would be limitations on their wealth, because some of that wealth, some substantial amount, needed to be shared with the working people and the middle class, and it was the role of government to make sure that that happened. Many among the well-to-do even shared that consensus.

Since Ronald Reagan rode into town, however, that deal is off the table, replaced by what is essentially a new New Deal – or, more accurately, simply the Bad Old Deal. Under the terms of this new/old arrangement, the unregulated wealthy grab absolutely everything they can get their hands on, the middle class scrambles for whatever bare existence it can maintain, and the rest of America, the working class and the poor, fall deeper and deeper into third world-style poverty. Under the terms of this new system, the role of the government is no longer to provide for the welfare of the people, nor to ensure that there are limitations on what the plutocracy can liberate from them. Under the terms of this new arrangement, the function of the government is simply to serve as a tool, assisting that plutocracy in depriving America’s own people of everything that can be taken from them.

That means that in the last thirty years we’ve entirely restructured the economy so that the super-wealthy have become obscenely-super-wealthy, and the middle class are lucky to have stood still, and haven’t really even managed that. If one examines the destination of the considerable GDP growth that America has sustained over the last three decades, it’s gone entirely to the richest of Americans. The middle class has actually lost ground. That’s an astonishing fact, but think about it: Despite robust economic growth, workers today actually make less than they did back in the 1970s.

Even more amazing, it wasn’t that hard to pull off. All you had to do was to fool the people and divert their attention to other circuses to go along with the remaining crumbs of bread. Meanwhile, unions were decimated by changes in government policy. Jobs were exported – first to the south, then to Mexico, then to China, now to Thailand or Vietnam, and probably soon to Africa – in a never-ending search for the cheapest possible way to wring value out of the working people of the world, leaving Americans without any sort of remaining industry or economic base. Tax policy was also deployed, channeling money from current working Americans, and especially from their children, and diverted it to the already wealthy. The upshot of all these policy changes was that the richest Americans became absolutely, astonishingly, fabulously rich, and the rest of us are barely holding on, if that.

If the Russians had come here and done this – if they had come and stolen our resources, if they come and enslaved our children into inescapable soul-numbing jobs, if they had left us with environmental degradation and a wrecked economy and destroyed education system and a crumbling infrastructure and a sieve-like healthcare regime – if the Russians had come and done any or all of this, we would’ve risen up in anger and hostility and patriotism and nationalism, and we’d have loaded up our weapons and killed every last one of them.

But it wasn’t the Russians that did it, it was our own overclass. And worse still, it was our own government acting as though they were protecting us from the evil bogeyman du jour, while in fact they were assisting the wealthy in bleeding us dry, until our anemia left us fit only for our profit-seeking hospitals.

Think about how idiotic you have to be to allow yourself to be looted and not even realize the money’s been taken out of your pocket. Think about how politically immature you have to be to allow a thief to walk right up to you, take your money, and not even recognize who that thief is. Think about how stupid you have to be to blame it on somebody else – like gays, or Iraqis, or black helicopters – and not pay attention to the real rip-off artist who’s stealing your money.

I would tip my hat in admiration to these plutocrats for the cleverness of their scheme – even if a scam this ugly requires the predators to have the moral sensibility of an empty parking lot – but in fact what they’ve done isn’t really all that clever. The successes of their crimes have lots more to do with the fatuousness of their victims than with the acumen of the criminals.

Worse yet, as if the American public hasn’t already been stupid enough, here we are thirty years down the road from the advent of Reaganism, and we still don’t get it. Here we are after three decades of being looted, still unable to figure out who’s ripping us off. Here we are, even after the implausibly complete failures and disasters and depredations of the Bush administration, and most Americans are still unable to point to the criminals and their ideology, and identify the source of the crime.

Which makes the future looked even more shaky. Now we have a president who most Americans are coming to believe is some sort of far-left Stalinist, while in fact he is every bit the full-measured facilitator of corporate parasitism that either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton were.

And yet, because he is being made out to be some sort of outrageously decadent liberal, and because Americans are too dim to figure out the ruse, this president – who is failing to address the concerns of ordinary Americans, most especially because he’s not working for them in the least – is bound to fail, and is looking increasingly like the proud owner of a one-term presidency. And what we can expect in reaction to that failure – ironically and disastrously and jaw-droppingly idiotically – is a sharp turn to the right. When Obama fails, it will be framed, as it already is being, as some sort of grand failure of liberalism. In fact, of course, just the opposite is true. It’s a grand success of the overclass’s looting of America.

In this respect, Obama offers precious little “change”, even from the crimes of George W. Bush. Look at his healthcare initiative, for example. I don’t know about you, but I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that anything that the big pharmacological and big health insurance industries are in favor of is pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster for the rest of us – you know, we the people of the United States. This bill no more represents an initiative for the purpose of bringing healthcare to Americans than George Bush’s prescription drug bill was an initiative to improve the life of seniors. In both cases, whatever vicarious and accidental improvements that exist are simply diversionary window-dressing on what is really another example of legalized corporate colonialism.

In the case of Obama’s healthcare legislation, what’s happening is that enormous quantities of new customers are being forced to buy expensive health coverage from insurance industry predators who will be vastly enriched by means of this new legislation, which is precisely why they would favor something that ordinarily we would expect them to oppose, and that we certainly would expect them to oppose if Obama was any kind of progressive whatsoever, even if only in his personal fantasies.

The bank bailouts were absolutely no different. What an amazing episode, what an amazing looting of the American public, what an amazing chapter in the destruction of an empire – and all brought to us by a supposedly liberal president. In fact, Obama was simply extending the tradition of the Bush administration, and the Reagan ideology prior to that, which calls for pillaging the federal treasury in order to divert the maximal amount of money to economic elites, and then leaving the bill for the American taxpayer.

One could go on and on from here. Obama continues to deploy more mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan than there are uniformed American soldiers. He continues to support privatization of everything from American prisons to schools. He asks for the most tepid possible re-institution of regulations on the financial industry, and when the thieves on Wall Street growl back at him, he abandons even those most limited of obstacles to their worst impulses.

The upshot is that today American voters have two choices. They can have the party that represents the maximal plundering of America, at the maximal speed. Or they can have the party that represents nearly the same crime at almost the same velocity.

Either way, the United States has ceased in any meaningful way to be owned by citizens. Its voters vote, but their representatives in Congress and in the administration are beholden to economic elites, and act entirely accordingly. The country’s institutions, infrastructure, and social relations are all being dismantled piece by piece and either relocated elsewhere or sold off in order to wring yet another drop of wealth out of the hides of working Americans, so that those who are already wealthy beyond belief can be even further enriched.

If some other country did this to us – if the Russians invaded and took all our resources, and enslaved us and our children to work in dismal jobs when we could find any work at all sufficient to maintaining a rapidly sinking middle class livelihood – if those things happened and the perpetrator was a foreign power, we’d rise up and go to war and we’d kill every last one of ‘em.

But we’re not doing any of that, even though a very real enemy has invaded this country and stripped it bare.

In fact, this society is pretty busy making sure that we don’t even notice who that enemy is.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net ), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

Netanyahu Warns UN Against Accepting Goldstone Report

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a last-gasp warning on Thursday to the 47 countries of the United Nations Human Rights Council, currently convening in Geneva. The Council is expected to vote on Friday whether to endorse and pass the Goldstone report on to the U.N. General Assembly.

It is expected that the Council will vote to accept the Goldstone findings, which conclude that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead earlier this year. Israel launched the offensive after Gaza terrorists rained down thousands of rockets on Israeli towns and cities, killing over 20 people and making havoc of routine life in Israel’s western Negev.

“A vote will [soon] be held in Geneva in the so-called UN Human Rights Council,” Netanyahu said, adding that “this council has made, in recent years, more resolutions against Israel than any of the 180 countries around the world.”

He said that if the committee decides to promote the Goldstone report, it would cause grave harm in three areas:

• It would grant legitimacy to the Hamas terrorist practice of attacking civilian targets while hiding behind other civilians.
• It would deal a blow to the UN status, reducing it to making “absurd” decisions.
• It would gravely harm the peace process, discouraging Israel from taking risks for peace for fear that it will not receive international backing.

“I hope a majority [of the Council] will come to their senses,” Netanyahu said, but added, “We have no confidence in it; there is usually an automatic majority there against us.”

“If a majority is found to negate this report, it will avoid this severe blow,” Netanyahu said, “but if not, the responsibility will be on those countries who didn’t pull themselves together in time.”

Israel’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Aharon Leshno-Yaar, has admitted it is likely that the report will in fact be passed on to the U.N. General Assembly. But he said he is still seeking justice and a moral victory in having the countries of the West support Israel’s position.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past

By Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat, Telegraph

Ahmadinejad showing papers during election. It shows that his family’s previous name was Jewish October 3, 2009 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vitriolic attacks on the Jewish world hide an astonishing secret, evidence uncovered by The Daily Telegraph shows. A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots. A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth. The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad’s birthplace, and the name derives from the Jewish for “weaver of the Sabour”, the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran’s Ministry of the Interior. Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad’s track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past. Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: “This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad’s background explains a lot about him. “Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith. “By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society.” A London-based expert on Iranian Jewry said that “jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. “He has changed his name for religious reasons, or at least his parents had,” said the Iranian-born Jew living in London. “Sabourjian is well known Jewish name in Iran.” A spokesman for the Iranian embassy in London said it would not be drawn on Mr Ahmadinejad’s background. “It’s not something we’d talk about,” said Ron Gidor, a spokesman. The Iranian leader has not denied his name was changed when his family moved to Tehran in the 1950s. But he has never revealed what it was change from or directly addressed the reason for the switch. Relatives have previously said a mixture of religious reasons and economic pressures forced his blacksmith father Ahmad to change when Mr Ahmadinejad was aged four. The Iranian president grew up to be a qualified engineer with a doctorate in traffic management. He served in the Revolutionary Guards militia before going on to make his name in hardline politics in the capital. During this year’s presidential debate on television he was goaded to admit that his name had changed but he ignored the jibe. However Mehdi Khazali, an internet blogger, who called for an investigation of Mr Ahmadinejad’s roots was arrested this summer. Mr Ahmadinejad has regularly levelled bitter criticism at Israel, questioned its right to exist and denied the Holocaust. British diplomats walked out of a UN meeting last month after the Iranian president denounced Israel’s ‘genocide, barbarism and racism.’ Benjamin Netanyahu made an impassioned denunciation of the Iranian leader at the same UN summit. “Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium,” he said. “A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies the murder of six million Jews while promising to wipe out the State of Israel, the State of the Jews. What a disgrace. What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations.” Mr Ahmadinejad has been consistently outspoken about the Nazi attempt to wipe out the Jewish race. “They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets,” he declared at a conference on the holocaust staged in Tehran in 2006.

:: Article nr. 58530 sent on 03-oct-2009 13:25 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=58530

Link: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6256173/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-r
evealed-to-have-Jewish-past.html

Giving Islam a Bad Name in Khyber

[The anti-Shia sectarian warfare policies of Mangal Bagh can continue as operation "Coming to Get You" sputters-out.  These efforts to recreate the sectarian conflict seen in Iraq, in Khyber Agency, are very important for maintaining the show in Pakistan.]

Bara operation loses intensity as most militants still at large

People dismayed at curfew

Saturday, October 03, 2009
Daud Khattak

PESHAWAR: The operation in Bara subdivision of Khyber Agency has lost its intensity with almost all militants and their leadership still at large though the unsettling curfew is in place to the dismay of many dwellers.

The anti-militant swoop was launched with trumpet blast on September 1 by razing houses of those accused of lending military, financial or moral support to militants in the area being controlled by Lashkar-e-Islam (LI), the outlawed group led by Mangal Bagh, over the past several years.

Unofficial figures suggest that nearly 50 houses have been razed, 35 people killed and over 100 arrested by the security forces in the past month. The authorities, however, failed to net or eliminate any of the wanted militants or senior commanders including chief Mangal Bagh who has been recently added to the list of wanted men carrying bounty on their heads.

Official figures released to media over the past one month, however, claimed the killing of nearly 100 militants besides destruction of their several centres and bunkers both in Bara and the remote Tirah Valley where most of the banned LI leaders are believed to be hiding to evade arrest.

Large-scale migration of people, fearing intense fighting between security forces and outlawed LI volunteers and the continued curfew in Bara, are the most disturbing aspects of the Operation ‘Bia Daraghlam’ (Here I Come Again), which is the second against LI since June 2008.

The first operation codenamed ‘Daraghlam’ (Here I Come) was launched in June last year with a promise to root out the militants and secure Bara as well as Peshawar. The action was, however, halted after a few days by pushing the militants, who returned with more force and vigour days after troop withdrawal from the area.

The current operation, launched with much fanfare by the army and Frontier Corps (FC), is going to meet fate of the previous one as army troops were withdrawn from Bara less than 10 days after the launch of the operation wherein the security forces focused more on demolition of houses instead of going after and chasing the militants in their mountainous hideouts outside Bara.

Although the LI is yet to offer any armed resistance, the previous threats from Mangal Bagh on his illegal FM channel terrified the residents to the extent that they started fleeing the area for safer locations in the suburban villages and houses with some even going to the Jalozai makeshift settlement established to house displaced from Bajaur and Swat.

According to locals and some relief organisations, 50,000 to 80,000 people have migrated from Bara after the threat from Mangal Bagh who asked the people to reach to safer locations within three days after Eid.

Locals said they were the ultimate victims both in fighting between LI and Ansarul Islam (AI) and the anti-militant operation by the security forces. “Our businesses have been destroyed due to the curfew for the past one month,” says Said Ayaz, president of the Traders’ Association in Bara bazaar.

First there was fighting between the two groups (LI and AI) and the civilians suffered. “We are again facing the brunt as the security forces are conducting operation in our area,” grumbled the retailer, claiming that majority of those killed in the month-long operation were civilians.

Ayaz said more than 10,000 shops had been closed over the past one month, incurring huge losses on the traders and businessmen. Earlier, some shop owners shifted the merchandise to their houses following relaxation in curfew hours during Eid, he added.

Another resident, who did not want to be named for security reasons, said the LI people had returned to some areas after the pulling out of army from Bara. “We are sandwiched between the government and the militants each time the two sides come face to face,” he lamented.

Talking to reporters, the former political agent of Khyber Agency Tariq Hayat had claimed the operation would be taken to its logical end. He was, however, removed from the office without seeing his pledge fulfilled. Incumbent Political Agent Shafeerullah Khan was contacted both on his office and cell phone numbers, but he was not available for comments.

Supreme Court Pakistan Petitioned to Remove Zardari

Petition to disqualify Zardari in SC soon

Saturday, October 03, 2009

By Muhammad Ahmad Noorani

ISLAMABAD: Senior Supreme Court lawyer Barrister Akram Sheikh is withdrawing his review petition in the Supreme Court and would be filing a petition to disqualify President Asif Zardari and other NRO beneficiaries after the detailed judgment of the court.

“I want to move a petition in the apex court for the disqualification of all NRO beneficiaries who are holding important offices in the country,” he told The News on Friday.

Sheikh said keeping aside the fact that the NRO was a highly controversial law, the Supreme Court had ordered not to give any benefit to any person. The ordinance lapsed on February 2, 2008 and most of the benefits under it were given after this date, especially in the case of President Asif Zardari.

He said as the NRO was not a law on February 3, 2008 and afterwards, so all the benefits given under it were wrong and illegal and those who enjoyed acquittal from different corruption cases under this now had no standing to hold any office and should be disqualified from their positions.

Sheikh, who moved a review petition on July 31 short judgment, now says all the major points he had raised in his petition had been addressed in paras 186, 187 and 188 of the detailed judgment delivered on Wednesday, so he would request the apex court on Monday to dispose of his review petition.

He said in his petition No 8 of 2009, he had raised four main points which were not addressed completely in July 31 short judgment of the Supreme Court but now these had been addressed and admitted by the apex court in its detailed judgment.

According to Sheikh, his four main points were as follows: First, all Nov 3 acts of military dictator Pervez Musharraf should be declared as void ab initio (to be treated as invalid from the outset) which could not be condoned or approved or validated by any institution, including parliament in any situation. Akram Sheikh said according to his view in the petition, the 1973 Constitution was made with national consensus and Article VI was the basic feature of this Constitution. “No subsequent assembly has any powers to condone or approve any act which in any means falls in the domain of Article VI of the 1973 Constitution,” Sheikh said.

Secondly, the judgment in the Tikka Iqbal case was neither handed down by some Supreme Court judges nor by any PCO judge; rather, it was handed down by some strangers who were having the physical occupation of the building of the Supreme Court.

He had raised a very important point that the court was not reviewing the ‘Tikka Iqbal Case’ as any case with such name was never heard or decided by judges of the Supreme Court, so no judgment in fact existed which could be reviewed.

“So, we couldn’t say that the Supreme Court was reviewing the case; rather, we will say it is hearing a fresh case,” Sheikh said to have argued in his petition. Thirdly, the act of sacking the Supreme Court and high courts judges on Nov 3rd was void ab initio. “So no vacancies were created which were needed to be filled and thus all appointments made on and after Nov 3rd were also void ab initio.”

Fourthly, all the ordinances promulgated, actions taken and legislative instruments issued were all void from the outset and were acts of high treason under Article VI of the Constitution. Akram Sheikh said all his major points raised in his petition were properly addressed and admitted in the detailed judgment of the Supreme Court.

Protest at West Point Today

War protests planned near West Point games

By Alexa James

Times Herald-Record

Posted: October 02, 2009 – 2:00 AM

HIGHLAND FALLS — As football fans flock to West Point Saturday, many will arrive decked out in Army Black Knights football attire.

Others will show wearing the adversarial garb of the Tulane Green Wave.

Nick Mottern, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran from Hastings-on-Hudson, plans to turn up waving a pennant that speaks to another sort of contest: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mottern and a group of about one dozen activists plan to gather quietly outside West Point’s Thayer Gate on Saturday morning, around 10:30. As visitors arrive for the Army’s afternoon homecoming game, the protesters will display banners and signs saying, “Army — Don’t go to Iraqistan.”

“We’re trying to encourage people in the military and cadets to decline to serve in these places,” Mottern said.

The upcoming demonstration was spurred by recent requests from military leaders for more troops in Afghanistan. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and a 1976 West Point graduate, reportedly asked President Barack Obama for as many as 40,000 additional troops last month. Though the White House has not yet committed to more manpower, the general’s demand has renewed strong debates about the nation’s future in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mottern said he hopes to trigger more conversations about withdrawing troops from both theaters. “The goal is to put forward a message that we hope will be carried inside West Point by people who are attending the game,” he said.

The activists plan to repeat their quiet protest before every West Point home game this season. Mottern said the group will keep away from the football field and off West Point property, sticking to public sidewalks in the Village of Highland Falls.

West Point officials said protests are illegal on military installations.

Mottern has had run-ins with the Army before. He was one of eight plaintiffs who brought a federal First Amendment suit against two West Point employees after being forced to leave an Army basketball game during a silent protest in 2004. That case concluded in July, when a jury ruled in favor of West Point.

ajames@th-record.com

Ahmadinejad: Western media ‘weapon of subterfuge’

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:54:28 GMT

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Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the Islamic Radio and TV Union Assembly

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says corporate media has turned into a weapon of subterfuge, with the sole aim of advancing the West’s political agenda.

In a Saturday address to the Islamic Radio and TV Union Assembly, Ahmadinejad cited random examples of political bias in US and European media outlets.

As a first example of biased reporting in the West, Ahmadinejad pointed to the scant media coverage of Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza, which killed over 1500 Palestinians mostly women and children, earlier in the year.

“Israelis easily used thousands of bombs against the defenseless population of Gaza Strip, who were stripped of medicine and their most essential needs. Now, eight months have passed and we see that the event has been already sunk into oblivion.”

Ahmadinejad said criticism of Israel and its actions has become ‘off limits’ in American and European media.

Then, Ahmadinejad turned to the sheer lack of media attention to the brutal murder of Marwa el-Sherbini, a pregnant Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death in a German courtroom while the whole jury and court officials stood by and watched.

Last but not least, Ahmadinejad pointed to the recent media hype over Iran’s second nuclear enrichment plant. “In the past few days, we saw Western media outlets repeating false accusations against Iran’s nuclear issue.”

“This is how the Western media works. First they
>distort facts and fabricate news. Then they incessantly repeat their false allegations, just to make sure that it is forever etched on the minds of people,” he said.

“[US President Barack Obama] made a huge mistake when he accused Iran of secrecy and gave rise to the recent torrent of false reports,” said President Ahmadinejad.

Referring to the sudden commotion over the newly-revealed Fordu nuclear facility in southern Tehran, President Ahmadinejad said Iran has always kept the IAEA posted on its enrichment work in line with its policy of transparency.

“Our activities are entirely based on honesty and transparency. There are no secrets between us and the IAEA whatsoever,” he noted.

Ahmadinejad warned that the mainstream media in the West has grown to become more dangerous and more threatening than any chemical or nuclear weapons.

“The media campaign has turned into a full-fledged war. I believe the West’s abundant arsenals of chemical and nuclear weapons are there to deceive and intimidate,” he said.

According to President Ahmadinejad, unbiased media does not exist in the West. “Claims of freedom of press are all lies, each and every one of the western media outlets serve the interests and policies of their states,” he said.

“When I was in New York for the General Assembly, I was interviewed by several news networks, all of which asked the exact same set of questions,” he said.

“I asked them how can you call yourself an independent media, when all the questions you are asking me have been clearly dictated by your governments. Which one of these questions are posed in the interest of your people?” he noted.

President Ahmadinejad said Iran’s mission today is not limited to spreading information. Our main responsibility today is to defend humanity and to create a global culture in support of the oppressed people, he explained.

General Thinks Iraq Going Swell, Can’t Wait to Help Afghans Just As Much

General Says Iraq Troop Reductions May Quicken

• By THOM SHANKER

Published: September 29, 2009

WASHINGTON — The senior American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that he could reduce American forces to 50,000 troops even before the end of next summer if the expected January elections in Iraq went smoothly.

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That could ease the strain across the American armed forces and free up extra combat units for duty in the Afghanistan war, which has become a priority for the Obama administration.

In an interview at the Pentagon, the commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said he had already ordered some service members and equipment diverted from the Iraq mission to Afghanistan, in particular surveillance aircraft and units known as “combat enablers,” which include engineers for clearing roadside bombs and military police officers for training Afghan forces.

President Obama ordered in February that American combat forces would be out of Iraq by August 2010, leaving 50,000 troops to advise and support the Iraqis. Since that schedule was set, the need for troops in Afghanistan has made that timing especially important — all the more so if commanders in Afghanistan formally request even more troops and President Obama agrees. In recent months American combat forces pulled out of Iraq’s city centers.

General Odierno described his continuing security concerns, especially in the north of Iraq, where there are deep Kurdish-Arab tensions and where homegrown insurgents who claim allegiance to Al Qaeda continue to operate.

But the general said he was confident enough in the path to stability — with orderly elections and a smooth transfer of power in the winter — that he had drafted a new plan that set out how the duties now performed by American forces would be increasingly transferred to Iraqis before the full withdrawal, planned for Dec. 31, 2011. For the final year and a half or so, the Americans would be advising and training the Iraqis and providing logistics to them.

He did caution that if the Iraqi government and military were not able to shoulder the entire burden of responsibility by that deadline, the ministries in Baghdad would have to rely for support on civilian United States agencies, in particular the State and Treasury Departments.

“We failed the first time in 2003, when things were fairly calm and we didn’t have a plan to transition what we had done militarily over to a civilian-led solution to help solve these problems,” General Odierno said.

“We have another opportunity here in 2010 and 2011 to do this,” he added. “What are the enduring functions that have to be transitioned over that will continue to build Iraqi civilian capacity and continue to improve their ability to provide security? We are very focused on that.”

The new Joint Campaign Plan was written in partnership with the American Embassy in Baghdad, the general said, and should be approved later this fall as the detailed map guiding the American withdrawal from Iraq.

The next benchmark for the American military withdrawal is Aug. 31, 2010, when forces must drop to 50,000. Military officers based in Baghdad said Tuesday that American military forces in Iraq numbered slightly more than 124,000, a reduction of 40,000 since 2008.

General Odierno said he had no intention of dropping below the 50,000-troop level required under a bilateral security agreement by the end of August, but he said he might reach that level before the deadline.

“Between now and May, I could accelerate the drawdown,” he said. “If we get through successful elections, and you seat the government peacefully, that provides another level of stability. That will help to reduce tensions.”

General Odierno said he had discussed the military needs for Afghanistan with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior commander in Kabul, and with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top officer in the Middle East, and he said all three had agreed that the military urgently required surveillance and transport aircraft in Afghanistan, as well as engineers and military police officers.

“We have been able to move some already over to Afghanistan,” General Odierno said. “We don’t want to affect the mission in Iraq, but we know some of this is needed in Afghanistan. I think we’ve been able to balance this so far.”

He said overall progress in Iraq was “slow, steady.” The leadership of Iraq’s security units has improved, and there is less sectarianism within these forces, the general said. But pitfalls remain.

“There is still too much political interference in the military,” General Odierno said. “That has always been a case there. It is better than it was, but it is still too much, and from a lot of different sources.”

The north of Iraq remains a serious security concern, especially in Nineveh Province, where, he said, “Al Qaeda in Iraq is still trying to re-establish a foothold and then be able to extend its tentacles down into Baghdad.”

Minority tensions, in particular between Kurds and Arabs in the north, are also a “driver of instability” and could be “exploited to destabilize the government of Iraq,” he noted.

And Iran has not halted its efforts to train insurgents and to send weapons and money in a bid for influence across the southern provinces of Iraq, General Odierno said, although Iranian agents “have reduced some of what they are doing.”

Even so, he said that Iraqi security forces continued to intercept large shipments of weapons and high-powered explosives sent from Iran.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 2, 2009
An article on Wednesday about the expected pace of the American military withdrawal from Iraq misstated the origin of a commitment to withdraw all but about 50,000 troops by August 2010. It was ordered by President Obama; it was not specified in the agreement on forces reached by the United States and Iraq last year.

Times of India Czech Bird Flu Story Source

Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic

AGENCIES 6 March 2009, 12:02am IST

It’s emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic

before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.
Last December, the Austrian branch of US vaccine company Baxter sent a batch of ordinary human H3N2 flu, altered so it couldn’t replicate, to Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, also in Austria. In February, a lab in the Czech Republic working for Avir alerted Baxter that, unexpectedly, ferrets inoculated with the sample had died. It turned out the sample contained live H5N1, which Baxter uses to make vaccine. The two seem to have been mixed in error.
Markus Reinhard of Baxter says no one was infected because the H3N2 was handled at a high level of containment. But Ab Osterhaus of Erasmus University in the Netherlands says: "We need to go to great lengths to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen."
Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences. While H5N1 doesn’t easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.

The Czech “Bird Flu” Combination Story

The Baxter/WHO case

Last Updated on Wednesday, 23 September 2009 16:30 Written by Jane Burgermeister Tuesday, 21 April 2009 20:34

< Prev

In February 2009, Baxter’s Austrian subsidiary in Orth an der Donau manufactured and distributed 72 kilos of vaccine material, contaminated with a H5N1 virus, to 16 laboratories in four countries.

In February 2009, Baxter’s Austrian subsidiary in Orth an der Donau manufactured and distributed 72 kilos of vaccine material, contaminated with a H1N1 virus, to 16 laboratories in four countries, including Austria, so nearly triggering a  pandemic, according to The Times of India.
The contaminated vaccine material consisted of a mixture of a seasonal H3N2 human influenza virus and the deadly H5N1 virus. By adding a virus of the type H5N1 to an ordinary flu virus of the type H3N2, Baxter produced a highly dangerous bioweapon. WHO supplied Baxter with the live bird flu virus. A staff member of a subcontracted laboratory in the Czech Republic discovered this lethal contamination, when all animals they tested died from this vaccine.

Since Baxter is obliged to use BSL 3 (Biosafety Level 3) precautions in its laboratories when handling the H1N1 virus (classified as a biological agent, BSL3 or 4 under EU regulations), such safeguards are in place as would make accidental contamination of ordinary influenza material with the dangerous H1N1 virus impossible.

In other words, this deadly contamination and distribution was almost certainly due to criminal intent. Thirty-six people had to be preventatively hospitalized in Austria and the Czech Republic because of their exposure to this vaccine-based contamination, underlining the danger.

On April 8th, I filed my first set of criminal charges with the Vienna City Prosecutor and the police in Austria are now investigating.

I have subsequently filed more charges over the Austrian government’s cover up in July, a bioterrorism incident in a Swiss train in April and set of charges at the FBI at the US embassy in Vienna in June over the “swine flu”outbreak.

Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi My Story

Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi

My Story

Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was convicted before the High Court of Justiciary sitting in the Netherlands of the murder of 270 people.

Mr Megrahi contends that he has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

His case was referred back to the Court of Criminal Appeal by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission on 27th June 2007.

He abandoned his appeal against conviction and sentence, with leave of the Court, on 18 August 2009.

The purpose of this website is to explain the basis of his challenge to that conviction.

Initially, he intends to publish those parts of his Grounds of Appeal which were argued before the Court between 28 April and 19 May 2009.

Thereafter, he will publish the Grounds of Appeal which were due to be the subject of argument before the Court, commencing on 2nd November 2009.

DOWNLOAD PDFs

1. 1. Summary of Grounds of Appeal 1 & 2
2. 2. Grounds of Appeal 1 & 2
3. 3. Written submissions relating to Grounds 1 & 2
4. 4. VMA report al Megrahi vs HMA 19-12-2008
5. 5. pp60 – 231 Grounds of Appeal
6. 6. Professor Steve Clark’s report 18 12 08
7. 7. US DoJ Guidelines

US paid reward to Lockerbie witness

Posted: 03 October 2009 1735 hrs

	Photos 1 of 1 Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi (C) being helped down the airplane steps on his arrival at an airport in Tripoli, Libya. (file pic)

LONDON: A key witness in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber was secretly paid up to two million US dollars (1.4 million euros) in a deal approved by the US government, according to legal papers.

The claims were made in new documents published on Friday by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, which he maintains prove he is innocent of the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.

Megrahi abandoned an appeal against his conviction for the bombing after the Scottish government released him from prison last month on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer.

His lawyers said the documents released on the website http://www.megrahimystory.net were not produced at the trial but would have been used in an appeal.

Megrahi, who is being treated in a Libyan hospital, said: “I continue to protest my innocence – how could I fail to do so?”

The documents show that the US Department of Justice was asked to pay two million US dollars to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold clothing found to have been in the suitcase that contained the bomb.

US authorities were also asked to pay Gauci’s brother Paul one million US dollars for his role in identifying the clothing, although he did not give evidence at the trial.

The previously secret payments were uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.

The SCCRC found the information about the request for payments in the private diaries of detectives in the case, but not in their official notebooks.

It was unable to establish exactly how much the brothers received under the Department of Justice’s “reward-for-justice” programme but records show they received “substantial payments” after Megrahi’s trial.

Megrahi said on Friday: “The commission found documents which they concluded ought to have been disclosed to my defence.”

The papers also cast doubt on evidence relating to Megrahi’s visit to Tony Gauci’s shop days before the bombing.

New evidence suggested the clothing had been bought before December 6, at a time when there was no evidence that Megrahi was in Malta, said the SCCRC.

It also emerged that Scottish policed failed to tell Megrahi’s lawyers that another witness, David Wright, had seen two different Libyan men buying similar clothes in Malta on a different day.

Psychologists believe this may have confused Gauci and impaired the prosecution case.

A spokesman for the Scottish government said Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill “supports” Megrahi’s conviction but stood by his decision to free him.

CIA Mouthpieces Warn Gen. Kayani: US Strikes Will ‘Impact’ Pakistan’s Military

CIA Mouthpieces Warn Gen. Kayani: US Strikes Will ‘Impact’

Pakistan’s Military

Further eroding Pakistan’s credibility is the alarming phenomenon of US diplomats indirectly threatening war against their host country

By Ahmed Quraishi

Saturday, 3 October 2009.

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—CIA’s mouthpieces in the US media and the Web have been activated to give maximum punch to US threats of bombing Quetta and convincing the international public opinion of the veracity of US intelligence on the presence of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden in Balochistan.  Separately, and as we predicted in our report A US Counteroffensive In Pakistan, the US embassy has decided to launch a ‘scare campaign’ inside Pakistan, discarding security concerns and opting to intensify television appearances on Pakistani channels in order to create public pressure against the government and especially against the military and the ISI.

One of the US intelligence mouthpieces has gone as far as warning Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani of the ‘impact’ that US strikes could have on the Pakistani military, claiming that this could lead to a ‘revolt’ within the army and the Pakistani intelligence community.

The Long War Journal, founded by Bill Roggio, a frequent lecturer at US Air Force’s Contemporary Counterinsurgency Warfare School, has warned that the “expansion of the US air campaign into Balochistan would likely lead to an internal revolt in the Pakistani military.  General Kiyani knows the impact a wide-reaching US air campaign would have on his military.”

The Journal was established as a not-for-profit company registered in the US after 9/11 to promote the idea of an expanded war that would also serve as a vehicle to achieve US strategic goals.  The CIA has a long tradition of creating ‘nonprofit incorporated companies’ as multipurpose fronts.  Another nonprofit incorporated company called Creative Associates International is suspected of having acted as a front for private US military contractors operating in Peshawar’s University Town.  Mr. Broggio’s Journal was created by Public Multimedia Inc., which describes its mission as a ‘nonprofit media organization with a mission to provide original and accurate reporting and analysis of the Long War.’

The Pakistani military has used its own channels to convey its strong protest to US military leadership on the belligerent American statemetns. But with a weak response by the elected government, Pakistan risks failure in countering the multi-pronged US media outreach that seeks to discredit Pakistan’s soft denials on the issue of Afghan Taliban’s ‘Quetta Shura’.

Further eroding Pakistan’s credibility is the alarming phenomenon of US diplomats indirectly threatening war against their host country.  Aside from US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson’s recent undiplomatic statements, a junior US diplomat – Deputy Head of Mission Gerald Feierstein – has made the unusual move of making a masked threat of war against his host country on Oct. 1.

Yesterday, Mr. Feierstein is reported to have called another group of Pakistani journalists and briefed them about what he terms as the insincerity of Pakistan’s military and intelligence in helping America manage its Afghan quagmire.  The US diplomat has reportedly taped an interview yesterday with a Pakistani news channel expected to be aired today.  Sources confirm that US diplomats in the Pakistani capital are planning a round of television interviews and press briefings in the coming days as part of a media offensive to counter the growing concern among Pakistanis on the activities of private US security firms in the country and the large number of US citizens that have entered Pakistan in recent months without proper security clearance.  The Nation published a detailed report on Sept. 26 on US embassy’s decision to launch this campaign.  Not since the days immediately after 9/11 have US diplomats in Pakistan hit the Pakistani television circuit like this.  On Sept. 19, Ambassador Patterson chose a polite Pakistani talk show host to use his platform for an interrupted projection of US policy positions.

The statements of Ms. Patterson and Mr. Feierstein create a rare precedent.  It is not often that an ambassador dares to threaten war against a host government.  If Ms. Patterson has stretched the terms of her stay in Pakistan to the limits, the junior diplomat has gone a step further. And in Mr. Feierstein’s case, this is an insult to Pakistan that a junior foreign diplomat has the audacity to call a press conference and threaten war against the host country.  Ambassador Haqqani, Pakistan’s envoy to Washington, dares not make half as strong statements even when he should.

What the Pakistani media and public opinion needs to consider is that Mr. Feierstein expressed confidence in the intelligence information provided by Karzai and the Indians on the presence of Mullah Omar in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan.  And he added Osama bin Laden to the list, discovering all of a sudden that bin Laden was definitely in Pakistan and possibly in the same place as Mullah Omar.

Never mind that Karzai sent Pakistan the same information back in 2006, along with a list of several other Afghan Taliban leaders allegedly living in Pakistan.  The Pakistani response, unlike the American-Karzai-Indian rehash, was backed by credible information, proving that the intelligence given to Pakistan was faulty and inaccurate.

In the absence of an effective Pakistani response, it will be easy for the Americans to mislead the world on concocted and often deliberately false information, as they did in the days preceding the invasion of Iraq.

A Pakistani analyst who has experience working closely with the US government but does not want to identify himself had this take on the latest American posturing: “They have launched a media campaign to prepare the public mind and the message to Pakistan is this: Take action in Waziristan. If not then we will bomb Quetta.”

Thanks to Gen. Musharraf’s strategic blunder of allowing Washington to dictate the terms of domestic Pakistani politics in the name of fighting terror, and now the Zardari-Gilani government’s unwarranted appeasement, Pakistan has lost a lot in terms of peace, stability and respect.  Time to cut our losses.

The Pakistani government should declare US ambassador Anne W. Patterson and her Deputy Chief of Mission Gerald Feierstein as unwanted persons on Pakistani soil and ask them to leave the country.  Failing to do so, we should be ready to see more junior diplomats from other countries doing the same.

This report was published by Pakistan’s The Nation today.

© 2007-2009. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com & PakNationalists

DALIT VOICE, Oct 1st – 15th 2009

DALIT VOICE

Vol. 28 Oct 1st – 15th 2009 No. 19 Editorial SARASWATI KICKED OUT IN OUR CRAZE FOR LAKSHMI : How can we end corruption & exploitation when Hindu values worship the filthy rich? Reports Fear of Islam sweeping West Ultimatum to Turkey India not among Asia’s emerging economies A STUDY OF INDIA & JAPAN : Revolution & counter-revolution One simple sentence that brought about Japanese revolution THUS SPAKE PERIYAR : EVR was not anti-god but anti-Brahmin Articles COMMUNICATION : Brahminism will surrender only when it gets biological threat COMMUNICATION : Brahminism as founding father of racism Financial “experts” are frauds : India needs social change not economic gimmicks COMMUNICATION : Brahmins in US behave exactly as they do in India Fake scientist engaged in killing farmers & destroying agriculture America shocked on hearing Brahminical media monopoly Jaswant said truth on Jinnah COMMUNICATION : DV is history : Should be preserved for future generations Why marxists target only Muslim- dominated Bengal & Kerala? C.S.D.S. STUDY REPORT : Brahmins alone control Indian media

© 2004 – 2009 Dalit Voice

Why The Goldstone Report Matters

Why The Goldstone Report Matters

Richard Falk

19 September 2009

http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=19888

“So why did the Israeli government boycott the commission? The real answer is quite simple: they knew full well that the commission, any commission, would have to reach the conclusions it did reach.”Uri Avnery (Israeli peace activist, and former Knesset member), “On the Goldstone Report” 19 Sept 2009

Richard Goldstone, former judge of South Aftica’s Constitutional Court, the first prosecutor at The Hague on behalf of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia, and anti- apartheid campaigner reports that he was most reluctant to take on the job of chairing the UN fact-finding mission charged with investigating allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the three week Gaza War of last winter. Goldstone explains that his reluctance was due to the issue being “deeply charged and politically loaded,” and was overcome because he and his fellow commissioners were “professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation,” adding that “above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war,” as well as the duty to protect civilians to the extent possible in combat zones. The four-person fact-finding mission was composed of widely respected and highly qualified individuals, including the distinguished international law scholar, Christine Chinkin, a professor at the London School of Economics. Undoubtedly adding complexity to Goldstone’s decision is the fact that he is Jewish, with deep emotional and family ties to Israel and Zionism, bonds solidified by his long association with several organizations active in Israel.

Despite the impeccable credentials of the commission members, and the worldwide reputation of Richard Goldstone as a person of integrity and political balance, Israel refused cooperation from the outset. It did not even allow the UN undertaking to enter Israel or the Palestinian Territories, forcing reliance on the Egyptian government to facilitate entry at Rafah to Gaza. As Uri Avnery observes, however much Israel may attack the commission report as one-sided and unfair, the only plausible explanation of its refusal to cooperate with fact-finding and taking the opportunity to tell its side of the story was that it had nothing to tell that could hope to overcome the overwhelming evidence of the Israeli failure to carry out its attacks on Gaza last winter in accordance with the international law of war. No credible international commission could reach any set of conclusions other than those reached by the Goldstone Report on the central allegations.

In substantive respects the Goldstone Report adds nothing new. Its main contribution is to confirm widely reported and analyzed Israeli military practices during the Gaza War. There had been several reliable reports already issued, condemning Israel’s tactics as violations of the laws of war and international humanitarian law, including by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a variety of respected Israeli human rights groups. Journalists and senior United Nations civil servants had reached similar conclusions. Perhaps, most damning of all the material available before the Goldstone Report was the publication of a document entitled “Breaking the Silence,” containing commentaries by thirty members of the Israel Defense Forces who had taken part in Operation Cast Lead (the Israeli official name for the Gaza War). These soldiers spoke movingly about the loose rules of engagement issued by their commanders that explains why so little care was taken to avoid civilian casualties. The sense emerges from what these IDF soldiers who were in no sense critical of Israel or even of the Gaza War as such, that Israeli policy emerged out of a combination of efforts ‘to teach the people of Gaza a lesson for their support of Hamas’ and to keep IDF casualties as close to zero as possible even if meant massive death and destruction for innocent Palestinians.

Given this background of a prior international consensus on the unlawfulness of Operation Cast Lead, we must first wonder why this massive report of 575 pages has been greeted with such alarm by Israel and given so much attention in the world media. It added little to what was previously known. Arguably, it was more sensitive to Israel’s contentions that Hamas was guilty of war crimes by firing rockets into its territory than earlier reports had been. And in many ways the Goldstone Report endorses the misleading main line of the Israeli narrative by assuming that Israel was acting in self-defense against a terrorist adversary. The report focuses its criticism on Israel’s excessive and indiscriminate uses of force. It does this by examining the evidence surrounding a series of incidents involving attacks on civilians and non-military targets. The report also does draw attention to the unlawful blockade that has restricted the flow of food, fuel, and medical supplies to subsistence levels in Gaza before, during, and since Operation Cast Lead. Such a blockade is a flagrant instance of collective punishment, explicitly prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention setting forth the legal duties of an occupying power.

All along Israel had rejected international criticism of its conduct of military operations in the Gaza War, claiming that the IDF was the most moral fighting force on the face of the earth. The IDF conducted some nominal investigations of alleged unlawful behavior that consistently vindicated the military tactics relied upon and steadfastly promised to protect any Israeli military officer or political leader internationally accused of war crimes. In view of this extensive background of confirmed allegation and angry Israeli rejection, why has the Goldstone Report been treated in Tel Aviv as a bombshell that is deeply threatening to Israel’s stature as a sovereign state? Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, calling the report “a mockery of history” that “fails to distinguish the aggressor and a state exercising the right of self-defense,” insisting that it “legitimizes terrorist activity, the pursuit of murder and death.” More commonly Israel’s zealous defenders condemned the report as one-sided, biased, reaching foregone conclusions, and emanating from the supposedly bastion of anti-Israeli attitudes at the UN’s Human Rights Council. This line of response to any criticism of Israel’s behavior in occupied Palestine, especially if it comes from the UN or human rights NGOs is to cry “foul play!” and avoid any real look at the substance of the charges. It is an example of what I call ‘the politics of deflection,’ attempting to shift the attention of an audience away from the message to the messenger. The more damning the criticism, the more ferocious the response. From this perspective, the Goldstone Report obviously hit the bullsye!

Considered more carefully, there are some good reasons for Israel’s panicked reaction to this damning report. First, it does come with the backing of an eminent international personality who cannot credibly be accused of anti-Israel bias, making it harder to deflect attention from the findings no matter how loud the screaming of ‘foul play.’ Any fair reading of the report would show that it was balanced, was eminently mindful of Israel’s arguments relating to security, and indeed gave Israel the benefit of the doubt on some key issues. Secondly, the unsurprising findings are coupled with strong recommendations that do go well beyond previous reports. Two are likely causing the Israeli leadership great worry: the report recommends strongly that if Israel and Hamas do not themselves within six months engage in an investigation and followup action meeting international standards of objectivity with respect to these violations of the law of war, then the Security Council should be brought into the picture, being encouraged to consider referring the whole issue of Israeli and Hamas accountability to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Even if Israel is spared this indignity by the diplomatic muscle of the United States, and possibly some European governments, the negative public relations implications of a failure to abide by this report could be severe.

Thirdly, whatever happens in the UN System, and at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the weight of the report will be felt by world public opinion. Ever since the Gaza War the solidity of Jewish support for Israel has been fraying at the edges, and this will likely now fray much further. More globally, a very robust boycott and divestment movement was gaining momentum ever since the Gaza War, and the Goldstone Report can only lend added support to such initiatives. There is a growing sense around the world that the only chance for the Palestinians to achieve some kind of just peace depends on the outcome over the symbols of legitimacy, what I have called the Legitimacy War. Increasingly, the Palestinians have been winning this second non-military war. Such a war fought on a global political battlefield is what eventually and unexpectedly undermined the apartheid regime in South Africa, and has become much more threatening to the Israeli sense of security than has armed Palestinian resistance.

A fourth reason for Israeli worry stemming from the report, is the green light given to national courts throughout the world to enforce international criminal law against Israelis suspects should they travel abroad and be detained for prosecution or extradition in some third country. Such individuals could be charged with war crimes arising from their involvement in the Gaza War. The report in this way encourages somewhat controversial reliance on what is known among lawyers as ‘universal jurisdiction,’ that is, the authority of courts in any country to detain for extradition or to prosecute individuals for violations of international criminal law regardless of where the alleged offenses took place. Reaction in the Israeli media reveals that Israeli citizens are already anxious about being apprehended during foreign travel. As one law commentator put it in the Israeli press, “From now on, not only soldiers should be careful when they travel abroad, but also ministers and legal advisers.” It is well to recall that Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions calls on states throughout the world “to respect and ensure respect” for international humanitarian law “in all circumstances.” Remembering the efforts in 1998 of several European courts to prosecute Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed while he was head of state in Chile, is a reminder that national courts can be used to prosecute political and military leaders for crimes committed elsewhere than in the territory of the prosecuting state.

Of course, Israel will fight back. It has already launched a media and diplomatic blitz designed to portray the report as so one-sided as to be unworthy of serious attention. The United States Government has already disappointingly appeared to endorse this view, and repudiate the central recommendation in the Goldstone Report that the Security Council be assigned the task of implementing its findings. The American Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, evidently told a closed session of the Security Council on September 16, just a day after the report was issued, that “[w]e have serious concerns about many recommendations in the report.” Elaborating on this, Ambassador Rice indicated that the UN Human Rights Council, which has no implementing authority, is the only proper venue for any action to be taken on the basis of the report. The initial struggle will likely be whether to follow the recommendation of the report to have the Security Council refer the issues of accountability to the International Criminal Court, which could be blocked by a veto from the United States or other permanent members.

There are reasons to applaud the forthrightness and comprehensiveness of the report, its care, and scrupulous willingness to conclude that both Israel and Hamas seem responsible for behavior that appears to constitute war crimes, if not crimes against humanity. Although Israel has succeeded in having the issue of one-sidedness focus on fairness to Israel, there are also some reasons to insist that the report falls short of Palestinian hopes. For one thing, the report takes for granted, the dubious proposition that Israel was entitled to act against Gaza in self-defense, thereby excluding inquiry into whether crimes against the peace in the form of aggression had taken place by the launching of the attack. In this respect, the report takes no notice of the temporary ceasefire that had cut the rocket fire directed at Israel practically to zero in the months preceding the attacks, nor of Hamas’ repeated efforts to extend the ceasefire indefinitely provided Israel lifted its unlawful blockade of Gaza. Further it was Israel that had seemed to provoke the breakdown of the ceasefire when it launched a lethal attack on Hamas militants in Gaza on November 4, 2008. Israel disregarded this seemingly available diplomatic alternative to war to achieve security on its borders. Recourse to war, even if the facts justify self-defense, is according to international law, a last resort. By ignoring Israel’s initiation of a one-sided war the Goldstone Report accepts the dubious central premise of Operation Cast Lead, and avoids making a finding of aggression.

Also, disappointing was the failure of the report to comment upon the Israeli denial of a refugee option to the civilian population trapped in the tiny, crowded combat zone that constitutes the Gaza Strip. Israel closed all crossings during the period of the Gaza War, allowing only Gaza residents with foreign passports to leave. It is rare in modern warfare that civilians are not given the option to become refugees. Although there is no specific provision of the laws of war requiring a state at war to allow civilians to leave the combat zone, it seems like an elementary humanitarian requirement, and should at least have been mentioned either as part of customary international law or as a gap in the law that should be filled. The importance of this issue is reinforced by many accounts of the widespread post- traumatic stress experienced by the civilians in Gaza, especially children that comprise 53% of the population. One might also notice that the report accords considerable attention to Gilad Shalit, the one IDF prisoner held by Hamas in Gaza, recommending his release on humanitarian grounds, while making no comparable suggestion to Israel although it is holding thousands of Palestinians under conditions of harsh detention.

In the end, the Goldstone Report is unlikely to break the inter-governmental refusal to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza or to induce the United Nations to challenge Israeli impunity in any meaningful way. Depending on backroom diplomacy, the United States may or may not be able to avoid playing a public role of shielding Israel from accountability for its behavior during the Gaza War or its continuing refusal to abide by international humanitarian law by lifting the blockade that continues to impinge daily upon the health of the entire population of Gaza.

Despite these limitations, the report is an historic contribution to the Palestinian struggle for justice, an impeccable documentation of a crucial chapter in their victimization under occupation. Its impact will be felt most impressively on the growing civil society movement throughout the world to impose cultural, sporting, and academic boycotts, as well as to discourage investment, trade, and tourism with Israel. It may yet be the case that as in the anti-apartheid struggle the shift in the relation of forces in the Palestinian favor will occur not through diplomacy or as a result of armed resistance, but on the symbolic battlefield of legitimacy that has become global in scope, what might be described as the new political relevance of moral and legal globalization.

*Prof. Richard Falk – is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, writer (the author or co-author of 20 books),[1] speaker, activist on world affairs, and an appointee to two United Nations positions on the Palestinian territories.

VIDEO: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Factory

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Pakistan’s ISI: The Invisible Government

SEAN P. WINCHELL

Pakistan’s ISI The Invisible Government

Since partition, no political force within Pakistan has driven the nation’s
domestic and international political agenda as has its army, and more
specifically, one of its intelligence units, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
agency. Comprised of the three branches of Pakistan’s military, the Army,
Navy, and Air Force, the ISI, in its time has been linked to political
assassinations, the smuggling of heroin and opium, and the smuggling of
materials and components for nuclear weapons. From headquarters on
Khayban-e Suharwady Street in Islamabad, the ISI has worked to suppress
political opposition to the military regimes that have dotted Pakistan’s
political landscape since 1947.
It has also embraced radical Islamic extremism and worked with the
United States in aiding the Afghan mujahideen in expelling the Soviets
from Afghanistan. At the same time, it has been charged with using
Islamic militants in a campaign of terror to wrench control of the
provinces of Jammu and Kashmir from the Indians. Now, in light of the
events of 11 September 2001, ISI’s exploits over the course of the last fifty
years have entered into the Western Hemisphere’s mainstream press as the
United States is compelled to work with the organization in pursuing its
war on terror.1
BACKGROUND
In 1948, following Pakistan’s loss of the first Indo-Pakistani War, and the
abysmal intelligence performance of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the
Intelligence Bureau, the then–Deputy Army Chief of Staff General
R. Cawthorne2 formed the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.3
Sean P. Winchell teaches in the Grandview, Missouri, School District. He
earned honors degrees in Political Science and History at the State
University of New York, Stony Brook.
International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 16: 374–388, 2003
Copyright # 2003 Taylor & Francis Inc.
ISSN: 0885-0607 print/1521-0561 online
DOI: 10.1080/08850600390201477
374 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE
Created from the three branches of Pakistan’s military, and modeled after
Iran’s intelligence service, the SAVAK, the ISI coordinates with the Army,
Navy, and Air Force intelligence units of Pakistan’s military in the
collection, analysis, and dissemination of military and nonmilitary
intelligence, focusing mainly on India. After receiving its training from the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the French intelligence service, the
SDECE4, the ISI originally had no active role in conducting domestic
intelligence collection activities, except in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir
(POK) and Pakistan’s Northern Areas (NA) of Gilgit and Baltistan. The
ISI’s role in Pakistani politics changed in 1958, when then–Army Chief of
Staff General Ayub Khan seized power in a coup, adding a new political
dimension to the ISI’s responsibilities.5
THE ISI UNDER AYUB KHAN
Prior to the 1958 coup and the implementation of martial law, the ISI,
which is part of Pakistan’s Ministry of Defense, reported directly to the
Army Chief of Staff. After the implementation of martial law, the ISI
began to report to then-President Ayub Khan and the martial law
administrator. In addition, under General Khan, the ISI became
responsible for monitoring Pakistani politicians, especially those in what
was then Eastern Pakistan. Khan expanded the ISI’s role to the
protection of Pakistan’s interests, which included the creation of a
covert action division within the ISI to assist Islamic militants in
Northeast India, as well as to assist the Sikh Home Rule Movement
in the 1960s.6
Under General Khan, the ISI was given the mission of conducting ‘‘the
collection of foreign and domestic intelligence, coordination of intelligence
functions of the three military services; surveillance over its cadre,
foreigners, the media, politically active segments of Pakistani society,
diplomats serving outside of the country; the interception and monitoring
of communications; and the conduct of covert operations.’’7
Through the 1960s, the ISI and other Pakistani intelligence services were
largely concerned with conducting domestic counterintelligence operations.
At the behest of Ayub Kahn, the ISI warned social organizations with
potential political influence, such as student groups, trade organizations,
and unions not to become involved in the political arena, and kept these
groups under tight surveillance. In addition, the ISI instructed Islamic
clerics to leave any political rhetoric out of their exhortations.8
General Khan further expanded the ISI’s powers when he began to suspect
the loyalty of Bengali officers in the Intelligence Bureau’s Dakha Branch in
East Pakistan. Khan ordered the ISI to conduct domestic intelligence
operations in the region, and to monitor East Pakistani politicians.9
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During the 1964 presidential elections the ISI became particularly active.
The ISI monitored candidates running for office, especially in what was
then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), keeping Bengali politicians in
Dakha, Pakistan’s legislative capital,10 under close surveillance. The ISI
attempted to keep Khan apprised of the political mood in East Pakistan,
which the ISI believed had swung in favor of President Khan. But the ISI
had miscalculated the popularity of Khan’s opponent, Fatima Jinnah.11
The following year, the ISI’s intelligence collection and analysis during the
Indo-Pakistani War, which took place over Kashmir, was a fiasco. The ISI,
under Director-General Brigadier Riaz Hussain,12 was then vigorously
conducting domestic intelligence collection operations inside Kashmir, and
had numerous assets inside the Indian-controlled sector. Once the conflict
started, all its assets in the region went underground, blinding the ISI to
what was occurring, both militarily and politically. This included losing
track of a division of Indian tanks. Part of the problem that faced the ISI
was that prior to the conflict, it had devoted itself to domestic intelligence
operations, including keeping track of the regime’s various political
opponents. The ISI had also been conducting intelligence operations
against India. As a result, the ISI was at a complete loss in addressing the
army’s (and the government’s) needs for timely military intelligence.
Through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, the ISI worked in tandem with
the CIA, under the Richard Nixon administration, to provide aid and
support to the Khalistan movement in Punjab.13 In addition, the CIA and
the ISI collaborated to discredit then–Indian Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi’s granting of naval facilities to the Soviet Union at Vizag and on
the Andaman and Nicobar islands. The program came to an end with
Gandhi’s death in 1984.14
YAHYA KHAN AND THE GROWTH OF ISI
Under President Yahya Khan, the ISI once again escalated its domestic
intelligence collection activities, especially in East Pakistan. It sought to
guarantee that no East Pakistani candidate would win the presidential
election. But, the operation was a complete failure. Throughout the
1960s, the Awami League, led by Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, gained in popularity. In 1970, the Awami League won an
overwhelming majority of seats to the National Assembly in the general
election and, under Parliamentary law, had the right to form a
government with Rahman as the newly elected Prime Minister. President
Khan, who did not want to grant East Pakistan greater political
autonomy, then delayed the commencement of the National Assembly,
which in turn provoked a civil war.15
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For the next two years, as East and West Pakistan fought a bloody civil
war, the ISI attempted to crush the Bengali resistance movement in East
Pakistan. The ISI’s efforts included the assassination of several prominent
Bengali politicians. The conflict was finally brought to an end in late 1971
when the Indian military interceded on behalf of the East Pakistani
government, leading to the defeat of Pakistan proper on 16 December
1971, and the formation of Bangladesh, or the Bengali state.16
Following Pakistan’s defeat and the independence of Bangladesh, Yahya
Khan was forced to step down and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was elected
President of Pakistan.
THE ISI IN A DEMOCRACY
President Bhutto tried to bring the ISI under control by appointing
Lieutenant General Gulam Gilani Khan as its director. At Khan’s behest,
Bhutto promoted Lieutenant General Zia ul-Haq to the position of Army
Chief of Staff.
Despite being in a democracy, the ISI had become so entrenched in
Pakistani society by the time that President Bhutto came to power that it
was readily adopted by his regime. In 1972, Bhutto, faced with a revolt by
Baluchistani nationals in Baluchistan, and suspecting the loyalty of officers
in the Quetta branch of the Intelligence Bureau, once again increased the
ISI’s mandate, making it responsible for conducting intelligence operations
in the region.17
In March 1977, Pakistan held its first general elections, with Bhutto’s
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) winning a substantial victory. His opponents
decried the election results as fraudulent. These accusations led to violent
protests and strikes. On 5 July 1977, General Zia ul-Haq, with the aid of
the ISI, seized power in a coup. Zia then ordered Bhutto’s arrest and had
him tried for the 1974 murder of a political opponent. Convicted of the
murder, Bhutto, on 4 April 1979, amid worldwide protests, was executed.
On 17 September 1978, amidst the negative fanfare, Zia declared himself
President and ruled under martial law until 30 December 1985, when he
restored some of the Pakistani people’s civil rights.
ZIA UL-HAQ AND THE SOVIET INVASION OF AFGHANISTAN
The son of an Islamic cleric, Zia was a fundamentalist who believed that the
only way Pakistan could become a major regional power was to turn it into
an Islamic state. Consequently, he made a deliberate attempt to Islamize the
Pakistani military. During this period, officers were actively encouraged to
become Islamic fundamentalists, and only those officers who were
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practicing Muslims received promotion. Experts now believe that
approximately thirty percent of the country’s army officers are Islamic
fundamentalists.18
The ISI’s powers were expanded to collect domestic intelligence on
political and religious organizations that were opposed to Zia’s regime. In
addition, the ISI began to smuggle arms and aid to Sikh extremists in the
Indian province of Punjab.19
In 1974, India conducted its first nuclear test, Pokharan I. In tandem with
Pakistan’s third defeat at the hands of India, the Bhutto government had
established a division within the ISI to conduct the ‘‘clandestine
procurement’’ of nuclear materials and missile technology from China and
North Korea. In order to hide the establishment of the nuclear weapons
program, the division received funding from both Saudi Arabia and Libya.
In addition, proceeds from heroin and opium smuggling were deferred to
the program. Finally, the ISI also began smuggling nuclear technology out
of Europe, all of which the United States knew, but did nothing about.20
The Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan compelled the CIA to
increase its ties with the ISI. The Agency had previously been working
with the ISI to discredit Indira Gandhi and to aid the Sikh Home Rule
Movement. Now, the CIA began collaborating with the ISI in training the
Afghan mujahideen to combat the Soviets, also providing them with
logistical support and financial and military aid.21
CIA intelligence officers were sent to Pakistan to liaise with the ISI, and
members of the ISI’s covert action division received training in the United
States. The CIA, through the ISI, ultimately channeled some three billion
dollars worth of arms to the Afghan mujahideen.22
But the CIA did not know at the time that the ISI was not using all of the
arms or money as Washington had intended. The ISI was appropriating arms
destined for the mujahideen and selling them to the Iranians and pocketing
the proceeds. When the Ronald Reagan administration learned of the ISI’s
activities, it sent a fact-finding mission to Pakistan to investigate. But by
then the ISI had already altered its records of the transactions and
destroyed any evidence that might show its complicity. The ISI was also
using the CIA-provided funds to enroll graduates from Pakistani
madrasas23 to fight in the war against the Soviets, and in the process
laying the ground for the rise of the Taliban.24
Between 1983 and 1997, the ISI trained approximately 83,000 Afghan
mujahideen. For its efforts Pakistan paid a price, as Soviet forces located
inside Afghanistan began bombing Pakistani cities located along the
Afghanistan–Pakistan border.25
In addition to supporting Afghan mujahideen fighters, the ISI began to
assist Kashmiri separatists in their efforts to make Kashmir part of
Pakistan. In 1988, as part of that support, then–President Zia created
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Operation Tupac.26 The idea behind the project was to avenge Pakistan’s
defeat in the 1971 war with India and, in the process, attempt to balkanize
it. Operation Tupac had three operational objectives: (1) the disintegration
of India; (2) the utilization of spy networks to conduct acts of sabotage;
and (3) the ISI was to ‘‘exploit porous borders with Nepal and Bangladesh
to establish bases and conduct operations’’ [inside India].27
In addition, the CIA gave a wink and a nod to the production of opium
and heroin in northern Afghanistan under the ISI’s auspices. The growth
and sale of the substances is important for three reasons: (1) The drugs
and their subsequent use by many of the Soviet forces stationed in
Afghanistan turned many of the Soviets stationed there into drug addicts,
diminishing both their will and their ability to fight; (2) the proceeds from
the sale of the heroin in Europe and the United States afforded the ISI the
opportunity to continue to finance its proxy war against the Soviets; and
(3) the proceeds from the drugs also helped to support Pakistan’s
burgeoning nuclear weapons program. It, too, was a program the United
States knew of, but did nothing about. Following the expulsion of the
Soviets from Afghanistan, heroin smugglers in Pakistan used their
experience from Afghanistan to increase their smuggling to the West.28
Several notable terrorists rose out of the ashes of the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan and the CIA–ISI’s joint efforts to oust them. Included among
them are Ramzi Yousef, the individual responsible for the February 1993
bombing of New York City’s World Trade Center; Mir Aimal Kansi, who
in 1993 murdered two CIA employees outside of CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia; and Osama bin-Laden, as well as a whole host of
Islamic militants in the Philippines and narcotics smugglers in Pakistan.29
THE KASHMIR ISSUE
Since partition in 1947, Pakistan has tried in vain to wrest control of Muslimdominated
Jammu and Kashmir from India. For most of this period, the ISI
has used Islamic militants living in Kashmir to foment discord. Since
partition the ISI has also served as the ‘‘principal liaison’’ with militant
Islamic organizations, many of which the United States now considers
terrorist organizations. Included are the Allah Tigers, al-Umar
Mujahideen, Harkat ul-Ansar, Hizb-ul-Islam, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Jamaat
Hurriyat Conference, and the Muslim mujahideen.30
Joint Intelligence North (JIN), the ISI section that supervises Islamic
militants in Jammu and Kashmir, has been largely responsible for
providing financial aid, military assistance, and logistical assistance to
militants in the region.31
The modern plan to drive India out of Jammu and Kashmir was
formulated in 1984 by then ISI Director-General Hamid Gul. The ISI
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originally implemented its plan via propaganda, then steadily increased
pressure in the 1990s as ISI-backed Islamic militants began to launch
strikes and street rallies. The militants then conducted terrorist attacks
against Indian interests in Kashmir.32
Young Islamic militants were trained in Jammu and Kashmir, and the ISI
is believed to have funded the campaigns of Kashmiri politicians or bribed
them outright, to gain their support.33
Starting in 1989, following the withdrawal of Soviet forces and the
election of Benazir Bhutto34 to the presidency, the ISI began supporting
Islamic separatist organizations, such as the Jamaat E-Islami as part of
a ‘‘process of Islamization and revolt.’’35 Consequently, the ISI started
using monies garnered from its Afghani drug smuggling operation to
finance ISI-backed terrorist incursions into the Indian provinces of
Kashmir and Punjab.36
The ISI is believed to spend nearly Rs 100 Crores 37 every year to run its
proxy war in Kashmir. Islamic militants inside Jammu and Kashmir receive
arms and ammunition from the ISI. It also directs indoctrination programs
and runs training camps, which in turn produce seasoned and motivated
Islamic militants experienced in the use of advanced weapons systems and
explosives.38
According to the Indian military, prior to 11 September 2001, the ISI
had approximately thirty camps running in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir
and Pakistan proper. It was assisted in running these camps by the
Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA),39 which is known for having close ties with
Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network. The HUA’s two militias,
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-ul-Jihad, provide food, shelter,
and clothing for trainees at these camps. In addition, the ISI has
contracted militants from Afghanistan, Bahrain, Chechnya, Iran,
Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey, and Yemen to fight in
Kashmir.40
Finally, the ISI is known to have supplied Islamic militants in Kashmir
with assault rifles and more advanced weapons systems, which included the
Russian Snayperskaya Vinyovka Dragunov (SVD) sniper rifle, surface to
air missile systems (SAMs), and plastic explosives.41
The ISI is also believed to be cooperating with Bangladesh’s intelligence
service in contacting Bangladeshi insurgents in India’s northeastern region
and the province of Assam.42
EFFORTS TO BRING THE ISI UNDER CONTROL
The ISI is believed to have assassinated Shah Nawaz Bhutto, the brother of
former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto,43 in 1985 by poisoning him on the
French Riviera. The ISI’s intention was to intimidate Bhutto into not
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returning to Pakistan to push for democratic elections. She refused to be
intimidated, and returned home after General Zia was killed in a plane
crash. In 1988, she won the Prime Minister’s position.44
By that time, it had become readily apparent to many in Pakistan that
the ISI was out of control. That belief was confirmed in 1990 when a
commission Bhutto had appointed to look into ISI’s activities concluded
that the organization ‘‘had the makings of a de facto government.’’
Consequently, Bhutto tried to rein in its power. Prior to the release of
the report, she had already taken steps to curb ISI’s role. Her first step
was to halt the practice of appointing a Lieutenant General
recommended by the Army Chief of Staff as the Director-General.
Instead, in 1989 she renamed Major General Shamsur Rahman Kallue
to the post. Next, she borrowed a page from her father, and tried to
bring the ISI under her control by promoting generals loyal to her into
Pakistan’s two other intelligence services, the Federal Investigation
Agency (FIA), which launched attacks against ISI-backed Islamic
extremists, and to the Intelligence Bureau (IB). Unfortunately for
Bhutto, these steps drew the ire of Army Chief of Staff General Aslam
Beg. Along with her maladroit efforts at influencing other key Army
appointments, Bhutto quickly found herself at loggerheads with General
Beg, which ultimately led to her dismissal by Pakistan’s President in
August 1990.45
Under the leadership of Director-General Hameed Gul, the ISI’s role in
Pakistani politics grew again. ISI’s activities are thought to have included
rigging the 1990 elections, which brought Nawaz Sharif to his first term as
Prime Minister.46
Like his predecessor, Sharif (1990–1993) also tried to bring the ISI under
control. Following his election, he appointed Lieutenant General Javed Nasir
as Director-General, even though Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General
Asif Nawaz Janjua had not recommended him. Unfortunately for Sharif,
Nasir’s appointment seems to have had little influence on the ISI’s day to
day operations.47
During her second term as Prime Minister, Bhutto once again tried to
regulate the ISI’s power by transferring its responsibility for clandestine
operations inside Afghanistan to the Ministry of the Interior. Sections
of the ISI close to then-Pakistani President Farooq Leghari had
Bhutto’s surviving brother, Murtaza Bhutto, murdered outside of his
house in Karachi in September 1996. The ISI then undertook a
propaganda campaign within the Pakistani media blaming Prime
Minister Bhutto and her husband for Murtaza’s murder. The cloud of
suspicion surrounding Bhutto afforded President Leghari the impetus
to dismiss her in November, once again bringing Nawaz Sharif to
power.48
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THE TALIBAN
Despite trying to curb the ISI’s power, Benazir Bhutto had an onerous
legacy. Pakistan has long used the ISI’s active role in Afghanistan as a
means of controlling the Afghan mujahideen and shaping its own
regional foreign policy objectives. In 1989, following the withdrawal of
Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the ISI chose to increase Pakistan’s
strategic strength in the region by establishing an ‘‘Islamic Caliphate’’ in
Afghanistan.49
In 1994, Bhutto, at the behest of an American oil firm50 and several family
friends in Pakistan’s army, threw her support behind a group of Islamic
Afghan students, known as the Taliban, then located in the Pakistani city
of Kandahar. Absent of any ISI influence, the Taliban at first proved to be
particularly successful. Members of warring factions from across
Afghanistan left their own camps to rally under the Taliban’s flag. The
ISI, taking notice of the Taliban’s gains, secured financial backing from
Bhutto’s government and began to recruit students from madrasas all over
Pakistan in an effort to support the fledgling Taliban, then led by Mullah
Muhammad Omar.51
Using resources and contacts left over from the resistance to Soviet
occupation, and with ISI support and training, the Taliban bribed local
tribal warlords and conducted guerilla tactics in their efforts to gain power
in Afghanistan. In 1996, after two years of fighting, the ISI-backed Taliban
managed to defeat most of the warring factions and gained control of
approximately ninety-five percent of the country. Since then, the ISI has
been accused of actively supporting both the Taliban and bin Laden’s
terrorist organization, al-Qaeda.52
THE RISE OF PERVEZ MUSHARRAF
During his second term as Prime Minister (1997–1999), Nawaz Sharif again
tried to curb the ISI’s power, appointing Lieutenant General Ziauddin as
Director-General even though the Army Chief of Staff, General Pervez
Musharraf, had objected to his appointment. In response, Musharraf
named Lieutenant General Muhammad Aziz, then ISI’s Deputy Director-
General, as Director-General of Military Intelligence (DGMI). Musharraf
then placed Joint Intelligence North (JIN), the ISI division responsible for
conducting clandestine intelligence activities, under Aziz’s control.
Relations between Sharif and Musharraf deteriorated even further in 1999,
when Sharif dispatched Ziauddin to meet with officials in the Bill Clinton
administration in Washington, D.C., where they discussed Sharif’s
concerns over Musharraf’s continued loyalty. Returning to Pakistan,
Ziauddin was then ordered by Sharif to travel to Kandahar to pressure
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Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar to stop supporting Islamic
fundamentalists in Pakistan and to work with Washington in extraditing
bin Laden to the United States. Upon learning of Ziauddin’s trip,
Musharraf dispatched Aziz to Kandahar, where he instructed Mullah
Omar that he was to disregard Ziauddin and instead follow his
instructions, which had Musharraf’s backing.53
By now, Sharif was widely viewed by many members of the public and the
Army, especially Musharraf, as becoming increasingly dictatorial. Musharraf
argued that Sharif was taking too many liberties in his running of the army.
On 19 October 1999, in a popularly backed coup, General Musharraf
overthrew Sharif and took control of the government, declaring himself
Chief Executive.54 Turning to the ISI, now–President Musharraf dismissed
ISI Director-General Ziauddin, and replaced him with Lt.-General Ahmed
Mahmud, an Islamic conservative.55
POST^SEPTEMBER 11
Politicians and political pundits in the United States have repeatedly asserted
that everything changed on 11 September 2001. Those words could not have
been truer for the ISI’s relationship with the United States and Afghanistan.
Prior to 11 September, neither the ISI nor the Pakistani government had any
desire to hand Osama bin Laden over to the United States. In fact, it is
believed that just prior to 11 September, the ISI had dispatched additional
operatives to Afghanistan to aid the Taliban.56
On 11 August, just a month before the terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, General Musharraf was quoted in an
interview by the Russian newspaper Noviye Izvestia as saying ‘‘the
Taliban . . . control about 95% of the territory [Afghanistan] and cannot be
wished away. . . .We feel that the international community should engage
the Taliban rather than isolating them and ostracizing them.’’57
On 11 September, the ISI’s GeneralMahmud was inWashington at the time
of the attacks, and pledged to provide the United States with the intelligence it
needed to pursue its war on terror.58 Despite Mahmud’s promises, at least five
ISI intelligence officers are known to have assisted the Taliban in preparing
Afghan defenses against an imminent American attack.59
But President Musharraf subsequently forced the ISI to do an about-face
regarding its role in Afghanistan. In October, Musharraf sent Mahmud to
Kandahar in Afghanistan as part of a diplomatic mission to tell Mullah
Muhammad Omar to hand bin Laden over to the United States. Instead,
Mahmud did the exact opposite, advising Mullah Omar not to hand bin
Laden over. When Musharraf, who has long had strong ties to the ISI,
learned of Mahmud’s actions, he decided to bring the agency under his
control by removing its Director-General, replacing him with Lieutenant-
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General Ehsan ul-Haq, who is believed to share Musharraf’s pro-Western
views. Ehsan, considered a moderate and a friend of Musharraf, had
previously served as the head of military intelligence, and is widely
respected within Pakistan’s military and by senior American intelligence
officials.60
THE ISI’S CONTINUED ROLE IN KASHMIR
While relations between the United States and Pakistan have warmed
considerably with the ISI’s removal from Afghanistan, relations between
India and Pakistan continue to remain tense. India holds Musharraf
responsible for the 1999 conflict in the Kashmiri province of Kargil,
known as the Kargil War.61
Relations between India and Pakistan became more complicated when, on
13 December 2001, Kashmiri separatists staged an attack on India’s
Parliament in Delhi. The Indian government under Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayi blamed ISI-backed Islamic militants for the incident and
began to mount troops on the POK border. In response, Musharraf,
fearing an all-out war with India, is believed to have instructed the ISI to
make sure that Islamic militants not carry out any more attacks.62
The following month, in January 2002, President Musharraf pledged that
his country would contribute to the War on Terror, and began to disband the
ISI’s Afghanistan and Kashmir departments. ISI officials have reported that
as many as forty percent of those working for the ISI could be reassigned,
thereby reducing the ISI staff from an estimated 10,000 to 6,000. By
February 2002 intelligence officers within the Afghanistan and Kashmir
divisions had already been transferred, with more transfers expected.63
While the ISI’s Afghanistan division is believed to have been closed down
entirely, the Kashmir section continues to be more of a challenge since it
serves as one of Pakistan’s main sources of information on Indian
intelligence activities in the region. The ISI also has a long history of
providing logistical and military support to Islamic Kashmiri separatists.64
The major sticking point in the ISI’s restructuring is the agency’s
reluctance to shut down the Kashmir division for two primary reasons: (1)
the ISI and the Pakistani government do not trust the Indian government
and want to continue to conduct intelligence operations in the region; and
(2) the ISI is already troubled by the loss of its Afghanistan division.
President Musharraf may not want to further antagonize the agency by
completely shutting down its Kashmir division.65
Under pressure from the George W. Bush administration in Washington,
the ISI has also begun to sever its ties with Islamic extremists in the region,
most notably with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Muhammad
groups.66, 67
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In addition, the ISI’s domestic political intelligence operations are being
transferred to Pakistan’s civilian intelligence service, the Intelligence
Bureau.68
President Musharraf, as a former Army Chief of Staff, may better be able
to bring the ISI, which is part of Pakistan’s military structure, under control.
According to Gary Samore of the International Institute for Strategic Studies
in London, ‘‘under civilian rule the ISI had a fair amount of
independence . . . under Musharraf they are answerable.’’69
Following the 11 September attacks and the initiation of President Bush’s
response of a ‘‘war on terror,’’ the United States began to rely heavily on
intelligence provided by the ISI. In return for American electronic
intelligence (ELINT) and financial remuneration, the ISI has provided the
United States with human intelligence (HUMINT) of extreme importance
because the ISI is believed to possess vast stores of intelligence on bin
Laden, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. In addition, the ISI has detained
suspected al-Qaeda operatives as they attempt to cross into Pakistan, and
have handed many over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). A
most notable capture of a top-level al-Qaeda operative came in April 2002,
when the ISI informed the FBI of the whereabouts of Abu Zubaydah, al-
Qaeda’s operations chief. This information allowed the FBI to place a
tracking device on Zubaydah’s car, which eventually led to his arrest by
federal agents and deportation to the prison established for the purpose at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.70
Despite their cooperation with the U.S. effort, both Musharraf and the ISI
have their detractors. Afghanistan’s Interior Minister, Younis Qanooni, has
accused the ISI of helping bin Laden flee Afghanistan.71 Pakistan, which
views Afghanistan’s new government as being pro-Indian, has vehemently
denied the accusation.72
A FIRM HAND
Until quite recently the ISI has been a ‘‘kingdom within a kingdom,’’
answerable to neither the army nor Pakistan’s President. Its leaders have
used their power to constrain political opponents at home, while
conducting various intelligence operations abroad.
With the rise of President Musharraf, and Pakistan’s strengthened
relationship with the United States, enough pressure may now exist to afford
Musharraf the opportunity to bring the ISI firmly under government control.
REFERENCES
1 Rahul Bedl, ‘‘Vital Intelligence on the Taliban May Rest with Its Prime Sponsor—
Pakistan’s ISI,’’ Jane’s.com, 3 May 2002. Available on the World Wide
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Web: (http://www.janes.com/security/international-security/news/misc/
janes011001-1-nshtml). Intelligence Resource Program, ‘‘Directorate for
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),’’ Federation of American Scientists, 1 May 2002.
Available on the World Wide Web: (http://www.fas.org/irp/world/Pakistan/isi).
2 In 1948, General Cawthorne was a leading member of the British Expeditionary
Force stationed in what was about to become the state of Pakistan.
3 Intelligence Resource Program, op. cit., p. 1.
4 SDECE: Service de Documentation Exte´rieure et de Contreespionage (the Service
of External Documentation and Counterespionage).
5 Rahul Bedl, op. cit., p. 2. Major General Ashok Krishna, AVSM (Ret.), ‘‘The
Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan,’’ IPCS, Article No. 191, 25 May
1999, p. 1; B. Raman, ‘‘Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),’’ South East
Asia Analysis Group, Paper No. 287, 8 January 2001, p. 1.
6 Indranil Banerjie, ‘‘Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence in Afghanistan,’’ SAPRA
India, 20 September 2001, p. 4; Intelligence Resource Program, pp. 1–2;
B. Raman, op. cit., p. 1.
7 Intelligence Resource Program, p. 1.
8 Federal Research Division, U. S. Library of Congress, ‘‘Pakistan: The Ayub
Khan Era,’ ’ 1 May 2002. Available on World Wide Web: (http: //
lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome,html). See section on Pakistan: Chapter 1, The
Ayub Khan Era.
9 B. Raman, op. cit., p. 1.
10 When Pakistan was established, it consisted of two halves: West Pakistan (today’s
Pakistan), and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. When the nation was created,
Pakistan’s political leadership decided that the capital would be in West
Pakistan, while the Legislature would meet in East Pakistan.
11 Altaf Guahar, ‘‘Writer Exposes ISI’s Role in Pakistani Politics,’’ The Nation in
English, 17 August 1997, p. 2; Intelligence Resource Program, p. 2.
12 The Director General of the ISI has always been, with a couple of notable
exceptions, a Lieutenant, or three-star, General. Under the Director General
are three Deputy Directors General (DDGs), one from each of Pakistan’s
military branches: Army, Navy, and Air Force.
13 Following India’s independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, its first Prime Minister,
implemented a foreign policy of nonalignment, which afforded India the
opportunity to actively engage both the United States and the Soviet Union.
As India became more intimately involved with the USSR, U.S. policymakers
sought stronger ties with India’s neighbor, Pakistan.
14 Major General Yashwant Deva, AVSM (Ret.), ‘‘ISI and Its Chicanery in
Exporting Terrorism,’’ Indian Defence Review, 1995, p. 8; Altaf Guahar, op.
cit., p. 1; Intelligence Resource Program, p. 2; B. Raman, op. cit., p. 2.
15 Intelligence Resource Program, p. 2.
16 Indranil Banerjie, op. cit., p. 4.
17 B. Raman, op. cit., p. 1.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE
18 Ron Nordland, ‘‘A Dictator’s Dilemma,’’ Newsweek, 1 October 2001, p. 1.
19 Indranil Banerjie, op. cit., p. 4; Rahul Bedl, op. cit., p. 2.
20 Rahul Bedl, op. cit., p. 3; B. Raman, op. cit., p. 3.
21 Rahul Bedl, op. cit., pp. 1–2; Intelligence Resource Program, p. 3.
22 Yashwant Deva, op. cit., p. 3.
23 In the Islamic faith, madrasas are Muslim seminaries for the study of advanced
Islamic law, also known as Shari’a.
24 Yashwant Deva, op. cit., p. 3; B. Raman, op. cit., p. 2.
25 Intelligence Resource Program, p. 3.
26 Operation Tupac was named after Tupac Amaru, an eighteenth-century Incan
prince who led a rebellion against the Spanish to liberate Uruguay. A leftist
guerrilla group named after him functioned for many years in Peru. See Simon
Strong, Shining Path: Terror and Revolution in Peru (New York: Times Books/
Random House, 1992), especially pp. 114–115.
27 Intelligence Resource Program, p. 3; John Daily Wilson, ‘‘Describes Activities of
ISI in India,’’ The Pioneer (Delhi), 30 June 1999, p. 1.
28 Rahul Bedl, op. cit., p. 3; B. Raman, op. cit., p. 3.
29 Rahul Bedl, ibid.; B. Raman, ibid., p. 2.
30 Douglas Jehl, ‘‘Pakistan Cutting Its Spy Units Ties to Some Militants,’’ The New
York Times, 20 February 2002, p. 1. Tim McGirk, ‘‘Has Pakistan Tamed Its
Spies?,’’ Time, 6 May 2002, p. 34; John Daily Wilson, op. cit., p. 2.
31 John Daily Wilson, op. cit., p. 2.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 General Zia met an untimely end on 19 April 1988 when the Air Force plane in
which he was flying exploded mysteriously in midair. What caused the explosion
has never been explained.
35 Indranil Banerjie, op. cit., p. 8.
36 Ibid.; Intelligence Resource Program, p. 1; Tim McGirk, op. cit., p. 34.
37 This is approximately 20.56 million U.S. dollars per year.
38 Yashwant Deva, op. cit., p. 5; Intelligence Resource Program, p. 2; Ashok
Krishna, op. cit., p. 2.
39 In 1997 the U.S. State Department declared the HUA a terrorist organization and
placed it on America’s terrorist watch list.
40 Ashok Krishna, op. cit., pp. 2–3.
41 John Daily Wilson, op. cit., p. 2.
42 Ashok Krishna, op. cit., p. 3.
43 Benazir Bhutto is the daughter of the slain former Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto.
44 Intelligence Resource Program, p. 3.
45 Indranil Banerjie, op. cit., p. 5;Douglas Jehl, op. cit., p. 1; B.Raman, op. cit., pp. 5–6.
46 Intelligence Resource Program, p. 3.
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47 B. Raman, op. cit., p. 5.
48 Ibid., p. 6.
49 Indranil Banerjie, op. cit., p. 1.
50 Which particular American oil firm is not listed in any of the source material that
I have come across, though several of these documents do stipulate that Prime
Minister Bhutto’s decisions were at the behest of an American oil firm.
51 Indranil Banerjie, op. cit., p. 9; Rahul Bedl, op. cit., p. 2.
52 Indranil Banerjie, ibid.; Rahul Bedl, ibid.; Tim McGirk, op. cit., p. 32.
53 B. Raman, op. cit., p. 7.
54 Sharif was arrested, charged with, and convicted of hijacking and terrorism. The
charges stemmed from an incident in October 1999 when he refused to allow a
plane carrying 198 passengers, one of whom was Musharraf, to land in
Karachi. See Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2002), especially Chapter 2, ‘‘The 1999 Coup,’’ pp. 34–55;
and Mary Anne Weaver, ‘‘Pakistan: In the Eye of Jihad and Afghanistan’’ (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), Chapter 1, ‘‘General on a Tightrope,’’
especially pp. 11–18.
55 Indranil Banerjie, op. cit., p. 7.
56 Rahul Bedl, op. cit., p. 3.
57 Ibid., p. 9.
58 Ibid., p. 1.
59 Tim McGirk, op. cit., p. 35.
60 Rahul Bedl, op. cit., p. 2; David Chazan, ‘‘Profile: Pakistan’s Military Intelligence
Agency,’’ BBC’s News Online, 9 January, 2002, p. 8; Intelligence Resource
Program, p. 4; Douglas Jehl, op. cit., pp. 1–2; Tim McGirk, op. cit., pp. 34–35.
61 The Kargil War was a ten-week conflict in 1999 between the Indian army and
Islamic militants (who may have been members of the Pakistani military) who
had crossed the line of control from Pakistani Occupied Kashmir into India.
62 Rahul Bedl, op. cit., p. 2.
63 Douglas Jehl, op. cit., p. 1.
64 Ibid., pp. 1–2.
65 Ibid., p. 2.
66 The Jaish-e Muhammad Islamic extremist group is most notable in the West for
its kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
67 Douglas Jehl, op. cit., p. 1.
68 Ibid.
69 David Chazan, op. cit., pp. 4–5.
70 Indranil Banerjie, op. cit., p. 3; Tim McGirk, op. cit., p. 33.
71 Many in Afghanistan blame both the Pakistani government and the ISI for the
creation of the Taliban, and there currently exists within Afghanistan a strong
undercurrent of antipathy to both Pakistan and the ISI.
72 David Chazan, op. cit., p. 6.
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September 11th: Propaganda Day

Larry Yu

Ocotber 1, 2009 “As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqi people were sub-human, untermenschen. You could almost split the Americans into two groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because the Army was going to pay their college fees.” – Ben Griffin, former SAS soldier. “They make a desert, and they call it peace.” — Publius Tacitus, De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae So another September 11th has come and gone. The most recent marks the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In the USA, Sept. 11th has been designated “Patriot Day” by the American government.  It’s a kind of memorial day for the nearly 3000 people killed. All US flags are mandated to fly at half-staff, and Americans are supposed  to observe a moment of silence at 8:46 AM EST, the moment when the first airliner hit the World Trade Center in 2001. The politicians make their speeches. The media broadcasts its tributes. And patriotic Americans wave their flags. But for all its nationalistic piety, this “Patriot Day” is completely misnamed. It should be called Propaganda Day. Why? Because Sept. 11th served as the political pretext for the USA and its allies to launch a global war of conquest based upon lies and deceit. Without the “new Pearl Harbor” that was 9/11, there would be no Western invasion of Afghanistan and no invasion of Iraq. No Abu Ghraib torture and no Gitmo Gulag. No Patriot Act and no Homeland Security. No “Long War” that will supposedly last decades. In short, there would no War on Terror in general. But the most Orwellian thing? That would be the deception that the Anglo-American “War on Terrorism” is actually about fighting terrorism, when it clearly is not. Then there are those nagging questions about the events of 9/11 itself, which have been relegated to the realm of “conspiracy theory” by the Mainstream media and society. All told, this Western-led war has murdered well over a million people, maimed countless more, displaced greater numbers as refugees, and destroyed entire nations in everything but name. Afghani child turned into NATO “collateral damage.” In Afghanistan, over 1000 civilians have been killed in the first half of 2009 alone, according to a UN report. This is up over 24% since the same period in 2008. One of the latest atrocities committed by NATO forces was the air strike in Kunduz, where at least 90-100 Afghanis were killed in early Sept. 2009. Some of these people were incinerated alive when German troops called in F-15 missile strikes on fuel tankers below. This is nothing new. American and allied forces have “accidentally” bombed wedding parties multiple times, raided hospitals, and even engaged in sex trafficking at the US Embassy in Kabul. This latter crime is similar to the sexual exploitation perpetrated by the infamous US “military contractor” company Blackwater (now rebranded as Xe) in Iraq. Only in the Blackwater case, the victims were Iraqi children.  Thus, sworn statements by former employees “describe Blackwater as ‘having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the ‘Blackwater Man Camp’ in exchange for one American dollar.’” These things are but a drop in the ocean and do not even include the 2001 Mazar-i-Sharif Massacre in which American troops are said to have tortured and killed 3000 Taliban POWs: One Afghan, shown in battle fatigues, says of the treatment of prisoners in the Shibarghan camp: “I was a witness when an American soldier broke one prisoner’s neck and poured acid on others. The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them.” Another Afghan soldier states, “They cut off fingers, they cut tongues, they cut their hair and cut their beards. Sometimes they did it for pleasure; they took the prisoners outside and beat them up and then returned them to the prison. But sometimes they were never returned and they disappeared, the prisoner disappeared. I was there.” And still, this doesn’t begin to address the historic crime that has been committed by the Coalition of the Willing against Iraq–where Iraqi dead number over 1 .3 million, with 4.5 million displaced from their homes (or 1 out of every 6 Iraqis), 1-2 million widowed, another 5 million orphaned, and depleted uranium poisoning the land. The 2004 Fallujah Massacre, the 2005 Haditha Massacre, or the sundry acts of daily brutality meted out with numbing regularity by Coalition of the Killing in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re all part of the crime of the century. Meanwhile, most citizens of the self-styled Free World can barely stifle a disinterested yawn, rousing only to complain that the war is no longer worth fighting because of the high cost in blood and treasure … for themselves. But at least this war has brought Western-style democracy to the Greater Middle East! Commenting about the Roman Empire, the great historian Tacitus once wrote, “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” For our times, his insight is just as relevant, but it must updated for the Anglo-American Empire of today: “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call democracy; and where they make a wasteland, they call it freedom.”

more about “September 11th: Propaganda Day :: www…“, posted with vodpod

Larry Yu is a writer and activist involved with Asian American and antiwar issues in the USA.

U.S is Puppet-Master in Somalia

[Obama has a clear choice to make, whether to continue the legacy of failed wars, left him by Bush and Cheney, or to seek a different path for the United States in the world.]

U.S is Puppet-Master in Somalia

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

October 1, 2009
Click the flash player to listen to or the mic below to download the MP3 audio of this commentary.

Being a superpower means having the ability to arbitrarily prolong the misery of weaker countries. Such seems to be the U.S. mission in Somalia, where the puppet regime would fall in hours if the Americans and their Ugandan mercenaries withdrew. "The Somali president’s dwindling soldiers only remain because they are getting paid – by the Americans."

U.S is Puppet-Master in Somalia

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"A president that cannot trust his own soldiers to protect his life, is no president at all."

If ever there was a government that deserved to be called a "puppet," it is the regime that claims to speak for Somalia. Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed’s ridiculous rump of a regime is wholly dependent on foreigners: the 5,000 mostly Ugandan troops that nominally work for the African Union but actually act as mercenaries for the Americans, and the CIA and U.S. special operations forces that roam the country, killing at will. According to a recent New York Times report, it is the Ugandans, not Somali soldiers, that guard President Ahmed around the clock, camping directly outside his doorway and driving him to the airport, which is also defended by Ugandans. A president that cannot trust his own soldiers to protect his life, is no president at all.

Sheik Ahmed rules over close to nothing, just a few patches of the capital city, Mogadishu. The Somali Shabaab resistance is positioned only blocks from the president’s residence, from which he rarely ventures. If the foreigners left, Sheik Ahmed would have to make a mad dash to the airport to leave with them.

Over the summer, the Americans sent in 40 tons of weapons, much of which immediately wound up in the hands of the opposition. Whole units of the president’s armed forces have gone over to the opposition – that is to say, they have sided with their fellow Somalis and against the foreigners and their puppet president. Press reports of the close interaction between opposition fighters and those troops still nominally loyal to the regime lead one to conclude that the Somali president’s dwindling soldiers only remain because they are getting paid – by the Americans.

"President Obama will have earned himself a third war in the Third World."

Sheik Ahmed has called for virtually all of his U.S.-back neighbors – Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Yemen – to come prop up his puny regime, which would, of course, require even more massive U.S. involvement and perpetual foreign occupation of Somalia. And that is a formula for perpetual war that would swallow up all of the Horn of Africa. President Obama will have earned himself a third war in the Third World, at a time when the American people have already tired of the other two, in Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Even the Americans roaming around Mogadishu admit that, at most, a few hundred foreign jihadists are fighting Sheik Ahmed’s puppet regime. The rest of the opposition is Somali. However, Washington is determined to portray the Shabaab as a "new Taliban" that must be crushed for reasons of U.S. national security.

There is really no rational choice for Washington but to withdraw and allow the Somalis to make their own peace, of whatever political complexion. But imperialists cannot envision a world in which they are not in charge – even if that world encompasses only a few city blocks in Mogadishu. Therefore, we can shortly expect a new offensive by the U.S. and other foreigners in Somalia. Perpetual war is the only game they know how to play.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

:: Article nr. 58485 sent on 01-oct-2009 23:57 ECT

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