Why This Crisis May Be Our Best Chance to Build a New Economy

Wall Street is bankrupt. Instead of trying to save it, we can build a new economy that puts money and business in the service of people and the planet—not the other way around.

by David Korten

posted Jun 19, 2009

	David Korten. Photo by Paul Dunn for YES! Magazine

Whether it was divine providence or just good luck, we should give thanks that financial collapse hit us before the worst of global warming and peak oil. As challenging as the economic meltdown may be, it buys time to build a new economy that serves life rather than money. It lays bare the fact that the existing financial system has brought our way of life and the natural systems on which we depend to the brink of collapse. This wake-up call is inspiring unprecedented numbers of people to take action to bring forth the culture and institutions of a new economy that can serve us and sustain our living planet for generations into the future.

The world of financial stability, environmental sustainability, economic justice, and peace that most psychologically healthy people want is possible if we replace a defective operating system that values only money, seeks to monetize every relationship, and pits each person in a competition with every other for dominance.

From Economic Power to Basket Case
Not long ago, the news was filled with stories of how Wall Street’s money masters had discovered the secrets of creating limitless wealth through exotic financial maneuvers that eliminated both risk and the burden of producing anything of real value. In an audacious social engineering experiment, corporate interests drove a public policy shift that made finance the leading sector of the U.S. economy and the concentration of private wealth the leading economic priority.

Corporate interests drove a policy agenda that rolled back taxes on high incomes, gave tax preference to income from financial speculation over income from productive work, cut back social safety nets, drove down wages, privatized public assets, outsourced jobs and manufacturing capacity, and allowed public infrastructure to deteriorate. They envisioned a world in which the United States would dominate the global economy by specializing in the creation of money and the marketing and consumption of goods produced by others.

As a result, manufacturing fell from 27 percent of U.S. gross domestic product in 1950 to 12 percent in 2005, while financial services grew from 11 percent to 20 percent. From 1980 to 2005, the highest-earning 1 percent of the U.S. population increased its share of taxable income from 9 percent to 19 percent, with most of the gain going to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. The country became a net importer, with a persistent annual trade deficit of more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars financed by rising foreign debt. Wall Street insiders congratulated themselves on their financial genius even as they turned the United States into a national economic basket case and set the stage for global financial collapse.

All the reports of financial genius masked the fact that a phantom-wealth economy is unsustainable. Illusory assets based on financial bubbles, abuse of the power of banks to create credit (money) from nothing, corporate asset stripping, baseless credit ratings, and creative accounting led to financial, social, and environmental breakdown. The system suppressed the wages of the majority while continuously cajoling them to buy more than they could afford using debt that they had no means to repay.

A Defective Operating System
The operating system of our phantom-wealth economy was written by and for Wall Street interests for the sole purpose of making more money for people who have money. It makes cheap money readily available to speculators engaged in inflating financial bubbles and financing other predatory money scams. It makes money limited and expensive to those engaged in producing real wealth—life, and the things that sustain life—and pushes the productive members of society into indebtedness to those who produce nothing at all.

Money, the ultimate object of worship among modern humans, is the most mysterious of human artifacts: a magic number with no meaning or existence outside the human mind. Yet it has become the ultimate arbiter of life—deciding who will live in grand opulence in the midst of scarcity and who will die of hunger in the midst of plenty.

The monetization of relationships—replacing mutual caring with money as the primary medium of exchange—accelerated after World War II when growth in Gross National Product, essentially growth in monetized relationships, became the standard for evaluating economic performance. The work of the mother who cares for her child solely out of love counts for nothing. By contrast, the mother who leaves her child unattended to accept pay for tending the child of her neighbor suddenly becomes “economically productive.” The result is a public policy bias in favor of monetizing relationships to create phantom wealth—money—at the expense of real wealth.

In the world we want, the organization of economic life mimics healthy ecosystems that are locally rooted, highly adaptive, and self-reliant in food and energy. Information and technology are shared freely, and trade between neighbors is fair and balanced.

In a modern economy, nearly every relationship essential to life depends on money. This gives ultimate power to those who control the creation and allocation of money. Five features of the existing money system virtually assure abuse.

1. Money issuance and allocation are controlled by private banks managed for the exclusive benefit of their top managers and largest shareholders.
2. Money issued by private banks as debt must be repaid with interest. This requires perpetual economic growth to create sufficient demand for new loans to create the money required to pay the interest due on previous loans. The fact that nearly every dollar in circulation is generating interest for bankers and their investors virtually assures an ever-increasing concentration of wealth.
3. The power to determine how much money will circulate and where it will flow is concentrated and centralized in a tightly interlinked system of private-benefit corporations that operate in secret, beyond public scrutiny, with the connivance of the Federal Reserve.
4. The Federal Reserve presents itself as a public institution responsible for exercising oversight, but it is accountable only to itself, operates primarily for the benefit of the largest Wall Street banks, and consistently favors the interests of those who live by returns to money over those who live by returns to their labor.
5. The lack of proper regulatory oversight allows players at each level of the system to make highly risky decisions, collect generous fees based on phantom profits, and pass the risk to others.

A Values-Based Operating System
To get ourselves out of our current mess and create the world we want, we must reboot the economy with a new, values-based operating system designed to support social and environmental balance and the creation of real, living wealth. We have seen what happens when government and big business operate in secret. The new system must be open to public scrutiny and democratic control. Globalization and the harshest form of capitalism have eroded the bonds of community and created vast gaps in wealth between the richest and the poorest. The new system must be locally rooted in strong communities and distribute wealth equitably.

Our environment and our infrastructure have paid a terrible price for the belief that private interests must always win over public ones. A viable system must balance public and private interests. Unregulated speculation is at the root of the current crisis. Society is better served by a system that favors productive work and investment, limits speculation, and suppresses inflation in all forms—including financial bubbles.

The following are five essential areas of action.

1. Government-Issued Money. There is urgent need for government action to create living wage jobs, rebuild public infrastructure, and restore domestic productive capacity. It is folly, however, for government to finance those projects by borrowing money created by the same private banks that created the financial mess.

The government can and should instead issue debt-free money to finance the stimulus and meet other public needs. Properly administered, this money will flow to community-based enterprises and help revitalize Main Street market economies engaged in the production of real wealth.

2. Community Banking. Under the bailout, the government is buying ownership shares in failed Wall Street banks with the expectation of eventually reselling them to private interests. So far, the money has disappeared or gone to acquisitions, management bonuses, office remodeling, and fancy vacations with no noticeable effect on the freeing up of credit.

A better plan, as many economists are recommending, is to force bankrupt banks into government receivership. As part of the sale and distribution of assets to meet creditor claims, these banks should be broken up and their local branches sold to local investors. These new,individual community banks and mutual savings and loan associations should be chartered to serve Main Street needs, lending to local manufacturers, merchants, farmers, and homeowners within a strong regulatory framework.

3. Real-Wealth Investment. Gambling should be confined to licensed casinos. Contrary to the claims of Wall Street, financial speculation does not create real wealth, serves no public interest, and should be strongly discouraged. Tax the purchase or sale of financial instruments and impose a tax surcharge on short-term capital gains. Make it illegal to sell, insure, or borrow against an asset you do not own, or to issue a financial security not backed by a real asset. This would effectively shut down much of Wall Street, which would be a positive result.

The money that has been used for speculation must be redirected to productive investment that creates real wealth and meets our essential needs responsibly, equitably, and sustainably using green technologies and closed-loop production cycles. We can begin by eliminating subsidies for carbon fuels and putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions. We can revise trade agreements to affirm the responsibility of every nation to contribute to global economic security and stability by organizing for sustainable self-reliance in food and energy and managing its economy to keep imports and exports in balance. If we Americans learn to live within our means, we will free up resources others need to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their families. The notion that reducing our consumption would harm others is an example of the distorted logic of a phantom-wealth economy.

4. Middle Class Fiscal Policy. The ruling financial elites have used their control of fiscal policy to conduct a class war that has decimated the once celebrated American middle class and led to economic disaster. Markets work best when economic power is equitably distributed and individuals contribute to the economy as both workers and owners. Massive inequality in income and ownership assures the failure of both markets and democracy.

To restore the social fabric and allocate real resources in ways that serve the needs of all, we must restore the middle class through equity-oriented fiscal policies. There is also a strong moral argument that those who profited from creating our present economic mess should bear the major share of the cost of cleaning it up. It is time to reinstitute the policies that created the American middle class after World War II. Restore progressive income tax with a top rate of 90 percent and favor universal participation in responsible ownership and a family wage. Because no one has a natural birth entitlement to any greater share of the real wealth of society than anyone else, use the estate tax to restore social balance at the end of each lifetime in a modern equivalent of the Biblical Jubilee, which called for periodically forgiving debts and restoring land to its original owners.

	Human-scale, locally owned businesses are essential to creating the new economy. Author David Korten goes for the spring snow peas as he shops for dinner at his local family-owned grocery store in Bainbridge Island, Washington. Photo by Paul Dunn for YES! Magazine

5. Responsible Enterprise. Enterprises in a market economy need a fair return to survive. This imposes a necessary discipline. Service to the community, however, rather than profit, is the primary justification for the firm’s existence. As Wall Street has so graphically demonstrated, profit is not a reliable measure of social contribution.

Enterprises are most likely to serve their communities when they are human-scale and owned by responsiblelocal investors with an active interest in their operation beyond mere profit. Concentrations ofcorporate power reduce public accountability, and no corporation should be too big to fail. The new economy will use antitrust to break large corporations into their component parts and sell them to responsible local owners. There are many ways to aggregate economic resources that do not create concentrations of monopoly power or encourage absentee ownership. These include the many forms of worker, cooperative, and community ownership and cooperative alliances among locally rooted firms.

Current proposals for dealing with the economic collapse fall far short of dealing with the deep conflict of values and interests at the core of the current economic crisis. We face an urgent need to expand and deepen the debate to advance options that go far beyond anything currently on the table.

The World We Want
The world of our shared human dream is one where people live happy, productive lives in balance with one another and Earth. It is democratic and middle class without extremes of wealth or poverty. It is characterized by strong, stable families and communities in which relationships are defined primarily by mutual trust and caring. Every able adult is both a worker and an owner. Most families own their own home and have an ownership stake in their local economy. Everyone has productive work and is respected for his or her contribution to the well-being of the community.

In the world we want, the organization of economic life mimics healthy ecosystems that are locally rooted, highly adaptive, and self-reliant in food and energy. Information and technology are shared freely, and trade between neighbors is fair and balanced. Each community, region and nation strives to live within its own means in balance with its own environmental resources. Conflicts are resolved peacefully and no group seeks to expropriate the resources of its neighbors. Competition is for excellence, not domination.

The financial collapse has revealed the extreme corruption of the Wall Street financial system and created an extraordinary opening for change. We cannot, however, expect the leadership to come from within the political system. There is good reason why both the Bush and Obama administrations, different as they are, have responded to the Wall Street crash with bailouts for the guilty rather than face up to the need for a radical restructuring of the financial system. No president can stand up against Wall Street absent massive popular demand.

To move forward, we the people must build a powerful popular political movement demanding a new economy designed to serve our children, families, communities, and nature. It begins with a conversation to demystify money and expose the lie that there is no alternative to the present economic system. It continues with action to rebuild our local economies based on sound market principles backed by national political action to transform the money system and broaden participation in ownership. This is our moment of opportunity.

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David Korten wrote this article as part of The New Economy, the Summer 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. David is co-founder and board chair of YES! His most recent book is Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth.

Blowback On the Border: The Purpose of the Terror War System

Chris Floyd

Let me say — or rather, reiterate — up front that it is my personal view that the form of vigorous activism known as non-violence is the only way, or the best way, that we can hope to even begin to address the inherent and intractable conflicts of human existence in a genuinely effective profound, sustainable and humane manner. That is the ideal I strive toward.

Of course, I also recognize that being what I am — a white man of Christian heritage living safely and comfortably under the penumbra of empire — it is easy for me to espouse this ideal. No drone fired in the distant black sky is going to kill my children tonight as they sleep warmly in their beds. No raiding party of assassins is going to tear down the door of my parents’ house tonight and shoot them at the dinner table. No one with a grudge against me — or simply in need of quick cash — is going to sell me into the captivity of a worldwide gulag. I’m not going to be caught in the crossfire of marauding mercenaries on my way to work. I’m not going to wake tomorrow in a refugee camp, my home and livelihood abandoned in the wake of a ravaging “counterterrorism” operation. No foreign soldier is going to shoot me, or abuse me, or humiliate me, or simply refuse to let me pass down the street of my own city. I’m not going to be stopped, “profiled,” or regarded with suspicion or hatred simply because of my skin color or the cultural or religious etymology of my name.

If I lived under the bootheel of such forces, I don’t how I would react, how firmly I could hold to my ideal. I don’t know if I would have the strength of mind and will, or the fortitude and wisdom it would take to resist our primal pull to violence — especially if I grew up in a culture that exalted certain forms of violence as cardinal virtues. (Of course, as an American, I did grow up in such a culture — and so has almost every other human being in history. To take the non-violent way is to appear — and yes, often feel – unnatural, deracinated, alien.)

Nonetheless, despite all these caveats and complexities, the ideal abides. I decry, denounce and mourn for the use of violence. Each act of violence — however understandable it might be in context — is a vast, ruinous defeat for our common humanity.

And of course many acts of violence are not “understandable” in any context, save that of our bestial desire to dominate others in one form or another. Here the defeat is even greater, its reverberations deeper, wider, longer-lasting: a degradation and degeneration that further brutalizes both the dispenser and victim of violence — especially the former, and especially when the dispensing culture comes to countenance an ever-widening array of violent acts as worthy, necessary, laudable, even honorable.

Each such act perpetuates the cycle of violence, the horrific dynamic of blowback: a self-perpetuating feedback loop that uses itself to engender more violence, in new and expanding forms. We are living today in the midst of a particularly virulent form of this dynamic, the so-called “War on Terror,” which I think has been designed — more or less deliberately so, although the obscene ignorance and arrogance of the powerful have also played their fateful part in unwittingly exacerbating these evils — to rage on without chronological end, without geographical, limits, and without any moral, social, legal or financial restraints. In his book X Films (reviewed here), Alex Cox uses an apt term borrowed from systems analysis — POSIWID: The Purpose of a System is What It Does.

The Terror War is not an event, or a campaign, or even a crusade; it is a system. Its purpose is not to eliminate “terrorism” (however this infinitely elastic term is defined) but to perpetuate itself, to do what it does: make war. This system can be immensely rewarding, in many different ways, for those who operate or assist it, whether in government, media, academia, or business. This too is a self-sustaining dynamic, a feedback loop that gives money, power and attention to those who serve the system; this elevated position then allows them to accrue even more money, power and attention, until in the end — as we can plainly see today — any alternative voices and viewpoints are relegated to the margins. They are “unserious.” They are unimportant. They are not allowed to penetrate or alter the operations of the system.

These reflections were prompted by last week’s attack on the CIA base near Khost, Afghanistan, and by the reaction to the attack among the operators and servants of the Terror War system. As the world knows, seven CIA officers were killed by a suicide bomber. (Two of the dead were actually Blackwater mercenaries, but as CNN solemnly informs us, the Agency considers such hired guns to be part of the family.) The officers were at a “forward operating base” near the Pakistan border. From this redoubt, they plotted and directed attacks by drone missiles and, if they were similar to other CIA teams, which seems likely, also helped run assassination squads, with bombs and ground raids launched against villages, private homes and other locations which allegedly contain alleged terrorists, both in Afghanistan, which American forces are now openly occupying, and in Pakistan, a sovereign, allied country where American military and security forces are carrying out a more and more open “secret war.”

The officers were killed when a suicide bomber — apparently a ‘native’ whom the CIA was grooming as a potential agent — walked into a gym and set off his hidden belt of explosives. Again, as noted above, I decry all deaths by violence, although I direct most of my attention to the violent deaths caused by the gargantuanly disproportionate infliction of state terrorism that characterizes our age, as opposed to the piecemeal pinpricks of small bands of extremists and isolated individuals — incidents which themselves often betray strong indications of the fomenting or facilitating hand of various operators in the Terror War system.

So it gave me no pleasure to note the grim truth that was confirmed, yet again, by the attack at Khost: Those who live by dirty war, die by dirty war. The CIA-mercenary squad at the base was a key part of what the New York Times rightly describes as the CIA’s evolution into a “paramilitary organization.” Like all terrorists, they operate outside the law, claiming moral superiority as their justification. And for this particular band, what they have dealt out to others — sudden death in a surprise attack with no possibility of defense –  they have now been dealt in turn.

Of course, the NYT seems to find no moral problem with the United States of America operating “paramilitary” squads of spies and mercenaries carrying out “extrajudicial assassinations” — or “murders,” as they once would have been called — in foreign lands occupied by American military forces slaughtering civilians on a regular basis. (We noted one such slaughter in Afghanistan last week; now yet another one is being reported.) The story which carried this description is concerned largely with describing the struggle of these noble bands as they struggle manfully on distant borders to keep us safe.

In this, the tone of the story strongly echoes the genuinely sick-making words of Barack Obama after the incident. From CNN:

“These brave Americans were part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens, and for our way of life,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in a written statement Thursday.

“The United States would not be able to maintain the freedom and security that we cherish without decades of service from the dedicated men and women of the CIA.”

The CIA’s decades-long record of sickening crime, outright atrocity, constitutional subversion, bungling, near-unbelievable incompetence, and unrelenting exacerbation of hatred for and violence toward the United States is indisputable. (For just one egregious example, see  “The Secret Sharers.”) Few government organizations in world history have been so inimical to the national interests of the state they purport to serve. It was with very good reason that John F. Kennedy — to whom Obama’s sycophants often liken their hero — once declared his intention to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” (Nor can it be entirely coincidental that Kennedy was later murdered in a case that had innumerable ties to the security apparat.)

There is nothing further from the truth — nothing further from the established historical record — than Obama’s statement that the CIA has been absolutely indispensable in “maintaining the freedom and security” of the United States. On the contrary; the historical record clearly shows that the activities of the CIA have, time and again, reduced both the freedom and security of the people of the United States.

Yet here we have Obama, once again, groveling to this renegade, retrograde, criminal organization — much as he did early on in his presidency, when he  cravenly guaranteed the Agency’s thuggish torturers that they need never fear prosecution from his administration for the KGB-like, Stasi-like, Gestapo-like atrocities they had inflicted on their victims.

Instead of shattering the CIA, or even curtailing it, the NYT story confirms, yet again, that Obama is accelerating the militarization of the agency, and giving it broad new scope to deceive and murder. What’s more, as we noted here a few days ago, Obama’s handpicked “special envoy” for the “Af-Pak front,” Richard Holbrooke, admitted, in a little-noticed story last month, that the United States is carrying out covert operations in “every country in the world.” And all of this is accepted without debate, without demur, as a just, honorable and natural state of affairs.

And while Obama is praising the murderers, torturers and incompetents of the CIA, the Agency itself is plotting its revenge for the blowback against its own dirty war, as CNN reports, with an obvious frisson of titillation at the tough talk:

“This attack will be avenged through successful, aggressive counterterrorism operations,” [an anonymous] intelligence official vowed. “There are some very bad people who eventually are going to have a very bad day,” the official promised Friday.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1884-when-blood-is-their-argument-an-empire-on-fire.html
And so, as I wrote the day after 9/11 (and quoted again recently, in this piece about Obama’s surging Terror War): “Blood will have blood; that’s certain. But blood will not end it. For murder is fertile: it breeds more death, like a spider laden with a thousand eggs. And who now can break this cycle, which has been going on for generations?”

The cycle will go on — because that is what is wanted. The purpose of the system is what it does.

“Democracy” in Mullah Iran.

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Elections are a sham in Iran; results are decided in advance by the Supreme Leader in consultation with other important clerical figures. In Iran Presidents are chosen by the Supreme Leader, rather than elected.

The beginning of the Islamic revolution instituted by the USA/UK/France/Israel set the tone around this matter. On April Fools Day 1979 a referendum was held over the simple question of whether Iran should be an Islamic Republic or not:

• 98.4 said yes…….voting style reminiscent of the old Soviet Union.
• there were 24/25 million votes counted in a nation with eligible voters of about 16-17 million in 1979….abut 38 million people, 70% youth.
• A sophisticated nation with many ethnic groups and political fractions….Communist/Tudeh, Monarchists, constitutional Republicans, regional nationalists……and of course Islamists……..ALL voting for an Islamic Republic???? Obviously not. Fixed referendum of course.

Ahmedinejad the Jew was one such elected official, chosen by the Supreme Leader in 2005. The Supreme Leader liked him because he served in the Revolutionary Guards; worked for a while in the mullahs prisons torturing, raping and executing regime opponents; because he was of humble non-mullah background in a nation increasingly questioning of the legitimacy of the mullah regime, and finally obedient and loyal to the Supreme Leader as his pawn and front.

The Supreme Leaders relatives participated in Ahmedinejad the Jew’s election campaign of 2005, and the Supreme Leader in the recent election last year was in a tremendous hurry to recognize his election victory yet again, barely before all the votes had been counted.

So whats the problem with Karoubi, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Katami, they surely know how things “work” in Iran. Or did they think that Iran was actually a fully fledged Norway style democracy?

What are the real issues at play here?

The mullah have been in power for 30 years, and there are major problems in the country, mainly related to the ineptitude and corruption of the mullah regime kleptocracy. When people are unhappy they tend to protest in a variety of ways to express and advertise their problems……….very natural in most democracies.

In Iran not, because a protest movement can be a catalyst for regime change, of a weak corrupt regime which is up to no good, as had been engineered artificially against the shah in 1979. The mullahs understand this.

The mullahs for Israel want to focus on the narrow issue of nuclear power, and threats from Israel to attack Iran. The nuclear issue of a $800 million nuclear reactor doesn’t require a lot of hard work on the part of the mullahs, or expenditure, or planning. The mullah’s think they can reap political benefits from this one issue, and uniting the country behind them, without having to embark on a comprehensive programs to improve Iran for the ordinary people……….so we have Ahmedinejad the Jew….constantly shouting, and making politics about the reactor.

On the other hand real Iranians, who are not puppets of foreign powers understand that the REAL PRESSING ISSUES OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE ARE FAR more comprehensive which require focus and dealing with, then the mere politics of the nuclear reactor:

• Corruption—Iran under the mullahs is one of the most corrupt regimes on earth. Endemic corruption destroys Real Economic Development, but under the mullahs corruption is allowed to flourish because many of the mullahs have become multi-millionaires and billionaires from this system of patronage, and corruption. Ahmedinejad the Jew pays lip service in fighting corruption, but not much else.
• The Oil and Gas industry—-Iran is a rich country which could reap huge economic benefits from the soaring oil prices in recent years. Instead what Iran has experienced is very mediocre economic growth, so one must wonder what the mullahs are doing with all that oil revenue? The ordinary Iranian people are not seeing any of the benefits of this oil boon. In addition the oil industry is monopolized by mullah cronies and the Revolutionary Guard, such that Iran a nation that once exported 5.5 billion barrels a year in the 1970′s now exports a meager 2.4 billion a year and declining, for lack of investment from the corrupt mullah government swimming in petro-$ profits. Iran shamefully can’t even process her own oil, but has to rely on imported fuels, with all the serious implications on security for such a policy. The mullah puppets keep boasting that they can block the Persian Gulf at the Straights of Hormuz, but is it not more logical and pertinent to state that an American naval embargo force can deny Iran significant fuels supply, so that Iran becomes isolated and economically destroyed, in a few weeks?
• Political corruption—-There are no real free and fair elections. Presidents are chosen by he Supreme Leader. There is no real transparency in government. Governments such as Ahmedinejad’s are high on rhetoric, especially against Israel, but provide very little real service and benefit for ordinary Iranians. More significantly one must ask whether elected governments actually run Iran, or the powerful mullahs in the background who in the final analysis veto and guide the main substantive issues of state…..and the purpose of Ahmedinejad and his government is to provide mere facade to a political game run by the Supreme Leader and his whim of the day. Finally are the mullahs really qualified, having sufficient knowledge and skills to manage a modern state.
• Iran’s security policy—-I have covered this extensively before, so I am not going to repeat myself again. Suffice to say that the mullah security policy for Iran was written in a foreign hostile country which could have dangerous consequences for the country, if practiced in a real war. No nation has ever mobilized 20 million for war……..militarily, logistically tactically such an outcome will be a disaster….Hezbollah is 5,000; the Iraqi resistance at one time was 30,000; the Mujaheddin against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was about 70,000; and the Vietcong was about 500,000. Mullah IRAN should mobilize no more than 1,000,000 in decentralized commands system. Iran has no air defense….1,500 AA guns, and a few SAM’S. Mullah Iran has not seriously attempted to manufacture these basic hardware, but rather has relied on imports from unreliable, over inflated sources….which were highly publicized…….giving the impression Iran was embarking on a massive air defense over haul. Which is clearly not the case. 30 M-Tors aren’t going to make a difference, even if they are concentrated on one site……in a nation with 1,200 potential military targets. The stupidity of two competing security forces…..the military and the Revolutionary Guard, which is transforming itself into a business organization.
• The Drugs epidemic originating from Afghanistan, and the 3 million drug addicts of Iran…..the costs to society of this huge problem, and the complicity of the Revolutionary Guard, and others in government in this business.
• Trafficking of Iranians into the Gulf by the Revolutionary Guard and others in the Iranian government.
• Capital flight away from Iran——$800—$1,000 billion, because most Iranians have no faith in the unstable mullah economy so they take their money into foreign countries.
• Human Flight—-4/5 million mainly skilled Iranians choosing to live in foreign countries instead of Iran. Policies and actions of the mullah regime which is specifically designed to encourage skilled Iranians to live abroad. The mullahs like illiterate Iranian farmers who are mesmerized by their rhetorical politics of empty promises….and loathe the protesting organized middle class who can easily see through the bullshit. However for all the mullah politics a modern state must ultimately rely and build its foundation on a solid happy prosperous middle class.
• Poor education policy, which relies on Islamic dogmatism, rather than on real education.
• Soaring prices of rent accommodation, and food prices and general basic living costs.

These are some of the main problems which Iran now faces which the mullah regime will never resolves given the fundamental nature, and rational for its present existence.

Therefore logically Iranians must strive to remove such a regimes, and overcome ALL the hurdles that they may face. There must be a momentum of on going protests so that the mullahs understand that their present conduct is unacceptable. The street protests are an excellent catalyst for peoples power mobilizing the Iranian nation under a just noble cause.

If ordinary Iranians do not protest and eventually remove such a regime then the consequences for them and Iran later will be far worse.

The mullah regime is unique in that never has Iran been ruled by such people……..unique in its level of corruption and unique in its level of repression of ordinary Iranians. This mullah regime is nasty, brutal and illegal……they came to power on a blood lust in 1979, executing many; then the civil war with the Tudeh in the early 1980′s; then the 8 year war which claimed the lives of 1 million Iranians including the lives of many children ; Saddam sought peace in 1982 and the war could have ended in that year……but the mullahs wanted endless war forever into 2010…..sacrificing 2,3,4,5,6, million Iranians if necessary………these mullahs are not mullahs but criminal shaitan backed by the UK/France now; the massacre of political prisoners in 1988 when the mullahs became fearful of losing to Saddam. The endless political theaters and tricks to amuse and distract the masses from their misrule…from Salman Rushdie to now the nuclear question.

Mullah Political gimmicks and tricks, lies and threats.

And so now the mullah regime again is fearful, and so he instinctively issues threats yet again against ordinary law abiding patriotic Iranians, for the mullah has no other tool and weapon…….the weapon of logic, argument, debate, reconciliation, compromise.

The protests against this regime must continue, but it will be pertinent, given the nature of this regime to build connections to security, especially members of the Revolutionary Guard who are unhappy at transforming themselves into businessmen, and members of Vevak.

Protest alone will not change the perspective of such a criminal regime.

MSNBC Report Hints At Rogue Network In False Flag Op

Obama White House Probing Rogue Network of Moles Behind Christmas Detroit Patsy Fiasco, Reports Richard Wolffe on MSNBC

by Webster G. Tarpley
www.tarpley.net
January 4, 2010

Washington DC, Jan. 4, 2010 — Officials in the Obama White House are considering the possibility that the Christmas day attempt by Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Mutallab to blow up an airliner about to land in Detroit was deliberately and intentionally facilitated by unnamed networks inside the US intelligence community. This was the gist of a report by Richard Wolffe delivered in this evening’s edition of cable network MSNBC’s Countdown program, hosted by Keith Olbermann:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#34694889. This report comes on the eve of a special White House interagency conference convoked by Obama to deal with the massive systemic failure of US intelligence in allowing the Yemen alumnus Mutallab to board the Amsterdam to Detroit flight while allegedly carrying a PETN explosive device on his person. A transcript of Wolffe’s remarks can be found at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/4/821905/-White-House-is-investigating-whether-intel-was-intentionally-withheld-re:-Flight-253-bomber.

Wolffe attributed his account to top officials in the Obama White House. The intentional sabotage of US antiterrorist screening procedures would explain why Mutallab had been able to use his US visa, escape interrogation and special searches, and board his flight, even though he was festooned with every red flag in the annals of airport security. If Wolffe’s report is accurate, these Obama officials may be pulling on a thread which could begin to unravel the entire secret structure of illegitimate power which has afflicted this country — in this case, the apparatus which manufactures terrorist incidents for political purposes of mass manipulation, dictatorship, and war.

Turf War Or Desire To Embarrass Obama?

Wolffe offered two possible explanations cited by his White House sources for the intentional sabotage of security procedures, resulting in yet another egregious failure to connect the dots. The first was a “turf war” inside the intelligence community, with one agency seeking to hoard information and deny it to others. The second was the desire to “embarrass” some leading figures, presumably referring to partisan animus or other resentments against Obama and his top appointees.

Answer: Re-Launching The “Global War on Terror” via Yemen

But Obama and his advisors should be urged to consider a third explanation far more plausible than either of these. This third explanation would include the desire of a rogue network inside the US government to unleash a new wave of Islamophobic hysteria to rehabilitate the discredited “global war on terror” strategy in a new and more sophisticated form, while imposing a new round of outrageous and degrading search procedures at airports (such as the full body scanners peddled by the venal Michael Chertoff) to soften up the American people for heightened totalitarian control and political repression. All of this, moreover, in ways that will be politically harmful to Obama.

The foreign policy rationale of Mutallab’s spectacular near miss in the skies over at Detroit would include the current US campaign of ginning up the three-cornered Yemen civil war so as to threaten and weaken both Saudi Arabia and Iran, each of whom is backing a faction in that civil war. Another benefit is to enhance the US presence in Yemen, a country which controls the exit from the Red Sea and thus all traffic coming out of the Suez Canal, one of the great naval chokepoints of the world and vital for the commerce of China, a leading US rival. Yet another advantage would be to suppress criticism of Obama’s West Point expansion of the existing war in Afghanistan to include an all-out assault on the territorial integrity and statehood of Pakistan. As a result of Mutallab’s handiwork, Obama has now declared a new Axis of Evil composed of Afghanistan-Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Yemen in particular has been catapulted to the center of international attention by an Anglo-American propaganda blitzkrieg of monumental proportions.

Gold is where you find it, and you often find it in strange locations, as in this case. If Wolffe’s report is correct, these unnamed officials in the Obama White House might well be on the trail of the rogue network or secret government which has deliberately and cynically manufactured the majority of the large-scale terrorism incidents of recent decades. This rogue network is older than Obama, older than Bush and Cheney, older than Clinton. It goes back many decades, and its calling cards have included such catastrophes as the Kennedy assassination, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Iran-Contra affair, and 9/11. The rogue network and the bankers who control it obviously regard Obama as an expendable puppet destined, like Jimmy Carter 30 years ago, to go down in the shipwreck of his administration’s Wall Street-inspired policies. As of this evening, it cannot be excluded that the Obama forces might fire some of the leading moles who made the Mutallab incident possible. If they do, that purge will be an important step in the right direction. In the meantime, three unauthorized entries into the White House over the last several months have doubtless served as a deterrent reminder to Obama that the rogue network can get to him at any time.

According to Wolffe’s report, the Obama White House officials are approaching the rogue network from the side of its mole component. The moles are subversive government officials who disdain the Constitution and instead serve a private network ultimately centered in Wall Street. One basic task of the moles is to make sure that patsies like Mutallab are not interfered with, no matter how suspicious their behavior, and no matter how many times they violate the law. If Mutallab’s kamikaze mission had produced an explosion, these same moles would have been the first to leak the news that the bomber was a jihadi from Nigeria. The moles would then have sabotaged any investigation, which is what they are doing tonight as this is written.

Mutallab Festooned with Red Flags

Mutallab had been denied a visa to enter the United Kingdom, despite the fact that his family owned a luxury apartment in London’s West End. His name had been placed on the UK watch list. Mutallab’s father, a prominent Nigerian banker, personally denounced him to the CIA and the State Department as a possible extremist who was then in Yemen, most probably at a training camp. Nevertheless, Mutallab’s visa was not revoked. Mutallab had met the infamous Anwar Awlaki, who had just received a wave of publicity for his relations with Major Hasan the Fort Hood patsy. Chatter from the Yemen patsy milieu monitored by the US contained references to “the Nigerian” – meaning Mutallab. Mutallab paid cash for his ticket in Ghana, checked no luggage, and entered Nigeria illegally, but was nevertheless permitted to embark on the first leg of his mission. In London, Mutallab was assisted by a “well-dressed Indian,” who told the gate agent that Mutallab was a Sudanese who did not have a passport. Nevertheless, Mutallab was allowed to board. As the present writer stated in a Dec. 28 interview on Russia Today, Only the active complicity of treasonous moles can explain Mutallab’s miraculous immunity to all surveillance and screening despite all these factors of suspicion.

Londonistan: The School for Patsies

But the moles are not the only component in the murderous apparatus of false flag terrorism of the type put on display over Detroit on Christmas Day. Patsies like Mutallab must be recruited from the ranks of misfits, psychotics, fanatics, dupes, criminals, and the mentally impaired. They must be equipped with an appropriate synthetic ideology of the type which Mutallab evidently acquired during his years in that immense school for patsies which is the MI-6’s artificially cultivated milieu of the Londonistan jihadis, the trendy Islamist radicals of the British capital.

Awlaki the CIA Lackey

Patsies like Mutallab must then be carefully sheep-dipped to establish a connection with “Al Qaeda,” in reality the CIA Moslem Legion. Mutallab underwent the requisite sheep-dip through his contacts with the incendiary firebrand Anwar Awlaki, now thoroughly exposed as a double agent and patsy recruiter/patsy chaperone working for the United States and well deserving of the epithet Awlaki the CIA Lackey. Awlaki had been implicated in the cases of supposed 9/11 Pentagon suicide pilot Hani Hanjour, and then of Major Hasan of Fort Hood, among others.

Needed: Mole Detectors at NSC, CIA, Defense

The paradigm of false flag “Islamist terrorism” deployed once again on Christmas Day by this rogue network which cuts across the top echelons of the executive departments and agencies of the US government is now frayed, worn, and threadbare. It is rent with gaping holes. The inherent disadvantage of false flag terrorism as a strategy of mass manipulation lies in the diminishing returns which this method is capable of producing: the more it is repeated, the more people begin to suspect that it is a fraud and sham. The flying patsy routine has been repeated ad nauseam, from the retarded Richard Reid the Shoe Bomber of December 2001 to Mutallab the Knicker-Bomber of December 2009. Over the past ten days, the genuine exasperation of columnists and editorial writers over this latest blatant failure to connect the most elementary of dots has suggested that all the naïve cover stories are about to collapse in a shock of recognition that networks infesting the US government do indeed actively create and produce terrorist events for their own evil purposes. We need mole detectors at the NSC, CIA, State Department, and Pentagon – not more harassment of the traveling public.

Persons of good will should mobilize to expose the Detroit patsy operation as a crude and blatant false flag event designed to promote foreign wars and domestic repression. Call the White House. Call your Congressman. Write a letter to the editor. You never know who might catch on.

Yemen dismisses Al Qaeda threat as ‘exaggerated’

By Borzou Daragahi

But the U.S. and Britain, citing evidence of a viable threat, close their embassies in the Yemeni capital. January 4, 2010 Reporting from Beirut – Yemeni officials on Sunday dismissed the threat posed by Al Qaeda in their country as “exaggerated” and downplayed the possibility of cooperating closely with the United States in fighting Islamic militants, even as the U.S. and Britain temporarily closed their diplomatic outposts in Yemen because of unspecified Al Qaeda threats. The statements by Yemen’s foreign minister, chief of national security and Interior Ministry came a day after the region’s top American military commander vowed to step up U.S. military support for the beleaguered Arabian Peninsula nation. Analysts said the Yemeni statements reflected domestic political concerns about President Ali Abdullah Saleh appearing weak and beholden to the West as he faces numerous political challenges. The group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the failed attempt at bombing a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day. The alleged attacker’s claim that he was tutored in Yemen set off alarm bells in Western capitals about the relatively lawless nation of 23 million, which is also facing an insurgency in the north and a separatist movement in the south. U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus visited Yemen on Saturday and vowed to give Saleh increased aid to fight Al Qaeda. His promise was echoed by President Obama, who said the United States would step up intelligence-sharing and training of Yemeni forces and perhaps carry out joint attacks against militants in the region. But Yemeni officials Sunday appeared to rebuff any close cooperation with the West. Foreign Minister Abubakr Qirbi told a government-run newspaper that his country welcomed intelligence-sharing but had made no commitment to conducting anti-terrorism operations in conjunction with the West. “Yemen has its own short-term and long-term schemes to tackle terrorists anywhere in the republic that only call for intelligence and information coordination with other countries,” he told the daily newspaper Politics, the official Saba news agency reported. A statement posted to the U.S. Embassy website cited “ongoing threats by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to attack American interests in Yemen.” The British Foreign Office confirmed that its embassy had been closed for security reasons and said discussions would be held today on when to reopen the facility. Both diplomatic missions in Sana, the Yemeni capital, normally are open Saturday through Wednesday. The U.S. Embassy has been the site of attacks in the past. At least 16 people died there in a Sept. 17, 2008, car bomb attack that was claimed by Al Qaeda. Three mortar rounds missed the embassy and crashed into a nearby high school for girls in March 2008, killing a security guard. Police and alleged Al Qaeda militants exchanged small-arms fire near the embassy a year ago. On Sunday, Obama’s top counter-terrorism advisor said the U.S. had evidence of a viable threat against the embassy, which led to the decision to close it. “There are indications that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is targeting our embassy and targeting our personnel,” John Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding: “We’re not going to take any chances with the lives of our diplomats and others who are at that embassy.” Asked whether Americans in the country are safe, Brennan said, “I think until the Yemeni government gets on top of the situation with Al Qaeda, there is a risk of attacks. A number of tourists have been, in fact, kidnapped. A number of tourists have been killed.” But Yemen’s Interior Ministry posted a message to its website Sunday boasting that Al Qaeda militants were “under surveillance around the clock.” And Saleh’s national security chief, Ali Anisi, said Sunday that Al Qaeda’s presence in Yemen was “exaggerated” and touted the success of his nation’s forces in stemming terrorism, according to an account of his comments reported by Saba news agency. He reportedly insisted that Yemen was not a haven for Al Qaeda and pointed to “preemptive operations against militants which thwarted planned attacks on vital domestic and foreign interests in the country.” According to Saba, he said that only 40% of the five dozen attempted terrorist attacks in the country since 1992 had succeeded. Analysts say the increased focus on Yemen’s security situation creates a dilemma for Saleh, who is worried about appearing to cede sovereignty to the Americans when he is being politically assailed from all segments of the population. “It’s about control,” said Abdullah Faqih, a professor of political science at Sana University. “The international actors need to assure the Yemeni government about its control. They don’t want to give concessions” to their rivals in the north or south. A member of a smaller Shiite Muslim sect, Saleh has been accused for years of gaining political allies by turning a blind eye to the growing influence of Sunni extremists who have begun enforcing Islamic dress codes and setting up religious schools. Qirbi, the foreign minister, emphasized in the interview published Sunday his nation’s “continuing rehabilitation of and advising misled terrorists,” a reference to its controversial program of re-educating and releasing convicted Islamic militants, some once held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay. About 90 Yemeni detainees are still being held at Guantanamo. Faqih suggested that the United States and Britain announced the temporary closures of their embassies as a way of turning up the heat on Saleh, whose government depends on international assistance to combat a number of issues, including piracy off its Gulf of Aden coast and a drought along its mountain ridges. “This could also be a kind of pressure,” he said. “If the World Bank decides to close its office, the country might collapse.” Saleh has presided for decades over the Arab world’s poorest nation, a generally lawless and mountainous land that faces vast unemployment, high birthrates and a plummeting water supply. Rampant corruption and festering tribal disputes exacerbate the problems. U.S. officials have limited direct aid to Yemen in the past for fear it would disappear into a government widely considered corrupt and unaccountable. But Washington increased the total anti-terrorism assistance from $4.6 million in 2006 to $67 million in 2009, according to the Pentagon. Following a Dec. 24 airstrike against suspected Al Qaeda militants in Yemen, which killed 30 and was suspected by many of having been directed by Americans, some Yemenis fear U.S. involvement could further destabilize their country. “We’re afraid that you will repeat the same mistake as in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Mohamed Abdul-Malik Mutawakil, a political scientist at Sana University. “The real challenge is to correct the situation. If you come to Yemen and you push for reform, justice, political change, a better economy, then you will pull the rug out from under Al Qaeda.” @latimes.com Jim Tankersley in the Tribune Washington Bureau and Times staff writer Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report. Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Luck must go

—Zafar Hilaly

India has also commenced the process of taking on board Kashmiri groups fighting for independence in discussions on the future of Kashmir. These are nascent but welcome steps. Nevertheless, they are not enough. India should restart the composite dialogue process

Even the most foolish must know by now that the greater the turmoil, the higher the casualties, the more intense the indignation, the larger the media coverage, the deeper is the satisfaction that terrorists derive from their actions. And, as happens so often, an unwitting accomplice of the terrorists is their enemy. Today it is America and tomorrow perhaps India too. Only the Israelis have done better than America in antagonising an entire religion, nay civilisation.
Seeking revenge, rather than justice, the US has waged war on Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia and is about to do so in Pakistan and perhaps Yemen. In its search for a handful of terrorists, the US has destroyed countries and caused the death and dislocation of millions. Not content, Washington is preparing to wreak havoc in Pakistan. Harassed and on the run, Al Qaeda terrorists are the quarry, and so is the leadership of the Taliban — an assortment of hitherto defeated, demoralised and unpopular antediluvian fundos that have prospered, gained respect and, to a large extent, become popular as a result of a lethal mix of American folly and Afghan xenophobia.
The misguided crusade begun by the doltish Bush against militant Islam continues under the stewardship of the opportunistic Obama. Soon America may be joined by India. The latter’s fanciful doctrines, such as ‘Cold Start’ and ‘Three Front War’, are reminiscent of Cheney’s ‘One Percent’ and the Petraeus’s ‘Surge’ theories. Spawned in the military classrooms of India’s indolent soldiers, they are being trotted out for airing as lynchpins of Indian military strategy. Presumably, the Indian establishment will indulge these military fantasies if another attack is mounted by terrorists whose provenance is traced to Pakistan. This only provides further incentive to the lashkars and jaishes, which seek to profit from the turmoil, to launch yet another attack on India. Encouraging a war that the enemy craves for is surely the height of folly.
America’s war in Afghanistan is not going well. Robert Taber summed up why America will lose in Afghanistan, “The guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog’s disadvantages: too much to defend, too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with.” The same fate awaits an Indian incursion into Pakistan. At best, Pakistan may be destroyed but never defeated. The true war would only begin once the fighting is over. Indian gains on the battlefield will be lost in the blood lust that would ensue as entire religions and populations collide. And this would happen even if a nuclear conflict is avoided.
The US and India would do better to heed to the desire of their respective populations which, in the case of the former, shows a steady erosion of support for the war in Afghanistan and a decisive shift in favour of an American withdrawal and in case of the latter, was revealed by what a recent poll conducted by two media houses of India and Pakistan discovered. Only a tiny minority, 17 percent in India and 8 percent in Pakistan, it discovered, are opposed to the idea of consigning their hostility to the dustbin of history. An overwhelming 66 percent of those polled in India and 72 percent in Pakistan said that they desire a peaceful relationship between the two countries.
These encouraging results were supported by the observations of an eminent Indian doctor holidaying in Indonesia whose contacts with most segments of Indian society are intense. “Indians do not buy their government’s line that the regime in Pakistan or the people were involved in the attack on Mumbai. They favour greater people-to-people contacts and are appalled at what the public in Pakistan were being subjected to at the hands of the terrorists. They genuinely wish that Pakistan is able to tide over the crisis and defeat terrorism. They feel that India must help where it can,” he wrote.
Of course, the next al Qaeda sortie from Pakistan may drown such friendly sentiments, at least that is what the terrorists count on. Manmohan Singh, who has dragged his feet in engaging with Pakistan after Mumbai, may find himself compelled to let the desire for revenge replace reasoned judgment. America too may seize on the additional pressure another Mumbai would exert on Pakistan’s brittle regime to obtain Islamabad’s concurrence for American forces to fan out looking for jihadists in Pakistan. That, of course, would be a recipe for disaster. A Pakistan invaded, weakened, divided and even defeated might bring temporary relief, but eventually permanent ruin to India. There seems no reason for India to play fortune’s fool. India and Pakistan can determine their own fate although time is not on their side.
Following their unsuccessful attempt to blow up Margaret Thatcher and other members of the British Cabinet at a hotel in Britain in 1984, the Irish Republican Army called the police to say, “Today we were unlucky. But remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.” The Nigerian student Omer Farooq Abdulmuttallab caught trying to blow up an American airliner over the Atlantic might have said the same thing, and so too other suicide bombers prevented by luck or good intelligence from reaching their targets. But luck, like chance, is a fickle friend. Eventually it runs out.
Manmohan Singh has begun what could prove to be the first step in a long process of the demilitarisation of Kashmir by withdrawing 30,000 Indian forces from Indian Kashmir. Pakistan has reciprocated by transferring an equal number of her forces to the Western border with Afghanistan. Sensibly, India has also commenced the process of taking on board Kashmiri groups fighting for independence in discussions on the future of Kashmir. These are nascent but welcome steps. Nevertheless, they are not enough. India should restart the composite dialogue process, conclude a number of agreements that await signature and begin once again the process of building confidence.

Because how far India and Pakistan are down the path of peace will determine their response to the next terrorist attack. Hopefully, negotiations would have advanced far enough to ensure that they can make their own ‘luck’ and not let the terrorists do so. In fact, the object should be to banish luck as a determining factor in relations. That surely is also the mandate that their respective peoples have given to two democratically elected governments. It is not ordained that the poisonous, clinging ivy of the terrorist should smother and suffocate the tree of peace. “We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets,” rightly said Karl Popper.

The writer is a former ambassador

Obama Selling Racist Policies Using Black Preacher

[If Obama's naive or sell-out preacher wants to understand the joint US/India policies he is defending, then he should go to Peshawar.]

India and US can make world a better place to live in

“India and America have greatest moral leaders and values.”  Otis Moss III

Press Trust Of India

India and United States must play a key role in making the world a better place to live through their high moral leadership qualities and values, an advisor to US President Barack Obama said in Mumbai on Tuesday.

“India and America have greatest moral leaders and values. I believe it will help dealing with racism and any other problem in any society. Both the countries can demonstrate it through non-violence and spreading the message of love,” Otis Moss III told students at H R College of Commerce in Mumbai.
Youths, the leaders of tomorrow, can determine how to confront racism, inequality and evils in the society. “We all must make sure that we are not carriers of them and ensure that we remove these roadblocks,” Moss, who is an Advisor to Obama on faith-based council and neighbourhood partnerships, said.
Describing Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King as greatest leaders of 20th century, he said “India has an opportunity to demonstrate to the world the meaning of great leadership in 21st century. As India has a large and diverse population, it has a great history,” he said.
Grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Professor Rajmohan Gandhi and NCP MP Supriya Sule were also present at the event.

We Outsourced Ohio To Death, Now We Bribe Indian Corporations To Create Jobs For Us

As Indian Firms Hire 1300 Americans in Ohio, Governor Rejoices

Taking a break from the fully subsidized stock market and returning to the fully subsidized – with money we don’t have - economy….

It appears after a few decades of moving first blue collar work outside the country, and now increasingly white collar work [Aug 15, 2008: Cost Cutting in New York's Financial firms, but a Boom in India] we are now at the point where the long awaited payback for such sacrifices by the middle and working class has arrived?

1300 jobs are returning to America via Indian outsourcing firms?  And all it will cost the American taxpayer is $19 million in tax credits so Ohio can create said 1300 jobs?  Aha! Finally, the seeds of success from sending millions of  American jobs overseas to create an army of middle class in those countries … somewhere academics in a dusty economics office are rejoicing as they whisper “I told you so!”.  I say that with tongue firmly planted in cheek…

p.s. where exactly is Ohio getting $19 million? considering they are raiding my wallet to pay for “stimulus” ? But I digress.

Or let’s put it another way… as the talented class of worker/job leaves the US [Sep 21, 2009: USA Today - More of World's Talented Workers Opt to Leave USA] we are receiving in return the jobs we jettisoned some 20 years ago?  And all it takes is bribery ($19M) by already bankrupt state governments? Sounds like a winning formula, indeed!  Now just imagine if we can continue to demolish the middle / working class – who after suffering an entire decade of no wage growth (adjusted for inflation) – now yearn for a job, any job – even those that have them going backwards in wage “growth”.  [Sep 4, 2009: Job Seekers Across America Willing to Take Substantial Pay Cuts]  No worries though – who needs jobs of any sort, low paying or not –  when you have such a generous government, with unlimited pockets? [Jun 5, 2009: 1 in 6 Dollars of Income Now Via Government; Highest Since 1929]

Yes indeed, the growing global pie of prosperity is working wonders – just look around you; things are *so* much better than 15 years ago. :) [Dec 8, 2007: Do the Bottom 80% of Americans Stand a Chance?]  As we see global wage arbitrage play out even faster than I envisioned [Sep 14, 2009: Global Wage Arbitrade at the Micro Level: Marvell Technology] [Nov 5, 2009: Blue Coat Systems - More Global Wage Arbitrage] let me re-introduce my list of questions for those who deal in textbooks or theory (while living in ivory towers), rather than in reality.

1. How many years will take place between the displacement of workers “today” in America and the “middle class demanding things in China” from America?
2. What do we do with those workers in the meantime aside from plugging them into government work or pseudo government (health care)?
3. What will happen to the income of said “displacements” as they move out of jobs from a very good high tech company to… (crickets chirping)?
4. What exactly are Americans making today that the Chinese want and need to import excluding large scale industrial weapons / defense?
5. What exactly will Americans be making in “some day in the future” (5? 10? 15 years?) when the Chinese middle class get to a level of wealth and can buy things from us… ?
6. Whatever those products are you named in question 5, why can’t the Chinese make them internally in 5, 10, 15 years?

**************************

Let’s turn back to the most recent story… which for VERY long time readers of FMMF is not a new story – we in fact talked about this in January 2008 [Jan 28, 2008 - India Facing a Shortage of... Workers???]

How can a country with 1 billion souls be short of workers? Well it’s a certain type of worker of course – and those type are in short supply. When I read the article (whenever it was) last year about how IBM and Accenture were expanding in very big ways and outbidding the Wipro’s (WIT) and Infosys’ (IFY) for talent, I knew this was not an area to be invested in (these were major darlings of the market in 04-06), even though there is a serious dearth of Indian ADRs to invest in, in the USA. Bidding wars for talent eat at the profit margins.

Keep in mind this fits in very well with my “global wage arbitration” theme – which simply states for those in the bottom 60-80%, our wages will be falling to a mean, as those who can provide similar/same services throughout the globe rise… until eventually they (near) match. Sounds impossible eh? What if I told you I could get you a loan for 110% of the value of your home, with nothing down and I wouldn’t check your income. You’d laugh… if this were 2001.

There is no blame or finger to point here – this is the reality of the truly flat, global economy we are now in stage 1 of. Eventually it will reach the point jobs are outsourced back to the US ….. No wait, that is already happening ‘Indian Call Center Lands in Ohio – CNNMoney.com’

That was then… this is now.  But oh, the devil in the details – Tata alone has some 125,000 workers, with 50% of revenue coming from North American (read: US) companies.  13,000 of those jobs are in the States (i.e. 10%) which in and of itself would be pretty shabby, but even further of those 13,000… only 1300 are actual Americans (1%).  The rest appear to be H1 Visa types.  But don’t let that stop the ribbon cutting ceremony Governor Strickland - putting 1300 Americans to work for a cost of $19 million is sound economics… and you can tout far more “down the road” since no one looks under the hood.  Oh well, what’s $19 million among friends nowadays?  It’s not even a rounding error on top of a rounding error.

Via BusinessWeek:

• (Governor) Strickland threw in $19 million in tax credits and invited the Tata Consultancy Services crew to a state dinner at the governor’s mansion. “The economy is difficult,” Strickland says. “I will go wherever I can to find jobs.”
• TCS said yes, and in November Strickland showed up at the sprawling wooded campus for a ceremony to mark the hiring of the 300th employee at what has become the cornerstone for TCS’s North American efforts. Tata has hired some 250 graduates of Ohio State University (I’ll supress comment), the University of Cincinnati, and other nearby schools. Soon the facility may employ as many as 1,000 Americans doing back-office and technology outsourcing for U.S. health-care companies and local governments. (I’m laughing at the customer list, and how circular this all is… borrowing money from the government – which is broke – to pay for backoffice work for government and pseudo government companies!)
• With the economy growing again—but unemployment stuck at double-digit levels—states and municipalities across the U.S. are scrambling to woo anyone with hiring plans—even if that means going, hat in hand, to the same bunch that have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs going overseas.
• Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Tallahassee have all been actively courting Indian tech outfits. Wipro Technologies (WIT) in March inaugurated a center in Atlanta, which now has 350 employees—nearly 300 of them Americans, including senior managers recruited from U.S. tech rivals.
• Infosys Technologies (INFY), meanwhile, is planning an operation in Dallas to target some of the $52 billion the U.S. government will spend on outsourcing work in 2010.  (again it is so sickingly circular… the main growth engine of America now is government and its key offshoot via Medicare – healthcare.  The shell game when you sit down and think about it, is amazing)

Now one might ask why, unlike every sector of corporate America, the Indian firms must actually hire locally rather than take the work back to their domicile?

• For Indian companies, U.S. facilities can mean more work on government and health-care projects—areas where laws prevent the transfer of data overseas.

Too bad… otherwise this charade would not be necessary, and the work could be done back in Mumbai.

But since we do love our charades, and America is no longer about actual solutions but all about political face saving – all we truly have is a political stunt and an almost Trojan Horse strategy to get to American taxpayer money by foreign firms, all so local politicians can say “I’m doing something! Re-elect me!”.

• Some critics say that the new centers offer little more than political cover and do little to boost employment in the U.S. “One reason they are doing this is for public relations,” says Ron Hira, an expert on offshoring at Rochester Institute of Technology. “They want to send the message, ‘We’re creating jobs for Americans.’”

Amazingly, we see the EXACT same thing by the sellouts politicians when it comes to the Chinese firms in alternative energy.  After it came to light that Senator Schumer  was unhappy that a Chinese firm was getting a huge wind order turbine bid, on the back of the US taxpayer [Nov 2, 2009: Lack of Green Energy Manufacturing Capability in US Means 84% of Stimulus Goes to Foreign Firms] – within weeks a plan to open a plant by this company (which we once invested in, and is currently one of the hottest stocks in the market) in the US was announced!  Problem solved; controversy averted – full access to US stimulus funds all for a mere pittance of a cursory amount of US employees..   And we see the exact same thing with Chinese solar firms – opening their one off plant in the US to say “we’re here to create jobs! Even if 99% of our workforce remains in China, we can give your politicians a wonderful ribbon cutting ceremony at that new solar assembly plant. Now give us all your stimulus money!” (insert Cookie Monster munching sound here) It works in Ohio, so why not Arizona [Nov 17, 2009: China Pushes Solar, Wind Development]

For the majority residing inside the Matrix, they say “heckuva job Brownie! (Strickland!).  My government is working hard for me!”  Then of course they look around and try to figure out where all the jobs are.

Those outside of the Matrix are only left to roll their eyes.

But who are we to complain?  We’ve decided we are not a nation who needs to actually build such lowly products so we’re happy to let other countries do 99% of the work, while foreign companies open a plant here or there to showcase they are “all in” with the Americans.  Which they are especially eager to do when taxpayer money is being thrown around in a free for all.

Our surreal life continues… Indian, call centers… Chinese, solar cells… potato. tomato.  As long as a good photo opportunity arises for the politicos, the sheeple of America seem to buy it hook, line and sinker.

So what did we have earlier? 1300 Americans to be hired at full staffing … ?

• It’s true that the jobs Indian companies have created in the U.S. are a rounding error compared with their overall workforce.
• And TCS has more than 11,000 Indians working in the U.S. on temporary visas, while Wipro has 7,000.

Ah, details… details.  1300 for us, tens of thousands for those on temporary visas…

• “Offshore outsourcers’ wonderful profitability has largely been on the back of labor arbitrage,”" says Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of Everest Group, a Dallas consulting firm that advises companies on outsourcing strategies. “Those profits surely would take a hit if the Indian companies start hiring more Americans.”

Ooohh, I love when terms I’ve been using for years (labor arbitrage) begin hitting the mainstream.  I really need to start trademarking some of this stuff years in advance.

• TCS already had to delay opening the Ohio center for almost six months during the recession in the U.S. Wipro says its Atlanta operation isn’t yet profitable. Both say American facilities are unlikely to create huge numbers of new jobs in the U.S. soon. (by not soon, they mean “never” – what business sense would there be?  You get full access to US taxpayers monies in exchange for a few hundred jobs, and said ribbon cutting ceremony – no need to expand past that)
• For several years, at least, (translation:. for decades, until Americans start earning $4.50/hour) the vast majority of work will continue to be done in India and other low-cost countries, according to Surya Kant, North America president for TCS.

******************

Just to be clear this is not a rant against Chinese, or Indians or in fact the inevitable march of globalization.  Capital will dominate and labor will be interchangeable among countries – this is the path of the past 20 years, and it only accelerates from here.  The piece is simply is to highlight the reality behind the press releases and photo ops.  Americans should be asking (and this is not protectionist) why they are layering on so much more debt simply to have much of it shuffled to places far, far away.  Which ironically is where much of the money was borrowed from in the first place.  (can you follow which shell the peanut is under?)  But inside the Matrix we don’t ask these things, instead we refer to convenient dogma… let me check my bullet point.  Ah yes, its “free market capitalism”. ;)

And with that, the first soap box of 2010 is in the books….I will assume one or more might follow this year. ;)

Wars “R” Us: Making the World Safe for American Domination

Posted by thomaspainescorner on January 5, 2010

By Emily Spence

1/5/10

In destructive economic systems, there is a feedback loop wherein it becomes self-confirming that greed and aggression lead to gains rather than acts that involve “playing by the rules”, sharing profits, cooperating and helping others to prosper. As activities on Wall Street and in transnational corporations confirm, successful players are expected to produce income by any means possible, pay workers as little as required, charge as much as can be obtained for products and always tap into new markets for an enlarged customer base. It, also, requires a perception to be created that some newly devised product is desirable and must replace the older versions for which there is often built-in obsolescence.

In any case, new markets must always be found in order to raise financial yields. Any corporate manager who did not strive to develop them would quickly find himself in an unemployment office in addition to his being blacklisted by former colleagues.

Moreover, new stocks of resources, the raw materials from which products are made, must be tapped for global industries regardless of whether the people in the regions supplying these stores want to share them or not. In a similar vein, large scale commercial operations heavily rely on fossil fuels in the obtainment of raw resources, haulage of them to manufacturing sites, production of finished products and transportation of merchandise to market. So a steady source of petroleum must, also, be guaranteed.

This entire process, therefore, requires government leaders in support of their countries’ industries to wrestle control of needed goods. Simultaneously, they have to convince the public that there are solid reasons to carry out assaults in resource rich regions of the world — places like the Caspian Sea, with its oil estimates ranging up to about 200 billion barrels or 15% of total world reserves. Add to this treasure the fact that the Caspian Sea, also, is believed to contain 4% of the world’s proven reserves of gas according to the Congressional Research Service, an organization supplying bipartisan information to Congress, in its report titled “Caspian Oil and Gas: Production and Prospects”.

Indeed, its author Bernard A. Gelb, a specialist in industry economics, states: “There is a likelihood of relatively large reserves of crude oil and natural gas in the Caspian Sea region, and a consequent large increase in oil and natural gas production from that area. Because diversity of energy sources and energy security are considerations in Congressional deliberations on energy policy, this prospect could play a role in such discussions. However, there are obstacles to increases in Caspian Sea region production of oil and gas [such as Russia's and Iran's unwillingness to hand Caspian Sea resources over to U.S. control] that may slow development.” He goes on to add: “However, Iran now can compete somewhat with the BTC pipeline through oil “swaps” that ultimately divert Caspian region oil away from Western, including U.S., markets. Iran has enlarged its tanker terminal at Neka on the Caspian Sea coast, enhancing its capacity to deliver Caspian oil to refineries for local consumption, with an equivalent amount of Iranian oil exported through Persian Gulf terminals.” [1]

Put alternately, uncooperative countries, such as Iran and Venezuela, with assets coveted by western corporations give the perfect excuse to western governments to demonize them, threaten them and seek out destabilization of their regimes. All the same, the maligned nations will not let their reserves be plundered whether bullied or not by outside groups willing to use any means possible to obtain their prizes.

Further, full government support of corporate goals is nearly always available. After all, members of Congress want huge donations for reelection campaigns.

At the same time, it becomes quickly clear about whose interests they, ultimately, serve (rather than the public’s) when government officials’ desire for these contributions, lucrative future jobs after exiting public service and maximization of personal profits from their financial holdings are added into the mix. Indeed, “members of Congress invested nearly 196 million dollars of their own money in business that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon”. [2] So taken all together, these conditions provide plenty of motivation to keep the nation’s war drums beating.

Therefore, wars are big business, most notably for investors and employees in the aerospace and defense industries. The related purposes, like the ones guiding most corporations, are hardly humanistic. Instead new sources of revenue, cheap resources from conquered lands, and new markets for products and services are the sine qua non.

Accordingly, the Pentagon and the corporations that supplies goods and manpower for wars have one general intention in mind and that is not even to win wars. Winning wars would mean that money-spinning contracts and growth of the organizations’ national and global influence would shrink. Jobs, then, would disappear, high salaries would not be commanded and gargantuan earnings would cut back if wars were, actually, won and, thus, completed.

Instead, the intention is to strengthen control of regions and their resources, open up new markets for one’s own country’s products, continually advance into new territories to create the same outcome and, eventually, dictate assorted policies across the entire world. Consequently, the U.S.A., despite having a $12T federal deficit, aims to advance its ongoing plans to have full-spectrum dominance over the economies, territories, politics, military affairs and other entire governments on a full global scale and in support of American enterprises.

It, also, means that an all-out attempt to quell the Taliban will take place since Afghanistan and Pakistan are both needed to move the fossil fuels to emerging markets and ensure that central Asian economies are tied to U.S. corporate interests rather than those of Russia and China. On account, it is critical that both latter nations be blocked if western dominion over Asian markets for obtainment of raw resources and sales of final products, i.e., fossil fuels, are to result.

In the same vein, American citizens are not much of a consideration. After all, markets and remuneration for oil and other supplies might be superlative in India, China or other lands with advancing economies and plenty of money to spare. As such, concern over protection of us from terrorists (the latest justification for carrying out assaults abroad in lands like Yemen) and any desire to improve the lives of peoples in the U.S. or developing countries are minor considerations at best. Instead, it is far more on the mark to ask, as did Woodrow Wilson: “Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?”

So one winds up wondering whether a moment will ever arrive in which the public can, actually, identify this origin for wars and rise up in resistance to such a degenerate state of affairs. As an alternative, the populace can continue to equate support of war with a patriotic spirit, enthusiastically wave flags every time that there’s a parade with tanks and other weaponry, and endorse far-away assaults with hardly a dissenting murmur. Meanwhile war activities, themselves, increasingly bankrupt the country morally and financially.

As such, it is useful to bear in mind that warfare almost exclusively concerns resources and trade except for religious rivalries and the small scale fighting of feudal lords. With the desire to gain ever greater advantages for oneself and one’s own group by taking these away from other subjugated groups, campaigns have always been perpetuated under false pretexts, especially so when energy supplies are involved.

It follows, then, that any politician not exhibiting Woodrow Wilson’s stark honesty on this point is both a liar and a propagandist with the ulterior motive to control public perception so there is advancement of war. This understanding, if nothing else, should be absolutely clear.

At the same time, the use of contractors all but guarantees that the sort of public backlash that occurred from so many troops having been killed and injured in Vietnam will not be repeated. If there exists no mandatory conscription due to freelancers being used, American citizens will feel less threatened by war even though they are paying an exorbitant amount for it and for the aid to far-away lands that the U.S. government wants to influence through bribes.

And the bribes keep coming. For example, a record State Department and foreign aid budget, amounting $49 billion, cleared the House last summer.

So is it surprising that some Americans are furious that universal single-payer healthcare, infrastructure repairs, WPA-style jobs and budget relief for insolvent States in the union aren’t adequately provided? Is it flabbergasting that they are outraged over Israel receiving $2.4B in foreign aid (ostensibly used to buy weapons primarily manufactured by U.S. companies) in 2008 with an additional $30B promised over the next 10 years period? Should there be annoyance that many other countries receiving aid, i.e., Egypt ($1.7B in 2008), have the funds slated to purchase armaments ($1.3B of that Egyptian total) and have less than sterling human rights records? In any case, USAID’s total assets amounted to $26.1 billion as of September 2009. This huge amount will, certainly, help guarantee that many U.S. agendas abroad will be heartily followed by others.

Moving to become a largely authoritarian militaristic state — the U.S.A. shows little self-constraint as it forces its will, through a combination of buy-offs and assaults, wherever and however it pleases upon the rest of the world. As a result, it has to create a positive perception and ever larger gifts of money to acquire allies, certainly, fit the bill.

In addition, Americans no longer getting riled up because their sons were conscripted through a mandatory recruitment system, also, does so. Instead of a draft, the Pentagon will authorize, according to the Congressional Research Service, between 26,000 to 56,000 additional battlefield contractors in Afghanistan, which would total as a force between 130,000 to 160,000, or very nearly two for every single troop despite the added 30,000 troops recently authorized to ship off to Afghanistan.

In other words, outsourced war, while terribly expensive for taxpayers, seems the wave of the future as it doesn’t foment comprehensive anti-war activism. As such, the act of killing will increasingly become a large scale, lucrative industry supported by U.S. taxes and overseas loans (most notably from China).

So if any unemployed American wants a job, all that he needs to follow is the money, which is increasing going into U.S. invasions largely carried out by private mercenaries. Besides, he has many options if he doesn’t want to become an outworker.

For instance, he could join the armed forces, which offer plenty of opportunities for work since the U.S. government currently has over 1,000 military bases spread out across the world and roughly the same number on U.S. soil. He’d, also, have plenty of company as there, presently, exist 1,445,000 active-duty armed service members, 800,000 DOD civilian employees and 1.2 million National Guards, along with other reservists who are periodically tapped for Middle East ventures.

This vast setup translates to the U.S., with only 4% of the world’s population, allocating more than $711B annually in military spending, which obviously burdens the taxpayer and removes funds from other programs that would, actually, serve human welfare at home and abroad. In addition, arrangement, obviously, does not lead to global security, nor the alleviation of poverty. If there is any doubt on these points, ask any Iraqi or Afghani his assessment.

Instead regions are destabilized, and the social and material structures that previously had contributed to human benefits largely are blown to smithereens. Even so, fighting insurgents, at least for the U.S.A., will continue to be a mainstay of foreign policy, as well as the U.S. economy, itself.

All in all, the following facts well lay out the course that, instead of heavy reliance on diplomacy, the U.S. leadership has chosen:

“US military spending accounts for 48 percent, or almost half, of the world’s total military spending
US military spending is more than the next 46 highest spending countries in the world combined
US military spending is 5.8 times more than China, 10.2 times more than Russia, and 98.6 times more than Iran.
US military spending is almost 55 times the spending on the six “rogue” states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) whose spending amounts to around $13 billion, maximum. (Tabulated data does not include four of the six, as the data only lists nations that have spent over 1 billion in the year, so their budget is assumed to be $1 billion each)
US spending is more than the combined spending of the next 45 countries.

The United States and its strongest allies (the NATO countries, Japan, South Korea and Australia) spend $1.1 trillion on their militaries combined, representing 72 percent of the world’s total.

The six potential “enemies,” Russia, and China together account for about $205 billion or 29% of the US military budget.”

“[T]he lion’s share of this money is not spent by the Pentagon on protecting American citizens. It goes to supporting U.S. military activities, including interventions, throughout the world. Were this budget and the organization it finances called the ‘Military Department,’ then attitudes might be quite different. Americans are willing to pay for defense, but they would probably be much less willing to spend billions of dollars if the money were labeled ‘Foreign Military Operations.’” [3]

In any case, anyone choosing to enter military service should keep in mind that contracting companies often show little loyalty to U.S. troops, nor a sense of responsibility for their actions when involving civilians of war torn countries. This lapse in accountability is clearly demonstrated by the shootings and the recent dismissal of charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards for civilian deaths in Iraq. [4]

So instead, there increasingly exist situations in which depraved indifference to life is exhibited. One of many such circumstances is this one describing KBR’s seemingly deliberate neglect to inform in a timely fashion about troop exposure to a highly poisonous chemical, sodium dichromate, at a site in Iraq overseen by KBR. In addition, KBR is fighting a reparatory lawsuit related to the incident. After all, any deserved payout for damage and death is to be avoided at all costs as remuneration would, absolutely, impact company earnings.

Concerning the event:

“What upsets some of the Guardsmen most of all is that, after serving their country faithfully, they believe the Army and KBR let them down by not fully acknowledging or investigating their exposure to the toxic chemical or their serious health problems. Some suffered for years and only recently have a possible explanation why.”

“[Sodium dichromate] had been used by Iraqi workers prior to the war to prevent corrosion in the pipes at the plant. There were hundreds of bags at the chemical at the plant, some of them clearly labeled.

“The mission’s official military name was Task Force RIO (‘Restoration of Iraqi Oil’). KBR got the contract.

“Six years later, some of the Guardsmen assigned to provide security for Task Force RIO at the plant are dead, dying or suffering from serious health problems–including rashes, perforated septums and lung disease. One of the foremost experts in sodium dichromate, Dr. Herman Gibb, says the Guardsmen’s symptoms are consistent with ’significant exposure’ to the chemical.

“KBR argues that the company is not to blame. The company says it told the Army about the dangerous chemical as soon as it was identified at the plant. That, the company says, was on July 25, 2003.

“But, international KBR documents contradict that claim, and indicate that the company became aware of the chemical at the site two months earlier.” [5]

Of course, one cannot expect mercenaries and outside contractors operating in war zones to care much about the lives of troops or others. After all, their main loyalty is not to the U.S. military, nor the U.S.A. as a whole, but to the companies that hired them and through which they are being paid to do whatever they are told.

Aside from war zone contracting firms, many other transnational consortiums are doing equally well during the economic downturn, as the multimillion dollar bonuses given to management of these power houses continually remind. One such company is McDonald’s. In fact, its balance sheet even indicates that it has been wildly prospering since the recession worsened.

With always more deforested land available around the globe, impoverished peoples looking to make a fast buck are more and more turning to cattle ranching and soy farming for animal feed. So therein lies plenty of breaks for McDonald’s.

Not having to subsume the environmental costs for its policies, it and several other fast food syndicates are cornering the market in sales for families wanting to eat out, but without the funds to dine at more costly eateries. So for the first quarter of 2009, sales went up and earned an impressive $979.5 million, a nearly 4% increase. The rest of the year followed suit despite fears that a strengthening dollar might lower gains due to the exchange rate for other currencies collected at overseas’ sites.

However, the company’s management in Oak Brook, Ill really needn’t have worried. After all, there are over 31,000 restaurants worldwide, with more than 1.5 million workers operating in 119 countries on six continents with over 47 million daily customers. So major losses would hardly be in the picture given that the majority of people around the world are now struggling to make ends meet.

At the same time, these stats are bound to change for the better when even more populations are inundated by American armed forces bent on subduing them, inadvertently destroying local businesses and creating opportunities for ever more McDonald’s workers forced to accept minimum wages as an alternative to no job in their newly destroyed lands. Like their impoverished American counterparts, who’ve been stripped of good jobs with decent wages in the mad rush towards globalized industry, they too can find the satisfaction of a secure employment position with a low salary and, at the end of a weary day, a happy meal as an extra perk.

As McDonald’s leadership surely must know, bringing “democracy” to developing nations, eventually, has a big payoff for American businesses focused on wiping out the small scale competition like Mom and Pop restaurants overseas. If one can endure patient waiting, the further openings will be a veritable whopper. It’s just a matter of time.

In the end, wars are successful commercial enterprises. As a result, they are, progressively, becoming the foundation for the new American economy. Especially this is so as former jobs are not coming back to the American shores in that it’s cheaper for transnational companies to outsource and offshore work.

In relation, the Second World War not only jump-started the American economy in the aftermath of the Great Depression, it provided lots of employment prospects for many subsequent years on account of the need to rebuild across whole continents and in their devastated cities like London, Dresden, Mukden (now Shenyang) and Ningbo. This is not the case this time around due to the heavy reliance on outside contractors, who more often than not don’t reconstruct much well at all, as the U.S. soldier electrocutions on a base in Baghdad and the Task Force RIO poisonings clearly demonstrate. In other words, they often are potentially dangerous and largely useless.

This all in mind, any financial and other benefits from warfare will not uplift Main Street. Instead, they increasingly will serve the special interests of corporations. As such, the economic downturn will continue to deepen throughout the U.S.A. while thousands of foreigners in assault zones are maimed and murdered.

Consequently, all that we can hope is that Russia and China will persist in making improvements in their own nations and the lives of their citizens. It’s obvious that, if they were to mimic America’s squandering of money in ever enlarging wars, the outcome wouldn’t be good at all.

[1] “Caspian Oil and Gas: Production and Prospects”, CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web, Bernard A. Gelb; Resources, Science, and Industry Division at Caspian Oil and Gas: Production and Prospects [http://italy.usembassy.gov/pdf/other/RS21190.pdf].

[2] FINANCE: U.S. Lawmakers Invested in Iraq, Afghanistan Wars – … [http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41893].

[3] “In Context: US Military Spending Versus Rest of the World” and “The Billions for ‘Defense’ Jeopardize Our Safety”, Center For Defense Information at World Military Spending — Global Issues [http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending].

[4] Blackwater Dismissal Risks Hurting Iraq Relations – WSJ.com [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126229226969112429.html].

[5] NBC News Investigation: Toxic water in Iraq – The Daily … [http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/articles/2120353.aspx].

The United States’ Global Agenda, vis-à-vis South Asia

Posted on August 14th, 2009

By S. Hewage and L. M. de Silva

It is a well-known fact among international security experts that one of the longstanding foreign policy doctrines of the United States is to destabilize countries and regions that are considered hostile to US economic and strategic interests. This policy has been the bedrock of American military and covert operations across the globe throughout the cold war period. When the US fails to win support from countries for its self-interested economic and defense policies, the US undertakes covert operations to overthrow democratically elected leaders in those countries by supporting military juntas and insurgent movements, cut off economic aid, and isolate them internationally until they give in to US pressure.

Since the end of the cold war, the US has inducted a new weapon to its arsenals of destabilization: This new weapon is the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded by the West. The US has been openly supporting various nongovernmental organizations to marshal mass support against elected governments that refuse to kowtow the US on the pretext of campaigning to protect human rights, media freedom, and democracy. The US funded international nongovernmental organizations and their local counterparts have been operating as the proxy of the US government across Latin America, the Middle East, and South, and South East Asia. The underline objective of all these covert operations is to cause political upheavals in specific countries, or regions with a long-term global strategy.

Once a nation becomes embroiled in fighting internal rebellions, whether they are ethnic or religiously motivated groups, or involved in cross-border conflicts, that nation soon becomes overwhelmed by the concerns of its survival. This would eventually force the leadership of that country to capitulate to the American strategic and economic interests in that country, and the region. This, in turn, would ensure US economic and political hegemony in the long- run, especially in nonwestern countries. For example, when Saddam Hussein refused to bow down to US pressure they invaded his country and violated all international conventions, rules and norms at will, and killed more than half a million civilians.

In 1998, a UN survey revealed that the mortality rates among children below five years of age in southern Iraq had more than doubled compared to the previous decade, meaning 500,000 excess deaths of children had occurred by that year due to diarrhea and acute respiratory infections because of sanctions imposed by the US and it allies. UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq (1997-98) Denis Halliday called sanctions ‘genocide’ and resigned in protest. His successor Hans von Sponeck followed suit in 2002 citing the same reasons. The UN World Food Program Director in Iraq Jutta Burghardt also registered his protest by fully subscribing to Sponeck’s position and tendering his resignation. That was before the US lead invasion of Iraq in 2003. Following the invasion, at the end of 2006, more than 600,000 civilians had been killed. The high-ranking retired US government official argued that the “price was worth” considering the importance of US strategic and economic interests in that region. It was argued that the invasion was necessary to remove “weapons of mass-destruction” that were being amassed by Saddam Hussein. When that was proved untrue, the Anglo-American invaders argued that they wanted to establish democracy in Iraq. Today Iraq is in the midst of a civil war created by the West. The major Western news organizations and the non-governmental organizations such the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which are heavily funded by the West, remain decidedly silence despite daily carnage taking place in that country. There is no moral outrage on the part of these human rights campaigners for the suffering of innocent Iraqis when the culprits were their paymasters.

Iraq is today one of the most dangerous places on Earth, thanks to the global “democracy” campaign of the Anglo-American leaders. Iraqis today not only have no democracy, but most importantly, lack basic security to go about their daily activities. In the meantime, the US has gained a permanent foothold in Iraq as never before with a largest fortified embassy, total control of its oil supply and, most importantly, a puppet regime installed by the US. This has given the US a guaranteed access to Iraq’s market for the supply of both military and consumer goods. The Anglo-American global “democracy” project is now complete, and the Western media and INGO allies are fully satisfied with the outcome of the Iraq war. They have moved on to their next assignment: Afghanistan, which is part the US strategy in South and Southeast Asia.

The South Asia has been particularly important for the US global strategy since the cold war. The creation of Al Quida organization involving Islamic militants against the Soviet backed regime in Afghanistan began in the early 1980s. With the end of the cold war, the key partners of the US strategic alliances broke up, and Al Quida became a sworn enemy of the West. A classic case of the “creature turned against its creator” with vengeance.

Some may think that the purpose of the current war in Afghanistan and Pakistan involving US and NATO troops is to capture Osama Bin Laden, who is hiding somewhere in the tribal area of Pakistan. If that is the real reason, a well equipped, nearly 100,000-man army should have finished the job in a few weeks, if not months. The truth is that they are not interested in Osama Bin Laden per se, but to stir up regional conflicts to prevent countries in that neighborhood from realizing their economic potential.

The longer this conflict lasts, both Afghanistan and Pakistan will have no chance of economic recovery, and will remain impoverished. They would continue to depend on American economic and military aid to carry on with a vicious military campaign, which has no obvious winners, except the US.

Likewise, India will continue to be rattled by periodic cross-border attacks by disaffected Muslims in the region. Moreover, India’s inability to resist the US pressure to get involved in the American geo-political agenda in that region will eventually antagonize not only China, but also many other smaller countries in the region.

Throughout the Cold War, the US kept Pakistan as its ally to undermine India, which was an ally of the Soviet Union. However, today, the US has almost abandoned Pakistan in favor of India, as the new US strategy to contain China requires much larger military and economic cooperation in the region. By bringing India on the side of the US to counter China’s economic and military influence in South Asia, the US foreign policy and military strategists intend to create a much bigger conflict in that region, which would destroy India. The Indian foreign policy mandarins must somehow find a way to cut India free from the “American Rope,” if India is to avoid military confrontation with China.

As recently as last week, Indian Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sureesh Mehta warned Indian authorities that India is no match for China when it comes to Chinese military and naval superiority. The US strategists are fully aware of this “sudden” and “perceived” insecurity by the Indian military leaders. In an attempt to exploit this, the US military strategists and media continue to highlight a perceived so called “military ring” being created by China in South Asia. Although Chinese concerned is purely its own economic and territorial integrity, sovereignty, and national security, the US has its own agenda to weaken China through various insurgent groups including Muslim minority and Tibetan separatists. By portraying China as a potential military threat to India, two large emerging economies in Asia, and forcing India to spend a large sum of money to build up Indian armed forces annually, the US is going to benefit economically in the short-run by selling military hardware to India. However, in the long-run, the objective is to destroy both China and India, as potential global economic rivals to the US.

FAILED IMPERIALIST ATTEMPTS TO VANQUISH SRI LANKA – Part II

Posted on June 12th, 2009

A.A.M.NIZAM MATARA

It was not only in the recent war theatre that the British Government and British authorities opposed Sri Lanka and made every effort to undermine the legitimate aspirations of Sri Lankan masses.  When the people’s resurgence took place in the 1950s, shattering Britain’s hidden objectives of remote controlling Sri Lankan affairs through their proxies differing only in the colour of skin, Britain had been hostile to Sri Lanka whenever it became possible.  Britain made desperate attempts to save the terrorist leadership even against the wishes of the Tamil masses.   Rajan Hoole and K. Sritharan of the award-winning University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) reported recently that Sri Lankan Tamils are wary of any peace talks that will give oxygen to the LTTE.

We have even experienced the agony of some British High Commissioners trespass their diplomatic privileges and behaving with the colonial mindset.  Dominic Chilcot was one such arrogant and despicable individual who violated all diplomatic norms who behaved crudely like a warlord during his assignment in Sri Lanka.  He even visited newspaper editors to instruct them what to write and what not to write.

This arrogant High Commissioner indulged in many controversial issues and the Dudley Senanayake memorial lecture delivered by him on 10^th December 2007 was a highly despicable pronouncement which even deserved his immediate deportation.

Totally digressing from the topic he was supposed to speak, he made the occasion a platform to introduce neo-colonialist concepts and pass on horrendous commandments to Sri Lanka.  This malevolent nitwit was the rogue who introduced the concept of what is called the “R2P” the right to protect or right to interfere in Sri Lanka, saying that “South Asian affairs have become very much a part of British political life and Britain has a direct interest in the conflict here and in the establishment of a fair and lasting peace”.  This nitwit ridiculed the concept of absolute sovereignty of nations, and also declared that political aspiration for Eelam was not illegitimate.

It was this dunderhead’s despicable speech that gave a life line to the NGO vultures, political traitors, and media dogs  to invite all sorts of good for nothing malingerer scoundrels to storm our nation one after the other in the pretext of attending various inapt memorial and community functions and emphasize the right of the international community to intervene in our internal affairs, criticize the mode of governance, raise a cry of alleged human rights violations, abductions, extortions, killings etc, and demand restrictions to development assistance and even justifiable loans, until such time that Sri Lanka conceded to their demands.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who inaptly thinking himself that Sri Lanka is yet a British colony, made several neurotic and compulsive telephone calls to His Excllency the President demanding to halt the military operation for two weeks and even insisted on sending a special envoy to report to him on the status of military operations in the North.  If it was not for our steely willed President and his forthright response that war will be over within two weeks this ruffian and penny-wise pound foolish Scottish Suddha would have achieved his vicious objectives as he wished.

It was however, amazing to find this ruffian the other day in an absolute display of duplicitous policy on terrorism calling the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan ‘a source of a chain of terror’, a crucible of terror, reaching as far as the streets of Britain. He therefore wanted Afghanistan and Pakistan tackled together with might and main. It is also equally amazing to find this ruffian being blind to tiger terrorist hooliganism and vandalism prevalent not only in the streets of Britain but also in the British Parliamentary Square, the seat of so-called democracy, which these terrorists have named as “Tiger Square”, bullying the Sri Lankan President to halt military operations and give a respite to the terrorist leadership, in complete contrast to policies he advocates for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The ignominious iters as “Sillyband”) was the last futile attempt made by the British imperialists to provide a life line to the terrorist leadership and reverse the marvellous gains made by the Sri Lankan gallant forces in the Northern front, with enormous sacrifices, which was a sheer humiliation to the so-called powerful armies of U.S and Britain getting mercilessly slaughtered daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. This Psychopath who had even attempted to belittle and deride the political hierarchy of India, found the real match in our outspoken heroic Defense Secretary Mr Gotabhaya Rajapkse who bluntly told him that people in this country approve of what the President is doing and a leader must listen to people in his own country and not to the foreign minister of the UK. Rejecting his call for a ceasefire and access for what they call ‘aid workers’ to the civilian zone, Mr. Rajapakse vowed that the government would not stop its war on terror until the LTTE was crushed and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran captured, dead or alive. He was ultimately forced to depart our shores pratfallen and mission unaccomplished.

Demonstrating his sordid character, upon return to his home-grounds, this Sillyband made a statement in the House of Commons on belittling the Governmen’s relief efforts, disputing the figures relating to rescued and entrapped persons, and blamed the government for not permitting their designated stooges to enter/visit the camps. However, the multi-party British Parliamentary delegation who visited Sri Lanka on the invitation of H.E. the President, after visiting the camps in Vavuniya negated his allegations.

Having defeated the ruthless terrorist gang militarily and having opened a new chapter in the history of the world and having even taught a lesson to the powerful countries of the world on how to defeat terrorism, we should not remain complacent about the laurels of our achievement. We must be mindful that the horrendous unpatriotic (the minority) elements in Sri Lanka and the remnants of tiger terrorists in the West and Tamil Nadu in collaboration with the haughty western nations who are unhappy about our success would make every attempt to create dissent and discord in Sri Lanka and design the landscape for the terrorists to raise their ugly heads once again in different and unexpected forms as happened in many counties in the world. These vicious elements could raise their ugly heads in the form of neo-terrorism, economic subjugation, trade restrictions, cultural enslavement, religious aversion, or communal disharmony.

In the meantime, individually and collectively we must make every endeavour to confront these anti-Sri Lankan elements and either win them over or defeat them through every possible means, which among other things may include:

- Sri Lankan government should adopt a firm non vacillating foreign policy upholding righteous causes similar to the foreign policy adopted by the late Prime Minister Mr. S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike prior to the advent of the Non-Aligned Movement. Sri Lanka may even give leadership to such a multi-polar foreign policy;

- The Embassies/High Commissions should cease to be springboards for providing educational and employment opportunities for the children and relations of the Embassy officials. The Embassy officials should operate round the clock to counter anti Sri Lankan vicious propaganda and promote and propagate about true facts on Sri Lanka and the Embassies should become vehicles of building bridges between the respective countries and Sri Lanka. They should coordinate their activities with the Sri Lankan community resident in the respective countries and encourage and induce these personnel to act as Sri Lankan emissaries in their respective fields;

- Sri Lankans resident in foreign countries should form non racist, non exclusive organisations to promote all aspects of life in Sri Lanka and these groups should regularly meet legislators, powerful government officials, community leaders, industrialists, religious dignitaries and other important personalities to enlighten them about the true facts of life in Sri Lanka, to counter vicious propaganda against Sri Lanka, to promote tourism and trade, and to enlighten them on facilities, resources and opportunities available in Sri Lanka. They should also organise periodical cultural events, trade fares, tourist promotion and social gathering events in collaboration with Embassies/High Commissions in the respective countries enabling important personalities of the respective countries to attend and also encourage them to visit Sri Lanka and spend their holidays in our paradise island.

- Many foreign based terrorist Tamil commentators have boasted that their struggle would not cease with the decimation of the military arm and it woud now take a new vibrant form to pressurise the western countries and deny Sri Lanka any form of assistance and brand it as an outlaw nation. All patriotic Sri Lankans resident in foreign countries should continuously be vigilant of these intrigues, misrepresentation and distortion of facts and effectively counter such moves and expose the criminal elements and their vicious motives.

- Wherever we are we must get rid of our enslaved mindset of considering western products, western culture superior, such as the silly concepts of suddha wage, suddha hadapuwa, and make every efforts to live as Sri Lankans, appreciate values of Sri Lankan life, buy Sri Lankan products and in the alternative to buy only products of our friendly nations, thereby imposing a boycott on western products.

As His Excellency the President, while granting appointments to nearly 1,000 Graduate Teachers, emphasised recently that we should drop the words “NO”and “CAN’T” from our vocabulary, the foregoing suggestions are some of the points we can certainly accomplish if we unitedly and determinedly take action similar to the glorious feat our gallant forces achieved under enormous hardships and with unprecedented sacrifices. Let us show our gratitude to the nation by working hard in whatever way possible to rebuild our shattered nation and make it once again a mighty nation in the East.

Death to Democracy and Road to Dictatorship – Part I

Posted on January 4th, 2010

A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA.

We Sri Lankans succeeded in ending 30 years of brutal terrorists aggression in May this year due to the wholehearted contribution made by each and every patriotic citizen that enabled the armed forces to destroy the military wing of the terrorists at Nandikadal annihilating the LTTE military leadership and put an end to the life of its megalamaniac leader Prabhakaran.  This splendid success could never have been achieved if not for the total commitment made by all those who contributed towards this goal, in the face of sturdy and unprecedented combined attempts made by the powerful western nations, Tamil Diaspora and proxies of LTTE, treacherous political desperados and political bandits, NGO vultures, and the South Indian political elements to force a halt to the offensive operations and rescue the terrorist leadership.  In the whole history of Sri Lanka it never faced such threats and warnings from a multitude of fronts simoultaneously.

The patriotic masses who yearned for a complete wipe out of the terrorists and terrorism were however apprehensive that once again the victory will be snatched away from them as it happened in 1987 with the mere drop of Parippu parcels and Indian pressure under which President Jayawardene shamelessly acquiesced and commanded Lt. General Denzil Kobbekaduwa to halt operations and withdraw the forces to their respective barracks.

If not for this political intervention, and the shameless genuflecting to foreign pressure, Lt. General Kobbekaduwa and his troops would have wiped out the terrorists forever, as the LTTE at that time was in a nascent stage and had only a few thousand fighting cadres and had no Navy powerful than the combined navies of several Asian nations and had no Air Wing which even became a threat to India.

After President Jayawardene Sri Lanka was ruled by several Presidents and Prime Ministers and all of them failed to put an end to the rapidly growing terrorist scourge since all of them lacked determination and the political will to annihilate the terrorists, succumbed to external pressure, became deceptive to LTTE’s cunning maneouvres, failed to provide adequate men and material to all forces including the police, had no faith in the capabilities of our security forces, and moreover were ineffective to muster the backing of all patriotic masses from all walks of life for the war effort.

Annihilation of the LTTE’s military wing was possible because of a multitude of factors.  The prime factor among them was the solid and staunch leadership given by the President who by making every effort to provide men and material for the forces unswervingly faced all pressures, criticisms and threats from the world’s most powerful nations and foiled all attempts made by treacherous political desperados and political bandits to topple the government with the objective of halting the operations against the terrorists. Nonetheless, we should not remain complacent of what was achieved but be very cautious of the dangers that may befall us from the combined cabal of disgruntled elements who were unsuccessful in saving the LTTE leadership.

The mere annihilation of the LTTE military wing will not make Sri Lanka safe.  The last minute sturdy attempts made by western nations including the joint visit made by Foreign Ministers of two powerful western nations (initial attempt was to make it a joint visit of three Ministers) point to the fact that how important LTTE was in their neocolonial geopolitical roadmap in the face of rising Asian giants China and India.

Since Sri Lanka is situated in a strategically important location than the illegally acquired Dieggo Garcia  the western nations, despite unavoidable proscription of LTTE, considered and valued the LTTE as a vibrant agent to destabilize the region, as they maintain Israel, Georgia and several other nations and terrorist organizations to destabilize regions and establish their economical and political hegemony over those regions.

Having lost the mercenary force, the LTTE, which they were nurturing to destabilize China and India,and other nations in the Asian region, the western imperialists together with the international LTTE elements and unpatriotic political desperados and hooligans would certainly attempt now to install a puppet regime in Sri Lanka.  Most Sri Lankans were unaware that on October 15th some treacherous elements under Uniform attempted to snatch away the people’s victory over the LTTE, and install such a puppet regime.  Swift action taken by the President and India placing its security forces on alert foiled the intended coup attempt.

If not for the swift action taken by the President, similar to what happened through  an Army coup in Indonesia in 1966 overthrowing President Sukarno’s 32 year rule would have happened in Sri Lanka, and by now several thousand would have lost their lives in a blood bath worse than the Uva-Wellassa blood bath.  In Indonesia, the western powers and the local treacherous political elements resentful of President Sukarno’s people friendly rule and his close relationship with China supported Suharto’s take over of power and following this take over military backed militia went on rampage and mercilessly murdered upto two million Sukarno’s party (PKI) members and Chinese nationals.

Similarly in Chile, the Popular Unity Governemnt elected in 1970 of President Dr. Salvador Allende was toppled in 1973 with active support from American CIA and a military dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet was installed.  Following this coup over 3,200 people were killed, at least 80,000 were imprisoned, 30,000 subjected to gruesome torture, and another around 200,000 people fled the country seeking asylum in Argentina, Peru and several other Latin American countries.  It was also reported that Dictator Pinochet’s military intelligence even killed some of these exiled people going into the countries they found asylum.

Likewise in 1983 the American forces invaded the carribean island of Grenada and killed Prime Ministeer Maurice Bishop and a puppet Army General named Hudston Austin was installed as the Head of State. Nicaragua is another ountry where an Amercan puppet regime was installed by deposing Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government.

Our neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan too were subjected to the jackboot conspiracies of the western imperialists.  The father of Bangladesh Sheik Mujib ur Rehman, the elected popular Prime Minister of Bangladesh and his family members were brutally murdered by the Army on 15th August 1975 and General Zia ur Rehman was installed as President of Bangladesh.

Elected popular Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown and imprisoned by an Army Coup led by General Zia ul Haq on 5th July 1977 and he ruled the country for 11 years under an iron fist until he was disposed by his own mentors the Americans in a meticulously arranged plane crash in 1988.

All these incidents occurred when those countries were governed by persons who loved their country over and above their self and were committed and determined to develop their nations with populist agendas.  Only in Malaysia they were unable to impose their hegemony since Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed clearly understood their maneouvres freed the country from all bondages with western nations and steered the country on a self-reliance agenda, and fortunately that country did not have a treacherous political force prostrating before western imperialists and exercising political banditry.

There is every possibility that the western imperialists who are unable to squeeze us economically due to forthright assistance we receive from China, Iran, Libya, Russia (their sworn enemies) and from India and many Middle East countries, will make every attempt in collaboration with unpatriotic shady political crooks and immoral elements to install a puppet regime servile to them.

When the matriarch of our nation the late Prime Minister Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike without bowing down to American threats nationalized the oil companies in 1961 attempts were made to imprison and murder her in a Coup led by C.C.Dissanayake, the grandfather of Ravi Karunanayake at midnight on 27 January 1962. Due to timely action taken by a patriot, S.P.Colombo Mr. Stanley Senanayake to inform her through his father in law Mr. P.de S. Kularatne saved the Prime Minister and the then Ministers of the Cabinet from the planned massacre.  Incidentally the Octobdr 15th attempt to overthrow the government could indeed be another such effort that failed to materialize. The argument of dangers posed by the western imperialists to subjugate our nation is vividly confirmed by a bipartisan report on Sri Lanka that had been prepared by the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The New Yrok Times dated 6th December outlining details containing in the report says that the report emphasises Sri Lanka’s importance to protect U.S.geostrategic interests in the region. Saying Sri Lanka is too important a country to be isolated from the West, the report emphasises  that “Sri Lanka is located at the nexus of crucial maritime trading routes in the Indian Ocean connecting Europe and the Middle East to China and the rest of Asia,”  Coupled with terrorist sympathiser Robert Blakes uninvited unilateral visit to Sri Lanka we all Sri Lakans shoud be very cautious about the anemy agendas that threatens the future of our nation.
Anyone who has an iota of patriotism cannot allow the hard earned victory to be snatched away by the external and internal vicious hostile unpatriotic forces. It is the bounden duty of all patriotic masses to join hands placing the country before and above all other petty and parochial interests and save the nation from attempts being made to achieve through the back door and clandestinely what was failed to achieve through terrorism, econmomical subjugation, and gunpoint-diplomacy and through deception and banditry.

The forthcoming Presidential Election has offered us the best option to be visionary, to put a permanent end to underhand and despicable activities by enemies of the nation, thwart all threats to the country, and steer the nation on a development path and make it a worthwhile and peaceful country for our posterity.  Let us seriously examine in the forthcoming installments of this article who is capable of steering our nation in the right path and attempts being made to hinder our march to progress and prosperity.

Inconvenient Truths

ashok malik, TNN

Assessments of the David Headley episode have focused on two sets of perceived failures outside India.

At the ministry of external affairs there is hand-wringing as to whether the Indian consulate in Chicago did the equivalent of due diligence before fast-tracking Headley’s visa application or whether he covered his dodgy past completely.

At the home ministry, briefings by senior officials have allowed the impression to be created that the Americans are not being helpful, that they are deliberately refusing access to Headley, the half-Pakistani Chicago resident identified as a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror scout. Fairly wild speculation has resulted on how much American intelligence agencies knew about the likelihood of the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, and whether they did not pass on specific information so as not to compromise their source, Headley.

It now appears Headley was a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and initially deployed to spy on narcotics traffickers. At some stage after 9/11, Indian intelligence officials surmise, inter-agency resource sharing may have led to the CIA also using Headley to pick up information on Islamist groups such as the LeT.

What if this assessment is true? There is then a possibility that American authorities are denying Indian officials the chance to interrogate Headley because it will reveal their information-gathering and agent-recruitment protocols. Yet, this shouldn’t stop India persisting. In the longer term, greater cooperation and trust between the two intelligence networks could reduce such gaps.

The point is, is floating crackpot theories and running an amateur media campaign going to get the Americans to change their minds? It is more likely to interrupt a still nascent intelligence relationship. If that happens, it will be counterproductive and could dry up a source of information that has been very useful to India in the past few years.

It is true the Americans did warn India of a sea-borne attack on key Mumbai installations in September 2008. However, there is no rock-solid evidence to conclude Headley was the source of that warning. It is reliably learnt that the September 2008 message came as a result of signals intelligence (SIGINT) and electronic surveillance of terror group communications, not from a human informant.

Why then did sections of the home ministry spend some two weeks travelling on this strange road? Perhaps the answer is closer home. After being given the initial leads about Headley by the FBI, India appears to have hit a wall. The trail has run cold. Local investigators don’t seem to have got enough on what he did in India. That is why they are desperate to talk to him.

The case of Headley and his colleague Tawahar Rana points to serious investigative and intelligence shortcomings in India. For one year, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been piecing together the 26/11 conspiracy. Yet, till his arrest in America a few weeks ago, Headley was not part of the picture. What else did the NIA miss? Next, consider intelligence misjudgement. It has occurred at three levels in the Headley-Rana affair – external, federal and in the states. Indeed, Headley should have been on the radar much, much earlier.

First, a public servant in the Pakistani prime minister’s office, a distant cousin of the prime minister himself, has an American half-brother, Headley, who was once convicted for drug running. Shouldn’t India have known this? One expects India’s external intelligence agencies do a thorough background check of every official in the Pakistani PMO. Second, Headley walks past immigration gatekeepers in India. A thumbing of his passport and a review of his other visas leads to no questions. It does not have him put on an even remotely mild watch list. The system misses him completely.

Third, since there is no urging from federal agencies or the immigration bureaucracy, state police forces don’t keep an eye on Headley and Rana. Between them they travel to numerous Indian states – Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat. What did they do in these states? They took photographs of potential targets. They went shopping in malls, watched movies at multiplexes, stayed and ate at hotels – all the while taking notes, one presumes, on the geography and the layout – and pretended to be business tourists.

Yet, did they meet nobody? Here one is not talking of casual acquaintances they may have run into at a gym or restaurant. The stress should be on their serious interlocutors in India. “It is likely”, says one Indian intelligence veteran, “that they met those they were asked to meet.”

What does this mean? It is highly probable Headley and Rana contacted local facilitators – in however roundabout a fashion – of the LeT in the cities they visited. At least some of these people should have been under regular surveillance anyway as “suspect characters”, “anti-national elements”, “religious radicals” and so on. If they had unknown guests, one of whom was a large, foreign-looking man, it should have set wheels in motion. Astonishingly, in half-a-dozen states, the local police and their grassroots intelligence reported nothing.

These are inconvenient truths. Pointing fingers at America won’t make them disappear.

Alleged Bomber of CIA Base From Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Home Town. Coincidence?

[I wish these spooks would settle on one lame explanation and leave it at that, but the more convoluted the better; one that keeps going through kaleidoscopic changes is even better.  Now they come-up with this curious story of a Jordanian doctor that the agency has allegedly "flipped," but it turns-out that he is secretly one of Osama's boys.  Now comes the really curious part, this doctor is supposedly from the same little town in Jordan, Zarqa, that previously produced "super-terrorist"  Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. You remember the dead super-terrorist leader of the fictitious "al Qaida In Iraq," who didn't even know how to fire an automatic weapon?

Both of these terrorists were arrested in Jordan and subjected to CIA persuasion until they gave-in (which means that they were broken by brainwashing), before being sent to Afghanistan.  The fact that both of them began anti-American operations after this either means that CIA brainwashing doesn’t work or that they were trained by the CIA to attack those targets.  The story of Abdullah Mehsud, after he was released from Guantanamo Bay, is almost identical to these Jordanian tales.  You would think that the CIA wouldn’t be so sloppy.]

CIA bomber was al-Qaeda triple agent, US media say

The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan was an al-Qaeda triple agent, US media reports say. He is said to have been a doctor from Jordan who was arrested by Jordanian intelligence a year ago. He was then reportedly recruited by the Jordanians and CIA – who thought they had successfully turned him – and given a mission to find al-Qaeda leaders. He is believed to have been working undercover in Afghanistan for weeks before detonating a bomb at a CIA base. The attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman was the worst against US intelligence officials since the US embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983. The news about the bomber’s identity came as a report was published in which the top US military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, Maj Gen Michael Flynn, sharply criticised the work of US intelligence agencies there. He said that at present, US intelligence in Afghanistan was still “unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate and the people they are trying to protect and persuade”. The report, which was published by a think tank, the Center for a New American Security, cites one officer’s remarks that the US was “clueless” due to its lack of useful intelligence about the country. Changing sides On the suicide bomb attack, the Washington Post quoted two former US government officials as saying that the alleged attacker had lured the CIA officers into a meeting with a promise of new information on al-Qaeda’s top leadership. The reports named him as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old al-Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan, arrested by Jordanian intelligence over a year ago. His specific mission was thought to be tracking down al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The CIA has declined to comment on the reports. Jordanian intelligence believed they had brought Humam al-Balawi over to their side and sent him to Afghanistan to infiltrate al-Qaeda, US network NBC says. According to Western intelligence officials quoted in the reports, Humam al-Balawi called his handlers last week to arrange a meeting at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, where he said he would relay urgent information about Zawahiri. Once inside the base, the reports say, he blew himself up killing seven CIA employees and his handler, whom Jordanian media have named as Ali bin Zeid. Questions were raised after the bomb was detonated in the base’s gym last week about how the attacker could have managed to pass through security. The Washington Post says he was picked up in a car outside the base and driven in without being thoroughly searched. A US official, also a former CIA employee, told the Associated Press news agency that such people were often not required to go through full security checks, in order to help gain their trust. “When you’re trying to build a rapport and literally ask them to risk [their lives] for you, you’ve got a lot to do to build their trust,” he said. Drone base A Taliban spokesman quoted on al-Jazeera’s website said Humam al-Balawi was a double agent who had misled Jordanian and US intelligence services for a year. Forward Operating Base Chapman, a former Soviet military base, is used not only by the CIA but also by provincial reconstruction teams, which include both soldiers and civilians. The airfield is reportedly used for US drone attacks on suspected militants in neighbouring Pakistan. The CIA has not released the names of the officials killed nor details of their work because of the sensitivity of US operations. But the head of the base, reported to be a mother-of-three, was among those killed. The BBC’s Mark Mardell in Washington says the CIA will be deeply embarrassed that the bomber was able to work so closely with the agency and with such high level officials.

Pakistan a country – Dreamland for secret agents, double and cross agents " Hollywood movie the Departed

By: Earthman, International Professor

Nation is celebrating its independence from imperialists, joyful crowds are waving crescent and star flag on the streets. This Independence Day is soaked in blood; thousands of Pakistanis have been murdered by Pakistan army and their dead bodies are scattered in the valleys and on hill tops and millions are wandering in refugee camps. However it is our independence day and it is not property of any Zardari, Gaylani or Kiyani type agents of imperialism, our hearts are full of sadness on unjust blood, but it is our Pakistan, we have no property or assets except name of Pakistan but it is our motherland and our forefathers kicked out colonists from our beloved country and now it is our duty to celebrate its independence from imperialists.

It is sad that unfortunate nation is not aware of the fact that its leaders have mortgaged their forthcoming generations and sold its sovereignty forever. The status of Pakistan in the eyes of other nations is not more than a glutton state, its airplanes loaded with politicians and generals are widely seen lamenting and begging in the capitals of rich nations, complaining against its citizens and busy in inventing new methods of sucking their money. On the air ports their staff ruthlessly removes their pants and under wears but shameless politicians, generals, journalists and technocrats have lost their honor permanently and sold their pride for money. Ultimately green passport and citizens of Pakistan have become a symbol of terror, beggary and suspiciousness. Our leaders have pledged our dignity and values.

Within 62 years it has squeezed to almost half, total debts have been jumped to over $ 40 billion; it has been awarded title of failed state, most corrupt nation and heaven of terrorists. Its political leaders and generals have worked hard to regain old colonial status, a puppet state, a lawless country, and have earned reputation of a country run by different war lords. Today Pakistan has not one master but it has syndicate of masters, almost all old colonial masters have taken control over its power base and maneuvering like a puppet.

Nobody exactly knows that which leader and general is on the pay role of which agency, everyone who has the power is using every means to earn money. Peoples are not blind and they have an idea to define difference between a vulture and a vulpine, unfortunately it is first time in the history of Pakistan that its whole ruling elite including politicians and army has been appointed by foreign powers. Among them everyone is spy, double agent, or cross agent of one or other external power.

Imperialists historically never had written any code of ethics; their target is always lands or resources of weak nations. Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and many African, Asian and South American countries are its victims. In post Second World War scenario, Imperialists did not need to invade on every country but use their puppets to control power bases of many countries. Traditionally local corrupt politicians or military junta is chosen to make grounds and clear the ways for invasions and occupations.

How Pakistan emerged as a puppet state and what will happen next is on finger tips, first phase of dictatorship has been passed successfully and imperialists have achieved their all targets. Continuous overseas ventures of imperialists are so common practice that if you may sit on a side and watch their steps, anybody can predict their steps and net moves. To examine solved puzzles, keep in front of you cases of Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile or Middle East. So their targets are known but you need to trace their priorities in choosing new goals. Democracy is their diaper baby, true democracy means only pro-imperialists governments. Elimination of Iranian democratic Government, sabotaging elections of Algerian and Palestinian authority is in front of everyone. India is their new target; their foolish leaders have allowed red bears to keep foot on their soil, so fate of India is also written on the wall. Almost 99 percent dictators, authoritarian rulers and totalitarian states are having backing of imperialists around the globe.

Second phase in Pakistan is achieving success more than their expectations:

Dictator has been removed, popular political leader has been murdered, Pakistan has joined the Shia crescent and corrupt mafia has been placed at the power corridors of Islamabad. As per unwritten manual of colonial rule peoples must be divided on the basis of ethnicity, race and religion, so Pakistani nation has been divided successfully. Army generals and elite intelligence agency the ISI has been hired to act as mercenary, which is also a great success of imperialists. Hired army is trying to burn entire country with fire; which is working as police and busy in killing citizens including women and children. Security forces in the broad day light are not only involved in kidnapping but demolishing homes of Pakistani citizens. F-16′s, gunship helicopters and tanks are being used in the attacks and killing of the villagers. The target of corrupt politicians and generals is making money or saving looted monies, whereas criminals and mafias have full backing of the imperialists.

A country of espionage dens and the war lords:

A famous Hollywood movie, The Departed, which was released in 2006, the movie has a complex fiction storey of spies, double agents and cross agents, every main character was undercover agent or mole. Finally everyone killed each other for their safety, please watch the movie and think about Pakistan that which character in this country is not a spy, a cross agent or a double agent, and nobody is sure that who is agent of which foreign intelligence agency.

Pakistan’s main intelligence agencies like ISI, MI, FIA, IB, Ministry of Interior, Defense and provincial police networks are independently working for different foreign agencies with the aim and targets to make money. Peoples call them Mercenary Intelligence Vigilantes (MIV), any country can hire them, in the presence of current historical anarchic and lawlessness in Pakistan where greedy politicians, hungry generals, voracious Mullahs, corrupt bureaucracy, covetous media owners, dishonest police and the non-existence of accountability has forced everyone to make money, in shortest possible times.

In fact generals are real rulers of Pakistan who are running entire show and working as a police, deciding life and the death matters like judges and have their own political party, the Fauji Political Party. Condition of ordinary citizens is so miserable that army can pick anyone or imprison any relative of suspect without any charge or producing in any courts of law. There is no tradition of search warrants or court orders to arrest anyone. Neither 99 percent alleged ever brought to justice. Dead media is surviving on the reports of army cooked deceptions and lies. There are layers of civil and army intelligence networks, hundred thousand are working, but all those white elephants are meant to strengthen the authoritarian rulers and made money. Condition is so serious that thousands of citizens are missing and nobody knows which agency has kidnapped them, hidden prisons and torture cells are operating throughout country, and there are at least one hundred such hidden centers to which even Chief Justice has no access.

A few weeks back some terrorists blown up ISI and Police centers at Lahore, soon after incidence corrupt media and politicians started to broadcast lies and deceptions, at least one dozen countries were blamed for their involvement, as usual Mullahs, Afghan refugees and Pushtoon were arrested, later nobody knows the fate of those arrested persons neither anyone brought to courts. If you may rewind your memories that when hundreds of citizens were missing and lawyers movement was on peak, Asma Jahangir, Chairperson, HRCP in an address on the Mall Road Lahore, raised her finger towards same ISI regional head quarter and informed public that it is a prison cell where missing peoples are imprisoned.

Whereas General Kiyani being DG of ISI in the same period was busy in kidnapping and receiving head money of innocent citizens on advise of his boss the Mush. Peoples are fed up; as security agencies are involved in humiliation and dishonor to families of suspects, arrested usually on the basis of ethnicity or religious abhorrence, imprison their women, children and senior family members, only those peoples raise their voice that have some influence, otherwise poor and illiterate peoples have no say. There are spies and intelligence networks of foreign agencies within Pakistani intelligence networks, but there strong perceptions exists that mostly peoples who are risking their lives in terrorists’ activities are mostly victims of the agencies and current satanic and vicious activities of security agencies have pushed them to avenge and joining criminal gangs.

Ask any citizen on street, he will quickly reply calculated answer, the names of politicians and generals and their associations with foreign networks. Awareness of peoples is exemplary but peoples are helpless. Imperialists are involved in forcing Pak Govt. to set aside loot and murder cases of politicians and on other side same peoples are busy in sucking remaining pennies of the nation, not only criminals have been provided sanctuaries in foreign countries but assurances of safety of black money has also been given to them.

Check the records of Zardari, Gaylani, Kiyani mafias and other politicians and generals; everybody is secret agent or double agent. Think who is behind Rahman Malik and his security agency at London? Who is behind Altaf Husain, Asfandyar Wali and Baloch nationalists? Who is financing all type of terrorists? And where Zardari, Kiyani, Shuja Pasha, Husain Haqqani, Isfahani and Husain Haroon stand? Why Shariff brothers and Imran Khan is mum?

There is a long list of Qaumi Lashkars, so called Peace Lashkars, Taliban, Separatists, Jihadi Networks, Brelvi Lashkars, Jan Nisaran e Benazir and other terrorists and dacoits funded by Govt. of Pakistan. ISI, MI, FIA, Min of Interior and Min of Defense have its own spies and double agents. Think who has created those pro-Government groups? Those are all war lords, criminals, drug dealers and arms suppliers. There are two examples in front of everyone that how army and civil agencies manipulate truth and bundled them with lies and deceptions, murder of Benazir and so called death of Baitullah Mehsud and his associates. Moreover manipulation in entire Swat genocide is also on record, who is main beneficiary of Swat genocide? In each case above mafias got desired benefits or imperialists would enjoy long term advantages on dead bodies.

Today in a message at Kakul Gen. Kiyani said that Pak army is capable to meet all internal and external challenges. We passed our life under such illusions but it was Pak army which never allowed to let flourish democracy in the country, we lost East Pakistan, Kashmir, Mir Java, Ran of Kuchh, Siachen, Kargal and now imperialists are daringly violating our sovereignty, is there any basis to trust Pak army or General Kiyani anymore. Who created and supported Taliban, Jihadi Organizations and Lashkars? It was Pak Army. Army is involved in every mess, sale of citizens, kidnappings, target killings, demolishing homes, NRO, providing sanctuary to terrorists and criminals like Altaf Husain, Zardari mafia, thugs of PPP, anti-Pakistan elements like ANP, MQM, NGO’s and liberal fascists. It is on record that imperialists exclusively provide dollars to army dictatorships.

Now since dollars are flowing in, and for the sake of dollars, mostly spies, secret agents and double agents have started to kill each other. Agents of foreign countries are blaming opposite groups of receiving overseas funds, but killings would carry on up till death of last spy. Among them army is the major group which is receiving big amounts. Now Pak army is active in killings to its old instruments and in creating new groups. Possibly Brelvi Lashkars would eliminate Taliban and then new created Lashkars could eliminate Brelvi Lashkars. For your information strength of anti-Taliban terrorists has crossed to over 30, 000 persons, more than total strength of current Taliban.

Swat is not liberated by Pakistan army but occupied them, now actual occupation has been emerged and peoples would not be able to ever get rid of Pak Army from Swat areas, it is a bear which hugs only and only on permanent basis and those would never leave that area.

Saying that Pak army has liberated Swat and Malakand is a kind of illusion and for from ground realities to undermine actual capabilities of Pak army. Taliban never ruled over that area, neither those ever claimed to be Taliban. For the sake of American dollars generals are making drama. Set a siding appreciation messages of Imperialists, in fact world is laughing on Pakistan Government and role of its army. No doubt purpose of over exaggeration in death toll in killings of civilians by the hands of army and labeling them as militants, demolishing homes of poor people’s is for the sake of filling stomach of invoices to receive head money and sell the dead bodies. The use of F-16 and sophisticated helicopters on civilians looks like use of unjust power, while army itself claimed that total strength of insurgents is not more than 4000 persons. Denying about drone attacks and now abruptly claiming that we are provided intelligence to USA in suspicious death of Baitullah Mehsud is hypocrisy.

Don’t go away in recent famous Umra drug case of Saudi Arabia, suspects have finger pointed towards Zardari mafia of Larkana. Read the early days of newspapers where alleged peoples clearly indicated names of PPP leaders of Larkana behind supply of narcotics. Rahman Dakait, Zardari mafia, Fauzia Wahab, Haqqani, Isfahani, Haroon, Sherry Rahman and Gen Kiyani gang is inter connected and provides refuge to each other.

Recent genocide by Pak army at Swat, Malakand, FATA areas, and target killings at Karachi, Baluchistan, and urban areas of Pakistan is a kind of gang war between mafias. Fight between different war lords who are backed by foreign powers. Each gang is earning dollars directly or indirectly. If direct flow of dollars to Pak army will be disturbed than it will kick civilian govt. out and would re-occupy president house, Islamabad. The 80 percent terrorist organizations are running with the funding of Min of Defense and remaining is with the help of Ministry of interior. Recently Min of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Secretariat Islamabad have also joined the race in creating new terrorist Lashkars.

Celebrate Independence Day and remember how our forefathers sacrificed for this Pak land. Be ready to terminate at least top 30 generals, kick Zardari mafia from presidency, don’t allow US super embassy at Islamabad a permanent sign of slavery. Pakistan is a failed state due to foolishness of generals and politicians, it is not our fault. To regain lost popularity setup an independent accountability commission to check properties and accounts of generals and politicians and fix them according to their crimes. Force Zardari to return looted amounts, take back NRO and force criminals to defend their cases in courts.

Taliban Will Never Be Defeated

By Christina Lamb

THE Pakistani intelligence agent who trained Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, to fight has warned that Nato forces will never overpower their enemies in Afghanistan and should talk to them rather than sacrifice more lives.”You can never win the war in Afghanistan,” said so-called “Colonel Imam”, who ran a training programme for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union’s occupation from 1979 to 1989, then helped to form the Taliban.

“I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand.”

A tall, bearded figure, whose real name is Amir Sultan Tarar, he trained at Fort Bragg, the US army base where America’s special forces are stationed.

During the late 1970s and 1980s he controlled CIA-funded training camps for 95,000 Afghans and often accompanied his students on missions.

After the Soviet defeat and the collapse of communism, he was invited to the White House by the first President George Bush and was given a piece of the Berlin Wall with a brass plaque inscribed: “To the one who dealt the first blow.”

Today western intelligence agencies believe Imam is among a group of renegade officers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) who continued to help the Taliban after Pakistan turned against them following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

United Nations officials and Afghanistan’s intelligence service have reported sightings of him in the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Uruzgan. It is a charge he shrugs off, claiming that at 65 he has not worked for almost eight years.

“I wish I could do it but they don’t need me any more,” he says. “My students are far ahead of me now. They are giving a lesson to the world. I am very proud of them.”

Although he expresses great admiration for the British military (“far more gallant than the Americans”), Imam says that in sending troops to Helmand, Britain had forgotten its previous wars in Afghanistan.

In particular, he chides, they should have remembered the battle of Maiwand in 1880, in which 2,500 British troops took on 25,000 Afghans and suffered a devastating defeat.

“When people in Helmand heard the British were coming back, the cry went up all over: ‘Remember Maiwand? Our old enemy has come to the same area where they were once defeated to take revenge’. Then everyone, Taliban and nonTaliban, joined together. They told me on the phone, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make sure the Brits don’t have an easy time’.”

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His comments come as the number of British soldiers killed by enemy action in Afghanistan has risen to 137, one more than the number who have died in Iraq.

According to Imam, Helmand is particularly difficult because of the character of the people. “They couldn’t care less about loss of property or loss of life,” he said. It is unlikely that anybody alive today knows the Afghans as well as Imam. All the key figures were trained in his camps, from the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panj-shir, to warlords such as Gul-buddin Hekmatyar, his “naughtiest” student.

“It was a matter of pride for me that my students later became big commanders,” he said. “The Afghan is a very cunning soldier,” he added. “He picks things up very quickly and never forgets. As a Pakistani unit commander I’d be training my men for six months and maybe they would remember 70%. But in Afghanistan teenagers came, had only three days’ weapon training and they remembered 100%. In just 15 days they mastered the Stinger [the shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile].”

 Omar passed through his camps in 1985. “He was a simple man, a small commander leading a maximum of 40 people and didn’t have much weaponry,” Imam recalled. One of Imam’s biggest backers was Congressman Charlie Wilson, the Texan who was instrumental in securing funding for Operation Cyclone, the CIA programme to supply arms with which the mujaheddin would fight the Soviet troops.

“He used to dance with happiness at seeing our training camps,” said Imam. Within 10 years the Russians had been forced out. “Total expenditure just $5 billion and not a single American life,” said Imam. “Now the Americans are spending hundreds of billions and losing hundreds of lives.” The last time he saw Wilson was after the 1988 Geneva accords on the Soviet withdrawal.

Imam told him: “You’re abandoning the Afghans. They need financial support for rehabilitation.” Wilson replied: “Dollars don’t grow on trees.” “Do Afghan youth grow on trees?” asked Imam. “Over 1.5m Afghans have died.” Furious at the American betrayal and devastated by the resulting infighting in the Afghan resistance, he became close to Omar. “I love him,” he said. “He brought peace to Afghanistan.”

Imam was Pakistan’s consul-general in Herat when the Taliban captured the city in 1995 from Ismail Khan, the mujaheddin commander, who claims the ISI agent oversaw the whole Taliban operation. From there he guided the Taliban as they took over the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Jalalabad and eventually captured Kabul.

Like many Pakistanis he refuses to believe the September 11 attacks were carried out by Osama Bin Laden. “An operation like that needs ground support,” he said. “I have no doubt it was carried out by the Americans to give a bad name to the Taliban government as an excuse to topple it.” When General Pervez Musharraf, then president of Pakistan, agreed to American pressure to cut ties to the Taliban, the colonel was outraged.

Recalled to Islamabad, he told Musharraf: “You cannot defeat these people, they are well trained, they have a lot of ammunition and the more you kill, the more supporters will come.” Today he adds: “It was the blunder of his life and because of it we are all doomed.” Imam left Afghanistan when the US bombing of the country ceased in 2001 and claims he has not returned. “I can go any time on my old routes, even the Americans cannot stop me, but there is no need,” he said. “I have friends roaming all over there. At times they give me a call, they like to hear my voice.

“I’m quite happy with the current situation because the Americans are trapped there. The Taliban will not win but in the end the enemy will tire, like the Russians.” He has offered to find the Americans a way out: “We can give them a face-saving solution but they must change their strategy.” First, he says, they must spend billions on reconstruction. Then they must open talks with Omar rather than the so-called moderate Taliban with whom negotiations are under way.

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“When are you people going to understand there are no number two Taliban?” he asked. “Those who break away from mainstream Taliban have no place in society. You may make deals in Dubai or Saudi Arabia, but when they come back to Afghanistan and people know they have compromised with the Americans, they are finished.

“In Afghanistan the only man who can make a decision and people listen is Mullah Omar. He’s a very reasonable man. He would listen and work for the interests of his country.”

He insisted the Taliban leader was not in Pakistan: “He’s in the hills of Uruzgan, his home province. If there’s a requirement he will listen to me, but why should I get him involved in a risky situation?”

Imam said he had watched with horror as fighting spread into Pakistan and had been shocked to see his fellow officers having to fight against their own countrymen in the Swat district.

“These are not Taliban, they are tribals,” he said. “Mullah Omar told them time and time again not to fight against Pakistan. They are fighting against the government of Pakistan because it is supporting the enemies of Islam. Everybody knows our government is supporting the US drone attacks in our own area.

“This is an American plan to make us a subjugated country and have an excuse to get our nukes. Everybody, your prime minister, President Obama, all go, ‘Oh, the nuclear weapons are unsafe’. I say you’re making them unsafe. When you were not in the region there was no problem.”

The call for prayer brings our interview to an end. Before he goes he has one last warning: “I tell you when my nation rises up it is not Afghanistan, not Iraq. There will be tremendous killing.*

Colonel Imam, Mujahedeen Trainer for ISI/CIA

Peace in ‘the graveyard of empires’

• Amir Sultan Tarar, also known as Colonel Imam, helped developed the Taliban when he worked as a Pakistani intelligence officer in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Photograph: Mary Fitzgerald, AP/Rafiq Maqbool

MARY FITZGERALD, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

The man known as the father of the Taliban was also a key member of Pakistan’s intelligence service. In a rare interview, he says the only hope for peace is for the US to negotiate with Mullah Mohammad Omar – something he is willing to arrange

IF ANYONE CAN be said to epitomise the intrigues that have played out in Afghanistan over the last three decades, it is the man known as Colonel Imam. That is the nom de guerre of Amir Sultan Tarar, a legendary figure who worked for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s infamous spy agency. As a code name, it hints at the deeply held religious convictions that provided the ideological underpinning for a career whose mark is still felt in the region today.

In the decade after Soviet tanks first rolled into Afghanistan, Col Imam trained and nurtured, with CIA help, a resistance fuelled on heady notions of jihad that drew thousands of Muslims from across the world. He knew all the leading lights of the Afghan jihad, including Osama bin Laden. “A very humble man,” he remembers. “The first time I saw him he was quite nervous. He had never been exposed to fighting, bombing and all that but he became brave. When you live among brave people you become brave.”

In the 1990s, the colonel’s guiding hand helped propel the Taliban to power. He was a close friend of the reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Today, Col Imam lives out his retirement at his modest home in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, close to Islamabad. “I am 65 but still fit to fight,” he chuckles during a rare interview. The man some refer to as “the father of the Taliban” cuts an imposing figure. Tall and rangy, he sports a long, grey-flecked beard and wears a pristine white turban with his salwar kameez, the traditional long shirt and trouser ensemble worn in Pakistan.

His living room is a veritable shrine to the Afghan jihad. On the walls hang paraphernalia, including a mounted Kalashnikov, an RPG launcher, and several daggers captured from Soviet troops in the 1980s. Metre-high missile casings, decorated with verses praising the mujahideen, lean against a cabinet. But the most intriguing item is a glass case containing a heavily graffitied chunk of the Berlin Wall, which the colonel says was a gift from US officials. The brass inscription panel reads: “To Col Imam, with deepest respect to the one who helped deliver the first blow.”

The colonel recalls his encounters with Charlie Wilson, the playboy Texas congressman who was instrumental in securing funding for Operation Cyclone, a CIA programme aimed at supplying the mujahideen with weaponry to fight the Soviets. Two years ago Wilson’s story was turned into a film starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

“The first time Charlie Wilson came I took him to a mujahideen training camp and he was delighted. He said: ‘I’ll get them Stingers, I’ll get them Stingers.’ The last time he came I said: ‘Look, you are abandoning them. They need help.’ He said: ‘What help?’ I said: ‘Rehabilitation.’ He told me dollars do not grow on trees. I responded by asking him if he thought the Afghan youth who fought the Russians grew on trees,” Col Imam recounts, running a string of amber prayer beads through his fingers as he speaks. “I didn’t like him. It was all about his own interests. When the interest was achieved, he just left.”

And that, the colonel argues, was the mistake the Americans made in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, one that they have been paying for ever since.

“The Afghan people were abandoned after the Soviet troops withdrew. Wasn’t that a criminal act on the part of the Americans? . . . There was a revengeful mood after that, against the power which had used and then abandoned you.”

COL IMAM’S TIES to Afghanistan ran deep, and he remained close to several mujahideen leaders. In the 1990s he returned, after being appointed Pakistan’s consul general in the western city of Herat, a position that proved a convenient cover for liaising with the nascent Taliban. “By the time he was engaging with the Taliban, he had become much more significant,” says Ahmed Rashid, author of a bestselling book on the Taliban. “He was one of the main instigators in getting the ISI to support the Taliban.”

Colonel Imam befriended Mullah Omar. “He is a very sincere and honest man, a good fighter,” he says, adding that the Taliban leader once told him he had no objection to girls’ education providing the curriculum did not contradict Islamic tenets and Afghan traditions.

The fall of the Taliban government in 2001 felt like a personal blow, the colonel says. “I was really hurt . . . They had brought peace to the country.” He was recalled to Islamabad after Pakistan’s then president Pervez Musharraf severed ties with the Taliban, having decided to back the Bush administration’s so-called war on terror. The colonel says he has not met Mullah Omar since.

In Kabul and Islamabad rumours abound as to how close he has remained to the Taliban. “He’s still very active indirectly, and he has a lot of friends in the Taliban, both the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban,” says one informed source in Pakistan. Security officials in Afghanistan go further, saying he has been spotted in Taliban strongholds there. Last year an Afghan general accused him of giving the insurgents “money for weapons, motorcycles, trucks – whatever they need”.

Col Imam laughs at the suggestion. “This is a complete lie. Believe me, if I had money I would give it to them. I wish I could help them. Write that down, if I could I would help them.”

Neither, he insists, do the Taliban in Afghanistan need help from the ISI. “The Afghan nation is addicted to fighting. It is impossible to defeat them,” he says. “Ask the Britishers – they went three times and they learned their lesson. The Russians came, they fought bravely, four times braver than the Americans, but ultimately they were defeated and soon after ceased to exist as a superpower.

“There are good reasons why Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires. I am hopeful that the right people with the right cause always succeed.”

Col Imam is equally supportive of Pakistan’s indigenous Taliban, members of which were recently allowed impose their own harsh version of Sharia law in certain districts in the country’s northwestern flank under the terms of a controversial peace deal. He likens the movement to a popular uprising, and acknowledges that his view will ruffle feathers within Pakistan’s establishment. “I am very happy with this situation,” he says with a smile. “This is fighting against a system that is a wrong system. These people are fighting for their rights because they feel they are deprived. They are liberating the country.”

He dismisses the suggestion that people in areas with a strong Taliban presence are fearful, with many fleeing their homes. “All propaganda. If the public is not with you then you cannot do anything.”

Col Imam goes on to accuse the US of carrying out indiscriminate attacks in Afghanistan and the tribal borderlands that lie between it and Pakistan.

“I was trained in the United States by its special forces. At that time their manuals advised the use of minimum force against the insurgents and stressed the importance of winning public support. Here they are using maximum force, indiscriminate force, and in the process they are killing the public support,” he says.

“America should have a realistic policy. They must not reinforce their errors. For how many years have they have been fighting, spending billions a year, in Afghanistan and Iraq but yet they have failed? The Americans must change their policy. Fighting is not the answer for them in this region.”

What Colonel Imam prescribes is what he calls “reconciliation”, by reaching out to elements within the Taliban, beginning with his old friend Mullah Omar. “Among all the leaders, contact with him will bring the most benefit. He has no ambition beyond Afghanistan, no ambition at all. He is not interested in power. He simply wants his country to be at peace.”

The colonel even volunteers to put a word in for the US, completing the circle that began when he worked with the CIA in the fight against the Soviets in 1980s Afghanistan. “I can help them out,” he says. “I can go to Mullah Omar and arrange a meeting and they can resolve this thing . . . If the Americans do that they will have a respectable retreat from this region. But they must realise they are only reinforcing their errors at the moment.”