SATYAM ASATYAM ! ASATYAMEV JAYATE!

SATYAM ASATYAM ! ASATYAMEV JAYATE!


Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 139

Palash Biswas

Rockets Fired From Lebanon Into Israel
New York Times - 2 hours ago
Soldiers rested on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza during the three-hour cease-fire on Wednesday. More Photos > By STEVEN ERLANGER JERUSALEM - Rockets fired from Lebanon landed in northern Israel on Thursday but both governments played down ...
Rockets fired from Lebanon hit Israel Financial Times
Israel-Lebanon confrontation unlikely after rockets rock N Israel Xinhua
The Early Word: Obama Defends Economic Plan
New York Times - 1 hour ago
By Michael Falcone In a speech that he will deliver this morning at George Mason University in Virginia, President-elect Barack Obama plans to warn Americans that without bold action on the economy, “a bad situation could become dramatically worse.
Obama to Congress: Act Now, Act Boldly ABC News
Obama to warn it may soon be too late to save economy USA Today
CNN - The Associated Press - Newsweek - DetNews.com
all 7,956 news articles »




Washington Post
Israel Continues Assault on Gaza As Hope Grows For a Ceasefire
Voice of America - 38 minutes ago
By Luis Ramirez Israel has been pounding targets in Gaza for nearly two weeks, aiming to destroy the militant Islamic group Hamas' ability to launch rockets at its territory.
Iran takes advantage of Gaza crisis BBC News
UN halts Gaza aid shipments, cites Israeli attacks The Associated Press
Financial Times - Xinhua - Reuters - Jerusalem Post
all 29,099 news articles »




Globe and Mail
US Stocks Drop on Retail Forecasts; Wal-Mart, Macy’s Slump
Bloomberg - 56 minutes ago
By Lynn Thomasson Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- US stocks slid for a second day after retailers from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to Macy’s Inc. said profit will trail forecasts as the recession limited holiday spending and sent jobless claims to a 26-year high.
From Wal-Mart to the mall, a tough holiday CNNMoney.com
Holiday Sales Were Dismal, New Retail Figures Show New York Times
BusinessWeek - Washington Post - Reuters - BBC News
all 1,241 news articles »


A two-front war for mighty-Israel? That might just be the end of Israel's fantasies because Hezbollah & Hamas together might just be able to do what the corrupt Arab governments won't even attempt: which is to bury Israel in the land that
ISrael is still trying to finish stealing ~ kirwan

The Courage To Resist

Woman faces down armed Israeli soldiers.

Please watch this 2 minute video
53 seconds into the video an unknown woman stands in front of Israeli soldiers and prevents them from firing on unarmed protesters.

First broadcast on World Wide Weekly - S Korea TV Program edited.
Added to You Tube January 28, 2008

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21676.htm

More Children Killed In Israel's Attack On Gaza

Al Jazeera Video Report From Gaza - Broadcast January 06, 2009
Palestinian children are increasingly among the dead as the Gaza death toll continues to rise.

One man has lost his entire family - including children, wife, parents and cousins - after a single attack.

Mohammed Vall reports.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21673.htm

Artists Against War
Palestine!
Stop Massacre


Clicca Qui !
URL:
http://www.bloggersperlapace.net/bloggersperlapace/index.php?module=Areafiles&func=display&lid=3

Katrina, Aishwarya, Sania have competition from Satyam in Google!

8 Jan 2009, 2003 hrs IST, Atmadip Ray & Kalyan Parbat, ET Bureau

KOLKATA: Katrina Kaif, Aishwarya Rai, Sania Mirza and Sachin Tendulkar were among the most popular online celebs in Year 2008. But guess who's about to give them a run for their money? None other than tainted Satyam Computers boss B. Ramalinga Raju.

Ever since an under fire Satyam chairman made his shocking revelation that the company's balance sheet was all cooked up, nearly everyone appears to be googling to extract every imaginable nugget of info on Raju & Satyam! So much so, on January 7, `Satyam' topped the charts by a mile on Google Hot Trends -- the dynamic analytics platform from Google that dishes out the latest feedback on the hottest `online searches' dominating collective mindshare.

A close scan confirmed that `Googleholics' across India punched in every conceivable keyword linked to Raju & Satyam to get a fix on the magnitude of the fraud that has sent shockwaves across India Inc on Wednesday. Out of the top 100 search threads, a whopping 40-plus dealt with the l'affaire Satyam alone. Keywords ran the full sweep of search variants -- from `Satyam fraud', `Satyam shares', `Satyam stock price' to `Satyam auditors', `Ramalinga Raju', `Ram Mynampati' to `Maytas'!

About the unbridled Satyam fever on Google, Mr Vinay Goel, Google India's products head, told ET: "I would not wish to comment specifically on the Satyam phenomenon. But I agree Google Trends is a great indicator of what is right on top of people's minds in India at a particular point of time."
Interestingly, the specific hotness of search threads like `Satyam shares' and `Satyam fraud' were categorised as 'Volcanic', which in Google parlance refers to "the maximum velocity at which query traffic volumes emanate on a particular subject within the Google ecosystem. Other Google Trend categories that also measure the level of hotness of a particular search thread are `On Fire', `Spicy', 'Medium' and `Mild'. Not surprisingly, nearly every search on `Satyam' was either termed as `Volcanic', `On Fire' or Spicy!

In this light, Mr Goel said: "There are no absolute numbers on the degree of hotness since the terms Volcanic, On Fire or Spicy are relative measures based on our analysis of a representative sample of a Google's web search traffic.

Incidentally, the Satyam scam even made waves among internet users across US markets, especially since Satyam's ADRs are listed on NYSE. Out of the 100 hottest topics on Google Trends-US on January 7, the Satyam fraud figured among the first 40 items at around 1.30 pm IST.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Katrina_Ash_Sania_have_competition_from_Satyam/articleshow/3953145.cms

What Risilience did the Worldbank gangster have been referring since GlobalMELTDOWN broke out, is more or less exposed with SATYAM ASATYAM! SATYAMEV JAYATE happns to be the GREATEST Hypocricy of Indian hegemoial HYPOCRICY sustained by MAJORITARIAN Unipolar Brahaminical RULE in South Asia! As if ZIONISM and Americanism associated with post Modern MANUSMRITI and APARTHEID with Killermost Genocide Culture had not been enough to sustain the HOLY SCRIPTED Age OLD Slavery of the majority Indigenous aboriginal SC, ST, OBC and Minority Communities in India, hence Italian remote control has been VESTED with BRAHMINICAL STATE POWER making it more lethal than original version of Geonism. Gaza or Palestine are small places which may not SHOWCASE any RESEMBLANCE of INDIAN Killing Fields. What LPG has done to Indian People and India ECONOMY not to mention South asian divided geopolitics, the SATAYAM SCAM is the TIP of the ICEBERG exposing the the FRAUD ILLUMINITI INDIA INCs!

Nepal's PM reinstates Indian priests after protests
KATHMANDU: Nepal's Maoist prime minister has temporarily reinstated a group of sacked Indian priests at the Himalayan nation's holiest Hindu Nepalese demonstrators chant anti-government slogans near Pashupati temple in Kathmandu. (AFP Photo)
More Pictures
Pashupatinath shrine after protests forced riot police to intervene.

The secular Maoists, who run the country after winning elections last year, ended centuries of tradition last week when they replaced the Indians with Nepalese priests.

But Nepal’s prime minister Prachanda told the national assembly late on Wednesday that he had ordered officials "to manage normal worship at the temple by the same Indian priests for the time being."

Riot police were deployed at the temple on the banks of the Bagmati river in Kathmandu after local priests and their supporters launched heated protests against the Maoists.

The move to reinstate the Indian priests was greeted with jubilation.

Recession could linger for years, BARRACK OBAMA says!

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Barack Obama today warned that America's current economic recession could "linger for years" and unemployment could
reach double digits unless Congress backs his plan to pump USD 750 billion into the economy.

"I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible," Obama said in his speech at George Mason University-Fairfax Virginia.

"The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall USD 1trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than USD 12,000 in lost income for a family of four," Obama said, according to the excerpts of the speech released by his aides.

"We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future," said the President-elect referring to the housing mortgage crisis, which the people of US are facing now.

"Our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world," he said adding, "in short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse."

Steps by Pak have not ended terror threat: US

New Delhi:Voicing its determination to ensure elimination of terror threat emanating from Pakistan, the US on Thursday said the steps taken by Islamabad so far were not sufficient in this direction and there is a "long way to go".

US assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher, who held talks with foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon soon after his arrival from Islamabad, stressed the need for tracking down individuals and organisations behind the Mumbai attacks by following leads "as far as they go". The US official, who has told the Pakistani leadership to take the probe into Mumbai attacks to its logical conclusion, briefed Menon on his discussions in Islamabad.

"The principal topic is the Mumbai attacks. It was a horrible attack against Indians, Americans and others. We will continue to follow up on that," Boucher told reporters after meeting the Foreign Secretary. He said the US and India are both "determined to find out who did this, how it was done and how to make sure it does not happen again." He said the US would keep making efforts to ensure that "this threat to Indians, Americans, whole world, including Pakistan, is eliminated.

"I think what we have seen so far is what we have said-- it is a promising start. In Pakistan we have seen some people detained, we have seen offices go down, they (Pakistan government) are back against the Jaamat-ud Dawa," he said.

Obama picks Sanjay Gupta as US surgeon general

WASHINGTON: It is one senior US administration post that has had "Indian" written on it for many years - probably because of the number of Dr Sanjay Gupta (AP Photo)
physicians India has exported to America. But it needed Barack Obama to fulfil the decades-long expectation.

In a rich and symbolic recognition to India's sterling contribution to the US health care system, the US President-elect has asked Dr Sanjay Gupta, CNN's well-known medical correspondent and a neuro-surgeon of repute to be the country's surgeon general. Gupta is expected to accept the nomination, and he will take up the office after confirmation by the US Senate. The surgeon general of the United States is the operational head of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government, with many informal duties, such as educating the American public about health issues and advocating healthy lifestyle choices. Perhaps the best known example of this is the surgeon general's warning labels that can be found on all packages of American cigarettes, which became a standard across the world.

FBI to let India prosecute Mumbai attackers

Offering an unprecedented level of cooperation to Indian authorities probing the Mumbai terror case, the FBI has said it will not seek custody of the perpetrators of the ghastly attacks, that also killed six Americans, and will let India prosecute them. Under federal laws, FBI, the primary investigative arm of the US Government, needs to investigate, chargesheet and bring the perpetrators to justice whenever an American citizen is killed overseas.

"This is the major tragedy in India, so it is fully appropriate that Indian authorities handle the investigation and prosecution," a FBI spokesperson said.

"If at some point many many years down the road... there is an opportunity for the United States to prosecute them for the killing of Americans, our prosecutors would take a look at that point," he said.

"There is no stature limitation on murders, so it does not matter when that time would be but absolutely the priority here is let India to handle the investigation and prosecution," he said.

At this point of time FBI is not registering a separate case against those responsible for the killing of US citizens in the Nov 26 Mumbai attacks. Instead, it is extending all help to India in investigating the case.

"The FBI will work with the Indian authorities as well as our partners to cover all leads, wherever they may take us," the spokesperson said.

Mumbai-like attack could happen in US, says Bush aide
US cities are vulnerable to an attack like the gun-and-grenade assault that terrorized Mumbai for three days and killed over 180 people,
the White House homeland security adviser said on Wednesday.

Ken Wainstein told a Washington think tank that the Mumbai attacks in November showed the effectiveness of a low-technology coordinated assault on an open city.

"You can envision that happening in any American city, and it's chilling when you think about it," Wainstein told policy makers and others in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That's the kind of thing that is all too realistic anywhere in the world."

Wainstein's comments reflected a growing unease among international security officials that the Mumbai attacks may have established a new model for terrorism. He spoke a day before government and local officials were to testify to Congress on the Mumbai attacks.


In India, Beleaguered Satyam on Thursday embarked on a major damage control exercise to pull itself from the brink, pushed to by founder Ramalinga Readers react.Raju, saying arranging liquidity, assuaging fears of 53,000 employees and continuing the existing business would be its top priority. Not ruling out initiating action against Raju or the auditors PwC for its complicity in fudging of accounts, the acting CEO Ram Mynampati said every possible action would be considered against Raju, who quit as chairman after making startling revelations on corporate India's biggest fraud entailing about Rs 7,800 crore. Aimed at preventing panic exodus of highly talented workforce and top management, the interim CEO said that the December'08 salaries has been paid and the management would be focusing on arranging funds, which at the present juncture was a cause for concern.

"We do not rule out recommending action against Ramalinga. Many actions are possible for Satyam's future," he said, adding that the company was not aware of his whereabouts amid reports that the disgraced founder of the country's fourth largest IT company had left for the US yesterday before the news of his resignation and disclosure became public.

On the auditor PriceWaterhouseCoopers who have been authenticating year after year the company's accounts, which Raju admitted to fudging by inflating profits and creating fictitious assets, Mynampati said: "We have not verified what process PwC took to certify financial statement. We are not yet in touch with PwC."

In the middle of the press conference held by the interim management at Satyam's headquarters here, CFO Valdamani Srinivas, who is the financial custodian of the company, sent in his resignation but Mynampati said the Board would decide on it on January 10 and anyway he has to serve notice period.

Day not far when Rahul becomes PM, Pranab, the greatest COMRADOR of the ITALIAN DYNASTY claims! We know that the brahmins being OUTSIDERS from the Beginning established the Aryavart Killing Non Aryan people demonising the aboriginal and indigenous domiciles. For Example, Assam as well as Bengal had been ruled by so called ASURAs. respectively MAHIRANGA and BANGA! The Himalayan Region was ruled by KIRATS. Central India and South India had been ruled by Daitya, Danav and Dasyu! manu described the KIRATs as MLECHHA. Hence, the despise berb had been used agaist the aboriginal Hill People long before the arrival of Muslims in India, even before the arrival of SHAKAS and HUNAs! Brahmins ruled as DE Facto Ruler in Ancient India and the Rajput Clan had been used as the Top Guns of Genocide culture in the best interest of Brahaminical Hegemony. All holy scripts including great VEDAS, UPANISHADs, Arthasahastra, Jyyotish, Puran and so on were composed and Manipulated to strengthen the BONDAGE of Productive forces in Ancient India! Manusmriti executed the COUNTER REVOLUTION as Brahamin PUSHYAMITRA killed last Heir of Emperor ASHOKA, the great, BRIHADRASTH and launched an all out Campaign against the BUDDHA DHARMA. Initial VEDIC Varnashram was limited in Chaturvarnas! All indigenous aboriginal People consisted of the last varna prescribed for the defeated productive forces, SHUDRAS! Hence, GAUTAM BUDDHA succeeded to annihilate Brahaminism and it was the FIRST EVER REVOLUTION by the CLASS called VARNA of productive forces in this Galaxy long before the emergence of Marxist Ideology! manusmriti did kill the CLASS dividing further the SHUDRAS into more than SIX Thousand catses and decalring them outcastes!

We know well how the BRAHMINICAL leadership projected BABU Jagajivan RAM to Marginalise DR BHIMRAO AMBEDKAR in National politics! We laso know how MATUA HEAD, the heir of HARICHAND THAKUR GURUCHAND Thakur, PR THAKUR had been fielded against Jogendra Nath Mandal in west Bengal. Congress succeeded everytime! We know all the IMPOTENT CREAMY SC, ST, OBC and MINORITY representing us in Parliament, Governments, Assmblies! The unworthy opportunist sold out faces were lifted in IVORY TOWERS by the BRAHMINS ruling India. The latest case happens to be SHIBYU SOREN, once the ROBINHOOD in JHARKHAND and later converted to BRAHAMINICAL MANIPULATION AND CORRUPTION after he REACHED New delhi as an electd MP. Despite so many controversies the Brahmins chose SHIBU SOREN to deny the aboriginal Indigenous communities in India and made him the chief Minister of JHARKHAND! Now,Shibu Soren loses bypoll, tries to delay resignation!



More than four months after becoming Jharkhand Chief Minister, JMM supremo Shibu Soren was on Thursday defeated in an assembly bypoll plunging the state's ruling UPA into a crisis and threatening his continuance at the helm even as he tried to delay his resignation. Soren was defeated by Gopal Krishna Patar, a candidate of Jharkhand Party which is a constituent of UPA, by a margin of 8,973 rpt 8,973 votes in the bypoll to Tamar constituency held on January three last, the counting for which was taken up on Thursday.

The JMM supremo sought to delay his resignation as Chief Minister by saying, "I will go to Delhi today or tomorrow and meet the UPA leadership, including RJD chief Lalu Prasad, there before taking any decision".

"I will also meet state UPA chairman Madhu Koda, and other allies and seek their suggestions before taking a decision," Soren added.

UPA sources said Soren is expected to leave for Delhi soon to discuss the situation with the Central leadership.

Deputy Chief Minister Sudhir Mahto said in Jamshedpur that the UPA government would continue in Jharkhand despite the defeat of Soren.

"We will try to make alternative arrangements to continue with the UPA dispensation in the state", he said adding UPA constituents would sit together soon and discuss the issue.

The Chief Minister's defeat by Patar was preceded by turmoil within his government barely a fortnight before the bye-election when Soren sacked Jharkhand Party leader Enos Ekka for refusing to withdraw his party's nominee in Tomar.


Brahmins did everything everytime in Indian History to SUSTAIN Manusmriti modifying HINDUTVA with FRAUD Reform Movements like ARYA SAMAJ Movement in Punjab, BRAHMA samaj Movement in Bengal and so on. Then, they adopted the POLITICAL theories of Majoritarian DEMOCRACY and SOCIALISM and MARXISM! GANDHI DID THE GREATEST SERVICE TO BRAHAMINICAL HEGEMONY COINING GANDHIAN HINDUTVA OF ABOLISH UNTOUCHABILITY SUSTAINING CASTE SYSTEM AS WELL AS MANUSMRITI!IT WAS GANDHI WHO ENSURED THE ALIEGNATION OF MUSLIMS AND TRIBALS FROM THE SC AND OBC COMMUNITIES! IT WAS GANDHI WHO TAMED DR AMBEDKAR AND MASTERMINDED PARTITION AS THE POWER WAS TRANSFERRED FROM BRITISH EMPIRE TO THE BRAHMINS OF INDIA!

Brahmins served the PATHANs and the MUGHALs to hold all the key policymaking positions to implement MANUSMRITI. The BRAHMINS cooperated FULL HEARTEDLY with EAST INDIA COMPANY and helped the RAJ to CURB all aboriginal indigenous INSYURRECTIONS all over the country! Specially in Kolkata, Madras and Mumbai, the BRAHMINS replicted the ANGLO SAXON DNA along with their original ZIONIST DNA producing the most Lethal WEAPON of MASS DESTRUCTION, the COLONIAL BRAHAMINICAL HEGEMONY. BRAHMIN Bengalies, specially, treated BIHAR, ORISSA and ASSAM along with the indigenous aboriginal and minorities as COLONIES! Pranab Represents well the legacy! The ELEMENT of COLONIAL Comradorship is reflected full fledged in all his activities allying with the rest TWO of the DANGEROUS TRIO of Indian Genocide Culture of Post ModerN MANUSMRITI, West Bengal Chief Minisister Buddhadev Bhattacharya and Lal KRISHNA ADWANI, the RSS Projected face of the Next to be PRIME MINISTER of India!It is quite AMUSING that a RAJPUT, the Rjasthan Heavyweight ex VICE PRESIDENT of India BHAIRON SINGH SHEKHAWAT claims to replace ADWANI. Rather it is more AMUSING that anothre RAJPUT STALWART RAJNATH SINGH from UP contradicts the claim!


Chennai! The day is not far when Rahul Gandhi will become the prime minister, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Thursday. Replying to a question from a delegate participating in the Pravasi Baharatiya Diwas in Chennai that why the country did not have young leadership, he said Rahul Gandhi would follow the footsteps of his father Rajiv Gandhi, who became the prime minister at a young age. He said P K Mohanta of the AGP and Omar Abdullah of the National Conference became the chief ministers at a young age.

The management of Satyam Computers has said that it has no clue about Ramalinga Raju's whereabouts, even as a team of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) reached Hyderabad to investigate a case of fraud related to the company. According to some sources, Raju left for Texas on Wednesday morning shortly after admitting to committing a Rs 7,000 crore fraud. There is a petition pending over his Maytas deal for which British Telecom's Solutions firm - U-paid had demanded the presence of Raju and senior directors of Satyam for questioning by its lawyers. Two US-based law firms – Izard Nobel LLP and Vianale & Vianale LLP - have filed class action lawsuits against Satyam Computer on behalf of shareholders of the software services firm's American Depository Receipts. As per unconfirmed TV reports, he could have also left for Dubai. The former Satyam's Chairman is also unreachable on his mobile phone. The company is expected to hold a news conference at around 5:00 pm on Thursday evening. The interim CEO of Satyam Computer Services, Ram Mynampati, is likely to address the media.

Meanwhile,Pranab slams Pak for flip-flop over Kasab's nationality!On the other hand, Indian superslave Prime Minisiter, trying his best to REPLICATE Zionist ISRAEL riding on Hindutva resurrection, at last, condemns Gaza strikes, supports Palestinians!India slammed Pakistan for its "flip-flop" over owning citizenship of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving Mumbai attacker on Thursday.

"He (Kasab) has told us quite categorically where he comes from, where he received military and arms training and where his handlers are located. Unfortunately, despite this, we have seen a consistent flip-flop in the reaction of the government in Islamabad," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told a gathering at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Chennai.

"The recent attacks in Mumbai brought about a huge international reaction; both anger at what happened in terms of 'external hand' and at the sorrow at the number of persons who had died," he said and rued that even after a month of the operation, "there continues to be recalcitrance in bringing the perpetrators to justice."

"I believe this to be the singularly unique terrorist strike since 9/11 (attacks on World Trade Centre in the US) and it is important that anti-terrorist wings in all countries take cognizance of this operation and bring the perpetrators to justice. Let us not forget terrorism knows no borders. All of us are vulnerable to terrorist attacks," Mukherjee said. When death is caused by terrorism, it "diminishes" mankind, he said. Thanking India's "friends and well-wishers," for their sympathy at this hour, Mukherjee said "we expect you to do more.

"As our ambassadors abroad, your words will be heard in multiple corners of the globe. I call upon all of you to join us in playing the important role of taking forward our concerns to the world stage because these are concerns that you also share," he said. He also asserted that such strikes will not "shake our resolve" of inclusive growth as India can manage multiple challenges at the same point of time. However, "India can succeed in her journey only if this kind

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh voiced India's strong condemnation of the Israeli strikes in Gaza and expressed the hope that international community will get together to restore peace and normalcy in the region.
In a first public statement on the ongoing strikes, he said India strongly condemned these incidents and regrets the loss of many innocent lives.

"It is our hope that the international community will come together to restore peace and normalcy," he said inaugurating the seventh edition of the three-day Pravasi Bhartiya Divas in Chennai.

He also declared India's "unstinted and unwavering support to the just cause of Palestinians".

The strikes have caused a lot of tensions in the region, where he said a number of Indian workers were living. At least 660 Palestinians, including over 200 children and nearly 100 women, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its military offensive on December 27. Close to 3,000 others have been wounded in the attacks.

Embattled Satyam Computer Services is speaking to its top 100 clients individually, and has received expressions of support from key customers, its interim CEO Ram Mynampati said on Thursday.

A billion-dollar false accounting scandal at one of the biggest outsourcing firms dominated the country's media on Thursday, with

New Satyam SWAT team distances itself from the scam
We don’t know”––that is a clear signal coming out from the newly appointed SWAT team, headed by Ram Mynampati who clearly for several of those questions had no answers. Some key headlines coming out is the fact that the CFO of the company, Srinivas Vadlamani, has submitted his resignation. The board, it seems, has not accepted his resignation.



More importantly, Ram Mynampati is very clearly saying that they had absolutely no visibility––completely absolving themselves of the entire Rs 7,000 crore scandal. They say there has been absolutely no visibility in the finance and everything was at the CFO’s door, and therefore, this existing team, Ram Mynampati included, who is also on the board, saying they had absolutely no visibility at this point in time in terms of what was going on and those declared numbers and they just went by what the auditors said. They were relying on the figures that were published.



The key points coming out at this point, as far as liquidity is concerned, is not encouraging. It is, in fact, not healthy at all. However, for the month of December, salaries have been managed but situation after that it is not very clear.



Key aspect to this is right after that letter that Ramalinga Raju sent out to the board of directors and to the exchanges, he actually did a conference call. He (Ram Mynampati), Srinivas Vadlamani, the CFO, and the leadership team that was presented in the presser did a conference call with Ramalinga Raju explaining the situation. If one were to go by the word of what Ram Mynampati just said that––it seems that Ramalinga Raju actually expressed that he would provide support in providing them with the details of what really happened.



So, the situation, as of now, is that the Satyam management––the SWAT team––is claiming complete ignorance of what has happened of the Rs 7,000 crore scandal that has happened in this company. They are simply making assurance that the process of verification is on. The process of verification of the veracity of the letter written by Ramalinga Raju, the process of verifying of whether the claims made in that letter is true and also restating their accounts––the financial restatement is also being done.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/current-affairs/new-satyam-swat-team-distances-itself-fromscam/375945

Satyam founders' stake drops further
MUMBAI (Reuters) - SRSR Holdings, an investment vehicle of the promoters of Satyam Computer, has sold a 1.27 percent stake of pledged shares in the outsourcing firm, a disclosure to the stock exchange showed on Thursday.

The stock was sold on the open market, and SRSR Holdings now held 2.34 percent of the company's stock, the disclosure showed.

Earlier this week, Satyam said the founders' stake in the firm had dropped to 3.6 percent after institutional lenders sold the stock.

Satyam chairman Ramalinga Raju resigned on Wednesday after revealing India's biggest corporate scandal in memory, sending the company's shares plunging nearly 80 percent.

(Reporting by Bharghavi Nagaraju; Editing by John Mair)

Satyam in crisis as India vows to end company fraud
By Sumeet Chatterjee

HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - India's Satyam Computer faces a crisis of "unimaginable proportions," its interim chief executive said a day after the chairman revealed profits had been falsely inflated for years.

Chairman Ramalinga Raju resigned on Wednesday in India's biggest corporate scandal in memory, after saying that about $1 billion, or 94 percent of the cash and bank balances on the company's books at end-September did not exist. The company's shares plunged nearly 80 percent.

The scandal, which some analysts dubbed "India's Enron" after the collapsed U.S. energy firm, has cast a cloud over foreign investment in Asia's third-largest economy and over its once-booming outsourcing sector.

It may also increase investors' nervousness about weak corporate governance and oversight in emerging markets, which are reeling from the global financial crisis.

Interim CEO Ram Mynampati said on Thursday that Satyam, India's fourth-largest software company, had contacted its top 100 customers, who account for almost 80 percent of revenue, and had received expressions of support.

Satyam specializes in business software and back-office services for clients such as General Electric and Nestle.

"Our only aim at this time is to ensure that the business continues," Mynampati said at a media conference on Thursday.

Mynampati said the liquidity situation was "not very encouraging now," but added Satyam had healthy receivables and would be able to deal with obligations this month. Continued...



newspapers likening it to that at US energy giant Enron.

The Economic Times described Satyam Computer Services founder and chairman B. Ramalinga Raju's admission that accounts and assets had been falsified and profits inflated as "the biggest fraud in India's corporate history."

"The shame and scandal has stunned India Inc., and left lakhs (tens of thousands) of investors and 53,000 staffers out in the cold," it said.

The Hindu said the Satyam scandal was "shocking beyond belief"; The Asian Age called it "the Great Dot Con"; while the Times of India said it was ironic that the firm's name means "truth" in Sanskrit.

At the Business Standard, Raju's revelations of cooking the books to the tune of more than Rs 5000 crore(one billion dollars) in its September-end balance sheet were described as "India's Enron".

"The scale of the fraud and manipulation in the financial statements of the company is mind-boggling", one commentator wrote, calling it "reminiscent of the Enron-Andersen days".

Enron collapsed in 2001 after revelations that bosses hid company losses and hyped the stock's value while selling their own shares on the sly, leading to prosecutions.

Auditors Arthur Andersen were also convicted after allegations that employees shredded documents to hide evidence relating to the scandal.

Raju said in his resignation statement that none of the other board members was aware of the firm's actual financial situation and that no-one had profited from the inflated results.

Questions were asked in the media about the role of Satyam auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers as well as the robustness of corporate governance and financial regulation in India.

Others feared for the effect on foreign investment, which is already being squeezed by the global economic slowdown, and India's reputation as a place to do business.

The Indian Express said the timing "could not have been worse", with a weak stock market, a reluctance on the part of domestic investors to take risks and their foreign counterparts pulling out of emerging markets.

"This will only exacerbate that problem, just when the Indian economy needs momentum to grow in the opposite direction," it said in an editorial.

The revelations were also "simply catastrophic" given the potential shift in attitudes towards outsourcing as US president-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office, it added.

An admission of fraud by the chairman of Satyam Computer Services has rocked a deep-rooted faith in the family-run businesses which still
dominate much of India's corporate landscape.

About half the top 30 companies on the BSE Sensex are controlled by their founding families, traditionally revered by shareholders and employees alike.

That respect took a beating on Wednesday when B Ramalinga Raju quit and said profits of India's fourth-biggest software exporter had been inflated over several years.

"It's not exactly what India needed now," said Seema Desai, analyst for Asia at risk consultancy Eurasia Group in London. "It is a stark reminder that we need tighter rules."

Shares in New York-listed Satyam, which means "truth" in Sanskrit, slumped nearly 80 percent. India's family-run firms have held sway for more than a century, with conglomerates such as Tata, Birla and Reliance dominating industries from steel to telecoms.

"We've deified our companies and their chiefs, confused our sense of national pride and given up a healthy skepticism for a don't-ask-don't-tell policy because no one wanted their bubble (to) burst," said Anantha Nageswaran, chief investment officer for Asia-Pacific at Bank Julius Baer in Singapore.

Once depicted in Bollywood films as mini empires with a near feudal system of governance, the opening of the economy in the early 1990s, tighter regulations and greater foreign investor interest have forced family firms to clean up their act.

For millions of Indians, entrepreneurs such as Reliance Industries founder Dhirubhai Ambani and mobile tycoon Sunil Mittal represented hope that even a school teacher's son or a small business owner could achieve wealth and fame.

But many family firms still battle issues such as nepotism, mismanagement, weak boards and a lack of transparency.
Long-drawn out succession battles such as the standoff between the Ambani brothers and the public spats among the Birlas as well as the Bajajs have taken off some their sheen.

Cleaner accounts
IT companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Infosys Technologies as well as Satyam were deemed shining examples of India's liberalisation, with their manicured campuses, Western-style cafeterias and contracts with Formula One motor racing teams and soccer authority FIFA.

"There was an expectation that these newer companies will have better systems, cleaner accounts compared to older companies with their more complex cross-holdings," said Eurasia's Desai.

India's $50-billion IT industry had grown at a scorching pace on the back of outsourcing demand from Western firms. Now, in addition to the economic crisis which has already slowed their growth, they will come under greater scrutiny.

"It's going to impact the outsourcing industry. Customers are going to get concerned about offshoring firms in India," said Sudin Apte, country head of research firm Forrester.

Some saw little risk of similar problems among other companies. "There is no need to extrapolate Satyam to any other enterprise in the country - it's just not possible that this level of misstatement will be there in a widespread manner", said Shailesh Haribhakti, executive chairman at BDO Haribhakti, a Mumbai-based management services firm.
Yet others said Satyam raised more general issues about India's corporate governance.

"This raises serious doubts about the involvement of auditors and independent directors in the workings of a company," said Amar Ambani, vice president of research at brokerage India Infoline.

"While it would be wrong to paint all companies with the same brush, in an already dull and bearish economic environment such events can have a prolonged impact on trade and sentiment."

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) said it was shocked by Raju's admissions but felt it would be inappropriate to question the general governance standards of other companies.

One possibility is that Satyam could provide an impetus for regulatory change. "History has shown that boom/bust cycles tend to throw up governance failures," said Sukumar Rajah, chief investment officer of Franklin Templeton Investments in India. "Such incidents have led to strengthening of the regulatory framework and we could see the same happening in India."

Ram Mynampati was appointed the interim CEO.

"Our only aim at this time is to ensure that the business continues," Mynampati said at a news conference. He said the company would help investigating agencies and had launched a process to assess its financial position.


On Wednesday, Mynampati admitted to the outsourcer inflating profits over several years and that senior officials have been summoned to the Satyam's headquarters in Hyderabad for further deliberations aimed at ending the crisis.

Meanwhile, Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta said the government is verifying Raju''s statement.

On Wednesday, Raju claimed that Satyam had inflated its earnings over the past few years, but no other board member had been aware of these financial irregularities.

"Once the contents of the message is verified, a proper action would be taken. If it is correct, it is shameful," said Gupta.

India''s biggest corporate scandal in memory threatens future foreign investment flows into Asia's third-largest economy and casts a cloud over growth in its once-booming outsourcing sector.

Amit Mitra, Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) said that the systematic failure might not necessarily spread to other companies, but the incident should provoke the corporate world to have fresh thinking on corporate governance.

The head of Satyam Computer Services resigned on Wednesday, saying the firm's profits had been inflated, sending the stock down more than 80 per cent and roiling investor confidence.

Satyam may axe 10,000 employees next month: Headhunters
NEW DELHI: With a big questions mark on its cash position and a minimum outgo on salary estimated at Rs 500 crore a month, Satyam may lay off over Employees unsure
10,000 employees next month, says a recruitment firm.

"It is most likely that Satyam will cut 10,000 jobs next month as the company is left with no cash to pay the salaries. The current fiasco is likely to put pressure on salaries, which may reduce by 10 per cent due to the surplus of about 20,000 people in the jobs market," Headhunters India CEO Kris Lakshmikanth said.

Satyam interim CEO Ram Mynampati while admitting that the cash position is not encouraging, the company, however, has taken care of salary for December.

Lakshmikanth said till Tuesday evening there were about 7,800 people from Satyam who had posted their resumes on job sites and by Wednesday afternoon, it has gone up to 14,000.

The uncertainty about jobs is killingly painful for the 53,000 employees of Satyam, especially when the industry is going slow on recruitment.

Further, possibility of a takeover too looks distant as the accounting fraud done by the company would make it difficult for any firm to evaluate its correct market value, which is compounding the worries of the employees.
IT-BPO union Unites Professionals general secretary Karthik Shekhar said, "In case of any lay off at Satyam, we may take legal action."

"We have received over 7,000 hits since the news break. Yesterday, in one hour we have seen over 800 hits (no of people visiting the site) from Hyderabad. People have been enquiries on how the union can help them," Shekhar added


Satyam's fraud may batter World Bank's image: Report

The revelation of Satyam Computer Services Ltd of about a Rs 7,800-crore fraud may dent the image of the World Bank as it kept quiet until last month about its suspicion of the IT firm's corporate malpractices, a leading financial daily said on Thursday.

In 2006, the World Bank told the US Justice Department it suspected Satyam may have been involved in bribery, the ‘Wall Street Journal’ reported, citing bank officials.

However, in late 2007, the bank completed an internal investigation and found that Satyam had acted improperly.

Under World Bank rules, the company then had the chance to argue why it shouldn't be banned.

"The bank should have been more responsible about

reporting publicly on what they knew to be misconduct at highest levels of Satyam," the paper quoted Bea Edwards, International Reform Director at the Government Accountability Project, Washington DC, watchdog group, as saying.

In February 2008, the World Bank temporarily suspended Satyam from bidding on new contracts, and then in September formally made the firm ineligible to bid on future contracts, the ‘Journal’ added.

But the paper said it did not announce the ban, called a debarment, until December 23 -- and then only after press reports about it.

Meanwhile, a World Bank spokesperson told the ‘Journal’ that it had acted responsibly. "We took the action we needed to take as an institution to maintain our high corporate integrity standards," the spokesperson said.

How did Satyam pull off India's biggest corporate fraud?

8 Jan 2009, 1843 hrs IST, REUTERS
Government has vowed to strengthen laws to prevent corporate fraud after Satyam Computer, the country's fourth-largest software company, shocked
investors by revealing profits had been falsely inflated for years.

Chairman Ramalinga Raju resigned on Wednesday after revealing India's biggest corporate scandal in memory, sending the company's shares plunging nearly 80 per cent.

The following is an overview of how the fraud escaped detection for so long and what compelled a soft-spoken man born into a family of farmers to risk all.

Q: How did Satyam escape detection?

A: On the face of it, New York-listed Satyam did everything by the rulebook, with an international firm auditing its books, declaration of accounts in accordance with Indian and U.S. standards, and the requisite number of independent directors with excellent credentials, including a Harvard business school professor and a former federal cabinet secretary.

Raju, in his now famous 5-page letter outlining the deception, said no other board member -- past or present -- was aware of the financial irregularities.

Regulators were blindsided, and analysts and experts say there are "systemic flaws" in accounting and audit practices.

About $1 billion, or 94 per cent of the cash, on the company's books was fictitious, Raju said, and manipulation of the cash flow may be a reason why the fraud was undetected.

"Companies have manipulated P&L (profit and loss) accounts before, but cash flow is the Holy Grail -- you don't tamper with it," said Saurabh Mukherjea, an analyst at UK-based research firm Noble Group.

"Auditors generally assume if there is cash, things are OK. But there are plenty of accounting and governance loopholes."

India also lacks a culture of dissent, with shareholders and independent directors reluctant to question company founders.

Government has vowed to strengthen laws to prevent corporate fraud after Satyam Computer, the country's fourth-largest software company, shocked
investors by revealing profits had been falsely inflated for years.

Chairman Ramalinga Raju resigned on Wednesday after revealing India's biggest corporate scandal in memory, sending the company's shares plunging nearly 80 per cent.

The following is an overview of how the fraud escaped detection for so long and what compelled a soft-spoken man born into a family of farmers to risk all.

Q: How did Satyam escape detection?

A: On the face of it, New York-listed Satyam did everything by the rulebook, with an international firm auditing its books, declaration of accounts in accordance with Indian and U.S. standards, and the requisite number of independent directors with excellent credentials, including a Harvard business school professor and a former federal cabinet secretary.

Raju, in his now famous 5-page letter outlining the deception, said no other board member -- past or present -- was aware of the financial irregularities.

Regulators were blindsided, and analysts and experts say there are "systemic flaws" in accounting and audit practices.

About $1 billion, or 94 per cent of the cash, on the company's books was fictitious, Raju said, and manipulation of the cash flow may be a reason why the fraud was undetected.

"Companies have manipulated P&L (profit and loss) accounts before, but cash flow is the Holy Grail -- you don't tamper with it," said Saurabh Mukherjea, an analyst at UK-based research firm Noble Group.

"Auditors generally assume if there is cash, things are OK. But there are plenty of accounting and governance loopholes."

India also lacks a culture of dissent, with shareholders and independent directors reluctant to question company founders.

Satyam's CFO puts in papers; Board to take call on Jan 10
HYDERABAD: Satyam's Chief Financial Officer Valdamani Srinivas Thursday sent in his resignation, dealing a blow to efforts to hold the top
leadership team intact, even interim CEO Ram Mynampati said efforts were on to continue with the business as usual.

At a scheduled press conference here, Mynampati said Srinivas has sent in his resignation and the Board will take a decision on January 10

Arrest Satyam chief, take penal action against PwC: CPI(M)
NEW DELHI: The CPI(M) on Thursday asked the government to immediately take into custody B Ramalinga Raju, who has resigned as Satyam Computer
Chairman, on account of his admission of guilt in the Rs 7,800 crore scam, saying such frauds had been encouraged by deregulation and liberalisation.

Seeking penal action against Satyam's auditors, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), the party said the "shocking revelation" about the scandal by Raju shows that "Indian big business has started emulating the worst corrupt practices of their counterparts in the advanced capitalist countries, especially the US."

Equating it with the 2001 Enron scandal in the US, it said the former Enron CEO was currently serving a 24-year prison term in the US and Enron's accounting firm Arthur Andersen had to be dissolved for its complicity in the scam.

In a statement from Kochi, where the party's Central Committee is meeting now, the CPI(M) demanded that the government "take suo motu cognizance of the admission of guilt by the Satyam Chairman and take him into custody.

"The concerned Directors in the Satyam Board and the audit firm PwC must also be held accountable for the gigantic fraud and strict penal action be initiated against them," the party said.

The party said "the PwC partners were earlier indicted for fraudulent accounting" after the collapse of the Global Trust Bank.

Govt could have probed Satyam affairs earlier: IT-BPO union
NEW DELHI: Satyam incident did not come as a bolt from the blue for the Bangalore-based IT-BPO union, who had written to the IT industry body
Nasscom, the Prime Minister, IT Minister and Ramalinga Raju himself to conduct an inquiry into the affairs of the company in 2008.

"Immediately after we heard that the World Bank was planning to ban Satyam in 2008, we had written to everyone -- the Prime Minister, Nasscom, the IT Minister and to the then Chairman Raju to conduct an inquiry into the matter," UNITES Professionals General Secretary Kartick Shekhar said.

He further said had the government investigated the World Bank allegations, discrepancies in Satyam would have surfaced earlier, he added.

"UNITES would like NASSCOM to urgently institute an inquiry with the cooperation of the Government of India, Department of Technology and with the cooperation of the World Bank, immediately and get the actual findings," UNITES had earlier said on its website.

However, when contacted, Nasscom had denied receiving any such communication from any union.

Nasscom President Som Mittal had said that it was a company-level matter and the industry body had no right to inquire into it.

Reliance Industries ceases gasoline sale to Iran

WASHINGTON: A non-profit organisation On Thursday said Reliance Industries has stopped gasoline sale to Iran, following a group of US Congressmen
urging the country's Exim bank to suspend assistance to the Indian firm, until the Mukesh Ambani-led Indian conglomerate stops business with Iran.

"Reliance Industries's (RIL) has ceased gasoline sales to Iran. Its decision follows receipt of a letter to the Treasury Department from members of the US Congress expressing concerns about Tehran's development of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorism and its human rights abuses, especially against Iranian people," Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) said in a statement.

However, RIL spokesperson said, "as a corporate policy and to maintain business confidentiality, we do not comment on specific transactions."

The US Export-Import Bank, which provides support to the US exporters, approved USD 900 million in loan guarantees to expand the Jamnagar oil refinery used by the RIL to refine petroleum for sale to Iran. Members of Congress wrote letters to the Exim Bank demanding a full investigation into these loan guarantees.

Meanwhile, informed sources said RIL's agreement for supplying gasoline to Iran was till December and the Indian firm has not renewed the contract as financial institutions are not ready to provide Iran with the line of credit needed for the same, in light of the US sanctions.

Further, the Executive Director of FDD, Mark Dubowitz said "Doing business with Tehran is a serious threat to the reputation of any business."

Dubowitz added "the Iranian regime is responsible for abusing its own citizens and murdering innocent civilians throughout the world. Providing the gasoline that fuels the Iranian regime and its military is simply bad business. The other companies exporting gasoline to the regime should follow Reliance's lead".

The foundation in its statement said although Iran is a major oil producer, it must import 40 per cent of the refined oil it needs because it lacks the refining capacity to meet its internal consumption. Reliance provides Tehran with about 25 per cent of its refined oil imports or around 10 per cent of the Iran's total gasoline consumption.

Commenting on the issue a senior official at FDD, Orde Kittrie said this move is a blow to Iran and its nuclear ambitions.

Dubowitz also said, "Executives at Vitol, Trafigura, British Petroleum and Total should take the same responsible steps as their colleagues in Mumbai and stop providing gasoline to a terrorist state that is in flagrant violation of international law."

The FDD, is the only non-partisan policy institute dedicated to promoting pluralism, defending democratic values and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy.

Petro products' supplies likely to go down in a day or two
NEW DELHI: Supplies of petrol, diesel and LPG are likely to be impacted in the next couple of days as the indefinite strike by PSU executives in the
oil sector entered the second day on Thursday.

There were reports of petrol pumps drying up in several parts of the country including the National Capital while aviation-refuelling services were delayed because of the absence of officers.

"We have been managing the situation till now, but, there are supply constraints," IOC Chairman Sarthak Behuria said. "If the strike continues, we might see dry-outs from tomorrow," he added.

There was a backlog of domestic LPG supplies in many parts particularly in the South as the truckers' stir disrupted supply.

Behuria said the problem was because of inadequate loading at the refineries and petrol pumps keeping low inventories in anticipation of fuel price cuts.

IOC's seven refineries were producing only 40 per cent of their output with production being impacted at its key refineries of Panipat and Mathura.

Its Koyali refinery in Gujarat was producing only 25 per cent of the normal output, while BPCL's Mumbai refinery was operating at 70 per cent of its capacity.

IOC Director (Marketing) GC Dagga said the product offtake from refineries was only 10 per cent on Wednesday and this was causing supply constraints.

The Government admitted there were shortages but said the situation was under control.

18 PSU oil co officers suspended on Day 1

8 Jan 2009, 0010 hrs IST, ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: Production at four refineries of Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) was disrupted following an indefinite strike
called by 14 PSU oil companies’ officers on Wednesday. However, normal production continued at other PSU refineries and the strike didn’t affect fuel supplies at petrol pumps in the country, an oil ministry official said. Oil Sector Officers Association (OSOA), representing about 45,000 members, called for the strike, demanding higher wages.

Meanwhile, PSU oil companies have suspended about 18 officials. “The police has also arrested over a dozen officials including OSOA president Amit Kumar for defying the High Court’s order,” an official in the petroleum ministry, who wished not to be named, said. Mr Kumar could not be contacted. The Federation of All India Petroleum Traders (FAIPT) secretary general Ajay Bansal confirmed his arrest. FAIPT has been supporting OSOA.

Mr Bansal said that “the government should try to resolve the issue at the earliest as petrol pumps might go dry in a couple of days across the country if strike is not called off”. At the time of going to press, the government was trying to persuade the officials to end the strike.

Petroleum ministry said that no shortage of petrol or diesel was reported from any part of the country. “We have contingency plans ready so that the common man does not suffer,” petroleum minister Murli Deora said. Earlier, in the afternoon, Mr Deora and oil secretary RS Pandey met CEOs of PSU oil companies and discussed the future course of action.
An official in IOC said that it is maintaining a normal supply of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) at airports. However, in a few cases, flights got delayed by 30-40 minutes over the issue.

“Not all officers are taking part in the strike. It is limited to officers below the rank of deputy general manager. We will do our best to maintain fuel supplies,” GAIL India chairman & managing director UD Choubey said. The strike has affected operations of mainly ONGC and IOC. While operations at Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) is marginally affected, work at Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) is normal, an official in the oil ministry said

“The strike is unjustified,” petroleum secretary RS Sharma said. The government had already notified a pay package for all public sector oil undertakings (PSUs) including oil sector PSUs. “The revised pay package provides a substantial increase in emoluments at all levels. The oil sector officers also enjoy the best perquisites among all PSUs in the country,” he said.

According to an oil ministry’s calculation, salary hikes of some of the OSOA office bearers ranged from 20-50%. “After the hike, gross salary of one of OSOA’s main executives for January 2007 went up to Rs 1,29,122 from Rs 85,782 for the same month,” an internal note of the oil ministry said.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Energy/Oil__Gas/18_PSU_oil_co_officers_suspended_on_Day_1/articleshow/3949120.cms

Take action in 5 days or SP will have to review support: Amar
NEW DELHI: Giving a virtual ultimatum to the government, Samajwadi Party on Thursday said if no "action" is taken against Pakistan within five days,
it would have to review its support.

Complaining that the ruling UPA was treating it like an "outsider" on the issue of dealing with Pakistan, the SP said it was under "tremendous pressure" from its cadres as the government was not doing anything against the neighbouring country despite the Mumbai attacks.

The party, which is extending crucial outside support to the Congress-led government, said its Parliamentary Board meeting here today was of the view that India needed to take strong action against Pakistan.

"The meeting criticised the government for failing to take any concrete action against Pakistan in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks," SP general secretary Amar Singh told a press conference along with party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav after over a two-hour meeting.

"In this light we have decided to give it five days' time to take action against Pakistan, otherwise we will review our support to the government in a working committee meeting of our party which would be called after January 14," he said.

The party's virtual ultimatum came a day after Singh issued a similar threat of withdrawal of support, only to tone it down after meeting Congress President Sonia Gandhi a few hours later.

Singh said the SP and he personally were under "tremendous pressure" from party leaders as it was his initiative to support the UPA on the nuclear deal.

"I have asked the party leaders to wait till January 14, when President Pratibha Patil will also come back to Delhi... We don't want to take any step in her absence," he added.
Govt is likely to appoint RBI Deputy Governor by month end
NEW DELHI: The government is likely to appoint a Deputy Governor of the RBI by this month end despite disruption in the selection process following
the resignation of former Satyam Computer independent director M Rammohan Rao from the selection committee.

The government has appointed a Search Committee headed by RBI Governor D Subbarao to shortlist candidates for the post of Deputy Governor following superannuation of V Leeladhar last month.

Since Rao, who was an independent director on the board of Satyam Computer Services and Dean of the Indian School of Business, resigned from the committee, the government will have to find his replacement to allow the Search Committee to shortlist candidates.

Subsequently, the shortlisted names would be referred to the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The government, according to Finance Ministry officials, will soon appoint another member on the selection panel and recommend the name or names to the ACC for final approval.

The post of the deputy governor is expected to be filled by the end of this month, officials said.

The committee would interview candidates including Bank of India Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) T S Narayansami, Punjab National Bank CMD K C Chakrabarty, Union Bank of India CMD M V Nair and IDBI Bank CMD Yogesh Agrawal.

Narayansami is the senior most candidate followed by Chakrabarty, they said.

RBI has four Deputy Governors and one post fell vacant after Leeladhar completed his four-year term. He was in charge of banking operations and supervision.

PwC faces axe from major clients after Satyam fiasco
Audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which has major companies like HCL Infosystems, GMR Group, Bosch, and Maruti Suzuki among its
over 100 clients in India, faces a possible axe after its role has come into question in the Satyam fraud case, of about Rs 7,800 crore.

"Even if there is no connivance, there is certainly negligence on the part of PwC and we have internally decided to terminate their services," said an official of a company with over a Rs 10,000 crore turnover audited by PwC, requesting anonymity.

Satyam episode may threaten FDI in India: Foreign media

NEW YORK: The massive fraud at India's software services firm Satyam Computer faced brick bats in the foreign media with some saying that this
episode could threaten investment from abroad in the country and is likely to cast a cloud over growth in its outsourcing sector.

"The scandal threatened to gobble up not just Raju, who resigned, but his company, Satyam Computer Services. Far beyond Satyam, it raised fears that similar problems might lurk in other Indian companies, particularly in its vaunted outsourcing industry," American daily the New York Times said.

In what could be termed as the biggest corporate fraud, Satyam yesterday made a shocking disclosure of accounts fudging by its founder Ramalinga Raju, who then quit as chairman, leaving an uncertain future for the company and its 53,000 employees.

Raju, in a statement yesterday, said that Satyam's profits had been massively inflated over recent years but no other board member was aware of the financial irregularities.

Quoting Jacob Rees-Mogg, the lead manager with Somerset Capital Management, a fund that specialises in emerging markets, NYT said, "The fraud will make people even more nervous about investing in India and other developing markets".

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal said, "[T]he chairman of one of India's largest technology companies said he concocted key financial results, ... sending shock waves across India and likely prompting investors to question other corporate results as the once-hot economy slows".

Satyam to be replaced by Sun Pharma in Sensex, effective Jan. 12
NEW DELHI: The Bombay Stock Exchange will replace Satyam Computer Services with drugmaker Sun Pharma in the benchmark share index, effective Jan.
12, the spokesman for the exchange said on Thursday.

Share of family-run businesses fall 30 pc on Satyam fiasco
MUMBAI: Shares of almost all family-promoted businesses on Wednesday suffered a value erosion of nearly 30 per cent after questions surfaced
regarding corporate governance structure and accounting practices in another privately held IT company Satyam.

Companies ranging from Mukesh Ambani-controlled RIL to K P Singh-led DLF and Anil Ambani group companies to Sunil Mittal-run Bharti Airtel were among the top losers.

"Today's Satyam episode has dented investor sentiment and they would be little cautious while dealing with a family-run business and would go for such companies that have a transparent corporate governance structure," marketmen said.

Private sector behemoth RIL today settled for the day lower by 12.52 per cent on the BSE. Meanwhile, other Mukesh Ambani led firms RPL and RIIL suffered a fall of 7.74 per cent and 11.74 per cent, respectively, on BSE.

"Corporate governance scheme differs from companies to companies. Government came up with clause 49, but the question is how many follow it with true spirit," global consultancy firm KPMG India Chief Operating Officer Richard Rekhy said.

Shares of ADAG group firms also witnessed similar fate. Rel Cap was down 14.05 per cent, RCom (17 per cent) Rel Infra (13 per cent) and RNRL (13 per cent) and RPower (9 per cent).

Satyam dipped nearly 78 per cent and saw a value erosion of Rs 10,000 crore in a single trading session after its chairman revealed malpractices in the company's balance sheet.

Ramalinga Raju, today resigned as Satyam's chairman after disclosing financial wrong doings in the company's balance sheet. He was under attack over the USD 1.6-billion acquisition fiasco of firms promoted by his family.

Another global consultancy major Grant Thornton's National Managing Partner Vishesh Chandiok said, "This episode presents a brilliant opportunity to demonstrate expeditious enforcement of our numerous rules."

Other losers were realty firm DLF (16.15 per cent), Bharti Airtel (1.17 per cent), JP Associates (29.15 per cent) and ACC (6.33 per cent).

NSE removes Satyam from Nifty; replaced by Rel Capital
MUMBAI: The National Stock Exchange on Wednesday removed Satyam from its benchmark index Nifty and the IT firm will be replaced by Reliance Capital Satyam's board members |
Five facts about Satyam
with effect from January 12.

Satyam would also be removed from various other indices like CNX 100, S&P CNX 500,CNX IT and the CNX Services sector index, the NSE said in a statement.

"The index maintenance sub-committee has decided to make the following changes in various indices during its review. These changes shall become effective from January 12, 2009," it added.

Further, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals will replace Satyam Computer Services in the CNX 100 Index, and Cairn India will replace it on the S&P CNX 500 Index.


National Stock Exchange said on Wednesday it would remove Satyam from its S&P CNX Nifty 50-share index from the same date.

The head of the Indian outsourcing firm resigned on Wednesday, disclosing profits had been falsely inflated for years, sending its shares crashing nearly 80 percent.

Satyam fraud: Equity advisors divided on what existing investors should do


7 Jan 2009, 2119 hrs IST, ET Bureau
KOLKATA: Portfolio managers and broking houses went into a frenzy on Wednesday by frantically mailing everyone about the `immediate discontinuation' Raju can get a 7-year jail term
Letter from Satyam interim CEO
of the Satyam stock coverage. Their suggestion to investors was unanimous: Stay away from the stock, period!

Equity investment advisors are, however, divided on what existing investors ought to do. Some feel everybody should exit the stock immediately. While the other view was clearly "don't rush things, wait for more clarity".

The equity broking fraternity is equivocal in saying that the incident has shaken investor confidence -- both domestic and global. Phrasing the incident as `one of the worst days for domestic investors', Angel Broking head (research) Hitesh Agrawal said: "As far as our view on Satyam Computers goes, we have discontinued coverage on the stock with immediate effect and would advise current investors to exit the stock and non-existent investors to stay away."

But SKP Securities head for equity research, Kuldip Balasia felt existing investors should wait for more clarity to emerge on the balance sheet issue and take their time before exiting the Satyam counter.

"As we are closely tracking developments, our sense is that nothing is left in the company financially. But we need clarity on the issue. We are advising our clients not to do anything on Satyam until more clarity emerges. New investors should not look at the company at all at this juncture," Mr Balasia told ET.

A local official with the online trading portal ShareKhan has a similar take. "We've told our clients to steer clear from Satyam. As for clients who are holding the stock, we've asked them to wait and watch till the management comes up with its clarification and the full extent of the fabrication is found out."

"The repercussions of which could be felt over the medium-term. While Indian corporate governance standards have been put at stake here, the role of the auditors have also come under serious question. Hopefully, this development will now lead to greater weightage being provided to corporate governance standards by companies and investors alike," Mr Agrawal said.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Markets/Stocks/Stocks_in_News/Satyam_fraud_Equity_advisors_divided_on_what_existing_investors_should_do/articleshow/3948502.cms

Satyam loses Rs 10, 000 crore in market cap; shares tank over 80%

MUMBAI: Beleaguered software services major Satyam on Wednesday bit the dust on the bourses and lost as much as Rs 10,000 crore in market Satyam's board members
Five facts about Satyam
capitalisation in a single trading session, after the scrip dipped to hit an all-time low level.

Satyam saw a massive value erosion and fell nearly 80 per cent, after the management revealed malpractices in accounting methods. The IT firm had a market capitalisation of Rs 12,067.98 crore yesterday and by the end of today's trading session its m-cap stood at Rs 2,691.88 crore.

The scrip, which fell by as much as 83 per cent to witness an intra-day low of Rs 30.70, managed to close with a fall of 77.69 per cent at Rs 39.95 on the BSE.

"In the long run the scrip can witness levels down to as much as Rs 20. The company was operating at a margin of three per cent -- the lowest by any firm. It was doing business on cost basis and the books were kept inflated," Arun Kejriwal of Kejriwal Reserach and Investment Services said.

On the National Stock Exchange, the scrip plunged to a low of Rs 41.05, down 77.06 per cent from its previous close. The scrip had witnessed the day's low of Rs 30.80, down 82.78 per cent over last closing.

The counter saw frantic selling after the news broke out, and over 48 crore shares had changed hands on both the bourses.

Consumers face shortage of petrol and diesel


8 Jan 2009, 2108 hrs IST, ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: Consumers are facing shortage of petrol and diesel in various parts of the country as the indefinite strike of state-owned oil companies'
officers continued for the second day. About 30% of 400-odd petrol pumps were running dry in the Capital and the condition in other major metros including Mumbai was the same.

The situation is likely to deteriorate further as the government is unwilling to relent under pressure, negotiators involved in crisis resolution said. While the officers are demanding a better pay package, the government says that their recently revised salaries are among best paid in the industry at a time when people are losing jobs due to the economic slowdown.

Panic buying has been reported from various petrol pumps across the country. Indian Oil Corp (IOC) officials feared that most of the pumps may turn dry by Friday if strike continued. "We have been managing the situation till now, but there are supply constraints," IOC chairman Sarthak Behuria said. Most of the petrol pumps had cut down their inventory-levels anticipating a fuel price reduction. A senior official in oil ministry, who didn't wish to be named, said that the government would issue a statement to remove the uncertainty on Friday.

Meanwhile, the management of oil PSUs have taken a tough stand against agitating officers. About 64 ONGC officers including office bearers of agitating Oil Sector Officers Association (OSOA) have been terminated. Petroleum secretary RS Pandey confirmed the development. IOC has also terminated three officers and GAIL has identified three executives to be fired, officials working in these firms said.

In order to stop officers from disrupting fuel supplies, Maharastra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh (UP), Haryana and Assam have imposed Essential Service Maintenance Act (ESMA). While gas supply in the western region is badly hit due to the oil officers' strike, no supply problems have been reported from the north-east, an oil ministry officers said. He said that ONGC chairman & managing director RS Sharma has already gone to Hazira (Gujarat) to ensure normal gas supply to the industry. Gas production at ONGC's Bombay High will also be revived soon, he added.

He said that two of the ONGC officials, arrested on Wednesday for participating in the agitation, had been released on bail. "They have given the undertaking that they would ask their other colleague to leave the path of confrontation and resolve the issue through dialogue," he added. No OSOA office bearers could be contacted as they have switched off their mobile fearing arrests.

Pressure is mounting on officers in other public sector undertakings (PSUs) to join the strike. Power major NTPC have decided to join the strike. Executives of other public sector companies such as BHEL and SAIL are also planning to take the agitation path.

Over 9000 officers of NTPC is set to join hands with about the 40,000 oil sector officers. A strike by NTPC would mean consumers, who are already facing fuel crisis, would also see power cuts. NTPC supplies almost a third of total electricity supplied in the country. "We are thinking of joining the strike called by OSOA. We have sent another memorandum to the Prime Minister on Thursday seeking early redressal of all issues. We are staging dharnas at all our 30 power plants from Friday, " NTPC Executives' Federation of India (NEFI) chairman Rakesh Pandey told ET.

"We also support their (OSOA) agitation in principle. We have planned to join the strike if the government does not implement the Justice M J Rao Committee's recommendations," Federation of BHEL Executives' Associations president KSN Raju said. The Federation has over 7,500 members.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Consumers_face_shortage_of_petrol_and_diesel/articleshow/3953292.cms

Bosch Managing Director V K Viswanathan said that the company has not taken a decision on the issue.

"We don't know the entire story. So far we have heard only from Ramalinga Raju, but haven't heard anything from PwC," Viswanathan said.

When contacted Maruti Suzuki India Chairman R C Bhargava said, "It is for the audit committee of the board to look into the matter. Once it submits its report, appropriate action will follow."

The companies audited by PwC are of the opinion that it is too early to cast suspicion on all the clients of the audit firm.

"It is too early to comment. The Satyam episode has been as a shock to everyone and the issue has not yet been settled; so we can't give any official comment at this point of time," an official of Religare Enterprises, which is also audited by PWC, said.

How much is Satyam's stock actually worth?


7 Jan 2009, 1836
1836 hrs IST, Mandar Nimkar, ECONOMICTIMES.COM

MUMBAI: In possibly the biggest single day fall for a stock, Satyam Computer Services lost 77 per cent to end at Rs 40.25 on NSE. The stock’s woes Satyam’s results for the ended September 30, 2008
More Pictures
began in December after the company’s promoters made a $1.6-billion bid for Maytas Properties and Maytas Infrastructure promoted by Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju's son.

However, adverse market reaction, which saw the company’s ADR take a knock of 54.5% to $5.70, made the company call off the proposed acquisition. At the time, Chairman Raju evinced surprise saying he was “surprised by the market reaction to this decision even though we were quite positive about the merits of the acquisition.”

Raju, in fact, today (Jan 7, 2009) took the stock market and the business community by surprise, after he tendered his resignation and admitted in a letter to the board that Satyam’s balance sheet was cash and bank balances as on Sep 30, 2008 was inflated to the extent of Rs 5,040 crore (as against Rs 5,361 reflected in the books).

Further, Satyam’s balance sheet carries an accrued interest of Rs 376 crore which is non-existent, an understated liability of Rs 1,230 crore on account of funds arranged by Raju, and an over stated debtors position of Rs 490 crore (against Rs 2,651 crore in the books)

The letter goes on to state that Satyam reported a revenue of Rs 2,700 crore and an operating margin of Rs 649 crore (24% of revenues) for the second quarter ended Sep 30, 2008, as against the actual revenues of Rs 2,112 crore and actual OPM of Rs 61 crore (3% of revenues). This resulted in artificial cash and bank balances going up by Rs 588 crore in the second quarter alone.

If one goes by the actual revenue and OPM figures, taking others as true, Satyam would have posted a loss instead of the reported profit after tax of Rs 537 crore for the September quarter. If one deducts the financial expenses and depreciation/amortization from the actual OPM of Rs 61 crore, it gives you a loss of Rs 5.87 crore, which translates to a negative EPS of Rs 0.08.

Investment bank CLSA has said that the value of Satyam stock in current conditions is about Rs 25-30. However, some analysts feel the stock is worthless as the scale of fraud is not yet known.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/How_much_is_Satyams_stock_actually_worth/articleshow/3948051.cms


Unedited open letter from Satyam interim CEO Ram Mynampati


7 Jan 2009, 1513 hrs IST,

From: Ram Mynampati

Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 2:05 PM

To: SatyamAssociates (Global)


Subject: Open communication : Today's developments

Importance: High

Dear colleagues

I write this mail to update you on some critical Board and Leadership level changes in our company, effective immediately. A series of extremely unfortunate events led to this, which I am sure you have seen covered in the media over the past few hours.

A SWAT team consisting of senior leaders has been formed. Many of them are Satyam veterans with a minimum of ten years experience in our company and more than twenty years in the industry. I have been requested to play the role of an Interim CEO and this team will support me, as we steer Satyam through this challenging phase. These are the leaders on the ground and have always had the final call on most customer and associate related matters in the company, so far. This team has committed to work together, to make it happen. The SWAT team represents all Customer Facing units, key Horizontal Competency Units and critical Support Units.

Over the past twenty one years, with your passion and commitment we have built significant customer assets, formidable service offerings, excellent delivery processes and scalable support systems. Satyam has been consistently acknowledged for our leadership bandwidth and has a demonstrated reputation for collaborative functioning. Our renowned Full Life Cycle (FLC) model encouraged 'Distributed and Empowered' leadership and prepared us for all situations. This is the time when we have to apply it in real life. What we have been trained for, we will now put to work. Let us continue to handle our respective areas with total autonomy, freedom and control. This is as good a time, as any, to remind ourselves that we have been acknowledged as being amongst the top three Best Employers in India by Hewitt and Mercer in independent surveys in 2007 and American Society of Training & Development (ASTD) named us as the best globally, for our Learning practices - the first company outside USA to be ever awarded this honor. Satyam continues to have everything that is fundamentally required for its success - a strong customer base and a committed universe of approx 53,000 associates.

What we are confronted with is the challenge of continuing our business operations, seamlessly. We will need your involvement and ideas to make it happen. This might involve even more effort at every level, in the near term. This is the time to prove to the world that we are united and will succeed in overcoming the challenges.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3947029.cms



Satyam's saga a setback to India's IT Industry: Nilekani
NEW DELHI: Terming the Satyam debacle as a "black-eye",Co-Chairman of the country's second largest software firm, Infosys, Nandan Nilekani today
said that is a setback to India's flagship IT sector.

"This incident is a black-eye because we have been promoting Indian entreprenuers, Indian corporate as the flagship of brand Indiaand when one of the lot really has a deplorable behaviour then obviously its not a good thing.

"It's something that is a setback to what we have been trying to accomplish," Nilekani told in an interview to a private television channel.

Talking about the fallout of the incident, Nilekani said, "Investors who have been shocked by this episode will obviously look for company numbers. We believe that the more data you share with the investors the better it is."

"All of us who run companies must really put ethics, corporate governance andrunning a transparent company in the front. If results are bad we should declare that, if profits are low we should declare that but we should not do anything which impairs the trust of our stakeholders," he added.

The resignation ofSatyam chairman Ramalinga Raju on Wednesday morning after confessing to have forged and inflated the company's accounts for years has sparked fearsamong the Indian IT frims.

Satyam case is a warning for other managements: N R Narayana Murthy


8 Jan 2009, 0000 hrs IST, ET Bureau
BANGALORE: At a time when India software Inc is waking up to perhaps the biggest corporate scam the country has seen, industry leaders such as N R Satyam's board members
Five facts about Satyam
Narayanamurthy who founded country’s second biggest tech firm Infosys, described developments at Satyam as shocking, painful and a good warning for other companies in the sector.

The Satyam episode is a good warning signal for all managements, said Mr Narayanamurthy, the non-executive chairman of Infosys and one of the strongest votaries of corporate governance in the country. Speaking to ET , Mr Murthy said, it is time for authorities to step in with appropriate action.

Following is Mr Murthy’s unedited views on the subject.

I am shocked and painfully dismayed at what has happened at an important software company in India. It is a total failure of governance. I only hope that relevant authorities get to the bottom of this and take appropriate action.


It is important to remember that one Satyam does not make the entire Indian software industry. I believe it is an isolated case. I want foreign investors to realise that there are many honest managements and good companies in this country. While what has happened at Satyam is totally regrettable, I believe that it does not represent India. It just represents one individual and one company.

In the short term, investors will start looking deeper into all companies they want to invest in, and rightly so. Once they realise that things are not all that bad and that most companies are decent and managements honest, they will regain their faith.

This too will pass. Investors will consider this as an extreme case. Right now, all of us must conduct ourselves in the most legal and ethical manner. It is a good warning signal for all managements.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Satyam_warning_for_other_companies_Narayana_Murthy/articleshow/3946833.cms

Raju's letter on shareholding misleading

8 Jan 2009, 1158 hrs IST, Times Now

NEW DELHI: In his letter to the Satyam board, Ramalinga Raju asserted that "neither myself, nor the managing director (including our spouses) sold Raju's letter to the Board |
Five facts about Satyam
any shares in the last eight years — excepting for a small proportion declared and sold for philanthropic purposes" .

The idea clearly was to suggest that the promoters of Satyam have not sold the company's shares for several years and hence have not benefited from artificially inflating the share price by overstating performance.

In fact, in the same letter, Raju reiterated the point by saying: "Neither me, nor the managing director took even one rupee/dollar from the company and have not benefited in financial terms on account of the inflated results" .

Despite the apparently candid admissions in the letter, this particular claim seems to be quite misleading. This is established by a closer look at the change in shareholding in Satyam from March 2001 onwards, details of which are available on the BSE website.

As on March 31, 2001, the promoter group's holding was about 7.2 crore shares, which was then 25.6% of the total shares of the company. Raju, his wife Nandini, his brother and MD B Rama Raju and the MD's wife Radha between them owned a little under 2.9 crore shares or about 10.3%.

Over the next few years till March 2006, the promoters' shareholding came down to about 14%, partly because the total equity base of the company was slowly expanding for reasons like conversion of stock options and partly because the promoters continued to sell small portions of their holdings. The holding of the two brothers and their spouses remained more or less the same.

By June 2006, the promoters' holding had fallen dramatically to 8.2% of the total equity or from 4.5 cr shares to 3 cr shares.

In other words, the promoters (read the Raju family) sold roughly 1.5 cr shares. During that period the average share price of the company was in the range of Rs 700. That means the family would have realized something of the order of Rs 1,000 cr from the sale of its shares.

Put that beside the fact that Satyam's share price on Wednesday was down to below Rs 40 and even before the current scandal broke, in mid-December last year, was only at about Rs 225 and it becomes difficult to accept that the Rajus have not gained at all from inflated results.

Tesco could move Satyam projects to rivals


8 Jan 2009, 1437 hrs IST, Pankaj Mishra, ET Bureau

BANGALORE: Tesco, the world's third biggest retailer could move its current projects being executed by Satyam Computer Services to other vendors
such as Infosys and TCS, on concerns of stability and trust.

Tesco, which is not among top ten customers for Satyam currently outsources few projects in the areas of data warehousing and transport management. "Trust is a critical factor in all our outsourcing decisions, and all I can say is that there is tremendous competition among companies such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS and Satyam," Mike McNamara, director operations and information technology Tesco Global told ET in an interview on Thursday.

He declined to make any specific comments about whether his company will immediately cease all engagements with Satyam, but admitted that customers will be concerned about the developments at Satyam.

Meanwhile, Mr McNamara added that despite developments at Satyam, the India offshoring story will continue to gain momentum. "The fundamentals are still attractive despite what has happened--you have an educated workforce with ambition, and most importantly, there is a lot of innovation happening here," he said. "Looking back, setting up our IT operations is one of the best decisions I have ever taken," Mr McNamara said.

By outsourcing key IT projects to its Bangalore centre and other Indian vendors, Tesco has been able to bring down the time required to go live in new markets such as US by upto six months, apart from reducing deployment and maintenance cost of IT applications by upto 70%.

"We are making annual savings of around $45-60 million by outsourcing to India," Mr McNamara said.

Tesco's Indian IT arm, Hindustan Service Centre (HSC) has currently around 3,000 professionals. "We want this centre to become the engineering hub for us, and there is a lot of scope for scale expansion," he said.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Software/Tesco_could_move_Satyam_projects_to_rivals/articleshow/3951815.cms

Satyam faces class action lawsuit in US

New York Two US-based law firms – Izard Nobel LLP and Vianale & Vianale LLP - have filed class action lawsuits against Satyam Computer on behalf of shareholders of the software services firm's American Depository Receipts.
"A lawsuit seeking class action status has been filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of those who purchased the ADRs of Satyam Computer between January 6, 2004 and January 6, 2009," Izard Nobel LLP said in a statement.

Another law firm Vianale & Vianale LLP has also announced that it has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers of the American Depository Shares of Satyam Computer during the Class period January 6, 2004 through January 6, 2009.

Trading on Satyam ADRs was suspended yesterday after it plunged by over 90 per cent to 0.85 dollars in pre-market trade in US following Satyam founder and chairman B Ramalinga Raju's confession to a Rs 7,800 crore fraud in the company.

NYSE in a statement yesterday had said that "NYSE Regulation is currently evaluating the news relating to Satyam and will closely monitor further developments. The security will remain halted until further notice".

Also, India's Corporate Affairs Ministry and market regulator SEBI announced that the episode would be probed and action taken against the perpetrators of the fraud that entails inflating profits and creating fictitious assets.

While the government said the entire issue would be referred to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, SEBI described it would act in tandem with the ministry.

"I am now prepared to subject myself to the laws of the land and face consequences thereof," Raju said in a letter, while announcing his resignation.

Infosys rules out 'tainted Satyam' buyout
New Delhi The country's second largest software exporter, Infosys, on Wednesday ruled out the possibility of buying Satyam saying the IT major "will not touch any tainted company".
"We have no such interest in looking at buying Satyam... absolutely not... We will not touch any such tainted company that's very very clear," Infosys Founder and Chief Mentor Narayana Murthy said in an interview to a private television channel.

He said that the Satyam incident will not have an backlash on the Indian IT sector.

"Every company, certainly large companies, they have very close relationship with customers. The CEOs and senior management of the Indian industry have a close relationship with the senior management of the customer companies...

"We have a lot of transactions where we have demonstrated class, quality and integrity, so I don't think all of that will be destroyed just because of one bad apple, because there is one Satyam," the non-executive chairman of the company added.

Talking about the course of action following the Satyam fiasco, Murthy said the need of this hour for the regulators is to act decisively.

"The most important first step for regulatory authority of India is to get the bottom of this and take a swift and decisive action to bring the guilty to whatever punishment they deserve," he said.

Murthy said that the IT industry has to communicate to their investors and customers and all potential investors that Satyam is indeed an isolated case of misgovernance and must all be prepared to answer further questions so that the investors get an enhanced level of comfort.

Raju may face 10 yr jail, Rs 25 cr fine
Satyam Computer Services former Chairman B Ramalinga Raju can face up to 10 years imprisonment along with a fine, which may extend to Rs 25 crore, in the financial fraud that led to erosion of investors wealth by whopping Rs 10,000 crore in a day.
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India already has ordered an enquiry into the issue to find out if Raju has violated the various regulations pertaining to dealings in securities market.

The regulator would look into various statutory violations, which include unfair trade practices, insider trading regulation and take over code. The enquiry would be conducted by a SEBI General Manager, Sunil Kumar, who had been designated as investigating authority.

Under the SEBI Act, imprisonment and monetary penalty could be awarded "if any person contravenes or attempts to contravene or abets the contravention of the provision of this Act or of any rules or regulations made there under".

This would mean that Raju could be punished for violating the securities regulation and as well as for abetting officers of Satyam to commit financial fraud, corporate law practitioners said.

In addition to violation of the SEBI norms, Raju can also be tried for other offences like misappropriation of funds and breach of trust under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and Companies Act.

More significantly, noted Supreme Court lawyer Fali S Nariman said that the country needs to put in place system to check such corporate frauds and financial irregularities.

"It has grave implications on corporate morality... It is disquieting that it is happening all over the world. I am very disturbed and its a very bad sign," he added.

Its Bal Thackeray vs the Karkares over Kasab

Mumbai In a veiled criticism of slain ATS chief Hemant Karkare's wife and daughter, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray has said that the country does not share their stance that the lone 26/11 terrorist in Mumbai police custody should be let off on “humanitarian grounds”.
“The Karkare family may have a different opinion. But that is not the opinion of family members of the other policemen killed in the terror attacks,” Thackeray said in an editorial comment in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

“The daughter of Tukaram Ombale, who fell to Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman's bullets but ensured that the terrorist was captured alive, has said that the souls of the 16 policemen killed in the terror attacks will get peace only if he is hanged,” Thackeray said.

Referring to the slew of media interviews of Kavita Karkare, the slain ATS chief's wife, Thackeray said she has quoted her daughter who is studying in London and who feels that Ajmal should be given another chance to live and realise what a grave crime he has committed.

“Karkare's daughter should meet Ombale's daughter. We also respect Karkare's martyrdom and we are expressing our opinion while respecting Karkare's sacrifice,” Thackeray said.

Pak claims its probe on 26/11 attacks has made 'progress'
Islamabad Pakistan on Monday claimed that its own probe into the Mumbai attacks had made ‘progress’ and it was prepared to uncover ‘full facts’ about the terror strikes even as it accused India of refusing to cooperate in investigations into the ‘heinous crime’.
Describing as ‘most unfortunate’ Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's comments about the involvement of Pakistan's official agencies in the 26/11 attacks, his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani said Islamabad's own probe had made progress and it was prepared to take forward the information provided by New Delhi to uncover the ‘full facts’.

"Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, instead of reciprocating Pakistan's sincere sentiments to move forward towards establishing good, cooperative and friendly relations, has given a statement yesterday while addressing a meeting of chief ministers raising serious allegations in connection with the Mumbai attacks which is most unfortunate," Gilani said.

"Our own investigations into Mumbai have progressed. We have received some information of an interim nature on Indian investigations. We are prepared to take this process forward with a view to uncovering full facts, thus ensuring that the perpetrators of this heinous crime whosoever they may be are brought to justice," he added.

Pakistan had ‘not only made constructive proposals for mutual cooperation but also initiated actions and investigations on its own’ since November 26, when he attacks began in India's financial hub, Gilani said in a statement issued by the Prime Minister's media office.

"We are convinced that the only effective way of dealing with the common challenge of terrorism is to develop robust cooperation encompassing all relevant departments," Gilani said.

"India has not only refused to cooperate in the investigations pertaining to Mumbai but has chosen to undertake a media and diplomatic offensive against Pakistan. It is clearly unhelpful to any serious and objective investigations and amounts to unnecessarily whipping up tensions in South Asia," he said.

Gilani expressed "Pakistan's earnest desire to work towards building friendly and cooperative relations with India".

He said he had ‘great personal regard’ for Prime Minister Singh and was ‘hopeful that he will act with a great sense of responsibility in the larger interest of peace, security and prosperity of the peoples of South Asia’.

Addressing a conference on internal security in New Delhi on Tuesday, Singh had said the evidence gathered by investigators showed that ‘some official agencies’ of Pakistan had backed the Mumbai attacks.

India has blamed the Lashker-e-Toiba terror group for planning and executing the attacks that killed over 180 people.

Pakistan, which has said it is examining information provided by India in a dossier two days ago, wants the two countries to carry out a joint probe into the incident.

Who will follow Rajnath's orders, quips Shekhawat
Jaipur/New Delhi Virtually posing a challenge to the projection of L K Advani as BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate, former Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat on Thursday said he was the “senior most” among the saffron leaders and kept his options open on pitching for the top post.
Shekhawat, who has created a flutter within the BJP by declaring that he would contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, also hit out at the party president Rajnath Singh for his remarks that somebody who has held a constitutional post should not enter the electoral fray.

He told reporters that even former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee should contest if his health improves.

“Advaniji may be the PM candidate, but others too can contest Lok Sabha polls. He is not the only one contesting elections,” he told reporters in New Delhi, when asked about his opinion on Advani being the PM-in-waiting.

He said there were several senior leaders in BJP like Advani, Rajnath Singh and Jaswant Singh. “But age-wise I am the senior most,” he said.

Shekhawat said he will contest the Lok Sabha elections if the public demands and his health permits.

On whether the party took a hasty decision in nominating Advani as the Prime Ministerial candidate, he said, “the party is free to take a decision in this regard.”

When queried whether he had congratulated Advani when the latter was nominated as BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate, he replied in the negative saying, “I did not even know.”

Asked whether he could also be an ideal prime ministerial candidate as he has served as Vice-President, Shekhawat diplomatically quipped, "How can I say this on my own? It is for you all to say...If there is any such law I will take advantage of that."

Shekhawat said though he has not been a member of the BJP ever since he resigned after becoming country's Vice President, he will not change his decision of contesting the Lok Sabha polls, even if BJP stops him from doing so.

"There is no such law which says that a former Vice President cannot contest Lok Sabha polls," he said responding to Rajnath Singh's contention that Shekhawat should not contest general elections as he held a constitutional post.

Hitting out at the BJP president, Shekhawat said, "Rajnath was not even born when I came into politics. It will take time for him to understand BJP," adding, "Who will follow his orders..."

On Rajnath Singh's comment that those who have taken a dip in the Ganga should not bathe on wells, the former Vice President said, "I have taken a dip in the Ganga several times and I have also bathed on wells."

However, Shekhawat's comments were laced with clarifications that he had no differences with Advani. "Neither can I be against Advani nor can he be against me," he said.

Showing his photograph with Vajpayee and Advani, he said, "Since 1952, we have worked together not as party workers but one family...," Shekhawat said, adding he wished no harm came to the party.

On being a potential PM candidate of BJP, Shekhawat told a TV channel that "It all depends on the democratic system. If the system brings something, then I will have to see how it is."

He said he had conveyed to the BJP leadership that "if the public wants and my health permits, I will contest". "There should be no surprise in it (on his contesting). I am free to contest the elections. There is no legal obstacle to it."

Reacting to Rajnath Singh's remarks, Shekhawat said "His comments are quite wrong. He should have consulted me before talking anything about me and about what I said."

On the BJP chief's contention that the former Vice President should not enter politics after holding the Constitutional post, Shekhawat retorted, "I have not jumped into politics. I have been in politics. I have never left politics, whether I am a member of a political party or not. I am not away from politics."

Shekhawat, who served as chief minister of Rajasthan decades ago, was most scathing against BJP leader and former chief minister Vasundhara Raje. He confirmed that he had written a letter to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to probe all charges of corruption -- said to be to the tune of Rs 22,000 crore -- against Raje's government.

He said his return to electoral politics was triggered by increasing corruption in politics and the growing menace of money power.

Expressing concern over allegations of party tickets being sold during the recently held assembly elections in Rajasthan, Shekhawat said that corruption and infighting could harm the party.

"Myself, Atalji and Advanji, all three of us have built the party and would not like to see it disintegrate in front of our eyes," he said.

Asked whether he was disappointed with Vasundhara Raje's tenure as the Chief Minister as he had backed her candidature during the 2003 elections, Shekhawat said, "I am not disappointed but saddened that I made her the Chief Minister."

Shekhawat added that cleansing the party in the wake of corruption charges would only strengthen it. He, however, denied rumours that he had spoken to BSP chief Mayawati or Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh or that he was planning to join the fledgling Third Front.

SP fields Sanjay Dutt from Lucknow LS seat
New Delhi Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt may now play a role in politics with Samajwadi Party today deciding to field him as its candidate from Lucknow in the Lok Sabha polls.
Bhojpuri sensation Manoj Tiwari would be SP's candidates from Gorakhpur.

The party took the decision in its central parliamentary board meeting held here.

SP general secretary Amar Singh announced the decision to field 26 other candidates, including party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, from Mainpuri.

Since Sanjay Dutt was convicted under the Arms Act, the SP would seek the permission of the Supreme Court, where the matter is pending, and the Election Commission to field him.

Apparently referring to BJP MP Navjot Singh Sidhu, Singh said, "Like a BJP MP who is a known cricketer was allowed to contest despite being convicted, we too will try our best to field Dutt...if we fail, he would certainly be our star campaigner.

"Since we are an ally of Congress, and Dutt's sister Priya is a Congress MP, we hope Congress will be happy that we are fielding Dutt," he said. Singh hoped that senior Congress leaders, including Law minister Hansraj Bhardwaj and Ahmed Patel, would "bless" Dutt.

He claimed Dutt was willing to contest the elections.

The party would field Tiwari from Gorakhpur where he would be pitted against BJP's Aditya Nath who is heir apparent of the powerful Gorakhnath Peeth in the East UP city.

Collective Punishment of Gaza

By Don Hynes
No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Geneva Convention, Section 11, Article 33

January 07, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Israel has maintained a privileged relationship with the United States since a portion of Palestine was portioned to the newly created state of Israel in 1948 through United Nations Resolution 181, another British inspired “divide and rule” strategy which resulted in 780,000 Palestinian refugees.

This “privilege” continued to be guaranteed through a US based lobby for Israel both in the Congress and mainstream media, fortified in the American populace by a four decades long campaign to equate compassion for the suffering of European Jews during WWII and solidarity with the people of Israel into unquestioning support for the government of Israel and its foreign policies.

This “special relationship,” supported and defended by every American president since Eisenhower including president-elect Obama, became most emphatic during the last decade in which Israel retained suffering victim status under any circumstance with any and all Israeli military actions legitimized.

The recent attacks against Gaza extended this Israeli “privilege” to an unabashed bombardment of a tightly packed civilian area in which hundreds of people were killed whose only crime was being Palestinian. Review this web photo essay and evaluate Israel’s case for “self defense.”

Israel uses US financed armaments and munitions to wage war against a civilian population that it has caged for years in an urban prison camp, deprived of movement, food, energy or any reasonable degree of humanitarian support. The reported deaths extend to thousands of critically if not mortally wounded, suffering in ghetto like compounds where medical supplies and humanitarian aid are severely limited or unavailable due to Israeli embargo and military blockade.

Although the United Nations President called for sanctions against Israel and the Assembly of Nations was near unanimous in its condemnation of Israel’s attack, the US blocked censure through its veto power in the Security Council.

Lame duck president George Bush and his inept Secretary of State continued to parrot the near insane logic of blaming the only democratically elected political entity in the Palestinian territories (with no formal military defense force) for Israel’s aerial destruction and invasion of Gaza.

The people of Gaza have no hope in the US government and will find no solace or any viable assistance among their compromised and corrupt Arab neighbors who continue to supply Israel with fuel for their jets, bombers and tanks. Their only hope is in humanity, those who will penetrate the propaganda, be they Arab or Israeli, Jew, Christian or Muslim, and call upon their governments to not only censure but stop the war crimes of Israel and save the people of Gaza.

Don Hynes - Vantage Point http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21668.htm

Democrats have silenced dissent and offered unflinching support for Israeli actions, including gross violations of international law.

By Stephen Zunes

January 08, 2009 "AlterNet "January 06, 2009 The Democratic leadership's strident support for the ongoing Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip underscores how the Democrats suffer from the same illusions as the outgoing Republican administration: that placing an Arab territory under debilitating sanctions that punish the population as a whole, bombarding heavily populated civilian areas -- resulting in widespread casualties among innocent people -- and invading and occupying territories with a long history of resistance to outsiders will somehow lead to greater moderation from those afflicted.

The reality is that Israel's war against Hamas and the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip is no more likely to result in more rational and compromising positions from the Palestinian side than the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel will lead to more rational and compromising positions from the Israelis.

As a result, the hard-line militaristic position of the Democratic Party does not bode well for a more enlightened Middle East policy after eight disastrous years under President George W. Bush.

On Capitol Hill, resolutions are being prepared in the House and Senate to defend the Bush administration's policy of unconditional support for the Israeli assaults, which as of this writing have led to the deaths of 500 people, at least one-quarter of whom were civilians. Unless there is widespread public opposition, it appears that the overwhelming majority of congressional Democrats will vote along with their Republican colleagues in favor of these resolutions, thereby giving Israel a blank check to continue the carnage and, as a result, give Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups the excuse to continue their attacks against Israeli civilians as well.

Democrats Goad Israel Into War

In June, 38 of 49 Democratic senators -- including Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton of New York -- wrote a letter (PDF) to President Bush that Americans for Peace Now, a moderate Zionist group, warned would build "a defense, in advance, for a large Israeli military offensive in Gaza." The letter also urged the Bush administration to block any U.N. Security Council resolution critical of Israel, claiming that United Nations opposition to Israeli attacks against crowded urban areas constituted a refusal to "acknowledge Israel's right to self-defense." An almost identical letter in the House, drafted by House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., received the signatures of 150 of the body's 230 Democrats.

Americans for Peace Now noted that such an Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip would likely result in large-scale civilian casualties. In apparent anticipation of the large numbers of Palestinian deaths that would result from such military operations in the Gaza Strip, the House passed a resolution (PDF) in March, during an outbreak of fighting, that claimed, "Those responsible for launching rocket attacks against Israel routinely embed their production facilities and launch sites amongst the Palestinian civilian population, utilizing them as human shields." The resolution goes on to specifically condemn "the use of innocent Palestinian civilians as human shields by those who carry out rocket and other attacks" and yet again makes note of Palestinians who "continue to be utilized as human shields by terrorist organizations."
But according to Joe Stork of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, while Hamas failed to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians in the densely populated Gaza Strip, the watchdog group had found no instances of Hamas actually using human shields in the legally defined sense of deliberately using civilians as a means of deterring counterattacks. Despite my contacting the offices of more than a dozen Democratic members of Congress who supported the resolution -- all of whom are members of the so-called Progressive Caucus -- none of them could provide any examples of Hamas actually using human shields. It appears that the Democrats' goal in pushing through this resolution was to convince their constituents that it was the Palestinians, not the Israelis who were attacking them, who were responsible for civilian casualties and who would likewise be responsible for the far greater number of civilian casualties that would inevitably result from the Israeli bombardment and invasion which was to commence later that year.

The resolution also gave unqualified support for the Israeli government's attacks against the Gaza Strip, even as Amnesty International condemned Israel's "reckless disregard for civilian life" in its bombing and shelling of civilian population centers. The AI report also noted how the attacks by Palestinians against civilian-populated areas in Israel, which the report also roundly condemned, "does not make it legitimate for the Israeli authorities to launch reckless air and artillery strikes which wreak such death and destruction among Palestinian civilians."

Not a single one of the 230 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the resolution. (There were four abstentions, and 12 did not vote.) This sent a clear signal that there would be no opposition in Congress -- which provides over $4 billion annually in unconditional military and economic aid to the Israeli government -- for an even larger military assault against the Palestinian population of the enclave.

Democratic support for an Israeli war against the Gaza Strip went beyond such nonbinding resolutions. In apparent anticipation of the long-planned Israeli invasion of Gaza -- which was to begin just three months later -- the Democratic-controlled Congress voted in September to send 1,000 of the highly sophisticated GBU-39 missiles to Israel, which have been used on a large scale in the Israeli assault.

On Nov. 5, Israel launched a brief but significant military incursion into Gaza. Though the raid was a clear violation of the cease-fire that had been in place at the time, no criticism was heard in Washington. There had been a series of minor violations by both sides, but the magnitude of this raid appeared designed to provoke Hamas into letting the cease-fire lapse. Israel then tightened its siege of the Gaza Strip, prompting Human Rights Watch to note that "Israel's severe limitations on the movement of nonmilitary goods and people into and out of Gaza, including fuel and medical supplies, constitutes collective punishment, also in violation of the laws of war." Despite this, President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders continued to defend the sanctions.

Hamas appeared willing to renew its cease-fire in return for Israel lifting the blockade on humanitarian and other aid and ending its periodic raids into Gaza and assassinations of Hamas officials. However, Israel -- again, supported by Obama and Democratic congressional leaders -- refused. Now, however, despite these leading Democrats' opposition to nonmilitary means, which could have salvaged the cease-fire and prevented the rocket attacks into Israel, they are now claiming that Israel had "no choice" but to launch its massive assault on Gaza Strip in retaliation.

In a Dec. 28 interview, Obama's chief adviser David Axelrod appeared to align the president-elect with the Bush administration in its support for Israel's war on the Gaza Strip, citing an Obama statement from the summer, in which he said, "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Axelrod ignored the fact that since Israel had launched its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, rocket attacks against Israeli towns had actually increased. This raises concerns that an Obama administration, like the Bush administration, may be so ideologically committed to military solutions in political conflicts that it too will ignore even obvious failures.

Rationalizing Civilian Deaths



Amnesty International USA, in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on January 2, noted its dismay "at the lopsided response by the U.S. government to the recent violence and its lackadaisical efforts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza." The Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization went on to note, "Without diminishing the responsibility of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups for indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, the U.S. government must not ignore Israel's disproportionate response and the longstanding policies which have brought the Gaza Strip to the brink of humanitarian disaster."

Leading Democrats rushed to the administration's defense, however. As reports of widespread civilian casualties among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip from the Israeli attacks continued to pour in, Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., insisted that "When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., stated ,"I strongly support Israel's right to defend its citizens against rocket and mortar attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza." House Majority Leader Hoyer claimed, "Israel is acting in clear self-defense in response to heinous rocket attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza" and that Israel has "an unequivocal right" to engage in its military operations. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., whom the Democrats recently named to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, declared "Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week." Even prominent liberals, like Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., insisted that "This use of Gaza as a base from which to attack Israel left Israel with no choice except self defense."

These Democrats have been unable to explain how a number of the most deadly Israeli strikes, which took place nowhere near any legitimate military targets, constitute acts of self-defense. These have included the missile which struck a group of students leaving the U.N.-sponsored Gaza Training College in downtown Gaza, the bombing of a mosque during evening prayers, another missile attack centered in civilian neighborhoods in the crowded refugee camps of Jabalya and Rafah, as well as a series of attacks against the territory's one university. Scores of others who worked in government offices under the Hamas administration but had nothing to do with rocket attacks against Israel -- or any other military function of the Islamist party -- have been killed as well.

Yet some Democrats have gone as far as to simply deny that attacks against civilian targets are taking place at all. For example, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and its Middle East subcommittee, has insisted that (PDF), contrary to reports of reputable human rights groups, international journalists and other eyewitnesses, "The Israeli response has been a series of targeted strikes against Hamas militants, aimed directly at those who are launching the attacks on Israeli civilian population centers" and that "the Israeli military is taking extreme caution to limit civilian casualties."

The Democratic Party has a history of denying Israeli culpability in the deaths of civilians during military operations in the Gaza Strip. During an Israeli offensive against the territory in 2006, prior to Hamas' takeover of the Palestinian Authority, Amnesty International declared:
"The Israeli authorities' deliberate and wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure and property in the Gaza Strip amounts to a war crime. The destruction and the disproportionate and arbitrary restrictions imposed by the Israeli army on the movement of people and goods into and from the Gaza Strip also amount to collective punishment of the entire population. This violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits punishing protected persons for offences they have not committed."
Similarly, the International Red Cross, long recognized as the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, declared that Israel was violating the principle of proportionality, as well as the prohibition against collective punishment.

Despite this and similar reports by other reputable human rights groups, Democrats – with only nine dissenting votes – joined their Republican colleagues in passing a House resolution claiming Israel's attacks, which resulted in widespread civilian casualties, were "in accordance with international law." The resolution went on to rebuke reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch's criticisms of Israel's failure to distinguish between military and civilian targets by including language that praised Israel's "longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss" and welcomed "Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties."

The resolution also insisted that Israel's attacks were in accordance with "Article 51 of the United Nations Charter." However, Article 33 of the Charter requires all parties to "first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice," which Israel -- with the backing of most of these same congressional Democrats -- has refused to do. Article 51 does allow countries the right to resist an armed attack, but not the right to engage in massive and disproportional attacks against crowded urban population centers.

The 2006 resolution, sponsored by the late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., then the ranking Democratic member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, commended President Bush for "fully supporting Israel" in the face of widespread international opposition, including by some of the United States' closest allies.

With only nine dissenting Democratic votes in the 435-member body, this placed virtually the entire Democratic Caucus on the side of Bush against a broad consensus of the international community, including all major human rights organizations.

Opposing Peace Negotiations

It should come as no surprise that when negotiations are ruled out, war results. But instead of encouraging negotiations between Hamas and Israel, the Democratic Party has actively discouraged it.

Even President-elect Obama, who has expressed willingness to meet with leaders of Iran and other hard-line regimes, spoke out in early 2008 against any negotiations with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, which received the majority of seats in the most recent Palestinian parliamentary elections. Indeed, the Democrats -- led by Vice President-elect Joe Biden -- have criticized the Bush administration for allowing the Palestinian Authority to go ahead with free elections in the first place.

This opposition to peace talks comes despite polls showing that a majority of Israelis -- including the mayors of the Israelis towns on the receiving end of Hamas rocket attacks -- do support negotiations with Hamas. Unlike the Democratic Party, the Israeli public is much more cognizant of the fact that -- whether it be a short-term cease-fire, a permanent peace agreement or something in between -- ending the violence without such negotiations will be impossible. Indeed, at the very time Obama was rejecting the idea of talks with Hamas, senior members of the Israeli security establishment were urging the Israeli government to engage in such talks, arguing that any agreement made without Hamas would fail.

Furthermore, for a number of years, the Israelis have been regularly negotiating indirectly with Hamas through Egyptian intermediaries and Palestinian prisoners. Back when Hamas was in charge of local governments in some West Bank towns several years ago, there were direct talks on a number of logistical issues. The Democratic Party, however, insisted that such talks not take place -- apparently because the prospect of negotiations would get in the way of Israel's massive military offensive against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.

The Democratic Party's leadership has long argued that no talks should take place until Hamas formally recognizes Israel's right to statehood, yet many of these same Democrats have had no problems with meeting, and even providing support for, Israeli parties and political groups that insist that the Palestinians do not have the right to statehood, such as the Likud Bloc, which is favored to win the upcoming Israeli elections. In addition, a sizable majority of Democrats in Congress have gone on record insisting that an explicit Hamas recognition of Israel as a Jewish state be a precondition for ending sanctions and inclusion in the peace process, which is not only an unnecessary prerequisite for negotiating a long-term cease-fire, but is something which even the Israeli government has not demanded.

Silencing Democratic Critics

Democratic Party leaders have made it clear that any dissent from within the party to their right-wing position rejecting any contact with Hamas will not be tolerated.
For example, Robert Malley, who served as a National Security Council member and special assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs under the Clinton administration, was already under fire for having the temerity to object to the Bush administration's effort to organize a coup against Hamas, noting how, "Almost every decision the United States has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged." He had been serving as an informal adviser to Obama during the presidential race, but was forced to sever his ties with the campaign when it was revealed that, as part of his efforts to promote a cease-fire in his role with the International Crisis Group, he had met with Hamas officials. For the Obama campaign, such peace-making efforts simply could not be tolerated.

In an even better-known example, former President Jimmy Carter was quoted last spring as saying, "I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors … Hamas will have to be included in the process," adding, "I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative." He then met with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria.

Former presidents have historically been largely exempt from criticisms by elected officials of their own party. When it comes to expressing the opinion that the United States should figure out a way to include Hamas in negotiations, however, such courtesy quickly evaporated. Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, was immediately denounced by Democratic Party leaders. Steve Grossman, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee claimed, "Carter's views are antithetical to those in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. He does not speak for either [Clinton or Obama] in any shape or form, and I think there's pretty much unanimity on that point."

As a result of his efforts to avoid war, Carter was denied a major platform at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, the first time in memory that a former president had been denied such an honor at his party's quadrennial gathering.

It's important to remember that both Malley and Carter were leaders of NGOs whose very mandates are to engage in conflict resolution. What these Democrats appear to be saying is that the Bush administration's policy of not talking with those deemed undesirable should not just be the policy of the U.S. government, but every nongovernmental organization and private citizen as well.

But that policy is inconsistent. Through his role at the Carter Center, for example, Carter met with war criminals like Liberia's Charles Taylor, Haiti's Raoul Cedras and Uganda's Martin Ojul, with no complaints from these same Democratic leaders. Their opposition to Carter's willingness to speak with Hamas appears not to have been because of the group's role in war crimes but because Carter had hoped such dialogue might pave the way for a negotiated settlement. Indeed, a number of those who supported Carter's exclusion from the Democratic National Convention had themselves met with unsavory characters as well, including right-wing Cuban and Nicaraguan terrorist leaders, some of the worst dictators on the planet, and others with even more blood on their hands than Meshaal.

What Explains the Democrats' Position?

All this inevitably raises the question as to why, in a conflict where both sides are clearly at fault, the Democratic Party has chosen to put 100 percent of the blame on the Palestinian side and has unconditionally supported the actions of the Israelis, who are not only the more powerful of the two, but whose violations of international humanitarian law are many times greater than those of Hamas.

There are those who try to defend these Democratic hawks by claiming it would somehow be political suicide to oppose any resolution supporting Israeli military actions. But a recent Rasmussen poll indicates that Americans are closely divided regarding the legitimacy of Israel's attacks on Gaza Strip, with Democratic voters opposing the offensive by a 55 percent-to-31 percent margin. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict overall, 7 of 10 Americans believe the United States should not take sides -- yet another example of how out of step the Democratic leadership is with the American public.

Nor does this strident support for Israeli militarism have anything to do with a genuine concern for Israel's legitimate security interests, given that every previous effort to defeat Hamas militarily has backfired. Similarly, Israel's 2006 offensive against Lebanon's Hezbollah -- also overwhelmingly supported by congressional Democrats -- proved to be a disaster for Israel.

The primary factor for the Democratic leaderships' hawkish stance regarding the current conflict appears to be the relative inaction of the progressive base of the Democratic Party. Most rank-and-file Democrats, at least intuitively, recognize the fallacy of the Democratic leadership's militaristic line and are aware that support for the Bush administration Middle East policy has brought neither justice for the Palestinians nor security for Israel. At the same time, however, the grassroots of the party has failed to mobilize in a way that would let the party leadership know there is a price to pay for supporting such a right-wing agenda.

Despite their efforts to undermine international humanitarian law and rationalize for the killing of civilians, many of these Democratic supporters of Bush administration policy toward Israel and Palestine still receive the enthusiastic endorsements and PAC funding from MoveOn and other supposedly "progressive" political organizations.
The message to Democratic lawmakers, then, appears to be that the progressive community doesn't care about international humanitarian law, at least if the victims happen to be Arabs.

And, although American Israel Public Affairs Committee and allied right-wing groups have certainly played a role in limiting debate within the Democratic Party, their power is often so grossly exaggerated as to create a fatalistic view that it is not worth even trying to get these Democratic officials to support a more balanced policy on Israel and Palestine. This results in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy by leading progressive activists to blithely accept that otherwise progressive members of Congress embrace positions essentially identical to that of the Bush administration. Congressional staffers -- always off the record -- often play into anti-Semitic stereotypes by claiming that their boss is but a hapless victim of rich and powerful Jews behind the scenes and should therefore not be held accountable for his or her actions. It is profoundly disappointing that so many peace and human rights activists appear to fall for it.
If there is to be peace between Israel and Palestine, we must stop giving these Democratic hawks the benefit of the doubt or making excuses for them. This means engaging in protests at their speaking events and sit-ins in their offices. It means withholding campaign contributions, supporting progressive challengers in primary races and backing Green or other third-party challengers in the general election.
Until they know there is a political price to pay for their anti-Palestinian -- and ultimately anti-Israel -- positions, they will continue to push their right-wing foreign policy agenda. How the progressive community addresses the ongoing tragedy in the Gaza Strip in the coming days and weeks may determine the direction for the incoming Obama administration and the 111th Congress, not just in terms of U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine, but in foreign policy overall.

For ultimately, the issue is not about Hamas versus the Israeli government, or even Palestine versus Israel, but between supporters of international humanitarian law and those who believe the United States and its allies are somehow exempt.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and chairman of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21679.htm



http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680

The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.

This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas
reserves off the Gaza coastline.

British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated
Contractors International Company(CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and
Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year
agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.

The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60
percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the
Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz,
October 21, 2007).

The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction
of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).

The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is
contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below).
It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the
Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.

The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2.
Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion
cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the
figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine's gas reserves
could be much larger.


Map 1



Map 2

Who Owns the Gas Fields

The issue of sovereignty over Gaza's gas fields is crucial. From a legal
standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine.

The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the
ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de
facto control over Gaza's offshore gas reserves.

British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In
turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration
and development rights over the gas fields.

The election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 was a major turning
point. Palestine's sovereignty over the offshore gas fields was
challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. Sharon stated unequivocally
that "Israel would never buy gas from Palestine" intimating that Gaza's
offshore gas reserves belong to Israel.

In 2003, Ariel Sharon, vetoed an initial deal, which would allow British
Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza's offshore wells. (The
Independent, August 19, 2003)

The election victory of Hamas in 2006 was conducive to the demise of the
Palestinian Authority, which became confined to the West Bank, under the
proxy regime of Mahmoud Abbas.

In 2006, British Gas "was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to
Egypt." (Times, May, 23, 2007). According to reports, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to
shunting the agreement with Egypt.

The following year, in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal
by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "to buy gas from the Palestinian
Authority." The proposed contract was for $4 billion, with profits of
the order of $2 billion of which one billion was to go the
Palestinians.

Tel Aviv, however, had no intention on sharing the revenues with
Palestine. An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Israeli
Cabinet to thrash out a deal with the BG Group, bypassing both the Hamas
government and the Palestinian Authority:

"Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in
goods and services and insist that no money go to the
Hamas-controlled Government." (Ibid, emphasis added)


The objective was essentially to nullify the contract signed in 1999
between the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.

Under the proposed 2007 agreement with BG, Palestinian gas from Gaza's
offshore wells was to be channeled by an undersea pipeline to the
Israeli seaport of Ashkelon, thereby transferring control over the sale
of the natural gas to Israel.

The deal fell through. The negotiations were suspended:

"Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security
grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror". (Member of
Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on "The Intention of
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the
Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas," March 1, 2006,
quoted in Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Does the Prospective
Purchase of British Gas from Gaza's Coastal Waters Threaten
Israel's National Security? Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs, October 2007)


Israel's intent was to foreclose the possibility that royalties be paid
to the Palestinians. In December 2007, The BG Group withdrew from the
negotiations with Israel and in January 2008 they closed their office in
Israel.(BG website).

Invasion Plan on The Drawing Board

The invasion plan of the Gaza Strip under "Operation Cast Lead" was set
in motion in June 2008, according to Israeli military sources:

"Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud
Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the
operation over six months ago [June or before June] , even as
Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with
Hamas."(Barak Ravid, Operation "Cast Lead": Israeli Air Force
strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)


That very same month, the Israeli authorities contacted British Gas,
with a view to resuming crucial negotiations pertaining to the purchase
of Gaza's natural gas:

"Both Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and
Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi
Kugler agreed to inform BG of Israel's wish to renew the talks.

The sources added that BG has not yet officially responded to
Israel's request, but that company executives would probably
come to Israel in a few weeks to hold talks with government
officials." (Globes online- Israel's Business Arena, June 23,
2008)


The decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group)
coincided, chronologically, with the planning of the invasion of Gaza
initiated in June. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an
agreement with the BG Group prior to the invasion, which was already in
an advanced planning stage.

Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud
Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion was on the
drawing board and that a new political-territorial arrangement for Gaza
strip was being contemplated by Israel.

In fact, negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were
ongoing in October 2008, 2-3 months prior to the commencement of the
bombings on December 27th.

In November 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of
National Infrastructures instructed Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) to
enter into negotiations with British Gas, on the purchase of natural gas
from the BG's offshore concession in Gaza. (Globes, November 13, 2008)

"Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry
of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler wrote
to IEC CEO Amos Lasker recently, informing him of the
government's decision to allow negotiations to go forward, in
line with the framework proposal it approved earlier this year.

The IEC board, headed by chairman Moti Friedman, approved the
principles of the framework proposal a few weeks ago. The talks
with BG Group will begin once the board approves the exemption
from a tender." (Globes Nov. 13, 2008)


Gaza and Energy Geopolitics

The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the
sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of
international law.

What can we expect in the wake of the invasion?

What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine's Natural Gas
reserves?

A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or
"peacekeeping" troops?

The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for
Israel?

The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral
declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza's maritime areas?

If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into
Israel's offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the
Gaza Strip. (See Map 1 above).

These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel's
energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an
oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport - pipeline terminal
at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through
a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Ceyhan is the terminal of the Baku, Tblisi Ceyhan Trans Caspian
pipeline. "What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the
Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel's
Tipline." (See Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle
for Oil, Global Research, July 23, 2006)
The lying silence of those who know

By John Pilger

January 08, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- -"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war … we are appalled."

Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system … Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."

In describing a "holocaust-in-the making," Falk was alluding to the Nazis' establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings "Think," her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance." The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators – was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed." The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power." Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity."


When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years … Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible."

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility." Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than "intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries"?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity," as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21680.htm

As of Friday morning, more than 360,000 petitions have been sent!
Please add your voice to the thousands who are demanding: Stop the massacre in Gaza!

Please help get the word out - pass this message along, post it on local bulleting boards & Indymedia,

Sign the Petition Online Now - http://www.iacenter.org/gazapetition


Join the ONLINE PETITION initiated by Ramsey Clark - sign on and send the message to President Bush, President-Elect Obama, VP Cheney, VP-Elect Biden, Secretary of State Rice, Secretary of State designate Clinton, Congressional leaders, the U.N. Secretary General, Security Council, the Israeli President, Prime Minister and cabinet, and members of the world media appealing for Israel to Immediately Cease Its Murderous Bombing, Siege and Threatened Invasion of Palestinian Gaza





Urgent Appeal for Israel to Immediately Cease Its Murderous Bombing, Siege and Threatened Invasion of Palestinian Gaza!

To: President George W. Bush, President-Elect Barack Obama, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Designate Hillary Clinton, Vice President Richard Cheney, Vice President-elect Joe Biden, Congressional leaders, U.N. Secretary General Ban, U.N. General Assembly President d'Escoto-Brockmann, members of the U.N. Security Council, U.N. member states, the President, Prime Minister, Cabinet and Opposition leader of Israel, and Major media representatives:

For 60 years, Israel has persecuted the Palestinian people with impunity in defiance of United Nations General Assembly and United Nations Security Council Resolutions, orders of the International Court of Justice, International Law and fundamental human rights.

Throughout the years, Israel has proclaimed itself the victim as it grew richer, more powerful and more violent, while
URGENT!
The International Action Center is mobilizing for demonstrations across the U.S. to stop the attack on Gaza, and we are networking with activists across the globe who are taking to the streets against U.S./Israeli war crimes. To view a roundup of the growing number of international actions, see: http://www.iacenter.org/palestine/gazademos123108.

Please consider making an emergency donation at http://www.iacenter.org/donate
to help with the costs of organizing and mobilizing.
NYC: Gaza Massacre: Emergency Demonstration - Sat. Jan. 3, 1 pm, Times Square

Emergency Demo in Boston, Sat, Jan 3: Stop the US/Israeli Attack on Gaza!

LA event Friday at 4:30 pm at the Israeli Consulate at 6380 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles

Solidarity with heroic Gaza: Statement from the International Action Center - Dec. 27, 2008 / also en Español

Video: Support for Gaza!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4hejAqOUMY&feature=channel_page
Palestinians were abused, impoverished, divided and demeaned.

A consistent tactic of Israel through all the years has been to divide Palestinians against their most effective organizations. Through most of the recent years Israel has attacked Fatah. Now it is Hamas that Israel attacks. But there is only one Palestinian people and there can be only one Palestinian State. This has been the guiding principle of the PLO. Israel's policy has always been to destroy the possibility of a Palestinian State. Its criminal assault on Hamas is in truth Israel's continuing assault on the possibility of a Palestinian State: divide and conquer.

Now in the waning days of the disastrous Bush Administration, the government of Israel with its Prime Minister under criminal indictment, is testing whether world opinion will permit it to escalate its isolation and impoverishment of Palestine and selective and systematic assassination of Palestinian leadership in Gaza to a genocidal, indiscriminate assault and invasion of Palestinian Gaza, knowing full well its acts will inflame passions throughout the Middle East and Arab and Muslim worlds risking conflict of disastrous magnitude in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, even between India and Pakistan.

Beyond crushing Gaza's capacity to resist and imposing its final solution on Palestinians, Israel is seeking confrontation that will lead to war with the U.S., the European Union, and NATO fighting for Israel against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan to impair their ability to prevent expansion of Israel's domination of the region while the "only one President at a time" the U.S. has, George W. Bush, will support Israel, finding all fault with Gaza.

In these dangerous and difficult days and hours the undersigned call upon the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, NATO members, and European countries independently, the governments of Asia, foremost China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, the nations of Africa, and the Americas to demand an immediate ceasefire throughout Israel and Palestine and the assurance of peace. All borders to Gaza, Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, must be opened for humanitarian relief and a complete arms and trade embargo on Israel until it fully complies with all the requirements of permanent peace.

We call upon all the people, the ultimate power in every nation when organized and energized, to take to the streets where they live and demand that their governments do all in their power to cause Israel to stop its war of aggression against Palestine and for all parties to pursue peace and for Israel, the U.S. and other nations who have provided material support for Israel's aggression to be held accountable for the deaths, injuries and damage Israel has inflicted.

We call upon governments and humanitarian agencies to provide all needed emergency relief to Palestine - medical care, food, humanitarian supplies, shelter; and on all the media that truly seeks peace, justice and respect for the equal dignity of every child, woman and man on earth to headline the demand that Israel stop its aggression immediately. All parties must engage in continuous negotiation with all Palestinians until a one state solution is agreed or the state of Palestine as mandated not later than October 1948 in UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947) is created, fully implemented, and Palestine thrives.

Sincerely,

Initiated and signed by
Ramsey Clark, winner, 2008 U.N.Human Rights Award and Founder, International Action Center
Add your signature to this letter now - go to http://www.iacenter.org/gazapetition


The CIA/Mossad disinformation is continuous, lies and fabrications about 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine, etc.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Where-Lies-Truth-in-the-La-by-Rowan-Wolf-090106-255.html
January 6, 2009 at 23:54:11

Where Lies Truth in the Land of Lies?
by Rowan Wolf Page 1 of 1 page(s)
www.opednews.com


I receive news updates from the UN news wire. Yesterday a headline read "U.S. thwarts cease-fire endorsement ." A pretty damning headline indeed. With the wire information was links to two articles that supposedly published the press release. One was to an AP article at TheStar.com. The other was to a Reuters article The Globe and Mail.

The UN press release posted at SmartBrief reads as follows:

UN Wire | 01/05/2009

While Arab, European and United Nations leaders have put their weight behind calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, the U.S. has blocked a Security Council statement to that effect. Globe and Mail (Toronto), The (01/03) Toronto Star, The (01/03)


Following the links, the Reuters report at Globe and Mail is titled "U.S. thwarts Libya at UN." The slant of the article implies that Libya's proposal went too far and that the U.S. refusal was not really out of line with the rest of the Security Council. Clearly not what is implied by the UN Wire release.

The AP report at The Star is titled "Arabs pressure UN on Gaza." Takes largely the same tack and spin as Reuters. Namely stating that the "Arab" countries were pushing the Security Council for a cease fire. It never even mentions that it is the U.S. that refused to vote for a cease fire.

This is a clear example of the "invisible hand" influencing what actually comes to the public eye.

It is clear from the UN Wire press release that all of the Security Council except the United States supported the cease fire proposal. In that statement, it does not frame it as "Arab" nations pushing and the Security Council refusing to be persuaded. Why then do two major news services (which are picked up by multiple major news papers as well as broadcast and cable news networks) totally reframe the events?

Welcome to freedom of the press and an informed public.

www/uncommonthought.com/mtblog/
Rowan Wolf is an activist and sociologist living in Oregon. She is the founder and principle author of Uncommon Thought Journal, and a Senior Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online with her own page being CJO's Avenger.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/link.php?id=79009

Dr. King, McKinney and Obamaþ
Glen Ford - Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
Wed 1/07/09
Black Agenda Report

The global reputation of Black America has suffered greatly under
George Bush, who deployed Black faces as fronts for his vicious brand
of U.S. imperialism. Barack Obama's silence on the Israeli assault on
Gaza suggests that his honeymoon with the planet won't last long. So
who is to represent the progressive values of African Americans on
the world stage? "Thanks to Cynthia McKinney, millions of Arabs have
been made aware of a different Black America, one that is not silent,
like Barack Obama, in the face of a purposely inflicted human rights
catastrophe."


"Dr. King and Obama represent opposing moral and political camps."

The two days touch: Dr. Martin Luther King's Birthday observance and
Barack Obama's presidential inauguration, January 19 and 20,
respectively. To many, the juxtaposition is self-evident confirmation
of the intersection of the two men's missions on Earth. Dr. King's
journey, which ended with his murder, and Obama's ascent to the
presidency, are seen to merge as the dates approach to form a
perfect, tragic-glorious symmetry - a 48-hour revelation.

The coincidence of the calendar makes for good copy and grand
sermons, but in fact reveals a great moral and political dissonance.
It is true that there could have been no Obama presidency had Dr.
King and the movement he sprang from not existed, but that simple
fact of history does not amount to a King benediction from the grave
for Obama's moral character and political policies. Indeed, Dr.
King's life and words are indelible evidence that he and Obama
represent opposing moral and political camps.

Tens of millions of African Americans - who did not choose the little-
known Obama to be their champion, but supported him near-universally
at the polls once his candidacy had been made "viable" - will
celebrate vicarious attainment of power when Obama is sworn in. Yet
when confronted on Obama's political agenda, enough of which has been
put in motion and otherwise made plain since Election Day, few Black
Obama supporters can mount a cogent defense. "Better than McCain"
doesn't cut it, anymore.

"Few Black Obama supporters can mount a cogent defense of his
positions."

When the New York Times describes the emerging Obama administration
as "center-right," there is not much for an honest progressive to
defend - and most African Americans are progressive on economic
issues and questions of war and peace. Beyond a ritual counting of
the president-elect's African American appointees, most African
Americans seem oblivious to the political nature of his Cabinet, his
policy pronouncements and shameful silences. More likely, they
pretend to be oblivious so as not to lose that once-in-a-lifetime
feeling that happened when the Black man won.

Blacks who have taken on the task of defending Obama, often wind up
revealing themselves as persons of little moral or political
substance, in the process. New York's Dr. Leonard Jeffries is one of
the more prominent Obamists, a self-styled Pan-Africanist. In my
second debate involving Jeffries, in Baltimore, December 20 (the
first was the week before, in Harlem), he repeated his mantra, that
Blacks should "study Obama-ology." I asked him to define this area of
study. "Obama-ology," said Jeffries, visibly exasperated by my
questioning of the obvious, "is the study of Obama. How he raised so
much money...how he used the Internet...."

Dr. Jeffries' response revealed his position to have no political or
moral content. He genuflected before Obama because the candidate
raised hundreds of millions of dollars (from whom and in return for
what?) and created an Internet network (to what end, beyond Election
Day?). Most importantly, Obama was a hero because he won. What else
is there to know or say?

"None of the Obamites were even minimally capable of defending their
guy's record."

At the Harlem debate, an Obama defender kept shouting into her
mic, "Obama won! Black people have spoken!" - as if any discussion of
his political positions was extraneous, or racially subversive, on
its face. The woman was a leader of the group that organized the
debate, but like others in her organization clearly did not really
want a debate. None of the Obamites were even minimally capable of
defending their guy's record on the bailout, his retention of George
Bush's defense secretary and plans to expand U.S. military manpower,
his positioning of bankers at the controls of his new
administration's economic machinery, his support for AFRICOM, his key
advisors' advocacy of "humanitarian" military intervention - on not
one point did the Obama camp offer anything that could reasonably be
called a defense, coherent or otherwise.

It is not simply that the Obamites failed to muster a defense in
Harlem or Baltimore or other venues; admittedly, it is difficult to
defend the indefensible. What is most shocking - maddening - is their
rejection of any political or moral standard for evaluating the soon-
to-be Black president. All that remains is the fact of Obama's power
and the delusion that Blacks somehow share in that power. There is no
thought of speaking Truth to Power, and certainly no place for a
moral compass in such a valueless void.
We can understand, then, how such people would imagine Obama and Dr.
King to be soul mates. The fact that one of these men fought his
whole life against the forces of militarism and economic
exploitation, while the other empowers, and is empowered by, bankers
and militarists, does not register on their anaesthetized moral and
political sensors.

"There is no thought of speaking Truth to Power, and certainly no
place for a moral compass."

If the Obamites had more presence of mind, they would be avoid
comparisons with Dr. King, which can only redound to Obama's great
detriment. King's break with his onetime ally, President Lyndon
Johnson, set the standard for both political and moral behavior. When
it became clear that the War on Poverty was doomed by the war in
Vietnam, which acted "like some demonic destructive suction tube,"
devouring all available resources, King publicly declared against the
war. In doing so, he severed what had been the most productive
relationship between an American president and a Black leader in U.S.
history. But the war gave him no choice, since military expenditures
made "rehabilitation" of the American poor impossible. Both morality
and politics led to the same conclusion: the Movement could not
coexist with war.

The lesson is directly applicable today, but Americans, Black and
white, find it difficult to recognize the characters. Obama is Lyndon
Johnson. National revitalization, including redress of historical
African American grievances, is impossible unless military
expenditures are dramatically reduced. But Obama is committed to
putting 100,000 new pairs of Marine and Army "boots on the ground,"
an expanded war in Afghanistan/Pakistan, a beefed up AFRICOM, and a
generally bigger U.S. military footprint on the planet. This, in the
midst of global economic collapse.

Dr. King would find creative ways to confront President Obama's
militarism, and to actively resist further diversion of public wealth
to the bankers. Were he to survey the current political scene, King
would be most impressed, not with the Obamas party plans for the
night after his birthday, but with the way that a daughter of Georgia
salvaged Black America's moral reputation at the beginning of
Israel's assault on Gaza.

"Not all African Americans have morphed into warmongering clones of
Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice."

Cynthia McKinney's attempted voyage of solidarity with the besieged
people of Gaza on the medical relief boat Dignity, rammed and almost
sunk by Israeli warships, reminds the world that not all African
Americans have morphed into warmongering clones of Colin Powell and
Condoleezza Rice. Thanks to the presence of the former Georgia
congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate on the mission,
millions of Arabs have been made aware of a different Black America,
one that is not silent, like Barack Obama, in the face of a purposely
inflicted human rights catastrophe.

Cynthia McKinney is Black America's moral emissary to the world. She
exemplifies the Black America that consistently opposes U.S. military
adventures abroad, a people that recognize organized racism when they
see it, and therefore condemn Israel's treatment of Palestinians -
the Black America that Martin Luther King came from.

Some of us are still in our right minds. Hopefully, most of the
others will recover, sooner rather than later.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

The Gaza Ghetto Uprising
Joseph Massad
The Electronic Intifada
4 January 2009
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10110.shtml

Nazi troops round up Polish Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in
May 1943. (Photographer Unknown)



One is often baffled by the ironies of international relations and
the alliances they foster. Take for example the Israeli colonial
settlement that had declared war on the Palestinian people and
several Arab countries since its inception while at the same time it
built alliances with many Arab regimes and with Palestinian leaders.

While Hashemite-Zionist relations and Maronite Church-Zionist
relations have always been known and documented, there has been less
documentation of the services that Israel has provided and continues
to provide to Arab regimes over the decades. It is now recognized
that Israel's 1967 invasion of Egypt aimed successfully to destroy
Gamal Abdul-Nasser, the enemy of all US dictatorial allies among the
Arab regimes, whom the US and before it Britain and France had tried
to topple since the 1950s but failed. Israel thus rendered a great
service to Arab monarchies (and a few republics) from "the ocean to
the Gulf," whose survival was threatened by Nasser and Nasserism.
Israel's subsequent intervention in Jordan in 1970 to help the
Jordanian army destroy Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)
guerrillas and its final crushing of that organization in its massive
invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 were also important services it
rendered to these same regimes threatened by the
PLO's "revolutionary" potential and its sometimes recalcitrant
positions. Israeli intelligence has also provided over the decades
crucial information to several Arab regimes enabling them to crush
their political opposition and strengthen their dictatorial rule.
Prominent examples among recipients of Israeli intelligence largesse
include the Moroccan and the Omani dictatorships.

Israel's services to Arab regimes continue apace. Its 2006 invasion
of Lebanon, engineered to destroy Hizballah, was cheered by Arab
regimes and neoliberal Arab intellectuals hostile to Hizballah and
employed exclusively by Saudi media outlets. Though the massive
Israeli destruction of southern Lebanon and south Beirut and the
massacres of more than a thousand Lebanese strengthened Hizballah and
weakened Israel's military standing, the invasion was much
appreciated by Israel's Arab allies. Indeed since 2006, Israel's Arab
regime allies as well as neoliberal Arab intellectuals have been
openly calling on it to neutralize the so-called Iranian "threat" for
its own sake and at their behest as well. The US has seen this as an
opportune moment to fully integrate Israel in the region, so much so
that it signaled to its Gulf allies to make proposals for a new
regional alliance that includes Israel in its midst. The Bahraini
foreign minister suggested a few weeks ago that Israel join the Arab
League. Many such proposals have already been made in the past few
months welcoming the colonial settlement to the regional alliance
against Iran.

Since 2006, Arab regimes, neoliberal Arab intellectuals, as well as
the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority (PCA) in Ramallah have
reached an understanding that only Israel will be able to save them
from Hizballah and Hamas, both organizations constituting a threat to
the open alliance Arab regimes have with the US and Israel against
Iran and all progressive forces in the region. These were not closely
guarded secret hopes, but strategies that were openly discussed in
private meetings, which often spilled into the public realm. The
discussions in the Arab media and the declarations made by Israeli
officials in the context of the ongoing Israeli massacres of the one
and a half million Palestinians in Gaza in the last 10 days have left
little to the imagination. A veritable open alliance now exists
between the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority, Arab regimes, and
Israel with the support of neoliberal Arab intellectuals, wherein
Israel is subcontracted to decimate the Hamas government -- the only
democratically elected government in the entire Arab world.

Here let us remember that Hamas was democratically elected in free
elections and that its elected officials and members of parliament
were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation and have been languishing in
Israeli jails for years, and that the Palestinian Collaborationist
Authority set their offices on fire, staged strikes against them, and
signaled the PCA bureaucracy not to follow their orders. It was after
all this failed to dislodge Hamas from power that the US, Israel, and
the PCA staged a coup to massacre Hamas leaders in Gaza that
backfired on them. The carnage unleashed by Israel in the last 10
days is the latest attempt by Israel to ensure that all Arabs and all
Palestinians are ruled by dictators and never by democratically
elected officials.

Many are wondering how the Arab regimes and the PCA can be so brazen
in their "treachery" of the Palestinians. "Don't they fear being
overthrown by the people?" is an oft-repeated question. The answer of
course is a resounding "no." It is true that collaboration with
Israel by Arab regimes is not new, and that what is new is merely
their openness about it, but there is a perfectly good reason for
this. In the 1940s and the 1950s, these regimes could not declare
openly their alliance with Israel, as there were popular and
international forces that would have removed them from power had they
done so. Indeed, some at the time flirted with alliances that
unofficially included Israel, like the Baghdad Pact, but they paid a
heavy price for such collaboration. The Cold War, Third World
revolutionism, Arab nationalism, the Soviet Union, China, Nasser,
were all factors to be considered. While a few of these factors had
remained when Egypt's Sadat declared his open alliance with the US
and Israel in the late 1970s, none of these factors remains today.
The US, Israel, and their major Arab allies have neutralized these
forces one by one since 1967, opening the way for this brazen
alliance between Israel and the Arab dictatorships, all of which are
in the service of US interests in the region. These Arab regimes rule
by terror and fear and have at their disposal the best secret police
and repressive security apparatus that the US can train and equip and
which oil money and US aid can buy.

When Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was asked point blank by al-
Jazeera's anchorman if Israel had an arrangement with Arab regimes to
commit the Gaza massacres, she refused to answer and finally denied
such an arrangement existed but could not help but affirm that there
are those in the Arab world who "think" as Israel does and that Hamas
is their enemy as it is the enemy of Israel. This is, incidentally,
the same Tzipi Livni, who only a few weeks ago informed Palestinian
citizens of Israel that she has slated them for denationalization and
deportation to the Palestinian Bantustans once Israel and the
international community grants these West Bank prisons the status of
an independent Palestinian state enclosed within the apartheid wall.
After her war on Palestinians in Gaza started last week, Livni
declared that her war against the Palestinian people is not only
about security but also about Israel's "values" which non-
collaborator Palestinians (unlike the PCA) do not share. Livni is of
course right. Unlike Livni and the Israeli leadership, whose ethnic-
cleansing ideals and plans are to make Israel a purely Jewish state
that is Palästinenser-rein, most Palestinians believe that they
should remain present on their lands even and especially if this
sullies the purity of a Jewish Israel.

Livni has also asserted that Israel's values are shared by the "free
world" and by unfree Arab regimes that are allies of the "free
world." We can add, that her values are also shared by Saudi-funded
neoliberal Arab intellectuals and by the leadership of the
Palestinian Collaborationist Authority ensconced in the Green Zone of
Ramallah. The civilized values of Israel are not unlike those
espoused by the US in its ongoing wars against Arabs and Muslims, and
are very much like European colonial values during the high age of
colonialism and beyond. Livni and the Israeli leadership speak of
human rights, democracy, peace, and justice as universal while
applying them only to Jews and denying them especially to
Palestinians. This is hardly an Israeli ruse. Let us remember the
undying words of Frantz Fanon in this regard: "leave this Europe
where they never tire of talking of man, yet murder men everywhere
they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in
all the corners of the globe."

On the Palestinian front, the term of chief Palestinian collaborator
and coup leader Mahmoud Abbas ends on 9 January. Israel hopes to
extend his collaborationist rule as head of the PCA it set up through
the Oslo agreement in 1993. As Palestinians are murdered and injured
in the thousands, world powers are cheering on. This is hardly a new
development. It happens often in the context of other populations
being murdered by allies of the US and Europe, and it even happened
during World War II as the Nazi genocide was proceeding. On 19 April
1943, Britain and the US met in Bermuda, presumably to discuss the
situation of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. That was also the day when
the Nazis had launched their war against the remaining Jews in the
Warsaw Ghetto but were met with unexpected courageous resistance.
Little came out of the Bermuda Conference and the ongoing war against
the Warsaw Ghetto proceeded uninterrupted. The Jewish resistance in
the Warsaw Ghetto executed Jewish collaborators with the Nazis and
bravely faced up to the Nazi army with what little weapons it had
before being massacred. Their uprising was always inspirational to
the Palestinians. In the heyday of the PLO as a symbol of Palestinian
liberation, the organization would lay flower wreathes at the Warsaw
Ghetto monument to honor these fallen Jewish heroes.

Szmul Zygielbojm was the leader of the Jewish socialist party, the
Bund, in Poland and was part of the resistance against the Nazi
invasion in 1939. He would later become a hostage held by the Nazis
but would later be released and made a member of the Jewish council
or judenrat, the Nazi equivalent of the Israeli-created Palestinian
Collaborationist Authority, and which was charged with building a
Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Zygielbojm opposed the Nazi order and fled
to Belgium, France, the US, and in 1942 ended up in London where he
joined the Polish government in exile. On 12 May 1943, after he
received word that the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto was finally
crushed and many of its fighters killed, Zygielbojm turned on the gas
in his London flat and committed suicide in protest against the
indifference and inaction of the Allies to the plight of the Jews in
Nazi-occupied Europe. He also felt that he had no right to live after
his comrades were killed resisting the Nazis. In his suicide letter,
Zygielbojm insisted that while the Nazis were responsible for the
murder of the Polish Jews, the Allies, through their inaction, were
also guilty:
The latest news that has reached us from Poland makes it clear beyond
any doubt that the Germans are now murdering the last remnants of the
Jews in Poland with unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto
the last act of this tragedy is now being played out.

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish
nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it
out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the
peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to
this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking
on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions, tortured
children, women and men they have become partners to the
responsibility ...

I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of
Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My
comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the
last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together
with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave.

By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest
against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the
destruction of the Jewish people ...
The Palestinian Collaborationist Authority that runs the judenrat set
up by Oslo has never even attempted to resist Israeli orders. Not one
member of the top leadership decided to resign and not serve. Mahmoud
Abbas, having provided so many dishonorable services to Israel, lacks
Zygielbojm's integrity and noble principles and would never follow in
Zygielbojm's footsteps.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian people will resist the invading Israelis
with all their might and against astronomical odds. The Palestinian
people, like Zygielbojm before them, understand very well that Abbas,
his clique, the Arab regimes, the US and Europe are all culpable in
their slaughter as much as Israel is. In the case of Zygielbojm, he
blamed world powers for their indifference and inaction, in the
Palestinian case, world and regional powers are co-conspirators and
active partners in crime.

The crushing of the Gaza Ghetto Uprising and the slaughter of its
defenseless population will be relatively an easy task for the giant
Israeli military machine and Israel's sadistic political leadership.
It is dealing with the aftermath of a strengthened Palestinian
determination to continue to resist Israel that will prove much more
difficult for Israel and its Arab allies to deal with. While the
thousands of dead and injured Palestinians are the main victims of
this latest Israeli terrorist war, the major political loser in all
this will be Abbas and his clique of collaborators. The test for
Palestinian resistance now is to continue to refuse to grant Israel
the right to conquer populations, to steal their land, to destroy
their livelihoods, to imprison them in ghettos, and to starve them
without being resisted.

The only constant in Palestinian lives for the last century of
Zionist atrocities has been resistance to the Zionist project of
erasing them from the face of the earth. While Zionism sought and
recruited Arab and Palestinian collaborators since its inception in
the hope of crushing Palestinian resistance, neither Israel nor any
of its collaborators has been able to stop it. The lesson that
Zionism has refused to learn, and still refuses to learn, is that the
Palestinian yearning for freedom from the Zionist yoke cannot be
extinguished no matter how barbaric Israel's crimes become. The Gaza
Ghetto Uprising will mark both the latest chapter in Palestinian
resistance to colonialism and the latest Israeli colonial brutality
in a region whose peoples will never accept the legitimacy of a
racist European colonial settlement in their midst.

Joseph Massad is associate professor of modern Arab politics and
intellectual history at Columbia University in New York.

US had unrealistic goals in Afghanistan: Report


http://www.counterpunch.org/fernandez01072009.html

January 7, 2009
WASHINGTON: The United States and its partners have shortchanged Afghanistan by focusing on short-term goals pursued without a cohesive strategy or
a clear understanding of the way the poor, decentralized country works, an independent study concludes.
The incoming Obama administration should refocus the US war and rebuilding effort in Afghanistan and think of the project as the work of a decade at least, according to the report compiled by the United States Institute of Peace.

The assessment was set for release Thursday at a conference to be attended by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Army Gen. David Petraeus, who is in charge of the Afghan and Iraq wars.

Petraeus' own review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is expected to be presented to Obama week after he takes office Jan. 20. The plan would shift the focus from the waning fight in Iraq to the escalating Afghan battle.

President George W. Bush's in-house Iraq and Afghanistan adviser has already done a separate assessment; it has not been made public.

"The Bush administration has had all but eight months of its entire tenure to stabilize Afghanistan and here it is January and one of the top foreign policy priorities for the Obama administration is to stabilize Afghanistan,'' said J. Alexander Thier, an Afghan scholar at the institute.

Thier, the report's editor, does not place all blame with the Bush administration, which led an invasion of Afghanistan shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Other countries and international organizations have too often set unrealistic or shortsighted goals for a country unaccustomed to topdown government and where subsistence agriculture is the norm, he said.

The study includes essays by scholars in a range of fields. The U.S. military is preparing to pour at least 20,000 extra troops into southern Afghanistan to cope with a Taliban insurgency that is fiercer than NATO leaders expected. The new troops will augment the 12,500 NATO soldiers, mainly British, Canadian and Dutch, in what amounts to an Afghan version of the surge in Iraq.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the US can expect to commit significant numbers of soldiers there for several more years. Gates said he will not have to cut troop levels further in Iraq to free up at least two of those three brigades for Afghan duty.

When the additions are complete, the number of US troops in Afghanistan will climb to more than 50,000. Some 31,000 US troops are there now.

Violence in Afghanistan has spiked in the past two years. Taliban militants now control wide swaths of countryside. Military officials say they have enough troops to win battles but not to hold territory, and they hope the influx of troops, plus the continued growth of the Afghan army, will change that.

In 2008, 151 US troops died in Afghanistan, more than in any of the seven years since the invasion to oust the Taliban. US officials warn violence will probably intensify next year.

The institute is an independent, nonpartisan institution established by Congress in 1984 to help prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and increase peace building capacity.

Sri Lanka Army claims capture of more LTTE territory
8 Jan 2009, 1832 hrs IST, ANI
COLOMBO: A spokesman of the Sri Lanka military said on Thursday that government troops have taken more territory from Tamil Tiger rebels in the
northern Jaffna peninsula.

Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said in a press conference that the army has seized the town of Pallai and hopes to recapture the entire northern part of the country soon.

Pallai is south of Muhamalai, the northernmost defensive line of the rebels in Jaffna, which the troops captured on Tuesday. The Tigers have not yet commented on the latest fighting in Jaffna.

He said that the army's key objective is to open up the strategically located Elephant Pass, to allow free movement between Jaffna and the mainland.

Government troops are already at the southern end, he added.

The LTTEs' administrative and political capital, Kilinochchi, fell to Sri Lankan troops last week.

The rebels have been fighting for the separate homeland for the past 25 years. At least 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Israel's Monopoly on Psychological Suffering

The Trauma Vortex
By BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ

B ased on the tallies currently being produced by Israeli towns located in the haphazard line of Qassam rocket fire, it appears that the bulk of Israel's civilian casualties in its war on Gaza will once again be shock related.

This was the case in the July 2006 war on Lebanon, during which the Israeli Health Ministry reported that 4,262 wounded Israeli civilians were treated in hospitals; this total was broken down into 33 seriously wounded patients, 68 moderately wounded, and 1,388 lightly wounded, with the remaining 2,773 treated for "shock and anxiety." The UN Commission of Inquiry on Lebanon, meanwhile, cited the Lebanese authorities' claim of 4,409 wounded Lebanese civilians­the only attempt at classification of casualties being a chart listing 56 different "collective massacres" conducted by Israeli forces during the war, with identifying labels such as: "Air raids struck heavily on the funeral procession of the victims of the previous day['s] air raids."

BBC News reported different figures in its August 2006 civilian casualty scorecard for the war, according to which there were 32 seriously wounded Israelis, 44 moderately wounded Israelis, 614 lightly wounded Israelis, 1,985 Israelis treated for shock, and 3,697 wounded Lebanese. Israeli casualties were thus still overwhelmingly shock related, while the Lebanese were still:
a lump sum.
not affected by acute stress disorders.

The same trend will most likely hold for Gaza­and not only because it is difficult for hospitals to accommodate people with heightened norepinephrine levels when they cannot accommodate people with missing limbs.

I awoke this past Sunday morning to find that 1 Israeli in Sderot had been lightly wounded, 4 Israelis had been treated for shock, and 23 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza since midnight. After performing a Google search of the terms "Palestinians treated for shock"­which mainly produced articles about Israelis being treated for shock due to Palestinian behavior­I phoned a Palestinian friend in Lebanon in an attempt to determine why enemies of Israel did not enjoy the luxury of psychological conditions. The investigation was conducted in modified English, the idiomatic form on which Hassan and I relied for all of our communications:

ME: Do Arabs ever go to hospital for problem with head?
HASSAN: Arab he don't have head.

This hypothesis would undoubtedly have been endorsed by ex-Israeli premier Golda Meir, who might have used it to back up her argument that Palestinians were not real people. Other possible excuses for the traditional embargo on Palestinian shock included the following:
The Palestinians were used to having bombs fall on their heads.
It was the Palestinians' own fault that bombs were falling on their heads.
Shock had become the exclusive property of Israel's international sympathy campaign, as had the words "hail," "shower," and "barrage."

The Health section of Sunday's online edition of the Jerusalem Post offered some insight into the unique phenomenon of Israeli shock. The main article was entitled "Escaping the trauma vortex," which­although it sounded more like instructions for breaking down the Rafah border crossing­turned out to be the goal of Somatic Experiencing (SE), a self-healing philosophy that had recently been advertised in Sderot.

The article begins on a Friday morning at the "bomb-proofed Sderot Resiliency Center," where visiting SE guru Gina Ross of Los Angeles is presiding in front of a rapt audience of health care professionals and social workers. According to the author of the article, the meeting has been auspiciously timed given the fragility currently felt by Israelis in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip, most of whom are nonetheless described as "sleeping in on the first day of the weekend." A corresponding estimate of how many Gazans sleep in on Friday mornings is not provided.

The "upbeat" Ms. Ross describes the purpose of SE as replacing the "trauma vortex" with a "healing vortex." The trauma vortex is the result of "an uncompleted biological response to threat, which leaves the system in an excessively high level of arousal, with thwarted movements of defense frozen in time"; the healing vortex occurs when victims learn how to "thaw the freeze and release the sensory motor expressions of trauma-based emotions." Ross enthusiastically contends that the replacement process is sometimes possible in only a few sessions, even with years of buildup.

The SE method was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, who is described in the article as being the author of the book Taming the Tiger; it turns out that the book is in fact called Waking the Tiger, which is perhaps more appropriate in the Israeli context given apparent preferences for unleashing beasts rather than deterring them. In addition to a host of other titles, Ross is the Middle East senior trainer for Levine's Foundation for Human Enrichment, as well as a self-proclaimed expert in overcoming "the insecurity and difficulties of exile"­her family having fled their home in Syria and later their home in Lebanon. Familiarity with exile might prove useful in the event that Gaza is one day deemed to be deserving of human enrichment, or somatic experience in general.

Ms. Ross has determined that Israelis, Palestinians, and Israeli-Arabs all suffer from collective trauma vortices­especially the second group, whose vortex "has been spiraling out of control for a while." Thus, although the Gazans are permitted in this case to suffer psychologically, they are doomed to fail even at their own suffering, as it is not possible to implement a collective healing vortex while an army financed by the global superpower is overhead and underfoot.

The SE method does, however, provide innovative opportunities for such international notables as:
Barack Obama, who is in danger of developing a trauma vortex due to repeated reliance on the "flight" option in fight or flight situations­namely AIPAC addresses and opinions on the war on Gaza.
MK Shai Hermesh, resident of a kibbutz close to the Gazan border, who­Tzipi Livni explained to a meeting of foreign diplomats in Sderot on 28 December­"has had to almost live in a shelter for weeks now." Livni declared the situation "unbearable," although this description most likely did not apply to the situation of Palestinian MPs held indefinitely in Israeli administrative detention.

Gina Ross' assertion that "peace can only come from balanced collective nervous systems" might also prove revelatory for other members of the international community, such as those under the impression that peace can only come from preventing Israel's disassembly of Palestine into noncontiguous enclaves. Instead of fretting over what percentage of remaining Palestinian territories should be permitted on the Israeli side of soaring cement walls, Middle East envoy Tony Blair might thus focus on more concrete issues like building emotional resilience into the roadmap for peace. Blair has already demonstrated a strong commitment to resilience, by choking back tears while discussing letters received from parents whose sons have died in Iraq but who nonetheless retain their conviction in the rightness of war.

(In keeping with the global distribution of power, Iraqis­like Gazans­have been judged unworthy of psychological victimhood, which is reserved for coalition troops, their families, and people who duct tape their windows to guard against WMD attack. Incidentally, the fourth item in the list of results returned by a Google search of the terms "Iraqis treated for shock" was a Haaretz article from 2007, entitled "Qassam fired from Gaza hits Sderot; man treated for shock.")

Near the end of the Jerusalem Post article on escaping the trauma vortex, an Israeli SE practitioner at the Sderot meeting declares her intention to host an emotional first-aid workshop for citizens of Jerusalem experiencing secondary­i.e. vicarious­trauma.

Moving on to the second headline in the Health section of JPost.com, I was informed that: "Emotional hot lines see sharp rise in callers from the South," most of whom were experiencing repercussions of the imbalance of the Gazan collective nervous system. According to the spokeswoman for the hotline run by Natal­Israel's Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War­a number of parents were concerned that their children were not eating or drinking; such behavior would have been less of a concern in Gaza, given the lack of food and drink.

Natal's advice to those battling the trauma vortex included:
moderately abstaining from news reports.
finding "light entertainment to ease them through the stress." (The word "entertainment" was underlined; when I clicked on it I was transported to a website in Spanish where I was invited to download popular tunes to my cellular phone.)
encouraging small children to spend time in their bomb shelters even when there were not air raid sirens, such that the shelters would become associated with things other than fear of death.

A visit to the Natal website itself revealed that many of the hotline callers were from northern Israel and were "experiencing flashbacks from the Second Lebanon War." Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, was also experiencing flashbacks to this particular war, and repeated that a ceasefire should never allow a return to the status quo ante, i.e. Gaza.

The Natal website describes the residents of southern Israel as "living in an abnormal reality" and provides them with coping tools, including a list of exercises entitled "Muscle Relaxation For Children." In one of the exercises listed, parents are advised to have their children pretend that: "A little elephant is coming closer; in a moment it's going to step on your stomach! Tighten your stomach; make your muscles as tight as you can. The elephant is gone; now your stomach can relax again."

Alternate therapeutic activities are explored on SderotMedia.com, which features a video of a small boy in a black yarmulke intently decorating a Qassam rocket he has fashioned out of a plastic bottle, paper, and masking tape. A more complex juxtaposition of innocence and war can of course be found in the photos of Israeli children decorating missiles en route to Lebanon in 2006, but the director of the SderotMedia video does cover additional symbolic ground in the final scene, in which the decorated Qassam is placed in the middle of the floor with a baby in a purple sweater seated a short distance away. The baby eyes the Qassam for a few seconds, then crawls over to it and knocks the rocket over.

Further navigation of the website produced an article to accompany the video, entitled "Environmental Friendly Kassams." In the article, the mother of the Qassam decorator explains that "the encounter with threat through creation" provides a sense of security to the children of Sderot (or at least to the 70-94% of them that SderotMedia diagnoses with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The author of the piece supplies more relevant background information, such as that the "Color Red" alert is as familiar a concept to these children as the word "Dad," and that the kids "don't really care if the IDF is the one who began with the response"­an example that the rest of the world might follow.

After viewing another video of Sderot­this one starring a woman in a nightgown trembling in her house­I returned one last time to the Health section of the Jerusalem Post's website to find an article entitled "Psychologically Speaking: Feeling sad." This piece explored other potential reasons aside from rocket hail that Israelis might feel down, such as seasonal affective disorder (SAD), brought on by winter, and reverse seasonal affective disorder, brought on by summer.

Most Palestinians in Gaza at the moment presumably do not have enough spare time to be affected by seasonal changes, nor are the melatonin supplements recommended to combat SAD likely to be available on humanitarian aid trucks. Regular explosions, however, might offer Gazans access to some of the other suggested treatments, such as bright light therapy. The Israeli government, meanwhile, might consider ceasing the exploitation of its citizens' genuine psychological torment in order to justify existential battles against its neighbors.

Belén Fernández is currently completing a book entitled Coffee with Hezbollah, which chronicles the 2-month hitchhiking journey through Lebanon that she and Amelia Opali?ska conducted in the aftermath of the July 2006 war. She can be reached at belengarciabernal@gmail.com.




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Fiat announces white-collar layoffs

MILAN: The Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA's layoff plans are now hitting white-collar workers.


Fiat informed unions this week that 1,800 white-collar workers will be temporarily laid off for the first week of February, and 1,500 during the second week, the company confirmed Thursday.

That is in addition to 48,000 blue-collar workers, more than half of the Italian work force, who were temporarily laid off until the middle of January. Workers at a Naples plant also will be laid off into February.

The monthlong shutdown of most of its Italian plants during the holiday season was unprecedented for the Turin-based automaker, which like the rest of the industry is trying to cope with the huge drop in demand for new cars.

Under the temporary layoff scheme, part of the workers' salaries are paid by a government-administered fund that includes industry contributions.