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Bush takes arms deal to Saudis for support against Iran

Monday, January 14th, 2008

US president seeks to persuade oil-rich ally into backing Washington against Iran.

The US administration is expected to formally tell Congress of a planned $20bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia, after George Bush, the US president, arrived in the Arab state as he nears the end of his Middle East tour.

The official announcement, expected on Monday, will start a 30-day review period during which Congress could try to block the deal.

The deal, which includes satellite-guided weaponry and high-tech munitions, has alarmed Israel and some US Congressmen since it was unveiled last July, especially as Saudi Arabia refuses to recognise the Jewish state.

During his visit to Saudi Arabia, his first visit to the oil-rich US ally, Bush hopes to rally support for his campaign to isolate Iran.

His administration, which has also announced a $30bn military aid pact with Israel, has argued the deal with the Saudis is needed to counter what it claims is a “major security threat” from Iran.

A senior US official said Bush will court Riyadh’s diplomatic influence and financial muscle which “could make an enormous difference in places like the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations”.

While Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia has voiced concern over the rise of Shia Iran, it is opposed to another war after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that has strengthened the Islamic regime in Tehran.

Diplomatic tour

In the last few days of his Middle East tour, Bush has been courting Gulf Arab allies to help shore up a US-backed peace effort between Israel and the Palestinians and combat Iran’s growing influence in the region.

Saudi Arabia is considered a linchpin for any broader Israeli-Arab reconciliation as Bush presses Israelis and the Palestinians to secure a peace deal before he leaves office in January 2009.

Iran was also expected to be an important part of Bush’s talks with King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, and was also discussed in Bush’s earlier meetings with Gulf Arab leaders in the UAE.

While the Gulf leaders share US concerns about curbing their powerful Shia neighbour, they want to avoid another war in the region.

“All agreed it’s a difficult problem that needs to be addressed, and at this point pursue in a diplomatic fashion,” Hadley told reporters when asked how UAE leaders had reacted to Bush’s entreaties on Iran.

Engaging Iran

Analysts say there are growing signs that America’s Arab allies prefer to engage Iran.

Last year, Saudi Arabia invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, to undertake the Hajj, making him the first Iranian president to receive an official invitation to the annual Muslim pilgrimage.

Also in the region on Monday, was Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, who visited Qatar and was later to travel to the UAE.

At the start of his regional tour, Sarkozy also met kind Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, where he offered Saudi Arabia help in developing peaceful nuclear energy.

The French president expects to sign a a nuclear co-operation agreement in with the UAE on Tuesday.

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Cossiga: US, Mossad behind 9/11

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga says global intelligence agencies assert the 9/11 attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad.

Although Osama bin Laden has confessed to launching the attacks, now all the European and American intelligence services are well aware that the attacks were planned by the CIA and the Zionists’ Mossad, Cossiga told Corriere della Sera.

The disastrous attack was aimed to put the Muslim world under powerful accusations and drum up support for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the former Italian president added.

Cossiga first expressed doubts about 9/11 in 2001, and is quoted in Webster Tarpley’s book titled 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in the USA as stating that, “The mastermind of the attack must have been a sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel.

He went on to add that the attack could not have been accomplished without penetration into the ranks of radar and flight security personnel.

CS/HAR

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CIA Hid Other Tapes From 9/11 Commission

Monday, January 14th, 2008

jimd3100We know now that the CIA kept from the 9/11 Commission tapes of al Qaeda suspects in violation of law. But why isn’t mainstream media (MSM) reporting about other tapes U.S. Intelligence kept from the 9/11 Commission?

In today’s 2-minute news sound bites it’s easy to deceive. Anthrax is released in letters and you are to believe that it came from Iraq. Next thing you know, we have a war in Iraq to eliminate their none existent stockpiles of anthrax. An “al Qaeda” suicide tape is released and you are to believe it came from al Qaeda.

Since the most important 9/11 hijackers were ringleader Mohammed Atta and Ziad Zarrah, let’s take a close look at the release of their “last will” tape and how it was reported. Clearly, the CIA kept other important 9/11 tapes from the 9/11 Commission and MSM helped with the cover-up.

The so-called Laughing Hijackers tape was obtained by London Sunday Times on September 30, 2006 and reported the next day. Read closely this article from MSNBC and you will see this quote about this “Al Qaeda” video. “The images were taken from a videotape the U.S. military supposedly recovered from an al Qaeda compound after the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.” That’s right - the U.S Government had these tapes for five years before they were mysteriously delivered to the media.

But MSNBC didn’t break this story - the London Sunday Times did. “The Sunday Times has obtained a copy of the video through a previously tested channel.” “Previously tested channel” to me means, this isn’t the first time. It’s worth noting that the person the tapes were delivered to previously worked for Al Jeezra and was the one who broke previous al Qaeda tape releases. His name is Yosri Fouda.

How did ABC report this leak of these “new” tapes that the U.S. Government had for five years and that no one knew about? This is the first sentence under their headline “The Man Who Received Tape From Al Qaeda Talks to ABC About the Al Qaeda PR Machine.” Now am I wrong, or does that seem to indicate these tapes came from al Qaeda? In this article they pretend these tapes came from al Qaeda. They didn’t.

Here is a little nugget from CNN on their reporting “A U.S. intelligence official told CNN the intelligence community has been aware of the video for some time.” No kidding. They had these tapes for five years. I say tapes because when this was released there were two parts of this video according to the breaking story.

Dates on the tape show Atta was filmed on January 18, 2000, together with Ziad Jarrah, the pilot of United Airlines flight 93. The high quality, unedited film shows bin Laden addressing his followers at the mud-walled complex near Kandahar. Dating on the tape indicates that the Al Qaeda leader was filmed on January 8, 2000, ten days before Atta and Jarrah recorded their wills.

The tapes consist of two parts: Atta and Jarrah supposedly reading their wills dated January 18, 2000, and a speech by bin Ladin dated January 8, 2000. You can watch them here.

I urge you to watch the bin Laden speech and try to convince yourself that this is not a surveillance tape, made in order to capture the images of people there. That seems to be what it is. It pans the crowd and freeze-frames their images before moving on to another. There is not a whole lot of interest in the speech and the speaker. It is odd, don’t you think, to focus on people in the audience instead of the speaker at the event? Why would al Qaeda do surveillance on themselves? They wouldn’t.

But to pretend U.S. intelligence didn’t want to do surveillance on Al Qaeda is laughable. Of course they did, which brings up the ugly possibility that these tapes were not “found” in some house in Afghanistan in 2001 but were actually made by U.S. Intelligence.

One thing is not in question though, although MSM wouldn’t tell you this: this was used as a surveillance tape. While this tape was kept secret from the 9/11 Commission, it was being used on detainees in Guantanamo to try to get them to confess to being members of Al Qaeda. Here is the proof.

In March 2006, seven months before the world was told of these tapes a movie was already made and released documenting the experiences of three people who were actually held in Guantanamo. These three people who were finally deemed innocent had their experience acted out in the docudrama Road to Guantanamo.

At 1:38 into this clip, a person from Washington DC shows a tape of a bin Laden speech dated Jan 8 2000 this interrogation was being done in 2003. So in 2003, the Government was using this tape in Guantanamo as a surveillance tape. Three years later, they released it along with the Atta video to the reporter who received the “al Qaeda” tapes.

According to the MSNBC article, they had this tape just after 9/11 and before the start of the 9/11 Commission. After the 9/11 Commission was concluded, they anonymously released it to an overseas reporter who received the other “al Qaeda” tapes. It was then reported in MSM as an al Qaeda tape. The media helped the U.S. Government pass this off as an al Qaeda tape, keeping the public in the dark.

Does the 9/11 Commission even care that this was kept from them? Why don’t they bring this up? Why doesn’t the media? The only site that seemed to notice this and tried to get attention focused on it was PrisonPlanet.

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Bush’s hate speech against Iran draws UAE opposition

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Several Emirati officials and commentators have voiced opposition to military action against Iran after the US president’s UAE speech.

US President George W. Bush, who is on a Middle East tour hoping to rally up Arab support against Iran, attacked Tehran, in a speech he delivered in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. The speech drew interesting reactions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“The Iranians choose their own government, whether we agree (with their choice) or not. They don’t need what he said,” said Jamal al-Suwaidi the Director General of the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, a government-backed think tank which sponsored Bush’s address.

He was referring to parts of the speech where Bush claimed that Iran was ’the world’s leading state sponsor of terror’ and told the Iranian people they deserve a better government.

“It would be very dangerous if Iran develops nuclear weapons. But to hit Iran is something else… Nobody wants it [a US strike on Iran],” al-Suwaidi told AFP after Bush delivered the address.

Mariam al-Hammadee of the UAE’s Federal Environmental Agency said she would have preferred a less confrontational speech. “The region cannot put up with another war … In fact, the world badly needs peace,” she said.

She noted that the UAE has wide-ranging trading links with Iran and hosts a large number of Iranians, who are estimated to number around 400,000 in the oil-rich country.

An official UAE source also told AFP that he did not expect Bush’s remarks to harm ties between Abu Dhabi and Tehran. Bush’s remarks “do not commit the UAE to anything”, he said, requesting anonymity.

“[Iranian President] Ahmadinejad also came here [last May] and spoke,” the source noted, referring to a speech in which he warned that Iran would retaliate strongly for any US attack.

The UAE faces Iran across the Persian Gulf, which means that “the option of the negotiations [to resolve the nuclear row] failing is not an option”, the official added.

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Nandigram… CPM’s hubris

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Stephen Lendman and Arun Shrivastava
RINF Alternative News

Abstract: This review paper documents the events of Nandigram and role of the Communist Party of India Marxists (CPM), Kissinger in Kolkata pushing through Indo-US nuclear deal, Special Economic Zones and their true purpose, and the true character of a Marxist Party that has ruled West Bengal for 30 years, also a partner in the United Progressive Alliance’s Government in New Delhi. The authors wish to thank the many people who were interviewed and who sent their written opinion in a very short time.

Nandigram. Google it and you get over one million hits. Early 2006, it was just another Block of poor and landless Hindu and Muslim peasants. It shot to fame early this year when the people of Nandigram opposed the Chemical Hub of the Salim Group of Indonesia that would require 4000 acres of land under Special Economic Zone dispensation. On 14th March, 2007, the West Bengal Police in league with armed hoodlums of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), aka CPM, butchered unarmed people protesting forced sequestration of their farmlands. The savagery of attack and the sheer bestiality of attackers even surpassed those of the Zionists in Gaza strip and the US and NATO occupation forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was a naked assertion of supremacy of ruling elite by force of terror.

“Mohammed Salim, the businessman to whom the land was to be turned over, helped bankroll Suharto’s genocide of Indonesian Communists. The Communist-led government of West Bengal is eager to do business with him. If ever proof was needed of the irony of the current conjuncture of the Indian left, or of the way capital swallows up and transcends ideological animosities in its expansionary drives, it is here,” says Aditya Sarkar. (“Nandigram and the deformations of the Indian left”, issue 115; Indian Socialism, 2 July 2007; http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=333&issue=115)

We believe these events are not political aberrations or deformations but carefully crafted acts of the entrenched ruling elite taking control of natural resources, especially land, and destroying the independent farmers. Particularly the Indian Left parties are more unabashedly modifying their policies to accommodate the demands of the Neoconservatives in Washington. In so doing, the Left is not deforming itself; rather, it is now showing its true colour.

1. CPM’s alliance with neoconservatives

Three decades ago, having failed to engineer workers’ and peasants’ revolution, the Stalinist CPM re-packaged itself as pro-poor and became the ruling party in West Bengal, the first Communist state within India’s federal polity. Since then it has ruled continuously, not because it is popular but through a dependent class of 20-25% people. Through dispensations like petty contracts, allotment of shops and subsidized homes, appointment in government services, control over village councils through which billions of development funds are expended, and other petty privileges, it retains a loyal cadre. It has installed a highly politicized, pliable, and complicit intelligentsia in the universities. Any opposition to its misdeeds has been crushed by brute force.

The party of the poor is now systematically decimating the poor. It perfected the techniques in Marichjhapi (February, 1979 massacring an entire village to cover up its mischief in resettling East Bengal refugees whom it had used politically to come to power. “…the sight of the hopeless refugees living without food and water amid their own excreta on muddy islands attracted global attention. The Central government, which was then headed by Morarji Desai, offered the “friendly” regime in Calcutta a face-saver. The Centre (meaning Central Government in New Delhi) offered to transport the poor intruders back to Madhya Pradesh. But the Marxists were fearful of the political fallout. They owed their rise to power to the refugees, had promised them the moon, and even prevented them from taking up residence in alternative locations offered by the Centre on the Andaman Islands when it was still sparsely populated. Now, in 1979, it was case of a vote-bank paying diminishing returns. So, the Marxist government in emulation of the man closest to its heart, Joseph Stalin, ordered a massacre… Marichjhapi still figures in academic discourse as an example of CPM’s deceit.”

(Udayan Namboodiri; ‘Shame at Singur’; 17 December 2007; Organiser, page 7; http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=161&page=7) Even today no one knows how many were shot to death but some say it was over 3,000. (Prior to 1947 there was an East Bengal and West Bengal; after 1947 East Bengal became East Pakistan and in 1971 became Bangladesh. Many Hindus of East Bengal became refugees and settled wherever they could find vacant land. It is the refugees of 1947, who were massacred at Marichjhanpi by CPM.

It is the same party that condemned Salvador Allende’s murder (suicide?) in 1973 in unequivocal terms and consistently maintained its opposition to Gen Pinochet’s coup and subsequent brutalization of Chilean people. It opposed the ‘imperialism’ led by the USA everywhere from its Indian base (rats always operate from their hole), although it could never produce a Che Guevara in its long history.

It is the same party that consistently maintained that the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), that ruled India for just under five years to 2004, is a Fascist and anti-minority communal party. However, events of Nandigram clearly show that CPM cadre attacked Muslim (minority) peasants and Dalits. All political parties, particularly the Communists, in India have used these two groups to come to power but excluded their concerns and aspirations consistently since 1947. When Muslim leaders in Andhra Pradesh raised questions in the state assembly about CPM’s oppression of Muslims in Nandigram, the CPM floor leader said that they “have no right to criticize Marxists and Communists.” (Statesman News Service; Hyderabad; November 19, 2007) Folks, if the right to criticize is denied, that usually happens in a Fascist state! And we are almost there.

It is the same party that opposed the ruling Congress Party in India right from 1947 and even sided with China, in a grand treasonous act, when she attacked India in 1962. As alliance partner in the present United Progressive Alliance its ostensible posture is anti-Congress. It was its ostensible anti-imperialist, anti-bourgeoisie ideological position that appeared to almost scuttle the Indo-US nuclear deal. That’s how it looked, but as John McCarthy says. “their argument is with politics, not action.”

And it is the same party that shot and brutalized unarmed men and women and tore young children apart. Can you even imagine what tearing children apart looks like? It is the same party that allowed its workers to rape women and hack them to death. Just watch the video ‘For the sake of development’ for five minutes because I doubt anyone can take it longer: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=na+hannate&sitesearch=video.google.com And it is the same party that wanted marginal Muslim and Dalit farmers to leave their land for Salim Group’s chemical hub where Dow Chemicals, another criminal corporation in the news early this year for selling un-approved pesticides in India and tainted with Bhopal liability, would also set up its chemical plants. report on Dow Chemical’s criminals acts earlier this year here: http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2007/02/bhopal-criminals-at-it-again-this-time.html

The short-changed Bhopal survivors condemned the CPM led West Bengal Government for inviting Dow Chemicals, (See here: ‘West Bengal Government complicity with Dow in Nandigram’, Bhopal survivors condemn government of West Bengal for colluding with Dow Chemical, June 05, 2007 http://www.bhopal.net/blog_act/archives/2007/06/bhopal_survivor_2.html

This time these corporations are looting land while the party of the poor facilitates the loot and watches the loot from the grandstand.

And it is the same party that welcomed Dr. Henry Kissinger, the butcher of Vietnam and at least 60 other nations, in Kolkata.

2. Kissinger in Kolkata?

Kissinger was not in Kolkata to express his condolence for the Nandigram raped, nor to tell the Chief Minister of West Bengal to ensure peace, democracy, justice and equity. That is not the way the US Government works or has ever worked. Kissinger, the neocon global salesman of death, was here to sell nuclear reactors. Each nuclear reactor costs US$3-5 billion (120 to 200 billion rupees). (http://www.neis.org/literature/Brochures/npfacts.htm)

He wanted West Bengal’s Communist Chief Minister to use his influence with national Politburo members, chiefly Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri, the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of the CPM to not oppose the deal, which would bring a windfall US$27-45 billion dollars worth of business to Kissinger’s friends in the US like General Electric and others and open up India to nuclear holocaust. ‘He said that the 123 deal would benefit both the countries,’ which is a lie. It should be noted that due to powerful grassroots anti-nuclear movement in the US, the industry had been languishing for 30 years until energy short India became an opportunity. “Nuclear reactors kill slowly” as Frieda Berryhill says, a leading anti-nuke activist in the US. Knowing the fact that low level radiation emanating from the reactors has turned sparsely populated America into a diseased nation, CPM never opposed the deal on health and environmental grounds. The latest report from Austria ‘Nuclear Power, Climate Policy and Sustainability’, 2007, clearly warns of the dangers of nuclear reactors. See here http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/austriangovtreport607.pdf.

The despicable Indo-US nuclear deal is through, after CPM gave its nod; the salesman of death rules okay, and the wheeler dealers of death rule okay too and that includes the CPM in India (http://in.news.yahoo.com/071116/43/6ncfd.html)

Secondly, Kissinger wanted to impress upon the Marxists to use their clout in Delhi not to have any energy deals with Iran because ‘Iran is facing international (US sponsored and illegal) sanction.’ He advised the Marxist Chief Minister to oppose Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project because Iran is a rogue state. Indians should note that a number of countries possess nuclear weapons outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Pakistan, North Korea, India, and Israel; yet the US Government has not taken military action. Iran is forging ahead with its nuclear policy within the constraints imposed by IAEA, which again exposes Kissinger’s lie. Iran is not a rogue state and India needs Iran’s energy resources, not American nuclear reactor, as Arjun Makhijani of IEER has forewarned. (For high quality information on dangers of nuclear power, see Institute for Energy and Environmental Research at http://www.ieer.org)

He said that in Kolkata in order to spare great embarrassment to the Marxist-Neoconservatives in Delhi who back-seat drive the Prime Minister of India. Energy short South Asia is heading towards a major economic crisis. Kissinger nudged CPM to ensure total compliance of India’s Left-leaning [hellish] elite to lean more towards Neoconservative energy agenda.

Thirdly, Kissinger supported America’s stand on Iraq that a solution would be found soon, that India’s 9% growth is sustainable, and the two countries have common interests. This is the lousiest of all lies. More than 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed (http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html) and over 5 million are refugees. Children as young as six are being used as sex-slaves by the Americans in Iraq. In Afghanistan, a South Asian country, over 40,000 are dead, hundreds of thousand homeless. Worse, the depleted uranium weapons, used in these two Asian countries will continue to kill innocent civilians for thousands of years. ‘This relatively new monster, DU, has been around since 1943 and classified as a weapon of mass destruction when used as an area deniability weapon, as in contaminating an area to disallow human penetration, for ever,’ says John McCarthy, a weapons expert and a Viet-Vet. (Go to this page: http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id245.html to see what war crimes this US Government has committed). And John McCarthy is also on record saying that this sort of genocide has ‘Kissinger’s hand all over it.’ So, if Kissinger says that India’s 9% growth is sustainable, that sustainability is contingent upon utter subservience of the ruling coalition in Delhi to a global genocidal agenda. Despite two Asian countries rendered uninhabitable forever, the CPM laid red carpet for Kissinger.

Excerpt from its mouthpiece shows that the CPM knows about depleted uranium: “That Tony Blair, whose government sells lethal weapons to Israel, has sprayed Iraq and Yugoslavia with cluster bombs and depleted uranium and was the greatest arms supplier to the genocidists in Indonesia, can be taken seriously when he now speaks about the “shame” of the ‘new evil of mass terrorism’ says much about the censorship of our collective sense of how the world is managed.” (People’s Democracy; Volume XXV; No 38; September 23, 2001; quoting John Pilger. (http://pd.cpim.org/2001/sept23/2001_sept23_usattack_pilger.htm) That was in 2001, note the date. For six years these criminals in CPM have kept the brutal facts under wraps never bringing it up in policy discussions. So has the Leftist mainstream media in India.

US and NATO forces used depleted uranium /weapons in Afghanistan that contaminated the entire Northwestern India. The mutagenic, tumorigenic and neurotoxic effects of depleted uranium is becoming clear as is evidenced from a number of excellent studies conducted by experts (See, Brice Smith & Arjun Makhijani; “Emerging Pictures of Uranium’s Health Risks; Science for Democratic Action; Vol 13, No 2; June 2005). Dr Chris Busby found it over the British atmosphere as well. The global is ‘radiated’! Right now, as many scientists are saying, we are breathing aerosolized depleted uranium and none of us will complete our natural life. Neither will the CPM leaders. What sort of abominable minds they have belies our imagination, for they haven’t even raised their voice against these war crimes! The whole world is being Nandigrammed in a variety of ways.

And, finally, “The US had never thought India would lean towards that country,” said Kissinger, quoted in one newspaper report. Or is it something more sinister? (Lest we forget, it was Kissinger’s great ‘tilt’ towards Pakistan’s drunkard General Yahya Khan that resulted in the genocide of 1.5 million Bengalis, 10 million refugees from East Pakistan into India and a major war with Pakistan (1971), eventually leading to the formation of Bangladesh.) If India has ever leaned so unabashedly towards the US, it started with Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Finance Minister (1991), evolved through the two hotchpotch coalitions 1996 through to 1999, and further evolved under the ‘Hindu-Nationalist’ (as the Neoconservative sidekick BBC wants the world to believe) BJP. During events of 911, the Hindu-Nationalists were crawling on their knees to be recognized as most ‘dependable anti-Muslim terrorist ally’ but unfortunately lost to Parvez Musharraf. When the US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan to grow opium poppy, and lilies over forty thousand dead civilians, and later Iraq to steal its oil, all parties kept mum. There has been a quiet tilt for over 17 years and Kissinger as usual is lying. Under normal circumstance, the Nandigram civil war would have forced the Central Government of Manmohan Singh to dismiss the state government of CPM and force an election within six months in accordance with the Constitutional provisions. Kissinger’s deal was that CPM drops its opposition to 123 and the Central government allows the barbarians to continue and retain their hold over West Bengal and that nefarious deed is done. The filthy hands of this supine coalition called United Progressive Alliance stands exposed.

So, Kissinger’s co-opted rulers are safely ensconced, not only in Delhi, but also in Kolkata, Islamabad and Dacca.

We believe that Kissinger’s visit was to ‘secure’ India’s diplomatic and military cooperation as a junior partner in Washington’s quest to expropriate oil and gas and redraw West Asian map. The map, copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006), is cited in Prof Michel Chussodovsky’s article here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4347.

Kissinger’s Kolkata meeting with CPM, alliance partners of the ruling UPA, was to ensure that US-NATO plan in West Asia, exposed by Chossodovsky, goes ahead unhindered. The neoconservative brotherhood expresses itself in various ways.

3. Special Economic Zones (SEZ) (a euphemism for land loot) (For Government data and policy statements see http://sezindia.nic.in/)

SEZ are 21st century’s mighty kingdoms. The concept was borrowed from China that has six mega SEZ. The previous BJP rulers thought of setting up ‘many.’ The present Commerce Minister, Kamal Nath, increased that to 500; India will set up 500 SEZs on Nandigrammed farmers.

Free zones

Except for issuing their own currency notes, SEZs are Indian territories in private hands. By May 2007, 234 were approved and 162 SEZs approved in-principle. These are all-tax-exempt zones: exemptions from excise duty, custom duty, sales tax, octroi, turnover tax, as well as income tax for ten years are some of the inducements. The fiscal sops extended to SEZs would cause a revenue loss of Rs. 1000 billion (US$25 billion) by 2009-10, which the Government itself has accepted. In water and electricity short India, the UPA government has assured round-the-clock electricity and water supply. The SEZ promoters have also been given a waiver from carrying out Environment Impact Assessment which is required in any infrastructure project. Promoters of SEZ can have their own security laws; Indian Police will not enter. For instance, Halliburton can acquire a SEZ, handover security to Blackwater, and invite armament manufacturers to reprocess depleted uranium into weapons of mass destruction; no questions asked.

No Inspection

SEZ owners are authorized not to permit any inspection of their premises by any official of the government and for conducting search and seizure operations without prior permission of the owners.

No restriction of capital flows

100 per cent foreign direct investment is permitted in these post modern fiefdoms. “They are permitted external commercial borrowings up to US $ 500 million without any maturity restrictions. They are free to bring in export proceeds without any time limit and make foreign investments from it and are exempted from interest on import finance. They are allowed to set up off-shore banking units with income tax exemption for three years and subsequently 50 per cent tax for another two years. And if they were to sub-contract production to local manufacturers, there would be duty drawbacks, exemption from state levies and income tax benefits. In the scheme of SEZ the livelihoods of small farmers and environmental concerns have been brushed aside.

Anti poor Left Parties

The Left parties, headed by the notorious CPM, enamored with the Neoconservative ideology, are not lagging behind in the race. The CPM in West Bengal has gifted over 900 acres of prime farmland in Singur to India’s Tata group for their NANO car project: two farmers opposing the acquisition of their land were beheaded and heads were kept as trophies by CPM hoodlums. Shamelessly, it has approved seven SEZ and given in-principle approval to fourteen more. The Left front ruled Kerala has approved ten SEZ and in-principle approved two more. SEZs kingdoms are slated to come up all over densely populated India.

The Great Land Loot

The official website says that for setting up of 396 SEZs 1750 sq km land would be required – all would not be on farmlands. Farmland would constitute only 1393.53 sq km. Krishan Bir’s estimate, however, points out that the loss of farmlands would be much more as has happened in the past. For example, the Russian backed Heavy Engineering Corporation project in 1960 required only 800 acres; instead 8,000 were acquired, and many farmers have not been compensated to this day. The government claims that with an estimated US$13.39 billion investment in 100 notified SEZ, 1.57 million additional jobs would be created; this is a complete hoax. Existing SEZs have not created the projected jobs with investments already made. Some of the best farmlands are gone and farmers have been forcibly uprooted. Once a SEZ, always a SEZ; there is no provision for returning the land to farmers, even if the industrial economy is devastated and modern mechanized manufacturing firms fold up.

Killing thousands to accommodate Salim Group

The Salim Group’s founder was manufacturing noodles in his backyard when accidentally he came across the young Suharto, the butcher of Indonesian communists. As Suharto grew in power, so did Salim group. Today, Suharto’s sons are stock holders in Salim Group and control many companies.

When Suharto was overthrown, Salim Group was in a financial mess. Tony Salim relocated to Singapore and used his considerable clout to restructure and expand. The patriarch had changed his name to a Muslim sounding one to appease the Muslims of Indonesia. They are Chinese and have also made huge investments in real estate in China. Majority of real money spinning firms of Salim group are closely held, not quoted on any stock exchange, leading some to remark that it actually fronts for Suharto ill-gotten gains.

And this fiefdom is expanding its hydra-headed tentacles in West Bengal, India, under the rule of ‘Peasants and Workers party,’ unraveling of CPM’s Chinese connections.
Since the CPM has signed a deal with the murderers of Indonesian communists, CPM has lost its credibility and it is now clear that it is complicit in Neoconservative agenda of looting whatever natural resources, especially land, remain in India.

4. Comments of a Nobel laureate

Dr Amartya Sen, was interviewed by Sambit Saha of The Telegraph on land acquisition for industrialization, the most important issue facing Bengal and India. Here are a few excerpts:

“Where there is a mistake in the government’s thinking, and I think it is a big mistake of a tactical kind, is not to recognize that if this land were available for industry in general, and not just for the Tatas (one of India’s largest conglomerates who were given lands at Singur), the value of the land would have been much greater. While the compensation paid is greater than the value of the land seen as agricultural land, the compensation paid by the government is less than what the value would have been had it been free for competition with industries. If you are part of the market economy, then you have to take into account what the value of the land would have been had it been freely available for industry. So there is an issue to be addressed. I think it is a mistake, an honest mistake and it can be corrected in the future…… “Nandigram is a much more complex issue. There is a question whether that kind of operation was needed, whether it was the right place. But I have not studied it in the way I have studied Singur. So I won’t comment,” said Dr Amartya Sen

(Full interview: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070723/asp/nation/story_8094453.asp)

Dr Sen should know the essence of land as a factor input. Since the amount of land available is fixed, it confers a monopoly on land owners and that monopoly in case of poor peasants must not be expropriated to favor big business, especially by invoking antiquated Land Acquisition Act of 1894, an act that was created and misused by the British particularly in the central Indian tribal region. Land to Indian peasants constitutes an inherited capital along with inherited wisdom of over six millennia that can’t be valued in cash terms. In fact this asset is immeasurable in terms of its intrinsic survival value given the present contingencies as elaborated by Heinrich, discussed below.

Dr Sen’s interview was published on 23 July, 2007, over four months after the Nandigram massacre. There are two basic issues that Dr Sen is inexplicably silent on. (a) Is the sort of industrialization policy being pursued by the ruling elite sustainable, given the impending energy crisis and threats posed by climate change? And (b) Should the farmers at all be forcibly removed from fertile farmlands when plenty of wastelands are available all over India and when one of the direct consequences of energy crisis would be food scarcity? Instead of strengthening India’s food production system, the present Governments, at Centre and States, are implementing the Neoconservative agenda of industrialization of farming, corporatization of food production, Walmartization of distribution, and concentration of most fertile lands in the hands of large corporations.

If ‘development’ means “Americanization of India, Corporatization of its agriculture, and Walmartization of its distribution, then this developmental model is a prescription for mass culling, famine on a scale unknown, starvation, civil unrest, perhaps food wars and water wars amidst rural poor thronging the cities as beggars for food and none to produce that food because best lands would be gone to SEZ. It is inconceivable that CPM top brass does not know about these issues Governments are extremely well briefed by top experts.

5. Chavez’s visit to India

President Hugo Chavez visited India March 2005 and was feted everywhere. During his visit the CPM courted him; the pro Neoconservative, peddling the dope of being pro-poor, had to court the genuinely pro-poor Chavez. Excerpts from Chavez interview here:

“… Mr. Chavez made it clear that he would like to have an energy relationship with India, and that Indian companies would be welcome to help exploit the oil resources of Venezuela. Indeed, the scope for cooperation is enormous despite the distances. Apart from New Delhi benefiting by extracting Venezuelan oil for use in India or sale through swap agreements (which would reduce the dollar hegemony), Caracas gets to further diversify its markets and reduce the monopolistic power of the U.S. Indian companies like IRCON are also well placed to assist Venezuela in the construction of railway lines and roads, not to speak of low-cost housing, which is a priority area for Mr. Chavez. His visit last week has done a lot to exorcise the ghosts of previous agreements that fell through at the last moment. The crucial factor in all this is the determination to follow through.”

(Full report here: http://www.hindu.com/2005/03/11/stories/2005031101881000.htm)
While Mr. Hugo Chavez was outlining an alternative plan to the ‘New American Century,’ the rogues in CPM were planning to stab him in the back. This, despite the fact that one Indian company (ONGC) has significantly contributed to successful extraction of heavy oil in Venezuela (Sam Hopkins, ‘Indian Innovation in Heavy Oil,’ www.energyinstitution.org; October 24th, 2007). It remains to be seen how the CPM does the balancing act of working simultaneously to deprive India of energy resources from Iran under Kissinger’s pressure and of Venezuela, a country also in the crosshair of the criminals in DC. If Indian farmers are denied access to cheap energy till such time that the farmers have transited to low-energy food production and distribution, agriculture productivity will fall steeply causing mass starvation in both rural and urban areas.

All evidences suggest that this is the intention of CPM in India, leaders. Effectively, CPMWashington’s agenda of ensuring an energy-enslaved India, the ability to grow foodAnd because this party believes in industrialization-through-destruction-of-peasantry, it does not even have a strategy to help Indian farmers move towards low energy agriculture. While the Bolivarian circles are achieving in less than six years what the CPM could not achieve in sixty, it is driving small farmers out of the most fertile lands.

6. The massacre at Nandigram:

Time line
The people of Nandigram were massacred on 14th March. Survivors continued to oppose, till the Government of West Bengal (GoWB) withdrew Salim’s project. But the attack by CPM cadre on unarmed people continued. From 29th October to 8th November 2007, there were nine major events of violence. The civil war is going on unabated. Media persons have been beaten up. Delegation of civil society, including artists, writers, and intellectuals were prevented from visiting Nandigram. Here’s the brief time line:

March 31, 2006 A basic understanding between GoWB and Salim Group was arrived at wherein the Salim Group would set up a SEZ (a Chemical hub)

October 6, 2006 On the recommendation of GoWB, the empowered committee of the Government of India approved Salim Group’s SEZ

January 3, 2007 Facing farmers’ opposition to acquisition of lands for SEZ, the Police indiscriminately fired at unarmed farmers.

January 4, 2007 GoWB sought modifications in SEZ rules from Government of India

January 6, 2007 Formation of Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Samittee, or BUPS, (People’s Committee to oppose acquisition of lands).

January 9, 2007 Mamta Bannerjee, opposition leader, demands President’s rule in West Bengal.

Violence of ruling party cadre continued through these months; Krishi Bhumi Raksha Samittee (KBRS) (Save Farmlands Committee) formed.

March 14, 2007 Police and CPM cadre fire indiscriminately at unarmed women,
children and men. Nandigram Massacre begins. Women are beaten up, raped and hacked to death; children torn apart.

No one knows the true figure of dead and ‘missing’.

No one knows how many women & children were brutalized.

March 15, 2007 The West Bengal High Court orders inquiry into the events by the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) (Our version of the FBI).

April 29, 2007 BUPC and KBRS confront CPM, more violence

May 24, 2007 All Party meet to resolve the Nandigram issue fails.

July 30, 2007 BUPC calls for State-wide Bundh; successful.

October 29, 2007 CPM cadre entered Takapura, Kamalpur and Ranichowk and at least 16 homes torched.

October 30, 2007 CPM hoodlums fired on a peaceful rally of thousands of farmers who were on their way from Nandigram to Tekhali. There was bombing and firing from Khejuri, a CPM stronghold. Armed miscreants, allegedly hired by the CPM, attacked Ranichowk village and set fire to two homes of BUPC supporters and looted a few. There was one death and 10 injured. Media persons and opposition leaders…were not spared either. Three journalists were beaten up.

October 31, 2007 CPM cadre bombed Bhangabera to terrorize the villagers.

November 02, 2007 CPI(M) cadre from Khejuri started firing while policemen deployed in the area turned a blind eye. All entry points into Nandigram have been sealed off by the cadres and there were attempts to take control over villages in Nadigram.

November 03, 2007 Further intensification of terror as armed CPM cadre reduced Satengabari to a virtual graveyard and the firing continued unabated. More than 200 thatched houses were burned to ashes after they were looted and ransacked, rendering approximately 1,000 people homeless. Women molested.

November 4, 2007 CPM Politburo member Brinda Karat, wife of Prakash Karat, the CPM supremo in Delhi, prescribed “Dum Dum Dawai” (harsh medicine, like severe beating — a slogan of the sixties advocating public thrashing of the corrupt) as a solution. She blamed the opposition politicians for the continuing trouble in Nandigram in the presence of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the same man who would entertain Dr Henry Kissinger. Instead of fading out gracefully, Brinda in her middle age is advocating violence.

November 6, 2007 In a repeat performance of 14th March, a savage attack was mounted by CPM cadre. Nine villages were torched. At least 15,000 people were hounded out of their homes The state home secretary Mr. Prasad Ranjan Roy admitted that firing started from Khejuri, indicating that CPI-M cadres unleashed the violence.

November 7, 2007 Yet another attack on villagers, over 3000 rendered homeless.

November 8, 2007 Prominent citizens attempting to enter Nandigram were attacked, women members (particularly Anuradha Talwar and Medha Patkar) were slapped, insulted and beaten up, cars wrecked and drivers assaulted.

7. The parallel with China

“At the Center the sky is blue,
In the provinces clouds are gathering,
In the counties there is flooding,
In the townships people are drowning
And are running for their lives”

(Quoted in Thomas P Bernstein’s ‘Unrest in Rural China: A 2003 Assessment.’ This is also called ‘the peasant’s cries’ (Nongmin de huhan) as explained by Yang Hao, 1999)
There have been over 248,000 peasants’ unrest in China in eleven years ending 2003. (Albert Keidel, ‘The Economic Basis for Social Unrest in China,’ The George Washington University, 2005; page 1) Among other issues, social unrest has been caused by land acquisition for industry and ‘modernization.’ People have been arrested, beaten up, perhaps tortured, because lower level officials and the security forces are as bad as in India. ‘The peasant’s cries’ sums up the normal brutality of lower level officials and cadres but the Chinese peasants believed that by petitioning higher authorities they would get some solace. Not there. Not here in India either.

India doesn’t have 248,000 peasants’ movements but getting uncomfortably close. Despite the Governor of West Bengal and the Home Secretary (in-charge of internal security) saying that the situation is bad (meaning very bad because Home Secretaries always understate the facts), the centre took its own time sending special protection force (Central Reserve Protection Force or CRPF). They have finally managed to enter Nandigram and recovered arms and explosives from the homes of CPM supporters.

8. The role of the media and the intelligentsia in this episode

Surprisingly, even the Leftist intellectuals have eventually decided to raise their voice against this genocide. The Internet is buzzing in the middle-class intellectual homes to oppose the “massacre at Nandigram.” Some have shown spine, most are spineless. Those who have shown spine are also much guarded in what they say and much of what they say appears that what CPM has done is a bit of aberration that can be ‘corrected’ by their pressure group, that its ‘expansionary drive’ can be curbed and reformed. Famous Leftist icons come out in support of the farmers but as one Nandigram activist, who blogs from Kolkata, said ‘they are there when the TV cameras are there’ (Palash Biswas in conversation with the authors). Over fifty ‘leading Leftists’ signed a ‘protest note’ opposing the acts of the CPM in Nandigram but instead of exposing the true Machiavellian machinations of the CPM, they merely denounced their acts in Nandigram. One ‘intellectual’ went so far as to say that events of Nandigram have been engineered by ‘communalist forces’. Do we need colonialists when we have home grown criminals to loot our natural resources?

9. Democide

The parties of the peasants and workers have history of exterminating the peasants. A researcher, R.J Rummel (We question many of his assumptions because he almost condones the American Democides, but he is right about Soviet Russia and China during their collectivization phase), has calculated that the Soviets under Stalin killed about millions of domestic citizens and China under the Communists killed about 35 million, majority peasants, some dissidents, two most lethal regimes of the 20th Century. (Details are here: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM) We do credit Rummel with having coined the phrase ‘Democide’ or death by governments. CPM ruled West Bengal has killed people in Nandigram and that is “Democide.”

The Communist parties are experts at turning the educated middle-classes into supine, spineless core support base. The so-called Leftist intellectuals in India’s top universities owe their positions not because they are serious thinkers but because they support the Left parties. The Communist Party of India, allied with Soviet Russians supported Indira Gandhi’s emergency (total dictatorship) in June 1975, just as the CPM is now allied with the UPA, inching towards total dictatorship.

Essentially totalitarian in nature, the Communists have found the small farmers difficult to control. The small farmer invariably is forced to take a stand against them because he/she can grow food and has land to grow food, no matter how small. In India’s case, the small farmers brought CPM to power in West Bengal but in the grand old Communist tradition of governance they are up against a Frankenstein monster.

As one wit told the author recently: politically correct disposition ensures material wealth and recognition! The politically correct disposition in India Today is to be Leftist, when Leftists are treasonous sycophants of Anglo-American Neoconservatives. If they fail, Washington will need a different strategy to pummel South Asia, a far worse hubris. The question is this: should India succumb to the terrorists? Or should the people of India, including conscientious socialists, resolve to demolish this UPA monster backed by CPM and other self serving Leftists and make an example of this democidal group?

10. CPM’s hubris

CPM, a party that ruled by manipulating ballots now rules by bullets. It is now openly stealing lands from poor peasants as part of the global Neoconservative strategy of destroying the independent farmers. It is determined to make an example of the people of Nandigram as part of the tribute to its traditional masters.

In trying to set an example for the rest of the country, the ruling coalition in Delhi is also banking on successful crushing of Nandigram revolt. In this hubris lies the success of the ‘sustainable 9% growth rate’ fondly blessed by mass murderer Kissinger, and eagerly sought by a small clique of former World Bank and IMF economists shaping the policies of India and South Asia. Framers’ suicides, taking place on a daily basis in India, is the real cost of Washington based Neoconservative’s agenda in which our present government is complicit.

Nandigram is a Democide; it is the beginning of a wholesale culling of farmers in India; the CPM must stand trial for Democide. All Politburo members of India’s CPM must stand trial for Democide.

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VIDEO: Preparations for War with Iran?

Monday, January 14th, 2008

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=54b_1200327598

Why would Bush go to the Mideast now? It is likely he went to nail down commitments from the Israelis and acquiescence from the Saudis prior to a planned attack on Iran. Bush, who neither reads nor writes well, has a low comfort level with diplomatic go-betweens, so this is a look’em in the eye trip to talk about what happens when he pulls the trigger.

If not, what is the alternative explanation for the trip? He is going to talk about peace talks likely to drift into the fall; change diplomatic tact, such as a demand Israel end the blockade of Gaza; schedule another Annapolis photo-op? Not likely. In addition, by White House standards this is a stealth trip with the US press attention focused elsewhere.

One possibly related diplomatic element: the White House is demanding North Korea “come clean” about its nuclear program, with the objective of getting some statement from them about working with the Iranians. Why an urgent deadline, especially one not in the agreement, unless it is linked to concomitant events? Any statements by North Korea affirming their assistance to Iran, no matter whether the nuclear assistance was weapons related or prior to the reported shut down of the Iranian program, would be presented as “new” intelligence and sold much like the “Sadam/9-11″ connection, trumping, or at least blunting, the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program.

Another indication of the White House’s intentions is promotion of an ordinary encounter in the Strait of Hormuz between US Navy Ships and Iranian Patrol Boats into an “incident,” including the imposition of addition sanctions on Iranian officials.

Assuming a decision to attack Iran, given weather and other logistical concerns, combined with attention to the domestic political schedule, the timing would likely be within two to three months or early fall.

Should this occur, the potential for destabilizing domestic and foreign consequences increase substantially, approaching near certainty. This nominally unattractive and reckless gamble would fit Bush’s character as well as the pattern of his governance. Also, this is his last shot, with a chance to create conditions in the Mideast that lock in future policy options, as he has in domestic policy with a massive deficit. Given the consequences, he would attack not only his foreign enemies, but at the same time strike at his domestic foes under the cover of the resulting emergency.

The later the attack on Iran comes, or a significant response from Iran, the more likely it would be combined with or be followed by a formal declaration of a national emergency, possibly affecting US national elections. The result would be a de facto coup d’état.

Finally, to further assess its likelihood, ask the question: who is to stop him? Not Congress; not the courts; not pubic opinion nor the press. The only chance, however slight, of stopping Bush would rest almost entirely with the British government, if Parliament became aware of the plan prior to the commencement of hostilities.

Intelligence chief condemns ‘waterboarding’ as torture

Monday, January 14th, 2008

By Stephen Foley

The head of the US intelligence community has come closer than any other official in the Bush administration to comdemning the interrogation technique of “waterboarding” as torture, stoking a legal row over its use by the CIA.

Mike McConnell, the US Director of National Intelligence, said the legal test for torture should be “pretty simple: Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?”

Although waterboarding has been considered torture for more than a century and the US military is banned from using it, President George Bush has defended “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the CIA. Waterboarding is a process of controlled drowning in which a suspect’s lungs are filled with water and he is made to believe he is dying.

Controversy over whether the practice constitutes torture has put Mr Bush on a collision course with the Democrats, who want it banned. More significantly, CIA agents who have carried out waterboarding – and their superiors who approved the practice – could face legal action.

“If it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it,” Mr McConnell told The New Yorker magazine yesterday. “If I had water draining into my nose… oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful. Whether it is torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”

Last month, a former CIA officer revealed that Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qai’da suspect, was subjected to waterboarding and broke down in about 35 seconds. John Kiriakou, who was based in Pakistan, said it “was like flipping a switch”.

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France planned to give Saddam nukes

Monday, January 14th, 2008

An Iranian commander has revealed that France had plans to equip Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons during the Iraq-imposed war on Iran.

According to General Mir-Feisal Baqerzadeh, the now retired French general and former intelligence official, Philippe Rondot, had made the offer to the Iraqi Baathist regime during a visit to the country as an advisor to the French prime minister .

Baqerzadeh made the remark citing a document registered at the defense ministry of the former Iraqi Baathist regime dated April 20, 1987.

The document was prepared by the Iraqi General Adnan Khairallah reporting to Saddam about his meeting with the visiting Rondot, said the Iranian general.

During the meeting, Rondot expressed his delight with the measures taken by Saddam’s regime against the Iranian forces.

In the meeting, Rondot also informed Khairallah about the meeting held earlier at the French military headquarters on ways to tackle potential moves by the Iranian forces and suggested the idea of using high-flexibility boats against them.

For his part, Khairallah briefed Rodot on the vast amount of satellite-based information on the Iranian military formations made available to the Iraqi side by the US.

Based on the document, the former French general emphasized the advisability of occupying Iranian cities, with particular reference to the southwestern city of Abadan.

Baqerzadeh says that Rondot also spoke of his ‘effective’ role in persuading the French authorities to provide Iraq with Mirage aircraft and Ronald missiles.

According to the document, the French had been looking at the possibility of giving Iraq ‘a very small type’ of nuclear weapon. It is underlined in the document that the matter must be kept confidential.

Rondot is reported in the document as having told Khairallah that possessing such a weapon, despite its being small, would be necessary and effective in helping Iraq impose its conditions on Iran.

MJ/GM/BGH

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Scientific Technique and the Concentration of Power

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Brent Jessop

“So long as the rulers are comfortable, what reason have they to improve the lot of their serfs?”- Bertrand Russell, 1952 (p61)

Bertrand Russell in his 1952 book The Impact of Science on Society* he describes the effects of “scientific technique” on the increasing control of societies by an ever shrinking number of people. As we will see, “scientific technique” is much more than just the development and widespread use of new technology, but first some of its effects.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872-1970) was a renowned British philosopher and mathematician who was an adamant internationalist and worked extensively on the education of young children. He was the founder of the Pugwash movement which used the spectre of Cold War nuclear annihilation to push for world government. Among many other prizes, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 and UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) Kalinga prize in 1957.

Increasing Organization

From Impact of Science on Society:

“This [the telegraph] had two important consequences: first messages could now travel faster than human beings; secondly, in large organizations detailed control from a centre became much more possible than it had formerly been.

The fact that messages could travel faster than human beings was useful, above all, to the police…” - 33

“Electricity as a source of power is much more recent than the telegraph, and has not yet had all the effects of which it is capable. As an influence on social organisation its most notable feature is the importance of power stations, which inevitably promote centralisation… as soon as a community has become dependent upon them for lighting and heating and cooking. I lived in America in a farm-house which depended entirely upon electricity, and sometimes, in a blizzard, the wires would be blown down. The resulting inconvenience was almost intolerable. If we had been deliberately cut off for being rebels, we should soon have had to give in.” - 35

“But what is of most importance in this connection is the development of flying. Aeroplanes have increased immeasurably the power of governments. No rebellion can hope to succeed unless it is favoured by at least a portion of the air force.” - 36

“In industry, the integration brought about by scientific technique is much greater [than agriculture] and more intimate.

One of the most obvious results of industrialism is that a much larger percentage of the population live in towns than was formerly the case. The town dweller is a more social being than the agriculturist, and is much more influenced by discussion. In general, he works in a crowd, and his amusements are apt to take him into still larger crowds. The course of nature, the alternations of day and night, summer and winter, wet or shine, make little difference to him; he has no occasion to fear that he will be ruined by frost or drought or sudden rain. What matters to him is his human environment, and his place in various organisations especially.

Take a man who works in a factory, and consider how many organisations affect his life. There is first of all the factory itself, and any larger organisation of which it may be a part. Then there is the man’s trade union and his political party. He probably gets house room from a building society or public authority. His children go to school. If he reads a newspaper or goes to a cinema or looks at a football match, these things are provided by powerful organisations. Indirectly, through his employers, he is dependent upon those from whom they buy their raw material and those to whom they sell their finished product. Above all, there is the State, which taxes him and may at any moment order him to go and get killed in war, in return for which it protects him against murder and theft so long as there is peace, and allows him to buy a fixed modicum of food.” [emphasis mine] - 44

“The increase of organisation has brought into existence new positions of power. Every body has to have executive officials, in whom, at any moment, its power is concentrated. It is true that officials are usually subject to control, but the control may be slow and distant. From the young lady who sells stamps in a Post Office all the way up to the Prime Minister, every official is invested, for the time being, with some part of the power of the State. You can complain of the young lady if her manners are bad, and you can vote against the Prime Minister at the next election if you disapprove of his policy. But both the young lady and the Prime Minister can have a very considerable run for their money before (if ever) your discontent has any effect.” [emphasis mine] - 45

“The increased power of officials is an inevitable result of the greater degree of organisation that scientific technique brings about. It has the drawback that it is apt to be irresponsible, behind-the-scenes, power, like that of Emperors’ eunuchs and Kings’ mistresses in former times. To discover ways of controlling it is one of the most important political problems of our time. Liberals protested, successfully, against the power of kings and aristocrats; socialists protested against the power of capitalists. But unless the power of officials can be kept within bounds, socialism will mean little more than the substitution of one set of masters for another: all the former power of the capitalist will be inherited by the official. [emphasis mine]” - 47

“As we have seen, the question of freedom needs a completely fresh examination. There are forms of freedom that are desirable, and that are gravely threatened; there are other forms of freedom that are undesirable, but that are very difficult to curb… The resultant two-fold problem, of preserving liberty internally and diminishing it externally, is one that the world must solve, and solve soon, if scientific societies are to survive.

Let us consider for a moment the social psychology involved in this situation.

…The armed forces of one’s own nation exist - so each nation asserts - to prevent aggression by other nations. But the armed forces of other nations exist - or so many people believe - to promote aggression. If you say anything against the armed forces of your own country, you are a traitor, wishing to see your fatherland ground under the heel of a brutal conqueror. If, on the other hand, you defend a potential enemy State for thinking armed forces necessary to its safety, you malign your own country, whose unalterable devotion to peace only perverse malice could lead you to question…

And so it comes about that, whenever an organisation has a combatant purpose, its members are reluctant to criticise their officials and tend to acquiesce in usurpations and arbitrary exercise of power which, but for the war mentality, they would bitterly resent. It is the war mentality that gives officials and governments their opportunity. It is therefore only natural that officials and governments are prone to foster war mentality.” [emphasis mine] - 51

“I incline to think that ‘liberty’, as the word was understood in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is no longer quite the right concept; I should prefer to substitute ‘opportunity for initiative’. And my reason for suggesting this change is the character of a scientific society.” - 68

More Organization is More Power

“The effect of the telegraph was to increase the power of the central government and diminish the initiative of distant subordinates. This applied not only to the State, but to every geographically extensive organization. We shall find a great deal of scientific technique has a similar effect. The result is that fewer men have executive power, but those few had more power than such men had formerly.” [emphasis mine] - 35

“We have seen that scientific technique increases the importance of organisations, and therefore the extent to which authority impinges upon the life of the individual. It follows that a scientific oligarchy has more power than any oligarchy could have in pre-scientific times. There is a tendency, which is inevitable unless consciously combated, for organisations to coalesce, and so to increase in size, until, ultimately, almost all become merged in the State. A scientific oligarchy, accordingly, is bound to become what is called ‘totalitarian’, that is to say, all important forms of power will become a monopoly of the State.” [emphasis mine] - 56

“In the first place, since the new oligarchs are the adherents of a certain creed, and base their claim to exclusive power upon the rightness of this creed, their system depends essentially upon dogma: whoever questions the governmental dogma questions the moral authority of the government, and is therefore a rebel. While the oligarchy is still new, there are sure to be other creeds, held with equal conviction, which must be suppressed by force, since the principle of majority rule has been abandoned. It follows that there cannot be freedom of the Press, freedom of discussion, or freedom of book publication. There must be an organ of government whose duty it is to pronounce as to what is orthodox, and to punish heresy. The history of the Inquisition shows what such an organ of government must inevitably become. In the normal pursuit of power, it will seek out more and more subtle heresies. The Church, as soon as it acquired political power, developed incredible refinement of dogma, and persecuted what to us appear microscopic deviations form the official creed. Exactly the same sort of thing happens in the modern States that confine political power to supporters of a certain doctrine.” - 57

“The completeness of the resulting control over opinion depends in various ways upon scientific technique. Where all children go to school, and all schools are controlled by the government, the authorities can close the minds of the young to everything contrary to official orthodoxy. Printing is impossible without paper, and all paper belongs to the State. Broadcasting and the cinema are equally public monopolies. The only remaining possibility of unauthorised propaganda is by secret whispers from one individual to another. But this, in turn, is rendered appallingly dangerous by improvements in the art of spying. Children at school are taught that it is their duty to denounce their parents if they allow themselves subversive utterances in the bosom of the family. No one can be sure that a man who seems to be his dearest friend will not denounce him to the police; the man may himself have been in some trouble, and may know that if he is not efficient as a spy his wife and children will suffer. All this is not imaginary, it is daily and hourly reality. Nor, given oligarchy, is there the slightest reason to expect anything else.” [emphasis mine] - 58

What is Scientific Technique?

Scientific technique is much more than just the impact of new technology on the machinations of society. It is the use of science, in its most calculating and inhumane ways, to analyze, control and guide societies in a desired direction. This topic was elaborated on in a couple of talks given by Alan Watt (here and here) particularly through the writings of Jacques Ellul.

The rest of the articles in this series will also elaborate on other aspects of scientific technique, especially its application to education and human breeding. But first, I will examine Bertrand Russell’s views about the stability of scientific societies and the possibility of a scientific world government.

*Quotes from Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952). ISBN0-415-10906-X

Note: I first heard about this book from talks given by Alan Watt at Cutting Through The Matrix.com, an individual well worth looking into.

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The Pentagon Plan to Drug Troops

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Chris Floyd

Penny Coleman at Alternet.com gives us a look at a new program designed to dull the moral sensibilities of American soldiers in combat on the imperial frontiers: Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War.But as we’ll see below, this attempt to peddle magic pills to chase away the horrors of war is just one front in a long-term, wide-ranging “warfighter enhancement program” — including the neurological and genetic re-engineering of soldiers’ minds and bodies to create what the Pentagon calls “iron bodied and iron willed personnel”: tireless, relentless, remorseless, unstoppable.

I.
Coleman takes specific aim at the “Psychological Kevlar Act,” aimed at reducing the alarming spread of soldier suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder spawned by the illegal invasion of Iraq. The program relies heavily on dosing soldiers with Propranalol, which, “if taken immediately following a traumatic event, can subdue a victim’s stress response and so soften his or her perception of the memory,” as Coleman notes. “That does not mean the memory has been erased, but proponents claim that the drug can render it emotionally toothless.” She continues:

But is it moral to weaken memories of horrendous acts a person has committed? Some would say that there is no difference between offering injured soldiers penicillin to prevent an infection and giving a drug that prevents them from suffering from a posttraumatic stress injury for the rest of their lives. Others, like Leon Kass, former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, object to propranolol’s use on the grounds that it medicates away one’s conscience…Barry Romo, a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, is even more blunt. “That’s the devil pill,” he says. “That’s the monster pill, the anti-morality pill. That’s the pill that can make men and women do anything and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn’t work, what’s scary is that a young soldier could believe it will.”

It is “a kind of moral lobotomy,” says Coleman, whose husband killed himself after coming home from the Vietnam War. She puts the bill — which is being sponsored by Robert Kennedy Jr., among others — in the historical context of military training:

Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings have to killing others of their own species. “Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli,” says Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, “and this maximizes soldiers’ lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will likely — and understandably — suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat.”

II.
Killing the soul is the ultimate aim of those who seek to create tools for empire, instead of recruiting citizens to defend the Republic from attack. I wrote about this in 2004 (Manufacturing Intent:The Army’s Cult of Killing Leaves a Generation Gap):

Yet despite the vast tonnage of celluloid and printer’s ink devoted to [the] praise [of the "greatest generation" soldiers of WWII), what is perhaps the truest, highest measure of their worth has been almost universally neglected. And what is this hidden glory, which does more honor to the people of the United States than every single military action ordered by their corruption-riddled leaders during the past fifty years? It's the fact that in the midst of history's most vicious, all-devouring, inhuman war, only about 15 percent of American soldiers on the battlefield actually tried to kill anyone.

In-depth studies by the U.S. Army after WWII showed that between 80 to 85 percent of the greatest generation never fired their weapons at an exposed enemy in combat, as military psychologist Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman reports. Many times they had the chance, but could not bring themselves to do it. They either withheld their fire altogether or else shot into the air, to the side, anywhere but at the fellow human beings – their blood kin in biology, mind and mortality – facing them across the line...These were not "warriors," bloodthirsty automatons with stripped-down brains and cauterized souls, slavering in Pavlovian fury at the bell-clap of command. No, they were real men, willing, as Grossman notes, to stand up for a cause, even die for it, but not willing, in the end, to transgress the natural law (implanted by God or evolution, take your pick) that says: Do not kill your own kind – and every person of every race and nation is your own kind.

...But far from celebrating this example of genuine glory, the military brass were horrified at the low "firing rates" and anemic "kill ratios" of American soldiery. They immediately set about trying to break the next generation of recruits of their natural resistance to slaughtering their own kind. Incorporating the latest techniques for psychological manipulation, new training programs were designed to brutalize the mind and habituate soldiers to the idea of killing automatically, by reflex, "at the bell-clap of command," without the intervention of any of those inefficient scruples displayed by their illustrious predecessors.

And it worked. The dehumanization process led to a steady rise in firing rates for U.S. soldiers during subsequent conflicts. In the Korean War, 55 percent were ready to pump hot lead into enemy flesh. And by the time the greatest generation's own children took the field, in Vietnam, the willingness to slaughter was almost total: 95 percent of combat troops there fired with the intent to kill.

And today in occupied Iraq, the brutalizing beat goes on. "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, it's like it pounds in my brain," a U.S. soldier told the Los Angeles Times last week. Another shrugged at the sight of freshly slaughtered bodies. "It doesn't bother me at all," he said. "I'm a warrior. My soldiers, they are all warriors. They have no problems. There's no place in this Army for men who aren't warriors." Said a third: "We talk about killing all the time. I never used to be this way…but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I'll be like when I get home."

...Yet strangely enough, this new model army, imbued with eager "warrior spirit," has not produced the kind of lasting victories won by the reluctant fifteen-percenters of yore. It was stalemated in Korea, defeated in Vietnam, chased out of Lebanon and Somalia, balked in Afghanistan...and is now [bogged down] in bloody quagmire [in Iraq].

Could it be that the systematic degradation of natural morality and common human feeling – especially in the service of dubious ends – is not actually the best way to achieve national greatness?

II.
But the endless efforts to raise “kill rates” are just part of the picture. As I noted in the Moscow Times back in 2003, “warfighter enhancement” is being taken to whole new levels of technological advancement – and moral depravity. I’m doing further research on the current state of the “enhancement” programs, but they are still going full-bore since the time the excerpts below were written:

Pentagon dark lord Donald Rumsfeld is shoveling billions of tax dollars into the research furnaces of federal laboratories and private universities across the land in the wide-ranging effort to spawn “super soldiers,” fired by drugs and electromagnetic “brain zaps” to fight without ceasing for days on end. The work is being directed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The DARPA “war fighter enhancement” programs — an acceleration of bipartisan biotinkering that’s been going on for years — will involve injecting young men and women with hormonal, neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting microchips and electrodes in their bodies to control their internal organs and brain functions; and plying them with drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies: the need for sleep, the fear of death, the reluctance to kill their fellow human beings.

The research is “very aggressive and wide open,” says Admiral Stephen Baker of the Center for Defense Information. Indeed, the U.S. Special Operations Command envisions the creation of “iron bodied and iron willed personnel” who can “resist the mental and physiological effects of sleep deprivation” while relying on “ergogenic substances” to “manage” the “environmental and mentally induced stress” of the battlefield. Their bodies juiced, their brains swaddled in Prozacian haze, the enhanced warfighters can churn relentlessly, remorselessly toward dominion.

And the term “creation” is not just fanciful rhetoric: some of the research now underway involves actually altering the genetic code of soldiers, modifying bits of DNA to fashion a new type of human specimen, one that functions like a machine, killing tirelessly for days and nights on end. These mutations will “revolutionize the contemporary order of battle” and guarantee “operational dominance across the whole range of potential U.S. military employments,” the DARPA wizards enthuse.

Of course, the Pentagon is not waiting on sci-fi technology to enhance the physical abilities of its warfighters; old-fashioned off-the-shelf “additives” have long been shoved down soldiers’ throats. For example, the use of amphetamines for pilots has been widespread for decades; during the first Bush-Saddam War, whole squadrons were cranked up on the stuff. Not only is the gobbling of speed officially sanctioned, it’s actively encouraged, even implicitly mandated–careers can be derailed for pilots who refuse to drug themselves.

The results of this dope-peddling were clearly seen on the new imperial frontier of Afghanistan last spring, when two U.S. pilots — hopped up on speed — killed four Canadian allies in a “friendly fire” bombing raid. The pilots, now facing legal charges, say Air Force brass pressured them into taking the mind-altering drug before the fatal flight.

But such glitches are inevitable in any grand scientific undertaking, and DARPA remains undeterred in its bold quest to “push the limits of human input/output,” advance the “symbiotic relationship between man and machine,” and customize “pharmaceutical technology” to “embolden the warfighter and his superiors,” as military scientists declared at a Pentagon-sponsored conference on “future warfare.”

What happens to the burnt-out husks of these “iron” soldiers after their minds and bodies have been eaten way by relentless modification and ceaseless toil is, of course, of no concern to the Bush Regime. Even now, the White House is cutting back on health benefits to military veterans — even going so far as to order veterans hospitals not to advertise their available services, lest broken soldiers actually seek to claim the promise of support their government once gave them. For men like Bush — protected scions of privilege who sit out wars in safety, in booze-addled luxury — such promises are just cynical sucker ploys, aimed at coaxing decent soldiers into acting as the hitmen of empire, then discarding them when they’re no longer needed.

How very strange it is: those who want to turn American soldiers into mindless, drug-addled mutants and send them off to kill and die in far-flung wars of imperial conquest are seen as patriots, noble leaders, doing the will of God; while those who would rather see these good men and women called home, treated with honor and respect–their talents and dedication applied solely to the defense of their own great country, not pressed into the service of a greedy, rapacious elite–are denounced as “traitors,” “anti-American agitators,” “allies of terrorism.”

But such is the inversion of values — the wisdom gone astray and turned to fell practice - -that now rules in Bush’s Washington, and in the Pentagon’s fiery crucibles of war.

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ID cards are staying voluntary… for now

Monday, January 14th, 2008

It is unlikely that UK citizens will be made to get an ID card for ’several years’ a minister said.

Liam Byrne has said on the Today programme that the voluntary scheme, which will come into force in 2009, will need time to “run in”. To make ID cards compulsory, parliament would have to pass new legislation, he said. When asked on the programme if the government would be drawing up legislation this year, Byrne said they were keeping ID cards voluntary for now, but the government remained enthusiastic about compulsory ID cards in the future.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett, who introduced the initial identity card bill, said the scheme would not work unless everyone had to have a card.

“In my opinion, without it being mandatory, there is little point in doing it,” he said.

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Fingerprints Required for Britain Visas

Monday, January 14th, 2008

LONDON (AP) - All visitors to Britain requiring visas will have to be fingerprinted starting Monday, the government said.

Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said those applying for a British visa from any of 133 countries would now have their fingerprints checked against a database.

Byrne said the system, which the government has gradually been introducing around the world since September 2006, had already captured biometric information from more than 1 million people. He said the system had flagged nearly 500 cases of identity fraud.

Logging and checking visitors’ biometric information is one of the central planks of the government’s new immigration strategy, which includes the introduction of an Australian-style points system intended to select encourage skilled immigrants, the creation of police-like border force and fines for bosses who do not ensure their employees are legally entitled to work in Britain.

Tourists from the United States and the European Union, who do not require visas for short visits to Britain, will not be fingerprinted.

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‘War criminal Bush persona non grata’

Monday, January 14th, 2008

A senior Lebanese cleric has called on Arab and Muslim countries to declare George W. Bush persona non grata and sue him for ‘war crimes’.

“We want our Muslim and Arab people to …declare that he is a persona non grata who represents crimes,” Seyyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said in a statement released on Sunday.

“He should soon be tried as a war criminal and a prominent symbol of terrorism in the world,” he added.

Fadlallah’s statement came as Bush was visiting Persian Gulf Arab countries in a bid to win their support for confronting Iran.

“Attempts to portray Iran as a threat and strategic enemy have failed,” said the cleric, “It has been clear that the motive behind creating an enemy for the Muslims from within is to boost the sales of American weapons,” the senior cleric said.

He also said the years Bush has spent in office were the ‘bloodiest’ since World War II and coincided with the most ‘unjust crimes and massacres in our region, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine.’

JS/RE

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US official wants Guantanamo shut

Monday, January 14th, 2008

The highest US military officer says he would like to see the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay closed because its image has damaged America’s international standing.

“I would like to see it shut down,” Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US military’s joint chiefs of staff, said on Sunday.

On his first visit to the jail in Cuba since taking up his post in October, Mullen toured Guantanamo facilities including the construction site of a new high-security courtroom that US officials say should speed up inmate trials.

He said: “I believe that from the standpoint of how it reflects on us that it’s been pretty damaging.”

But he acknowledged closing the prison posed major legal problems.

Legal issues

“There are enormous challenges associated with that,” Mullen said.

“There are enormously complex, complicating legal issues that are way out of my purview.”

He said there were some “really, really bad people” detained at Guantanamo who had committed “extraordinary crimes”.

Among those detained is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington DC.

Mullen also said steps had been taken to reduce the population at the camp, which now stood at 277.

Waterboarding ‘torture’

Earlier, Mike McConnell, the chief of US national intelligence, was quoted as saying he believed the US interrogation practice known as “waterboarding” could be described as torture.

“Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture,” he told The New Yorker magazine on Sunday.

Protesters enact ‘waterboarding’ in one of the
many rallies held against its practice [Reuters]

The comments came as the US House Intelligence Committee continues an investigation into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes that are reported to have shown the use of the interrogation technique on suspects.

McConnel also said that should waterboarding ever be determined as torture, “there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it”.

“If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful!” he said.

“Waterboarding”, involves pouring water over subjects who are bound, gagged and hooded in order to terrify them by stimulating the feeling that they are drowning.

McConnell stopped short of categorically describing the interrogation process as torture and declined to say whether he believed it should be formally labelled as such.

No dispute

A spokesman for McConnell later said he did not dispute the quotes attributed to him in the story the Associated Press reported.

Kevin Lanigan, from Human Rights First, told Al Jazeera: “It’s a very important step for such a senior official in this [US] administration for the first time to admit that - with some caveats on his admission - that this technique is torture.”

Michael Mukasey, the US attorney general, has declined to rule on whether “waterboarding” is torture.

A ruling that the technique does constitute torture would put at risk the CIA interrogators who were given permission by the White House in 2002 to use the technique on three prisoners who were considered resistant to conventional interrogation.

‘Excruciatingly painful’

McConnell said in his interview that the legal test for torture should be “pretty simple”, suggesting: “Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?”

The CIA has said it has not used the technique since 2003 and Michael Hayden, the agency’s director, prohibited it in 2005.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, refused to comment on the issue on Saturday.

He said: “We don’t talk about interrogation techniques. And we are not going to respond to every little thing that shows up in the press.

“We think it’s vitally important he and the intelligence community have all the tools they need.”

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