और लेफ्ट एक बार फिर ऐतिहासिक भूल कर बैठा

और लेफ्ट एक बार फिर ऐतिहासिक भूल कर बैठा

यह हमारे देश और देश की जनता की बिडम्बना ही है की अपने को जनता का प्रतिनिधि पार्टी कहने वाली लेफ्ट पार्टियाँ हमेशा से ऐतिहासिक भूलें करती आयीं हैं. उसकी ईमानदारी पर अविश्वास इसलिए भी नहीं कर सकते की वोह इसे तहे-दिल से स्वीकार भी करती आई है. कुछ-कुछ इस शक्ल में की 'लो जी फिर से एक ऐतिहासिक भूल हो गई. अब क्या करें. हम करना तो कुछ ऐसा चाहते थे. पर हो कुछ और ही गया.' इस बार भी लेफ्ट से ऐतिहासिक भूल हो ही गई. आज नहीं (क्यूंकि बैठकों में काफी वक्त लगता है) पर कल जरूर लेफ्ट वाले यह सच सबके सामने स्वीकार करेंगे की 'लो जी एक और भूल हो गई'. पर उसमें अभी काफी समय है.

आख़िर बेचारे वह भी क्या करें. मार्क्स-लेनिन ने इतना लिख डाला है की पढ़ते-पढ़ते तरुनाई में ही ऑंखें खरब कर लेते हैं. बाकि पता नही कितने विचारक हो चुके हैं. उनसे भी निपटना जरूरी होता है. आख़िर यही पढ़ाई तो उनकी 'पूंजी' है जिसके बल पर पोलिट ब्यूरो में बैठकर राजनीति करने का हक उन्हें मिलता है. वरना अगर जनता के बीच रहकर पैर घिस रहे होते तो बाटा की हजारों चप्लें घिसने के बाद भी शायद ही डिस्ट्रिक्ट कमिटी का चेहरा देख पाते. अब जब आँखों से साफ़ दिखाई ही नहीं दे तो गलती होनी तो स्वाभाविक ही है. अभी कुछ दिनों पहले ही एक पत्रकार बंधू कह रहे थे, 'परिवर्तन इतनी तेजी से हो रहा है की आपकी ऑंखें चुन्धियाँ जाएँगी. समय बिल्कुल राजधानी और शताब्दी एक्सप्रेस की तरह भाग रहा है. प्लेटफार्म पर खड़े किसी व्यक्ति को सिर्फ़ इतना ही दीखता है की कोई ट्रेन कुछ गुजर गई. उसपर लिखी इबारत नहीं दिखती.' यहाँ तो पहले से ही आँखों में मोतिअबिंद हुआ पड़ा है. ऐसे में कुछ खाक दिखेगा.

पर उनकी ईमानदारी पर आप सक नहीं कर सकते. देखियेगा कोई पांच साल बाद एक बयान आयेगा (आदत के मुताबिक) की 'लो जी एक और भूल हो गई'. कारण मैंने पहले की बताया है, आखिर लोकल कमिटियों से लेकर पोलित ब्यूरो तक कोई निर्णय लेने में इतना वक्त तो लगेगा ही. उसपर पार्टी कोई एक राज्य में थोड़े न है. तीन राज्यों में तो सरकार चला रहें हैं. उसपर थोड़ा बहुत आधार कुछ और राज्यों में भी है. कहीं आधार नहीं भी है तो क्या पार्टी तो है. वहां की भी राय सुनी जानी जरूरी है. फिर पार्टी के भीतर वाद-विवाद और बहस-मुबाहिसा का वातावरण बरक़रार रखने के लिए अलग-अलग धडे भी तो हैं. आखिर इन सबको समेटने में वक्त तो लगता ही है.

खैर, तो बात हो रही थी 'ऐतिहासिक भूल की'. लेफ्ट वाले यह समझकर सरकार को समर्थन दिए जा रहे थे की सरकार कोई भी जन-विरोधी कदम नहीं उठा रही है. मंहगाई का क्या. गलोब्लैजेशन का ज़माना है. मंहगाई भी आखिरकार ग्लोबल फेनोमेनों है. कब तक रोक पायेगी सरकार. पेट्रोल-डीज़ल का दम भी बढेगा. ग्लोबल वर्मिंग के ज़माने में फल-सब्जिओं और खाद्यान के दामों में तो आग लगेगी ही. कुछ भी है एक सेकुलर सरकार तो है. और इसे साम्राज्वाद विरोधी भी बनाकर ही दम लेंगे. मनमोहन और चिदम्बरम पहले भले ही वर्ल्ड बैंक की घुलामी बजा चुके हों. अब ऐसा कभी नहीं करने देंगे. उन्हें भी थोड़ा ह्यूमन टच भर देने की जरूरत है. वे ख़ुद ही समझ जायेंगे. कुछ ऐसा ही मुगालता पले बैठे थे हमारे लेफ्ट बंधू. कितने भोले हैं हमारे कर्णधार. इतने भोलेपन से पॉलिटिक्स करते हैं जैसे कोई बच्चा अपनी माँ के साथ पॉलिटिक्स करता है. चॉकलेट नहीं मिले तो रोने लगता है. माँ भी उसकी हर अदा जानती है. प्यार से झिड़क देती है. इतने भोलेपन पर ही शायद विनोद कुमार शुक्ल ने लिखा है: 'इतने भोले मत बन जन साथी, जैसे होते सर्कस के हाथी'. बेचारों को बिल्कुल नचा कर छोड़ दिया. चार साल तक अपना मतलब भी साधा और फ़िर ठेंगा भी दिखा दिया. साम्रार्ज्वादी आस्तीन के साँपों को तो डसना ही आता है. डंस लिया आखिरकार. पर लेफ्ट वाले बेचारे इसमे क्या करें. उन्होंने तो जी भरके कोशिश की इनका हृदय परिवर्तन हो जाए. नहीं हो सका तो समर्थन वापस भी ले ली. इससे ज्यादा क्या कर सकते थे.

अब अगर यह न्यूक्लियर डील हो जाती है. तो लेफ्ट की कोई जिम्मेदारी नही है. वो तो सरकार को अब समर्थन नहीं कर रहे. समाजवादी वाले इनके मुंहबोले भाई लोग कर रहे हैं. लालू-मुलायम को कितना चाहते थे बेचारे. क्या-क्या नहीं किया इनके लिए. दुनिया भर की तोहमतें लीं. फिर भी वे धोका देकर कांग्रेस के खेमे में चले गए. और शुक्र है की अभी तक कांग्रेस के खेमें में है. वह भी लेफ्ट की वजह से, नहीं तो बीजेपी के खेमें में चले जाते तो क्या कर लेते. लेफ्ट का पढाया पाठ की साम्प्रयादिकता बहुत बड़ा खतरा है, उन्हें याद रह गया है. आखिर सब कुछ भूलने में वक्त तो लगता ही है. वरना हो सकता है वह सीधे बीजेपी के खेमे में ही चले जाते. आख़िर अमर सिंह ने तो कह ही दिया, सुरजीत साहब की दिल्ली इच्छा थी की वह कांग्रेस के नजदीक आ जायें सो वो आ गए. कुछ अलग थोड़े ही कर रहे हैं. सुर्जितवाद को ही अपना रहे हैं.

यह भी कम बड़ी विडम्बना नहीं है की लेफ्ट बंधू जिसे पानी पी पी के कोसते हैं वह होकर ही रहता है. बीजेपी को इतना कोसा की उनकी सरकार तक बन गई. साम्प्रय्दिकता के नम पर क्या क्या और किस्से समझौता नहीं किया. पर जितना उसे कमजोर करने की कोशिश करते हैं. मजबूत होती जाती है. अभी देखिये. कांग्रेस को समर्थन दिया था की बीजेपी शाषण से दूर रहे पर उसके कदम १० जनपथ की तरफ बढ़ते ही जा रहे है. अब डील के पीछे पड़े थे वह भी अब होकर ही रहेगा. लेफ्ट की छवि भी कुछ उलटी बन गई है. अब तो खाए पिए लोग यह सोचने लगे हैं की लेफ्ट विरोध कर रहें हैं तो जरूर वह देश के हित में होगा. भाई -बंधुओं को इसपर भी जरा विचार करना होगा.

कितने मौके आए जब सरकार गिरा सकते थे पर नहीं बीजेपी आ जाएगा का भय दिखाते रहे. कुछ कुछ उस आदमी की तरह जो झूट मूठ हॉल मचाता था की शेर आया. लोग दौड़-दौड़कर परेशान. औ रजब शेर आया तो कोई भी साथ नही था. यही हाल हो गया बेचारों का. तीसरा मोर्चा का बनता पलीता फ़िर लुढ़क गया. और बेचारे अकेले खड़े हैं. कुछ कुछ उन्ही अभिशप्त आत्मायों की तरह जो अकेले रहने को अभिशप्त हैं.

हो सकता है पाँच साल वाद वाले बयान में यह भी आए, की हमने सरकार को समर्थन देना ही नहीं था. यह भी एक ऐतिहासिक भूल थी. पर इसकी सम्भावना कम है. पर कहने वाले तो कहेंगे ही की यूपीऐ सरकार को समर्थन देना भूल थी. पर ऐसा नक्सल वाले कहते हैं. या बीजेपी वाले. यह कहकर दरकिनार कर दिया जाएगा. उन्हें यह बात भी स्वीकार करने में हिचक होगी की सरकार से थोड़ा पहले समर्थन वापस ले लेते तो शायद न सरकार बच पाती न ही डील सम्भव होता. पर बेचारे क्या करते . मनमोहन ने उड़ने के बाद बोला की जा रहे हैं डील करने. लेफ्ट वाले तो समझ रहे थे. जायेंगे मौज-मस्ती कर के वापस आ जायेंगे. ऐसे सम्मिट तो होते ही रहते हैं.

पर कहीं न कहीं किसी न किसी लोकल कमिटी की फाइल में जरूर दबा रह जाएगा की 'देर हो गई थी'.

मृत्युंजय प्रभाकर

Advanced US Preparations For War On Iran

A lengthy article by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published in the New Yorker on Sunday provides further confirmation of the Bush administration’s well-developed military and political preparations for attacking Iran. According to Hersh, the Pentagon has drawn up new war plans, the CIA has allocated substantial extra resources and the White House has already sounded out US allies, including Israel, Britain and Australia, for support in any military strike.
The article “Shifting Targets: The Administration’s plan for Iran” focusses on the changing pretext for war: from allegations that Tehran is building a nuclear bomb to a new propaganda campaign claiming that Iran is arming, training and supporting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan who are killing US troops. The cynical ease with which the White House has switched from one unsubstantiated claim to another underscores the fact that a US attack will have nothing to do with any threat posed by Iran, but will aim at furthering US ambitions for the domination of the resource-rich region.
Like the lies that were used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration is casting around for a casus belli to try to stampede public opinion behind an attack on Iran. At the same time, however, the White House confronts deep-seated suspicion, hostility and opposition—in the US and internationally—to any new US military adventure.
Hersh told CNN on Sunday: “The name of the game used to be, they’re a nuclear threat... Sort of the same game we had before the war in Iraq. And what’s happened is in the last few months, they’ve come to the realisation they’re not selling it. It isn’t working... So they switched really.”
According to Hersh, the new bombing plan targets the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), which Washington alleges has been assisting Shiite militias in Iraq. “The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targetted ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities,” he wrote in the New Yorker.
A former senior American intelligence official told Hersh: “[Vice President Dick] Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes. The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.”
Hersh also cited a Pentagon consultant who explained that the air war would be accompanied by “short, sharp incursions” by Special Forces units against suspected Iranian training sites. “Cheney is devoted to this, no question,” he said. Ominously, the consultant also explained that while the initial bombing campaign might be limited, there was an “escalation special” that could also include attacks on Iran’s ally Syria, as well as against the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. “[A]dd-ons are always there in strike planning,” he said.
In the early northern summer, Hersh reports in the New Yorker, President Bush told Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, via a secure videoconference that he was thinking of attacking Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board”. Bush concluded by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution. In a separate interview with DemocracyNow, Hersh admitted that Bush had been even blunter. “The President was very clear that he is interested in going across the border and whacking the Iranians,” he said.
The New Yorker article presents the new war plans as limited, precision strikes against specific IRGC targets, but such acts of aggression always entail the danger of rapid escalation into all-out war for which military planners prepare. Moreover, other recent articles in the British press have pointed to a discussion in Washington of a far more extensive “shock and awe” bombardment aimed at levelling Iran’s military, industrial capacity, transport and communications.
As Hersh acknowledged in an interview with DemocracyNow, a limited military strike appeared to be a tactical factional compromise in the White House between Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has previously advocated extended diplomatic moves. “She [Rice] favours a limited bombing, so I hear,” Hersh said. “If you want to really get a dark scenario, Cheney has gone along with the limited bombing. Basically, they call the limited bombing the third option, because there’s one option to do nothing, the other is to bring in the Air Force and rake...everything.”
Not only the military, but the CIA has now made Iran the top priority. A recently retired CIA official explained: “They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk. They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002 [prior to the invasion of Iraq]... The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”
Hersh told CNN that the CIA has established “something called the Iranian Operations Group. We had the same kind of a group for the Iraq war... It’s suddenly exploded in manpower. And they have been going around, just dragging a dozen people here, a dozen there. They built it up into a large, large operational group.” He also explained that “the National Security Council inside the White House is focussed much more on attacking Iran and what’s going on in Iran than it has been before.”
Diplomatic feelers have already been put out to a number of countries. But as Hersh explained, even among close US allies there is scepticism and resistance. One of the reasons for scaling back the attack plans and shifting emphasis is to secure backing in Europe in particular, where few believe that Iran will have the capacity to construct a nuclear bomb, even if it wanted to, in less than five years. Plans for a strike have received the “most positive reception” from the British government. Hersh explained to CNN that the White House had received “expressions of interest” from Australia and other countries. While backing the strikes, Israel is still insisting on a more extensive war that includes the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The new casus belli
The Bush administration’s new justification for war is just as riddled with holes as the previous one. Beyond repeated bald assertions that Iran is helping to kill US troops and lurid stories fed to a compliant American media about the sinister activities of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force in Iraq, the only publicly presented “evidence” has been the occasional display of Iranian manufactured weapons. No attempt has been made to rule out other obvious sources for such arms, including the region’s extensive blackmarket in weapons and the huge stockpiles of arms that existed in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion.
In his interview with DemocracyNow, Hersh pointed to the scepticism in US military and intelligence circles over the Bush administration’s claims. “There is a tremendous dispute about all of those assertions inside the American government. There’s just a lot of questions about it inside the government. They don’t see the case as being nearly as strong as the White House is saying in public,” he said.
Some of the most telling comments have been those of David Kay, former CIA adviser, UN weapons inspector and the man who headed the large US team hunting for evidence of WMDs following the 2003 invasion. Even though he was a vigorous proponent of the pre-invasion lies about Iraqi WMDs, Kay was forced to conclude that Saddam Hussein’s regime had no biological, nuclear or chemical weapons, their precursors or any plans for their future construction. To deflect attention from the lies concocted by the Bush administration, Kay attributed his findings to a massive “intelligence failure”.
Kay told Hersh that his inspection teams had been astonished, in the aftermath of the two Iraq wars, by “the huge amounts of arms” it had found. “He recalled seeing stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators, as well as charges that had been recovered from unexploded cluster bombs. Arms also had been supplied years ago by the Iranians to their Shiite allies in southern Iraq,” Hersh explained. The existence of “stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators” or EFPs, is particularly significant as one of the Pentagon’s chief accusations is that Tehran is currently supplying EFPs to Iraqi insurgents. It raises the possibility that these weapons were looted during the US invasion and obtained by militias, either directly or through the blackmarket.
Commenting on Bush’s campaign, Kay told Hersh: “When the White House started its anti-Iran campaign six months ago, I thought it was all craziness.” Even as he repeats the current White House line, Kay is cautious in his assessment: “Now it looks like there is some selective smuggling by Iran, but much of it has been in response to American pressure and American threats—more a shot across the bow sort of thing, to let Washington know that it was not going to get away with its threats so freely. Iran is not giving the Iraqis the good stuff—the anti-aircraft missiles that can shoot down American planes and its advanced anti-tank weapons.”
Well aware of public scepticism, Patrick Clawson, from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, advised the Bush administration to provide some evidence for its increasingly improbable claims. “If you are going to attack, you have to prepare the groundwork, and you have to be prepared to show some evidence,” he told Hersh. Clawson also cautioned that an attack on Iran could compound US problems in Iraq, where it relies on a government headed by Shiite parties with longstanding ties to Tehran. “What is the attitude of Iraq going to be if we hit Iran? Such an attack would put a strain on the Iraqi government,” he said.
Hersh noted that the Bush administration would not be deterred from war by the potential impact on the Republican Party. A former intelligence official explained: “There is a desperate attempt by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”
The New Yorker article explained that the Bush administrated planned to counter any objections from the Democrats by pointing to the record of the Clinton administration in unilaterally bombing Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq during the 1990s. But there is already ample evidence that the Democrats would support a new war on Iran. The main Democratic presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards—have already declared that all options are on the table. A majority of Democrats supported a Senate amendment last week calling on the administration to provocatively declare the entire 125,000-strong Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be a “terrorist organisation”.
Even the support of the Democrats, however, will not halt the eruption of mass antiwar opposition. To energise its own rightwing base, the Bush administration desperately needs to goad the Iranian regime into a confrontation, or, failing that, to concoct an incident that can be blamed on Tehran. Asked about his assessment of the new US war plans, a retired four-star general candidly told Hersh that the revised bombing plan “could work—if it’s in response to an Iranian attack. The British may want to do it to get even, but the more reasonable people are saying, ‘Let’s do it if the Iranians stage a cross-border attack inside Iraq.’ It’s got to be ten dead American soldiers and four burned trucks.”
All of Hersh’s sources stressed that the President had not yet issued a final, formal “execute order”. But in emphasising that the US military is not about to attack Iran tomorrow, their comments only confirm that the administration’s plans for war are far advanced and can be executed at short notice.


By Peter Symonds

“TWO NATIONS”

KRUPSKAYA tells us in her Memories of Lenin that when she and Lenin were in exile in London at the beginning of the twentieth century, they would often take omnibus rides in the areas of London frequented by the bourgeoisie; they would also walk along the streets of the working class areas, where omnibuses did not ply. Lenin was so struck by the contrast between the two Londons that he would often refer to “two nations” within one country. Now, six decades after India’s independence, which came as the result of a prolonged anti-colonial struggle, in the course of which the modern Indian nation was born, we are in the process of slipping into the reality described by Lenin: “two nations” within one country. The so-called “two nation” theory which was used to justify the partition of the subcontinent was palpably false: the Hindus and the Muslims did not constitute separate and distinct nationalities. But neo-liberalism has spawned a more plausible division of the country into two “nations”, a term that may not stand up to strict scrutiny under the canons of Marxist theory, but nonetheless contains a rich description, reminiscent of Lenin, of the Indian context.

What is striking about this hiatus is that one of these two nations, the “nation of the rich”, believes that it belongs to the first world, would like to be accepted within the first world as belonging to it, and is even in the most “fortunate position”, in its own perception, of being acceptable to the first world, though as a slightly inferior relative. The other, “the nation of the poor”, remains stubbornly stuck in the third world, experiencing the same agrarian crisis, the same unemployment, and the same privations on account of cuts in government expenditures in areas that matter to it, that pervade the entire third world. Some have referred to this hiatus as the “secessionism of the rich” within the third world, but, no matter how we describe it, the phenomenon is unambiguously present: a fracturing of the nation into two quite distinct components.

COLLOBORATION WITH IMPERIALISM

This transition from a situation where the whole nation-in-the-making was waging an anti-colonial struggle, to one where the nation-that-came-into-being is getting fractured into two distinct components, can be understood in class terms as a shift in the position of the big bourgeoisie vis-à-vis imperialism. From leading the anti-imperialist struggle of the people, and hence belonging to the camp of the people, notwithstanding all its tendencies to vacillate and compromise, it moves into a position where it carries its collaboration with imperialism to a point at which it effectively deserts the people, or does a volte face against the people. It does so not only because of the intense pressures upon it from the side of imperialism in the era of globalisation, but also because its ambition of building a relatively autonomous capitalism, autonomous, that is, vis-à-vis imperialism, runs into serious contradictions, even as imperialist globalisation opens up new pastures for it.

The two most significant components of the policy of the post-colonial State, both aimed at asserting this relative autonomy, were: the public sector, and non-alignment. The distinguished Marxist economist, Michael Kalecki, whose overall characterisation of the post-decolonisation regimes as “intermediate regimes” was rather off the mark, was nonetheless accurate in identifying these two elements as the key elements of State policy. The public sector, built up in most third world countries with the support of the Soviet Union, was a bulwark against metropolitan capital. It was used for building up a domestic industrial base, for achieving technological self-reliance, for developing the skill base of the economy, and for providing the overall setting in which domestic capitalists, including the newly emerging peasant and landlord capitalists of the agricultural sector, could prosper. And non-alignment made it possible to keep the requisite distance from imperialism, to keep a door open to the Soviet Union which was so essential for the relative autonomy of the capitalist development path that was pursued.

Imperialism had always attacked both these elements of third world State policy viciously. It had attacked the public sector first by boycotting it, and later by infiltrating and subverting it through the so-called “aid” provided by its agencies like the World Bank. And it had attacked, and does so to this day, the policy of non-alignment. From the days of John Foster Dulles right down to the days of Condoleeza Rice, this attack has been relentless.

It is instructive that precisely these two elements of State policy are being sought to be abandoned in the period of globalisation. The public sector is being sought to be privatised, and would have been privatised but for the intervention of the Left. And non-alignment is being sought to be abandoned in favour of a closer strategic alliance with imperialism, of which the Indo-US nuclear deal is a clear example. What this points to is the volte face on the part of the big bourgeoisie, the shift in its position vis-à-vis imperialism, the replacement of its project of a relatively autonomous development of capitalism by an alternative project of bourgeois development through greater collaboration with imperialism in the context of globalisation. To go back to the Leninist description, one of the “two nations”, the “nation of the rich” consisting of the big bourgeoisie and its hangers-on, wants to become part of the first world.

OBLITERATING THE MARGINALISED

It is a hallmark of this “nation of the rich” within the country that it sees itself as the sole and true nation, as the embodiment of the nation as a whole. It simply pretends that the other “nation” within the country, the one facing the massive agrarian crisis thanks to the same process of globalisation, the one reeling under the impact of unemployment and underemployment, the one steeped in debt and hunger, the one consisting of the marginalised and the economically disenfranchised, does not exist. And the media at its command, the opinion-forming devices it controls, work overtime to obliterate the marginalised, to present the “nation of the rich” as the “true nation”. The la dolce vita of the former is passed off as “India shining”. The economic bonanza reaped by the former is passed off as the “nation’s progress”.

And nowhere has this role of the so-called “opinion makers” manifested itself so clearly as in their response to the Left’s rejection of the Indo-US nuclear deal. One commentator was simply amazed how anybody could reject such a relationship with the US, when “our children” go there! One newspaper (The New Indian Express August 23) editorially commented: “the Left’s knee-jerk opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal again suggests a lack of empathy for the national consensus, and a sympathy for China’s position on the issue.” Obviously, since no sample survey covering the entire country has been conducted on the issue, the “national consensus” referred to in the editorial is the consensus among the SMS-sending crowd! The nation apparently consists of those whose children go to the US, and those who send SMS messages to the questions accompanying the so-called TV “discussions” where the audience is drawn from the same crowd. The “nation of the rich” simply appropriates for itself the mantle of the Indian nation!

The more sophisticated defenders of the deal do not explicitly refer to the strategic alliance with the US. They continue to profess commitment to non-alignment but argue the need for the deal in terms of the country’s energy requirement. And the still more sophisticated defenders even drag in climate change, which makes carbon-based energy sources dangerous, to buttress their argument. Interestingly however no cost-benefit analysis has ever been cited to argue the case for nuclear energy. No convincing case has ever been made out on purely energy grounds for having such a deal. The energy argument serves as a cover for having a strategic alliance with the US, which is the objective of one of the “two nations” into which the country is getting increasingly divided.

CONTRADICTORY INTERESTS AND IMPLICATIONS

Non-alignment, autonomy vis-à-vis imperialism, breaking loose from the shackles of globalisation that leads to the dispossession and expropriation of petty producers, and having an autonomous State that can intervene in favour of the marginalised, and will do so because of the pressure of having to face the electorate, are what the “nation of the poor” needs. But this is precisely what the “nation of the rich” abhors. The interests of the “two nations” are sharply contradictory. (This explains why the prime minister’s “packages” for the peasants have not stopped the spate of suicides, since these “packages” have been worked out ensuring their compatibility with imperialist globalisation).

The fracturing of the nation into “two nations” and the growing ascendancy of the “nation of the rich” for which it needs the support of imperialism, has serious implications for the country’s future. The most obvious relates to democracy. Broad-based democracy, democracy based on universal adult franchise as we have known it, is basically in the interests of the poor, since political empowerment gives them some opportunity for arresting or even reversing the process of their economic marginalisation. On the other hand, such broad-based democracy which threatens the ascendancy of the “nation of the rich” is anathema for the latter. Its attempt therefore is always to attenuate democracy, to make it hollow, to reduce the effectiveness of the people’s political choice. Not that it necessarily wishes to do away with universal adult franchise, but it wishes to enfeeble its significance. It wishes to institutionalise the kind of democracy which the Americans push everywhere: “the government must be chosen by the people but must follow the policies we like”. Indeed the very instance of a government pushing ahead with a nuclear deal (which it would have done but for the opposition of the Left), even though a majority in the parliament is opposed to such a deal, throws light on the kind of “democracy” that the “nation of the rich” and its imperialist backers want.

There are a number of ways in which a democracy that has struck roots among the people, that has captured the people’s imagination, and that is vigorously used by them to assert themselves, is sought to be enfeebled. These vary from a substitution of parliamentary democracy by a presidential form of government; to a substitution of politicians by bureaucrats and technocrats as the heads of government even within a parliamentary democracy (to facilitate which a process of vilification of politicians is unleashed by the bourgeois media and “opinion makers”); to the institutionalisation of a uniformity among all political parties on policy issues, ostensibly for the sake of “development”. One national daily has even called upon both the prime minister and the CPI(M) to quickly reach a settlement (for which, needless to say, the latter must abandon its opposition to the nuclear deal), so that the “stock markets are not disturbed”! The interests of finance capital in short must take precedence over the people’s interests, and the country’s future.

The introduction of capital account convertibility greatly increases the voice of finance capital in the country’s affairs; and it is instructive that in the very midst of the stand off between the prime minister and the Left, a committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of introducing capital account convertibility. You may think it is a case of bull-headed obtuseness; but it is not. It is a part of a strategy.


By Prabhat Patnaik

BRITISH OUT TO EXPLOIT GURKHA WOMEN AS SACRIFICIAL LAMBS

It is reprehensible that UK is poised to exploit the poor Gurkhas of Nepal, this time their women, who have never in history had been pressed to fight for their daily bread.

BBC report is selling the whole project as selling a dream to the Gurkhas, as they will be paid ten times their salaries in Nepal.

One can imagine, what will be the reference salary figure for these poor women, for the British to be boasting about paying them a fortune.

The BBC report does go on to admit that Britain's armed forces are facing shortages while its forces are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The colonial British had fought world wars in the past by employing colonials in their armies around the world.

With liberated nations, out of their colonial stranglehold, having their own ideas if they should be fighting a colonizing war against oppressed people of their own kind, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are illegally invaded, in blatant wars of conquests, the British attempt to press and exploit Gurkha women to fight their illegal wars, is sure to be opposed by the whole comity of non-aligned nations of the world, who cannot be fooled with the propaganda blitz by the likes of Bush and Blair to sell their cruel killing expeditions in Iraq and Afghanistan as some noble cause that should be supported rest of the gullible world.

US, UK and their allies should be made to pay for the blood of the innocent they shed on foreign soil, where they had or have no right to even step on.

It is here that Non-alignment Movement will become more and more relevant, for its members. India has been very farsighted in shooting down Condoleezza Rice's audacious demand that India should better disband the whole movement.

By Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

Killing 15,000 Iraqis Every Month

A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) concluded that—as of a year ago—600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.
That wasn’t the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge.
The U.S. and British governments quickly dismissed these results as “methodologically flawed,” even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no concrete reasons for rejecting the study’s findings, and they ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that it was “a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict zones”; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).
Reputable researchers have accepted the Lancet study’s results as valid with virtually no dissent. Juan Cole, the most visible American Middle East scholar, summarized it in a particularly vivid comment: “the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible [in a little over three years] for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.”
Despite the scholarly consensus, the governments’ denials have been quite effective from a public education point of view, and the few news items that mention the Lancet stody bracket it with official rebuttals. One BBC report, for example, mentioned the figure in an article headlined “Huge Rise in Iraqi Death Tolls,” and quoted at length from President Bush’s public rebuttal, in which he said that the methodology was "pretty well discredited,” adding that “six-hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just... it's not credible.” As a consequence of this sort of coverage, most Americans probably believe that Bush’s December 2005 figure of 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (less than 10% of the actual total) is the best estimate of Iraqi deaths up to that time.
COUNTING HOW MANY IRAQIS THE OCCUPATION HAS KILLED
These shocking statistics are made all the more horrific when we realize that among the 600,000 or so victims of Iraqi war violence, the largest portion have been killed by the American military, not by carbombings or death squads, or violent criminals — or even all these groups combined.
The Lancet interviewers asked their Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died and who was responsible. The families were very good at the cause of death, telling the reporters that over half (56%) were due to gunshots, with an eighth due each to car bombs(13%), air strikes (13%) and other ordinance (14%). Only 4% were due to unknown causes.
The families were not as good at identifying who was responsible. Although they knew, for example, that air strike victims were killed by the occupation, and that carbomb victims were killed by insurgents, the gunshot and ordinance fatalities often occurred in firefights or in circumstances with no witnesses. Many times, therefore, they could not tell for sure who was responsible. Only were certain, and the interviewers did not record the responsible party if “households had any uncertainly” as to who fired the death shot.
The results are nevertheless staggering for those of us who read the American press: for the deaths that the victims families knew for sure who the perpetrator was, U.S. forces (or their “Coalition of the Willing” allies) were responsible for 56%. That is, we can be very confident that the Coalition had killed at least 180,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006. Moreover, we have every reason to believe that the U.S. is responsible for its pro rata share (or more) of the unattributed deaths. That means that the U.S. and its allies may well have killed upwards of 330,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006.
The remainder can be attributed to the insurgents, criminals, and to Iraqi forces. And let’s be very clear here: car bombs, the one source that was most easy for victims’ families to identify, was responsible for 13% of the deaths, about 80,000 people, or about 2000 per month. This is horrendous, but it is far less than half of the confirmed American total, and less than a quarter of the probable American total.
Even if we work with the lower, confirmed, figured of 180,000 Iraqi deaths caused by the occupation firepower, which yields an average of just over 5,000 Iraqis killed every month by U.S. forces and our allies since the beginning of the war. And we have to remember that the rate of fatalities was twice as high in 2006 as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or something over 300 Iraqis every day, including Sundays. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.
HOW COME WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS?
These figures sound impossible to most Americans. Certainly 300 Iraqis killed by Americans each day would be headline news, over and over again. And yet, the electronic and print media simply do not tell us that the U.S. is killing all these people. We hear plenty about car bombers and death squads, but little about Americans killing Iraqis, except the occasional terrorist, and the even more occasional atrocity story.
How, then, is the US accomplishing this carnage, and why is it not newsworthy? The answer lies in another amazing statistic: this one released by the U.S. military and reported by the highly respectable Brookings Institution: for the past four years, the American military sends out something over 1000 patrols each day into hostile neighborhoods, looking to capture or kill insurgents and terrorists. (Since February, the number has increased to nearly 5,000 patrols a day, if we include the Iraqi troops participating in the American surge.)
These thousands of patrols regularly turn into thousands of Iraqi deaths because these patrols are not the “walk in the sun” that they appear to be in our mind’s eye. Actually, as independent journalist Nir Rosen described vividly and agonizingly in his indispensable book, In the Belly of the Green Bird, they involve a kind of energetic brutality that is only occasionally reported by an embedded American mainstream journalist.
This brutality is all very logical, once we understand the purpose and process of these patrols. American soldiers and marines are sent into hostile communities where virtually the entire population is supports the insurgency. They often have a list of suspects’ addresses; and their job is to interrorgate or arrest or kill the suspect; and search the house for incriminating evidence, particularly arms and ammunition, but also literature, video equipment, and other items that the insurgency depends upon for its political and military activities. When they don’t have lists of suspects, they conduct “house-to-house” searches, looking for suspicious behavior, individuals or evidence.
In this context, any fighting age man is not just a suspect, but a potentially lethal adversary. Our soldiers are told not to take any chances: in many instances, for example, knocking on doors could invite gunshots through the doors. Their instructions are therefore to use the element of surprise whenever the situation appears to be dangerous—to break down doors, shoot at anything suspicious, and throw grenades into rooms or homes where there is any chance of resistance. If they encounter tangible resistance, they can call in artillery and/or air power rather than try to invade a building.
Here is how two Iraqi civilians described these patrols to Asia Times reporter Pepe Escobar:
“Hussein and Hasan confirm that the Americans usually ‘come at night, sometimes by day, always protected by helicopters.’ They "sometimes bomb houses, sometimes arrest people, sometimes throw missiles’”
If they encounter no resistance, these patrols can track down 30 or so suspects, or inspect several dozen homes, in a days work. That is, our 1000 or so patrols can invade 30,000 homes in a single day. But if an IED explodes under their Humvee or a sniper shoots at them from nearby, then their job is transformed into finding, capturing, or killing the perpetrator of the attack. Iraqi insurgents often set off IEDs and invite these firefights, in order to stall the patrols prevent the soldiers from forcibly entering 30 or so homes, violently accosting their residents, and perhaps beating, arresting, or simply humiliating the residents.
The battles triggered by IEDs and sniper attacks almost always involve the buildings surrounding the incident, since that is where the insurgents take cover to avoid the American counter-attack. Americans, therefore, regular shoot into these buildings where the perpetrators are suspected of hiding, with all the attendant dangers of killing other people. The rules of engagement for American soldiers include efforts to avoid killing civilians, and there are many accounts of restraint because civilians are visibly in the line of fire. But if they are in hot pursuit of a perpetrator, their rules of engagement make it clear that capturing or killing the insurgent takes precedent over civilian safety.
This sounds pretty tame, and not capable of generating the statistics that the Lancet study documented. But the sheer quantity of American patrols—1000 each day—and the sheer quantity of the confrontations inside people’s homes, the responses to sniper and IED attacks, and the ensuring firefights add up to mass slaughter.
The cumulative brutality of these thousands of patrols can be culled from the recent inquest into the suspected war crimes committed in the city of Haditha back in November 19, 2005. The investigation seeks to ascertain whether American marines deliberately murdered 24 civilians including executing with point blank head shots nineteen unarmed women, children and older men in a single room, apparently in retribution for the death of one of their comrades earlier in the day. These horrific charges have made the incident newsworthy and propelled the investigation.
But it is the defense’s version of the story that makes the Haditha useful in understanding the translation of American patrols into hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. First Lt. William T. Kallop, the highest ranking officer in Haditha that day, told the military hearing that he had ordered a patrol “to ‘clear’ an Iraqi home in Haditha after a roadside bomb had killed a Marine” earlier in the day. Later, after the firefight that this action generated, he went to inspect the home and was shocked to discover that only civilians had been killed:
“He inspected one of the homes with a Marine corporal, Hector Salinas, and found women, children and older men who had been killed when marines threw a grenade into the room.“‘What the hell happened, why aren’t there any insurgents here?’ Lieutenant Kallop testified that he asked aloud. ‘I looked at Corporal Salinas, and he looked just as shocked as I did.’
It is important to keep in mind that Lt. Kallop would not have been shocked if there had been one or more insurgents among the dead. What made the situation problematic was that all the fatalities were clearly civilians, and it led to the possibility that they had not been in hot pursuit of an enemy combatant.
Later, however, Lt. Kallop decided that even this situation involved no misbehavior on the part of his troops, after questioning Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who had led the patrol and commanded the military action:
“Sergeant Wuterich had told him that they had killed people [in that house] after approaching a door to it and hearing the distinct metallic sound of an AK-47 being prepared to fire.“‘I thought that was within the rules of engagement because the squad leader thought that he was about to kick in the door and walk into a machine gun,’ Lieutenant Kallop said.”According to Kallop, the soldiers were thus following the rules of engagement because if the squad leader “thought” that he was going to be attacked (based on recognizing a noise through a closed door), he was authorized and justified to use the full lethal force of the patrol (in this case a hand grenade), enough to kill all the people huddled within the apartment.
The critical distinction has to do with intentionality. First Lieutenant Max D. Frank, sent to investigate the incident somewhat later, explained this logic: “It was unfortunate what happened, sir,” Lieutenant Frank told the Marine prosecutor, Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan, “but I didn’t have any reason to believe that what they had done was on purpose.”
Translated, this means that as long as the soldiers sincerely believed that their attack might capture or kill an armed insurgent who could attack them, the rules of engagement justified their action and they were therefore not culpable of any crime.
Note here that other alternatives were not considered. The soldiers could have decided that there was a good chance of hurting civilians in this situation, and therefore retreated without pursuing the suspected insurgent. This would have allowed him to get away, but it would have protected the residents of the house. This option was not considered, even though many of us might feel that letting one or two or three insurgents escape (in a town filled with insurgents) might be acceptable instead of risking (and ultimately ending) the lives of 19 civilians.
Later in the hearing, Major General Richard Huck, the commanding officer in charge of the Marines in Haditha, underscored these rules of engagement in more general terms, —and also ignored the unthinkable option of letting the insurgents get away—when he explained why he had not ordered an investigation of the deaths:
“They had occurred during a combat operation and it was not uncommon for civilians to die in such circumstances. ‘In my mind's eye, I saw insurgent fire, I saw Kilo Company fire,’ Huck testified, via video link from the Pentagon, where he is assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations. ‘I could see how 15 neutrals in those circumstances could be killed.’”
For General Huck, and for other commanders in Iraq, once “insurgent fire”—or even the threat of insurgent fire—entered the picture (and it certainly had earlier, when the American soldier was killed), then the actions reported by the Marines in that Haditha home were not just legitimate(if they reported them honestly), but exemplary. They were responding appropriately in a battlefield situation, and the death of “15 neutrals” is “not uncommon” in those circumstances.
Let’s keep in mind, then, that the United States undertakes something over 1000 patrols each day, and lately this number has surged to over 5000 (if we also count patrols by the Iraqi military). According to U.S. military statistics, again reported by the Brookings Institute, these patrols patrols currently result in just under 3000 firefights every month, or just under an average of 100 per day (not counting the additional 25 or so involving our Iraqi allies). Most of them do not produce 24 Iraqi deaths, but the rules of engagement our soldiers are given—throwing hand grenades into buildings holding suspected insurgents, using maximum firepower against snipers, and calling in artillery and air power against stubborn resistance—guarantee a regular drumbeat of mortality.
It is worth recording how these events are reported in the American press, when they are noted at all. Here, for example, is an Associated Press account of American/British patrols in Maysan province, a stronghold of the Mahdi army:
Well to the south, Iraqi officials reported as many as 36 people were killed in fierce overnight fighting that began as British and Iraqi forces conducted house-to-house searches in Amarah, a stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia.
This brief description was part of a five paragraph account of fighting all over Iraq, part of a review under the headline “U.S. and Iraqi forces Move on Insurgents.” It contained brief accounts of several different operations, none of them presented as major events. There were 100 or so engagements that day, and many of them produced deaths. How many? Based on the Lancet article, we could guess that on that day—and most days—the incident in Amarah represented perhaps one-tenth of all the Iraqis killed by Americans that day. Over the course of June, the accumulated total probably came to something over 10,000.
During the hearing about Haditha one of the investigators addressed the larger question that emerges from the sacrifice of so many civilians to the cause of chasing and catching insurgents in Iraq. Lieutenant Max D. Frank, the first officer to investigate the deaths, characterized is an “unfortunate and unintended result of local residents’ allowing insurgent fighters to use family homes to shoot at passing American patrols.” Using a similar logic, First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, the executive office of the company involved, argued against issuing an apology to local residents for the incident. Mathes advocated that instead they should issue a warning to Haditha residents, that the incident was “an unfortunate thing that happens when you let terrorists use your house to attack our troops.”
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines terror as “violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population….” The incident at Haditha was just such a violent act, and was one of about 100 that day that Lt. Mathes hoped would intimidate the population of Haditha and other towns in Iraq from continuing to support insurgents.

By Michael Schwartz

What mean Free, Freedom, Democracy?

I am "Free". He is "Free". She is "Free". They are "Free". And you are only a spectator...
Free, Freedom, Democracy. I shudder at these words.

I want to burn Plato's Republic and spit on your Constitution, on your Founding Fathers, on your Laws...

Free limbs, detached, solitary limbs, scattered to the four cardinal points and a bleeding heart in the middle, like a compass.

An arm to the West, a leg to the East, a head down South and a torso up North...And that damned bleeding heart in the Center.

Free, so free...

Free, free in Prisons. Free, so free in Detention centers...

Detention centers in the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Justice!
Crammed, packed, jammed... The smell of blood, urine and feces...covering the infected wounds. Wounds of torture born on transparent skins covering rib cages...
Free, so free.

Tortured and Free in American camps. Sodomized and Free - American democracy flavor. Tortured and Free, whipped by sectarianism - Iranian flavor. Oh so Free.
Free to die. Free to cry. Free to mourn. Free to flee. Free to escape. Free at the borders...jammed, packed.

Two thousand "free souls" flee a day. They amass at frontiers, waiting for a stamp on that damned Green passport...that cursed passport.

The passport with a broken winged eagle as an emblem. Clipped wings of Freedom.
It reads "Republic of Iraq."

Republic of whom? Iraq? What Iraq?

Two thousand a day. Grave faces, desperate eyes, lost voices...
A forgotten, abandoned people. A despised, humiliated, tortured, stolen people.
A raped people.

Lost voices in the wilderness of your indifference. The Lost voices of Freedom and Democracy...

" I have 8 children. Look at how I am living. Has anyone asked me how I feed those kids. I have been without a job for 2 years. I tell you how I feed them...I can't feed them. I spit on the U.N. I spit on the thief Bush. If I ever return to Iraq it will be to free my country from those criminals. I will either kill or be killed by them. There is no other way " says this worn out father who looks 3 times his age.

" The Iraqi government helping us? Are you insulting me or what? The Iraqi government has not and will never do anything for us. These are the most corrupt people in power that Iraq has ever known. They are sectarians and thieves. I don't want this passport. Take it now. I don't want this nationality. I am even willing to go to Somalia. Just find me a solution. Take that passport. Take it." says another father of 32.

" The Americans bombed my house. My 9 year old son was inside. Look at his face. He is burnt all over. His eyes are stuck and he cannot open them. His tongue is stuck to his palate and he cannot talk or swallow. And his head was stuck to his shoulder.
He has already undergone 9 operations and he needs another 9... He is only 9 years old. Look at him. I, myself, have 3 bullets lodged in my body. I served the Iraqi Army for 24 years. One in my thigh. One below my ribs and one in my back. I need surgery too. But I am not important. My son is. How will I manage? On my way here, highway bandits took all my money. I sold the house to come here. Now I have nothing. The boy needs treatment. No school is willing to accept him. One school did but the other students rejected him. They said he frightened them with his looks."

The father wipes his tears and you can see the look of being stuck in "Freedom".
Ah the look of America on his and his son's face. The look of " Freedom ".
Another one plays the lute. A melodious tune that makes your heart quiver. A languorous tune of longing that fills the empty space like smoke. A smoke soon dissipated into that nothingness of " Freedom ."

A couple with a paralysed little girl who needs urgent treatment. They have been there, waiting since the crack of dawn, at the gates of some embassy or the UNHCR. Others take to the pavements. They sit and wait some more... Long hours of waiting in the space of " Freedom ".

Free, Freedom...

Free comments on a blog.

And the rats crawl from the gutters...Rats droppings, Albert Camus's "the Plague". The same kind of rats that rule Baghdad with their droppings...

Rats everywhere, crawling the streets, crawling on this page, leaving behind them a trail of excrements wherever they pass.

Rats on the go. Rats exiting. Rats entering again through a different door.
The rat with the grey steel eyes. The eyes of lies and deception has exited only to re-enter again after having ruined our lives with Freedom. Now another rat has taken up his place.
The fat rat of Baghdad. The rats of Iran. The rats of America...

The plague of Freedom.

Free, Freedom, Democracy and forever Ruined lives...

Forever Ruined.

By Layla Anwar

The Killing Machine

Sunday is a good day to read something that would appear to be science fiction.
It was announced that the CIA would be declassifying hundreds of pages on illegal actions that included plans to eliminate the leaders of foreign governments. Suddenly the publication is halted and it is delayed one day. No coherent explanation was given. Perhaps someone in the White House looked over the material.
The first package of declassified documents goes by the name of “The Family Jewels”; it consists of 702 pages on illegal CIA actions between 1959 and 1973. About 100 pages of this part have been deleted. It deals with actions that were not authorized by any law, plots to assassinate other leaders, experiments with drugs on human beings to control their minds, spying on civil activists and journalists, among other similar activities that were expressly prohibited.
The documents began to be gathered together 14 years after the first of the events took place, when then CIA director, James Schlessinger became alarmed about what the press was writing, especially all the articles by Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein published in The Washington Post, already mentioned in the “Manifesto to the People of Cuba”. The agency was being accused of promoting spying in the Watergate Hotel with the participation of its former agents Howard Hunt and James McCord.
In May 1973, the Director of the CIA was demanding that "all the main operative officials of this agency must immediately inform me on any ongoing or past activity that might be outside of the constituting charter of this agency”. Schlessinger, later appointed Head of the Pentagon, had been replaced by William Colby. Colby was referring to the documents as “skeletons hiding in a closet". New press revelations forced Colby to admit the existence of the reports to interim President Gerald Ford in 1975. The New York Times was denouncing agency penetration of antiwar groups. The law that created the CIA prevented it from spying inside the United States.
That “was just the tip of the iceberg”, said then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger himself warned that “blood would flow” if other actions were known, and he immediately added: “For example, that Robert Kennedy personally controlled the operation for the assassination of Fidel Castro”. The President’s brother was then Attorney General of the United States. He was later murdered as he was running for President in the 1968 elections, which facilitated Nixon's election for lack of a strong candidate. The most dramatic thing about the case is that apparently he had reached the conviction that Jack Kennedy had been victim of a conspiracy. Thorough investigators, after analyzing the wounds, the caliber of the shots and other circumstances surrounding the death of the President, reached the conclusion that there had been at least three shooters. Solitary Oswald, used as an instrument, could not have been the only shooter. I found that rather striking. Excuse me for saying this but fate turned me into a shooting instructor with a telescopic sight for all the Granma expeditionaries. I spent months practicing and teaching, every day; even though the target is a stationary one it disappears from view with each shot and so you need to look for it all over again in fractions of a second.
Oswald wanted to come through Cuba on his trip to the USSR. He had already been there before. Someone sent him to ask for a visa in our country’s embassy in Mexico but nobody knew him there so he wasn’t authorized. They wanted to get us implicated in the conspiracy. Later, Jack Ruby, --a man openly linked to the Mafia-- unable to deal with so much pain and sadness, as he said, assassinated him, of all places, in a precinct full police agents.
Subsequently, in international functions or on visits to Cuba, on more than one occasion I met with the aggrieved Kennedy relatives, who would greet me respectfully. The former president’s son, who was a very small child when his father was killed, visited Cuba 34 years later. We met and I invited him to dinner.
The young man, in the prime of his life, and well brought up, tragically died in an airplane accident on a stormy night as he was flying to Martha’s Vineyard with his wife. I never touched on the thorny issue with any of those relatives. In contrast, I pointed out that if the president-elect had then been Nixon instead of Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs disaster we would have been attacked by the land and sea forces escorting the mercenary expedition, and both countries would have paid a high toll in human lives. Nixon would not have limited himself to saying that victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan. For the record, Kennedy was never too enthusiastic about the Bay of Pigs adventure; he was led there by Eisenhower’s military reputation and the recklessness of his ambitious vice-president.
I remember that, exactly on the day and minute he was assassinated, I was speaking in a peaceful spot outside of the capital with French journalist Jean Daniel. He told me that he was bringing a message from President Kennedy. He said to me that in essence he had told him: “You are going to see Castro. I would like to know what he thinks about the terrible danger we just experienced of a thermonuclear war. I want to see you again as soon as you get back.” “Kennedy was very active; he seemed to be a political machine”, he added, and we were not able to continue talking as someone rushed in with the news of what had just happened. We turned on the radio. What Kennedy thought was now pointless.
Certainly I lived with that danger. Cuba was both the weakest part and the one that would take the first strike, but we did not agree with the concessions that were made to the United States. I have already spoken of this before.
Kennedy had emerged from the crisis with greater authority. He came to recognize the enormous sacrifices of human lives and material wealth made by the Soviet people in the struggle against fascism. The worst of the relations between the United States and Cuba had not yet occurred by April 1961. When he hadn’t resigned himself to the outcome of the Bay of Pigs, along came the Missile Crisis. The blockade, economic asphyxiation, pirate attacks and assassination plots multiplied. But the assassination plots and other bloody occurrences began under the administration of Eisenhower and Nixon.
After the Missile Crisis we would have not refused to talk with Kennedy, nor would we have ceased being revolutionaries and radical in our struggle for socialism. Cuba would have never severed relations with the USSR as it had been asked to do. Perhaps if the American leaders had been aware of what a war could be using weapons of mass destruction they would have ended the Cold War earlier and differently. At least that’s how we felt then, when there was still no talk of global warming, broken imbalances, the enormous consumption of hydrocarbons and the sophisticated weaponry created by technology, as I have already said to the youth of Cuba. We would have had much more time to reach, through science and conscience, what we are today forced to realize in haste.
President Ford decided to appoint a Commission to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency. “We do not want to destroy the CIA but to preserve it”, he said.
As a result of the Commission’s investigations that were led by Senator Frank Church, President Ford signed an executive order which expressly prohibited the participation of American officials in the assassinations of foreign leaders.
The documents published now disclose information about the CIA-Mafia links for my assassination.
Details are also revealed about Operation Chaos, carrying on from 1969 for at least seven years, for which the CIA created a special squadron with the mission to infiltrate pacifist groups and to investigate “the international activities of radicals and black militants”. The Agency compiled more than 300,000 names of American citizens and organizations and extensive files on 7,200 persons.
According to The New York Times, President Johnson was convinced that the American anti-War movement was controlled and funded by Communist governments and he ordered the CIA to produce evidence.
The documents recognize, furthermore, that the CIA spied on various journalists like Jack Anderson, performers such as Jane Fonda and John Lennon, and the student movements at Columbia University. It also searched homes and carried out tests on American citizens to determine the reactions of human beings to certain drugs.
In a memorandum sent to Colby in 1973, Walter Elder who had been executive assistant to John McCone, CIA Director in the early 1970s, gives information about discussions in the CIA headquarters that were taped and transcribed: “I know that whoever worked in the offices of the director were worried about the fact that these conversations in the office and on the phone were transcribed. During the McCone years there were microphones in his regular offices, the inner office, the dining room, the office in the East building, and in the study of his home on White Haven Street. I don’t know if anyone is ready to talk about this, but the information tends to be leaked, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable in this case”.
The secret transcripts of the CIA directors could contain a great number of “jewels”. The National Security Archive is already requesting these transcripts.
A memo clarifies that the CIA had a project called OFTEN which would collect “information about dangerous drugs in American companies”, until the program was terminated in the fall of 1972. In another memo there are reports that manufacturers of commercial drugs "had passed” drugs to the CIA which had been “refused due to adverse secondary effects”.
As part of the MKULTRA program, the CIA had given LSD and other psycho-active drugs to people without their knowledge. According to another document in the archive, Sydney Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and head of chemistry of the Agency Mind Control Program, is supposedly the person responsible for having made available the poison that was going to be used in the assassination attempt on Patrice Lumumba.
CIA employees assigned to MHCHAOS –the operation that carried out surveillance on American opposition to the war in Vietnam and other political dissidents –expressed “a high level of resentment” for having been ordered to carry out such missions.
Nonetheless, there is a series of interesting matters revealed in these documents, such as the high level at which the decisions for actions against our country were taken.
The technique used today by the CIA to avoid giving any details is not the unpleasant crossed out bits but the blank spaces, coming from the use of computers.
For The New York Times, large censored sections reveal that the CIA still cannot expose all the skeletons in its closets, and many activities developed in operations abroad, checked over years ago by journalists, congressional investigators and a presidential commission, are not in the documents.
Howard Osborn, then CIA Director of Security, makes a summary of the “jewels” compiled by his office. He lists eight cases –including the recruiting of the gangster Johnny Roselli for the coup against Fidel Castro –but they crossed out the document that is in the number 1 place on Osborn’s initial list: two and a half pages.
“The No. 1 Jewel of the CIA Security Offices must be very good, especially since the second one is the list for the program concerning the assassination of Castro by Roselli,” said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive who requested the declassification of “The Family Jewels” 15 years ago under the Freedom of Information Act.
It is notable that the administration which has declassified the least information in the history of the United States, and which has even started a process of reclassifying information that was previously declassified, now makes the decision to make these revelations.
I believe that such an action could be an attempt to present an image of transparency when the government is at an all time low rate of acceptance and popularity, and to show that those methods belong to another era and are no longer in use. When he announced the decision, General Hayden, current CIA Director, said: “The documents offer a look at very different times and at a very different Agency.”
Needless to say that everything described here is still being done, only in a more brutal manner and all around the planet, including a growing number of illegal actions within the very United States.
The New York Times wrote that intelligence experts consulted expressed that the revelation of the documents is an attempt to distract attention from recent controversies and scandals plaguing the CIA and an Administration that is living through some of its worst moments of unpopularity.
The declassification could also be an attempt at showing, in the early stages of the electoral process that the Democratic administrations were as bad, or worse, than Mr. Bush’s.
In pages 11 to 15 of the Memo for the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, we can read:
“In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards with the objective of determining whether the Security Office had agents who could help in a confidential mission that required gangster-style action. The target of the mission was Fidel Castro.
“Given the extreme confidentiality of the mission, the project was known only to a small group of people. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was informed and he gave it his approval. Colonel J. C. King, Head of the Western Hemisphere Division, was also informed, but all the details were deliberately concealed from officials of Operation JMWAVE. Even though some officials of Communications (Commo) and the Technical Services Division (TSD) took part in initial planning phases, they were not aware of the mission's purpose.
“Robert A. Maheu was contacted, he was informed in general terms about the project, and he was asked to evaluate whether he could get access to gangster-type elements as a first step for achieving the desired goal.
“Mr. Maheu informed that he had met with a certain Johnny Roselli on several occasions while he was visiting Las Vegas. He had only met him informally through clients, but he had been told that he was a member of the upper echelons of the 'syndicate' and that he was controlling all the ice machines on the Strip. In Maheu's opinion, if Roselli was in effect a member of the Clan, he undoubtedly had connections that would lead to the gambling racket in Cuba.
“Maheu was asked to get close to Roselli, who knew that Maheu was a public relations executive looking after national and foreign accounts, and tell him that recently he had been contracted by a client who represented several international business companies, which were suffering enormous financial losses in Cuba due to Castro. They were convinced that the elimination of Castro would be a solution to their problem and they were ready to pay $ 150,000 for a successful outcome. Roselli had to be made perfectly aware of the fact that the U.S. government knew nothing, nor could it know anything, about this operation.
“This was presented to Roselli on September 14, 1960 in the Hilton Plaza Hotel of New York City. His initial reaction was to avoid getting involved but after Maheu’s persuasive efforts he agreed to present the idea to a friend, Sam Gold, who knew “some Cubans”. Roselli made it clear that he didn’t want any money for his part in all this, and he believed that Sam would do likewise. Neither of these people was ever paid with Agency money.
“During the week of September 25, Maheu was introduced to Sam who was living at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. It was not until several weeks after meeting Sam and Joe –who was introduced as courier operating between Havana and Miami –that he saw photos of these two individuals in the Sunday section of Parade. They were identified as Momo Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante, respectively. Both were on the Attorney General’s list of the ten most wanted. The former was described as the boss of the Cosa Nostra in Chicago and Al Capone's heir, and the latter was the boss of Cuban operations of the Cosa Nostra. Maheu immediately called this office upon learning this information.
“After analyzing the possible methods to carry out this mission, Sam suggested that they not resort to firearms but that, if they could get hold of some kind of deadly pill, something to be put into Castro’s food or drink, this would be a much more effective operation. Sam indicated that he had a possible candidate in the person of Juan Orta, a Cuban official who had been receiving bribery payments in the gambling racket, and who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind.
“The TSD (Technical Services Division) was requested to produce 6 highly lethal pills.
“Joe delivered the pills to Orta. After several weeks of attempts, Orta appears to have chickened out and he asked to be taken off the mission. He suggested another candidate who made several unsuccessful.”
Everything that was said in the numerous paragraphs above is in quotes. Observe well, dear readers, the methods that were already being used by the United States to rule the world.
I remember that during the early years of the Revolution, in the offices of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, there was a man working there with me whose name was Orta, who had been linked to the anti-Batista political forces. He was a respectful and serious man. But, it could only be him. The decades have gone by and I see his name once more in the CIA report. I can’t lay my hands on information to immediately prove what happened to him. Accept my apologies if I involuntarily have offended a relative or a descendent, whether the person I have mentioned is guilty or not.
The empire has created a veritable killing machine that is made up not only of the CIA and its methods. Bush has established powerful and expensive intelligence and security super-structures, and he has transformed all the air, sea and land forces into instruments of world power that take war, injustice, hunger and death to any part of the globe, in order to educate its inhabitants in the exercise of democracy and freedom. The American people are gradually waking up to this reality.

“You cannot fool all of the people all of the time”, said Lincoln.


By Fidel Castro Ruz

Big Oil And Big Media V. Hugo Chavez

On June 27, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal vied for attention with feature stories on oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips "walking away from their multi-billion-dollar investments in Venezuela" as the Journal put it or standing "Defiant in Venezuela" as the Times headlined. Both papers can barely contain their displeasure over Hugo Chavez wanting Venezuela to have majority ownership of its own assets and no longer let Big (foreign) Oil investors plunder them. Those days are over. State oil company PDVSA is now majority shareholder with a 78% interest in four Orinoco joint ventures. That's up from previous stakes of from 30 to 49.9%. That's how it should be, but it can't stop the Journal and Times from whining about it.
What ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips reject, oil giants Chevron, BP PLC, Total SA and Statoil ASA agreed to. They're willing to accept less of a huge profit they'll get by staying instead of none at all by pouting and walking away as their US counterparts did. Or did they? The Wall Street Journal reports "Conoco isn't throwing in the towel in Venezuela yet. By not signing a deal, the Houston company kept open the option of pursuing compensation through arbitration." Exxon, however, is mum on that option for now. Responding to Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez saying the two oil giants will lose their stakes in the Orinoco oil fields altogether, a company spokesperson expressed "disappoint(ment) that we have been unable to reach an agreement on the terms for migration to a mixed enterprise structure (but will) continue discussions with the Venezuelan government on a way forward."
So what's likely ahead as most Big Oil giants agree to Venezuela's terms while two outliers haven't yet but may in the end do so. The country's oil reserves are too lucrative to walk away from, especially with Russia now pressuring foreign investors the same way. It also wants majority stakes in its own resources with its giant oil and gas company Gazprom in control. It has a monopoly over the country's Sakhalin gas field exports and has taken over two of the largest energy projects in eastern Russia.
If these actions by Venezuela and Russia succeed as is likely, they may influence other oil producing nations to follow a similar course and pursue plans for larger stakes in their own resources as well. Why not? They own them and even with less ownership interests, Big Oil will still earn huge profits from their foreign investments. They just won't be quite as huge as they once were with one-sided deals benefitting them most. So the end of this story may not be its end according to Michael Goldbert, head of the international dispute resolution group at Baker Botts, an influential law firm representing major international oil companies. He said he didn't think the June 26 actions were "necessarily the end of the story (adding) The prospects of a deal are never over until a sale is made or an arbitrator reaches a decision."
The investments are large ranging from $2.5 - $4.5 billion for Conoco and $800 million for Exxon if Venezuela assumes ownership of its heavy oil projects. Conoco explained "Although the company is hopeful that the negotiations will be successful, it has preserved all legal rights, including international arbitration." Exxon also expressed its hope an agreement could be reached permitting it to continue operating in an ownership role.
It looks like Conoco and Exxon want one foot in and the other outside Venezuela to keep its interests in the country alive. It also looks like they're playing games and letting the Wall Street Journal and New York Times do their moaning about what they ought to be grateful for - the right to invest and earn huge profits the way other Big Oil investors are opting to do. Despite their June 26 decisions, Exxon and Conoco may, in the end, make the same choice. If they don't, the stakes they relinquish will shift to other producers according to James Cordier, president of Liberty Trading Group in Tampa, Florida. He said production won't halt, and "Before everyone walks out, a deal will be struck and production there will continue." Caracas-based petroleum economist Mazhar al-Shereidah agrees saying "Venezuela is now free to find other partners (and) this doesn't constitute a dramatic situation." There are plenty of capable and willing takers around.
Conoco and Exxon may in the end accept less of a good investment, stop whining about it, and continue operating in Venezuela. Why not? The country is more open than many other oil-producing nations with much of their world's proved reserves controlled by state monopolies barring private investment. Venezuela barred them from 1975 - 1992 when the nation's energy sector was completely nationalized. That changed with a series of partial privatizations in the 1990s, and Chavez said he has no plans to reinstitute a complete oil industry nationalization. Private investors can thus remain in the country and continue earning huge profits doing so. Conoco and Exxon may decide after all to share in them.
Venezuelan V. Iraqi Oil Policies - A Study in Contrasts
High-level US officials from the administration, Congress and Pentagon are pressuring the puppet Iraqi parliament to pass its new "Hydrocarbon Law" drafted in Washington and by Big US and UK oil companies. Its provisions are in stark contrast to Venezuela's oil management policies under Hugo Chavez. For Chavez, his nation and peoples' interests come first. In Iraq, however, Big Oil licensed plunder will become law if the parliament agrees to accept what its occupier and corporate interests demand. At this stage, it's nearly certain it will clearing the way for stealing part of what a US state department spokesperson in 1945 called "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history" - the vast (mostly Saudi) Middle East oil reserves.
In Venezuela, the nation and its people will benefit most from the country's oil wealth. In Iraq, their resources are earmarked mostly for Big US and UK Oil. The new "Hydrocarbon Law" is a shameless act of theft on the grandest of scale. It's a privatization blueprint for plunder giving foreign investors a bonanza of resources, leaving Iraqis a mere sliver for themselves. As now written, its complex provisions give the Iraqi National Oil Company exclusive control of just 17 of the country's 80 known oil fields with all yet-to-be-discovered deposits set aside for foreign investors.
Even worse, Big Oil is free to expropriate all earnings with no obligation to invest anything in Iraq's economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire local workers, respect union rights, or share new technologies. Foreign investors will be granted long-term contracts up to 30 or more years, dispossessing Iraq and its people of their own resources in a naked scheme to steal them.
The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and rest of the dominant US media shamelessly denounce Hugo Chavez for his courage and honor doing the right thing. In contrast, their silence, and effective complicity, on what will be one of the greatest ever corporate crimes when implemented shows their gross hypocrisy. It'll be up to the people of Iraq to resist and reclaim what Venezuelan people already have from its social democratic leader serving their interests above all others.


By Stephen Lendman
(Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com)

The Mask Of Imperial Power Is Dying

The charade is over in Palestine. The farce that tried to pass itself off as a pathway to peace has clearly ended. The ‘West’ led by Israel and the US has finally begun to show the world the duplicity of their joint criminality as that has most recently been underscored in “Gaza vs. The West Bank.”
After Israel illegally seized the Palestinian taxes raised, from the starving and beleaguered Palestinians, to deny those people the means to achieve a functioning state: now in light of the rebellion in Gaza, Israel intends to use that money to blackmail The West Bank, and starve survivors in Gaza. This surpasses what the Nazis did to those they occupied by a factor of at least ten-fold: Given that the Nazi reign lasted only twelve years – while Israel and the US have controlled the people of Palestine for over fifty years.
Israel’s claims that Hamas wants to destroy the State of Israel are true: yet it is equally true that Israel wants to exterminate the Palestinian people. Unfortunately Americans seldom hear both sides of these charges: only Israel’s claims are routinely reported, each and every time the name of Hamas is mentioned.
Neither is it mentioned here, that Israel had its military severely beaten in Lebanon, which was not supposed to happen. Israel was behind the bombing that killed the very popular pro-Lebanese leader that was then blamed on Syria—in order to pave the way for an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This is the same murder that the UN has now been coerced into holding an international trial for. The bomb signature was the same as the bomb used on the 241 US Marines, in Beirut, during Ronnie’s reign, and the only nation capable of making such bombs was and is Israel.
In instance after instance the corruption that passes for the military dictatorship of Israel today is the only group that directly profits from the escalation and destabilizations of so many different countries in the Middle East now.
Israel is not a traditional nation in the sense that she was not organically conceived, or home grown, but rather ‘it’ was created out of Palestine, and has yet to complete that process – over fifty years after her presence was inserted into Palestine. If the headlines offer any clues, her major exports seem to be ‘hatred & war’: which does not seem to be reason enough for that tiny place to exist upon the world map.
Her most powerful citizens are mostly found living abroad, where many enjoy very good lives. There is also no question that many Israeli’s are immensely powerful in many of the world’s pivotal institutions and industries, as well as throughout the world, in arts and entertainment, in politics and power, and in virtually all the major fields of endeavor: No small accomplishment given their very small overall numbers. But Israeli’s are not of a single mind, or even a single religion: and their country has been infected by an extremism that is very similar to the one that won the coup that toppled the United States in 2000. Both systems are as virulent as they are hated around the world.
The map of the Middle East is far from clear even to seasoned veteran players in the region. In fact to get an idea of just how difficult this puzzle is one would have to somehow envision a chess board where eight players could simultaneously oppose one another. Motives, outcomes, and movements are each composed of several different minds, within each group that represents a single theoretical ‘state.’ Nothing is simple. Sophistication, in-depth intelligence and an intense knowledge of the various histories and multiple factions are all basic to even beginning to understand what goes on there.
Overlay upon this immensely difficult region the fact of their resources and the importance of their resources to the rest of the planet and you can easily see that no nation that seeks to dominate that region can afford to be involved there, without a great deal of diplomatic and real understanding about events in that war-ravaged region. The military components at play are only one arm of a vast network of seething and competing goals that are never far from any surface; including the day-to-day realities. Add to this the arrogance and the self-imposed blinders, of the Western would-be rulers of that region—and it is clear that several different boogey-men needed to be created to keep all the various factions at bay. Enter the one-size fits all “terrorists,” many of whom are freedom fighters, some that are just mercenaries, and a huge number of extremists of all stripes. In this situation “Chaos” is the one logical outcome, but it is not the only consequence.
Suffice it to say that this region is and was the grand prize being sought by the world’s bankers and the global corporatocracy, not to mention the puppets in several nations that each has more than a small stake in the outcomes from this Privateer’s Dream of global conquest. This has been the Cheney-Bush target of our foreign policies since long before they ascended into office.
Ironically, these Outlaws approached this situation just as they have always approached everything else – they chose to begin with intimidation and what they thought of as overwhelming force: and they failed repeatedly. Did they learn anything at all – no! Instead they have chosen to compound their initial blunders with the threat of even more wars, and an expanded presence by both US military personnel and a sharp new spike in the accompanying mercenary forces as well. Death, death and lots more death, all to maintain the false air of some faint idea of a ‘victory’ in the war over the oil field contracts. How pathetically lame this so-called “leadership” has been!
In addition to that folly the Israeli’s have taken pages from our own bloody past, and began to treat the Palestinians much like we treated our native population when they still stood between the American colonies and the Western shore of what finally became the United States.
In addition to partitioning Palestine and stealing the lands of the inhabitants, Israel went further establishing camps and policies that made a horror out of daily life for any Palestinian caught up in that nightmare. The goal was to get the Palestinians to leave. This did not succeed, as for the most part the Palestinians have stayed and they continue to fight to this day, just as almost any people will fight tenaciously for their own lands and countries.
However, the Empire has no use for other people’s patriots, we call them terrorists. In fact the still unfinished state of Israel initially used the Irgun, (their own terrorists when they were seeking independence from the Brits). Many of their early leaders were drawn directly from the ranks of their own former “terrorists.” This is probably why the current Israeli leadership is so incensed by Hamas, and what their leadership of the Palestinians might be able to accomplish, should Hamas ever succeed in uniting a real Palestinian state.
This brings us to the current tactics being employed by both the US and Israel inside Iraq and elsewhere today, and indeed throughout these long and ugly years of a war that is not a war but an illegal slaughter of helpless people. Rumsfeld and Cheney and Gonzalez and Bush came up with the idea that torture could both justify their wars and keep the fear alive in so many millions of people everywhere – and who knew – maybe they might actually gain some information from the exercise. So we created Gitmo and revoked Habeas Corpus for all Americans, if the Decider decided that whoever it was might just possibly be involved in something anti-American, at least according to his interpretation of that definition. But now—years after this obscenity was put in place—the truth is beginning to leak out as it always will. And Seymour Hersh has written about it in a major article in The New Yorker Magazine entitled: The General’s Report. (1)
This series of crimes and cover-ups could lead to major destruction within those at the top of this extremely vicious treachery against all that the world had outlawed so very long ago.
Cheney-Bush has created so many ways by-pass the once sovereign laws of this country: Like the 1100 signing statements, the spying on American citizens at will, the upending of everything needed to run even a third class country, much less the United States of America. We have become a country without an infrastructure, without real jobs, with no real say about our own defense, or even how our borders should be maintained. We have no culture unless one counts consumerism (our major disease – without which we’d already be in the worst depression the world has ever known). Most of our industries are run from overseas, our goods and services are outsourced and then imported and now we’ve been reduced to selling off our national highways and public lands to satisfy our government’s addiction to unsubstantiated loans to fight the wars we’re already lost in the name of major corporations like Halliburton that fled this country to avoid taxes and the legal responsibilities that their contracts will entangle them in—once the investigations finally get underway. (2)
So much criminality, so much treason, and so few outcomes that stand even a chance of making a real difference: It’s obvious that Americans need a new mantra!
"NO" is the only thing this government should hear, to everything they are proposing, from the majority of the people they want to rule. If all of us just did this in both thought and deed, then this government could not continue, and we could begin again.
The entire fabric of what was 'government' is rotten to the core, because each one of almost all of the elected members continues to make decisions based solely on their own personal gains that have nothing to do with their offices, or with the public's welfare. They have in essence "sold their reputations for a song" and in that bargain condemned us all to an inferno of slavery, death and taxes that will crush us into oblivion - NO - is the only cry that we can still make.
If that battle-cry is loud enough and often enough it would begin to take hold - to the point that things would have to change. Imagine 100,000 people in front of the Tarnished House, the Congress & the Supreme Court - in three demonstrations ALL chanting that one simple word, simultaneously - if that reached the airwaves maybe we could find a new beginning?
Remember - They need us far more than we "need" them.

By Jim Kirwan

Connect The Dots Of Those Who Are Connected

Start connecting the dots at the very beginning.

On the 27th of February 1933, the Reichstag (German parliament) caught fire. Hitler described the fire as a "beacon from heaven". History shows that it removed many obstacles to the Nazi power grab and led directly to the rise of Hitler and the brutal killing spree that followed. Communists were blamed, and many were rounded up and imprisoned, but evidence shows the Nazi’s were responsible for the fire. "You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in German history...This fire is the beginning," Hitler told a news reporter at the scene. What followed was death, destruction, and horror. The Bush family is all too well acquainted with that part of history as Prescott Bush (GW’s grandfather) was instrumental in bringing Hitler to power. One former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor insisted that Prescott Bush should have been prosecuted for, "giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

(I can not believe that the Republican Party of Connecticut still has the annual Prescott Bush honor dinner.)

Shortly after George Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001, the US stock market seemed to be crumbling. The 171.32-point drop on August 30, 2001 left the Dow down more than 500 points for that week alone. Markets the world over caught the jitters and showed signs of crashing. Close to $5 trillion in paper wealth was wiped out. Personal debt, caused by credit card and ballooning mortgages was rising by an average of 8.2% a month. Thousands of workers were being laid off. Americans were unhappy. They did not feel that they had elected GW Bush, but that the election was stolen and Bush was appointed by a stacked Supreme Court. He had no mandate from the people. There was an American mind lock and a yawning void waiting to be filled by a political explosion. The explosion came on September 11, 2001.

There were people who knew a way to save Bush and the empire. Names jump at you. Larry Silverstien. Rupert Murdoch, Frank Lowy, Lewis Eisenberg, among others.

There is nothing really new here. It has all been written about before, but facts are piling up and now that the big payoff has occurred on May 24,2007 and the money trail becomes more visible, it all must be brought before the world again, and again and again. We must not allow 9/11/01 to simply pass into history. Those who suffered the unspeakable crimes that followed scream for justice.

As the reign of the Bush family comes to an end and the empire shudders and shakes, perhaps a new Nuremberg Tribunal will mete out punishment for those responsible for the tens of thousands who died and the suffering of millions of others as a result of that awful Tuesday 9/11/01.

The deadly dust had not yet settled when the drums of war began to beat. Murdoch’s pro Israel New York paper, (New York Post, 9/12/01) headlined "Kill THE BASTARDS. An editorial stated, "The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift-- kill the bastards. A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts."

That kind of inciting gutter, journalism was poured into the eyes and ears of people the world over via the Murdoch Media Empire and there was no letup for years. The Muslim community was astounded by the hate of Fox news and other Murdoch outlets. Murdoch’s unabashed support of Bush and his own devotion to Israel made him a well-known figure to those who took control of the World Trade Center shortly before its destruction.

Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy, who leased the WTC property six weeks before 9/11, insisted on the unusual insurance coverage under Terrorist acts, added to the contract. Port Authority Chairman Lewis M. Eisenberg approved the transfer of the leases. One has to wonder how that all came down.

On March 19.2001, Lewis M. Eisenberg released this statement, " re: Net Lease of World Trade Center.


"In connection with the net lease of the World Trade Center, on February 22, 2001, the Port Authority entered into an exclusive negotiating period with Vornado Realty Trust. During this period, Port Authority staff and its advisors, JP Morgan, Cushman & Wakefield and Milstein Brothers Realty Advisors have worked with representatives of Vornado to complete the contract and associated transactional documents.
In view of the lack of a final agreement at this time, the Port Authority's Board of Commissioners has instructed staff and our advisors to engage in exclusive negotiations with Silverstein Properties and Westfield America to conclude a 99-year net lease transaction."

In February of 2002 Silverstein Properties were granted a $861 million settlement from Industrial Risk Insurers to rebuild on the site of WTC 7. Silverstein Properties investment in WTC 7 was approximately $386 million. Silverstein Properties gained almost half a billion. More litigation was to follow.

It is well known that Murdoch, Silverstein and Eisenberg were members and supporters of many right wing Zionist organizations. It is also well known that Ariel Sharon, the man responsible for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, and Murdoch were friends and Sharon looked to Murdoch for support. Murdoch was also a friend and supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu who said on the day of the 9-11 attacks, "It's very good (for American and Israeli relations)…Well, it's not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)."

As soon as I heard about the Mossad agents being present and taking pictures across from the twin towers on 9/11/01 I immediately thought of The Lavon affair in 1954. The Israeli secret service set up a spy ring in Egypt with the purpose of blowing up US and British targets. The operation was code-named "Susanah." The terrorist hits were to be blamed on the regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, with the purpose of alienating the US and Britain from Egypt and Nasser. A bomb exploded prematurely and the ring was discovered. Israel denied knowledge and kept the information from its own citizens until the secret could be kept no longer.

On 9/11/01 police received several calls from angry New Jersey residents claiming "middle-eastern" men with a white van were videotaping the disaster with shouts of joy and mockery. The men in the white van were stopped and arrested in East Rutherford NJ.

On 9/12/01, The New York Times reported that a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers prior to the attack on Tuesday, and were seen congratulating one another afterwards. The Jewish weekly The Forward reported that the FBI finally concluded that at least two of the detained Israelis were agents working for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and that Urban Moving Systems, the ostensible employer of the five Israelis, was a front operation. Two former CIA officers confirmed this, and they noted that movers' vans are a common intelligence cover. The Israelis were held in custody for 71 days before being quietly released. If by their own admission, "they were there to document the event" does that not mean, to any intelligent person, that they knew in advance what was going to happen?


After 9/11 on a PBS documentary Silverstien admitted that he made the decision to have the building WTC 7 "pulled." meaning he planned to have it taken down well before the disaster. Not Silverstein himself or his daughter who normally would be in the building were present on 9/11/01.

On May 24, 2007 an AP story stated, "The builders of the World Trade Center site and seven insurers have reached a $2 billion settlement that ends all outstanding legal battles over its multibillion-dollar policy, state officials said Wednesday."

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and state Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo announced the settlement after leading two months of talks with the insurers, trade center developer Larry Silverstein and the site's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The $2 billion, added to $2.55 billion already paid out since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that destroyed the trade center, is about $130 million less than the amount awarded to rebuild the site after the trial in 2004.

So those connected all got what they wanted. Silverstein got his money. He will rebuild and hold a 99-year lease. Murdoch sold a lot of papers and got the hate Palestinians propaganda into high gear. The Israelis got millions more of American taxpayers dollars and as Benjamin Netanyahu said, "a lot of sympathy".

Bush became the ‘war’ President and The Commander in Chief.

No one except a seemingly deranged man (Zacarias Moussaoui) went to jail.

Tens of thousands have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the oil barons are running amuck. Murdoch’s media still controls the minds of millions of people. Realists are wondering are the people going to allow the 9/11 commission report to stand? Should we not be demanding a new investigation? Do we not owe that to the children of Iraq and the millions of other suffering people including Americans?


By David Truskoff
www.erols.com/suttonbear