Chomsky: What Next? The Elections, the Economy, the World

28 Nov, 2008

Speech by Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

America's most influential public intellectual Naom Chomsky gave a speech to a packed house in Boston on November 24th, his first public address since the US presidential elections. What follows is the full text of his remarks.

Well, let's begin with the elections. The word that the rolls off of everyone's tongue is historic. Historic election. And I agree with it. It was a historic election. To have a black family in the white house is a momentous achievement. In fact, it's historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were an African-American and a woman. Both remarkable achievements. We go back say 40 years, it would have been unthinkable.

So something's happened to the country in 40 years. And what's happened to the country- which is we're not supposed to mention- is that there was extensive and very constructive activism in the 1960s, which had an aftermath. The feminist movement, mostly developed in the 70s--the solidarity movements of the 80's and on till today. And the activism did civilize the country. The country's a lot more civilized than it was 40 years ago and the historic achievements illustrate it. That's also a lesson for what's next.

What's next will depend on whether the same thing happens. Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below. And the answer to what's next depends on people like you. Nobody else can answer it. It's not predictable. In some ways, the election-the election was surprising in some respects.

Going back to my bad prediction, If the financial crisis hadn't taken place at the moment that it did, if it had been delayed a couple of months, I suspect that prediction would have been correct. But not speculating, one thing surprising about the election was that it wasn't a landslide. By the usual criteria, you would expect the opposition party to win in a landslide under conditions like the ones that exist today. The incumbent president for eight years was so unpopular that his own party couldn't mention his name and had to pretend to be opposing his policies. He presided over the worst record for ordinary people in post-war history, in terms of job growth, real wealth and so on. Just about everything the administration was touched just turned into a disaster.

[The] country has reached the lowest level of standing in the world that it's ever had. The economy was tanking. Several recessions are going on. Not just the ones on the front pages, the financial recession. There's also a recession in the real economy. The productive economy, under circumstances and people know it. So 80% of the population say that the country's going in the wrong direction. About 80% say the government doesn't work to the benefit of the people, it works for the few and the special interests. A startling 94% complain that the government doesn't pay any attention to the public will, and on like that. Under conditions like that, you would expect a landslide to a opposition almost whoever they are. And there wasn't one.

So one might ask why wasn't there a landslide? That goes off in an interesting direction. And other respects the outcome was pretty familiar. So once again, the election was essentially bought. 9 out of 10 of the victors outspent their opponents. Obama of course outspent McCain. If you look at the-and we don't have final records yet from the final results, but they're probably going to be pretty much like the preliminaries a couple of months ago. Which showed that both Obama and McCain were getting the bulk of their financing from the financial institutions and for Obama, law firms which means essentially lobbyists. That was about over a third a few months ago. But the final results will probably be the same. And there is a-the distribution of funding has over time been a pretty good predictor of what policies will be like for those of you who are interested, there's very good scholarly work on this by Tom Ferguson in Umass Boston, what he calls the investment theory of politics. Which argues essentially that elections are moments when groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state and has quite the substantial predictive success. Gives some suggestion as to what's likely to happen. So that part's familiar. The-what the future is as I say, depends on people like you.

The response for the election was interesting and instructive. It kept pretty much to the soaring rhetoric, to borrow the cliché, that was the major theme of the election. The election was described as an extraordinary display of democracy, a miracle that could only happen in America and on and on. Much more extreme than Europe even than here. There's some accuracy in that if we keep to the West. So if we keep to the West, yes, it's probably true. That couldn't have happened anywhere else. Europe was much more racist than the United States and you wouldn't expect anything like that to happen.

On the other hand, if you look at the world, it's not that remarkable. So let's take the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti and Bolivia. In Haiti, there was an election in 1990 which really was an extraordinary display of democracy much more so than this.

In Haiti, there were grassroots movements, popular movements that developed in the slums and the hills, which nobody was paying any attention to. And they managed, even without any resources, to sweep into power their own candidate. A populist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That's a victory for democracy when popular movements can organize and set programs and pick their candidate and put them into office, which is not what happened here, of course.

I mean, Obama did organize a large number of people and many enthusiastic people in what's called in the press, Obama's Army. But the army is supposed to take instructions, not to implement, introduce, develop programs and call on its own candidate to implement them. That's critical. If the army keeps to that condition, nothing much will change. If it on the other hand goes away activists did in the sixties, a lot can change. That's one of the choices that has to be made. That's Haiti. Of course that didn't last very long. A couple of months later, there was military coup, a period of terror, we won't go through the whole record. Up the present, the traditional torturers of Haiti, France, and the United States have made sure that there won't be a victory for democracy there. It's a miserable story. Contrary to many illusions.

Take the second poorest country, Bolivia. They had an election in 2005 that's almost unimaginable in the West. Certainly here, anywhere. The person elected into office was indigenous. That's the most oppressed population in the hemisphere, those who survived. He's is a poor peasant. How did he get in? Well, he got in because there were again, a mass popular movement, which elected their own representative. And they are the source of the programs, which are serious ones. There's real issues. And people know them. Control over resources, cultural rights, social justice and so on.

Furthermore, the election was just an event that was particular stage in a long continuing struggle, a lot before and a lot after. There was day when people pushed the levers but that's just an event in ongoing popular struggles, very serious ones. A couple of years ago, there was a major struggle over privatization of water. An effort which it would in effect deprive a good part of the population of water to drink. And it was a bitter struggle. A lot of people were killed, but they won it. Through international solidarity, in fact, which helped. And it continues. Now that's a real election. Again, the plans, the programs are being developed, acted on constantly by mass popular movements, which then select their own representatives from their own ranks to carry out their programs. And that's quite different from what happened here.

Actually what happened here is understood by elite elements. The public relations industry which runs elections here - quadrennial extravaganzas essentially - makes sure to keep issues in the margins and focus on personalities and character and so on-and-so forth. They do that for good reasons. They know - they look at public opinion studies and they know perfectly well that on a host of major issues both parties are well to the right of the population. That's one good reason to keep issues off the table. And they recognize the success.

So, every year, the advertising industry gives a prize to, you know, to the best marketing campaign of the year. This year, Obama won the prize. Beat out Apple company. The best marketing campaign of 2008. Which is correct, it is essentially what happened. Now that's quite different from what happens in a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or Haiti, except for the fact that it was crushed. And in the South, it's not all that uncommon. Notice that each of these cases, there's a much more extraordinary display of democracy in action than what we've seen-important as it was-here. And so the rhetoric, especially in Europe is correct if we maintain our own narrow racist perspective and say yeah, what happened was in the South didn't happen or doesn't matter. The only matters is what we do and by our standards, it was extraordinary miracle, but not by the standards of functioning democracy. In fact, there's a distinction in democratic theory, which does separate say the United States from Bolivia or Haiti.

Question is what is a democracy supposed to be? That's exactly a debate that goes back to the constitutional convention. But in recent years in the 20th century, it's been pretty well articulated by important figures. So at the liberal end the progressive end, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century was Walter Lippman. A Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy progressive. And a lot of his work was on a democratic theory and he was pretty frank about it. If you took a position not all that different from James Madison's. He said that in a democracy, the population has a function. Its function is to be spectators, not participants. He didn't call it the population. He called it the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The ignorant and meddlesome outsiders have a function and namely to watch what's going on. And to push a lever every once in a while and then go home. But, the participants are us, us privileged, smart guys. Well that's one conception of democracy. And you know essentially we've seen an episode of it. The population very often doesn't accept this. As I mentioned, just very recent polls, people overwhelmingly oppose it. But they're atomized, separated. Many of them feel hopeless, unorganized, and don't feel they can do anything about it. So they dislike it. But that's where it ends.

In a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or the United States in earlier stages, they did something about it. That's why we have the New Deal measures, the Great Society measures. In fact just about any step, you know, women's rights, end of slavery, go back as far as you like, it doesn't happen as a gift. And it's not going to happen in the future. The commentators are pretty well aware of this. They don't put it the way I'm going to, but if you read the press, it does come out. So take our local newspaper at the liberal end of the spectrum, "Boston Globe," you probably saw right after the election, a front page story, the lead front page story was on how Obama developed this wonderful grassroots army but he doesn't have any debts. Which supposed to be a good thing. So he's free to do what he likes. Because he has no debts, the normal democratic constituency, labor, women, minorities and so on, they didn't bring him into office. So he owes them nothing

What he had was an army that he organized of people who got out the vote for Obama. For what the press calls, Brand Obama. They essentially agree with the advertisers, it's brand Obama. That his army was mobilized to bring him to office. They regard that as a good thing, accepting the Lippman conception of democracy, the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders are supposed to do what they're told and then go home. The Wall Street Journal, at the opposite end of the spectrum, also had an article about the same thing at roughly the same time. Talked about the tremendous grassroots army that has been developed, which is now waiting for instructions. What should they do next to press forward Obama's agenda? Whatever that is. But whatever it is, the army's supposed to be out there taking instructions, and press work. Los Angeles Times had similar articles, and there are others.

What they don't seem to realize is what they're describing, the ideal of what they're describing, is dictatorship, not democracy. Democracy, at least not in the Lippman sense, it proved- I pick him out because he's so famous, but it's a standard position. But in the sense of say, much of the south, where mass popular movements developed programs; organize to take part in elections but that's one part of an ongoing process. And brings somebody from their own ranks to implement the programs that they develop, and if the person doesn't they're out. Ok, that's another kind of democracy. So it's up to us to choose which kind of democracy we want. And again, that will determine what comes next.

Well, what can we anticipate if the popular army, the grassroots army, decides to accept the function of spectators of action rather than participants? There's two kinds of evidence. There's rhetoric and there's action. The rhetoric, you know, is very uplifting: change, hope, and so on. Change was kind of reflective any party manager this year who read the polls, including the ones I cited, would instantly conclude that our theme in the election has to be change. Because people hate what's going on for good reasons. So the theme is change. In fact, both parties put both of them, the theme was change. So the theme is change. In fact both parties, both of them the theme was change. You know, break from the past, none of old politics, new things are going to happen. The Obama campaign did better so they won the marketing award, not the McCain campaign.

And notice incidentally on the side that the institutions that run the elections, public relations industry, advertisers, they have a role-their major role is commercial advertising. I mean, selling a candidate is kind of a side rule. In commercial advertising as everybody knows, everybody who has ever looked at a television program, the advertising is not intended to provide information about the product, all right? I don't have to go on about that. It's obvious. The point of the advertising is to delude people with the imagery and, you know, tales of a football player, sexy actress, who you know, drives to the moon in a car or something like that. But, that's certainly not to inform people. In fact, it's to keep people uninformed.

The goal of advertising is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices. Those of you who suffered through an economics course know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. But industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to undermine markets and to ensure, you know, to get uninformed consumers making irrational choices.

And when they turn to selling a candidate they do the same thing. They want uninformed consumers, you know, uninformed voters to make irrational choices based on the success of illusion, slander, and effective body language or whatever else is supposed to be significant. So you undermine democracy pretty much the same way you undermine markets. Well, that's the nature of an election when it's run by the business world, and you'd expect it to be like that. There should be no surprise there. And it should also turn out the elected candidate didn't have any debts. So you can follow Brand Obama can be whatever they decide it to be, not what the population decides that it should be, as in the south, let's say. I'm going to say on the side, this may be an actual instance of a familiar and unusually vacuous slogan about the clash of civilization. Maybe there really is one, but not the kind that's usually touted.

So let's go back to the evidence that we have, rhetoric and actions. Rhetoric we know, but what are the actions? So far the major actions are selections, in fact the only action, of personnel to implement Brand Obama. The first choice was the Vice President, Joe Biden, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq in the Senate, a long time Washington insider rarely deviates from the party vote. In cases where he does deviate they're not very uplifting. He did break from the party and voting for a Senate resolution that prevented people from getting rid of their debts by, individuals, that is, from getting rid of their debts by going into bankruptcy. It's a blow against poor people who've caught in this immense debt that's a large part of the basis for the economy these days. But usually, he's a, kind of, straight party-liner with the democrats on the sort of ultra naturalist side. The choice of Biden was a, must have been a conscious attempt to show contempt for the base of people who were voting for Obama, or organizing for him as an anti-war candidate.

Well, the first post-election appointment was for Chief of Staff, which is a crucial appointment; determines a large part of the president's agenda. That was Rahm Emanuel, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq in the House. In fact, he was the only member of the Illinois delegation who voted for Bush's effective declaration of war. And, again, a longtime Washington insider. Also, one of the leading recipients in congress of funding from the financial institutions hedge funds and so on. He himself was an investment banker. That's his background. So, that's the Chief of Staff.

The next group of appointments were the main problem, the primary issue that the governments' going to have to face is what to do about the financial crisis. Obama's choices to more or less run this were Robert Rubin and Larry Summers from the Clinton--Secretaries of Treasury under Clinton. They are among the people who are substantially responsible for the crisis. One leading economist, one of the few economists who has been right all along in predicting what's happening, Dean Baker, pointed out that selecting them is like selecting Osama Bin Laden to run the war on terror.

Yeah, I'll finish. This saves me the problem of what's coming next, so I'll finish with the elections. Let me make one final comment on this. There was meeting on November 7, I think of a group of couple, of a dozen advisers to deal with the financial crisis. Their careers were, records were reviewed in the business press, and Bloomberg News had an article reviewing their records and concluded that these people, most of these people shouldn't be giving advice about the economy. They should be given subpoenas.

Because most of them were involved in one or other form of financial fraud, that includes Rahm Emanuel, for example. What reason is there to think that the people who brought this crisis about are some how going to fix it? Well, that's a good indication of what's likely to come next, at least if we look at actions. We couldn't, but it won't. You can bring this up. Ask what we expect to see in particular cases. And there's evidence about that from statements from Obama's website. I'll mention just one thing about Obama's website, which gives an indication of what's happening. One of the major problems coming is Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's pretty serious. Take a look at Obama's website under issues, foreign policy issues. The names don't even appear. I mean, we're supposed to be ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. We're not supposed to know what Brand Obama is. So you can't find out that way. The statements that you hear are pretty hawkish. And it doesn't change much as you go through the list. I'll wrap up here. So it's up to you to continue.

Courtesy Amy Goodman of www.DemocracyNow.org

~ Press TV ~

German expert says 50 nukes astray

The loss of an atom bomb is not as rare an occurrence as it is assumed throughout the world, a senior German expert has revealed.

Otfried Nassauer, an expert on nuclear armament and the director of the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security says the loss of an atom bomb in 1986, when a US plane crashed in Greenland's Arctic ice is not an isolated one.

"The American Defense Department has confirmed the loss of 11 atomic bombs," he added.

"It is believed that up to 50 nuclear weapons worldwide were lost during the Cold War." Spiegel quoted Nassauer as saying. Most of these highly dangerous weapons are still lying on the ocean floor.

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Nine Arctic nukes exploded in eighteen hours

On November 17 and 18, 2008 nine H-Bombs were exploded below the Arctic Ocean near the North Magnetic Pole. I was unable to transfer this info from the IRIS Seismic Monitor, so I copied this information longhand and typed it back onto my computer.

DATE TIME LATITUDE LONGITUDE MAGNITUDE DEPTH (Kilometers)

17 Nov 2008 12:55:23 UT 79.66 -116.86 5.7 10.0
17 Nov 2008 13:16:51 79.70 -115.78 4.7 10.0
17 Nov 2008 13:40:11 79.70 -115.36 5.1 10.0
17 Nov 2008 17:17:05 79.70 -115.78 4.7 10.0
18 Nov 2008 03:59:49 79.61 -114.76 5.6 10.0
18 Nov 2008 04:10:35 79.76 -115.70 5.1 10.0
18 Nov 2008 04:52:51 79.74 -115.32 5.3 10.0
18 Nov 2008 05:37:27 79.75 -115.33 4.9 10.0
18 Nov 2008 07:05:12 79.78 -114. 69 4.7 10.0

The North Magnetic Pole is about 80 degrees North and 104 degrees West and follows a circular 50 kilometer path each day. This area is north of Banks Island near the edge of the continental shelf and edging into the deeper waters of the Arctic Ocean. It is within Canadian waters.

Checking IRIS WILBER system of seismographic readings I was able to see the distinctive peaks of underground nuclear explosions. No small tremors leading to the major event and few if any aftershocks. The area is seismically stable. None of the blasts appeared to trigger sympathetic tremors. The explosions were concentrated in an area about 16 kilometers by 16 kilometers (10 miles by 10 miles). The explosions were in the 5 to 10 Megaton range. All were 10 kilometers deep (6.2 miles).

Such a concentration of explosions punched a hole in the crust and will allow petroleum from the bottom of the crust to leak into the Arctic Ocean. This could destroy life in large sections of the Arctic Ocean.

The Russians blasted a similar hole in Siberia east of the Urals and soaked hundreds of square kilometers with crude oil. The forests are covered in oil. Also huge volumes of natural gas were vented into the atmosphere. For many years the flaring of the natural gas was the largest source of light on Earth to the astronauts and cosmonauts who flew over night time Siberia. That same field is now the source of natural gas supplied by pipeline to Germany and France. Deep hydrocarbons from this hole contributed to Russia becoming the largest petroleum exporter in the world ahead of Saudi Arabia.

There is a possibility that the Department of Energy working with the oil companies and the Department of Defence, the likely culprits, were attempting to shift the North Magnetic Pole. Checking my compass I have not seen any shifts during the past few days. The flipping of the magnetic poles is happening as the field strength of the Earth is half of what is was centuries ago. There are other disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field indicating change is coming. Were they trying to accelerate the flipping of the poles? Were they trying to cause such calamity that martial law would be imposed? Were they trying to kill five to six billion people?

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Putin Urges calm as India readies nuclear forces

Russian Foreign Ministry sources are reporting that Prime Minister Putin has telephoned India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him to react to the attacks upon his Mumbai with 'calm' after being informed by Singh that he has invoked India's National Security Act which puts their Nuclear Forces on 'full alert'.

India's NDTV News Service is further reporting that their elite Marine Commando Forces (MCF) are continuing their battles against the terrorist forces holding an estimated 150 hostages and that the death toll is over 200 dead with nearly 1,000 wounded.

Indian Military Intelligence sources are also reporting to the FSB that the initial 'confessions' of those terrorists apprehended show that they are from Pakistan and had entered into Mumbai with what is being termed a 'strategic attack plan' giving full details of the attack including the security plans and procedures of all hotels targeted in these attacks.

As we had previously reported on in our previous report, "Kissinger-Obama Team Targeted In Horrific India Terror Attack", Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] and US CIA forces are believed to be the 'masterminds' behind these attacks in order to derail President-Elect Obama's attempts to bring a permanent peace to the Southeast Asia in his hopes of averting Total Global War.

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Battle rages for Mumbai hostages

With the country in the middle of crucial state elections which could determine the timing of the next general election, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is facing intense scrutiny.

Following the attacks, he has been seen visiting the injured in hospital, alongside Congress party president Sonia Gandhi.

He has already promised to strengthen anti-terrorist laws, and in a TV address came close to threatening retaliation against Pakistan if their involvement in the attacks can be proved.

"We will take up strongly with our neighbours that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated, and that there would be a cost if suitable measures are not taken by them," Mr Singh said.

Recent overtures

The Indian Navy has seized two Pakistani merchant ships and is investigating the possibility that they dropped off the militants who then came ashore in fast boats.

They are linking this with the discovery of a trawler, found abandoned off the Indian coastline on Thursday with its captain dead.

Pakistan's denials of involvement have been clear and unambiguous.

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Mumbai attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda as pretext for U.S. military response

The only claim of responsibility for the attacks came from the "Deccan Mujahideen," the Deccan Plateau being an area in southern India, but the press, usually breathless to take the first obscure claim of culpability and set it in stone, are now belittling this explanation as a likely hoax in an attempt to pin the blame on the all-mighty mythical Al-Qaeda.

"Earlier eyewitness reports from the hotels suggested the attackers were singling out British and American passport holders," reports the BBC.

"If the reports are true, our security correspondent Frank Gardner says it implies an Islamist motive - attacks inspired or co-ordinated by al-Qaeda."

Really? Perhaps the BBC's "security correspondent" should be worried about his job security, because the facts directly contradict previous alleged "Al-Qaeda" attacks.

Since when do Al-Qaeda take hostages? Since when do they hang around to be caught? Since when do Al-Qaeda use grenades rather than bombs or suicide bombs?

And if the attacks were targeted against British and American citizens then tell me why, out of at least 101 killed, was there only one British victim?

If the attacks were targeted against British and American citizens then why were the terrorists reported to be firing AK-47's indiscriminately into crowds of (mainly Indian) people? Out of 101 victims, only six were foreigners, the rest were Indian. This was blatantly not a targeted attack against British and American citizens, but it is being spun that way by the media so as to justify a coordinated British and American military response, which will no doubt take the form of more bombing raids inside Pakistan and an increased presence in Afghanistan.

The London Times are already busy proclaiming that yesterday's events were the work of Osama bin Goldstein, reporting, "Targeting Bombay's most luxurious hotels and a crowded railway station had all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation."

But voices of skepticism have broken through the firewall of fearmongering and propaganda.

"Chrtistine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, was careful to say that the identity of the terrorists could not yet be known. But she insisted the style of the attacks and the targets in Mumbai suggested that the militants were likely to be Indian Muslims - and not linked to Al Qaeda or the violent South Asian terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba," reports the International Herald Tribune.

"There's absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it," she said of the attack. "Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar. They don't do hostage taking, and they don't do grenades."

"Indians will have a strong incentive to link this to Al Qaeda. 'Al Qaeda's in your toilet!' But this is a domestic issue. This is not India's 9/11," said Fair.

Terrorism expert Professor Bruce Hoffman agreed that the assault was "not exactly Al Qaeda's modus operandi, which is suicide attacks."

"The very name (Deccan Mujahideen) - if it is a real group - suggests a domestic agenda," adds the report, highlighting a probable link to the riots in Gujarat State near Mumbai six years ago (alluded to in the claim of responsibility), which killed 2,000 Muslims.

But that's not how the media are portraying the event, hyping the situation beyond all proportion with a crazed obsession and linking it to Barack Obama's mandate to carry on the endless war on terror started by George W. Bush.

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Evidence Mumbai attackers were Anglo-American intel operatives

Even though these firsthand accounts indicate the attackers were white, drank alcohol and displayed the steely and professional reserve of trained military men, the emerging story carried by the corporate media blames the attacks on al-Qaeda and specifically Lashkar-e-Taiba, one Arab and the other Asian. "A terrorist group with training camps in Pakistan and strong ties with al-Qaeda as well as a history of mounting attacks in India yesterday became the chief suspect behind the atrocities," reports the Times Online, pointing to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

As the Times Online admits, Lashkar-e-Taiba is a creation of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. It "receives considerable financial, material and other forms of assistance from the Pakistan government, routed primarily through the ISI. The ISI is the main source of LeT's funding. Saudi Arabia also provides funds," explains the South Asia Terrorism Portal. Lashkar-e-Taiba "also played a part in the ISI organized 'Bosnian campaign against the Serbs,' which was directed above the ISI by the CIA and British intelligence."

According to Andrew G. Marshall, the ISI "has long been referred to as Pakistan's 'secret government' or 'shadow state.' It's long-standing ties and reliance upon American and British intelligence have not let up, therefore actions taken by the ISI should be viewed in the context of being a Central Asian outpost of Anglo-American covert intelligence operations."

The presence of "foreign looking, fair skinned" commandos who calmly gunned down dozens of people after drinking a few beers indicates that the Mumbai attacks were likely the work of the Anglo-American covert intelligence operatives, not indigenous Indian Muslims or for that matter Arab al-Qaeda terrorists. The attacks prepare the ground for the break-up of Pakistan and the furtherance of destabilizing terrorism in the Middle East and Asia. The Mumbai attacks had little to do with India or the relationship between Muslim Pakistanis and Hindu Indians.

"Pakistan's position as a strategic focal point cannot be underestimated. It borders India, Afghanistan, China and Iran," concludes Marshall. "Destabilizing and ultimately breaking Pakistan up into several countries or regions will naturally spread chaos and destabilization into neighboring countries. This is also true of Iraq on the other side of Iran, as the Anglo-American have undertaken, primarily through Iraq, a strategy of balkanizing the entire Middle East in a new imperial project." (See Marshall's Divide and Conquer: The Anglo-American Imperial Project.)

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Mumbai terror: Will it be a reason used to kill Muslims & attack Pakistan

The BJP orchestrated an attack on the Babri Masjid and demolished it.  As a result it unleashed communal violence against Muslims. The BJP used the attack to win the elections. Many Pakistanis are wondering, if this attack on Mumbai is also part of a some sort of plan. RAW facts on South Asia- India fails to occupy countries

India intelligence: "'the aim of RAW is to keep internal disturbances flaring up and the ISI preoccupied so that Pakistan can lend no worthwhile resistance to Indian designs in the region."

"Hindu Terror" tearing India apart in all out Civil War: High case Hindu vs Chritians, Dalits & Muslims .

Terrorist are holding hostages in the upscale Taj and Oberoi hotel. About 100 hostages are held in the Norman House. There are conflicting reports on the number of hostages that seem to be well planned. Pakistan and India have strived to improve their relations by re-starting the cross-border trains. In the early hours of February 19, 2007 sixty-eight people, mostly Pakistani civilians were burned alive in the train after IEDs exploded on the train. Malegaon bomb blast accused Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit was caught red handed for his involvement in blowing up the Samjhota Express. Purohit as an army officer was in charge of 60 kg RDX in the Deolali army camp near Nashik during his posting there in 2006 and that some of the explosive material was supplied to Bhagwan Das, an absconding accused in the Samjhauta Express blast. Several Hinduvata members in the Indian army were arrested in blowing up the train which plies between Pakistan and India. Indian Red Saffron terrorism in India: Roots & funding in USA.

Westerners were rounded up in at least two five-star hotels, including the exclusive Taj Palace, which were among seven targets stormed by men armed with AK-47 machine guns and grenades. Security forces continued to fight gunbattles with the terrorists last night, hours after the initial attacks in Bombay, also known as Mumbai.

Guests in the restaurant of the five-star Oberoi were challenged on their nationality as they were herded upstairs from the Oberoi restaurant. "They told everybody to stop and put their hands up and asked if there were any British or Americans," said Alex Chamberlain, a British businessman. "My friend said to me, don't be a hero, don't say you are British. "I am sure that is what this is all about. They were talking about British and Americans specifically." BBC

BLA - A threat to international peace by Ahmad Shah Baloch: "The BLA is the creation of Indian intelligence agencies, which are trying to create instability in the areas bordering Iran and Afghanistan.". Expose on RAW by Isha Khan of Dhaka Bangladesh

All of Mumbai is pretty much under Martial Law. It seems the city is in total control of the terrorists. There is total and absolute anarchy in capital of finance and currency. Many in the press have been saying for the past few weeks that the BJP will stage some spectacular attacks to spark ethnic rioting and then use the communal card to come to power. Narendar Modi has done this in Gujarat before. An attack on a train was staged and then in a prep-planned effort, 2000 innocent people, mostly women were raped, murdered and burned. India's Securithy concerns: Naxalites, Kashmir, 7 Sisters & Communalism

While the current crisit caused much emotionalism in Pakistan, is this a Hinduvata orchestrated tactic to win the election?

Sudra Holocaust: Genocide of 1 million Dalits in India since 1947: About three million Dalit women have been raped and around one million Dalits killed from the time of Independence. This is 25 times more than number of soldiers killed during the wars fought after independence. That is why Dalits do not need Aryan culture or Hindu Dharma based on caste any more. …" [Dr. Tulsiram]

Sajjad Karim, an MEP for the North West of England who was a member of an EU delegation visiting Bombay said he had seen a gunman opening fire in the lobby of Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

Speaking via mobile phone, he said: "I was in the lobby of the hotel when gunmen came in and people started running … A gunman just stood there spraying bullets around, right next to me. I managed to turn away and I ran into the hotel kitchen and then we were shunted into a restaurant in the basement." "We are now in the dark in this room and we've barricaded all the doors. It's really bad." Outside the Taj hotel, injured guests were being stretchered away on the hotel's golden-coloured luggage carts. The weekly Standard

Illegal polls in Indian Occupied Kashmir cannot hide illegitimacy: NEW DELHI - Coordinated terror attacks struck the heart of Mumbai, India's commercial capital, Wednesday evening, targeting at least two five-star hotels, the city's largest commuter train station, a historic movie theater and a hospital.

The state's highest ranking police official, A.N. Roy, said the attackers, armed with machine guns and grenades, opened fire and disappeared. Local television reported deaths tolls as high as 80, none of them could be confirmed and the police were yet to give an official count of their own.

A spokesman for Mumbai's St George's Hospital told Agence France-Presse: "Fifty-eight bodies have been brought in. There are another 50 who are injured, some critical, who have been transferred to the nearby J.J. Hospital."

Leopold's restaurant, a Mumbai landmark popular with tourists, was also targeted in the attacks, The Associated Press reported, and the news agency quoted a top state official, Johnny Joseph, chief secretary for Maharashtra State, as saying that at least 78 people had been killed and 200 more injured.

There were initial unconfirmed reports of hostages having been taken at one of the hotels.

Around midnight, more than two hours into the serial attacks, television images from near the movie theater, the Metro Cinema, showed journalists and spectators ducking for cover as gunshots rang out in the city.

A fire raged inside the Oberoi Hotel, a luxury hotel that is popular with foreigners, according to the police. Television footage showed the charred shell of a car in front of the train station, Victoria Terminus, apparently from the impact of an explosion. A nearby gas station was blown up. New York Times. November 27, 2008, Death Toll Rising in India in Coordinated Attacks, By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Eat Rats:Indian officials ask starving Indians to eat rodents (BBC)

Indian girl Infanticide-Female Foeticide: 1 million girls killed before or after birth per year

Rupee News for the past several years has been discussing the Indian support for terrorists in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. India has been playing with fire. Goyem: India support for Frankensteins will create blowback. it appears that the analysis of Rupee News was correct.

The knee jerk reaction of the Indian media is to blame the neighbors. "Deccan Mujahideen" has never been heard of before and seems to be a made up name to malign Muslims–a favorite tactic of the Hinduvata extremsis. India: Interaction of Hindus in power with Muslims

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World Government, interview with an insider....?

Athanasios Strigas, interviewed here, studied Political and Economic Science at the University of Heidelberg. He then took Foreign Relations and International Strategy in the University of Georgetown in Washington D.C. and Propaganda in Patris Lumumba of Moscow.

He started his career as an attaché and nowadays is a specialised consultant to the supreme military commander of NATO and has close connections with the Trilateral Commission. Most of his time is spent in Brussels and in the last year and a half he has published 4 successful books.

Strigas has revealed some shocking facts in Greece about domestic politics using secret documents etc. as proof. He also predicted a military crisis between Greece and Turkey 18 months before it happened and named exactly the small island which was the focus of the crisis. Unfortunately his books are only available in Greek but in them he reveals a great deal about the US National Security Agency and the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Club, sometimes far more than anything you can find on the world-wide web.

This interview is translated, imperfectly, from the original Greek.

[ ... ]

Being under high pressure, and after having passed the economic convulsion which will lead to the global shock we mentioned before, the world's economy will make an opening to China. China, of course, will ask for something in return. An exchange could be India.

What does this mean? It means that China will be allowed to invade India under false pretences. The Bilderberg Club will supply India, and the Trilateral Commission will renew the armour of China.

In this war, in order to reduce the world's population, the neutron bomb will be used. One time general of NATO's army, Alexander Hague, was fighting off proposals for the neutron bomb, so on 29th June 1979 they tried to assassinate him.

If this happens Pakistan and Turkey will be dragged in, and Turkey will split up in two halves, Eastern and Western...

 

Indian Army officer arrested for role in Malegaon bombing

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) An Indian Army officer has been arrested for his suspected involvement in the Sep 29 bomb blast in Maharashtra's Malegaon which killed five people and was blamed on a Hindu militant group, a defence official said here Wednesday.This is the first case of a serving Indian Army officer being taken into police custody for terrorism related activities.

Mumbai's anti-terrorism squad arrested Lt. Col. Srikant Purohit late Tuesday, said the defence official, who pleaded anonymity because his service rules do not allow him to speak to the media on record.

Purohit, said to be a founding member of the Abhinav Bharat, a radical Hindu right-wing group, was being questioned for his "links" with other suspects of the Malegaon blasts.

Members of the Abhinav Bharat have been linked to the deadly bombing in Malagaon. The police suspect that Purohit helped bomb blast accused Sadhvi (Hindu missionary) Pragya Thakur, retired army Major Ramesh Upadhyaya and his associate Sharad Kulkarni in procuring explosives used in the blast. The three are already in police custody.

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Army denies arrest of Lt. Colonel Purohit in Malegaon blasts case

New Delhi, Nov 5 (ANI): The Army today denied arrest of Lieutenant Colonel Srikant Purohit by Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in connection with the September 29 Malegaon blasts.

The army officer, who came under the scanner for his alleged role in the blasts, was stationed at the Army Education Corps Training College and Centre at Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh. He was doing a course in Arabic at the Army Education Corps College.

The officer is not under arrest. He has been accordingly detained by the ATS for the questioning. The Army Headquarters will take a further view on the matter based on progress of investigation by the ATS an availability of additional evidence, if any, said Veerendra Singh, APRO Army.

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Alarm as Indonesia thumbs nose at West over bird flu

Indonesia stopped sharing the samples with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in December 2006 on fears pharmaceutical companies would use them to make vaccines that are too expensive for poor countries.

The initial move by Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari earned international plaudits for taking on an unfair global system, but with WHO negotiations at an impasse, Supari's increasing belligerence is raising alarm.

The minister has broadened her critique of an "unfair, neocolonialist" global health system, raising the possibility earlier this year the United States was using the virus to develop biological weapons in her book "It's Time for the World to Change: Divine Hands Behind Avian Influenza."

Supari told a rapturous crowd at a book discussion last week that rich nations were creating "new viruses" and sending them to developing nations in order create markets for drug companies to sell vaccines.

"Indonesia sends a virus to the WHO but it suddenly it ends up with the US government. Then the US government turns the virus into dollars and we don't know what kind of research," Supari said.

"Then the virus is turned into vaccines (that are sent to) Indonesia and Indonesia has to buy them and if they don't buy them, it turns and turns again, and in the end developed countries make new viruses which are then sent to developing countries," she said.

"The conspiracy between superpower nations and global organisations isn't a theory, isn't rhetoric, but it's something I've experienced myself."

Bird flu scientists abroad and in Indonesia have raised concerns that while Supari seeks to reshape the global order, time is being wasted in understanding a virus that could potentially kill millions if it mutates into a form transmissible between humans.

Indonesia announced in August that 112 people have died from the virus, out of more than 240 worldwide since late 2003. Only a handful of samples and genetic sequences have been shared with the WHO and researchers.

The health ministry also earlier this year stopped publicly announcing bird flu deaths, only releasing information information weeks or months after victims have died.

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Afghan president wishes he could down U.S. planes

As Western dissatisfaction with Karzai has grown over his failure to crack down on corruption and govern effectively, the Afghan president, facing elections next year, has hit back over the killing of dozens of civilians in foreign air strikes.

In recent weeks, Karzai has repeatedly blamed the West for the worsening security in Afghanistan, saying NATO failed to target Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan and calling for the war to be taken out of Afghan villages.

"We have no other choice, we have no power to stop the planes, if we could, if I could ... we would stop them and bring them down," Karzai told a news conference.

He said that if he had something like the rock attached to a piece of string, known as a chelak in Dari, used to bring down kites in Afghanistan, he would use it.

"If we had a chelak, we would throw it and stop the American aircraft. We have no radar to stop them in the sky, we have no planes," he said. "I wish I could intercept the planes that are going to bomb Afghan villages, but that's not in my hands."

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Thanksgiving check on America's food

In an open letter to whoever would become our next President -- or "Farmer in Chief," as he put it in the Oct. 12 New York Times Magazine -- Pollan wrote:

"It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration - the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril...
 
"But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact - so easy to overlook these past few years - that the health of a nation's food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention."

In 2007, before the financial meltdown had even struck, some 32 million Americans -- at least one in nine households -- had trouble putting enough food on the table.

Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, food banks across the country are struggling to meet a surge of people uncertain about their next meal. They've seen a 20% increase in demand -- middle class families, they say, account for most of the growth.

And the day before our annual Thanksgiving binge, the Washington Post reported, "The number of Americans on food stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina."

Contrast this with the big bucks being shelled out in the recent $307 billion farm bill, much of it going to massive agribusinesses -- "A welfare program," as Time Magazine  described it, "for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water, and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals and depopulate rural America." 

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Report suggests CIA covered up role in missionary's death

A top-ranking Republican said he will call for a new federal inquiry into an alleged CIA cover-up in the 2001 military attack on a small plane in Peru that killed an American missionary and her infant child.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said the attack that killed Veronica and Charity Bowers can be traced to a reckless CIA-sponsored drug interception program that already had downed numerous other planes.

Hoekstra also said the CIA may be responsible for a widespread cover-up designed to hide embarrassing details about the Bowers' deaths and similar incidents in the skies over Peru between 1995 and 2001.

A new report from CIA Inspector General John Helgerson accuses the agency of running a reckless air interception program for illegal drugs and ignoring regulations and procedures designed to protect innocent air travelers.

That type of disregard for procedure might have led to the unnecessary downing of several private planes during the six-year life of the "Narcotics Airbridge Denial Program," culminating with the Bowers tragedy, Hoekstra said.

"To say these deaths did not have to happen is an understatement," said Hoekstra, who also represents the Bowers' hometown of Muskegon.

"The CIA knew about repeated serious issues with this program but took no corrective action, which could have prevented this needless tragedy. Making matters worse, the inspector general found continuous efforts to cover the matter up and potentially block a criminal investigation."

The CIA has admitted that proper procedures were not followed during the April 20, 2001, attack on the missionary plane carrying the Bowers family, according to Hoekstra.

The attack, by a Peruvian Air Force jet, resulted in the death of Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and the Bowers' 7-month-old daughter, Charity. Her husband, Jim Bowers, the Bowers' young son, Cory, and pilot Kevin Donaldson survived.

The couple had been working in Peru with the Pennsylvania-based Association of Baptists for World Evangelism when the attack occurred. Jim Bowers, who has remarried and recently was working as a missionary in Africa, could not be reached for comment.

CIA officials claimed the tragedy was an isolated incident and its air interception program had been operating smoothly and legally to that point.

Hoekstra, however, said the report suggests that approximately 10 other private planes were shot down over Peru in the years before the Bowers tragedy.

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