India Successfully Test Fires Prithvi Nuclear Vehicle to Cover Prior Failure in ABM Test

[SEE: Indian interceptor missile test fails. Look for Indian/Pakistani tension to boil over because of American scheming.  It's going to be a long, hot summer.]

Photo from The Hindu

India successfully tests fires two nuclear capable ballistic missiles

© Сollage by RIA Novosti

• India’s new interceptor missile fails test

11:0527/03/2010

India has successfully test-fired two short-range nuclear-capable missiles off the coast of the Orissa state on Saturday, the IANS news agency reported, quoting military officials.

The Dhanush was test-fired from a naval ship off the coast of India’s eastern Orissa state, while the Prithvi II was launched from the Chandipur firing range, some 200 kilometres northeast of the state capital Bhubaneswar.

Both tests occurred at 5:30 a.m. (11:00 GMT).

The Prithvi is India’s indigenously developed surface-to-surface ballistic missile, with a range of 350 km and payload capacity of 500 kg.

The Dhanush missile, which has liquid propellant, is the naval version of the Prithvi. It is capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads.

The first Dhanush test launch ended in failure in April 2000 over technical problems related to the take-off stage, but subsequent trials were reported as successful. The latest Dhanush trial was successfully conducted off Orissa coast in March 2007.

NEW DELHI, March 27 (RIA Novosti)

Saudis Still Spreading CIA’s “Islam” In Former Yugoslavia

[Anywhere in the world, where you see so-called "Islamists" who kill only other Muslims, you are looking at the CIA's "Islamists."  Wherever this phenomenom occurs it is done with Saudi money.  It happens using primarily Saudis, Pakistanis and Iranian terrorists/Islamists.  The term "al Qaida" is merely the label we use to describe our Islamists, who have been trained by our people.  SEE Bosnia and Clinton’s Radical Islamists ; BILL CLINTON: FIRST NEOCON PRESIDENT ]

Saudis fund Balkan Muslims spreading hate of the West

Muslims stage a protest against the publication of cartoons of Prophet Mohammed

Bojan Pancevski in Skopje

SAUDI ARABIA is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into Islamist groups in the Balkans, some of which spread hatred of the West and recruit fighters for jihad in Afghanistan.

According to officials in Macedonia, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to destabilise the Balkans. Strict Wahhabi and Salafi factions funded by Saudi organisations are clashing with traditionally moderate local Muslim communities.

Fundamentalists have financed the construction of scores of mosques and community centres as well as handing some followers up to £225 a month. They are expected not only to grow beards but also to persuade their wives to wear the niqab, or face veil, a custom virtually unknown in the liberal Islamic tradition of the Balkans.

Government sources in traditionally secular Macedonia (official title the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), said they were monitoring up to 50 Al-Qaeda volunteers recruited to fight in Afghanistan.

Classified documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal that Macedonian officials are also investigating a number of Islamic charities, some in Saudi Arabia, which are active throughout the Balkans and are suspected of spreading extremism and laundering money for terrorist organisations.

One of the groups under scrutiny is the International Islamic Relief Organisation from Saudi Arabia, which is on a United Nations blacklist of organisations backing terrorism. It did not respond to inquiries, but has previously denied involvement in terrorist activities, calling such claims “totally unfounded”.

According to its website, it works in 32 countries to provide relief to the victims of natural disasters and to carry out humanitarian, health and educational projects.

“Hundreds of millions have been poured into Macedonia alone in the past decade and most of it comes from Saudi Arabia,” said a government source. “The Saudis’ main export seems to be ideology, not oil.”

Sulejman Rexhepi, leader of the Islamic community in Macedonia, said a number of mosques had been forcibly taken over by radical groups. Four in central Skopje are no longer under the control of the official Islamic authorities. New imams claim they have been “spontaneously” installed by the “people”.

“Their so-called Wahhabi teachings are completely alien to our traditions and to the essence of Islam, which is a tolerant and inclusive religion,” said Rexhepi.

In some mosques believers are being told that Macedonia, which sent 200 soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan, has been tricked into supporting a crusade against Islam spearheaded by Britain and America. Radical clerics have shown footage from Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories to illustrate their claims that the West is waging war on Islam.

Rahman, a 35-year-old cab driver from Skopje, Macedonia’s capital, said he had stopped going to his local mosque since it was taken over by extremists. “Following the Haiti earthquake the new imam said God would punish the West for their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with natural disasters,” he said.

Bekir Halimi, an imam trained in Syria, runs Bamiresia, an Islamic charity that has been investigated for alleged terrorist links and money laundering. Police raided its offices but failed to find any evidence of terrorist links.

“We are fully entitled to receive funding from both governmental and non-governmental organisations from Saudi Arabia,” said Halimi, who refuses to name the sources of his funding but rejects any suggestion of criminal activity.

Macedonia’s law enforcement agencies warn that the European Union and America have failed to recognise the growing problem of Islamic extremism in the Balkans.

Baroness Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, has declared stability in the region to be her top priority, but local politicians complain that the EU and Nato are reducing their presence in troublespots such as Bosnia and Kosovo.

Last month, Bosnian security forces raided a village strongly influenced by Salafi extremists and found a weapons cache.

In raids elsewhere rifles, bombs and rocket-propelled grenades have been uncovered.

The West has put considerable political and financial efforts into helping build democracy in Bosnia following its civil war in the 1990s. Saudi organisations have also asserted considerable influence, giving more than £450m to build more than 150 mosques and Islamic centres.

In Macedonia, Fatmir, a former disc jockey, explained how he became an adherent of Salafism. The father of two has grown a beard and instructed his wife to wear a niqab. He now makes his living by selling Islamist literature. “Ours is the Islam of the 21st century,” he said.

Saudi Shootout With Another Neighbor

[Saudi terror, Saudi hegemony...all the same thing.  Being America's number 1 friend gives you the right to do whatever you want, to anyone you want, all in the name of God.]

Naval battle between UAE and Saudi Arabia raises fears for Gulf security

A naval clash in the Gulf has reignited fears over the security of the world’s most important shipping lanes and disputed oilfields.

By Richard Spencer in Dubai

The United Arab Emirates navy is thought to have opened fire on a small patrol vessel from Saudi Arabia after a dispute over water boundaries.

According to one report, two Saudi sailors were injured in the alleged bombardment.

The Saudi vessel was forced to surrender, and its sailors were delivered into custody in Abu Dhabi for several days, before being released and handed over to the Saudi embassy earlier this week.

The incident has shocked diplomats who hope the countries, both key American allies, will help implement the West’s strategy to constrain Iran’s nuclear and military ambitions.

The clash happened in disputed waters between the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and the peninsula on which the gas-rich state of Qatar sits.

The seabed is rich with oil deposits, while the Dolphin pipeline project to carry natural gas direct from Qatar to Abu Dhabi has provoked irritation in the Saudi authorities. Nevertheless, direct conflict between the two countries’ armed forces is highly unusual.

The Gulf is one of the most heavily armed regions in the world. The Saudi government has been building up its army and air force for years in response to what it sees as a regional threat from Iran.

The UAE was slower to join the arms race, despite a long-running row with Iran over three Gulf islands previously under Abu Dhabi control which were seized by the late Shah in 1971 on the night the Emirates celebrated their independence.

But now the UAE, despite its small size, is the fourth largest purchaser of weaponry on the international market in the world.

Western governments are exasperated that the two countries are unable to co-operate because of a series of long-running border disputes, largely influenced by oil reserves.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil producer, while Abu Dhabi, though ranking only number four in OPEC, is by some counts the richest city per head of population in the world.

“It looks as though attempts were made to keep this quiet, which is predictable given the important relationship between the two countries and the strategic relationship with Iran,” a Gulf-based diplomat said. “But it does remind us of the simmering rows that there are in this part of the Gulf.”

The Gulf is the shipping route for 40 per cent of the world’s oil trade. The lack of agreed naval boundaries leads to repeated arrests of civilian vessels, including a British yacht by the Iranian navy last November, but more serious is the threat of Iranian retaliation for any attack by Israel or American forces on its nuclear installations.

The Iranian government has threatened to mine the Straits of Hormuz at the tip of the Gulf, or target the western navies moored in Gulf Arab ports.

“This is getting serious,” a local defence analyst said. “The Dolphin pipeline is a critical interstate energy project to bring gas from Qatar to the UAE, so a fight (with Saudi Arabia) is affecting the relations between these three countries at a time when they should be co-operating.”

A spokesman for the UAE ministry of defence said he was unable to give details of the incident.

An Unaccustomed Truth: American Commander Admits Afghan Atrocities

WRITTEN BY CHRIS FLOYD

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief Saying, “Tell me great hero, but please make it brief Is there a hole for me to get sick in? – Bob Dylan, “Tombstone Blues” One can only assume that the regular editors of the New York Times were all out at a party, or left early for a weekend in the Hamptons, or something — but somehow, the paper published a front webpage story that stated — without the usual thousand excuses and extenuations — that American troops are routinely slaughtering Afghan civilians at checkpoints. What’s more, the story unequivocally ties the civilian killings to the “surge” ordered by the noble Nobel Peace laureate, Barack Obama. Here’s what the Times says: American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops, according to military officials in Kabul. And what is the paper’s authority for this astounding admission of atrocity? Not the usual “unnamed sources” or “senior official in a position to have knowledge of the situation,” but none other than Obama’s hand-picked commander on the Af-Pak front, General Stanley “Black Ops” McChrystal his own self: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties. Let’s repeat the much-media-lauded general’s statement again: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” Now, what would the authorities say if you or I shot “an amazing number of people who have never proven to be a threat?” Why, they would call us murderers — even mass murderers. Yet this is precisely what “the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan” has just declared, on videotape. The story goes on to make the extraordinarily straight — and indisputable — point that these wanton killings of civilians who have never even “proven to be a threat” is fanning the very “insurgency” (which is the Beltway term of art for any resistance to American military presence”) whose quelling is the ostensible reason for the Laureate’s “surge” in the first place: Failure to reduce checkpoint and convoy shootings, known in the military as “escalation of force” episodes, has emerged as a major frustration for military commanders who believe that civilian casualties deeply undermine the American and NATO campaign in Afghanistan. Many of the detainees at the military prison at Bagram Air Base joined the insurgency after the shootings of people they knew, said the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall. “There are stories after stories about how these people are turned into insurgents,” Sergeant Major Hall told troops during the videoconference. “Every time there is an escalation of force we are finding that innocents are being killed,” he said. The story even states plainly that the official figures of admitted killing of unthreatening civilians — already unconscionably high — might not be the true extent of these atrocities: Shootings from convoys and checkpoints involving American, NATO and Afghan forces accounted for 36 civilian deaths last year, down from 41 in 2008, according to the United Nations. With at least 30 Afghans killed since last June in 95 such shootings, according to military statistics, the rate shows no signs of abating. And those numbers do not include shooting deaths caused by convoys guarded by private security contractors. Some tallies have put the total number of escalation of force deaths far higher. A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said private security contractors sometimes killed civilians during escalation of force episodes, but he said he did not know the number of instances. The story also presents an example of one slaughter of civilians, and shows how it leads directly to the rise of resistance against the American military presence: One such case was the death of Mohammed Yonus, a 36-year-old imam and a respected religious authority, who was killed two months ago in eastern Kabul while commuting to a madrasa where he taught 150 students. A passing military convoy raked his car with bullets, ripping open his chest as his two sons sat in the car. The shooting inflamed residents and turned his neighborhood against the occupation, elders there say. “The people are tired of all these cruel actions by the foreigners, and we can’t suffer it anymore,” said Naqibullah Samim, a village elder from Hodkail, where Mr. Yonus lived. “The people do not have any other choice, they will rise against the government and fight them and the foreigners. There are a lot of cases of killing of innocent people.” Finally, the story depicts McChrystal — again, the handpicked commander of the commander-in-chief — stating flatly when it comes to the widely ballyhooed “counterinsurgency doctrine” that is supposedly now governing the military occupation of Afghanistan, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. In other words, it’s a full-scale, four-star FUBAR: More recently, General McChrystal moved to bring nearly all Special Operations forces in Afghanistan under his control. NATO officials said concern about civilian casualties caused by these forces was partly behind the decision, along with the need to better coordinate units and ensure that local commanders were aware of what was happening. One unit could be doing counterinsurgency, while another carried out “a raid that might in fact upset progress,” General McChrystal explained during the videoconference. Beyond the bare facts reported by the story — i.e., the top American commanders acknowledge that their forces are killing scores of innocent civilians who pose no threat to the occupiers, and that their own incompetent policies are actually breeding more hatred and resistance — there is also the astonishing circumstance that we have a story on the Laureate’s “good war” in Afghanistan that is almost entirely nothing but bare facts. Of course, the story appeared late on a Friday, and will no doubt disappear down the memory hole in short order. (What, you think the Sunday talk shows will be filled with heated discussions about “McChrystal’s astounding admission”?) Still, I must admit that when I read the piece, I honestly did a double-take; I thought it was a hoax — or perhaps a hack. Not because the story seemed implausible — but precisely because it didn’t, and because it was shorn of most of the self-serving, empire-justifying bullshit that surrounds accounts of the “Peace Prize Surge.” Again, just think of it, let it sink in, attend to the word of the commander: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” Again: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” Again:“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” Again: what do you call it when innocent, unarmed, defenseless people who “have never proven to be a threat” are gunned down in cold blood? What do you call such an act?

Parachinar–Pakistan’s Gaza Strip

[SEE: The actual story of Parachinar Pakistan ]

Parachinar: Pakistan’s Gaza Strip remains under siege by Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba

March 27th, 2010Abdul NishapuriLeave a commentGo to comments

The following news item in Dawn today (27 March 2010) forced me to post this rather lengthy compilation of events. First the news item:

Six kidnapped truckers found dead in Thal
Dawn, 27 Mar, 2010

PESHAWAR: Police on Saturday found the bodies of six truck drivers who were kidnapped a few days ago in a restive northwestern town, officials said.

The drivers were shot dead and their bodies were found in Thal district, local police official Abdul Rehman told AFP.

“A letter found in the pocket of one dead truck driver said that if anyone supplied goods to the Parachinar Shia community, he will be treated like this,” Rehman said.

Parachinar, the main town of Kurram tribal district, is a sectarian flashpoint where activists from the rival Shia and Sunni Muslim sects have clashed in the past.

A police spokesman confirmed the incident, but did not identify the suspects, saying an investigation was in progress.

Shias account for about 20 per cent of Pakistan’s Sunni-dominated population. The two communities usually coexist peacefully, but more than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence since the late 1980s.

Attacks by extremists, meanwhile, have killed more than 3,100 people since July 2007. Most attacks are blamed on the Pakistani Taliban.

Separately, militants early Saturday blew up a boys’ middle school in Alingarh village of Mohmand tribal district, where troops are hunting Taliban militants, local administration chief Amjad Ali Khan said. Taliban militants have destroyed 36 government school buildings in Mohmand since 2009.

Only three weeks ago, on 5 March 2010, terrorists of Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba hadattacked a Shia convoy travelling to Parachinar, killing at least 14 women, men and children. Here is a picture of a child victim of that attack:

http://criticalppp.org/lubp/archives/6785

Here is a brief background of Parachinar and the blockade faced by its more than half a million population.

Parachinar and its siege

Parachinar, the capital of Kurram Agency, FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) of Pakistan, remains under siege by the Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba for the last three years. Parachinar is situated on a neck of Pakistani territory south of Peshawar, that juts into Paktia Province in Afghanistan and is the closest point in Pakistan to Kabul and borders on the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan.

The main road that connects this remote area to Peshawar and the rest of Pakistan has been effectively blocked for almost three years by certain jihadi and sectarian outfits, i.e., Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba. Any one from Parachinar who tries to travel through this road is attacked and literally slaughtered.

To get their daily supplies of food and medicine, the people of Parachinar are forced to take the longer route to Peshawar which requires crossing the Afghan border.

The cost of daily supplies and travel to other parts of Pakistan has therefore multiplied five to six times.

The Afghan route is not very safe either. On several occasions, the passengers from Parachinar have been abducted and killed by the Afghan Taliban. T

The Pakistani state has to a large extent turned a deaf ear to various appeals requesting security and emergency supplies to Parachinar. Rogue elements within the state institutions (e.g. ISI) are actively backing the criminals (Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba) in their protracted, low-scale ethnic cleansing of the Parachinar people.

Parachinar: The Valley of Death
By Ali Jawad

Tucked away between soaring snowy-peaks and deep gorges in the fragile north-western region of Pakistan is the tiny town of Parachinar.

Humbled by towering snow-tipped mountains and covered by endless fruit orchards, Parachinar’s natural charm is breathtaking. Its narrative for the last two years however, has been anything but reflective of the serene beauty of its surroundings.

Strangled by recurring sieges laid on the town by the Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba, and a plight concealed from the consciences of the outside world by a silent media, the lives of Parachinaris have been a tale of untold suffering.

Since early 2007, Taliban insurgency has gripped the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which holds Parachinar, and the surrounding North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) leading to the deaths of hundreds. Even more have been left homeless and without means of sustenance with homes and local businesses regularly torched down just because their owners happen to fall under the wrong “sect”, i.e., Shia, who are considered infidel by extremist Deobandis and Wahhabis. Despite the periodical nature of sectarian violence in these regions, the unrelenting wave of the recent outbreak has been by far the bloodiest in recent memory.

Shias represent a majority of the population in Parachinar constituting over fifty-percent (50%) of the population. They also have a considerable presence in neighbouring towns in the north-west, e.g., in Kohat, Hangu and D.I.Khan.

During the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, the Kurram Agency (which hosts the town of Parachinar) came under increased focus for its strategic location as it provided the shortest route from within Pakistan to the Afghan capital, Kabul. Jutting out into Afghanistan almost like an island peninsula, it was famously nicknamed the “Parrot’s Beak” by US forces during the Soviet-Afghan War and was regularly used as a launching-pad by American-backed “jihadists” to strike out at the Soviets. As a result of this strategic importance, towns in the FATA region were flooded by inflows of Wahhabist and Salafist anti-Soviet “jihadists” well-known for their hatred towards Shias.

Following on from the early and comparably minimal killings unleashed in 2007, armed Wahhabi groups have since caved in on the local Shias of Parachinar from all sides. The Shia residents of Parachinar have repeatedly claimed that Wahhabi elements from Afghanistan have joined in the attacks against the town’s Shias, but these cries have been met by deaf ears in Islamabad’s Pakistani central government.

An all-out attack against the Shias of Parachinar has been underway for a long time now; even Sunni locals seen to be “friendly” towards Shias have not been spared in this maelstrom of killing. Gruesome images of beheaded and mutilated bodies, with arms and legs chopped off from corpses, have surfaced on the Internet since the outbreak of violence. Such showings of utter barbarity are not altogether unique. The collective massacres of Hazara Shias in next door Afghanistan – more notably in Mazari Sharif in 1998 where during a 48-hour period over 8,000 Hazaras were mercilessly slaughtered – evoke similar images of ruthlessness. By the end of the killing spree then, corpses littered the streets of the city after express orders were given out by the Taliban government for the dead to be left unburied.

Eerily reminiscent of massacres conducted against Afghan Shias in the recent past, Riaz Ali Toori, a villager from Parachinar, protested in a letter to a Pakistani daily:

“Today Parachinar is burning: daily bodies of more than five beheaded persons reach Parachinar. The situation of Parachinar is getting worse day by day and so is the life of all people living there. It’s a matter of great sorrow and shock that Pakistan, in spite of bringing Fata into the mainstream of the country, has been pushed into fighting a continuous war and facing terror.” (Letters to the Editor, The Dawn, April 08 2008)

Surprisingly, at a time when the “civilized” world is on a so-called offensive against “terror”, coverage of the sorrow-filled plight of Parachinaris within western media has been periodical at best. The reasons for this are unclear. May be it is because Parachinar, fatefully, does not sit over barrels of oil.

In July of 2008, the New York Times ran a piece highlighting the rise of “sectarian conflict” in Parachinar. By then, the town had already been subject to a siege that had spanned for months; food and medical supplies had been in severe shortage after the main Thal-Peshawar highway leading to the town was blocked off by armed groups.

The New York Times article carried the story of Asif Hussain, a Sunni driver, in a relief convoy headed for Parachinar; the convoy was ambushed, and its drivers taken captive. Asif Hussain was let off after convincing his captors that he was Sunni, the other eight drivers were not as lucky. (Power Rising Taliban Besiege Pakistani Shiites, New York Times, July 26 2008)

Today, the Taliban / Sipah-e-Sahaba led violence against Shias has spread out over a larger radius extending all the way through to the southern tips of the NWFP and the rest of the country. Attacks on Shias in Kohat, Hangu, Dera Ismail Khan, Peshawar, Chakwal, D.G. Khan, Quetta and Karachi have become a norm.

The systematic targeting of followers of the Shia sect in various regions of Pakistan, more specifically in the north-west of the country, amounts to nothing other than a project of ethnic cleansing.

According to a reputed scholar of the phenomenon of ethnic cleansing, Drazen Petrovic, he defines it as such:

“ethnic cleansing is a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons to systematically eliminate another group from a given territory on the basis of religious, ethnic or national origin. Such a policy involves violence and is very often connected with military operations. It is to be achieved by all means, from discrimination to extermination …”

The above definition provides an almost perfect fit to the present situation of Shia in Pakistan, particularly in Parachinar. If international silence continues as it has over the last three years, the same story will have repeated across many towns in the FATA, NWFP and all over Pakistan.

That the Pakistani government, Pakistan Army in particular given its persistent patronage of and links with Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba, holds principal blame for its failure to restrain the killings is indisputable and goes without mention. Wider global apathy to an ongoing project of ethnic cleansing however, is certainly not comprehensible and deserves a great deal of mention.

Parachinar deserves better. And the people of Parachinar certainly deserve better. The least we can do is speak out and urge our leaders to press the Pakistani government to bring an immediate end to these massacres. Then, and only then perhaps, can it be said that we have extended a hand to the forgotten victims of Parachinar.

Ali Jawad is a political activist and a member of the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission (AIM); http://www.aimislam.com/.

Source: Counter Currents, 2009

Locals cry for freedom from militants in Kurram
‘Pakistan’s Gaza Strip’ under siege for three years

By Mumtaz Alvi

The News, March 24, 2010

Most recently, on 23 March 2010, the inhabitants of Kurram Agency have appealed to the government (read Pakistan Army) to come to their rescue in the face of long-continuing siege, militants’ (Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba) barbarism and economic blockade of their region.

Though an open letter, representing the over 0.5 million population of the agency, several locals of Turi and Bangash tribes through e-mails, have sought the government’s intervention to rid them of the militants, who were after them to implement their diabolical agenda.

“Through this open letter/petition, we, half-a-million population of Kurram Agency, Fata capital Parachinar and surroundings, want to draw the attention of the government, media and civil society towards inhuman behaviour being meted out to us on our own land in the form of siege and economic blockade since April 2007, has converted the paradise-like valley into a Gaza Strip,” they said.

They wondered why the state apparatus was helpless in dealing with a very small number of militants and why it lacked the ability to also open the road permanently. They noted through Voice of Parachinar (Parachinar-based website) if Swat and other areas, infested with militants could be cleared, why not the Kurram Agency?

The valley is located on the Pak-Afghan border. The inhabitants have to risk their lives while coming to other parts of Pakistan, as they have to do this via restive Afghanistan. Many of them have lost their lives in the bid during the last three years. The main road leading to the agency is blocked.

“The real challenge to the government is how to permanently make the Tall-Parachinar road secure at least for vehicular movement. But unfortunately, this has not been done so far,” said Hasan Gul Ishrat, who last visited Parachinar in November 2007. He said only a few days back, a suicide bomber hit a convoy, escorted by the FC personnel, again ringing alarming bells, for those who either wanted to visit their families in Kurram Agency or planned to come out of the under siege valley.

Sajid Hussain Turi and Munir Khan Orakzai, the two MNAs are from Kurram Agency, from NA-37 and NA-38, respectively. They too have not been able to freely visit their constituencies, let alone carrying out development works there. They have raised the issue on the floor of parliament several times and also brought it to the notice of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, but the situation by and large remains unchanged.

Hasan Gul noted the Kurram Agency was divided mainly into Turi and Bangash tribes — Turis were Shias, whereas Bangash Sunnis, but unfortunately, both were hostages and suffering at the hands of the Taliban.

The residents feel that if it was difficult to take on the militants on ground, they could be effectively dealt a decisive blow by helicopters or jets. They have even offered to lead security forces in hunting down the militants.

A journalist from Parachinar, who is Islamabad-based, Ali Hussain Turi, talking to The News requested to the government to launch a decisive action to cleanse the Kurram Agency of militants on the auspicious anniversary of 1940 Resolution. He said that making the main road safe for public could provide the desperately-needed relief to the people of the Kurram Agency and this ultimately could lead to ending its occupation. Ali’s parents, brothers and sisters have also been under siege in Parachinar for the last three years.

Source: The News

Call for Help

The humanitarian crisis in Parachinar demands urgent action. We can’t afford to sit idle and wait for our army generals and government ministers to attend to their responsibilities. Thousands of people are literally on the verge of death. The objective of the protracted, low-scale ethnic cleansing is to drive them out of their ancestral lands and to provide a safe haven for terrorists of Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba. The brave people of Parachinar have been able to defend themselves for many years now. But their capacities are nothing compared to the organized terror machinery of their opponents. Their plight is indeed desperate. In the name of God and in the name of humanity, please come forward and help your brothers and sisters in need.

What YOU CAN do!

Educate yourselves and people around you about the situation.

Organize prayers, vigils, and workshops in your localities (school campus, public libraries, Friday prayers, mosques and community centers, embassies and press clubs). Prepare large posters with images and concise information.

Write op-ed columns and letters to your local and national newspapers with an informed perspective. Also write to your governments and local and international human rights groups. Hold poster and letter writing sessions in your communities.

Demand that the Pakistani army and government ensure the protection of all of its citizens. It should immediately end the blockade of the Peshawar-Parachinar route. The government should set up an independent commission to investigate the complicity of state officials and intelligence agencies. They should also estimate the level of damage and compensate the victims duly.

Generate emergency funds in your localities through donation and public service. Establish these funds as part of a regular project (with a target amount to be generated each year) to help victims of oppression in various parts of Pakistan and elsewhere.

As you help these victims with basic humanitarian aid (food, medicine, shelter), also empower them for the longer term by establishing and supporting sustainable development projects, relating to education, health, media/communications, micro-financing, and community building.

Keep up with the latest developments in Parachinar and other affected areas in Pakistan.

Lastly, in any assessment or condemnation of crimes against the Parachinar people, especially in the international media, it is important to hold accountable not only the front-end Taliban forces, but also the hidden hands (ISI, CIA, Saudi Arabia) that created and promoted them over the years and that continue to use them to advance their political and economic interests. Focusing purely on the Taliban conceals the crucial role of the bigger powers in this game. These very powers can also effectively control these criminals. Therefore, these powers should be the main target of international pressures. Merely denouncing the Taliban without denouncing the powers that originated them and for whose interests they are still working also leads to a kind of misperception in the eyes of the world that the problem is with Islam and its teachings.

Useful Readings:

Ahmed Rashid. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. (Yale University Press, 2001)

Ahmed Rashid. Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. (Viking Adult, 2008)

Ayesha Siddiqa. Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. (Pluto, 2007)

Gyan Pandey. Construction of Communalism. (Oxford, 2006, 2nd edition)

Hassan Abbas. Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism. (M.E. Sharpe, 2004)

Mahmood Mamdani. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. (Random House, 2004)

Shuja Nawaz. Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within. (Oxford, 2008)

http://supportparachinar.blogspot.com/

Arab Summit: Turkey Blasts Israel, Dialogue with Iran Not Welcomed

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan unleashed a vehement attack on Israel’s policy in Jerusalem at an Arab summit in Libya as Arabs turned down a proposal to open dialogue with Iran.

Erdogan, a guest speaker, blasted as “madness” Israel’s policy in dealing with the whole of Jerusalem as its united capital.

“Jerusalem is the apple of the eye of each and every Muslim… and we cannot at all accept any Israeli violation in Jerusalem or in Muslim sites,” he said in his speech at the opening of the Arab League summit in the Libyan town of Sirte Saturday.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was likewise invited by Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi to address the summit, said “now is the time to give peace a chance.”

“We have the possibility, we have the responsibility and we feel the urgency,” he said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruled out U.S.-brokered indirect peace talks with Israel unless it freezes all settlement construction, as Arab leaders closed ranks over Jerusalem.

Abbas, in a speech at the opening of the two-day summit, echoed widespread concern that the Middle East peace process was at risk, urging his Arab peers to “rescue” Jerusalem.

“We cannot resume indirect negotiations as long as Israel maintains its settlement policy and the status quo,” he said.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon also addressed the summit, seeking Arab support for the peace talks.

He urged Arab leaders to facilitate Israeli-Palestinian “proximity” talks, saying “our common goal should be to resolve all final-status issues within 24 months.”

Ban also criticized as “illegal” Israeli settlement construction in mainly Arab east Jerusalem and stressed Jerusalem must emerge “as the capital of two states.”

Abbas accused Israel of seeking to wipe out the Arab identity of Jerusalem through “ethnic cleansing.”

He insisted that Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem must be the capital of any future Palestinian state.

“We have always said that Jerusalem is the jewel in the crown and the gate to peace,” Abbas said.

Fresh U.S. efforts to broker indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks earlier this month were still-born when Israel announced plans to build 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem.

The timing of the announcement during a visit to Israel by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden angered Washington and the Palestinians, who just days earlier had agreed to give peace talks another chance after a year-long hiatus.

Arab leaders from both the pro-Western and radical camps have also been angered by the opening of a restored 17th-century synagogue near east Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam.

The 13 Arab leaders attending the summit along with Qadhafi are due to adopt a resolution to raise 500 million dollars in aid to improve living conditions for Jerusalem Palestinians.

After a plenary session for speeches, the leaders broke for lunch and returned for talks behind closed doors before wrapping up the first day of meetings.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who said before the summit that peace talks with Israel had become “pointless,” asked the leaders on Saturday to examine “the chances of failure of the peace process” due to Israel’s policies.

He also said the Arabs should open a dialogue with Iran, which is locked in a dispute with the West over its controversial nuclear program, and set up an “Arab Neighborhood Zone” that would include the Islamic republic and Turkey.

“I understand that some of us have concerns about Iranian positions. This does not rule out but maybe confirms the need for a dialogue in order to define our future relations with Iran, with whom we differ on many issues,” he said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit told reporters that the afternoon session discussed Moussa’s proposal on Iran “but most of the Arab countries don’t welcome this for now.” He did not elaborate.

The Arab summit follows the worst violence in the blockaded Gaza Strip in 14 months, and comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected anew on Friday international calls to stop settlement building in east Jerusalem.

Israeli tanks carried out an incursion into southern Gaza and killed a Palestinian militant on Saturday after the army lost two soldiers in clashes the previous day along the border with the coastal strip.

The Sirte gathering is the first annual summit to be hosted by Qadhafi, who considers Israel an implacable “enemy” of the Arabs.(Naharnet-AFP)

Ferghana Hydro relations…

Hydro relations…

26/03-2010 11:15, Bishkek – News Agency “24.kg”

Bishkek and Dushanbe are not going to decline from the ambitious projects of construction of Rogunsk and Kambar-Ata hydro power plants in order to satisfy Uzbekistan. Besides, the countries will conduct an international assessment, having agreed thereby with the Tashkent’s attitude.

For Dushanbe, the erection of the Rogunsk HPP is a chance to come out of energy isolation. Official Tashkent is determined not to admit such course of events.

- By means of a giant dam Dushanbe will have a serious influence on Tashkent’s policy. As an owner, Tajikistan can block off the access to water source any time. And fatally depending on irrigation, the Uzbek agro sector will die in a two-week’s time, – the Director of the Central Asian Department of the Institute for CIS and Baltic countries Andrei Grozin considers.

Russia also must reckon with Uzbekistan, despite the fact that Moscow intends to contribute to the construction of Kyrgyzstan’s Kambar-Ata HPP.

- Tashkent plays a very important role in energy and primarily gas sectors of the region. Russia must not lose such a partner by no means, Andrei Grozin notes.

Winter 2010 – turned out to be a very hot period for Central Asian countries. Uzbekistan refused from energy cooperation with the states included in the Unified energy system, whereby gave a great number of problems to its neighbors, especially to Tajikistan.

Dushanbe regards the attitude of Uzbekistan as disrespect to national interests of all Central Asian republics.

- Coming out of Uzbekistan from the Unified energy system harms not only our state, but all the countries of the region, since at the most hard times the “ring” provided with uninterruptible energy exchange”, stated the Ambassador of Tajikistan in Kazakhstan Abdutalip Ahmetov in the interview with NA “Novosti Kazakhstana”.

As soon as Uzbekistan broke the “ring”, Astana, Bishkek and Dushanbe decided to create their own system. According to Abdutalip Akhmetov, they will construct a transmission line from Kyrgyz Osh to Tajik Khudzhand that will help unite three energy systems into one.

Besides, a road will be laid between Kazakhstan and Tajikistan through Kyrgyzstan. Astana also agreed to create an investment fund of 100 million dollars on equal shares. Tajikistan has already decided how to apply the funds: they will direct them for development of hydroelectric sector, agriculture and construction. However, these projects have no real implementation yet.

Uzbekistan is continuing to occupy a defiant attitude. According to Tashkent, the neighbors should not undertake these constructions. At the same time, Uzbekistan authorities frankly stated several times that construction of the Rogunsk HPP can lead to great shallowing of Amudarya – one of the main arteries of the Aral Sea. But analysts assume that the root of the Aral problem is in irrational utilization of water resources. According to assessments of the UN experts, over 20 percent of water of river flows are discharged idly due to incorrect arrangement of irrigation system, simply go into ground, whereas only five percent required for reservoir filling.

- Uzbek expert, Director of Hydroproject OJSC Sergei Zhigarev in his interview to the news agency REGNUM stated that the intent of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to construct HPP by twenty-year-old projects is a criminal flippancy.

- All existing hydro power facilities of international importance must have licenses for safe exploitation, but only after documentary evidence that they comply with the requirements of modern international reliability and safety standards, Zhigarev concluded.

In turn, the Head of the International Fund “Institute for research of problems of water and water energy security in Central Asia” Ernest Karybekov accentuates that he cannot understand why the Uzbek party is so intensely insisting on conducting an assessment.

- When I hear requirements on conducting of assessment, then I involuntarily ask myself: what are our neighbors afraid of the most – the break of dams or decrease of water supply? If they bother of operation regime and water supply more, then these nuances can be included in contracts and agreements. If they think of possible break of dams, particularly like the one which happened as a result of explosion on Naryn River, then again we need to model a would-be emergency without any excessive emotions. Generally there is no any threat. The danger is contrived and exaggerated, Karybekov says.

In search of benefit, Moscow, sharing the attitude of Tashkent, is not breaching the agreement with Bishkek. The Kremlin understands that participation in Kambarata-Ata-1 Project in future will bring solid political dividends and Russia will obtain a powerful lever of influence on the region.

At the same time Russia refused to finance the Rogunsk HPP. And Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon declared that they will construct the Rogunsk HPP on their own. Moreover Tajikistan authorities are collecting funds for the construction from population, and the amount is 1.4 billion soms. Each Tajik family should buy shares of the Rogun. But they can count on dividends only after launch of the first aggregate of the HPP.

Tajik specialists stated that in the long-term perspective the Rogun is profitable not only for Tajikistan, but also for Uzbekistan. Thus, the neighbors can receive water in the required volume for irrigation of gourd fields.

The leading scientific officer of the Russian Institute of strategic researches Azhdar Kurtov considers that Uzbekistan hardly change its opinion regarding the “construction of century”. Tashkent will firstly undertake diplomatic efforts, and it’s not improbable that in order to find supporters, it will initiate discussion of the problem of the Rogunsk HPP at an international level.

A serious conflict is ripening, and as a peace-maker appeared the European Union, though it was expected that Russia will help.

The special representative of the EU to Central Asian countries Pierre Morel, who visited Dushanbe in the middle of January, informed about the willingness of Brussels to allocate 60 million dollars to Tajikistan, so that, instead of one big HHP, the Tajik build several but small HPPs. These funds will be enough to construct two small HPPs on Surkhob River and to modernize the existing Kairakumsk HPP.

- It is not easy to solve the existing problems in this direction in Central Asian countries, it is necessary to conduct a constant dialogue, and the European Union is ready to facilitate holding such a dialogue”, Pierre Morel stated.

Darya Podolskaya, special edition of Slovo Kyrgyzstana plus newspaper, 26 March, 2010

Uzbek Students Protest Tajik Aluminum Plant

A barge operator on the Amu Darya river near the Uzbek border town of Termez

March 26, 2010

TERMEZ, Uzbekistan — Around 1,000 students and university professors in the southern Uzbek town of Termez have protested against neighboring Tajikistan’s plan to expand its aluminum plant near Uzbek territory, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reported.

Participants in the March 25 protest said industrial waste from the plant has caused serious health and environmental problems in Sariosiyo, Uzun, Denov, and other districts of Uzbekistan’s southeastern Surkhondaryo Province.

The aluminum plant, run by the Tajik Aluminum Company (Talco), was launched in late March 1975 in close proximity to the border with Uzbekistan.

Uzbek ecology movements have repeatedly said the plant has contaminated water, air, and soil in Surkhondaryo for over 35 years, resulting in an increase of pollution-related diseases among the local population.

According to Uzbek environmentalists, high rates of pulmonary and digestive diseases and blood disorders among Surkhondaryo residents are connected to pollution caused by the aluminum plant.

Tajik authorities have denied such accusations.

The protest action in Termez came two days after the Uzbek ambassador in Dushanbe was summoned by Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry to hand over a protest note over some 1,000 Tajik rail freight cars blocked in Uzbek rail stations.

According to reports by RFE/RL’s Tajik and Uzbek services, Uzbek railway officials since early February had blocked the cargo train wagons transiting through Uzbekistan, citing technical reasons.

RFE/RL’s Tajik Service quoted Tajikistan’s railway officials as saying the freight cars were carrying raw alumina for the Talco plant, a few bulldozers for the construction of the country’s Roghun hydropower station, fuel, and some nonmilitary cargo for international forces in Afghanistan.

The Uzbek Embassy in Dushanbe said today that some of the trains have already left for Tajikistan.

The embassy rejected a claim by Tajik authorities that political motives were behind the hold-up.

Relations have cooled between the two neighbors in recent months over Tajikistan’s plans to complete the construction of its key Roghun power plant despite Tashkent’s objections.

Uzbekistan says the Roghun plant will leave it facing water shortages.

Uzbeks ‘Ease’ Freight Holdup At Center Of Row With Tajikistan

The delayed railroad cars are carrying materials for the Talco aluminum plant.

March 27, 2010

DUSHANBE — Some of an estimated 1,000 freight cars held up for several weeks on Uzbek territory have now arrived in Tajikistan, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reports.

Tajik railway officials said around 150 of the railcars were now in the country, but the Foreign Ministry said hundreds more were still being held up on Uzbek territory.

Officials said previously that the freight cars contain raw materials for Tajikistan’s Talco aluminum plant, construction equipment for the country’s Roghun hydropower station, fuel, and some nonmilitary cargo for international forces in Afghanistan.

The hold-up has caused a dispute between the neighboring countries, with Tajikistan accusing Uzbekistan of intentionally blocking the freight transiting through its territory.

Uzbekistan has blamed technical problems, along with bad weather and an increase in freight traffic.

On this last point, the Uzbek Embassy in Dushanbe said on March 26 that Uzbekistan was fulfilling “its obligations under international agreements on ensuring the passage of nonmilitary and humanitarian goods to Afghanistan.”

Relations have cooled between the two neighbors in recent months over
Tajikistan’s plans to complete the construction of its key Roghun power plant despite Tashkent’s objections.

Uzbekistan says the Roghun plant will leave it facing water shortages.

Tajik plans to expand the Talco plant, near the Uzbek border, have also prompted some anxiety in Uzbekistan.

On March 25, around 1,000 students and university professors in the southern Uzbek town of Termez protested the planned expansion, saying industrial waste from the plant had caused health and environmental problems.

Tajik authorities have previously denied such accusations

Increased Traffic Exposes Weak Links In Northern Distribution Network

Uzbek-Tajik dispute hinders Afghanistan supplies

By OLGA TUTUBALINA

The Associated Press

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — A dispute between two former Soviet republics in Central Asia has caused a bottleneck in the shipment of some nonmilitary supplies destined for U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, Tajik officials said Friday.

Tajikistan says freight traffic is being blocked from crossing its border with Uzbekistan, holding up many shipments, including the Afghanistan-bound supplies.

Tajiks say the action has severely damaged their economy. Some analysts say Uzbekistan has halted traffic because it fears that a huge dam project in Tajikistan will divert water from its territory.

Uzbekistan denies that the interruption in railway deliveries is intentional.

Under deals secured last year, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan granted the United States and NATO forces permission to transport nonmilitary materials through their countries to neighboring Afghanistan.

Tajik officials say that about 1,000 railway carriages transporting goods to Tajikistan for an important aluminum company and the giant Roghun hydroelectric dam construction project, as well as fuel needed for agricultural machinery, have been affected. Tajikistan’s state railways company says some of the railcars are also carrying supplies bound for international forces in Afghanistan.

Earlier this week, Tajik Prime Minister Akil Akilov criticized Uzbekistan for the holdup, which he said has caused his impoverished country millions of dollars. He appealed to the United Nations Secretary General to help settle the dispute.

Akilov accused Uzbekistan of intentionally targeting fuel supplies to disrupt farming in Tajikistan, which is largely rural.

The Uzbek Embassy in Tajikistan said the holdup was caused by too much traffic on its railroads.

“These problems are mainly technical and logistical, and they have been caused by a sharp increase in traffic on Uzbekistan’s railways,” the embassy said in a statement.

The statement said the increased traffic has been created by international agreements to allow deliveries of humanitarian supplies to Afghanistan. Some transportation difficulties have also been caused by adverse weather, the embassy said.

Uzbek officials say its state railway company is devising an emergency timetable to ensure essential supplies are delivered to Tajikistan as soon as possible.

Since the 1991 Soviet collapse, relations between the two neighbors have been strained by border disagreements and failure to coordinate on sharing natural resources. But tensions have escalated in recent months over Tajikistan’s plan to build a giant hydroelectric plant by damming a river that flows into Uzbekistan’s agricultural heartland.

—–

Associated Press Writer Peter Leonard contributed to this report from Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Nato chief proposes missile shield to include Russia

By Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has called for a new missile defence system that would protect the US and its allies, and include Russia as well. Mr Rasmussen said the threat of missile proliferation was real and growing and, in cases such as Iran, these missiles could threaten Nato territories. He said missile defence could bring Nato and Russia together. Mr Rasmussen was speaking at the Brussels Forum – an international gathering in the Belgian capital. The Nato secretary general said he saw a new Euro-Atlantic missile defence system, as he called it, as more than just a means of defending Nato countries against ballistic missile attack. Mr Rasmussen clearly believes that such a system could re-invigorate not just the European allies’ relationship with the US but also Nato’s whole relationship with Russia. “It would be an opportunity for Europe to demonstrate again to the United States that the allies are ready and willing to invest in the capabilities we need to defend ourselves,” he said. ‘New dynamic’ But he also argued that such a step would create a new dynamic in European security. It would be a strong political symbol that Russia is fully part of the Euro-Atlantic family, he said. It’s a bold proposal. The US has tried to draw Russia into its missile defence plans with very limited success. Moscow tends to see the proposal as ultimately undermining its own nuclear deterrent. But Nato as a whole is increasingly interested in such defences and looks set to go ahead with them with or without Russia on board.

THE ART OF PROPAGANDA THE GODZILLA FACTOR

Man can not control the forces of nature; because of the lust within, he will turn that power to evil.

Every child knows this instinctively. Children create images of Monsters in their dreams as a way to rationalize their fears, nightmares which are abstractions of reality.

Monsters are an important part of the human psyche rooted deep in the primal regions of the brain. While it is still unclear how the higher functions of the brain creates from theses primal instincts symbols, expressions and abstractions. It is from these abstractions that we as humans develop ideas about our survival and our future.

The Propagandist uses primeval tactics to reach the audience on a level that operates outside of objective and rational argument. The Propagandist uses images, ideas that awaken the deep primal fears every human being has locked away in our minds sequestered only by reason.  Mom or Dad rushed into our bedroom and turned on the lights to prove no monsters were hiding under the bed.

GODZILLA is my favorite monster my favorite propaganda image, idea. You may have never thought about Godzilla as a propaganda metaphor; but he is. Created by the Japanese as an anti nuclear symbol Godzilla is a monster born of the unintended consequence of scientific invention. The Bomb, nuclear fallout, nuclear waste and the uncontrollable effects of radiation in relation to nature and the human species.

Godzilla is a monster that slumbers deep in the hidden regions of the earth until he is awakened by some evil force. Sometimes he is called upon to help us fight an evil force. Never the less when he shows up he just kicks ass and he doesn’t care who woke him up or called him. In Godzilla’s eyes we are all worthy of and have earned an ass kicking.

When he is first awakened he usually swims around and eats a fishing boat a ship or two before he decide’s to wonder onto shore. Once he comes ashore he takes no sides and just destroys everything in his path in an uncontrollable rampage. In his primeval mind we are all instinctive threats. His intent is to render us harmless. Try as we might, we never destroy him, the more we try the more pissed off he gets and the more damage he does. Only when we finally realize our faults our errors and seek the higher road based on morality, ethics and embrace those things that are of the collective good does he retreat and fall back into his slumber until he is again woken.

This is a Warning; Godzilla is awake and he is roaming around those deep secret places in America. Only this time he has been awakened by the primeval shouting of conservative politicians who believe propagandizing primeval fear is an effective political strategy. Turn on any media source right now and you will find a consensus that the conservative message has been very successful. However Godzilla doesn’t know they’re just politicking and the conservative media pundits are pandering to a market share of the audience.  Today Godzilla is a metaphor for political fringe groups that believe government is evil and should be destroyed. We all know one of these people, it is our old uncle a co-worker or our own elderly mother who watches Fox news non stop and fears for her life.  Some of these people are armed and dangerous and are so embittered by hatred they are capable of extreme violence. They become Godzilla and they have been awakened by the shouting of Conservative Rhetoric.

So how does propaganda work so effectively. The message targets the primal fears of the audience.

We humans have three brains as it turns out combined into one head. First the reptilian brain or ‘R-complex’, second the mammalian brain or ‘limbic system’, and third the neo-mammalian brain or ‘neocortex’. The reptilian part of the brain controls reflexive actions, you stick your hand in an alligators open mouth and you lose your hand. The alligator reflexively closes its mouth, it doesn’t think about what is in its mouth. The mammalian brain controls primal fear as well as pleasure and sexual drive. It controls fight or flee instincts and it learns remembers instinctive behavior. The neocortex is the highest developed part of the system in most humans and is capable of complex and abstract thought processes. Like there is really no monster under the bed even after the other two brains reacted as if there was.

Recently you may have noticed if your using your neocortex that the conservative party message propagated by conservative politicians and the conservative media is based on key words, statements and a comprehensive message. Regardless of the question asked or regardless of whom it is asked the message the answers are the same. This is defined in the propaganda play book as Ad Nauseam to: use tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited and controlled by the propagator.

The on going healthcare debate is an example of propaganda tactics that target primal fear. Have you heard the phrase “Ram it Down Our Throats”. This statement triggers the primal fear of choking. Or how about, “This Bill is a Baby Killer”. Triggers the primal fear to protect our offspring our children. Then there is the idea of Socialism. This idea triggers the learned primal fear of imprisonment or the loss of freedom, the loss of democratic control of free choice and the loss of wealth which equals safety or security. The intended response is to trigger such a primal fear that we don’t stop to engage the neocortex and analyze the threat. Soon through repetition we begin to believe or even develop a primal instinct and reaction to the key words and statements.

Soon the monster Godzilla is awake functioning on lower levels of the mammalian brain. He reacts without reason because of the fear driven instinctive impulses.  As Godzilla makes his way ashore he is always attacked by ineffective weapons, useless are guns and missiles. Oh sometimes these weapons knock him down or push him up against some high power lines that render a non lethal shock. He usually just lies and his back kicking and screaming and beating the ground until his reptilian brain kicks in.  Then he is just reacting reflexively to the attack. It is then our big lovable monster really starts to kick ass.

Weapons like Senator Tom Coburn’s manipulation of the new jobs bill that would extend unemployment benefits to desperate people are used to trigger the primal fear of survival, only agitates the monster.  Senate Plays Game Of Chicken With Unemployment Benefits

We can also thank the cute twin personalities of Sarah Palin for calling on Godzilla for help like the little twin fairies in the Godzilla movies that ask the monster for his help. This alway works out bad for the general population as Godzilla still rampages though cities fighting evil. But sister Palin the gun toting soccer mom has some help for Godzilla, she providing maps with her approved targets highlighted with bullseye’s  and cross hairs. So how can Godzilla miss?

Well the problem is that when primal fear controls your brain functions you don’t pay attention to the details. Maybe that’s why when some one shot a bullet through Republican Eric Cantor’s office window? He blamed the event on ratcheting up the rhetoric however police investigators determined. Bullet That Hit Eric Cantor’s Office From Random Gunfire.

Maybe it’s really Zombies we have to worry about? Zombies are good metaphors too. They function on the Reptilian Brain and they eat brains too. Zombies run amok with one intent, that is to eat your brain. Their brains are already infected, like in Resident Evil. Once infected your best friend or even your dear old mom will become a brain eating monster. Hey wait a minute isn’t there always an evil corporation  behind Zombie out breaks?

Well sooner or later if Government leaders keep telling us we can’t trust the Government we’er not going to trust the Government. I guess I need to use my neocortex and tell my Conservative Government Leaders that they are part of the Government they don’t want me to trust.

One thing is for sure based on history and the current crisis is this. As economic inequity and desperation are combined with fear, summer heat and hopelessness it is an explosive mixture.

It is time to cool down the rhetoric before the Zombies over run the rest of us. Because god help us if we have to call Godzilla to save us from ourselves.

Univ. Nebraska, Home to Afghanistan’s “Militarized” Islamist Textbooks

[It is very significant that this timely article appears at this stage in the war of terror.   America's controversial history of collusion with "Islamists" must be made common knowledge, especially the policy of creating and training "Islamists" as part of American foreign policy.  If Americans only knew that our military and intelligence services have been training Islamists to become super terrorists for the past thirty years, the same people we are fighting today, they would not support a war designed to multiply their numbers.  If Americans only knew that these super-terrorists that we have trained are today called "al Qaida" then they would not accept either prolonging the war in Afghanistan to keep them out, or an expansion of the war into central Asia to chase after them.

Director Thomas Gouttierre, of U. Neb. Dept. of Afghan Studies, likes to maintain publicly that his effort was not a CIA project, but history and multiple lines of research by many different individuals proves that it was a political warfare operation, a psyop, from the very beginning.  It was started as CIA Dir. Wm. Casey's pet project, which he used to extend Islamic terrorism into not only Afghanistan and Pakistan, but deep into Uzbekistan and all the Soviet Republics as well.  America's Islamization programs are today our Achilles' heel, which only has to be exposed to the American people to disrupt our war of conquest, which the Islamists have made possible.   (SEE: America’s “Islamists” Go Where Oilmen Fear to Tread )

According to the definitive history on this topic, given by author Steve Coll in Ghost Wars,:

“CIA Director William Casey, in a move exceeding his authority, decided to extend destabilizing propaganda measures inside the borders of the Soviet Union. To this end, the CIA promoted the Muslim religion in Uzbekistan, by CIA commissioning a translation of the Qu’ran into Uzbek by an Uzbek exile living in Germany, and then commissioning Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence to deliver 5,000 copies.”]

In Nebraska, a Center for Afghanistan Studies – and for controversy

Critics say the institute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha has gone too far in its work with the U.S. military, the State Department and even the Taliban. Its director makes no apologies.

Director Thomas Gouttierre has no apologies for the center’s work.: “Our interest is humanitarian.”(Chris VanKat / For The Times)

By Kate Linthicum

Reporting from Omaha – On the dusty plains of Afghanistan, a surprising number of people are said to know the word “Nebraska.”

It began as a fluke in the early 1970s, when administrators at the University of Nebraska at Omaha launched the Center for Afghanistan Studies. They wanted to distinguish the school as an international institution, and no other university was studying the then-peaceful nation half a world away.

As Afghanistan became a central battleground in the Cold War and then in the war against terrorism, the center — and its gregarious, well-connected director, Thomas Gouttierre — were fortuitously poised.

Equal parts research institute, development agency and consulting firm, the center has collected tens of millions of dollars from the U.S. military, the State Department and private contractors for its programs at home and in Afghanistan.

Like much of America’s involvement in that nation, it has not been without controversy.

The center has come under fire from some academics who say it has not generated the kind of scholarly research needed to help solve Afghanistan’s problems. It has also been criticized by women’s rights groups for its dealings with the Taliban.

Most frequently it has been targeted by peace activists, who say the center’s past and current collaborations with U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan are unethical. [Educator collaboration with CIA brainwashing programs is just as unethical as psychologists collaborating with CIA and military torture.]

“I don’t think the University of Nebraska has any business teaching kids anywhere in the world how to be killers,” said Paul Olson, president of Nebraskans for Peace, an activist group that has been calling on the university to close the center for the last decade.

As evidence, Olson points to the center’s $60-million contract with the U.S. government in the 1980s to educate Afghan refugees who were living in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation.

It printed millions of textbooks that featured material developed by the mujahedin resistance groups — including images of machine guns and calls for jihad against the Soviets.

Gouttierre says criticisms of the center are “revisionist” and fail to acknowledge the challenges of working in a society that has been at war for three decades.  [It is CIA efforts to destabilize Afghanistan, in which he played a vital part, that have plagued Afghanistan with its thirty year war.  Whatever the good professor says in the program's and his own defense, it is not "revisionist" to point-out the fact that it is immoral to help pollute an entire generation of a nation's young people with hatred and a determination to exact revenge.] The center’s aim, he says, has been to build cultural understanding and empower the Afghan people.

“Our interest is humanitarian,” he said. “They are victims who lost years of their lives on earth.”

Few Americans know more about Afghanistan than Gouttierre, who fell in love with the country as a Peace Corps volunteer there in the 1960s.

He and his wife, Mary Lou, arrived during the “golden age” of Afghanistan, a time before the Soviet invasion, the rise of the Taliban and the widespread production of opium.

In a mud house in Kabul, he wrote love poems in the Afghan language of Dari. At the high school where he taught English, he built a basketball court (he later coached the Afghan national basketball team).

And he met a collection of people who would later figure largely in Afghanistan’s history — future Marxists, anti-Soviets and ministers of the current government of Hamid Karzai.

In 1973, after nearly 10 years in Afghanistan, Gouttierre was invited by the University of Nebraska to lead the newly launched Afghanistan program, with the title dean of international studies.

Gouttierre moved to Omaha and set up an exchange program with Kabul University. He recruited Afghans to come teach and helped organize a large library of donated Afghan materials.

The U.S. funded its educational projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan until the 1990s, when the Taliban took power and the contracts dried up.

That left the center to do “whatever was necessary” to continue its programs, Gouttierre said.

In 1997, that meant signing a contract to train workers for Unocal, a California company that was trying to build a natural gas pipeline in Afghanistan. That year, several Taliban ministers came to Nebraska for a tour of the campus. Several women’s groups, angry over the Taliban’s repressive policies against women, protested.

It was the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that launched Gouttierre — and the center — onto the international stage.

The morning of the attacks, Gouttierre showed up to teach his Introduction to International Studies lecture and found half a dozen reporters sitting in the center aisle.

Over the next 10 months, he said, he gave more than 2,000 interviews to journalists from around the globe who wanted to learn about the rise of the Taliban and about Osama bin Laden, whom Gouttierre had researched while on a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Afghanistan in the 1990s.

The center’s newfound prominence helped garner more funding.

In 2002, the State Department gave the center a $6.5-million contract to print 15 million textbooks. Images of AK-47s were absent in these books, but they included phrases from the Koran, prompting criticism that U.S. funds were inappropriately being used to print religious material. The following year, the government did not renew the book contract.

The university has defended the center. Terry Hynes, senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, called it “a superb asset” to the school.

These days, the center leads a Department of Defense-funded literacy training program for the Afghan army. It also hosts a program for social scientists who are being trained to accompany U.S. military teams in Afghanistan to help facilitate cultural understanding. Eighteen such groups, known as “human terrain teams,” have come to Omaha over two years before shipping overseas. [The so-called "human terrain teams" have been linked to the Pentagon's secret Taliban hunting program (SEE:The Other Side of the Taliban-Hunter Story), which maps local social networks to facilitate the hunting of Taliban leaders and their subordinates.]

Gouttierre stood before a cramped class of trainees one morning this winter. In a lecture that lasted several hours, he talked about the history of Afghanistan and about U.S. involvement there since Sept. 11.

“We under-sourced the military and we outsourced redevelopment,” Gouttierre said, his voice rising. What Afghanistan needs, he said, is rebuilding. And the stakes could not be higher.

“If we succeed, it’s going to be seen as an American success,” Gouttierre said. “And if we fail, it’s going to be an American failure.”

kate.linthicum@ latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

ORCHESTRATING A PHONY WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

March 27, 2010 by Gordon Duff · 8 Comments

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IS THE ENEMY OUR OWN STUPIDITY?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER, Senior Editor

America’s recent attack, augmented by top line Afghan army troops,  against the massive Taliban enclave in the city of Marjah, population 80,000, a city that has been an enemy stronghold for years may not have happened at all.  Can anyone prove it?  Nobody had ever heard of Marjah before or even knew a city was there.  Nobody knew it was a Taliban stronghold either.  One thing we can easily figure out from the total lack of reporting, other than our “screw ups,” killing the usual civilians, using our over reliance on technology, is that the sham of the operation was simply to give the mercenary army of the Northern Alliance, an army no American soldier would turn its back on, a casual airing.

A trip to Vegas would have been cheaper and we would have found just as many Taliban.  What we did find is drugs, drugs everywhere, the embarrassment of our deceitful policy to build narcotics production from nothing to massive levels.  The further risk of peppering the internet with more photos of American, Afghan, British or Canadian troops tiptoeing through the poppies had to be avoided at all cost.  Thus a tissue thin cover story about poor farmers and their reliance on opium for a living was spun to the public, a story based on lies.

WHAT ARE WE REALLY INTO?

We have turned Afghanistan from a haven for a few foreign fighters, bin Laden included, given safe haven under strict parole, no training facilities, monitored daily under threat of expulsion, a country with a strict Islamic government actively rejecting opium production, western technology and the human rights of its women, into a sewer of drug dealers, crooked contractors, terrorist training camps and spies.  We originally handed the country over to warlord drug barons and criminals and eventually melded Hamid Karzai, a know moderate and very well know weak leader into the dupe of a defacto dictatorship built around the city of Kabul.  For years, America ignored an entire nation, an error of massive proportions that has exploded in our faces.  Other than Bush era stupidity and hubris, what was our rationale?

OIL, GAS, DRUGS, AND BETRAYAL

Bush settled into the poorly managed war in Afghanistan at the behest of Israel and India.  Israel was chasing gas pipeline revenue and India needed a base of operations to train guerrillas to attack Pakistan.  In the process, absolutely everyone involved was going to get rich peddling heroin into Russia by mule and running it by the ton into Western Europe and America in through every means possible including, we are told, using rendition flights as drug couriers.

Since day one of the American war, the primary goal has been to push opium production to maximum levels, restructure it as the number one agricultural crop of Afghanistan and to build a permanent tribal war to cover open involvement in this massive multi-billion dollar initiative through purposeful mismanagement, misjudgment and sheer idiocy.

NO WAR CAN BE FOUGHT IN AFGHANISTAN AS THINGS NOW ARE

We have recently learned, again, that our military leadership in Iraq had become corrupted in every imaginable way.  The current round of investigations will end the careers of hundreds of officers and only proves that the new “privatized model” being used by the Pentagon to artificially suppress the actual number of troops involved in a conflict by supplanting the majority of military functions, including military intelligence, transport and logistics, administration and even some combat operations with private contractors and mercenaries, is a ruse.  We don’t fool enemies anymore.  It is always assumed the enemy is Congress, the American People and our allies.

Some of the contracting firms, notably KBR, Haliburton and Blackwater, but others also, performed dismally, over billed by billions and led to a culture of corruption that tore at the core of our Army, reducing effectiveness massively instead of supplementing and supporting.  This “deconstructionism” cost billions and left us in a shambles, a shambles that has moved onto Afghanistan where things have only gotten worse.

Iraq had only Shiites and Sunnis.  Afghanistan is filled with warlords, Islamic insurgents, Israeli and Indian spies, the scum of the earth packaged as United Nations workers, American mercenaries, India diplomats and tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of gun toting criminals who will kill their own mothers for 5 dollars.  War attracts this kind of crowd but it took America’s decision to build drug trafficking to unprecedented levels to make the environment totally unviable for any military operations.  Was it planned?  It couldn’t have happened this way otherwise.

Did the US plan it alone?  Not hardly.  India was involved from day one, pushing to keep Pakistan drowning, facing enemies on both sides, and Karzai was a leader India knew it had in its pocket.  His own family is rumored to run much of the nation’s drug business and Karzai himself went to university in India and has always hated Pakistan, suspecting them of killing his father.  India has been given free rein of the country and is arming and training terrorists at war against Pakistan or so we like to tell ourselves.  Actually, we don’t know who they are arming or what they are doing.  The only information we get is from “private intelligence contractors” who are likely involved in the drug trade themselves.  Everyone knows this but turns a blind eye, that many people are getting paid out of this.

THE REAL DRUG WAR

What does it take to build a massive drug operation like this with thousands of hectares under production?  Now that heroin production has been established inside Afghanistan, massive profits can be realized but the farmers themselves, the ones we are worrying about so much receive almost nothing for their poppies.  They are actually paid better for growing wheat?  Where does the money come from?  There was never an infrastructure in place that could organize production on a national scale, process heroin, ship it around the world and bank the billions of dollars in a world where strict money laundering procedures are in effect.

PLANNING TO LOSE

The only way money can keep flowing, drug money, massive contractor payoffs, money to rig elections and the Fog of War to make it all possible, the only way chaos can be maintained is by keeping a war going with phony victories every so often and the appearance of building a nation, a nation with no economy, no cohesive institutions and no leadership.  Karzai is perfect for this, a classic “asset.”

As there never was a real enemy, no major leader of the Taliban, no “big kahuna” so to speak, especially since the death of bin Laden, not even Mullah Omar, defining an enemy or a victory would be impossible anyway.  It gets worse when you have indefensible border on both sides, Pakistan and Iran and are fighting an enemy that can melt into the civilian population for 2 years to reemerge victorious while we are away playing tennis.  We have some experience with such things.

The current plans, military, political and economic are ill advised, impossible to execute and blatantly dishonest in measure and application.  They are a sham.

LEAVING A VIABLE NATION

Nobody is going to survive the worldwide flood of narcotics from Afghanistan.  When some of the most powerful nations on earth send their most corrupt elements into a  region, allow them to establish a narco-kingdom defended by the most powerful military on earth with the world’s most skilled intelligence agencies either complicit in operations or “stood down” by their “private sector” surrogates, expect the worst.  Killing is a kindness compared to narcotics addiction.  One addict can murder an entire extended family.  Several addicts can turn any community into a sea of misery and despair.

Imagine that much of the destruction being done, not only to Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the world at large is being done in the name of democracy and religion.

GUNS AND DRUGS HAVE TO GO

Farmers and herdsmen don’t need anti-aircraft weapons, RPGs and automatic rifles.  An Afghan herdsman can kill a predator at 600 meters with a hundred year old rifle.  Anyone that can’t make a living without growing opium poppies, anyone given the opportunity to live otherwise, is an enemy and must be destroyed.  As it looks now, the root of the problem and the leadership of the threat to world civilization is drugs, not insurrection.  Perhaps we might want to see if we might be the enemy ourselves.

Who Killed Karkare? The Real Face of Terrorism in India

Who Killed Karkare? The Real Face of Terrorism in India

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Contents

Preface 7

I: Hindu-Muslim riots 13

A new-age strategy of Brahminists to subjugate common Hindus (Bahujans)

II: Switching gears 31

From Communalism to the bogey of  “Muslim terrorism”

III: Bomb blast investigations . 55

IB’s uncalled for and deliberate interference to save Brahminists and implicate Muslims

i) Mumbai Train bomb blast case of 2006 (11 July 2006) 59

ii) Malegaon bomb blast case (8 September 2006 74

iii) Ahmedabad bomb blasts & Surat unexploded bombs (26 July 2008) 79

iv) Delhi bomb blast 2008 (13 September 2008) 100

v) Samjhauta Express bomb blast case (19 February 2007) 118

vi) Hyderabad Mecca Masjid Blast (18 May 2007) 122

vii) Ajmer Sharif Dargah Blast (11 October 2007) 128

viii) Serial Blasts in U.P. courts (23 November 2007) 136

ix) Jaipur Blasts (13 May 2008) 143

IV: Nanded bomb blast (5 April 2006) 153

A providential self detection of the case

V: Malegaon Bomb Blast 2008 169

(Pre-Mumbai attack investigation)

The first true and honest investigation of the case

Hemant Karkare showed the way

VI: Who Killed Karkare? 181

Mumbai Terror Attack is a reality but its CST-CAMA-
Rangabhavan Lane episode is shrouded in mystery

Part I: The Brahminist elements in the IB and in the Naval
Intelligence Directorate deliberately blocked the hot intelligence
given by the U.S. and the RAW 182

Part II: 16 CCTVs at the CST were tampered with 187

Part III: The “terrorists” at CST used SIM cards which had
Satara connections 189

Part IV: Out of the 284 calls received by the terrorists from their handlers
in Pakistan by using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol Technology), not a single call was received by Kasab and Ismail Khan 192

Part V: The Terrorists spoke fluent Marathi 192

Part VI: Out of 46 persons killed at CST, 22 were Muslims 194

Part VII: Karkare led to the trap 195

Part VIII: Ajmal Kasab was arrested in Kathmandu (Nepal)
before 2006 by Indian agencies 197

Part IX: Much-publicised photograph of Ajmal Kasab 199

Part X: A woman witness forcibly taken to the U.S. for interrogation
and recording her statement, but she did not budge 202

Part XI: Holes galore in the Mumbai Crime Branch story 208

A) The timing of firing at CST-CAMA 208

B) The number of terrorists at CST 209

C) The exit of the terrorists from the CST  211

D) The “Skoda” theory  212

E) The number of terrorists killed in the Girgaum Chowpatty  215

An alternative theory of Mumbai terror attack 217

I) The mystery of taxi blasts at Vile Parle and Wadi Bundar  222

II) An offence under the Official Secrets Act  224

III) The government’s anxiety to keep the Pradhan Panel report
under wraps — the selective leakage of the report is a
red herring   226

Perfect case for reinvestigation 228

VII: The Investigation of the Mumbai Attack case 229

IB & FBI de facto investigators, Mumbai Crime Branch merely a puppet

VIII: Malegaon blast case of 2008 — Post-Mumbai attack investigation 245

Undoing of Hemant Karkare’s Investigation

The protégé of the main conspirator heading the investigation team

Many serious omissions and commissions

IX: Dubious role of Maharashtrian Brahminists 267

X: The Chargesheet against the IB 275

XI: Urgent measures needed to save country & society 285

Annexure A: Important points in respect of the specific intelligence about

the Mumbai terror attack published in some important newspapers 311

Annexure B: The transcript of some parts of the wireless conversation 317

Map: A sketch of the area which witnessed major terror incidents in CST-

CAMA area including Hemant Karkare’s murder 183

Murder of Shahid Azmi

Headley Saga: Mumbai attack was a joint IB-CIA-Mossad-RSS project

Headley Saga: Mumbai attack was a joint IB-CIA-Mossad-RSS project By Amaresh Misra The Milli Gazette With the row over India getting access to David Headley growing acrimonious each day, the CIA’s double agent saga seems all set to open up a can of incredible worms. First, the case unmasks the pro-US face of the Indian English media. When the Headley saga first came to light, Vir Sanghavi of the Hindustan Times carried an editorial piece claiming that if ‘Headley is CIA, and knew about 26/11, the CIA knew about the attack.’ In other words, Sanghavi accepted the ‘conspiracy theory’–which in the eyes of the English media was ‘peddled’ by Aziz Burney and this author during the terrible aftermath of 26/11–that the event was a CIA/Mossad/RSS/ISI plot. In November-December 2008, Vir Sanghavi and his cohorts in the English media attacked both Aziz Burney and this author for spelling forth the ‘conspiracy theory’. Then after Headley’s name surfaced, they changed tune, without of course admitting their debt to Mr. Burney or this author. The fact of the matter is that in the 2009 Parliamentary elections, the English media was all set to project Lal Krishna Advani as India’s next Prime Minister. It was the feverish anti-RSS, anti-Mossad work done by Aziz Burney and this author that went a long way in ensuring the victory of Congress and secular forces. Now when the CIA hand behind 26/11 is slowly being unraveled, the English media is seeing red. It is again trying to portray Headley merely as a Lashkar operative, severing thus his links with the CIA. This highlights the second point, that basically Headley and the CIA cannot be de-linked. Thank God the government of India put into place the NIA, a new National Investigative Agency. The NIA was set up, as the IB and other Indian agencies, especially the IB, had not only gone anti-Muslim-they had gone anti-India. This was proved in the case of Azamgarh boys picked up in and around the Batla House encounter on various bomb blasts charges. Most of the boys were products not of madarsas, but modern schools. They were youngsters in their teens; they had made a mark for themselves in professional courses and were holding jobs in the new, professional sector of the economy. When Shri Digvijay Singh, the General Secretary AICC and the most secular leader of the India, went to Sanjarpur (under the banner of Anti-Communal Front) in Azamgarh to find out the facts for himself, he was shocked to find that Zeeshan, a boy from Azamgarh who on the fateful day of the Batala House encounter was giving his exams, had more than 50 cases slapped over him in more than three states–which meant that his parents could go on fighting cases for more than 100 years and yet Zeeshan would be in jail. There are dozens and hundreds of Zeeshans from Azamgarh and other districts of UP, Gujarat and Maharashtra languishing in various Indian jails on unsubstantiated charges. This in fact is India’s Guantanamo Bay story–that right here in the world’s largest democracy the Indian security services like the IB have secret detention and torture centres where innocent Muslim youths are tortured and put to death. The IB today has been infiltrated heavily by RSS, Mossad and CIA. In fact, this one agency is an anti-national agency—it is obstructing the work of NIA and secular Indians like Shri Digvijay Singh. Soon, in India’s interest, the IB will have to be closed down. All its communal officers will be hunted down and tried in a court of just law. The IB knew about Headley—this is proved by the fact that the SIM cards used by the ten 26/11 terrorists were purchased by an Intelligence Bureau (India) (IB) informer. Till date, the investigations into the 26/11 case, which the IB is handling, have been unable to state as to how the ten terrorists got hold of the SIM cards. The State IB chief of Maharashtra told a very senior Mumbai Police Officer just after 26/11 that he was ‘entirely in the dark about 26/11 investigations as Delhi (meaning the chief IB office) was handling it’. Basic information about 26/11 was not shared with secular Indian officers. The Headley lead would never have come to the fore had the NIA not stepped in. IB training criminals [read here Charge-sheet against IB] Now comes the news that the IB has set-up training camps in Gorakhpur, where it trains criminals–and then uses them to kill Muslim under-trials. The name of Chota Rajan is used as a convenient scapegoat. It is in this manner that dozens of accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, several other such accused in other cases, Muslim businessmen and men of influence have been eliminated on a systematic basis in Maharashtra. The latest in the long list of victims killed allegedly by IB is Shahid Azmi, the lawyer defending the accused of the 2006 Mumbai train blasts. Shahid had hit upon evidence which proved the innocence of the accused-and that is why he was bumped off, again by criminals with Nepal–Gorakhpur links! In fact, the state of Maharashtra holds the dubious distinction of almost institutionalizing the extra-judicial killing of Muslim youth and personalities. Headley was in India months and years before the 26/11 attack; he even surveyed Pune where a blast took place as late as February 2010. It beats one’s imagination as to how the IB did not know about Headley and his movements. There can only be two scenarios: that the IB is totally incompetent–or that the IB is heavily infiltrated by CIA and Mossad: the agency knew about 26/11 and did nothing to stop it. This places the IB at par with Headley, as executioners of 26/11 and mass murderers. There can be no other honest conclusion. Headley holds the key to the fact that 26/11 was not just a mere Lashkar operation–that it was a joint Mossad-CIA operation, conducted with possible ISI and RSS help.If the charge-sheet against Raj Kumar Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya, accused in the Malegaon and other blasts, is read, it is clear that there was always some sort of collusion between the RSS and the ISI. The so-called nationalists, theHindutva forces, took money to the tune of crores of rupees from the ISI! The IB knows about this transaction but is keeping quiet! The Headley saga has links to Abhinav Bharat and pro-Hindutva terror groups. The pro-Hindutva terror groups are widely believed to be behind the Pune blasts where a combination of RDX and Ammonium Nitrate was used. Right after the visit of Shri Digvijay Singh to Maharashtra in February 2010, the state home secretary spoke of the possibility of the involvement of Hindutva groups in the Pune blasts. Other officers, including the ATS chief Raghuvanshi, purported to be an RSS/opportunist also spoke of this possibility. But then RR Patil, the Maharashtra Home Minister whose role during 26/11 was disastrous and who was removed from his post in the wake of the attack on Mumbai (but who was restored after the 2009 assembly elections), made amazing statements ‘that those who take the name of Hindu organizations in the Pune blasts will be punished’! How can a Home Minister make such a statement? Now we hear that Rakesh Maria, a notorious anti-Muslim officer, with pro-Israeli links, a man who has killed and tortured innocents, has been made the new ATS chief and Raguvanshi has been promoted! Secular organizations in Maharashtra were demanding that Raghuvanshi be removed and that an honest, secular officer be made the ATS chief so that Hemant Karkare’s seminal work in cracking the shell of Hindutva communalism could be promoted!. But Rakesh Maria is even worse than Raghuvanshi. It seems that the NCP in Maharashtra has taken a clear anti-Congress, anti-national line. RR Patil, who is a third grade, uncouth, thoroughly communal, NCP leader should be removed from his post. The Maharashtra chief minister should act, because if the NIA gets access to Headley, the latter’s links with Hindutva organizations–and the whole RSS-Mossad-CIA-ISI-IB nexus–will be exposed. This nexus is working overtime to destabilize the Congress government and undo the commendable work done by the party under the secular leadership of Sonia Gandhi. Amaresh Misra is a famed historian and chief of the Anti-Communal Front of the All India Congress Committee (AICC)

US Alone, Enables Continued Israeli Mockery of International Justice

UN Human Rights Council adopts five resolutions against Israel

compiled by Cem Ertür
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad

The UN Human Rights Council has roundly condemned Israel in resolutions tabled under the agenda item 7, “Human Rights Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories”.

Five resolutions have been adopted against Israel, amounting to the greatest number of condemnatory resolutions on a single country:

• Human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan
• The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination
• Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan
• The grave human rights violations by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem
• Follow-up to the report of the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

______________________________


1) Human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan
(voted on 24/03/2010: 31 in favour, 1 against, 15 abstentions)


In a resolution (A/HRC/13/L.2) on human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan, adopted with thirty-one in favour, one against, and fifteen abstentions, the Council calls upon Israel to desist from its continuous building of settlements and from changing the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and legal status of the occupied Syrian Golan, and emphasizes that the displaced persons of the population of the occupied Syrian Golan must be allowed to return to their homes and to recover their property; further calls upon Israel to desist from imposing Israeli citizenship and Israeli identity cards on the Syrian citizens in the occupied Syrian Golan, and to desist from its repressive measures against them and from all other practices that obstruct the enjoyment of their fundamental rights and their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights; calls upon Israel to allow the Syrian population of the occupied Syrian Golan to visit their families and relatives in the Syrian motherland through the Quneitra checkpoint and under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and to rescind its decision to prohibit these visits, as it is in flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; also calls upon Israel to release immediately the Syrian detainees in Israeli prisons, some of whom have been detained for more than 24 years; further calls upon Israel to allow delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Syrian prisoners of conscience and detainees in Israeli prisons accompanied by specialized physicians to assess the state of their physical and mental health and to protect their lives; determines that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken or to be taken by Israel, the occupying Power, that seek to alter the character and legal status of the occupied Syrian Golan are null and void, constitute a flagrant violation of international law and of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and have no legal effect; again calls upon States Members of the United Nations not to recognize any of the above-mentioned legislative or administrative measures; and requests the Secretary-General to report on this matter to the Council at its sixteenth session.


The result of the vote was as follows:

in favour (31): Angola, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Uruguay and Zambia.

against (1): United States of America.

abstentions (15): Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, France, Gabon, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

______________________________


2) The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination
(voted on 24/03/2010: 45 in favour, 1 against)


In a resolution (A/HRC/13/L.27) on the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, adopted with forty-five in favour, one against, and no abstentions, the Council reaffirms the inalienable, permanent and unqualified right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including their right to live in freedom, justice and dignity and to establish their sovereign, independent, democratic and viable contiguous State; also reaffirms its support for the solution of two States, Palestine and Israel, living side by side in peace and security; stresses the need for respect for and preservation of the territorial unity, contiguity and integrity of all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem; and urges all Member States and relevant bodies of the United Nations system to support and assist the Palestinian people in the early realization of their right to self-determination.


The result of the vote was as follows:

in favour (45): Angola, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, France, Gabon, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Uruguay and Zambia.

against (1): United States of America.

abstentions (0):

______________________________


3) Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan
(voted on 24/03/2010: 46 in favour, 1 against)


In a resolution (A/HRC/13/L.28) on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan, adopted with forty-six in favour, one against, and no abstentions, the Council condemns the new Israeli announcement on the construction of 120 new housing units in the Bitar Elite settlement, and 1,600 new housing units for new settlers in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ramat Shlomo, and calls upon the Government of Israel to immediately reverse its decision which would further undermine and jeopardize the ongoing efforts by the international community to reach a final settlement compliant with international legitimacy, including the relevant United Nations resolutions; urges the full implementation of the Access and Movement Agreement of 15 November 2005, particularly the urgent reopening of Rafah and Karni crossings, which is crucial to ensuring the passage of foodstuffs and essential supplies, as well as the access of the United Nations agencies to and within the Occupied Palestinian Territory; calls upon Israel to take and implement serious measures, including confiscation of arms and enforcement of criminal sanctions, with the aim of preventing acts of violence by Israeli settlers, and other measures to guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilians and Palestinian properties in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem; demands that Israel, the occupying Power, comply fully with its legal obligations, as mentioned in the Advisory Opinion rendered on 9 July 2004 by the International Court of Justice; and urges the parties to give renewed impetus to the peace process.


The result of the vote was as follows:

in favour (46): Angola, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, France, Gabon, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Uruguay and Zambia .

against (1): United States of America.

abstentions (0):

______________________________


4) The grave human rights violations by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem
(voted on 24/03/2010: 31 in favour, 9 against, 7 abstentions)


In a resolution (A/HRC/13/L.29) on the grave human rights violations by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, adopted with thirty-one in favour, nine against, and seven abstentions, the Council demands that the occupying Power, Israel, end its occupation of the Palestinian land occupied since 1967, and that it respect its commitments within the peace process towards the establishment of the independent sovereign Palestinian State; strongly condemns the Israeli military attacks and operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; demands that the occupying Power, Israel, stop the targeting of civilians and the systematic destruction of the cultural heritage of the Palestinian people; condemns the disrespect for religious and cultural rights provided for in core human rights instruments and humanitarian law by Israel, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; demands that Israel immediately cease all diggings and excavation works beneath and around Al-Aqsa mosque compound and other religious sites in the old city of Jerusalem; calls for the immediate cessation of all Israeli military attacks and operations throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory; demands that the occupying Power, Israel, immediately stop its illegal decision to demolish a large number of Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem; demands that Israel, release Palestinian prisoners and detainees including women, children and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council; calls upon Israel to lift checkpoints and open all crossing points and borders according to relevant international agreements; and demands that Israel immediately lift the siege imposed on the occupied Gaza Strip.


The result of the vote was as follows:

in favour (31): Angola, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Uruguay and Zambia.

against (9):Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and United States of America.

abstentions (7):Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Japan, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, and Ukraine.

______________________________


5) Follow-up to the report of the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
(voted on 25/03/2010: 29 in favour, 6 against, 11 abstentions)


In a resolution (A/HRC/13/L.30) on follow-up to the report of the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, adopted with twenty-nine in favour, six against, and eleven abstentions, as orally amended, the Council reiterates the call by the General Assembly upon the Government of Israel to conduct investigations that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards into the serious violations of international humanitarian and international human rights law reported by the Fact-Finding Mission, with a view to ensuring accountability and justice; reiterates the urging by the General Assembly for the conduct by the Palestinian side of investigations that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards into the serious violations of international humanitarian and international human rights law reported by the Fact-Finding Mission, with a view to ensuring accountability and justice; calls upon the High Commissioner to explore and determine the appropriate modalities for the establishment of an escrow fund for the provision of reparations to the Palestinians who suffered loss and damage as a result of unlawful acts attributable to the State of Israel during the military operations conducted from December 2008 to January 2009; decides to establish a committee of independent experts in international humanitarian and human rights laws to monitor and assess any domestic, legal or other proceedings undertaken by both the Government of Israel and the Palestinian side, in the light of General Assembly resolution 64/254, including the independence, effectiveness, genuineness of these investigations and their conformity with international standards; and invites the International Committee of the Red Cross and interested parties and stakeholders to consider the launching of an urgent discussion on the legality of the use of certain munitions, as recommended by the Fact-Finding Mission. Draft resolution L.30 was presented by Pakistan at the end of yesterday’s meeting (please see separate release, HRC/10/045E).


The result of the vote was as follows:

in favour (29): Angola, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovenia, South Africa, Uruguay and Zambia.

against (6): Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine, and United States of America.

abstentions (11): Belgium, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, France, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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sources:


[1]  Human Rights Council renews mandates on right to food and on elaboration of optional protocol to children’s rights convention

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights website, 24 March 2010

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=9940&LangID=E


[2]  Council establishes committee on experts in context of follow-up of Goldstone report, renews mandate on Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights website, 25 March 2010

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=9942&LangID=E

Obama tells Pak to catch 26/11 brain

K.P.NAYAR

Ashfaq Kayani, Barack Obama Washington, March 26: Securely hidden from public view, belying the head-butting, handshakes and the toasts between Americans and Pakistanis taking part in their first ministerial-level “strategic dialogue” this week, US president Barack Obama asked for the arrest of Hafiz Saeed, one of the masterminds of the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. Although the top-level Pakistani delegation to the talks, including chief of army staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, has been in Washington since Monday, Obama has not met any member of the delegation till the time of writing. According to sources at the heart of the bilateral dialogue, however, during pre-talks, inter-agency discussions among US officials and key members of his cabinet at the White House, Obama made it clear that the US-Pakistan strategic partnership cannot be a partnership of hearts and minds unless the Pakistani government firmly targets Saeed’s Lashkar-e-Toiba, which has acquired the image here of the next al Qaeda. In taking a tough line on Saeed’s arrest, which has been demanded by India, Obama disagreed with the views of the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies and sections of the state department led by special envoy for Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, all of whom are for treating Pakistan with kid gloves on anything to do with India, including the Mumbai terror attacks. The President appears to have been somewhat cornered into his hardline stand after a key hearing last fortnight of the South Asia sub-committee of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, at which every member of the panel — except one — called for heavy-handed action against the Lashkar by the Pakistanis. “This group of savages needs to be crushed,” the highly respected chairman of the committee, Gary Ackerman, said at the hearing without mincing words. Such was the strength of opinion against Islamabad’s double-dealing over Lashkar that even Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani-American scholar whom Pakistani lobbyists had planted at the hearing as a witness, was forced to put the gloss that “the former trainers and associates from the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) perhaps now have an opportunity of independently working with the LeT”. This week’s strategic dialogue made absolutely no progress on the issue of a nuclear deal for Pakistan, similar to the one the US signed with India. The subject does not find even a passing mention in a joint statement released at the end of the talks. In fact, an American source privy to the entire proceedings blamed the sudden brouhaha over a nuclear deal for Pakistan on a section of the Indian media that thought up the issue as a headline-grabbing curtain raiser for the talks. “The issue has been injected periodically by the Pakistanis into our talks directly and through third parties since 2006,” conceded the source. “This time the media asked about it at press conferences. If we are asked in public, we are not going to sour the mood by saying that Pakistan cannot have a nuclear deal. We have been diplomatic in public but very clear in private on this issue.” The Americans are understood to have told Qureshi and Kayani that Pakistan must first put in place proper export control laws which will give the US Congress some confidence that there is at least a fig leaf of rationale behind Islamabad’s request for a nuclear deal.In 1999, as talks between then Planning Commission deputy chairman Jaswant Singh and the US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott got under way on India’s nuclear programme, the Americans similarly asked for new, water tight export control laws on Indian statutes as a guarantee against nuclear proliferation. An expert on such laws was then posted to the US embassy in New Delhi for six months and she worked with Rakesh Sood, then joint secretary in South Block for disarmament, on new laws. That was six years before the US announced a nuclear deal with India. This experience offers a road map for any such deal with Pakistan, if at all. Besides, an American source involved in the talks with Pakistan pointed out that “if this president had been in power in 2005, there would have been no nuclear deal even with India. So where is the question of him initiating any such deal for Pakistan?”

A $1.2 trillion timebomb ticks in China

Venkatesan Vembu / DNA

Hong Kong: A major fiscal shock looms over China, arising from local governments’ shadowy finances and banks’ reckless lending to them as part of the frantic rush to boost GDP growth in China following the global economic slowdown in 2008.

The fiscal crisis represents “the biggest risk to China’s economic and financial stability over the next two years” and has the potential to more than completely wipe out Chinese banks’ equity base, and trigger an equity market panic when it bursts, says Credit Suisse chief regional economist Dong Tao.

At the heart of the crisis are about 8,800 investment vehicles set up at the local government level to take up massive infrastructure projects to prop up GDP growth to make up for the export slowdown owing to the global economic recession.

These vehicles —- called urban development investment corporations (UDICs) —- were set up “in part to circumvent rules prohibiting local governments from borrowing,” notes Louis Kuijs, senior economist in the World Bank’s China office. Local governments injected land and cash into these UDICs as equity, and the land was used as collateral to get bank loans for infrastructure projects.

“UDICs share many common characteristics with the investment vehicles that caused the financial crisis in the US,” adds Tao. “They lack transparency, are high on leverage, rely on short-term funding and land-based valuation, and their assets are illiquid.”

And although it’s very hard to determine how much bank lending has been channelled to the UDICs, Tao estimates outstanding loans to be about 8 trillion yuan (about $1.2 trillion), which is about 24% of China’s GDP, 83% of overall new lending in 2009, and a whopping 180% of the equity base of all Chinese banks.

Estimates by other economists paint a grimmer picture.

Victor Shih of Northwestern University, who has studied local governments’ debt, estimates total bank lending to UDICs (including further lendings) to balloon to 24.2 trillion yuan ($3.5 trillion).

“If large portions of the debt end up being taken over by the central government, that will add significantly to the official government debt,” says Kuijs. In Tao’s estimation, if the central government absorbed 8 trillion yuan of UDICs’ liabilities, China’s debt-to-GDP ratio would explode from an estimated 19.1 in 2010 to an estimated 50.3 in 2010.

The key problem with the UDIC financing model is its use of land as collateral, points out Tao. “If there is a change in the assessment of the value of the land that UDICs pledge to banks as collateral, we may have a serious problem.”

In particular, when property prices in China fall —- as Tao expects them to in the second half of this year, owing to an oversupply of finished apartments and expected interest rate hikes to fight inflation —- “banks will review the value of the land they have as collateral, become risk-averse, and initiate a loan call-back.”
If even one or two UDICs fail as a result, Tao reckons, “it will trigger a wider loan call-back and trigger an equity market panic.”

Flagging the risk of policy errors, he adds that Beijing is “too complacent about how a property market correction could aggravate the UDIC problem.”

Zhu Min, deputy governor of China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, however, dismisses concerns about the stability of Chinese banks arising from local governments’ debt as exaggerated. Greater economic activity from China’s enhanced infrastructure would offer sufficient payback on loans for these projects, he observed in a speech at the 13th Credit Suisse Investment Conference in Hong Kong on Thursday. “In 1998, following the Asian financial crisis, China unveiled a 400 billion yuan stimulus package, almost all of which went into building highways,” he recalled.

And although the highways remained empty for a while, the roads catalysed economic activity, and today they are packed, he added. “So long as China keeps growing and these loans have gone into real infrastructure projects, things will be okay.”

The problem with UDICs can be solved right away if the central government cracks the whip and asks the central finance ministry, the local governments and the banks to absorb the losses, Tao believes. But Beijing perhaps lacks a sense of urgency, and it may be difficult for the three parties to agree on who should bear how much of the losses.

The UDICs’ financial problems would affect future local government investment spending and could lead to a rise in banks’ non-performing loans, points out Kuijs. “Problems would emerge if the infrastructure projects do not generate enough growth and revenues to pay the operating and interest costs and repay the loans.”

The time duration of the crisis, when it blows up, could determine the severity of the crisis, reasons Tao. “If the crisis lasts just two weeks, there will only be short-lived market panic. If it lasts two months, fixed asset investments could be affected. And if it lasts two years, China may go down the path of Japan in the 1990s —- but without a property safety net.” However, he expects any crisis to be an “abrupt but short one” —- for three reasons.

In China, the government owns all banks, “and once Beijing realises the magnitude of the risks, it will order banks to keep lending.” Of course, banks’ shareholders would lose out.

Secondly, although local governments are low on cash, the central government is cash-rich, and “we could see another 4 trillion yuan or even 8 trillion yuan fiscal spending program to boost growth and stabilise the banking sector.” And thirdly, China is, in the global context, “too big to fail” —- and in any case it has a roadmap in the form of the US bailout of banks.

“You have a Western recipe —- and you have lots of fresh materials (in the form of China’s fiscal strengths)… Even a mediocre chef can cook a reasonably good meal,” says Tao.
But even as he sounds the alarm over local governments’ debt, Tao puts it in perspective. “What’s happening in China is not very different from what’s happening elsewhere: the government leveraging up during a global financial crisis to stimulate the economy.” The critical difference is that China’s starts with a low debt-to-GDP ratio, about 19% currently.

“It’s a hiccup, and a big hiccup at that,” he acknowledges. “But nevertheless, this is not something that will derail my fundamental view of China over the next decade… We remain bullish on China’s long-term outlook.”