9/11 Conspiracy Theory is well REPLICATED in South Asia in the BEST Interest of the Global WAR ECONOMY in Recession!India Considers EVERY OPTION, PRAN

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9/11 Conspiracy Theory is well REPLICATED in South Asia in the BEST Interest of the Global WAR ECONOMY in Recession!India Considers EVERY OPTION, PRANAB Says as ANTULAY Finds Himself KICKED OUT for Raising UNEASY Questions on Malegaon Blast and ATS Encounter! Power POLITICS Follow Washington Dictates as Nawaz Sharif ,After INDIA, Slams Zardari, says Kasab from Pak!
What a KILLER ANTI PEOPLE CAPITALIST SLAVE Government of India We may BOAST of! Oil drops below USD 36 Barrel! But we the COMMON Starving People may never get RELIEF. The Kerosene Prices are the SAME. Same is the COOKING GAS COST. No concession in BUS, CAR,TRAM tram fares. Food commodities remain as dearly as have been. Oil prices climbed down from 147 to 36. Petro prices slumped in domestic market for the MOTOR Riders. cars are now cheap. Cheaper is AIR travel. If this Bloody Geopolitics is indulged in a war once again we have to buy Food Products paying ten times more and the Farmers won`t get anything! Rather they would be charged LEVY! LPG has created JOB INSECURITY infinite. Pay Scales is an affair of Government employees. Rest of the People have to live on what they earn at present or must opt for SUICIDE as the farmers of most of the parts in this Country. No RED, no SAFFRON Politics is meant to save the DYING SUCCUMBING MASSES! This is our BHARAT VARSH still SICKLED. India is Liberated and AMERICANISED. That`s All!


Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 128
Palash Biswas

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !."
- Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa 500 B.C


Concern over military inventory
Defence minister A.K. Antony today asked the military to be ready for “challenges”, two days after saying that India was not considering warlike measures against Pakistan. ... | Read..


Amar, other Indians on Clinton donor list
A person named Amar Singh donated between $1million and $5million to the Clinton Foundation, according to a complete donor list published for the first time on Thursday. ... | Read..


IITians discover India
The Indian Institutes of Technology may finally be shedding the tag of public-funded launchpads for the best and the brightest to leap to greener pastures abroad, the fir ... | Read..


Plan to trim 60 MPs’ security
The Centre has decided to downsize the security of nearly 60 MPs, including law minister H.R. Bhardwaj and at least nine other ministers, sources said. ... | Read..


http://www.telegraphindia.com/section/frontpage/index.jsp


9/11 Conspiracy Theory is well REPLICATED in South Asia in the BEST Interest of the Global WAR ECONOMY in Recession!India Considers EVERY OPTION, PRANAB Says as ANTULAY Finds Himself KICKED OUT for Raising UNEASY Questions on Malegaon Blast and ATS Encounter! Power POLITICS Follow Washington Dictates as Nawaz Sharif ,After INDIA, Slams Zardari, says Kasab from Pak!Given the economic meltdown and the global shift of economic power eastward, the Obama team will prioritize the Asian economic powerhouses, especially China. That’s why Obama’s first official visit may be to Beijing, as some experts are forecasting. The other evidence of a reinvigorated Sino-US economic partnership is the two unambiguously pro-China voices in his financial team. Asia Times. Patrick Burns is a New York-based journalist and United Nations resident correspondent, and a staff reporter for the Tokyo Shimbun.The shoe incident is minor but is a symbol of the end of the Bush era. Many call it apt that the two symbols that remain seered into the minds minds of the media savvy world population is one which proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” and the other “The Show shower”. The narrative in the middle will also remind the world of Shock and Awe, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. For many in South Asia the Fourth Battle of Panipat has begun.

DID CIA encouraged Sikh terrorism which lead to the assasination of Indira Gandhi?
DID CIA encouraged Sikh terrorism which lead to the assasination of Indira Gandhi

if so why ?
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
This idea that Sikhs randomly shot Hindus is false. If you know a Sikh who shot a random Hindu, then he or she must not be a true Sikh, or else maybe it wasn't a random Hindu, maybe it was a Sikh hating Hindu. Some of these so called Sikh terrorists gave money to poor Hindu families, even though Sikhs do not agree with Hindu beliefs. Sikhs give whatever they can to whoever is in need, no matter if they are, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc. Our Gurus even died to protect Hindus. We avoid violence when possible, but we're not afraid to take up the sword in the defense of the innocent.

It is a little known fact in the west that Sikhs were persecuted by the Indian government, even after we gave our lives to create a free India. We did more for India than any Gandhi ever did! Assassinating Indira Gandhi was self defense pure and simple, the facts have just been hidden by the pro-Hindu government.

I'm very proud to be a Sikh, it was the best decision I ever made in my life, I finally found out who I really am.
1 week ago
40% 2 Votes
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081208030149AAFS9YE

Meanwhile,Maintaining pressure on Pakistan, the European Union on Friday asked it to help track down the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror strikes and ensure that ‘uncontrolled elements’ do not use its soil to launch attacks on India.
French Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont, whose country holds the Presidency of 27-nation European Union, said Islamabad should fulfill its ‘obligation’ of tackling terrorism in an ‘efficient manner’ as it is in Pakistan's own interest.

He said the 27-nation powerful bloc will assess the situation ‘constantly’ as Pakistan has to answer the ‘questions’ which were raised after the Mumbai attacks!

The involvement of US as European Union in Indian OCEAN EX Peace Region is quite SURPRISING!

I am amused to study the statements of the most POWERFUL Indian Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi relating the Endangered National UNITY and Integrity by Foreign hands in not very Remote PAST. PAST is never Past. Except the latest TREND of Americanisation of the Indian Ocean Peace Zone turning it into a WAR Zone as well as ZIONIST Weapon Market most Viable! Consumer Durables and Capital Goods, SEZ, Nuclear Parks and Retail Chain, Infrastructure and Reality, IT and XXXXX Entertainment, FREE senSEX, diversion of National Revenue and Public Money, Concessions and Waivers, Hegemony Dominance, Monopolistic Aggression and unlimited Killing Fields and widespread CORRUPTION and Manipulation across the political borders are not ENOUGH for the KILLER Greedy Money Machine! It is an Incarnation of War Goddess ETHENA or Warring Goddess KALI who want SACRIFICE of Millions Enslaved!

Thus, war is on TOPMOST AGENDA! The agenda kills World Peace and human rights. But it defends the US and Zionist Interests most. Mrs Indira Gandhi was never AFRAID of United states Of America. She never tried to Americanise us.Every time she pointed out at CIA and MOSAD, which have turned to be SACRED COWS of Indian Parliamentary Politics. No one dares to speak on CIA or MOSAD most active today as never before.

I wonder that Pranab Mukherjee had been Number TWO in Indira Cabinet and had been also considered as Potential Prime Ministerial candiate after the unfortunate demise of Mrs Indira Gandhi, once again in a terrorist Attack unprecedented. But the Assassination of our strongest Prime Minister remains a MYSTERY till this date as no following Government tried to unfold the possibilities of FOREIGN HANDS as Indira used to point out. In fact, Just after Indira Gandhi, the RSS Fascism which she despised most, took over Congress party and as Internal security Minister Arun Nehru in Rajiv Gandhi cabinet opened the Box of Pandora called Ram Mandir v/s Babri Mosque Controversy. At this point, Fascism in India collaborated with International imperialism. What Indira tried to defend, the national Integrity and Unity became most Vulnerable since the day when the doors of Ram mandir were opened to get RSS support to mobilise Hindutva vote Bank against Sikh Insurgency named khalistani movement which had been supported and funded by the War Economies of the West including United states of America as they created TALIBAN and OSAMA BIN LADEN.

Mind you, Pakistan happened to be the Strategic partner of USA that day. Pakistan happens to be much more a STRATEGIC Partner for United states of Ameriac even today! Even after the Mumbai Attacks! Whatever Diplomacy miy say, United states of America is not going to discard Pakistan for INDIA. The war Against Terror demands a stronger Role of Pakistan. Thus, it is quite in VAIN that our not so FOOL Political Leader do Bank on US and West support to punish Pakistan! Rahter, the Ruling Hegemony has used this Terror Struck nationality Crisis to delete genuine mass Movements and Resistance and the latest Anti terror laws would help the Brahaminical hegemony to repeat the malegaon blasts. Unless and until, we address the ETHNIC problems, unless and until we happen to be sovereign and Free enough to act in national Interest in spite of Western zionist Interests, until and unless we stand united against the FOREIGN HANDS as Indira Gandhi used to point, the Anti Terror laws would only used to settle political scores as it has always been in cases of MISA, AFPSA and POTA! it would justify REPRESSION uncensored and widespread violation of Human Rights, Civil Rights and Principles of NATURAL JUSTICE in its Anti People Procedure apart from killing the INDIAN Constitution manufactured by a Black untouchable named Dr BR Ambedkar! Indian Fascism has been described the most lethal and most dangerous the world has ever seen–all under the veneer of “democracy”. this Fascism of Hindutva Brand roots in Caste system and apartheid doctrined in MANUSMRITI!India …declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi’s predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India’s bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.

By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by L K Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it.

By 1998, the BJP was in power at the center in Delhi. The US “war on terror” put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy.Asia Times. The monster in India’s mirror By Arundhati Roy

As the suffering, bleeding, starving, displaced and deprived, jobless, uneqaul . persecuted, tortured People of South Asian Geopolitics, we should understand the Disastrous WAR Game played by United states of America, the WEST and our own Political leaders and the ruling Hegemonies!Another aspect of the US-Indian relationship that is being impacted by the change in Washington is the US-China relationship.There is a high level of frustration in Indian circles. They cannot attack Pakistan and if the China card is lost, they will be back again in the corner of the class-room where the rest of the rich boys and the naughty poor boys will be making fun of them as before.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is preparing to present President-elect Barack Obama with a lengthy, classified strategy review aimed at reversing the gains that militants have made in destabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The review contains an array of options, including telling Pakistan’s military that billions of dollars in American aid will depend on the military’s being reconfigured to effectively fight militants. That proposal amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that roughly $10 billion in military aid provided to Pakistan as “reimbursements” for its efforts to root out militant groups has largely been wasted.

The payments have been the source of increasing criticism on Capitol Hill and from independent review groups, which have concluded that Pakistan diverted much of the money to build up its forces against India.

Revamping the aid to the military was part of a three-month study of what has gone wrong in the seven-year war along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The study calls for a new and broadly regional approach to insurgencies that move freely across the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the short term, it calls for continued covert strikes into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan, though the American military has been reluctant to repeat the kind of ground attack that led to an open exchange of fire with Pakistani border forces in September.

The report, which is expected to be presented to Mr. Obama’s top national security advisers in the next week or two, was the product of a highly unusual strategy review that was begun in mid-September, just four months before President Bush leaves office.

“We’ve gone seven long years proclaiming that Pakistan was an ally and that it was doing everything we asked in the war on terror,” said one senior official involved in drafting the report. “And the truth is that $10 billion later, they still don’t have the basic capacity for counterinsurgency operations. What we are telling Obama and his people is that has to be reversed.”

As a war that Mr. Bush once believed he had won came back to life in 2005 and 2006, the White House began a series of strategic reassessments, the most recent one reporting in the fall of 2006, just before the forced resignation of Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. December 7, 2008 Revamping Aid to Pakistan Is Expected in Bush Report By DAVID E. SANGER


What a KILLER ANTIPEOPLE CAPITALIST SLAVE Governemt of India We may BOAST of! Oil drops below USD 36 Barrel! But we the COMMON Starving People may never get RELIEF. The Kerosene Prices are the SAME. Same is the COOKING GAS COST. No concession in BUS, CAR,TRAM tram fares. Food commodities remain as dearly as have been. Oil prices climbed down from 147 to 36. Petro prics slumped in domestic market for the MOTOR Ridres. cars are now cheap. Cheaper is AIR travel. If this Bloody Geoploitics is indulged in a war once again we have to buy Food Products paying ten times more and the Farmers won`t get anything! Rather they would be charged LEVY! LPG has created JOB INSECURITY infinite. Pay Scales is an affair of Government empoloyess. Rest of the People have to live on what they earn at present or must opt for SUICIDE as the farmers of most of the parts in this Country. No RED, no SAFFRON Politics is meant to save the DYING SUCCUMBING MASSES! This is our BHARAT VARSH still SICKLED. India is Liberated and AMERICANISED. That`s All!

For about 50 years the US-Pakistani relationship was seen through the lenses of the Cold War. As such any American move towards India would be seen with suspicion in Islamabad. However President Clinton and then President Bush tried to “dehiphenate” the US Indian relationship. This meant that US relations with India would move ahead irregardless of the erlationship with Pakistan. Also this meant that the US Pakistani relationship would move ahead without any link to India.

This has not worked. Bruce Reidel and other major Obama advisors want to look at South and West Asia is a more holistic way. They clearly realise that when one tinkers with the Khyber Pass, Panipat and Delhi get affected. The think tanks on both sides of the American spectrum clearly realize that unless the Kashmir issue is resolved Pakistan cannot and will not be able to support the USA in Afghanistan. This realization has impacted the Indians more than the Pakistanis. The Indians are fuming at the mention of Kashmir.



Oil drops below USD 36 per barrel
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Reuters
Posted: Dec 19, 2008 at 1644 hrs IST

London Oil fell below $36 on Friday to its lowest level in more than four years as the global economic slowdown overshadowed OPEC's record supply cuts.
US light crude for January delivery were down 51 cents at $35.71 a barrel by 1100 GMT. It earlier touched $35.62, the lowest since June 2004.

London Brent crude was trading 59 cents up at $43.95.

Oil prices have fallen by more than $110 from their peak above $147 in July. They look set for their second biggest weekly decline since 2003.

"Until traders see a sustained drop-off in the rate of demand destruction, the market will have a hard time establishing a floor," Jonathan Kornafel, Asia Director of Hudson Capital Energy, said.

"From a credibility standpoint, OPEC has no choice but to bite the bullet for the next few months."

Oil has continued to drop despite pledges by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) this week to remove 2.2 million barrels per day from its supply, which will be the largest ever reduction by the producer group.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, speaking in London, said on Friday the kingdom would be pumping less oil in January and would be at its new output target in line with the group's latest cut.

Other key markets were also falling on Friday. The dollar looked set for its biggest weekly decline since 1985 and world stocks fell as concerns about the US economy worried investors in the last full trading week of 2008.
Reuters

Sensex above 10k, rate cut eyed

Reuters
Posted: Dec 19, 2008 at 1639 hrs IST

Mumbai Sensex rose 0.2 per cent on Friday after a volatile session, with rate cut expectations and a stimulus package underpinning the market though investors were wary to keep open positions ahead of the weekend.
Foreign funds, which have revived buying in local stocks, were active in blue-chips such as top mobile operator Bharti Airtel and leading engineering and construction firm Larsen & Toubro, traders said.

Banks, automobiles and property stocks were also in demand after data on Thursday showed inflation dropped below 7 per cent for the first time in nine months, strengthening expectations for a rate cut.

"We are heading for a regime of lower interest rates and low inflation, and a positive momentum is emerging in the system," said Deven Choksey, managing director at K R Choksey Shares & Securities.

The 30-share BSE index ended up 0.23 per cent, or 23.48 points, at 10,099.91, after initially falling nearly 1 per cent and then rising 1.1 per cent.

The benchmark, which had closed above 10,000 for the first time in five weeks on Thursday, gained 4.2 per cent on the week, its second in a row.
Reuters



Just look how AR Antulay had been KICKED out of the ORDER!

Union Minister A R Antulay, who is at the centre of a storm triggered by his remarks on the circumstances surrounding Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare's killing, has sent his resignation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, highly placed sources said on Friday. 79-year-old Antulay, whose remarks created an uproar in Parliament and outside with the opposition parties demanding his removal, had sent his resignation on Wednesday night, they said.

When contacted, Antulay declined to comment, saying "I am neither confirming it nor denying it".

Throughout Thursday Antulay had maintained that he owed explanation to none on his controversial statement and that he had neither met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi nor the Prime Minister, nor had he written to them.

The Union Minister for Minority Affairs had created a furore by his remarks raising doubts on the issue of killing of Karkare and two other senior police officers on November 26 night in Mumbai and sought to link it to the ATS chief's role as a key investigator in the Malegaon blast case in which Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Lt Col Shrikant Purohit were arrested.

He had said that Karkare could have been a victim of "terrorism or terrorism plus something. I do not know".

Later, Antulay had sought to wriggle out by saying he did not question the fact that Karkare was killed by Pakistani terrorists but had only wanted to know who had sent him "in the wrong direction" towards Cama hospital instead of Taj or Oberoi hotels or Nariman House which were on fire.

Opposition BJP and Shiv Sena have demanded his removal saying that the comments had weakened India's position on the Mumbai terror attacks carried out by Pakistani terrorists.

The Ramadoss view: 'Scrap medical entrance tests'


New Delhi: Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Friday said he personally felt the entrance tests for medical colleges should be scrapped and marks obtained by students in qualifying examination should be the sole criteria for admissions.
Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, he said his personal views were not necessary the opinion of his department which is to make a submission before the Supreme Court on a petition challenging the criteria of 40 per cent marks in qualifying exam for ST/SC students.

"Personally, I am for doing away of the entrance examinations as they are huge harassment to students," he said.

The practice of holding entrance examinations, except in Tamil Nadu which has prescribed qualifying marks to be criteria for admission to medical colleges, has encouraged mushrooming of coaching centres who charge huge fee, he said.

Ramadoss said suggestions have been made by members that both qualifying examination marks and entrance test results should be taken together for admissions.

Government, he said, has not yet taken any view on the position it will take in the Supreme Court and suggestions made by the members as well as the Tamil Nadu model would be considered before filing a reply before the apex court.

Till 1997, students in all categories including SC/ST had to obtain 50 per cent marks in qualifying examination for being eligible to appear in the medical entrance tests. This was lowered for SC/ST students to 40 per cent but Government of Kerala informed the Centre that ST candidates in the state were not being able to qualify and a petition was filed in Supreme Court.



ET Headline
Bailout approved: Automakers to get $17.4 bn

19 Dec 2008, 2100 hrs IST, AGENCIES



Citing danger to national economy, Bush administration approved bailout of US auto industry. Gainers: BSE ( A, B ) | NSE | Losers: BSE ( A, B ) | NSE | 52 Week: High, Low


US stocks advance after automaker bailout news
GM, Chrysler to share US bailout: White House
Oil drops below $34, lowest level in almost 5 years

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RIL emerges biggest wealth creator in 2003-08 period
19 Dec 2008, 2155 hrs IST, PTI


Driven by the strong bull run in the stock market, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries has been ranked as the biggest wealth creator. Interview with KV Kamath


Reliance ADAG says no firing; hiring up to 90,000 people
Financial slowdown: When will the tide turn?
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Governments across the world are taking extra efforts to combat the slowdown threatening the financial world. 2008: Year of fin crisis | Anatomy of credit crisis


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Parsvnath puts on hold 12 SEZ projects

New Delhi: Leading realty firm Parsvnath Developers Ltd on Friday said it has put on hold 12 Special Economic Zone (SEZ) projects across the country due to credit crunch.

"We have put on hold some of the large projects, which is of luxury kind... like SEZs etc, where we need to invest a large sum of money," Parsvnath Chairman Pradeep Jain said.

Asked which large projects have been put on hold, he said: "At present, we are working at five SEZs and the rest 12 we have put on hold for acquisition of the land.

"Wherever we have already acquired the land, we do not want to put on hold, we want to go on with those projects."

On the SEZs that the company has put on hold, Jain said: "Like Chennai one, one in Pune and some other locations, where we are on the way to acquire the land, we have stopped to acquire the land at this point of time."

The company is currently developing five SEZs at Gurgaon, Indore, Dehradun, Hyderabad and Kochi.

He said the company is focusing on completion of its ongoing projects rather than taking new ones.

Due to the economic slowdown, the country's realty players are facing credit crunch for developing projects, as banks have almost stopped lending them. High interest rates have also taken a toll on consumers' demand forcing the government to cut the rates.

The company's subsidiary – Parsvnath SEZ – plans to develop 17 SEZ, having a total saleable area of 367 million sq ft, in various segments like pharma, gems and jewellery, IT/ITeS, biotech, handicrafts, leather, food processing and automotive sectors, apart from multi-product SEZs.


Islamabad: Challenging President Asif Ali Zardari's assertion that there was no proof that the arrested Mumbai attacker hailed from Pakistan's Punjab province, former premier Nawaz Sharif has said that the suspect's village was cordoned off and his parents were not allowed to meet anyone.
"I have checked myself. His (Ajmal Amir Iman alias Ajmal Kasab) house and village has been cordoned off by the security agencies. His parents are not allowed to meet anybody. I don't undertand why it has been done," Shraif, who hails from Punjab, said in an interview to ‘Geo News’ channel.

"The people and media should be allowed to meet Iman's parents so that the truth could come out in the open," he said, adding that "We need some kind of introspection."

Zardari, who earlier acknowledged that the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage could be 'non-state' actors from Pakistan, has now said there is still no "real evidence" that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai came from Pakistan.

"Have you seen any evidence to that effect. I have definitely not seen any real evidence to that effect," Zardari told BBC in an interview earlier this week.

Pakistani security agencies and local officials in Faridkot have launched a cover-up since India made it public that Kasab belonged to the village in Punjab province and his father acknowledged to a Pakistani newspaper that the gunman captured in India was his son.

Sharif also slammed President Zardari's rule, saying the functioning of the current Pakistan People's Party-led government is making Pakistan look like a "failed state". Pakistan presents the picture of a failed and ungovernable state due to the absence of the government's writ and the country urgently needs a new roadmap to pull it out of the problems it is currently facing, he said.

Kasab has told Indian investigators that he belongs to Faridkot village of Okara district in Pakistan's Punjab province and that he was trained by the Lashker-e-Taiba to carry out the attacks. Iman's father Amir Kasab too had admitted that the gunman in pictures beamed by the world media is his son.

Sharif said if Iman was not involved in the Mumbai attacks, why was Faridkot village being cordoned off by security agencies and the media prevented from going there.

If Iman was "involved in any way, despite that his parents should be allowed to speak out and say the boy has been (away from home) for three or four months or one or two years and we are also very worried about him", Sharif said.

He also asked why people and journalists were being barred from meeting Iman's parents and other residents of Faridkot.

Pakistani security agencies and local officials in Faridkot have launched an apparent cover-up operation since Indian investigators revealed he belonged to the village.

Iman's parents have reportedly been shifted from the village and local officials have claimed no youth named Ajmal Kasab had lived in Faridkot.


Gangtok: India on Friday said it was obliged to ‘consider the entire range of options that exist’ with the failure of Pakistan to deliver on its promise of not supporting terror activities.
"Terrorism remains a scourge for our region. If a country cannot keep the assurances that it has given, then it obliges us to consider the entire range of options that exist to protect our interests and people from this menace," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said, without naming Islamabad.

Filed on December 15, 2008, this is the most powerful lawsuit ever launched by a 9/11-related party. It was not only filed by minority female career officer who was an eyewitness to/victim of the 9/11 Pentagon attack, but it directly accuses Cheney/Rumsfeld et al and directly asserts that there was no evacuation or scramble orders given by the defendendants, despite at least thirty minutes' foreknowledge given by air traffic controllers. The plaintiff also clearly states that she personally saw no airplane hit the Pentagon -- that there were only explosions set off or created by a missile attack. This lawsuit is also beautifully written, comprehensively recapitulating the most salient discrepancies in the official story. This could be a major breatkthrough for the 9/11 Truth movement on a number of levels, whether or not it is never tried or won in an official court of law.


And now see, what Pranab Mukherjee speaks out!


"We have made repeated appeals to our neighbours over the years to ensure that they do not provide support to terrorist activities and to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, but our pleas have been ignored in spite of assurances given by them," Mukherjee said.

He said this in his message from New Delhi to the International Conference on 'Sub-regionalism Approach to Regional Integration in South Asia: Prospects and Opportunities'.

It was read out by the Sikkim University Vice-Chancellor Prof Mahendra P Lama at the inauguration of the three-day conference.

Mukherjee said the terror attacks on the financial capital of the country reflected the extent to which the terrorists have spread their network in the neighbouring country.

The External Affairs minister, however, did not elaborate on the course of action to be taken by the government following Pakistan's failure to act on its assurance of dismantling terror infrastructure on its territory.

He also hinted that the state agencies of Pakistan may have provided assistance to the terrorists, whom he described as non-state actors, in carrying out the attack.

"The Mumbai terrorist attack is the latest instance of how sub-regionalism, regionalism and multilaterism are directly threatened by non-state actors with the aid of para-state apparatus," Mukherjee said.

He said that India would fine-tune its priorities to deal with terrorism.

Referring to India's assessment of political situation in Pakistan, Mukherjee noted that the internal security of that country continued to deteriorate ‘leading to emergence of multiple centres of power’.

The emergence of multiple centres of power has been reflected in attempts at cross border infiltration as also the increase in ceasefire violations besides the appalling terrorist attacks in Mumbai recently, he said.

TERROR-PRANAB 3 LAST

The issue of terrorism within Pakistan being deeply embroiled in its internal politics has been found true, the minister said.

"The infrastructure of terror remained unchallenged in Pakistan and so did the logistical support to anti-Indian terrorists from multiple hands due to emergence of multiple centres of power," Mukherjee said.

On India's vision for a developed and prosperous South Asia, Mukherjee said, New Delhi sought to promote an environment of peace and stability in the SAARC region and the world for accelerated socio-economic development and national security.

"At the same time, one cannot choose one's neighbour," he said in an apparent dig at Pakistan.

"The goal of the SAARC countries should be to create a peaceful periphery to enable all of us to pursue our own development," the Union Minister said and questioned the commitment of some neighbouring countries to pursue a common goal of peace and development in the South Asian region.

"The internal development in our neighbour countries, cross border issues, ethnicities and migration among others make the bilateral relations a complex and sensitive issue as the domestic and foreign policy gets closely intertwined," he said.

India After Indira
Paul H. Kreisberg

From Foreign Affairs, Spring 1985

Article preview: first 500 of 7,267 words total.

Summary: Indira Gandhi?s assassination on October 31, 1984, marked the passing of the generation that brought India to independence. Mrs. Gandhi was nourished, almost from birth, on the Congress Party?s struggle against the British, and was particularly influenced by her party?s close links with British socialism in the 1930s. She was deeply suspicious of the business class, even though it supported her with millions of rupees. She was convinced that only if the nation?s industry, agriculture and services were closely guided by the state would equity and justice be assured. Wary of ?imperialist? pressures on India?political, educational and economic?she never relinquished her belief that ?foreign hands? sought to undermine not only Indian stability and independence but her personal political power as well. Although the United States seemed most often to be the target of her concern, the Soviets, British, Chinese, French and most of her South Asian neighbors were also frequently suspect.

Paul H. Kreisberg served several tours of duty in India since 1952 as a Foreign Service officer and was Deputy Director of Policy Planning in the State Department in the late 1970s. He is now Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Indira Gandhi?s assassination on October 31, 1984, marked the passing of the generation that brought India to independence. Mrs. Gandhi was nourished, almost from birth, on the Congress Party?s struggle against the British, and was particularly influenced by her party?s close links with British socialism in the 1930s. She was deeply suspicious of the business class, even though it supported her with millions of rupees. She was convinced that only if the nation?s industry, agriculture and services were closely guided by the state would equity and justice be assured. Wary of "imperialist" pressures on India?political, educational and economic?she never relinquished her belief that "foreign hands" sought to undermine not only Indian stability and independence but her personal political power as well. Although the United States seemed most often to be the target of her concern, the Soviets, British, Chinese, French and most of her South Asian neighbors were also frequently suspect.

Mrs. Gandhi shared the concern of her father?s generation that India?s unity and integrity were fragile and under continuing threat. The partition into two states, India and Pakistan, was the first great trauma for the independence politicians. Then, in the 1950s, came the integration of hundreds of small princedoms of the old British Raj and the struggle to prevent India from collapsing into a babel of independent linguistic and ethnic states. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mrs. Gandhi fought against political rivals at the national level, and sought to weaken and destroy politicians with strong regional bases who threatened to shift the political balance of power from New Delhi to the state levels; such a shift, she believed, would inevitably weaken the unity and authority of the central government.

Mrs. Gandhi was proud of India?s technological progress but remained close to the traditions and customs of the countryside. Unlike her father, who openly disdained traditional religion, she regularly visited and worshipped at temples and shrines, and privately sought the counsel of astrologers. Her empathy was strong for the concerns of ordinary villagers, even though she herself never lived in rural India. Only once did she lose her grip on the pulse of her country, when a mass compulsory sterilization campaign got out of hand in 1975-76, arousing popular fears and anger, and resulting in her overwhelming defeat at the polls in 1977.

The confusion, division and incompetence of Mrs. Gandhi?s political opponents (despite their strength in some regions), her determination to ensure that one of her sons would succeed her, her drive for vindication, and her sheer political grit and shrewdness, all led Indira Gandhi back to power in 1980. But her last four years were difficult, marked by growing internal political unrest, increasing public cynicism about politics and politicians, and the dangerous religious violence which ultimately took her life.

II

Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded his mother as prime minister only hours after her death, was three years old when India became independent in 1947. For most of his life, politics and foreign policy seem to have held ...
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19850301faessay8434/paul-h-kreisberg/india-after-indira.html

CIA, ISI encouraged Sikh terrorism: Ex-R&AW official

July 26, 2007 13:26 IST

The Richard Nixon administration in the US had initiated a "covert action plan" in collusion with General Yahya Khan's government in Pakistan in 1971 to encourage a separatist movement in Punjab, a former top officer of the Research and Analysis Wing has said.

"This plan envisaged the encouragement of a separatist movement among the Sikhs for an independent state to be called Khalistan. In 1971, one saw the beginning of a joint covert operation by the US intelligence community and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence to create difficulties for India in Punjab," B Raman, who retired as additional secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, says in his forthcoming book.

In the book The Kaoboys of R&AW -- Down the Memory Lane that is yet to be published, he said the US interest in Punjab militancy "continued for a little more than a decade and tapered off after the assassination of Indira Gandhi [Images]" by two Sikh security guards on October 31, 1984.

Elaborating, Raman said Jagjit Singh Chauhan, a Sikh leader from Punjab, went to the UK and took over the leadership of the defunct Sikh Home Rule movement and renamed it after Khalistan.

The then Pakistani military ruler Yahya Khan invited Chauhan to Pakistan, "lionised" him as a leader of Sikhs and handed over some Sikh holy relics kept in Pakistan, which Chauhan took to the UK to win a following in the Sikh diaspora.

Chauhan also went to New York, met officials of the United Nations and some American journalists and alleged human rights violations of Sikhs in India.

"These meetings were discreetly organised by officials of the US National Security Council Secretariat then headed by (Henry) Kissinger," the former R&AW officer says.

"With American and Pakistani encouragement, the activities of Chauhan continued till 1977. After the defeat of Indira Gandhi in the elections in 1977 and the coming to power of a government headed by Morarji Desai, Chauhan abruptly called off his so-called Khalistan movement and returned to India," writes Raman.

Observing that foreign intelligence agencies were not helpful in providing information on Sikh extremist activities in their respective countries, he says the political leadership of western countries like the UK, the US and Canada [Images], which has sizeable Sikh population, did not want to antagonise them by cooperating with the Indian government against the Khalistanis.

Giving an example of "non-cooperation", he refers to the authorities in the then West Germany [Images].

He says Talwinder Singh Parmar of Babbar Khalsa, a sacked sawmill worker in Vancouver in Canada who was wanted in several cases in India like the Nirankari massacre and had been making "threatening" statements against Indira Gandhi, was arrested while travelling from Zurich to West Germany following an INTERPOL alert.

The German authorities not only did not hand him over to a CBI team, which had rushed to Bonn to take him into custody, but sent him back to Vancouver.

Two years later, Parmar played an active role in the conspiracy, which led to the blowing up of the Air India plane 'Kanishka' killing over 300 passengers, the retired R&AW official says adding, "the West German authorities cannot escape a major share of responsibility for this colossal tragedy."

On the storming of the Golden Temple in June 3-6, 1984, Raman writes that as Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers started gathering arms inside the complex and a spurt in terrorist incidents was witnessed across the country, there was "panic" in the government when trans-border sources of IB and R&AW reported that ISI was infiltrating Pakistani ex-servicemen and some serving Pakistani armymen into Punjab.

However, these IB and R&AW reports were later proved wrong, he says.

But the "alarm" led Indira Gandhi to frantically find a political solution and to use Akali Dal leaders to pursuade Bhindranwale to vacate the temple.

"Rajiv Gandhi and two of his associates held a number of secret meetings with Akali leaders in a New Delhi guest house of the R&AW. I was given the task of making arrangements for these meetings, recording the discussions, transcribing them and putting up the transcripts to (Rameshwar Nath) Kao for briefing Indira Gandhi," Raman said.

Kao was then the senior advisor to the prime minister.

Maintaining that the talks failed to persuade Akali leaders to see reason and cooperate with the government, he said, "The transcripts, which were kept in the top secret archives of the R&AW, were very valuable records of historic value.

"They showed how earnestly Indira Gandhi tried to avoid having to send the Army into the Golden Temple," he said.

Raman also elaborated on the pros and cons of the army raid, called Operation Blue Star [Get Quote], its impact on the sentiments of the armymen as well as the Sikhs.

The "lingering hurt" aggravated the Khalistani trouble and finally led to the killings of Indira Gandhi and then army chief Gen A S Vaidya.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jul/26raw.htm

The CIA papers


A.G. NOORANI


A CIA Staff Study published in May on the Sino-Indian border dispute (1959-62) throws neglected light on relations between the two countries.



THE HINDU PHOTO ARCHIVES

New Delhi, November 28, 1956. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai received by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at Palam Airport.

“We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.”

– Macaulay

SUBSTITUTE chauvinism for morality and you have an accurate description of the hyper-charged mind of the Indian public; not only of its lay citizens but of the entire political class, not least the academia and the media. It goes into a frenzy over disclosure of secret documents revealing “betrayals”, wrath over criticism by foreigners; jubilation over their support; and sheer ecstasy over their praise even if it is patronising praise. The chauvinism would have made Count Nicolas Chauvin blush.

Abba Eban, Israel’s accomplished diplomat, pitied Israelis who felt comforted whenever any state recognised theirs. We lack that calm self-assurance and, with it, the capacity for study, rigorous analysis and introspection. Wrong, simplistic lessons are drawn from “disclosures” and other events; invariably to fortify self-righteousness.

The publication in May of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Staff Study, entitled “The Sino-Indian Border Dispute”, covering the period 1959-1962, triggered off familiar reactions in familiar tunes – China’s “perfidy”, Nehru’s “idealism”, both confirming the proposition engraved on rock – we were always right, the Chinese were always wrong.

Series:This is the first part of a two-part article.


It was of a piece with the reactions to Jack Anderson’s disclosures on December 13, 1971 and January 14, 1972 published with other documents in 1973 as The Anderson Papers and Thomas Powers’ book on the CIA Director Rich ard Helms, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, not to overlook Tad Szulc’s report on the Indo-Soviet Treaty in The New York Times of August 13, 1971, based on intelligence reports. They revealed the existence of a CI A mole in the Indira Gandhi Cabinet; a senior Minister, indeed. He performed freely for the CIA all through 1971 till he was compromised. She did not sack him, however, ever forgiving of “human” weakness. He survived. “The CIA had penetrated the Indian Government at every level.” It sent reports on “troops movements, logistics, strategy, and even some of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s secret conversations”. Was it not a matter of concern that her anxious queries to the Soviet Ambassador and his replies reached Henry Kissinger’s table while the war was on.

Disclosures are lapped up; but the questions they raise are never asked. How penetrable was and is our system? What does a particular disclosure say for our decision-making process and for the soundness of the decision? Kissinger has been coming frequently to India and was often asked about the entry of the Seventh Fleet; not once, about his explicit instigation to the Chinese in December 1971 to attack India. So much for our television anchors and other interviewers. The CIA paper s published in May reveal that there was a mole in the Indian Cabinet, in a sensitive Cabinet Committee and even in the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI). It split in 1964.

More disclosures

Here are some disclosures. Have fun: Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt plainly told U.S. Ambassador Elsworth Bunker on April 27, 1959, that if the mighty West could not fight the United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in Hungary in 1956, “certainly India could not fight over Tibet which it is practically impossible for Indians even to reach out”. Some paragraphs that followed are blanked out. Did they contain Bunker’s pleas for Indian intervention in Tibet since the Dalai Lama had entered India on March 31? Are they cut out because they would embarrass the U.S. vis-À-vis China now?

The first armed clash with China occurred at Longju on August 25, 1959. Two hundred Chinese troops attacked 12 Indians. Longju was north of the McMahon Line in fact, but on the ridge to the north along which, Nehru claimed, the Line shou ld really run. The Study says that the clashes “seem to have stemmed largely from an increased Indian presence” there. (emphasis added, throughout).

On October 6 Mao and Liu Shao-Chi told the CPI’s general secretary Ajoy Ghosh that “reliable sources” informed them “that the Tibetan rebels had been aided by the Indians”.

The Study holds: “The Chinese goal was twofold: (1) probe New Delhi’s willingness to begin preliminary negotiations on an overall border agreement and (2) establish a military presence along the entire border. In discussions on 5 and 6 October, Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-chi reportedly told Indian Communist leader Ghosh that they wanted a border settlement, were prepared to exchange NEFA for their claim in Ladakh – that is, the Aksai Plain where they had built the road connecting Sinkiang and Tibet – and would put pressure on India to negotiate. They did not make clear what they meant by ‘pressure’. As for the McMahon line, Mao and Liu stated that they would accept it de facto with minor adjustments. They then told Ghosh that it would be necessary to develop a ‘proper atmosphere’ especially in India before negotiations could begin. In early October, Foreign Minister Chen Yi had moved to develop such an atmosphere, informally proposing to the Indian ambassador that the ‘first step’ would be a visit by the Vice President. On 19 October, Chou wrote a personal letter to Nehru, suggesting that Vice President S. Radhakrishnan visit Peiping and that this ‘might serve as a starting point for negotiations’. Nehru was reportedly at the time encouraged that the Chinese seemed willing to talk. When the letter was finally delivered by the Chinese ambassador on 24 October, Nehru and Radhakrishnan turned the proposal down, as on 21 October Chinese military forces had clashed with a patrol of Indian border police near the Kongka pass in southern Ladakh, capturing ten and killing nine.” For that clash, as the Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief B.N. Mullik’s memoirs reveal, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Army blamed him (The Chinese Betrayal, page 243). The public was told the very opposite. Public opinion was inflamed. Nehru went along with it. Nehru made a fate ful and most unwise move which reflected his poor understanding of “the international situation”, his favourite words. He sought Soviet intercession, aggravating Sino-Soviet as well as Sino-Indian relations.

“Apparently in the hope that Khrushchev would restrain the Chinese from further border attacks, New Delhi instructed the Indian ambassador in Moscow to explain the Indian position to Khrushchev personally. Khrushchev was to be informed that a large number of notes sent to Peiping have gone unanswered and that ‘the Chinese have started an insidious propaganda against India among socialist and nonaligned countries’. In early September, Indian Foreign Secretary Dutt formally notified the Soviet and Polish ambassadors of New Delhi’s serious concern over Chinese border incursions. Dutt privately warned the ambassadors that if the incidents were to continue, New Delhi would be forced to re-appraise its policy of nonal ignment. These appeals and Khrushchev’s apparent concern for the USSR’s whole Indian policy ‘combined to spur the Russians into an effort to dissociate Moscow from Peiping’s actions against India.” Note the CIA study’s direct quotes from secret Indian documents.

The TASS statement of September 9, 1959, provoked Zhou Enlai to send his letter of September 8 to pre-empt it after attempts to persuade Moscow not to release it had failed. It was a hard-line reply to Nehru’s letter of March 22. India’s Ambassador in Moscow told his U.S. counterpart that Khrushchev, whom he had met on September 12, took a balanced view. “Nehru told his Cabinet that in mid-October the Soviet Union had informed him that the Russians had done ‘as m uch as they were able to’ in cautioning the Chinese to exercise restraint – that is, Nehru explained, the Russians were clearly not in a position to dictate to Peiking” (the italicised words are in direct quotes in the Study). The CIA had access to Cabinet papers. Further, “at an emergency cabinet meeting in late October Nehru indicated that border fighting did not constitute a threat to India. The strategic Chinese threat, he maintained, lies in the rapidly increasing industrial power base of China as well as the building of military bases in Tibet. The only Indian answer, he continued, is the most rapid possible development of the Indian economy to provide a national power base capable of resisting a possible eventual Chinese Communist military move. Nehru seemed to believe that the Chinese could not sustain any major drive across the ‘great land barrier’ and that the Chinese threat was only a long-term one.”

Such was Nehru’s understanding of the realities of the modern world that the concept of a limited war, in vogue by then, never entered his mind. He was obsessed with an all-out-war, which he regarded as unthinkable and one which would lead to a world war.

The Study does not approve of restraint. “Had it not been Nehru but rather a more military-minded man who occupied the post of prime minister in late October 1959, a priority program to prepare India eventually to fight would have been started.”




Documents are misread; well-known facts misrepresented. There are also grave factual errors. It is absurd to say that the Army Chief Gen. K.S. Thimayya told the Governor’s conference in October 1959 that he wanted to “take” necessary military steps “on the road through the Aksai Chin but was prevented from doing so by Defence Minister Krishna Menon”. This is belied by the entire record. It bears quotation in extenso: “Nehru was responsible for the decision, and began to prepare Indian public opinion for the cession of Chinese-occupied sections of Ladakh. The procedure used was simply to reassert the line that most of Ladakh was wasteland. Nehru is reliably reported to have stated in late October sessions of the External Affairs sub-committee that he was willing to begin open negotiations on the determination of the Ladakh border. He emphasised that the disputed area of Ladakh is of ‘very little importance – uninhabitable, rocky, not a blade of grass’ – and went on to imply that he would not be averse to the ultimate cession of that part of eastern Ladakh claimed by the Chinese. In conversations at the time with army and government officials, members of the American embassy staff were told that the Aksai Plain is not regarded as strategically important or useful to India. The Indians stated repeatedly that it is a ‘barren place where not a blade of grass grows’. Both Foreign Secretary Dutt and Vice President Radhakrishnan complained bitterly that Nehru was on the way to selling out the Aksai Plain.” Nehru evidently was ignorant of Radhakrishnan’s penchant for intrigue. He got him elected as President in 1962.

“The developing line about the strategic insignificance of the Aksai Plain was strengthened by the Indian military estimate that the Plain was indefeasible anyway. General Thimayya’s estimate was that the ridge line of the Ka rakoram Range is the only defensible frontier in the entire Ladakh area. Thimayya stated that therefore part of the Tibet Plateau east of the ridge line shown as Indian territory on New Delhi’s maps was ‘militarily indefensible,’ and by implication there was really no strategic reason for recapturing it from Chinese troops even if it were possible to do so in the face of ‘preponderant Chinese military power’. This view provided Nehru with another rationalisation for his talk rather than fight decision. He also stated privately that the entire border in Ladakh is undefined, that few Indians live in the area, that there has never been any real administration there, and that therefore he is not sure th at all the territory claimed in Ladakh belongs to India.”

Throughout the 19th century the British favoured the Karakoram boundary, which gave the Aksai Chin to China. Nehru claimed the Kuen Lun boundary which included Aksai Chin in India.

B. N. Mullik, the IB chief, records Thimayya’s view on the futility of a fight over the worthlessness of the Aksai Chin. The MEA thought it was “useless” (The Chinese Betrayal, pages 204, 205, and 240). It lay in & #8220;disputed” territory. President Rajendra Prasad was for a hard line and persuaded Nehru to revise his note of November 4 as it “lacked firmness”. Maulana Azad was dead. G. B. Pant and Morarji Desai thought it a good opportunity to bridle Nehru politically. Nehru needed little persuasion to swim with the tide of public opinion. It is, however, hard to believe, as the Study asserts, that Nehru’s letter to Zhou on November 18 was “drafted primarily” by Pant and “reviewed” by Nehru. Whoever told the CIA that? Pant or a zealous aide?

Four fateful steps


THE HINDU PHOTO ARCHIVES

Beijing, October 1954. Jawaharlal Nehru, along with Indira Gandhi, going to a rally accompanied by Zhou Enlai.

So much for the juicy disclosures. More relevant is the record on policy. It was shaped by four crucial decisions by Nehru. As Aitchison’s Treaties, Engagements, etc. recorded (1929), “the northern as well as the eastern boundary of the Kashmir State is still undefined.” The two White Papers on Indian States (1948 and 1950) had maps more than one, all reflecting that position. In one of them even the colour wash did not extend to the Aksai Chin (vide the writer’s article “Negotiating with China”, Frontline, August 14, 1989). In contrast, all maps showed the McMahon Line clearly as the boundary. Patel’s famous lette r to Nehru on November 7, 1950, and Nehru’s declaration in Parliament on November 20, 1950, were confined to this Line. The Aksai Chin did not figure in our consciousness at all.The Panchsheel Agreement was signed on April 29, 1954. In June Zhou came to India. Four fateful steps followed thereafter. (1) On July 1, 1954, Nehru wrote a 17-paragraph memorandum directing that “all our old maps” should be “withdrawn. New maps should be printed” (which) should also not state there is any undemarcated territory. And there would be no discussion on that new line; no debate (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru; Vol. 26, page 481). Such a unilateral change in one’s own map is ineffective in law, morality and politics. One might as well alter one’s map to claim ownership over another state. China did not protest when, on February 12, 1951, Major R. (Bob) Khating evicted the Tibetans and took over the administration of Tawang, the last outpost south of the McMahon Line. Nor did it protest over the new maps of 1954. It ignored them. In April 1952 China had decided “to go all out” for the road through the Aksai Chin. In October 1951 India noticed its surveyors there. The IB reported construction on the site in November 1952. Completion of the road was announced in March 1957. Not till 1958 did an Indian patriot reach the road (Mullik, pages 196-198).

This was the situation when the second fateful step was taken. On August 21, 1958, India protested at China’s maps. China’s reply of November 3, 1958, neither owned them up nor promised revision; only promised surveys and consultation. Nehru wrote to Zhou on December 14, 1958, citing their talks in October 1954 and 1956 on the McMahon Line. It was Zhou who raised the Western sector in Ladakh in his reply of January 23, 1959. It made two points – “border disputes do exist” between them but he would take “a more or less realistic attitude towards the McMahon Line”. The issue was about the Aksai Chin.

India could not, should not have asked for more. Instead, Nehru’s reply of March 22, 1959, banged the door to conciliation contending that it was a settled matter and no dispute existed. He cited incredibly the Treaty of 1842 between China and Kashmir as having fixed the boundary. “The area now being claimed by China has always been depicted as part of India on official maps” – which was untrue (vide the writer’s article Frontline, A ugust 28, 1998). Nehru himself admitted repeatedly in August-September 1959 that, unlike the McMahon Line, the Aksai Chin was disputed territory – “for a hundred years” (September 17, 1959).

Why then did he cite the 1842 Treaty in March 1959? Had he stuck to this belated discovery a fair settlement could have been arrived at. He took the third step on September 26, 1959, only nine days later, stipulating two pre-conditi ons – China must withdraw to the line claimed by India, but even if it did India “could not possibly discuss the future of such large areas which are an integral part of their territory”. This rendered conciliation and compromise impossible. Which historian advised him to (1) write the letters of March 22, 1959 and September 26, 1959? The people have a right to know.

That baleful advice was in the teeth of historical records from 1846-1947. The Bhartiya Janata Party decries Nehru, others laud him for “idealism”. He was in truth a unilateralist – he decided where the boundary lay and refused to negotiate on it. He also decided there was no dispute on Kashmir. He left successors with terrible legacies since he had moulded public opinion on both in support of impossible positions. The fourth, last step was at the Nehru-Zhou summit in New Delhi on April 19-26, 1960, where Zhou offered to accept the status quo and Nehru refused.

By now the 1954 map had become a cartographic Bible. Ignore the disclosures and reflect on the light which the CIA’s Study sheds on how we responded to the diplomatic challenge. It is in these parts, covering 1950-59; 1959-61 and 1961-62. It draws on inputs by the Defence Department, the CIA and the U.S. Embassy’s reports.

The U.S. was then hostile to China. All the more damning is its exposure of the arrogance and sheer folly that marked Nehru’s stand on the boundary question. But remember – the Jan Sangh, the Lohiaites, the Swatantra and the Congress right wing, in fact the entire media and academia backed him to the hilt and urged a harder line. It was a truly national failure rooted in hubris and ignorance. There is little sign today of either abating and yielding to serious introspection on such issues. That China prevaricated on the maps and showed lack of candour is evident. After August 1959 it spread out to the west of the road and occupied the Changchenmo valley in Ladakh.

Conciliatory advice

Section I of the Study is supportive of Nehru’s position. Not so the rest. Section II reveals the “conciliatory” advice which our Ambassadors to the USSR and China gave to India. “According to Ministry of External Affairs deputy (sic.) Secretary [Jagat] Mehta’s remarks to an American official on March 9, the acid test for a real compromise solution was not Chinese willingness to accept the McMahon line – as they had already accepted the line ‘in fact’ – but willingness to withdraw from the Aksai Plain. That is, Chinese acceptance of the Aksai Plain as Indian territory and retraction of their demand that this part of Ladakh be considered at least disputed land. Peiping indicated, through a discussion by its military attaché in East Germany with a Western journalist on 2 March, that China might agree to a demilitarized zone in ‘certain portions’ of Ladakh. However, such agreement was conditional on Indian acceptance of the principle that Ladakh was disputed territory. The attaché then made it clear that ‘under no circumstances’ would the Chinese withdraw from the road. Another small concession of ‘face’, evidencing Peiping’s urgent desire to mollify the Indians and work toward an overall border settlement. The Chinese acted to create an impression of confidence that the meeting would bring satisfactory results. Ambassador Parthasarathy reported his impression from Peiping on 7 Mar ch that the Chinese were prepared to compromise.”

Nehru was taken aback when Zhou indicated his intention to spend six days in New Delhi. He came to settle. “Negotiation, in the Chinese view, actually meant a simple procedure whereby Nehru would agree to ac cept Chou’s formula of an Aksai Plain-for-NEFA exchange. The Indian officials reported to New Delhi that at their parting reception given in late July by Foreign Minister Chen Yi, Chen explicitly stated that the Chinese were ready ‘to negotiate’ on the basis of Chou’s formula, and added that Chou would be willing to visit India again to sign an agreement to such a formula ‘if Nehru had no time’ to come to Peiping. A similar message was later conveyed by Burmese Prime Minister U Nu in talks with President Prasad in New Delhi on 14 November. U Nu is reported to have been told by Chou En-lai that he was prepared to give up China’s claim to the NEFA in return for India’s acceptance of the status quo in Ladakh, even though this would mean giving up ‘vast territories that historically belonged to Tibet.’ When Prasad discussed U Nu’s statement with Nehru, the latter – according to Prasad – commented: Chou’s suggestion for solving the dispute has some merit, for if they (i.e. the Chinese) can prove that historically Ladakh belongs to them, what is the reason for us to keep it? line’ thinking on Peiping and his personal inclination to vacillate, keeping alive the hope of a way out through compromise. It also underscores the influence of his associates in sustaining at crucial times an adamant official attitude.”

Section III is critical of India’s Forward Policy. “Formulated in December 1961 (in fact on November 2, 1961 - AGN) the army plan envisaged operations in Ladakh by spring when weather conditions improved. The plan called for the establishment of five new Indian posts of 80-100 men each behind nine existing forward Chinese posts in Ladakh west of the 1956 Chinese claim line; the posts were to be manned all year round. Krishna Menon instructed the Indian air force to prepare a report on its capability to sustain a major air supply effort. (Two of the posts were to be set up close to the western part of the Aksai Plain road, but the Indians were unable to move anywhere near it in subsequent encounters.)

“Briefing cabinet sub-committee officials on the Nehru-approved plan in late December, Krishna Menon stated that the new posts would be positioned to cut off the supply lines of targeted Chinese posts; they were to cause the “starving out” of the Chinese, who would thereafter be replaced by Indian troops in the posts. These points would serve as advanced bases for Indian patrols assigned to probe close to the road.”

China’s warning

“Alert to the possibility of new Indian moves, the Chinese in late 1961 had warned the Indians to maintain the border status quo. Privately in January 1962, they began to threaten armed counteraction. The Chinese ambassador in Cambodia told his Burmese colleague in late January (at a time when Peiping was again probing for negotiations) that China still desired Chou-Nehru talks, but if India wanted to ‘bully, pressure, or fight’ the Chinese about the disputed area, the Chinese would prove to be tough diversaries and were ‘quite willing to use troops to resist attack’. This threat was communicated to the Indian ambassador in Phnom Penh, who apparently informed New Delhi… The border dispute was in this way transferred by the Indians from a primarily political quarrel to a serious military confrontation.” Large portions that follow this are blanked out. Remember, in 1964 the U.S. was hostile to China.

Nehru declared: “We will continue to build these things up so that ultimately we may be in a position to take effective action to recover such territory as is in their possession,”; that is, use force to recover the Aksa i Chin, while penny posts were erected in that area. Worse, India set up the Dhola Post in the Thagla Ridge in the east in June 1962. It was “north of the McMahon Line by at least 400 yards”.

It thus played into the hands of an impatient and exasperated China, which formerly was afraid of attack by Chinese Nationalists across the Taiwan Straits. However, “Statements made at the Sino-American talks in Warsaw to Ambassador Wang Pingnan on 23 June and by President Kennedy to newsmen on the 27th apparently dispelled these fears. Security precautions in the Canton area were eased in early July and on 19 July, Chen Yi, during an interview in Geneva, three times referred to the American ‘assurance’ given to Wang Ping-nan that the U.S. would not support a Nationalist assault against the mainland, describing the assurance as ‘not bad’. He did not comment on Khrushchev’s 2 July statement. The Chine se leaders, no longer rattled by the prospect of a two-front war, turned with restored confidence to encounter the Indian advances. Their first major move of 1962 was in direct response to a new Indian move in Ladakh.” This was brought out 30 years later in Roderick Macfarquhar’s book and John W. Garner’s essay. Meanwhile, “according to Krishna Menon’s report to the Cabinet Defence subcommittee on 12 July, the 20-man Indian unit had been ordered to open fire if the Chinese advanced any closer. Nevertheless, the Chinese had the superior force and could have destroyed the post without much trouble. Ambassador Galbraith received the impression from the MEA’s China Division Director, S. Sinha, on 13 July that the ‘strategy’ of the Indian leaders was to hope that the Chinese would go away.”

Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul “told Ambassador Galbraith on 16 July that the Indian army viewed the Chinese as set in a ‘mood’ of weakness and that Indian policy was to take maximum advantage of this mood by establishing even more new posts. In contrast to the policy ‘ambiguities’ of a year or two ago, Kaul continued, the Indian army ‘is not now in a mood to be pushed around’.”

This CIA Study, hostile to China, records: “Ever since the Chou-Nehru talks of April 1960, the Chinese leaders without exception had been receptive to any high-level Indian exploratory approach to talks. Only after they had ascertained that the Indian representative was stating the same old position – that is, Chinese withdrawal as a pre-condition for negotiations – did they act to reject an Indian overture. Thus in early July, the Chinese responded by returning Ambassador Pan Tuz-li, who had been in Peiping since January, to New Delhi to make a personal determination of Nehru’s willingness to begin talks. Nehru advised the Cabinet Defence Subcommittee meeting on 12 July that during his meeting with Pan, the latter had suggested Sino-Indian talks be initiated. Nehru told the meeting that this suggestion would be turned down because the Chinese were capable of making further border advances under the guise of talks. President Radhakrishnan concurred, maintaining that no grounds for talks existed as long as the Chinese persisted in their refusal to withdraw first.”

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2416/stories/20070824507005900.htm

Date : 2005-12-21
CIA aid northeast India insurgents: Sarkar
Raymond R Kharmujai - Reporting to Asian Tribune



Shillong, 21 December, (Asiantribune.com): "It’s not only the Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) agency which is aiding and abetting the North East India insurgents. Even the United States of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)," said Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar.

"ISI is still active in Bangladesh and continues to back North East India insurgents with the full support of the CIA," Sarkar said adding that he has communicated to the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on the CIA’s involvements - hand in glove with the Pakistani’s intelligence agency to "aid and abet" the North East militants outfits.

"Recently, my government has submitted a list of militant camps and maps pointing out the militant safe hide-outs in Bangladesh soil to the Prime Minister," he informed. He added that the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had apprised his Bangladesh counterpart on the issue.

It may be mentioned here that the Border Security Forces and New Delhi has also submitted list of 194 camps to the Bangladesh Rifles and Dhaka urging them to dismantle these training camps. Bangladesh has often denied the presence of such camps in its soil.

More than a dozen of North East militant outfits have set up their training camps in Bangladesh soil to wage war against the Indian government. Most of these organizations are fighting for "sovereign homeland".

"The government of India should continue to persuade Bangladesh to dismantle all the north east militant’s camps, freeze all the bank accounts of the outfit’s leaders and to augment more BSF personnel to guard the porous Indo-Bangla border," he said.

- Asian Tribune -

TOP SECRET

Laptop evangelists

Latest cutting-edge web technologies are used to keep in touch with various "unreached people groups" through key local interlocutors. They also track on a regular basis status indicators like number of evangelists working within a people group, the number of Christian adherents, church growth and mission agency progress indicators. All this information is then used to "promote networking and partnerships focusing on least-reached peoples in order to promote the flow of strategic ministry activity information between individuals, churches, denominations and mission agencies.

Tehelka's undercover operation managed to set up networking contacts with the Joshua II project. Evidence of the meticulous nature of this data is available with Tehelka. The amazing network that has been established can be illustrated with the following anecdote. B Shreeprakash and B Jayaprakash from Kayamkulam, Kerala, came across the December 1998 issue of the National Missionary Intelligencer published by The National Missionary Society of India, Royappettah, Chennai, while waiting for an appointment with a doctor. That sparked off an amateur investigation exercise, the contents of which were put down in their report titled 'Conversions in India'. Here's an extract:


"As part of this work, an address namely, 'Workers Together' in US was contacted. To my surprise, a pastor of the Brethren Church, contacted me from my own town, his residence was only 1km away from that of mine. He called me over telephone and invited me for a personal meeting. On visiting his house, he handed over to me an oxford Edition of the Bible, printed in New York, and a few booklets and pamphlets. What astonished me was, that the pastor had with him, a copy of letter which I had sent to US. On enquiring about how the nearness of my residence with that of the Pastor was understood by the party at Bangalore, he showed me an official directory of the list of the evangelicals working in India, with their family photographs and complete details arranged in order of PIN codes. Another directory of their worldwide network was also shown to me."

There cannot, perhaps, be a better example to understand the effects of marrying the IMA's survey with Joshua Project's database. The message is this-an American missionary agency will go to any length even if it means converting just one person. A letter written to an agency in the US is re-directed immediately to Bangalore and the agency in Bangalore in turn tracks down the nearest evangelist and directs him to take upon the task of ministering the gospel to the newest seeker. In fact, the mission goal of IMA, according to its general secretary, Ebenezer Sunder Raj, is: "We need a church within cycling distance, then within walking distance and finally within hearing distance." The Church growth figures that are with Tehelka clearly indicate that this mission mandate is on in full swing.

Data on India: the CIA connection

The "spying out" missions that generated the vast ethnographic data of the Indian people also involved detailed study of Dr KS Singh's 'People of India Project' that was launched in 1985 by the Anthropological Society of India (ASI). Under Singh's leadership, the ASI undertook an ambitious project to chart one of the most far-reaching ethnographic studies in the 20th century. Five hundred scholars spent over 26,000 field days to compile information for these volumes. This gigantic research work came handy for American and Indian strategists to draft their evangelical plans for India. According to Luis Bush, "Never before has this kind of information on India been so carefully surveyed, prepared, well published and distributed…We do not believe it is accidental. God is allowing us to "spy out the land" that we might go in and claim both it and its inhabitants for Him."

The data collected by experts from Wycliffe/Summer Institute of Linguistics, World Vision (WV) and the International Mission Board/Southern Baptists to compile the Joshua Project Peoples list included a detailed and comprehensive list of the people groups in India as well. Though this may appear normal international research activity - generating ethnographic profiles of non-Christian people groups in the 10/40 window - there are unseen dangers inherent in the compilation of such accurate people-group profiles.

The CIA has publicly admitted to having used Wycliffe/SIL and the Southern Baptists for covert intelligence operations in many parts of the world. The cosy relationship between the Wycliffe and CIA is documented exhaustively in a book Thy Will Be Done written in the 1990s by Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennett. The book documents joint CIA-Wycliffe missions to source anthropological data from Latin America. Here's a quote from the book: "SIL had helped gather anthropological information on the Tarascan Indians that ended up in Nelson Rockefeller's intelligence files. The files contained cross-references to reveal behavioural patterns among Indian peoples in everything from socialisation (including aggressive tendencies) and personality traits, drives, emotions, and language structure, to political intrigue, kinship ties, traditional authority, mineral resources, exploitation, and labor relations. Rockefeller called these data the Strategic Index of Latin America." The question that will rattle not only the Indian government, but also outrage the Indian citizens is whether the American-funded "spying missions" carried out by Indian and foreign missionary agencies through more than a decade has resulted in the preparation of a 'Strategic Index of India' at the CIA headquarters?

Wycliffe, the Southern Baptists and World Vision have all been active in India as well. Could it be mere coincidence that Southern Baptists who are amongst President Bush's most loyal supporters, played an active role in the "spying out" missions? In fact, Colby and Dennett's book features a missionary of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, William Carlsen, who admits that he gave an eight-hour briefing to the CIA on Thailand's tribal areas. In the mid-1970s when the CIA's penetration of American missionary agencies made international headlines, the agency passed a self-limiting executive order to refrain from using foreign missionaries for intelligence gathering operations. Incidentally, it was George Bush Sr who in his first action as the new CIA director declared on February 11, 1976, that he would ban the practice of enlisting "clergymen and newsmen as intelligence agents." But this was just public grandstanding, doublespeak to save the CIA not only from embarrassment, but protect its operations in Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. As soon as this announcement was made the CIA granted itself a private waiver. This was confirmed in April 1996 when the then CIA director, John Deutch, testifying before a Senate intelligence committee, said that the agency could waive the ban in cases "unique and special threats to national security."

Faith-based policies of White House

Surprisingly, Bush's supporters like the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), made laborious protests then to condemn the collaboration between missionaries and the intelligence agency. "Any foreigner living in a foreign culture already comes under a natural suspicion. If this policy is reversed, it would totally erode the ministry of missionaries," said Jerry Rankin, the then president of the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board. In effect, this amounted to a plea to the CIA to keep their most well publicized (and hardly noticed) secret guarded!! The very fact that CIA has been courting religious missionaries in India and elsewhere is testimony to the fact that US funded evangelical missions have an unparalleled reach to the remotest corners of the country. Christianity Today in its issue of April 29, 1996, carried the following comment by the NAE President Don Argue: "For intelligence agencies to seek any relationship whatsoever with our religious workers must be unequivocally prohibited."

Yet, as recently as January 15, on a visit to the Union Bethel AME Church in New Orleans (this is a predominantly African-American congregation) Bush touted his faith-based initiatives. These initiatives are designed to break the constitutional sanctity of the separation of the State and the Church. Bush is desperate to entangle and enmesh faith-based organization as providers of various services. The Americans United For Separation of Church and State and some other inter-faith organisations have challenged the Bush plan for religious conversions. Americans United, founded in 1947, is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, DC. But, the Bush administration has relentlessly pushed its religious agenda. It has now become inextricably linked with not only its social services policies domestically, but also with US foreign policy and the disbursal of aid to US-based TMOs. "President Bush shows little appreciation or understanding of the separation of church and state. Bush is closely aligned with ultra-conservative Christian groups that have opposed church-state separation for years. It is obvious they have great influence over his domestic and foreign policy agendas," Rob Boston, assistant director of communications, Americans United, told Tehelka.

These TMOs, themselves have been instrumental in influencing the faith-based policies of the Bush administration in the first place. Therefore, they in turn, by virtue of being Bush loyalists have carried the 'Bush Religious Agenda' to other countries, including India. While within the US this agenda "strikes at the heart of the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment" of the US constitution, in the rest of the world, specially, India, it has vitally subverted its security and integrity. "The Religious Right organisations and fundamentalist Protestants groups have way too much influence over the Bush administration. Sadly, many Americans do not follow foreign policy decisions (with the exception of the war in Iraq) and are either not aware of what is happening or, more often, simply do not care. As a result, we are on the verge of dismantling the wall of separation of church and state in America-a policy that, if enacted, is bound to have negative repercussions around the world as fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity increasingly become the basis for foreign policy," said Boston.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts013004shashi.asp&id=4

CURRENT AFFAIRS investigation


The Foreign Hand

What is the latest in the investigations taking place in the Mumbai terror plot? A report from Ground Zero by RANA AYYUB

INVESTIGATIONS INTO the November 26 Mumbai attacks continue to reveal new facets. In his confession, captured terrorist Kasav has stated that not just he but the other nine terrorists killed are Pakistani nationals, a fact confirmed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, members of which interrogated Kasav, Crime Branch sources say. Kasav has also named his trainers, all members of the Lashkar-e- Tayyeba (LeT) front, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, including its head, Hafiz Sayeed.

Right from Kasav’s statement to the material recovered from the trawler, Kuber, which the terrorists hijacked on their way to Mumbai, there has been enough evidence of the involvement of Pakistan-based extremist organisations and their leaders in the attack. Pakistan, however, claims that it has not been provided such proof, thereby giving it grounds to take no specific action against terror outfits on its soil. Finally, though, international pressure appears to have compelled President Asif Ali Zardari to say, in an interview to Newsweek, that non-state actors were indeed his responsibility. Although he categorically denied that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was involved in the attack or with the LeT, he did say that nobody would be allowed to use Pakistani soil for any kind of aggression on a friend.

Contrary to Zardari’s assertions, however, sources investigating the attacks have told TEHELKA that there is enough evidence to suggest a key ISI role — among the trainers Kasav has named, several were apparently part of the ISI or armymen. When asked whether or not these armymen were presently in service, the officials declined to comment.

Another significant clue pointing to Pakistani involvement are the grenades recovered from the attack sites, which Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police Rakesh Maria says are of the same make as those used in the city’s 1993 serial blasts. The grenades were manufactured by the Pakistan Ordinance Factories (POF), under license for the Pakistan Army and are all marked ‘Arges’, in bold letters, followed by ‘Spl HG 64’ and the serial number. The brand belongs to the Austriabased Rheinmetall Waffe Munition Arges, a subsidiary of Rheinmetall Waffe Munition GmbH, a German weaponsmanufacturing company. Additional CP (Crime) Deven Bharati says Rheinmettall has assured investigators complete cooperation. However, when contacted by TEHELKA, officials of Rheinmetall Waffe refused to comment.

While the assistance the terrorists must have received has not been made clear, a state minister who is looking into the matter has said that information had it that another set of LeT operatives used the same route as the terrorists thrice in two months as a recce for the main operation. If this turns out to be true, it would suggest not just serious security and intelligence lapses, but also what is, at best a oversight and, at worst, the connivance of a section of Pakistani officials, as the Pakistan Navy did not manage to intercept any of the terrorists either.

The Crime Branch is also hoping to elicit crucial information from LeT operatives Faheem Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed, held for attacking a CRPF camp. The Mumbai Police claims the operatives had scouted the targets of the attack and provided information on them to their heads in Pakistan. Ansari’s family has denied these claims. His elder brother, Abu Bakr Ansari, and sister, Farhana Ansari, who visited him just a day before the attack, say that the Special Task Force (STF) officials were themselves convinced that he was not involved in any terrorrelated activity. “When we went there,” Abu Bakr Ansari told TEHELKA, “the STF officials asked us to file an application for his bail. If he were a terrorist, would they have suggested this?”

Faheem Ansari’s interrogation report states that he was working under orders from LeT operatives Zaki ur Rehman, Muzammil, Kahafa, Abu Talha and others. It also states that he had confessed to holding Osama Bin Laden as a hero and was known to his neighbours as having jehadi inclinations. The neighbours, however, deny this claim. Ansari’s family has also refuted the police claim that he disappeared from his work place in Dubai to join the LeT. According to his brother, Ansari injured someone during a fight at his workplace and fled fearing the consequences.

While there are contradictions between the family’s version of events and Ansari’s interrogation reports, there also seems to be a contradiction in the investigating agencies’ version of the 26/11 plot. After the attack, Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) officials told TEHELKA that several local terror outfits, such as the Indian Muja hideen, had been involved and had provided logistical support to the terrorists. Crime Branch officials, however, place responsibility on foreign organisations alone. The interdeparmental strain became clear in a senior ATS official’s remark to TEHELKA, on condition of anonymity, that most of the Crime Branch’s statements have been given out without verification.

Meanwhile, Kasav — who has appeared before a magistrate and is facing a string of accusations including waging war against the country, murder, attempted murder and other charges under the Arms and Explosives Act — will have a difficult time finding legal help with Maharashtra bar associations passing a referendum against allowing him any representation. The Bar Council of India has termed this move illegal. Ex-IPS officer and law expert YP Singh says under the Constitution, every accused is entitled to a fair trial under the CrPC. “By not allowing Kasav a lawyer, they will only help his case and he will have the last laugh. As it is, he has to go to the gallows as there is enough evidence against him. Why give him a chance to appeal later and keep delaying the case,” says Singh. While lawyers Ashok Sarogi and Mahesh Deshmukh, who expressed willingness to take the case, had to face Shiv Sena ire, former state Additional Advocate General P Janardhan has offered to represent Kasav if the Pakistan High Commission approa - ched him. Kasab has written to the Pakistani consulate asking for legal help and, according to the police, the letter has been sent to the Ministry of External Affairs.


From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 51, Dated Dec 27, 2008
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Ne271208the_foreign.asp

Welcome To The Security State

There’s fear that the two new anti-terror laws will be repressive, finds ROHINI MOHAN

IMAGINE A regular train journey. You get down at your station, laughing at a friend’s bad joke. Suddenly, you are dragged away by your waist. Men you have never seen before threaten to kill you if you don’t go with them. You are blindfolded, thrown into a vehicle and taken, you have no idea where. You are left naked in the cold. Beaten. Administered electric shocks six times a day. You are only a medical student trying to pass an exam, but you are told repeatedly to admit to making a bomb that killed 16 people in your city. Finally you realise that the men yelling at you are the police. Your beard is cut off, your religion abused, and when you cannot feel your bones anymore, you tell them yes, you are a terrorist just to make the pain stop. A magistrate sends you to jail for five months — your family is not informed, you have no lawyer, no access to a phone, no money. You see no one but your torturers for half a year. In the world’s biggest democracy, you have not a single human right.

This happened. To Junaid, a 25-yearold medical student in Hyderabad, and to 20 other young men in the same city. They were picked up as terror suspects a few days after the Mecca Masjid blasts in May 2007, and illegally detained for about six months each. Most of them are now free because the courts found the police had no evidence against them. Still, Juniad was thrown out of his university, and the others lost their jobs. The Andhra Pradesh Minority Commission admitted publicly that the police had repeatedly tortured the Muslim boys and held them under fabricated criminal and conspiracy cases. The state government said, “We apologise, but it happens.” The policemen responsible still hold their jobs, unpunished.

‘Where is the blueprint? Where are the officers going
to come from? The government cannot simply
create bodies without accounting for them’

PRAKASH SINGH
Former DG, UP Police

‘The greatest casualty of POTA and TADA was civil
liberties. The new amendments are simply
revised provisions of POTA, which saw two percent
conviction, as police were trapping innocents ’

RAM JETHMALANI
Former Law Minister

‘The policemen would take me to hospital and dictate to the medical officer: ‘Heart rate normal, no visible sign
of torture’. If the lawyer of the accused wants to be
present, he is not allowed’

SAR GEELANI
Lecturer, University of Delhi

‘There is always torture of arrested persons. There are
personal biases among policemen against minorities. It is common to flog the horse till it does what you want.
With 30 days, police are getting a long hand’

SR DARAPURI
Inspector General, UP Police




“If this kind of misuse can happen under regular laws, imagine the misuse if more powers are provided through antiterror laws,” says civil liberties activist Gautam Navlakha. The UPA Government, which made the repeal of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) its first major policy decision in 2004, has now passed two laws it believes are necessary to tackle rising terror. A special federal outfit called the National Investigating Agency (NIA) will be created to investigate and prosecute terrorists. Unlike the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the NIA can take charge of terror cases without the consent of the state concerned. It has jurisdiction over the entire country, and can set up special fast track courts for speedy trials. Then, amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act (UAPA) would deny bail to foreigners accused in terror cases, which means the likes of Mumbai terror accused Kasav can be detained indefinitely. Bail to an Indian accused will be granted only after a court hears the prosecution. A new provision says that if anyone is found with explosives or firearms, the onus would be on him to prove his innocence.

The most contentious change is the doubling of the duration of police custody from 15 to 30 days. This, to social activist Ram Puniyani, “only means more time for torture”.

Questions have also been raised over how the NIA is to be constituted. “Where is the blueprint?” asks Prakash Singh, former Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police, “Where are the officers going to come from? IPS officers of high calibre are rare to find even for the state police and the CBI.”

Over a third of all staff positions at the CBI are vacant — the agency says it just cannot find qualified applicants. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) — in charge of collecting internal intelligence — employs 28,000 personnel, of whom only 3,500 are field officers. “The government cannot simply create bodies and give them powers and duties without accounting for who will carry them out,” says Singh. “IB officers cannot be used. I have worked in the IB for 10 years, and they cannot investigate even a cycle theft. We will have to start by teaching them how to file an FIR. The NIA needs investigators.”

Ajay Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, says, “The government has created special purpose agencies before: the National Disaster Management Authority, the National Security Council, and the Defence Intelligence Agency. They are nothing but non-functional organisations without funds and without trained officers.” Sahni says the NIA is a “misguided project that only has electoral resonance”.

EVEN SUPPORT for the NIA comes with apprehensions. AK Verma, a former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) feels the NIA will overcome the disabilities of the IB, CBI and RAW. “The NIA will come into the picture when a terror act happens, and that is the need of the hour,” says Verma, “But tackling terror is a long-term project. It does not end with being tough on an Kasav. You have to nip terror in the bud, and prevent more from taking root. Innocents cannot be punished, the justice system has to be fair.”

The stringent terror laws being put forth with the NIA threaten this goal. “The greatest casualty of POTA and TADA was civil liberties,” says former law minister Ram Jethmalani, who was part of a fact-finding team that documented POTA misuse in 2003. “Sadly, the UAPA amendments are simply revised provisions of POTA, which saw an abysmal conviction rate of two percent because the police were always trapping innocents.”

Activists and policemen fear that prolonged custody will inevitably be abused. “There is always torture of arrested persons,” says SR Darapuri, retired Inspector General, UP police, “There are personal biases among policemen against minorities, and the popular school of thought is to flog the horse till it does what you want.” He points out that if investigators need more time on a terror case, they can always extend police custody by providing sufficient grounds in court. “With 30 days, the police are getting a long hand,” says Darapuri.

Many believe that the amendments are only legitimising illegal detentions. SAR Geelani, the Delhi University lecturer accused under POTA of masterminding the Parliament attacks and acquitted after four years, says, “Longer custody would not be a problem if the police did not violate human rights with alarming regularity.” He says the mandatory medical examination he had to undergo every 48 hours in custody was always fabricated. “The policeman would take me to hospital and dictate to the medical officer: ‘heart rate normal, no visible sign of torture’. If the lawyer of the accused wants to be present, he is usually not allowed.”

The Lok Sabha, in debating the antiterror laws before passing it, mostly lauded the tougher stand. Kapil Sibal said that in setting up the NIA, the UPA did in two months what the NDA could not do in six years. Ghosts of POTA haunt both new laws – they have the same repressive definitions of who could be a terrorist. The BJP’s LK Advani supported the laws, but wanted more. When a voice in Parliament shouted out about human rights violations, he retorted, “All laws can be misused.” They can. But when a law has been more abused than used well, chances are its new avatar won’t do any better.

WRITER’S EMAIL
rohini@tehelka.com
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Ne271208welcome_to.asp

Indira's India and the KGB
A charm offensive against Mrs Gandhi, agents in the media and the government, attempts to buy influence in Congress — in the second volume of the astonishing Mitrokhin archive Christopher Andrew reveals how the KGB targeted India

by Christopher Andrew
INDIRA GANDHI NEVER realised that the KGB’s first prolonged contact with her occurred during her first visit to the Soviet Union, a few months after Stalin’s death in 1953. As well as keeping her under continuous surveillance, the Centre (KGB headquarters) also surrounded her with handsome, attentive male admirers. Two years later Indira accompanied her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the inaugural Prime Minister of independent India, on his first official visit to the Soviet Union. Like Nehru, she was visibly impressed by the apparent successes of Soviet planning and economic modernisation exhibited to them in stage-managed visits to Russian factories. During her trip Khrushchev presented her with a mink coat which became one of the favourite items in her wardrobe — even though a few years earlier she had criticised the female Indian ambassador in Moscow for accepting a similar gift.

Soviet attempts to cultivate Indira Gandhi during the 1950s were motivated far more by the desire to influence her father than by any awareness of her own political potential. Moscow still underestimated her when she became Prime Minister. In her early parliamentary appearances she seemed tongue-tied and unable to think on her feet. The insulting nickname coined by a socialist MP, Dumb Doll, began to stick.

But her political genes were soon to show their worth. Following a split in the Congress Party in 1969, the Communist Party of India (CPI), encouraged by Moscow, swung its support behind her. At the elections of February 1971, Mrs Gandhi’s wing of Congress won a landslide victory.

In August she signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation with the Soviet Union. Both countries immediately issued a joint communique calling for the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. India was able to rely on Soviet arms supplies and diplomatic support in the conflict against Pakistan which was already in the offing.

Despite diplomatic support from both the United States and China, Pakistan suffered a crushing defeat in the 14-day war with India.

For most Indians it was Mrs Gandhi’s finest hour. A Soviet diplomat at the United Nations exulted: “This is the first time in history that the United States and China have been defeated together!” In the Centre, the Indo-Soviet special relationship was also celebrated as a triumph for the KGB. The residency in Delhi was rewarded by being upgraded to the status of “main residency”. Its head from 1970 to 1975, Yakov Prokofyevich Medyanik, was accorded the title of “main resident”. In the early 1970s the KGB presence in India became one of the largest outside the Soviet bloc. Indira Gandhi placed no limit on the number of Soviet diplomats and trade officials, thus allowing the KGB and Soviet intelligence as many cover positions as they wished.

Oleg Kalugin, who became head of Foreign Counter-Intelligence in 1973, remembers India as “a model of KGB infiltration of a Third World government”. He recalls one occasion when the KGB turned down an offer from an Indian minister to provide information in return for $50,000 on the grounds that it was already well supplied with material from the Indian foreign and defence ministries: “It seemed like the entire country was for sale; the KGB — and the CIA — had penetrated the Indian government. Neither side entrusted sensitive information to the Indians, realising their enemy would know all about it the next day.” The KGB, in Kalugin’s view, was more successful than the CIA, partly because of its skill in exploiting the corruption that became endemic under Indira Gandhi’s regime. Suitcases full of banknotes were said to be routinely taken to her house and one of her opponents claimed that Mrs Gandhi did not even return the cases.

The Prime Minister is unlikely to have paid close attention to the dubious origins of some of the funds that went into Congress’s coffers. That was a matter she left largely to her principal fund-raiser, Lalit Narayan Mishra, who, though Mrs Gandhi doubtless did not realise it, also accepted Soviet money. Short and obese, Mishra looked the part of the corrupt politician. Indira Gandhi, despite her own frugal lifestyle, depended on the cash he collected from various sources to finance her party. Money also went to her son and anointed heir, Sanjay, whose misguided ambition to build an Indian popular car and become India’s Henry Ford depended on government favours.

When Mishra was assassinated in 1975, Mrs Gandhi blamed a plot involving “foreign elements” — doubtless intended as a euphemism for the CIA. The Delhi KGB residency gave his widow 70,000 rupees, though she doubtless did not realise the source. Though there were some complaints from the Communist leadership at the use of Soviet funds to support Mrs Gandhi, covert funding for the Congress Party of India seems to have been unaffected. By 1972 the import-export business founded by the CPI to trade with the Soviet Union had contributed more than 10 million rupees to party funds. Other secret subsidies, totalling at least 1.5 million rupees, had gone to state Communist parties, individuals and media associated with the CPI. The funds that were sent from Moscow to party headquarters via the KGB were larger still. In the first half of 1975 they amounted to over 2.5 million rupees.




India under Mrs Gandhi was probably the arena for more KGB active measures than anywhere else, though their significance appears to have been considerably exaggerated by the Centre, which overestimated its ability to manipulate Indian opinion.

()

According to KGB files, by 1973 it had on its payroll ten Indian newspapers (which cannot be identified for legal reasons) as well as a press agency. During 1972 the KGB claimed to have planted 3,789 articles in Indian papers.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article567013.ece

‘CIA funded Cong against Left in Kerala, Bengal’
ASHOK MALIK
Posted: Sep 20, 2005 at 0307 hrs IST
NEW dELHI, SEPTEMBER 19 Reacting to The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu told The Indian Express yesterday, ‘‘Even the CIA paid money to Indira Gandhi. You read former US ambassador to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s book.’’
Ironically, the CPI(M) veteran’s thesis is supported by the Mitrokhin Archive II itself. Pages 326-27 of the book—a copy of which is with this newspaper—describe the turbulent pre-Emergency setting: ‘‘Among the KGB’s most successful active measures were those which claimed to expose CIA plots in the subcontinent.’’

‘‘Mrs Gandhi was also easily persuaded,’’ the book continues, ‘‘that the CIA, rather than the mistakes of her own administration, was responsible for the growing opposition to her government. Early in 1974 riots in Gujarat reinforced her belief in an American conspiracy against her. Irritated by a series of speeches by Mrs Gandhi denouncing the ever-present menace of CIA subversion, the US ambassador in New Delhi, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ordered an investigation.’’

The inquiry “uncovered two occasions” during Jawaharlal Nehru’s prime ministry when “the CIA had secretly provided funds to help the Communists’ opponents in state elections, once in Kerala and once in West Bengal.’’

The Mitrokhin Archive II then quotes from Moynihan’s book, A Dangerous Place: ‘‘Both times the money was given to the Congress Party which had asked for it. Once it was given to Mrs Gandhi herself, who was then a party official.’’

The alleged internationalisation of the Congress-CPI conflict continued into Indira Gandhi’s final term (1980-84). Only, KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin’s posthumous book says, the arbiter changed.

Page 335 pieces together the story: ‘‘In May 1981 she (Indira Gandhi) set up a new Congress (I)-sponsored association, the Friends of the Soviet Union, as a rival to the CPI-sponsored Indo-Soviet Cultural Society—declaring that the time had come to liberate Indo-Soviet friendship from its ‘custodians’.’’

In June 1983, Indira Gandhi ‘‘sent a secret letter to the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, attacking the CPI for having ‘ganged up’ against her with right-wing reactionaries. The letter was entrusted to Yogendra Sharma, a member of the Party Politburo who disagreed with (then CPI general secretary C.) Rajeshwar Rao’s opposition to Mrs Gandhi.’’ The story leaked to the Indian press when ‘‘Sharma had second thoughts and ‘confessed all’ to a Party comrade’’ who was with him in Moscow.

The main allegations of The Mitrokhin Archive II that the CPI and left-leaning Congress functionaries were on KGB retainership mirror revelations made in Open Secrets, the memoirs of former Intelligence Bureau joint director M.K. Dhar, released earlier this year.

On pages 247-9, Dhar describes his stint in the early 1980s with the IB’s “USSR counter-intelligence desk”. He alleges he was “discouraged from penetrating the KGB network” by the Foreign Office. He talks of finding Soviet operatives “amongst the Communist parties and their front organisations”. ‘‘I had the satisfaction,” Dhar writes, “of locating and hooking at least four human assets—three from the Indian communist targets.”

“Painstaking research” led Dhar to identify “four Union ministers and over two dozen” MPs who were “on the payrolls of the KGB operatives”. The Mitrokhin Archive II says almost exactly the same thing.
http://www.indianexpress.com/oldstory.php?storyid=78523

Is someone Holding India Hostage?

By Jawed Naqvi

27 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org

Sonia Gandhi recently made a startling statement about her husband's premonition of death, but it went largely unnoticed. Describing her meeting with Rajiv after Indira Gandhi was assassinated on an October morning in 1984, she told a TV channel recently: "My husband was away. He was in West Bengal. He arrived and came straight to the hospital. It was a very difficult moment. He did say that is what was expected of him (to step into his mother's shoes) and I did beg him not to take that responsibility. I did say that, because I thought he would be killed too. He replied he would be killed in any case."

So Rajiv and Sonia knew that Rajiv would be inevitably killed whether or not he became prime minister? And who did they both think were going to target the future prime minister of India? We all parrot the easier lines. Sikh bodyguards killed Indira Gandhi at her residence in 1984. A Sri Lankan Tamil woman suicide bomber assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in Siriperembudur in 1991 and, of course, Sanjay Gandhi died because he was playing the fool with a private plane, plunging to his death near his mother's home.

Since the LTTE was not even remotely an issue for India on the day of Indira Gandhi's death, when the exchange with Sonia took place, the source of Rajiv Gandhi's fears was evidently elsewhere. Was he alluding to Sikh insurgents because they had got his mother in a shower of bullets with frightening ease? Would he be killed "in any case", by the same Sikh rebels? Is that what he was afraid of but defied nevertheless to become prime minister? Yes. It could be a possible source of worry. And that is why perhaps the prime minister's security detail ever since does not have a single Sikh personnel, even more ironically for a prime minister who is himself a Sikh – at a time when the army chief too is a Sikh. But to consider not becoming prime minister because a bunch of terrorists were out to get him? It's a little difficult to digest.

No that's not what Sonia Gandhi and her husband were afraid of. There had to be something more menacing, more capable of striking at will, more entrenched and threatening. Were the two thinking of a foreign country, as his mother was given to fearing about. An extremely powerful foreign agency perhaps? Or some highly motivated people within the Indian system itself, or both? These are probably very old questions, but unanswered questions nevertheless. They are relevant today because the threat to the future prime minister, should there be another from the Gandhi family, still looms large. Or has that threat waned.

A reasonable approach to these questions would be to scan the various anti-bodies that surrounded the Gandhis in their moment of crisis. There were three or four things that Rajiv Gandhi did during his turbulent five-year rule and later as opposition leader that may offer clues into his death.

To begin with, in his early days as prime minister, Rajiv had annoyed the business lobbies within his own party by declaring a war on the "politics of moneybags". The purported author of that famous speech in Mumbai in 1985 was believed to be Mani Shankar Aiyar, once Rajiv's man Friday. It is possible that the business lobbies that felt threatened by him had rejoiced at his death. But could they have plotted his extermination? Only as conduits, if at all.

Then there were political rivals within his Congress party, some of whom had approached President Zail Singh to dismiss his government. The commissions of inquiry that went into the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi pointed to the possibility of the enemy within. But there's a global angle too. In the Cold War context, Indira Gandhi was seen as a Soviet protégé. She had often spoken of the threat from the CIA and from the Hindu revivalist RSS. Both are believed to have penetrated her porous Congress party and successfully destabilised her from within.

Indira Gandhi's emergency rule between 1975 and 77 was supported by the pro-Soviet Communist Party of India. In a post-Vietnam world, with the United States looking to avenge its humiliating exit from Saigon, Indira's move to fortify herself against the swirling threat from the right was of a piece with the global pattern. Within a short span Mujibur Rehman was assassinated in Bangladesh, Bhutto in Pakistan, Allende overthrown in Chile, the Iranian and Afghan revolutions were brewing with Soviet support and Zia ul Haq was being groomed to wage jihad with motivated Muslim foot soldiers against the communist government in Kabul. If we look around further there would be more examples of the global cat and mouse.

So CIA definitely. It must be a source of worry to Rajiv Gandhi. And why not? If we regard his proximity to the Soviet leaders of his time, his landmark handshake with Deng Xiaopeng and his strident disapproval of the Chandrasekhar government's refuelling facilities given to American war planes that were heading for the Gulf during the first war against Iraq. All this made him stick out like a sore thumb with the Americans. Just compare the two situations. BJP's foreign minister Jaswant Singh invites American troops to fight the Afghan war from Indian soil. And here was Mr Gandhi unrelenting on a core principle against foreign troops.

It is of course no longer embarrassing for an Indian to be identified as a CIA man. Some of them wear the proximity like a badge of honour. The Pew survey, not the most reliable yardstick, nevertheless showed Indians as resolutely supportive of President Bush when everyone else seemed to have deserted his destructive policies. The new flavour in India is America. Forget the Indira Gandhi days, no one today talks anymore about the CIA's presence in India, about its ability to penetrate the nation's polity, to strike deep inside its labyrinthine security agencies, of its insatiable appetite for informants and assassins, for moles inside the country's armed forces, for stealing invaluable secrets. (And gullible as we are, we continue to capture in droves the Jama Masjid-type looking men with some yellow paper that contains a secret map for Pakistan, Nepal or Bangladesh. Is there any secret left to be sold after the National Security Council was cleaned out very recently by we know who?)

Is it wrong to fear the worst under the given circumstances? Why did the most crucial file on Rajiv Gandhi's assassination disappear from Prime Minister Rao's office? Is it outlandish to suspect that India's lurch to the right was plotted with the help of key assassinations? And the answer should come from Sonia Gandhi. Who is threatening her that she decided to surrender a mandate that was hers to a bunch of people who have either never won an election or were defeated in the last polls. Only she can tell if someone is holding the country hostage, someone who perhaps controls the stock markets that rocked like an earthquake when she was about to be anointed in May 2004.

Someone she had in mind in her interview recently.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com
http://www.countercurrents.org/ind-naqwi271106.htm

CIA spy in Indian cabinet prevented Pakistan’s annihilation
Written on December 19, 2008 – 8:56 am | by Frontier India Strategic and Defence |
minister of Indira Gandhi’s cabinet betrayed India’s “war objectives” to the Central Intelligence Agency in December 1971, causing an abrupt end to the Bangladesh war under vicious US arm twisting.

This is the highlight of the book CIA’s Eye on South Asia by journalist Anuj Dhar. Published by Delhi-based Manas Publications, which is facing government’s ire for coming out with a book on the R&AW, the book compiles declassified CIA records on India and her neighbours. It specifically spotlights what arguably has been India’s biggest spy scandal.

In the run up to the 1971 India Pakistan war over what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), The New York Times first hinted at the presence of a CIA operative in the Indian government. By December The Washington Post had reported that US President Richard Nixon’s South Asia policy was being guided by “reports from a source close to Mrs. Gandhi.”

Records and telecons declassified recently - but not properly explained up till now - show that a dramatic turnaround came on December 6 when a CIA operative, whom Dhar pins down as a minister of the Indira Cabinet, leaked out India’s “war objectives” to the agency. Prime Minister Gandhi told Union Cabinet that apart from liberating Bangladesh, India intended to take over a strategically important part of the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and go for the total annihilation of Pakistan’s armed forces so that Pakistan “never attempts to challenge India in the future.”

When he came to know of the CIA report, a furious Nixon blurted out that “this woman [Indira Gandhi] suckered us,” thinking that Mrs. Gandhi had promised him that India won’t attack East Pakistan - not to speak of targeting West Pakistan and PoK. “But let me tell you, she’s going to pay,” he told his National Security Advisor Dr Henry Kissinger even as he tried to leak out the CIA report to give her bad press.

The CIA went on assess that fulfillment of India’s “war objectives” might lead to “the emergence of centrifugal forces which could shatter West Pakistan into as many as three or four separate countries.”

As a direct result of the operative’s information, the Nixon administration went on an overdrive to save West Pakistan from a massive Indian assault. Because the President felt that “international morality will be finished - the United Nations will be finished - if you adopt the principle that because a country is democratic and big it can do what the hell it pleases.”

Nixon personally threatened the USSR with a “major confrontation” between the superpowers should the Soviets failed to stop the Indians from going into West Pakistan. Kissinger secretly met Chinese Permanent Representative at the UN to apprise him of the CIA operative’s report and rub in that what India was planning to do with Pakistan with the Soviet backing could turn out to be a “dress rehearsal” of what they might do to China.

Dhar quotes in the book the official records showing that USSR’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov visited Delhi after Nixon’s threat and told the “Indians to confine their objectives to East Pakistan” and “not to try and take any part of West Pakistan, including Azad Kashmir” as “Moscow was concerned about the possibility of a great power confrontation over the subcontinent.” Kuznetsov also extracted a guarantee from Prime Minister Gandhi that India will not attack West Pakistan. This decision was promptly conveyed to Nixon. On 16 December 1971 when Nixon was told that India had declared a ceasefire, he exulted: “We have made it… it’s the Russians working for us.” Kissinger congratulated him for saving West Pakistan - India’s main target, as per the operative’s report to the CIA.

Dhar repudiates recent assertion by a former Indian Navy chief that showing up of America’s biggest nuclear powered carrier into the Bay of Bengal during the war had something to do with the accidental destruction of a US plane in Dhaka during an Indian strafing. “Declassified records make it unambiguously clear that the month-long show of strength by the USS Enterprise and accompanying flotilla was a byproduct of the CIA operative’s reports,” he writes, reproducing chunks from official records detailing how Nixon ordered a naval task force towards the subcontinent to “scare off” India from attacking West Pakistan.

In subsequent years, former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, and two deputy PMs - Jagjivan Ram and Y B Chavan - were alleged to be the CIA operative active during the 1971 war. However, all such charges lacked any substantiation because there was no confirmation whether or not such an operative ever existed. As such no constructive discussion on the issue ever took off. This has changed now given the unassailable evidence in the form of US records making it clear that the CIA had a “reliable” agent operating out of the Indian cabinet in 1971.

In declassified records the name of the operative has been censored because the CIA Director has “statutory obligations to protect from disclosure [the Agency's] intelligence sources.” Dhar writes: “Naming the Indian operative even after so many years will adversely impact the Indo-US relations, and hit the Agency’s prospects of recruiting new informants.”

However, he suggests that Indian government may have known the identity of the operative. “R&AW under the most capable R. N. Kao could not have missed the reference to the ’source close to Mrs. Gandhi’ and must have dug deeper,” he writes, adding that in 1972 Mrs. Gandhi herself charged that “she had information that the CIA had become active in India”.

More pertinently, Dhar quotes from the declassified record of a 5 October 1972 meeting between Indian Foreign Minister Swaran Singh and US Secretary of State William Rogers. During the meeting, Singh asserted that “CIA has been in contact with people in India in ‘abnormal ways.’” and that India had information that “proceedings of Congress Working Committee were known to US officials within two hours of meetings”.
http://frontierindia.net/cia-spy-in-indian-cabinet-prevented-pakistans-annihilation


Career Army officer sues Rumsfeld, Cheney, saying no evacuation order given on 9/11
12/17/2008 @ 2:29 pm
Filed by Stephen C. Webster

A career Army officer who survived the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, claims that no evacuation was ordered inside the Pentagon, despite flight controllers calling in warnings of approaching hijacked aircraft nearly 20 minutes before the building was struck.

According to a time-line of the attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration notified NORAD that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked at 9:24 a.m. The Pentagon was not struck until 9:43 a.m.

On behalf of retired Army officer April Gallop, California attorney William Veale has filed a civil suit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Air Force General Richard Myers, who was acting chairman of the joint chiefs on 9/11. It alleges they engaged in conspiracy to facilitate the terrorist attacks and purposefully failed to warn those inside the Pentagon, contributing to injuries she and her two-month-old son incurred.

"The ex-G.I. plaintiff alleges she has been denied government support since then, because she raised 'painful questions' about the inexplicable failure of military defenses at the Pentagon that day, and especially the failure of officials to warn and evacuate the occupants of the building when they knew the attack was imminent" said Veale in a media advisory.

Gallop also says she heard two loud explosions, and does not believe that a Boeing 757 hit the building. Her son sustained a serious brain injury, and Gallop herself was knocked unconscious after the roof collapsed onto her office.

The suit also named additional, unknown persons who had foreknowledge of the attacks.

"What they don't want is for this to go into discovery," said Gallop's attorney, Mr. Veale, speaking to RAW STORY. "If we can make it past their initial motion to dismiss these claims, and we get the power of subpoena, then we've got a real shot at getting to the bottom of this. We've got the law on our side."

The lawsuit's full text follows.


UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK ___

APRIL GALLOP, for Herself and as Mother and Next Friend of ELISHA GALLOP, a Minor, No. _____________

Plaintiff, Jury Trial Demanded

vs.

DICK CHENEY, Vice President of the U.S.A., DONALD RUMSFELD, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, General RICHARD MYERS, U.S.A.F. (Ret.), and John Does Nos. 1– X, all in their individual capacities, Defendants.

__________________________________________


COMPLAINT FOR VIOLATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS, CONSPIRACY, AND OTHER WRONGS

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

1. This case arises from the infamous Attack on America of Sept 11, 2001, and especially on the Pentagon; and is premised on an allegation of broad complicity in the attack on the part of key U.S. Government officials, beginning with and led from the top by Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Myers, then acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The plaintiffs allege that these and other government officials, whose identities will be ascertained from their proven or evident relevant roles and activities, and who are named herein as 'John Doe' defendants, together with other known and unknown operatives and functionaries, official and otherwise, engaged in an unlawful conspiracy, or a set of related, ongoing conspiracies, in which the concrete objective was to facilitate and enable the hijacking of the airliners, and their use as living bombs to attack buildings containing thousands of innocent victims; and then to cover up the truth about what they had done.

2. The defendants' purpose in aiding and facilitating the attack, and the overall object of the conspirac(ies), was to bring about an unprecedented, horrifying and frightening catastrophe of terrorism inside the United States, which would give rise to a powerful reaction of fear and anger in the public, and in Washington. This would generate a political atmosphere of acceptance in which the new Administration could enact and implement radical changes in the policy and practice of constitutional government in our country. Much of their intention was spelled out prior to their coming into office, in publications of the so-called Project for the New American Century, of which defendants Cheney and Rumsfeld were major sponsors. There they set forth specific objectives regarding the projection of U.S. military power abroad, particularly in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and other oil-producing areas. They observed, however, that the American people would not likely support the actions the sponsors believed were necessary, without being shocked into a new outlook by something cataclysmic: “a new Pearl Harbor”. By helping the attack succeed, defendants and their cohorts created a basis for the seizure of extraordinary power, and a pretext for launching the so-called Global War on Terror, in the guise of which they were free to pursue plans for military conquest, “full spectrum dominance” and “American primacy” around the world; as they have done.

3. In pursuit of the goals of the conspiracy, the named and unnamed defendants knowingly and by agreement committed a series of acts and omissions which were aimed at and did generally accomplish the following objectives:

+ To permit the men they later identified as the hijackers and any immediate accomplices to enter and remain in the country, and carry out the activities, movements and communications needed in their preparations for the hijacking, free from interference by police or counter-terrorist authorities; and then allow the groups of these men to book passage, all on the same day, and board the flights;

+ To cause normal operation of the regular off-course airline flight interception practice of the US Air Force, in cooperation with civil flight control authorities, to be altered, suspended or disrupted in such a way as to remove its protections, at least on that day, and thus permit three of the four apparently hijacked planes to reach their targets and crash into them (or appear to do so...);1

+ To cause the normal operation of ground and air defenses which guard the Pentagon from external attack to be altered, suspended or disrupted in such a way as to remove or negate the building's normal protections, and thus permit an airliner, believed to be hijacked by possible suicide bombers, and following a forbidden, descending flight path, to reach the Pentagon undeterred;

+ To cause and arrange for high explosive charges to be detonated inside the Pentagon, and/or a missile of some sort to be fired at the building, at or about the time the wayward airliner supposedly arrived there, to give the false impression that hijackers had crashed the plane into the building, as had apparently happened in New York;

+ To arrange, thereafter, and fabricate, propound and defend, as part of the conspiracy, an elaborate, highly complex and sophisticated cover-up, centering around the Report of the 9/11 Commission, and continuing to this day. To this end, defendants misappropriated the highest authority of government to block, misdirect and otherwise evade any fair, independent investigation of the evidence, and officially if implausibly explain away the evident wholesale failure of America's defenses with misinformation, omissions and distortions, withheld and destroyed evidence, and outright lies.

4. In the attack on the Pentagon, in particular, plaintiff avers that the official story, that a hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon and exploded (causing the plaintiff’s injuries), is false. In fact, the bombing was accomplished another way, so as to limit the damage, protect the defendants, and only make it appear that a plane had been crashed into the building. This claim is supported by data from the plane’s supposed “black box”, released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which indicate the plane passed over the building at very low altitude, just as an explosion and fireball were engineered by other means, a planted bomb or bombs and/or a missile. This is supported by the lack of any photographic evidence of a wrecked airliner at the Pentagon, compounded by the record of reported refusal by the U.S. Department of Justice to release some 85 video tapes from surveillance cameras in locations at or near the Pentagon, which it has declared exempt from Freedom of Information Act disclosure.

5. Whatever way the bombing of the Pentagon was accomplished, however, and whatever else may or may not have been done by defendants to facilitate the hijackings that day, it is clear the defendant top commanders would have had and did have, at a profound minimum, enough foreknowledge, on that day and in the intelligence information they received beforehand, to have sounded a warning in time for plaintiff and others to evacuate the building, and thereby avoid much if not all the death and injury which occurred. In the end, more than half an hour passed after flight controllers first sounded the alert on Flight 77, while all concerned were fully aware of the suicide crashes in New York; plenty of time for the Pentagon to be evacuated. ‘Top gun’ jet fighter-interceptors under defendants’ command, available with time to spare, were not summoned; and the people in the building, including plaintiff and her infant, were not

warned. This was the result of unlawful conspiracy among these highest-level commanders, and others, who acted knowingly and intentionally to have the Pentagon attacked or to allow it to be attacked, without warning, with deliberate indifference to and in reckless and callous disregard for the fundamental constitutional and human rights of plaintiff and her child, and many other people, dead, injured and bereaved.

6. Plaintiff April Gallop brings this action for herself and as next friend of her son Elisha Gallop now aged 7, who was a two-month-old baby in her arms on that day, her first back from maternity leave. She was a career member of the US Army, a ranking specialist with top secret clearance, who had served six years, two-and-a-half of them in Germany, before being assigned to the Pentagon in 2000. Her desk was roughly 40 feet from the point where the plane allegedly hit the outside wall. As she sat down to work there was an explosion, then another; walls collapsed and the ceiling fell in. Hit in the head, she was able to grab the baby and make her way towards the daylight showing through a blasted opening in the outside wall. There was no airplane wreckage and no burning airplane fuel anywhere; only rubble and dust.

7. Plaintiff and her baby both suffered substantial head and brain injuries, which seriously affect them still today. Plaintiff charges that, because of the conspiracy alleged herein, she and her child and others were injured by acts of terrorism participated in by defendants. Further, as more fully described within at Pars 57-59, she and her child were and subsequently have been denied fundamental rights — including by acts of retaliation against her for raising painful questions about what occurred — as the cover-up continues.


JURISDICTION & VENUE

8. This Court has jurisdiction of this case, as follows:

a. Under the First, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as applied to federal officials under the rule of Bivens v Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971); and 28 USC 1331;

b. Under the federal Common Law — given that the most direct occurrences and mechanisms of plaintiffs’ injuries, no doubt including crucial agreements and other communications among various defendants, took place in the Pentagon, a federal enclave — giving plaintiff a right of action in this Court for conspiracy to commit and facilitate actions likely to cause wrongful death, great bodily injury, terror and other loss to plaintiff and others to whom defendants owed a special duty of care; where, instead, defendants acted with reckless and callous disregard for and deliberate indifference to the likelihood of great harm to plaintiff and others, and deprivation of their rights;

c. Under the Terrorism Acts, 18 U.S.Code 2333(a), for acts of terrorism brought about by actions wholly outside the scope of defendants’ duties, in perversion of their authority, and beyond the bounds or color of any law; and therefore not exempt or immune under the provisions of Sec. 2337, the application of which to exonerate these defendants would be unconstitutional.

9. Venue for the case is set by the special provisions of the Air Transportation Safety Act of September, 2001, 49 U.S.C. 40101, Subsection 408(b)(3), bringing all claims arising from events of 9/11 to this honorable Court .

PARTIES

10. Plaintiff APRIL GALLOP is an American citizen, resident of the State of Virginia, a member until this year of the U.S. Army, stationed at the Pentagon on 9/11, claiming for herself and for her minor child, ELISHA GALLOP, who was just two months old on 9/11/01, and was with her when the building was hit. Plaintiff respectfully petitions the Court to appoint her as guardian ad litem for the purposes of this action and related matters.

11. Defendants are DICK CHENEY, the Vice President of the United States; DONALD RUMSFELD, formerly and at relevant times Secretary of Defense of the U.S.; Gen. RICHARD MYERS, then acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; all sued in their individual capacities. Additional named, unknown defendants are other persons who were and are co-actors and co-conspirators in sundry phases of the (terrorist) undertaking complained of herein, whose identities, and some of whose precise places or functions in the plot(s) alleged herein are not yet known or fully known, but who certainly include high-ranking members of the Defense Department, the Military, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other agencies. Such persons are named and alleged as co-defendants, designated as John Does Nos.1-X and hereby notified of this action, pro tanto, to be identified for the record and impleaded by plaintiffs as the particulars of both culpable and innocent acts and omissions by everyone involved in these events become known.

12. Existence of a Class. Plaintiff notes that a number of other persons suffered injury and loss in the Pentagon on September 11 as she did, and are similarly situated to her, plainly within the provisions of Rule 23, F.R.Civ P., so that she represents a Class, the members of which evidently are also entitled to recover judgment as sought herein. She does not now assert the Class interest; but, where it appears there could be action by the Court affecting this question, and a class could emerge, she wishes to and does hereby reserve the right, subject to the Court’s approval, to act as lead plaintiff.

13. Limitations. There is no time bar to the claims in this action. The Statute does not run against plaintiff’s child, as a minor, under Virginia law (Va. Code Ann., §8.01-229). As to the plaintiff herself, defendants and their cohorts and agents, by means of elaborate planned and other ad hoc cover stories, public lying, alteration of records, misappropriation of official authority and other nefarious activities, have concealed and continue to conceal, fraudulently, the truth about the attacks and the way they occurred — and their own participation and complicity in the range of acts and omissions needed, in furtherance of conspiracy, to bring them about. Likewise, the original conspiracy to act secretly in furtherance of terrorism, and lie and dissemble afterwards, in order to foment war and vengeance against the supposed perpetrators, has stayed alive and continued to harm the plaintiff, as she will show.

STATEMENT OF FACTS

I. Background: Al Qaeda and the 9/11 Attack

14. As the world knows, four large commercial airliners filled with ordinary passengers were reported hijacked in the northeastern United States the morning of September 11, 2001. Two were evidently crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York, which later collapsed; a third was said to have hit the Pentagon in Washington DC, and the fourth, supposedly aiming for the White House or the Capitol, was reported crashed in Pennsylvania by its passengers, fighting back against the hijackers.

15. The alleged hijackers were quickly identified by US authorities, supposedly from passenger lists, as 19 men of Middle Eastern descent, fifteen from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one Egyptian and one Lebanese. Their pictures, apparent police mug shots, were shown on TV around the world soon after the attack. It emerged that some if not all of these men were already known to police and intelligence authorities in the US and elsewhere as terrorist suspects. They were said to be associated with Al-Qaeda, a network of radical 'Islamic' militants, led by the renegade Saudi aristocrat Osama bin Laden, and pledged to unremitting ‘holy war’ against the United States and its people. Al Qaeda was blamed for several previous terrorist attacks, including suicide attacks in which hundreds died, in the Middle East and Africa, and against a U.S. Navy warship in the Persian Gulf. An earlier, precursor group of ‘Islamist’ terrorists, based in Brooklyn and New Jersey, carried out the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993.

16. At the time the Clinton Administration was succeeded by that of George W. Bush and defendant Dick Cheney, in January, 2001, an extensive, complex U.S. counter-terrorism effort against Al Qaeda was in progress, involving personnel and resources from a number of government agencies, including the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the U.S. Military, and others, requiring coordination between these agencies at the highest levels. The Chief of Counterterrorism under President Clinton, Richard Clarke, was retained by Bush, but later strongly criticized the Bush Administration for ignoring the Al Qaeda threat, allowing the effort begun under Clinton to lapse, to the point where he felt constrained to apologize to the families of those who died, for the failure he said led directly to the devastation of September 11th. At all events, it is clear from the accounts of Clarke and others that, once Mr. Bush and Defendant Cheney were in office, the effort to combat Al Qaeda was decisively blunted at the top, and at key points down the chain of command.

17. In particular, little or no attention was paid by defendants and others responsible to an increasingly explicit series of warnings, during 2001, that Al Qaeda was hoping and planning to strike inside the US; and that there were concrete plans — which cadres in U.S. agencies were aware of, and were in fact conducting exercises to prepare for, and defeat — which included attempting to crash planes into important buildings. U.S. investigators were well aware that the man they believed was the enemy network’s chief bomb-maker for the 1993 attack on the Trade Center, Ramzi Youssef, had hoped and attempted to bring a tower down in that attack; and that this remained a goal of the group.

18. Responsible intelligence officials were aware that Al Qaeda members were operating inside the U.S., and there were a number of critical investigative leads. Two of the hijackers-to-be lived with an FBI informant in San Diego. The CIA monitored a meeting in Malaysia in 1999, after which two of the participants came to the U.S., where authorities supposedly lost track of them. There were reports from FBI field offices in Arizona and elsewhere that figures on the suspect list were taking or seeking training as pilots — including one who reportedly said he only wanted to learn how to fly an airliner, not how to land or take off — but coordination and follow-up investigation on these and other leads was blocked by John Doe defendant CIA and FBI higher-ups and key players. Notwithstanding such malfeasance, the signs and portents of an imminent attack were very strong in the summer of 2001. As the then CIA chief George Tenet testified, “The system was blinking red.”

19. Despite the flow of ominous information to various sections of the US counterterrorism apparatus, however, and the danger to innocent people — and as a result of conspiracy among defendants Cheney and Rumsfeld, and other members of the Government in various positions — the many warnings of a coming attack by Al Qaeda forces (as many as forty messages in all, according to the Commission Report, from eleven different countries) were studiously ignored.

20. That is, defendants and others in the highest circles of the Government knew more than enough beforehand about the threat and gathering danger of an imminent possible attack by Al Qaeda in the U.S. to understand that they needed to take strong, thoroughgoing measures to increase the country's protections and alertness. Instead, led by defendants Cheney and Rumsfeld, and because defendants were callously indifferent to the rights and safety of innocents — including their own people in the Pentagon, plaintiff among them — the government did not respond. On information and belief, no special meetings of high officials and agency heads were called, to make sure protections systems were on high alert and functioning properly, and that all needed information was being shared. No special warnings were given to the Federal Aviation Administration, the Immigration Service, the Military and other affected agencies. No consultations were had about possible methods of attack, including specifics about possible hijackings, and the use of planes as missiles to hit buildings, despite operational planning and training which had already occurred at lower echelons. The FBI did not step up surveillance of suspected terrorist individuals or “cells”, or immigration checks, or let such people know they were being watched, in order to impede their activities; and it appears that no coordinated, high-level monitoring and analysis of the threats, and planning for counteraction, ever took place. Instead, the threat was dismissed, and ignored.




21. It should be noted that plaintiff cannot and does not know with certainty the outlines of the plot at its initiation. The attacks may have been conceived of as a false-flag operation from the beginning, with the defendants and their operatives as creators, planners, and executors, with the assistance of others as necessary. Or, defendants may have employed Muslim extremists to carry out suicide attacks; or they may have used Muslim extremists as dupes or patsies. The roles of the supposed “nineteen” could have been to hijack the airliners, or simply, unwittingly, to be on the planes when they were crashed into buildings by remote control. It is also possible that the defendants learned of a plot originated by Muslim extremists, and co-opted or overrode it with their own plan. Whatever lay in the minds of the defendant conspirators at the outset, it is clear that the nineteen men so quickly identified as the hijackers, some if not all of them known terrorist suspects, traveling under their own names, simply walked onto the four planes that morning, with their “box cutters”, without hindrance or incident.

II. Failure of the Air Defense System.

22. Accounts from the FAA and the National Military Command Center vary widely, suffer from internal contradictions, and are in conflict with each other; but credible reports show that FAA flight controllers were aware of a problem with the first plane as early as 8:14 or 8:15 a.m. the morning of September 11th, and evidently called the military for emergency assistance, pursuant to routine, by 8:21 a.m. or thereabouts. They learned the second plane was off course and not responding a short time later. According to reports, United Flight 11 hit the WTC North Tower at 8:46 a.m. and Flight 175 hit the South Tower at 9:03. The Pentagon was hit at or about 9:32 a.m. — although the official version says 9:38 — and the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania shortly after 10:00 a.m. High performance jet fighter planes stationed at various bases around the northeastern U.S. — tasked to intercept and deal with unidentified or straying aircraft entering or flying in U.S. airspace under NORAD district command, or otherwise at NORAD’s disposal — were available at a moment's notice. None were notified, however, or sent to the right place, until it was too late; at least for the first three planes.

23. No interceptor planes came to stop the supposed hijackers — shoot them down if necessary — even though the Air Force has for many years maintained a practice of immediate response in which the fighters have readily been “scrambled” when aircraft are seen to go too far off course, or lose radio contact with flight controllers. The interceptor program has been an elite assignment in the Air Force, even after the Cold War ended, in which pilots fly regularly, and wait in ‘ready rooms’ near the hangars, and planes are kept in top condition, with engines warm and ready for takeoff. The best jets are used, which can reach speeds of 1600-1800 miles per hour, and the personnel are so well trained and practiced that pilots routinely go from hearing the scramble order to 29,000 feet in less than three minutes. The scramble orders are normally made by local NORAD commanders in cooperation with the FAA. Both the FAA and the affected NORAD North East Air Defense Sector (NEADS) military command have radar tracking coverage of the entire airspace, and special telephone hotlines between them and with higher authority. Nor are these forays rare, reportedly occurring once or twice a week at various U.S. locales during the past several years. Published Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) records showed that, between September 1, 2000 and June 1, 2001, interceptor jets took to the air 67 times to check on “in-flight emergencies” involving wayward planes.

24. No interceptors came to defend the Pentagon, in particular, and plaintiff and the other occupants, because of actions and failures to act by defendant Rumsfeld, Defendant General Myers and John Doe others in concert with them, even though more than an hour passed between the time the first warning went out to the Military, at or about 8:21a.m., and the attack on the Pentagon at 9:32; even though the first tower was hit in a suicide crash in New York at least 46 minutes before the Pentagon was hit; and even though ‘combat air patrol’ jets from any of several bases in the region could have reached the Pentagon — or the path of Flight 77 — in a fraction of that time.

25. Having pre-arranged a coordinated failure of the Pentagon defenses, and its warning system, the defendants hid and distracted themselves, and otherwise failed to act, just at the time they were needed to ensure defense of the building; and they have dissembled ever since, as part of the conspiracy, in representing where they were and what they did during that time. As with the planes that hit the towers in New York, the Military and the 9/11 Commission, while failing to cast blame, explained away the failure to launch fighter interceptors at the Pentagon as the result of a failure by flight controllers — which FAA personnel deny — to notify the Air Force of the flight emergencies in a timely way. This was cover-up, in furtherance of the conspiracy.

26. Likewise, by the acts of one or more defendants in furtherance of the conspiracy, no defenses at the Pentagon responded either, no missile or anti-aircraft batteries opening from the ground around the building, or the roof; no sharpshooters deployed with hand-held missiles at stations close by; nothing. And, shockingly, when the towers in New York had already been hit, and Flight 77 (or a substitute, see below) was out of radio contact and headed back towards the capital; and even when the plane approached, and then doubled back and headed toward the building in a long dive, no alarm was sounded.

27. It is evident, particularly with respect to the attack on the Pentagon in which the plaintiff and her baby were injured, that, if the building was hit by a plane that morning, or if, as appears more likely, a plane flew low over the building at the time the bomb(s) went off inside and/or the missile hit, to give the (false) impression of a crash, some form of order or restriction was in force which suspended normal operation of the building's defenses. In particular, it is indisputable that the expected response of the fighter-interceptors failed completely; and plaintiff avers this resulted from orders or authorization from within the defendant circle of Rumsfeld and Myers and their helpers, restraining normal operation of the protections system and armaments at the Pentagon — including but not limited to jets available at various bases near the capital.


28. Plaintiff alleges further that such “standdown” orders, in whatever manner or form they had been prepared or issued, were maintained and affirmed by defendants up to and through that morning, and that defendant Cheney in particular, operating in the underground command bunker (Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC) beneath the White House, personally affirmed such an order. His word kept the order in force during the period between 9:20 a.m., when he was observed in the Bunker and the moment the Pentagon was hit.

29. In this connection, plaintiff refers the Court to the testimony of then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta to the 9/11 Commission. Mineta testified that when he arrived at the White House, he was sent to the PEOC, and arrived at around 9:20 a.m., to find Cheney there, and in charge. He said he sat at a table with Cheney for the next period of time, during which a young man came in the room, three times, and informed the Vice President that an “unidentified plane” was approaching Washington, D.C., first at 50, then 30, and then 10 “miles out”; and that, when he reported the distance as 10 miles, the young man asked the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” Secretary Mineta testified that defendant Cheney responded sharply, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Whereupon the young man left the room; and a few minutes later, the hit on the Pentagon was announced. This testimony by the Secretary has never been contested, discredited or explained away by any U.S. official.

30. Plaintiff alleges that the “orders” were orders not to intercept or shoot down the approaching plane. If the orders had been to attack the approaching plane, it would have been shot down before it reached the Pentagon — or at least some attempt to stop it would have been made; and the world would know of it. Based on some two hundred years of American military history, the failure would have led to a Board of Inquiry or other public official investigation, to determine how and why the defense apparatus had failed. Individuals would have been called to account, and disciplinary procedures followed resulting in findings of responsibility and demotions or formal charges against those found to have failed the Country. All of these bureaucratic events would have become part of the official record, and known to the public; none of which has happened. There has been no publicly recorded disciplinary action against any military or civilian officer of the United States government as a result of the attacks of September 11th. Such proceedings would have created a great risk that the truth would be exposed.

31. The public record also shows that no meaningful follow-up questioning of Sec. Mineta occurred before the 9/11 Commission; that defendant Cheney has never testified under oath or been reasonably questioned about these events; and that he has given contradictory accounts, one of which---the account he gave to Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” five days after 9/11--- conflicts with The 9/11 Commission Report. The 9/11 Commission Report adopts an unsworn statement by Cheney that he never reached the bunker until about 10:00 a.m.; and contains no reference to Mineta’s testimony, ignoring completely this contradiction between the two high government officials. The Commission also ignores the fact that Richard Clarke’s book “Against All Enemies” supports Mineta’s testimony and hence contradicts the 9/11 Commission’s account.

32. Plaintiff charges that, in point of fact, the “orders” referred to were orders not to shoot the plane down, but to let it proceed, and that such orders were given and/or approved by defendants Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Myers, pursuant to the root conspiracy alleged herein, and transmitted down a chain of command. The normal expected operation of Pentagon defense that day was thus prevented, allowing the attack to succeed, or to “succeed” in creating a false and deceptive scenario of a plane crash.


III. The Attack on the Pentagon.

33. At the Pentagon, the plaintiff was at her desk, with her baby, in her office on the first floor, when large explosions occurred, walls crumbled and the ceiling fell in. Although her desk is just some forty feet from the supposed impact point, and she went out through the blown-open front of the building afterwards, she never saw any sign that an airliner crashed through. If Flight 77, or a substitute, did swoop low over the building, to create the false impression of a suicide attack, it was then flown away by its pilot, or remote control, and apparently crashed someplace else. At the building, inside or outside of the wall the plane supposedly hit, there was no wreckage, no airplane fragments, no engines, no seats, no luggage, no fuselage sections with rows of windows, and especially, no blazing quantities of burning jet fuel. The interior walls and ceilings and contents in that area were destroyed, but there was no sign of a crashed airplane. A number of those present inside the building and out have attested to this fact in published reports.

34. Instead, just when plaintiff turned on her computer — for an urgent document-clearing job she was directed by her supervisor to rush and begin, as soon as she arrived at work, without dropping her baby off at child care until she was finished — a huge explosion occurred, and at least one more that she heard and felt, and flames shot out of the computer. Walls crumbled, the ceiling fell in, and she was knocked unconscious. When she came to, terrified and in pain, she found the baby close by, picked him up, and, with other survivors caught in the area, made her way through rubble, smoke and dust towards daylight, which was showing through an open space that now gaped in the outside wall. When she reached the outside she collapsed on the grass; only to wake up in a hospital some time later.

35. Plaintiff’s injuries could have been avoided, had an alarm been sounded. However, despite the undoubted knowledge of the defendant commanders and operators in the system that an unknown aircraft was headed towards Washington, possibly as part of the apparent terrorist suicide attack begun earlier in New York — and in spite of well-established Pentagon emergency evacuation procedures and training — there was no alarm. On the contrary, plaintiff was directed to go straight to her desk when she arrived at work, and when she got there, and turned her computer on, the place blew up. If an unauthorized non-military plane was headed towards the building, on a day when two apparently hijacked planes had hit the Twin Towers, why wasn’t she evacuated, with her baby, instead of hurried inside? Why weren’t alarms going off, and all the people in the building rushing to safety? Due to the conspiracy, and defendants’ actions and flagrant failures to act, in furtherance of it, one hundred and twenty-five people, members of the Military and civilian employees, died in the bombing; and many more including plaintiff and her child were seriously hurt.

36. Plaintiff alleges further that, pursuant to the conspiracy, the attack on the Pentagon was contrived to “succeed” in only a very limited way. Destruction, death and injuries, in comparison to what would have occurred if the building had been attacked straight on with a large plane, by enemies bent on causing the greatest possible devastation and loss of life, were kept to a minimum; and the conspirators themselves not put at risk. Certainly the official account of what occurred is full of gross anomalies,

which contradict the physical evidence, the scientific and aeronautical evidence, and the laws of physics and aerodynamics. The 9/11 Commission Report is exposed as an artifact of the conspiracy, aimed at covering up the fact that no airliner crashed into the Pentagon, and that it was bombed a different way.

37. The official account established in the 9/11 Commission hearings is that American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757-200 jetliner, took off from Dulles International Airport at or about 8:20 a.m., and apparently was hijacked at about 8:55 a.m. some two or three hundred miles west of Washington. Radio contact was lost and the plane’s “transponder” was turned off. At that point, Flight 77 was traversing an apparent radar “dead zone”, located over the southeast Ohio-West Virginia borderland, where another similar plane, fitted with radio control reception equipment, may have been substituted, so as to ensure that the precise maneuvers required by the conspirators’ plan could be carried out. Whichever plane it was soon established a flight path leading back towards Washington at high speed, on a downward trajectory, until it was close to the Pentagon. There it began a two-and-a-half-to-three-minute spiral dive, from an altitude of about 8000 feet and in a 330-degree loop, which supposedly carried it into the northwest wall of the building. Experts agree this dive was an aeronautically fantastic maneuver, nearly impossible for a plane of that size, which would require the most skillful and experienced pilot — or remote control.

38. The returning plane, according to the official version, struck the Pentagon just above ground level. There it disintegrated — even maybe vaporized, according to some accounts, at least in part — but, paradoxically, also plowed inside. Had it simply flown straight into the top of the building rather than making its improbable spiral dive, there would have been far greater damage and loss of life. Had it turned only 150-180 degrees, it could have smashed into the East side of the building, where the office of defendant Rumsfeld was publicly known to be located on the third floor, looking out at the river, with the Joint Chiefs and other high officials all nearby. In contrast, the ground floor area that was blown up held offices like the one plaintiff worked in, many of them empty for a remodeling project, which was said to have included reinforcement to protect against attack. Another part of the destroyed space held financial records.

39. Also in the official version, the nose of the plane supposedly penetrated the distance of the three outer “rings” of the building, leaving a large, nine- or ten-foot-high round hole — shown in official photographs, without any sign of a plane — in the inner wall of the third (“C”) ring. The hole was located some 300 feet from the alleged impact point, through a maze of structural pillars and interior walls. It was also said that the wings of the plane knocked over five lampposts along a nearby road, as it approached the building, which meant the wings were a maximum of 50 feet off the ground as the plane flew past, roughly 300-350 yards away from the near face of the building.

40. This account is at odds with known evidence, and raises substantial questions about the absence of evidence — and official withholding of evidence — including the following:

a. There are no photos of a wrecked airplane at the place where the building was hit and set on fire; or of airplane wreckage at the hole in the inner ring where the nose of the plane was originally said by Rumsfeld to have come to rest, or elsewhere inside the building. Moreover, the nose of such a plane contains radar equipment, and the outer shell is made of a porous, composite material that allows the radar to function. Therefore, the nose was not capable of surviving an impact with the outer wall without being crushed, let alone penetrating all the way inside to the C-Ring wall, 300 feet away.

Although this story was later dropped, defendant Rumsfeld has never been publicly questioned about his statement that this is what occurred.



b. As noted, there is no footage from numerous video surveillance cameras — reportedly 85 different tapes are being withheld by the U.S. Justice Department — which are known or reliably assumed to have been operating at various nearby locations where some or all of the plane and the crash could be expected to have been caught on tape.

c. The official account says the plane knocked over several lampposts with its wings — two on one side of a nearby road, three on the other — which meant the wings were less than fifty feet off the ground as the plane approached, over uneven terrain, and the undercarriage even closer. The earliest photographs, taken before the upper floors fell in, about 30 minutes after the explosion(s), show the front blown off an expanse of the ground floor, no marks on the lawn in front of the impact zone; and several large cable reels standing in front of the building, unscathed.

d. The “black box” flight data recorder identified by the Government as coming from Flight 77, and reportedly recovered from the wreckage at the scene, bears data, according to pilots who have examined printouts provided by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which contradict various aspects of the official account, — and indeed the very notion that a plane struck the Pentagon — in crucial ways, viz:

1. It is a fundamental premise of airliner manufacture and operation that the black box only stops recording data when a flight is terminated — by the pilot turning off the engines at the gate, or by a crash. According to the pilots who studied the printouts, however, the record showing the path of Flight 77, etched with codes which connect it to that plane that day, cuts off, unaccountably, some 4-500 yards short of the building — a point reached after the pitched, diving loop described above — at an altitude of 273 feet. The Pentagon is roughly 75 feet high. Just as they will confirm the improbability of that dive, expert pilots will attest that for a plane that size to descend from 273 feet, going approximately 500 miles an hour, and then level off inside of a quarter mile without hitting the ground — let alone get down to 50 feet in time to catch the lampposts, 300 yards closer — is an aerodynamic and gravitational impossibility.

2. The Safety Board has released a computer simulation of the flight path of Flight 77, allegedly based on the data from the flight recorder, which contradicts a simulation adopted by the 9/11 Commission. The Commission simulation shows the flight path of the official story, at an angle reflected by the damage inside the building, consistent with the downed light poles, and to the south of two nearby buildings housing the Navy Annex and a Citgo gas station. The NTSB simulation shows the plane headed towards the building on a path north of the two buildings and the line of lampposts.

3. Similarly, in the one fragment of a surveillance tape the Pentagon has released, two of the five frames disclosed appear to show an object, not recognizable as an airliner and apparently trailing a plume of white smoke, moving parallel to and just above the ground towards the Pentagon wall, followed by a bright explosion and a fireball mounting from the front of the building. The NTSB’s black box data shows Flight 77 was roughly 200 feet above the top of the Pentagon as it reached its last known position some 400 to 500 yards (2-3 seconds) away. Thus, it could not have hit the building except by diving into it, and so could not have flown parallel to the ground between there and the point of impact. So it appears that, contrary to the defendants’ false cover story of an airliner suicide crash, there was a different, additional, flying object, which hit the Pentagon, and was part of the terrorist bombing that caused the plaintiffs’ injuries.

e. Additionally, the FBI identified the hijacker pilot of Flight 77 as “Hani Hanjour”, supposedly a known terrorist suspect, who was reported to have received flight training in various places in the months before the attack. His flight instructors, however, reported that Hanjour was such a poor flight student that he was barely able to fly a small Cessna; and then he was so erratic that instructors refused to go up with him, and, just a few months before 9/11, recommended he be washed out and his license taken away. Thus it seems quite impossible that he could have flown the 757 really at all, let alone in its great uncanny dive. There have also been repeated reports since 9/11 that several of the other men named and pictured by the FBI as the hijackers were still alive after 9/11, and living in various locations in the world — including one, Waleed Al-Shehri, who was said to be a working pilot for Moroccan Air Lines, correctly shown in the FBI photo, whose identity and location have been verified by at least one major press outlet, the BBC. This information has not been pursued by U.S. investigators, or media.

f. Several trained and experienced military personnel at the scene noted the distinctive odor of cordite, a high explosive used in gunpowder, in the aftermath of the attack at the Pentagon. This suggests explosives as the cause for the destruction rather than the impact and fire resulting from burning jet fuel.

g. One investigator has documented the fact that numerous clocks in the damaged area of the building stopped at 9:32 a.m., as the plaintiff’s watch did also, supporting the idea that electrically timed or detonated explosives were used to bring about the intended damage to the building — and that the attack occurred at 9:32, not 9:38.

41. All the matters alleged in paragraph #40 are known and demonstrable, and most would have been immediately evident to the defendants at the time. As Secretary of Defense, defendant Rumsfeld in particular was in a unique position to determine the truth and fix responsibility. He did neither. That he did not is confirmation of his complicity in the attack--and his indifference to and callous disregard for the injuries and loss of rights suffered by plaintiff and others.

42. Further, it should be noted that on September 10, 2001, the day before the attack, Defendant Rumsfeld conducted a press conference at the Pentagon in which he publicly announced that auditors had determined that some 2.3 trillion dollars in Defense Department funds —$2.300,000,000,000 — could not be accounted for. To plaintiff’s knowledge and belief, part of the area of the ground floor of the Pentagon that was destroyed in the bombing is a location where records were kept that would be used to trace those funds, and where people worked who knew about them. On information and belief, there has been to this day no public report concerning the fate of those records, or that money.

43. In any event, the plainly visible pattern of damage on the outside and in other photographic views makes it clear the building was not hit by a plane. There may have been a missile strike, perhaps penetrating through to the back wall, which helped collapse the section that fell in, possibly augmented by explosives placed inside. Photos taken before the collapse suggest this, showing a single blown-out window section, above the ground floor; and witnesses have reported seeing a helicopter above the building, and disappearing behind it, followed by a big explosion and bright fireball. As noted, a large roundish hole was found in the C-ring wall, some 300 feet inside the building; and there were credible accounts, ignored in the Commission Report, of serious bomb damage in the B-ring, second from the center, and even some reports of dead bodies in the central A-ring, also ignored. As shown on CNN television, a large military aircraft, identified as an E-4B — the so-called “Doomsday Plane”, which carries the most complete and sophisticated military command and control apparatus — was circling above Washington at the time the Pentagon was hit. It was in perfect position to coordinate the detonation and/or missile shot with a fly-over; and guide the airliner in its dive by remote control. It was also in perfect position to spot the oncoming plane on its radar and sound an alarm. Significantly, the Department of Defense has denied any knowledge of this airplane flying in that area on that day.

44. Whatever the cause of the bombing, and the traumatic injuries to plaintiff and others which resulted, the Government, of which the two main defendants were and have been the highest, most powerful officers, pursuant to the conspiracy they led and still lead as alleged herein, has been altogether deceptive in investigating, reporting and explaining the attack and its cause; and defendants, rather than righteously investigate and determine the derelictions which occurred, have done nothing but lie and cover up.

45. Defendant Rumsfeld in particular has been deceptive from the start, as where, on September 13, he reported on Good Morning, America that the plane “...went in through three rings (of the Pentagon). I’m told the nose is — is still in there, very close to the inner courtyard, about one ring away”; a palpably false statement, contradicted by numerous witnesses, a total lack of photographic evidence, and evident impossibility. Rumsfeld has also contradicted himself several times in describing his whereabouts and movements during the first hour or more of the attack. He does not acknowledge his presence in a teleconference which Richard Clarke said he, Rumsfeld, and others were part of, beginning shortly after 9:00 a.m. — after the Flight 77 emergency was reported, at or about the time the second tower was hit in New York, and more than half an hour before the Pentagon was hit — and he contradicts himself about whether and when he went to the Executive Support Center and/or the National Military Command Center, both within the Pentagon, as events transpired that morning. General Myers also (falsely) denied he was at the Pentagon in the early stages of the teleconference, as reported by Clarke. Tellingly, the tape of the videoconference, which obviously would have been part of any good faith investigation, has been kept secret.

46. Defendant Rumsfeld also made a striking prediction of the attack, as if speaking compulsively about his secret knowledge, that very morning, and several days later, he publicly referred to the “missile” that hit the Pentagon. In testifying before the 9/11 Commission, the defendant stonewalled and double-talked egregiously, responding to direct questions (some of them personally submitted by plaintiff herself during a hearing open only to survivors), especially about the Air Force fighter-interceptors not showing up, with irrelevant and sometimes incomprehensible ramblings. Consistent with their part in the cover-up, Commissioners failed to question him closely or confront his non-responsiveness.

IV. The Other Planes.

47. In spite of what the record shows was a regular, timely alert and request to NEADS commanders by FAA flight controllers at Boston for in-flight emergency response regarding United Airlines Flights 11 and 175 out of Boston, as described above in Pars. 22-24, the jets were not scrambled, or properly “vectored”, in time to intercept the planes that hit the Towers in New York — even though there was plenty of time for the interception.

48. With respect to Flight 93, which was thought to be intended for an attack on the White House or the Capitol, but crashed in Pennsylvania, there remains a great deal of mystery. Much of what supposedly happened was a made-in-Hollywood saga, where the passengers, learning of the earlier suicide crashes, gathered themselves and counter-attacked the hijackers, succeeding in heroic, self-sacrificing measure by crashing the plane (or causing the hijacker pilot to crash it) in a remote field, before it could approach its target. This story was supposedly recounted to persons on the ground by passengers with cell phones; but the science is clear that, at least in 2001, cell phones couldn't operate at the high altitude where the struggle supposedly took place. Also, the FBI, in presenting evidence at the Moussaoui trial in 2006, denied that any of the high-altitude calls that had been reported actually took place. The only cell phone calls confirmed by the FBI were two that reportedly occurred when the plane had descended to 5,000 feet. Thus, the mythic account is suspicious, to say the least.

49. Moreover, it appears fairly well established that one or more fighters ultimately did go aloft, and reached Flight 93, although this was also comprehensively denied in the Commission Report. There is also good evidence that supposed presidential authority to “engage”, meaning shoot down the plane, was given by defendant Cheney at or about 9:50 a.m. that morning, wherewith Flight 93 was indeed shot down with an air-to-air missile from a U.S.A.F. fighter jet.

50. Finally, there are multiple reports that debris from the plane was found a mile or more from the crash site, an obvious impossibility if the plane simply fell or dove into the ground. Likewise, there is no debris visible in photographs of the crash site, despite a long photographic history of airliner crashes showing plane parts and debris spread around the point of impact. Instead there was a crater, and no sign of the plane. Implausibly, however, the official report said that a visa, in the name of the alleged hijacker identified as the pilot, was recovered near the crater, along with a red headband of the type the hijackers supposedly wore. Again, available evidence shows the official account promulgated under the defendants’ illicit influence is, and plaintiffs allege that it is, false and fraudulent, in furtherance of the conspirac(ies) alleged herein.

V. The Cover-up.


51. As with the other branches or phases of the conspiracy, wherein a number of John Doe defendants working on different aspects of the organized enablement of the hijacking led by defendants Cheney and Rumsfeld may not have been aware or fully aware of each other's involvement; so too with the cover-up, a complicated operation which those involved have maintained for these seven years, and must continue to see to, indefinitely, on any number of fronts. That is, the skein of misrepresentations, distortions, omissions, contradictions, withheld evidence and outright lies which comprise the fraudulent “official” version, must be and plaintiffs allege that it has been and is assiduously, and fraudulently, maintained by the original perpetrators and various cohorts, who have kept the original conspiracy alive to this day.

52. In particular, the cover-up — beyond the fact that the simulated plane crash at the Pentagon was itself a cover-up — has been concentrated around the purported investigation and analysis of the attack and its supposed background by the 9/11 Commission, formally known as The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States, and the Report it issued in 2004. There, as extensively shown by a number of critics and commentators, this official organ put forth a supposedly comprehensive account of the attacks, the alleged attackers and their history, and various surrounding events and circumstances, in a version so full of omissions, distortions and outright falsehoods, as to clinch its purpose as a mainstay of the cover-up, in furtherance of the underlying conspiracy alleged herein, and its ongoing success.

53. Thus the Report gives a careful account and description of some of the many warnings the Government received during 2001 about Al Qaeda's intention to attack — in the United States, possibly with hijacked planes. The Report goes on to describe an interview with President Bush, which occurred only after intense negotiations in which the Commissioners acquiesced to White House conditions requiring that defendant Cheney be permitted to accompany the President, and that no record would be kept and no notes taken. There the President earnestly insisted to his Commission interlocutors that no warning of the attack had come. All contradictions were left unexplored, and ignored in the Report.

54. Similarly, defendant Rumsfeld — like the President himself, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defendant Gen. Richard Myers and others — testified and said in public, repeatedly, that no one in the Government security apparatus ever imagined terrorists suicidally crashing planes into buildings. This claim was also absolutely false. In point of fact, the CIA, the NSA, the FAA and NORAD had planned and trained for just such a possibility. Indeed, the record shows training exercises involving such a potential attack had in fact been carried on at the Pentagon in October, 2000 and May, 2001, and that NORAD had begun planning in July, 2001, for a training exercise in which the premise would be that a hijacked airliner was crashed into the World Trade Center. The 9/11 Commission, however — with the same studied indifference it showed towards the Mineta testimony — failed even to mention these contradictions in its Report, let alone explain them away.

55. In any event, it is in the nature of the acts alleged that the participants would endeavor from the outset to keep their actions — and the meeting of the minds that unleashed them — the deepest and darkest of secrets, forever. Thus the cover-up, even as it continues today, and will be manifest in the litigation of this complaint, was inherently part of the original unlawful agreement, and thereby part of the cause of the injuries and deprivations plaintiffs suffered on 9/11, and continuing injury since that time.

56. As to the overall plot, with its roots in the command positions and unhinged political fantasies and intentions of the two main defendants, Cheney and Rumsfeld, plaintiff alleges that, necessarily, there were multiple meetings of the minds among the various necessary parties in various implicated locations, positions and phases of the action. Indeed, the narrative reflects an evident form of rolling conspiracy, or multiple successive, interlocking, sub-conspiracies, by which defendants and their cohorts maintain and have maintained the original agreement to cover up the original crime(s) of terrorism, and their part in it, to this day.

VII. Plaintiffs’ Injuries.

57. The injuries, loss and deprivation of rights suffered by Plaintiff April Gallop, her child and others in the bombing of the Pentagon, however it was accomplished, were the result of terrorism, and terrorist acts, and conspiracy to commit terrorism, and to violate constitutional rights, and they include serious head and brain injuries she and her child both sustained when the ceiling caved in on them, as well as the loss and deliberate denial of their rights involved in their being made innocent victims of the attack. Plaintiff’s son, Elisha, has had ongoing problems as he has grown older, associated with injury to his brain, and has required continuing medical care and other special help. Both mother and child have had continuing difficulty, pain and suffering as a result, and sustained need for medical care, and financial and other loss; and they evidently will continue to suffer and to need medical and other assistance for the future.

58. Further, clearly as a result of and in retaliation for her public statement that no airplane wreckage was present in the building after the explosion(s), and for raising other questions, John Doe Department of Defense (DOD) defendants, pursuant to the conspiracy, have wrongfully caused plaintiff to be denied medical care and other benefits she should have received since the attack, and have acted to discourage others from helping her, all to her consequent, actionable loss. Most recently, on being discharged from the Army earlier this year, plaintiff’s financial account was closed out with a zero balance. A short time later, however, she was refused service at the VA medical center, on grounds that she supposedly owed the Defense Department more than $14,000; for which no documentation has been provided.

59. The plaintiff and her child also will experience more general loss, pain and suffering, forever, from what was done to them by high officials of their own government, who, attacking the Country and the Constitution, were willing to see her killed, and did see many others, thousands, killed, simply to further crass political designs. They were and are themselves terrorists, in truth, without whose crucial complicity the Al Qaeda attacks would never have occurred.

PLAINTIFFS' CAUSES OF ACTION

One. Violation of Constitutional Rights – Bivens.

a. Conspiracy. The defendants engaged in an unlawful conspiracy or series of interlocking conspiracies whereby they and various co-conspirators and others took various concrete steps, pursuant to a meeting of the minds around the objective of facilitating and enabling the terrorist attacks, specifically by de-activating and defaulting various normal defense systems and measures, as described and to be shown, so that the Al Qaeda hijackings and bombings of September 11 could succeed. They thereby helped cause the attacks and the resulting injuries to plaintiff, denial of her fundamental rights under the Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and death and injury loss to so many others; entitling plaintiff to judgment against the defendants under the rule of the Bivens case, for compensatory damages in such amount as the Jury may determine; and Punitive Damages.

b. Deliberate Indifference. The concerted actions of defendants in their efforts to facilitate and enable the terrorist attacks of September 11 in various ways as described hereinabove and to be shown, and the defendants’ deliberate indifference to the likelihood of serious injury and deprivation of rights arising therefrom, resulted in plaintiff and her child being made unknowing, defenseless victims of the attack, and thereby seriously injured and denied fundamental rights under the Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, entitling her to judgment against the defendants, under the rule of the Bivens case, for compensatory damages in such amount as the Jury may determine; and Punitive Damages.

c. Retaliation. The actions taken against plaintiff in retaliation for her speaking out with questions about the official explanations of what happened violated her rights under the First Amendment, entitling her to a further judgment against those responsible for compensatory damages in such amount as the Jury may determine; and Punitive Damages.

Two. Common Law Conspiracy to Cause Death and Great Bodily Harm. The plaintiff is further entitled to judgment against the defendants, jointly and severally, for the injuries she and her child received which were caused by the acts and omissions of defendants and others pursuant to the conspiracy(ies) alleged herein, and by breach of defendants’ duty of care towards the plaintiff, for compensatory and punitive damages in such amounts as the Jury may determine, and costs and attorneys fees.

Three. Acts of Terrorism Causing Injury – 18 U.S.Code 2333(a). The aforesaid acts and omissions of and by defendants were part and parcel of a terrorist attack on the United States, and the Pentagon in particular, resulting from a conspiracy or conspiracies to cause and help cause, facilitate and enable the hijacking and crashing of the planes and other elements of the attack; and these acts resulted in serious injuries to plaintiff and her child, entitling her to judgment against the defendants for compensatory damages as determined by the Jury, treble damages, and Attorneys Fees, under the Terrorism Acts — notwithstanding the provision of Sec.2337, purporting to exempt or immunize U.S. officers and employees acting “within… official capacity or under color of legal authority”; in that the agreements, acts and omissions alleged herein are outside and beyond the reach and compass of any conceivable official capacity or legal authority, actual or colorable, and therefore unconstitutional as applied in this case, as a deprivation of Due Process of Law, and of her right under the Seventh Amendment to have her claim tried by a Jury according to Law.

///

PRAYER FOR RELIEF




WHEREFORE, the plaintiff demands Trial By Jury, and Judgment against all defendants, jointly and severally, for compensatory and punitive damages in such amounts as the Jury may see fit to award; treble damages under 18 U.S.C. 2333(a), and costs of suit, expenses and attorneys fees...

Yours, etc.,

DATED: December 15, 2008.






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Mossad Daughter Refusnik>-WWII Vet on USA & NAZI Germany Similarities
-
A Mossad Daughter Jailed
For Refusing Military Service

By Omer Goldman
Source: Financial Times
Omer Goldman's ZSpace Page

in middle of middle coulmn:
http://www.powerpointparadise.com/
This article was published
in the Financial Times, November 22, 2008.

As told to Sarah Duguid. (GOD BLESS HER!)
SOME ISRAELIS WAKING UP TO THEIR UNGODLY CABBAL

I first went to prison on September 23 of this year and served 35 days.
By the time you read this, I will be back inside for another 21.
This is going to be my life for the next two years:
in for three weeks, out for one. I am 19 years old now
and by the time the authorities give up hounding me, I will be 21.
The reason? I refused to do my military service for the Israeli army.

I grew up with the army.
My father was deputy head of Mossad and I saw my sister,
who is eight years older than me, do her military service.
As a young girl, I wanted to be a soldier.
The military was such a part of my life that I never even questioned it.

Earlier this year, I went to a peace demonstration in Palestine.
I had always been told that the Israeli army was there to defend me,
but during that demonstration Israeli soldiers opened fire on me
and my friends with rubber bullets and tear-gas grenades.

I was shocked and scared.
I saw the truth. I saw the reality. I saw for the first time
that the most dangerous thing in Palestine is the Israeli soldiers,
the very people who are supposed to be on my side.

When I came back to Israel, I knew I had changed.
I told my dad what had happened.
He was angry that I had been over to the occupied territories
and told me I had endangered my life.
I have always discussed history and politics with my father
but on this subject -- my rejection of the military
and my conscientious objecting -- we can't speak.

My parents divorced when I was three and my father has a new family.
My mother is an artist and she is very supportive of me.
But my father has been horrified by my decision. I think he thought
that I was going through a stage that I would grow out of.
But it hasn't happened.

In prison, I wake up at five and clean all day, inside and out.
It's a military prison so we are made to do ridiculous stuff.
They painted a white stripe across the floor, and I have to keep
the stripe glowing white and clean. I have to wear a US army uniform.

The uniforms were given as a present to the Israeli army
by the US Marines.
I feel stupid. I am anti-military.
I am against the whole idea of wearing the uniform.
The other prisoners are women from the army.
They are in for silly things such as playing with their guns,
smoking dope, running away from the army.
None of them is really a criminal.
And then there are five girls like me who are conscientious objectors.

We talk to the other girls, tell them things
they have never heard about before. Like that everyone is a human,
no matter what religion they are. Some of them are really ignorant.
They have never heard of evolution theory,
or Gandhi or Mandela, or the Armenian holocaust.
I try to tell them that there have been a lot of genocides.

Of course I get scared when I am in prison. Three times a week,
I have to help guard the prison at night. But also,
it's frightening that my country is the way that it is,
locking up young people who are against violence and war.

And I worry that what I am doing may damage my future.
The worst part is that I have a taste of freedom
and then I am back inside, back to my mundane prison life.
It's hard to go from being a free girl who can decide things for herself -
- what to wear, who to see, what to eat -- and then go back
to having every minute of the day timetabled.

Last time I was out of prison, I went to see my dad.
We tried not to talk politics. He cares about me as his daughter,
that I am suffering, but he doesn't want to hear my views.

He hasn't come to visit me in prison. I think it would be
too hard for him to see me in there. He is an army man.
I suppose, actually, we have similar characters.
We both fight for what we believe in.
It's just that our views are diametrically opposed.

=================
U.S. World War II Veteran warns of similarities

between today�s America and Nazi Germany
http://www.blog.agoracosmopolitan.com/?p=247


I am 81 years old and a veteran of World War II.

I remember what the Nazi�s were doing in Germany very well.

Here in America our government is getting dangerously close

to acting just like the Nazi�s were in Germany and

the Germans were doing it for �better security� as we are doing.


The Germans got more and more paranoid (of their own people)

and began watching all Germans and tightened security,

and made Germans carry and show identity papers

whenever the police and soldiers wanted to see them.

They had German kids telling on their parents.

It was a horror.


We are starting down the same path.

The excuse is that we need to do this to protect our Citizens

but the trouble is more and more of our freedoms are going

and we are beginning to be like a gigantic outdoor prison.


It is not like the America I love and fought for.

I fought for the freedom of Americans and not for a selfish

�United States of Corporations� which is more interested

in money and power than it is in the People of America.


I don�t look and see a kindly Uncle Sam anymore.

I see a bullying Big Brother. Sorry to be so blunt but it is how I feel�


by Jack Aiken Lancaster


About the author:

Jack Aiken Lancaster is the founder of

People for Freedom, Grants Pass, Oregon.


This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 11:28 am

and is filed under U.S. Foreign Policy.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

13 Responses to �U.S. World War II Veteran warns
of similarities between today�s America and Nazi Germany�
Paul E. Coughlin Says:
April 18th, 2007 at 5:43 am
Totally agree, totalitartianism being firmly set in place. The full picture is worse, much worse. 9/11, 7/7, mysterious suspicious multiple killings, false wars, phantom enemies, media now under operation mockingbird control, complicity of other western (UK, Europe) ALL MUST know what is going on at the �intelligence� hence government level. The only truth is coming from conspiracy theorists, just about. If it is not stopped then it can only get worse. It will not stop of it�s own accord. Intelligent intervention is required by thinking individuals. I wish I could be wrong - I keep double-checking - I just wish I am wrong. Check the facts. Do your own research. The real situation IS much worse.
Mary Hartman Says:


June 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
God Bless you, Sir, for your service and for your courage in speaking the truth about what it is that is taking place. On February 12, 2002, 63 citizens from a town with a population of 270+ turned out at a city council meeting upon invitation from their Mayor. At issue was the public safety hazard caused by an exotic animal farm operating in illegally and irresponsibly in their midst. The meeting was called to order and the Mayor announced that anyone who attempted to speak would be escorted off the premises by a Mower County, MN Deputy. A woman rose to speak and the deputy was summoned. As it turns out, the business was part of a organized criminal enterprise that involves the CIA and FBI in Minnesota. They ran drugs, guns, and money through this exotic animal �sanctuary� and had plans to make 50 more of these so they could centralize their operations. It used to be that the press would scream and the FBI would jump when those types of blatant violations occurred. But not anymore. The #2 guy for Minnesota�s Department of Public Safety is also a CIA agent and complaints like the civil rights violations go to the attorney in the AG�s office who represents the DPS so�..no one could see the problem with those abuses of power. We�re in the midst of a soft coup in this country, and the people are too dumbed down to see it. I am both angry and sad to see and understand what is happening, in large part because it degrades and devalues the sacrifices made by those who died (and killed) to preserve our freedom and the integrity of the Constitution.
Oscar Ladner Says:
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I agree with Mr. Jack Lancaster 1000%. I am an 84 year old former combat infantryman in WWII in Gen. Patton�s 3rd Army and served in Patton�s Raiders. Here in Mississippi we have the redneck Organized crime, Dixie Maffia, the Italian Mafia, and others, all of them using Hitler�s tactics and worse. Black mail, extortion, set ups, lying, stealing and just about any dirty thing you can think of without regard to any person. I have fought it without much assistance because I could see it happening. We have a fight on our hands to save this Nation. God Bless America. Oscar Ladner
fascistUSA Says:
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Where to begin? Gestapo literally translates to �Homeland Security�.
I can state facts all day long about how Amerika/Nazi Germany/Fascist Rome are all similar - even the same damn Salute!
Oh, yeah. Fluoride is Poison. That junk added to our water to �make our teeth� better. It was used in Nazi Germany to control the Population. Makes you Submissive and lowers your IQ. Don�t believe me? Google search �fluoride� and �toxic� or even �poison�.
TV is Brainwashing. Sorry, I thought I better add that Fact. Your Brain works on Waves: Alpha, Beta, ect. TV puts you into Alpha Relaxed state. Makes it easier to Influence a person. Words like �conspiracy� and �theories�. When you hear someone repeating the �words� there�s a good chance that person is TV Brainwashed. Let�s not even mention all The Subliminal Messages.
I can keep spouting Facts all day, but Why? I give you something better. Almost all the Answers.
Illuminati, Empire of Cities : Ring of power, Zeitgeist (zeitgeistmovie.com), and Esoteric Agenda. ALL on Google Video.
John Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 am
When I first started thinking the same thing a few years ago, everyone told me I was paranoid. I didn�t understand how anybody could miss it. Then I saw a story in the paper one day about a woman who had survived Auschwitz. She was old, in her eighties I guess, but she was leaving America, where she had lived for the last fifty years I guess, and going back to live with relatives in Germany, because what she saw happening here reminded her of what happened when the Nazis started to take over in Germany. She said that she could never go through that again, and the signs were unmistakable.
It must have been at least three years ago when I saw that story, and knew for certain that I was right.
Since then I�ve read maybe three or four stories about and articles by older people, some German, some American, who remember that terrible time very well, and have tried to warn us today about what they see happening.
These people know what they are talking about. They know how these things happen, how bit by bit, day by day things get just a little bit worse until one day, it is too late.
There is a book edited by Marvin Mayer that is a collection of interviews done with German civilians who lived under Nazism, titled �They Thought They Were Free.�
If you�re reading this, you ought to get the book if you can, but if you can�t at least go to Amazon and read the excerpts from the book. I recall that one man said that every day, bit by bit, the government a little more secretive, a little more distant from the people.
The reasons offered were the same ones we hear. National security. Alleged terrorists, who at the time were the communists.
And things began to change around him. There were book burnings back then, and renewed emphasis on Christianity, and the German race as being unique and superior of course.
The man was a professor, and he said that he kept waiting for the big event, the big injustice that would draw everyone into the streets protesting the government. But things didn�t happen like that. Instead it was a steady encroachment upon the people�s right�s, day by day, and often in such incremental ways that it was easy to rationalize them, and to say to one�s self well, this is really not all that much.
He was a professor and he was very involved with his work, and so it was easy for him to be distracted.
I remember one quote. He said �Please believe me, to live under this is not to know it is happening, until one day something happens that forces you to face it, to face what you have become. But then it is too late.�
He said in his case he was walking home with his young son one day and they saw a man who lived in their neighborhood and he heard his son mutter
�Dirty Jew�.
And then he realized that he was living in a different country, that the forms were still the same, he still did the same things every day, but the emotions behind those forms had changed, and it was now a culture of hate.
He says there were a number of people he knew who committed suicide when they understood what was going on.
He didn�t have any advice for how others could recognize the process in time, and stop it.
And truthfully, I think it is too late now here. You have to challenge people when they start telling lies. When they start to turn every converstation into a screaming match, when they lie about other politicians you can�t let them get away with it. You have to call them out in public, and humiliate them as liars and show what their intent is.
Because Abraham Lincoln was wrong. You may not be able to fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of the people enough of the time for long enough to get into power. And once there, in a position to control what people hear, read, and see; and to punish your enemies, who is going to stop you?
Jacob L Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 am
This man is totally un-american - there is a real and terrible danger out there, far worse than the Nazis ever were, and it�s threatening to destroy the ENTIRE WORLD, never mind America, and it�s called ISLAM. There�s a global islamic consipracy out there, and they�re working with the communists in China Im pretty sure, and they�re going to destroy us all - we need to strike first - lock up the moslems, and any sympathisers - that�s why we�ve been building concentration camps - WE SHOULD USE THEM!


Alex in Toronto Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:00 am
Ignorance and apathy are at the root of this precarious cancer in the American body politic. Unfortunately, Americans don�t care about the state encroaching on their civil rights because they are too scared or too busy with work to think that by opposing they can make their government do the will of the people.
A revolution is needed. It�s supposed to be a government of the people for the people, as in France, where the government is afraid of what the people can do when their desires are not met, and not of the rich corporations for the wealth of the big corporations.
Pity.
Jake Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Sadly, I agree. I too fought for my country during the current war. When I enlisted in 1997 America was still an admirable country to look up to. Unfortunately I no longer feel proud of the service I have given to my country. So much has changed since that short time ago. Our citizens have become spoiled and desensitized to the sacrifice given by the members of our armed forces. Corporations run politics and our leadership is shameful and embarrassing. Lets all hope that changes for the better are coming and we can see the wrong of our ways.
Atheus Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Sounds to me like you just read 1984 and your a crazy old bastard who was probably a water boy in the army and now your still trying to impress someone.
Todd Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Jack,
All though i respect what you are saying, i couldn�t disagree with you more.
The united states has never been better. There are perfect checks and balances in this great country. And in the last 200+ years not once has it
failed its people. 9\11 will not change the country. Sure there have been changes to our security, but that�s so insignificant that you really cant notice it. Just long airline lines�.no big deal.
America has never lost a war. Sure we have left vietnam, but never lost.
To be honest�..I�m glad that America went to war. You can always feel good when america goe to war. I guess i�m one of those people that likes that America is the police of the world. Cause there�s nothing i can�t stand more than bullies.
David McInnis Says:
June 4th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Fortunately Bush hasn�t shown signs of aligning the military with him, and also fortunately, he�s a pretty pathetic and unconvincing public speaker. For the longest time, I was expecting him to declare himself dictator (or fuhrer - if there�s much of a difference) as Mr. Lancaster might suggest.
Sure, he (or someone on his behalf) was savvy enough to have a USAPATRIOTACT that was doctored at the last minute to be voted on and passed.
Yes, we ARE being scrutinized as individuals more than any time in American history!
RealId in the works.
But since EVERY DAMN TIME I APPLY for anything, they want my SSN (even though that should be only between myself, the SSA, my employer and the IRS), isn�t it already a unique national ID? It can be used to access my credit history. It can be used to steal my identity (as if anyone would want it).
If the ridiculous notion of all citizens having RFID chips embedded in their skin ever receives any serious consideration, as much as I love this country, I will be gone in a heartbeat. I�m damn near 100% Canadian-French (with a nod to Canadian-Scottish) by heritage (all my great-grandparents moved from Canada to Massachusetts). I would go north, and if that silliness ever starts, I hope Canada would open its border to dissenters.
But they�d be overrun, so possibly not.
To sum up and to offer a better possibility, I think the Idiot-In-Chief hasn�t really drummed up the backing he needs to make a move in that direction permanently. But McCain could. Vote Obama!!
Arlene Johnson Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Dear Mr. Lancaster,
Thank you for risking your life and well being to go to war in the 40s. You were used, however, by the forces who are hidden, and I have devoted one of my editions to all of you who have served in the military. These forces are called the Illuminati, and they fund both sides of war and then collect the usury from both sides.
They want people to believe that they are fighting for democracy, but that is a lie, because the USA was not created as a democracy. It was created as a Republic, and they are not the same at all.
The Illuminati want three wars, WW I, WW II, and next WW III. After that, they will have their New World Order, which is also known as the One World Government. This is not what the Framers of our Constitution wanted. Yet this is what we have now.
There is much more that I could say, but hope you will log onto my Web site and read the editions that are at the icon that says Magazine, because they are the God�s truth, and so documented that no one has been able to sue me for libel.
I am an American; see the icon on my site that says About Us. I now live in Sweden, a country that�s not perfect, but at least is not a dictatorship as ours is now and has been since May 21, 2007 when Bush signed the National Security & Homeland Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 51).
We did have a president who wanted peace. We know him better as John F. Kennedy. This is why I normally sign off my letters or Emails with�
Peace,
Arlene Johnson
Publisher/Author
http://www.truedemocracy.net
Trex Says:
July 11th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Aa an interesting note, Georgie W�s grandfather funded the Nazis before and during WWII through a little entity called �Union Banking Corp�. Herbert Hoover uncovered the money laundering scheme and had UBC siezed under the �Trading with The Enemy Act�.
It is no surprise to me that once again the US is under threat of a Nazi take over. (albeit a far less direct and more subversive seizure) The Nazi party even had small followings in the US before the war. They were a very determined lot then and their persistence still burns as does the resistance to it.
The Nazi spirit lives on in the Bushs, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a cast of many others. To bad Prescott wasnt made an example of and executed like the traitor he was. It might have made some other corrupt individuals think twice before betraying our country. Then again when your rich and have powerful friends you can buy yourself out of and into and situation you want. How else would George Herbert Walker have become Director of the CIA��.. but thats another story.


Subject: Bush's final


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/24991066/bushs_final_fu/print




Rollingstone.com

Back to Bush's Final F.U.

Bush's Final F.U.

The administration is rushing to enact a host of last-minute regulations that will screw America for years to come

TIM DICKINSON

Posted Dec 25, 2008 11:55 AM

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With president-elect Barack Obama already taking command of the financial crisis, it's tempting to think that regime change in America is a done deal. But if George Bush has his way, the country will be ruled by his slash-and-burn ideology for a long time to come.

In its final days, the administration is rushing to implement a sweeping array of "midnight regulations" — de facto laws issued by the executive branch — designed to lock in Bush's legacy. Under the last- minute rules, which can be extremely difficult to overturn, loaded firearms would be allowed in national parks, uranium mining would be permitted near the Grand Canyon and many injured consumers would no longer be able to sue negligent manufacturers in state courts. Other rules would gut the Endangered Species Act, open millions of acres of wild lands to mining, restrict access to birth control and put local cops to work spying for the federal government.

"It's what we've seen for Bush's whole tenure, only accelerated," says Gary Bass, executive director of the nonpartisan group OMB Watch. "They're using regulation to cement their deregulatory mind-set, which puts corporate interests above public interests."

While every modern president has implemented last-minute regulations, Bush is rolling them out at a record pace — nearly twice as many as Clinton, and five times more than Reagan. "The administration is handing out final favors to its friends," says Véronique de Rugy, a scholar at George Mason University who has tracked six decades of midnight regulations. "They couldn't do it earlier — there would have been too many political repercussions. But with the Republicans having lost seats in Congress and the presidency changing parties, Bush has nothing left to lose."

The most jaw-dropping of Bush's rule changes is his effort to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act. Under a rule submitted in November, federal agencies would no longer be required to have government scientists assess the impact on imperiled species before giving the go-ahead to logging, mining, drilling, highway building or other development. The rule would also prohibit federal agencies from taking climate change into account in weighing the impact of projects that increase greenhouse emissions — effectively dooming polar bears to death-by-global-warming. According to Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, "They've taken the single biggest threat to wildlife and said, 'We're going to pretend it doesn't exist, for regulatory purposes.'"

Bush is also implementing other environmental rules that will cater to the interests of many of his biggest benefactors:

BIG COAL In early December, the administration finalized a rule that allows the industry to dump waste from mountaintop mining into neighboring streams and valleys, a practice opposed by the governors of both Tennessee and Kentucky. "This makes it legal to use the most harmful coal-mining technology available," says Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. A separate rule also relaxes air-pollution standards near national parks, allowing Big Coal to build plants next to some of America's most spectacular vistas — even though nine of 10 EPA regional administrators dissented from the rule or criticized it in writing. "They're willing to sacrifice the laws that protect our national parks in order to build as many new coal plants as possible," says Mark Wenzler, director of clean-air programs for the National Parks Conservation Association. "This is the last gasp of Bush and Cheney's disastrous policy, and they've proven there's no line they won't cross."

BIG OIL In a rule that becomes effective just three days before Obama takes office, the administration has opened up nearly 2 million acres of mountainous lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming for the mining of oil shale — an energy-intensive process that also drains precious water resources. "The administration has admitted that it has no idea how much of Colorado's water supply would be required to develop oil shale, no idea where the power would come from and no idea whether the technology is even viable," says Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado. What's more, Bush is slashing the royalties that Big Oil pays for oil-shale mining from 12.5 percent to five percent. "A pittance," says Salazar.

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BIG AGRICULTURE Factory farms are getting two major Christmas presents from Bush this year. Circumventing the Clean Water Act, the administration has approved last-minute regulations that will allow animal waste from factory farms to seep, unmonitored, into America's waterways. The regulation leaves it up to the farms themselves to decide whether their pollution is dangerous enough to require them to apply for a permit. "It's the fox guarding the henhouse — all too literally," says Pope. The water rule goes into effect December 22nd, and a related rule in the works would exempt factory farms from reporting air pollution from animal waste.

BIG CHEMICAL In October, two weeks after consulting with industry lobbyists, the White House exempted more than 100 major polluters from monitoring their emissions of lead, a deadly neurotoxin. Seemingly hellbent on a more toxic future, the administration will also allow industry to treat 3 billion pounds of hazardous waste as "recycling" each year, and to burn another 200 million pounds of hazardous waste reclassified as "fuel," increasing cancer-causing air pollution. The rule change is a reward to unrepentant polluters: Nearly 90 percent of the factories that will be permitted to burn toxic waste have already been cited for violating existing environmental protections.

Environmental rollbacks may take center stage in Bush's final deregulatory push, but the administration is also promulgating a bevy of rules that will strip workers of labor protections, violate civil liberties, and block access to health care for women and the poor. Among the worst abuses:

LABOR Under Bush, the Labor Department issued only one major workplace-safety rule in eight years — and that was under a court order. But now the Labor Department is finalizing a rule openly opposed by Obama that would hamper the government's ability to protect workers from exposure to toxic chemicals. Bypassing federal agencies, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao developed the rule in secret, relying on a report that has been withheld from the public. Under the last-minute changes, federal agencies would be expected to gather unnecessary data on workplace exposure and jump through more bureaucratic hurdles, adding years to an already cumbersome regulatory process.

In another last-minute shift, the administration has rewritten rules to make it harder for workers to take time off for serious medical conditions under the Family and Medical Leave Act. In addition, the administration has upped the number of hours that long-haul truckers can be on the road. The new rule — nearly identical to one struck down by a federal appeals court last year — allows trucking companies to put their drivers behind the wheel for 11 hours a day, with only 34 hours of downtime between hauls. The move is virtually certain to kill more motorists: Large-truck crashes already kill 4,800 drivers and injure another 76,000 every year.

HEALTH CARE In late August, the administration proposed a new regulation ostensibly aimed at preventing pharmacy and clinic workers from being forced to participate in abortions. But the wording of the new rule is so vague as to allow providers to deny any treatment that anyone in their practice finds objectionable — including contraception, family planning and artificial insemination. Thirteen state attorneys general protested the regulation, saying it "completely obliterates the rights of patients to legal and medically necessary health care services."

In a rule that went into effect on December 8th, the administration also limited vision and dental care for more than 50 million low-income Americans who rely on Medicaid. "This means the states are going to have to pick up the tab or cut the services at a time when a majority of states are in a deficit situation," says Bass of OMB Watch. "It's a horrible time to do this." To make matters worse, the administration has also raised co-payments for Medicaid, forcing families on poverty wages to pay up to 10 percent of the cost for doctor visits and medicine. One study suggests that co-payments could cause Medicaid patients to skip nearly a fifth of all prescription-drug treatments. "People who have nothing are being asked to pay for services they rely upon to live," says Elaine Ryan, vice president of government relations for AARP. "Imposing co-pays on the poorest and sickest people in the United States is cynical and cruel."




NATIONAL SECURITY Under midnight regulations, the administration is seeking to lock in the domestic spying it began even before 9/11. One rule under consideration would roll back Watergate-era prohibitions barring state and local law enforcement from spying on Americans and sharing that information with U.S. intelligence agencies. "If the federal government announced tomorrow that it was creating a new domestic intelligence agency of more than 800,000 operatives reporting on even the most mundane everyday activities, Americans would be outraged," says Michael German, a former FBI agent who now serves as national security policy counsel for the ACLU. "This proposed rule change is the final step in creating an America we no longer recognize — an America where everyone is a suspect."

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John Podesta, the transition chief for the Obama administration, has vowed that the new president will leverage his "executive authority" to fight Bush's last-minute rule changes. But according to experts who study midnight regulations, there's surprisingly little an incoming executive can do to overturn such rules. The Bush administration succeeded in repealing just three percent of the regulations finalized before Bill Clinton left office in 2001. "Midnight regulations under Bush are being executed early and with great intent," says Bass of OMB Watch. "And that intent is to lock the next administration into these regulations, making it very difficult for Obama to undo what Bush just did."

To protect the new rules against repeal, the Bush administration began amping up its last-gasp regulatory process back in May. The goal was to have all new regulations finalized by November 1st, providing enough time to accommodate the 60-day cooling-off period required before major rule changes — those that create an economic impact greater than $100 million — can be implemented.

Now, however, the administration has fallen behind schedule — so it's gaming the system to push through its rules. In several cases, the Office of Management and Budget has fudged the numbers to classify rules that could have billion-dollar consequences as "non-major" — allowing any changes made through mid-December to take effect in just 30 days, before Obama is inaugurated. The administration's determination of what constitutes a major change is not subject to review in court, and the White House knows it: Spokesman Tony Fratto crowed that the 60-day deadline is "irrelevant to our process."

Once a rule is published in the Federal Register, the Obama administration will have limited options for expunging it. It can begin the rule-making process anew, crafting Obama rules to replace the Bush rules, but that approach could take years, requiring time-consuming hearings, scientific fact-finding and inevitable legal wrangling. Or, if the new rules contain legal flaws, a judge might allow the Obama administration to revise them more quickly. Bush's push to gut the Endangered Species Act, for example, was done in laughable haste, with 15 employees given fewer than 36 hours to review and process more than 200,000 public comments. "The ESA rule is enormously vulnerable to a legal challenge on the basis that there was inadequate public notice and comment," says Pope of the Sierra Club. "The people who did that reviewing will be put on a witness stand, and it will become clear to a judge that this was a complete farce." But even that legal process will take time, during which industry will continue to operate under the Bush rules.

The best option for overturning the rules, ironically, may be a gift bestowed on Obama by Newt Gingrich. Known as the Congressional Review Act, it was passed in 1996 to give Congress the option of overriding what GOP leaders viewed at the time as excessive regulation by Bill Clinton. The CRA allows Congress to not only kill a new rule within 60 days, but to do so with a simple, filibuster-immune majority. De Rugy, the George Mason scholar, expects Democrats in the House and Senate to make "very active use of the Congressional Review Act."

But even this option, it turns out, is fraught with obstacles. First, the CRA requires a separate vote on each individual regulation. Second, the act prohibits reviving any part of a rule that has been squelched. Since Bush's rules sometimes contain useful reforms — the move to limit the Family and Medical Leave Act also extends benefits for military families — spiking the rules under the CRA would leave Obama unable to restore or augment those benefits in the future. Whatever Obama does will require him to expend considerable political capital, at a time when America faces two wars and an economic crisis of historic proportions.

"It's going to be very challenging for Obama," says Bass. "Is he going to want to look forward and begin changing the way government works? Or is he going to look back and fix the problems left by Bush? Either way, it's a tough call."

[From Issue 1068-69 — December 25, 2008 - January 8, 2009]

Related Stories:

More from Issue 1068-69
Same-Sex Setback by Tim Dickinson
Make-Believe Maverick: The Real John McCain by Tim Dickinson



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'Can I meet Kasab and ask him what he has gained'
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Shweta Desai
Posted: Dec 19, 2008 at 1434 hrs IST

Mumbai Is it possible for me to meet that boy?” asks Karuna Thakur Waghela, her eyes swollen, as if she has been crying for a very long time. “Or can you ask him what he has gained by doing this? In a single night he stole my family’s happiness, shattered all our dreams, took away the father of my children.”
That boy is Ajmal Ameer Kasab, the only terrorist caught alive by the Mumbai police for the 26/11 attacks. One of the men he and his partner Ismael gunned down was Thakur, Karuna’s 33-year-old husband who was a sweeper at GT hospital.

On the night of 26/11, Thakur was all set for his late shift at GT Hospital. He was sharing a meal with his son Yash in their ramshackle quarters, when Kasab entered their home from the lane behind GT Hospital. Almost as soon as he sauntered in, Kasab shot and killed Thakur.

Thakur’s mother, who lived next door, saw the two men walk in with their rifles. “He’s my son, don’t do anything to him,” she shouted, only to be shot at by Ismael. She ducked, escaping the bullet.

Now, Thakur’s children cope with the tragedy in different ways. While seven-year-old Dhaval is angry and wants to avenge his father’s death, his four-year-old brother, Yash, suffers from terrible nightmares. He saw his father die. The eldest, 11-year-old Roshni, meanwhile, has taken on the role of a caretaker, often consoling her younger brothers. All three children manage to get through the day, but when night sets in, so does uncontrollable anxiety.

“The kids weren’t afraid to stay out of the house until late, but now they cannot even venture out after 6 pm. They know that the terrorists came and killed their father in the dark,” says Karuna, adding that the family plans to seek the help of a psychiatrist for the two boys.

“We had so many plans for the children. We wanted them to study in an English-medium school. Thakur would say that he wouldn’t mind giving up one meal a day if it would help get them English-medium education,” says Karuna.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Can-I-meet-Kasab-and-ask-him-what-he-has-gained/400158/


Selected Writings by Nadesan Satyendra - ?????? ?????????????


Sathyam Commentary
12 June 1998
The Buddha Smiled [also in PDF]

Question: "The Buddha is the most awesomely solemn of beings. Why then does he smile?" Reply: "There are all manner of causes and conditions whereby one may smile. There are those who are delighted and therefore smile. There are those who are afflicted with anger and therefore smile. One may feel contempt for others and therefore smile. One may witness strange events and therefore smile. One may observe embarrassing situations and therefore smile. It may happen that one sees strange customs from other lands and therefore smile. It may also happen that one witnesses rare and difficult undertakings and thus is caused to smile". (The Buddha's Smile - from the Sutras T25.112b8-113a8 [fasc. 7])Translation Copyright © Bhikshu Dharmamitra)

[ 8 years later on 17 November 2006: US Senate backs India nuclear deal "Energy-hungry India needs nuclear power. The US Senate has overwhelmingly voted to pass a controversial deal to share civilian nuclear technology with India. Under the deal, which was proposed more than a year ago, India must allow international inspections of its nuclear facilities. US President George W Bush hailed the move as bringing India into the "nuclear non-proliferation mainstream". However, the bill still has to clear a number of hurdles before it becomes law and is implemented. One condition would require India to fully and actively participate in efforts to contain Iran's nuclear programme." more]


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India's first nuclear test, carried out in May 1974, was code named the 'Smiling Buddha'. After its success, Indian nuclear scientist Kalam (a Tamil and a Muslim), reportedly told India's Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, that the Buddha had smiled.

Twenty four years later, the fall out from the series of nuclear tests carried out by India in May 1998, has served to expose the many faces (smiling, or otherwise) of the emerging multi polar world.

Here, it may be useful to look back a few decades.

Background

Prior to World War I, it was said that the sun never set on the global British Empire and that Britannia ruled the waves. Great Britain was the World's super power. But, two World Wars contributed to the eclipse of Great Britain, and the eventual emergence in 1945 of a bi polar world with the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the two super powers.

The United Nations Charter signed in San Francisco in June 1945, was structured to give the victors of World War II (United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France) a permanent place in the Security Council, each with the right to a veto. It is perhaps, no accident that eventually, these five states also became nuclear powers.

Member states of the United Nations often proclaim their faith in democracy. They even call for democracy within armed resistance movements which cannot possibly put in place institutional structures for elections, whilst being engaged in battle to secure stable boundaries for a state-to-be. But democracy finds little encouragement within the structure of the United Nations itself - a structure which continues to perpetuate the control of its affairs by the five victors of World War II. It is now more than fifty years since the end of World War II and, unsurprisingly, the system that the world was persuaded to accept in 1945, is increasingly at odds with political reality.

It is not simply that with the collapse of the Berlin wall, the old style division between the First World and the Second World, together with the resulting 'alignments' and 'non-alignments', has become less meaningful. It is not simply that the collapse of the bi polar world structure led to a uni polar one with the United States playing the role of the sole super power. History teaches that a uni polar world will eventually give birth to a multi polar one. And, today, within the womb of the uni polar world, a multi polar world has begun to take shape.


Germany and Japan (the 'defeated' in World II) have emerged as major economic powers. France, since Charles de Gaulle, has not been slow to assert its own sovereignty. China perceives itself as a world power. The Islamic world is giving expression to a togetherness rooted in its past. Great Britain would like to retain its identity, extend its influence in the English speaking world, and 'contribute' by drawing on its reservoir of experience and expertise gathered by having 'managed' a global Empire for a century and more. Again, countries which have gained independence from colonial rule are asserting their right to participate and be involved in decisions taken in the international arena - decisions, which in the end, affect the lives of their own citizens.

And India with a population of more than a billion, has called for a proportionate voice in world affairs. Indian Foreign Secretary J.N.Dixit delivering a lecture on September 16 1993, at the influential German Society for Foreign Policy made it clear that India wants a seat as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. He said:

''If Japan and Germany alone are inducted as Permanent members of the Security Council, we will not agree. We have already written to the Secretary General of the United Nations''

In its official submission to the UN Secretary General in 1993, India proposed that the Security Council be expanded from its current five permanent and 10 non permanent members to 10 or 11 permanent members and 12 or 14 non permanent members.

International response

It is against this backdrop that the international response to India's nuclear tests may be usefully considered. The position taken by each country, although couched in the language of 'principle' is more often than not, a reflection of that which it perceives to be its own 'permanent interest'.

The US, given its self perception as the 'super power' has been quick to respond with 'sanctions' - an urgency which, for instance, it did not feel in the case of sanctions against the South African apartheid regime which had imprisoned President Nelson Mandela for more than twenty years.

The US points out that 146 countries have signed up to the non proliferation treaty and insists that India should 'put the brakes on its slide away from the international mainstream'. But, the US itself has not yet ratified the treaty. Furthermore, it has carried out over a thousand nuclear tests as against the five carried out by India, and at the latest count had a stockpile of over 8000 nuclear devices - enough to destroy the earth and all its inhabitants, several times over.

France and Russia have deplored the Indian nuclear tests but have stopped short of outright condemnation and have dragged their feet at imposing sanctions. They are not in the business of giving an entirely free hand to the US to set the agenda in world affairs.

Pakistan and China have been vociferous in their condemnation of India. Both Pakistan and China are India's immediate neighbours. At the same time, each of them have close ties with the United States. The closeness of US-Pakistan military links was strengthened during the Soviet - Afghanistan conflict. In the case of China, the intimacy of the relationship is shown by an example of 'co-operation' in 1979, given by President Carter's former National Security Adviser Brzezinski. He writes:

"I informed the President that Deng (the Chinese leader) told Vance and me that China approved of our decision to support the Shah in Iran, that in the Chinese view the United States should be more active in strengthening Pakistan, and - somewhat ominously - that Deng wished a private meeting with the President on Vietnam.

I sensed from the tone in which Deng asked for this that we would be hearing something significant, especially given mounting indications that the Chinese would not sit back idly as the Vietnamese continued their military occupation of Cambodia. when we sat down together in the Oval office, I had a general sense of what was coming...

None the less, there is a difference between anticipating a situation and actually experiencing it. There was something grave and very special in the calm, determined and firm way in which Deng Xiaoping presented the Chinese case. China, he said, had concluded that it must disrupt Soviet strategic calculations and that 'we consider it necessary to put a restraint on the wild ambitions of the Vietnamese and to give them an appropriate limited lesson'.

Without detailing at this stage what the lesson specifically would entail, he added that the lesson would be limited in scope and duration. He then calmly diagnosed for us various possible Soviet responses, indicating how China would counter them. He included among the options 'the worst possibility', (a Soviet nuclear response) adding that even in such a case China would hold out. All he asked for was 'moral support' in the international field from the United States". (Zbigniew Brzezinski - Power and Principle, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983)

When China invaded Vietnam in February 1979 - a twenty day invasion to 'teach Vietnam a lesson', the US stance in the international arena helped to stall any adverse resolution by the Security Council on the Chinese invasion.

Sri Lanka’s response

Again, unlike China and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, another neighbour of India, was quick to declare that it had no objection to India becoming a nuclear power.

Soon after the Indian General elections (in February 1998) which saw the election of supporters of the Tamil Eelam struggle, such as the PMK and Gopalaswamy's MDMK to the Lok Sabha, the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister visited New Delhi. On his return, the Sri Lanka newspapers proclaimed that the Indian Prime Minister had assured Sri Lanka 'not to worry about Tamil Nadu.' That, ofcourse left open the question as to what it was that Sri Lanka should worry about.

The decision by India, on 11 June 1998 to extend the ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for a further period, on the ground that LTTE was a threat to the unity and integrity of India, must have been received with some satisfaction by Sri Lanka.

The US whilst, ofcourse, understanding the special reasons which may have influenced Sri Lanka's decision to support India, may nevertheless have been concerned at the effect that such an open declaration by a signatory to the non proliferation treaty, may have on other signatories. This may explain the somewhat circumspect, but pointedly public, US response:

"A US embassy official in Colombo says the American Ambassador has requested a meeting with Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister to learn Sri Lanka's position on India's nuclear tests. The embassy spokesperson says the ambassador is seeking an explanation of a foreign ministry statement that supports India's nuclear test series - because Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. US embassy officials say the United States is interested in finding out why Sri Lanka chose to support India so openly." (Voice of America, 19 May 1998)

Sri Lanka's private response to the American Ambassador, would no doubt have taken into account Sri Lanka's structural dependence on foreign aid. The Paris Aid Consortium (including Japan), at its meeting held on 27 May 1998, did pledge 780 million dollars of aid to Sri Lanka, though the Western donors trimmed their contribution by 10%.

Here, it may be useful to remember the words of Sardar K.M.Pannikar who served as, Indian Ambassador to China from 1948 to 1952:

''The public habit of judging the relations between states from what appears in the papers adds to the confusion. It must be remembered that in international affairs things are not often what they seem to be. .. A communique which speaks of complete agreement may only mean an agreement to differ. Behind a smokescreen of hostile propaganda diplomatic moves may be taking place indicating a better understanding of each other's position. ...'' (Sardar K.M.Pannikar - Principles and Practice of Diplomacy,1956)

Complex power balances

The world wide web of power balances is an increasingly complex one. President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote perceptively in 1983::

".... The population of the world by the end of this century will have grown to some 6 billion people.... moreover most of the increase will be concentrated in the poorer parts of the world, with 85% of the world's population by the end of this century living in Africa, Latin America and the poorer parts of Asia....

Most of the third world countries... are likely to continue to suffer from weak economies and inefficient government, while their increasingly literate, politically awakened, but restless masses will be more and more susceptible to demagogic mobilisation on behalf of political movements... it is almost a certainty that an increasing number of third world states will come to possess nuclear weapons.... . the problems confronting Washington in assuring US national security will become increasingly complex..." (Zbigniew Brzezinski - Power and Principle, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983)

It is not clear whether Brzezinski saw the irony in his statement that as the peoples of the third world become 'increasingly literate' and 'politically awakened' they will be 'more and more susceptible to demagogic mobilisation'. Surely, literacy and political awakening will render people not more but less susceptible to demagogy.

Be that as it may, Brzezinski's perception that the political awakening of the so called 'third world' (in reality, the 'majority world') was a threat to US 'national security' though understandable, also reflects a failure by the US to develop a principle centred approach to international relations - a principle centred approach which seeks genuine win-win answers to conflicts between the US and other states, instead of the US being seen as attempting to impose its own diktat on the world.

In the context of an 'increasingly literate' and 'politically awakened' multi polar world, the old techniques of 'balance of power', 'divide and rule' and 'my enemy's neighbour is my friend' may be seen for what they are - techniques designed simply to out wit your opponent. And, they may not work. No one has a monopoly of wit. Again, as Sardar K.M.Pannikar, has pointed out:

''Foreign Ministers and diplomats presumably understand the permanent interests of their country.. But no one can foresee clearly the effects of even very simple facts as they pertain to the future. The Rajah of Cochin who in his resentment against the Zamorin permitted the Portuguese to establish a trading station in his territories could not foresee that thereby he had introduced into India something which was to alter the course of history. Nor could the German authorities, who, in their anxiety to create confusion and chaos in Russia, permitted a sealed train to take Lenin and his associates across German territory, have foreseen what forces they were unleashing. To them the necessity of the moment was an utter breakdown of Russian resistance and to send Lenin there seemed a superior act of wisdom...'' (Sardar K.M.Pannikar - Principles and Practice of Diplomacy,1956)

The danger is that in a nuclear world, a miscalculation may result in mutually assured destruction. It was Arthur Koestler who remarked in the 1950s that if he was asked: what was the most important date in history, he would say without hesitation that it was the day when the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, because on that day mankind had for the first time acquired the know-how to annihilate the entirety of the human species.

Need for Principle Centred Approaches

The old style 'command - control' method of leadership will yield diminishing returns in an increasingly 'politically awakened' world. Hierarchical authority may secure a measure of compliance in the short term but it will fail to foster genuine commitment and stability. Perhaps, the time has come for the US government, as a government of a country that is regarded as the home of private enterprise, to itself start practising some of the leadership methods which the likes of Stephen Covey and Peter Senge have advocated to successful Fortune 500 companies:

"From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole. When we then try to 'see the bigger picture', we try to reassemble the fragments in our minds, to list and organise all the pieces. But as physicist David Bohm says, the task is futile - similar to trying to reassemble the fragments of a broken mirror to see a true reflection. Thus, after a while we give up trying to see the whole altogether.

....When we give up this illusion (that the world is created of separate, unrelated forces) - we can then build 'learning organisations,' organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together." (The Fifth Discipline : The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization - Peter M. Senge, Massachusetts Institute Technology)

There may be a need to see the bigger picture. If the US aspires to world leadership, it will need to recognise that leadership will not come simply by the display of military might and economic power. It is the marriage of power with principle that will secure leadership. A leader needs to secure the trust and respect of those whom he seeks to lead - trust in his integrity and respect for the skills that he is able to bring to the task of achieving shared goals. This is true of individuals. It is true of business organisations. It is also true of countries.

The glaring weakness in the US stand on nuclear non proliferation is that it is not willing to engage in discussions about the reduction of nuclear weapon stockpiles as a part of an agreement on nuclear non-proliferation. It is an approach that says: "We will continue to have, what we have. But no one else shall have, what we have."

The US argument that 'the Indian government at this point appears to care more for narrow political interests, than for its role in the international community." (Rediffusion News Report, 16 May 1998) would have carried more weight, if it was not self evident that the US stand was itself directed to secure that which the US perceives to be its own 'national security' interests.

Nothing is gained by the visceral language that some US commentators have used:

"In some of the sharpest commentary heard so far, former Under Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger did not want "pipsqueak countries" like India to be recognised as nuclear powers. His colleague Robert McFarlane was even more visceral in the New York Times. 'We must make clear to the Indian Government that it is today what it was two weeks ago, an arrogant, over reaching cabal that, by its devotion to the caste system, the political and economic disenfranchisement of its people and its religious intolerance, is unworthy of membership in any club" (Indian Express 31 May 1998)

The comments by ex President Carter which appeal to reason and principle deserve the attention of a wider audience.

" 'It's hard for us to tell India you cannot have a nuclear device when we keep ours -- 8,000 or so -- and are not ready to reduce them yet," he (ex President Carter) said during a commencement address at Trinity College in Hartford yesterday. The U.S policy on nuclear weapons and landmines "smacks of hypocrisy," Carter noted. The former President also pointed out that U.S advises India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but it has not ratified it yet. Condemning the superpower's claim to reduce nuclear arsenals, he said, "the Start-II treaty was passed about eight years ago and has still not been ratified by the U.S or Russia." (PTI, 18 May 1998)

Again, there are those who take the view that India's nuclear tests moves India away from Gandhi. The logic of such a viewpoint may also lead them to call upon India (with the fourth largest army in the world) to abandon its conventional armed forces as well.

Here, the story of the wandering sadhu (holy man) who visited an Indian village where many had died as a result of being bitten by a snake, comes to mind. As the story goes, the sadhu advised the snake against killing and persuaded the snake to give up its evil habits. An year later, the sadhu returned to the village to find the snake shrivelled up and in agony and pain as a result of the injuries caused by stones thrown by villagers who were no longer afraid of it. The snake told the sadhu: " I followed your advice - and see what has happened to me." The sadhu replied: "I told you not to bite - but I did not tell you, not to hiss."

David Landes has analysed the First World's phenomenal wealth and power, in a new book titled 'The Wealth and Poverty of Nations : Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor ' Landes suggests that one of the three main reasons that Europe earned its wealth was that Europeans mastered the power to kill. They learnt about gun powder from Asia - China originally - but they learnt to make it better and their guns fired straighter and farther. Perhaps the time has now come to level the playing field, to right the balance - and at the same time, move towards a world wide reduction in nuclear and conventional weapons of destruction.

India’s strength will lie not in the nuclear bomb, but in its peoples

Having said that, New Delhi will need to recognise that, in the end, the strength of India will lie not in the nuclear bomb, but in its peoples. The economy of India will not grow unless the different peoples of India are energised to work together to achieve their shared aspirations. Here, the failure of successive Indian governments to openly recognise that India is a multi-national state, has served to weaken the Indian Union rather than strengthen it. The European Union (established albeit, after two World Wars), may serve as a pointer to that which may have to be achieved in the Indian region in the years to come. There may be a need for India to recognise the force of reason in that which Pramatha Chauduri declared more than 70 years ago:

"It is not a bad thing to try and weld many into one but to jumble them all up is dangerous, because the only way we can do that is by force. If you say that this does not apply to India, the reply is that if self determination is not suited to us, then it is not suited at all to Europe. No people in Europe are as different, one from another, as our people. There is not that much difference between England and Holland as there is between Madras and Bengal. Even France and Germany are not that far apart. If some of our politicians shudder at the mention of provincial patriotism, it is because their beliefs smack of narrow national selfishness....

To be united due to outside pressure and to unite through mutual regard are not the same. Just as there is a difference between the getting together of five convicts in a jail and between five free men, so the Congress union of the various nations of India and tomorrow's link between the peoples of a free country will be very different. Indian patriotism will then be built on the foundation of provincial patriotism, not just in words but in reality."

Nuclear capability will not guarantee unity. The nuclear bomb did not prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the non-nuclear states of Latvia, Estonia and Georgia. Peoples speaking different languages, tracing their roots to different origins, and living in relatively well defined and separate geographical areas, do not easily 'melt'.

A people's struggle for freedom is also a nuclear energy and the Fourth World is a part of today's enduring political reality. India may need to adopt a more 'principle centred' approach towards struggles for self determination in the Indian region. A myopic approach, apart from anything else, may well encourage the very outside 'pressures' which New Delhi seeks to exclude. And, if India can grasp this, then, the Buddha may have cause to truly smile.
http://www.tamilnation.org/saty/9806buddhasmiled.htm


The decision by India, on 11 June 1998 to extend the ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for a further period, on the ground that LTTE was a threat to the unity and integrity of India, must have been received with some satisfaction by Sri Lanka.

The US whilst, ofcourse, understanding the special reasons which may have influenced Sri Lanka's decision to support India, may nevertheless have been concerned at the effect that such an open declaration by a signatory to the non proliferation treaty, may have on other signatories. This may explain the somewhat circumspect, but pointedly public, US response:

"A US embassy official in Colombo says the American Ambassador has requested a meeting with Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister to learn Sri Lanka's position on India's nuclear tests. The embassy spokesperson says the ambassador is seeking an explanation of a foreign ministry statement that supports India's nuclear test series - because Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. US embassy officials say the United States is interested in finding out why Sri Lanka chose to support India so openly." (Voice of America, 19 May 1998)

Sri Lanka's private response to the American Ambassador, would no doubt have taken into account Sri Lanka's structural dependence on foreign aid. The Paris Aid Consortium (including Japan), at its meeting held on 27 May 1998, did pledge 780 million dollars of aid to Sri Lanka, though the Western donors trimmed their contribution by 10%.

Here, it may be useful to remember the words of Sardar K.M.Pannikar who served as, Indian Ambassador to China from 1948 to 1952:

''The public habit of judging the relations between states from what appears in the papers adds to the confusion. It must be remembered that in international affairs things are not often what they seem to be. .. A communique which speaks of complete agreement may only mean an agreement to differ. Behind a smokescreen of hostile propaganda diplomatic moves may be taking place indicating a better understanding of each other's position. ...'' (Sardar K.M.Pannikar - Principles and Practice of Diplomacy,1956)

Complex power balances

The world wide web of power balances is an increasingly complex one. President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote perceptively in 1983::

".... The population of the world by the end of this century will have grown to some 6 billion people.... moreover most of the increase will be concentrated in the poorer parts of the world, with 85% of the world's population by the end of this century living in Africa, Latin America and the poorer parts of Asia....

Most of the third world countries... are likely to continue to suffer from weak economies and inefficient government, while their increasingly literate, politically awakened, but restless masses will be more and more susceptible to demagogic mobilisation on behalf of political movements... it is almost a certainty that an increasing number of third world states will come to possess nuclear weapons.... . the problems confronting Washington in assuring US national security will become increasingly complex..." (Zbigniew Brzezinski - Power and Principle, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983)

It is not clear whether Brzezinski saw the irony in his statement that as the peoples of the third world become 'increasingly literate' and 'politically awakened' they will be 'more and more susceptible to demagogic mobilisation'. Surely, literacy and political awakening will render people not more but less susceptible to demagogy.

Be that as it may, Brzezinski's perception that the political awakening of the so called 'third world' (in reality, the 'majority world') was a threat to US 'national security' though understandable, also reflects a failure by the US to develop a principle centred approach to international relations - a principle centred approach which seeks genuine win-win answers to conflicts between the US and other states, instead of the US being seen as attempting to impose its own diktat on the world.

In the context of an 'increasingly literate' and 'politically awakened' multi polar world, the old techniques of 'balance of power', 'divide and rule' and 'my enemy's neighbour is my friend' may be seen for what they are - techniques designed simply to out wit your opponent. And, they may not work. No one has a monopoly of wit. Again, as Sardar K.M.Pannikar, has pointed out:

''Foreign Ministers and diplomats presumably understand the permanent interests of their country.. But no one can foresee clearly the effects of even very simple facts as they pertain to the future. The Rajah of Cochin who in his resentment against the Zamorin permitted the Portuguese to establish a trading station in his territories could not foresee that thereby he had introduced into India something which was to alter the course of history. Nor could the German authorities, who, in their anxiety to create confusion and chaos in Russia, permitted a sealed train to take Lenin and his associates across German territory, have foreseen what forces they were unleashing. To them the necessity of the moment was an utter breakdown of Russian resistance and to send Lenin there seemed a superior act of wisdom...'' (Sardar K.M.Pannikar - Principles and Practice of Diplomacy,1956)

The danger is that in a nuclear world, a miscalculation may result in mutually assured destruction. It was Arthur Koestler who remarked in the 1950s that if he was asked: what was the most important date in history, he would say without hesitation that it was the day when the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, because on that day mankind had for the first time acquired the know-how to annihilate the entirety of the human species.

Need for Principle Centred Approaches

The old style 'command - control' method of leadership will yield diminishing returns in an increasingly 'politically awakened' world. Hierarchical authority may secure a measure of compliance in the short term but it will fail to foster genuine commitment and stability. Perhaps, the time has come for the US government, as a government of a country that is regarded as the home of private enterprise, to itself start practising some of the leadership methods which the likes of Stephen Covey and Peter Senge have advocated to successful Fortune 500 companies:

"From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole. When we then try to 'see the bigger picture', we try to reassemble the fragments in our minds, to list and organise all the pieces. But as physicist David Bohm says, the task is futile - similar to trying to reassemble the fragments of a broken mirror to see a true reflection. Thus, after a while we give up trying to see the whole altogether.

....When we give up this illusion (that the world is created of separate, unrelated forces) - we can then build 'learning organisations,' organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together." (The Fifth Discipline : The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization - Peter M. Senge, Massachusetts Institute Technology)

There may be a need to see the bigger picture. If the US aspires to world leadership, it will need to recognise that leadership will not come simply by the display of military might and economic power. It is the marriage of power with principle that will secure leadership. A leader needs to secure the trust and respect of those whom he seeks to lead - trust in his integrity and respect for the skills that he is able to bring to the task of achieving shared goals. This is true of individuals. It is true of business organisations. It is also true of countries.

The glaring weakness in the US stand on nuclear non proliferation is that it is not willing to engage in discussions about the reduction of nuclear weapon stockpiles as a part of an agreement on nuclear non-proliferation. It is an approach that says: "We will continue to have, what we have. But no one else shall have, what we have."

The US argument that 'the Indian government at this point appears to care more for narrow political interests, than for its role in the international community." (Rediffusion News Report, 16 May 1998) would have carried more weight, if it was not self evident that the US stand was itself directed to secure that which the US perceives to be its own 'national security' interests.

Nothing is gained by the visceral language that some US commentators have used:

"In some of the sharpest commentary heard so far, former Under Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger did not want "pipsqueak countries" like India to be recognised as nuclear powers. His colleague Robert McFarlane was even more visceral in the New York Times. 'We must make clear to the Indian Government that it is today what it was two weeks ago, an arrogant, over reaching cabal that, by its devotion to the caste system, the political and economic disenfranchisement of its people and its religious intolerance, is unworthy of membership in any club" (Indian Express 31 May 1998)

The comments by ex President Carter which appeal to reason and principle deserve the attention of a wider audience.

" 'It's hard for us to tell India you cannot have a nuclear device when we keep ours -- 8,000 or so -- and are not ready to reduce them yet," he (ex President Carter) said during a commencement address at Trinity College in Hartford yesterday. The U.S policy on nuclear weapons and landmines "smacks of hypocrisy," Carter noted. The former President also pointed out that U.S advises India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but it has not ratified it yet. Condemning the superpower's claim to reduce nuclear arsenals, he said, "the Start-II treaty was passed about eight years ago and has still not been ratified by the U.S or Russia." (PTI, 18 May 1998)

Again, there are those who take the view that India's nuclear tests moves India away from Gandhi. The logic of such a viewpoint may also lead them to call upon India (with the fourth largest army in the world) to abandon its conventional armed forces as well.

Here, the story of the wandering sadhu (holy man) who visited an Indian village where many had died as a result of being bitten by a snake, comes to mind. As the story goes, the sadhu advised the snake against killing and persuaded the snake to give up its evil habits. An year later, the sadhu returned to the village to find the snake shrivelled up and in agony and pain as a result of the injuries caused by stones thrown by villagers who were no longer afraid of it. The snake told the sadhu: " I followed your advice - and see what has happened to me." The sadhu replied: "I told you not to bite - but I did not tell you, not to hiss."

David Landes has analysed the First World's phenomenal wealth and power, in a new book titled 'The Wealth and Poverty of Nations : Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor ' Landes suggests that one of the three main reasons that Europe earned its wealth was that Europeans mastered the power to kill. They learnt about gun powder from Asia - China originally - but they learnt to make it better and their guns fired straighter and farther. Perhaps the time has now come to level the playing field, to right the balance - and at the same time, move towards a world wide reduction in nuclear and conventional weapons of destruction.

India’s strength will lie not in the nuclear bomb, but in its peoples

Having said that, New Delhi will need to recognise that, in the end, the strength of India will lie not in the nuclear bomb, but in its peoples. The economy of India will not grow unless the different peoples of India are energised to work together to achieve their shared aspirations. Here, the failure of successive Indian governments to openly recognise that India is a multi-national state, has served to weaken the Indian Union rather than strengthen it. The European Union (established albeit, after two World Wars), may serve as a pointer to that which may have to be achieved in the Indian region in the years to come. There may be a need for India to recognise the force of reason in that which Pramatha Chauduri declared more than 70 years ago:

"It is not a bad thing to try and weld many into one but to jumble them all up is dangerous, because the only way we can do that is by force. If you say that this does not apply to India, the reply is that if self determination is not suited to us, then it is not suited at all to Europe. No people in Europe are as different, one from another, as our people. There is not that much difference between England and Holland as there is between Madras and Bengal. Even France and Germany are not that far apart. If some of our politicians shudder at the mention of provincial patriotism, it is because their beliefs smack of narrow national selfishness....

To be united due to outside pressure and to unite through mutual regard are not the same. Just as there is a difference between the getting together of five convicts in a jail and between five free men, so the Congress union of the various nations of India and tomorrow's link between the peoples of a free country will be very different. Indian patriotism will then be built on the foundation of provincial patriotism, not just in words but in reality."

Nuclear capability will not guarantee unity. The nuclear bomb did not prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the non-nuclear states of Latvia, Estonia and Georgia. Peoples speaking different languages, tracing their roots to different origins, and living in relatively well defined and separate geographical areas, do not easily 'melt'.

A people's struggle for freedom is also a nuclear energy and the Fourth World is a part of today's enduring political reality. India may need to adopt a more 'principle centred' approach towards struggles for self determination in the Indian region. A myopic approach, apart from anything else, may well encourage the very outside 'pressures' which New Delhi seeks to exclude. And, if India can grasp this, then, the Buddha may have cause to truly smile.
http://www.tamilnation.org/saty/9806buddhasmiled.htm
Gen. Kayani suspects foreign hand in assassination to destabilize and denuclearize Pakitan
Posted on January 4, 2008 by Moin Ansari
Babar disclosed that the slain PPP chairperson had personally informed him of threats to her life at the hands of some influential elements within Pakistan.”Sophistication of the operation carried out to assassinate the PPP chairperson is beyond the capability of criminal gangs,” Babar said.

Benazir Bhutto before her homecoming after ending her self-exile in October last year had also written a letter to President Musharraf and named three senior officials who, she alleged, were after her life.

Neither Benazir Bhutto nor the president ever disclosed these names; however, media reports while quoting sources discussed different names, including that of a spymaster and two former chief ministers.

It was perhaps Benazir’s own apprehensions that she had shared with her close relatives and associates that her spouse and presently the co-chairperson of the PPP told The Guardian on Monday that the government by blaming al-Qaeda for the Benazir killing wanted to muddy the waters.

“Al-Qaeda has nothing to fear, why would they fear us? Are they our political opponents?” he was quoted as saying by the British newspaper, within days after he blamed the Pakistani Gorbachev (without identifying him) of destabilising Pakistan.

Meanwhile, a source who, too, had frank interaction with Benazir told this correspondent that she was aware of an international conspiracy to destabilise and de-nuclearise Pakistan. He said that many things that she used to say in public during the last few months of her life were far from her conviction.

She, the source said, had the realisation what was brewing in certain parts of Pakistan, particularly in the tribal belt could be properly addressed through dialogue and political means that she wanted to pursue once she got into the corridors of power.

However, contrary to these revelations about her real objectives, Benazir Bhutto’s return from self-exile was full of risks because of Washington’s overt support for her to be the next prime minister of Pakistan.

Despite strong anti-US feeling, the US authorities, including the State Department officials, issued repeated statements in her favour, knowing well that the post-9/11 policies had increased the anti-US feelings to an all-time high in the Muslim world, especially in Pakistan.

However, against the general perception, things were not smooth between Benazir Bhutto and Washington as has now been confirmed by veteran Washington Post journalist Robert D Novak, who wrote in the prestigious US newspaper on Monday that before her death Benazir Bhutto had distanced herself from a US-brokered power-sharing deal between her and President Musharraf.

Robert revealed that Ms Bhutto had sent a written complaint to a senior State Department official, saying her camp no longer viewed the backstage US move as a good faith effort towards democracy. The US paper also wrote that in return to her several pleas, seeking US assistance for better security, the US reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing assurance that President Musharraf would not let anything happen to her.

Lt-Gen (retd) Jamshed Gulzar Kayani, who was amongst those serving generals at the time who had voiced their opposition to the post-9/11 Islamabad’s war on terror policy, when contacted told this correspondent that Pakistan’s nuclear programme had been the main target of the world’s most influential capitals, who wanted to see this country unstable and chaotic so that they could get hold of our nuclear assets.

Kayani, who had the reputation of a professional soldier and had also served the ISI, besides holding key military positions, believes that Benazir’s killing was part of an international conspiracy executed with active connivance of local players to create such a situation in Pakistan that suits those hell-bent on de-nuclearising Pakistan.

A government official told this correspondent that there were many pointing fingers at someone sitting in Islamabad or the country’s indefinable establishment for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He believed that although only a fair, independent and thorough probe would possibly solve the riddle as to who was behind Benazir’s assassination, no one in the government could draw any benefit out of this horrendous act and the post-Benazir situation had proven that rulers were actually at the receiving end.

The source said though some local players might be involved in this, the mastermind seemed to be sitting in a distant foreign land.

The source, while quoting an intelligence report submitted well before the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by one of the country’s leading intelligence agencies, said the government was astounded when it was reported that an international player, apparently friendly with Islamabad, was funding certain extremist elements in tribal areas through Afghanistan to cause destabilisation.

On Wednesday, a New York datelined story published on the back page of The News while quoting a website developed by the US Homeland Security and the intelligence news disclosed that US special squads were all set and ready to take into their possession Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the event of a political upsurge or the dissolution of the government.

“The US special squad has been ordered to stay on alert to capture Pak nuclear warheads in case of political instability there,” the report said, adding special squad comprising 10,000 soldiers and headed by two major-generals was entrusted with the responsibility of safeguarding these weapons.

After Benazir Bhutto’s death, there are now serious concerns being raised about the safety of PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, whose name was disclosed by the interior ministry as being on the hit list of al-Qaeda.

Although, Benazir Bhutto’s appearance on the hit list of al-Qaeda would have been a possibility for her pro-American statements, many are surprised here to find Nawaz Sharif on it. Nawaz Sharif and his PML-N have been critical of most post-9/11 US policies and never did anything to invite the ire of al-Qaeda.

They have been opposing and condemning the military action in tribal areas.

It is feared even by official circles that if Nawaz Sharif (God forbid) meets the same fate as that of Benazir Bhutto, it would be chaotic and a serious threat to the integrity of Pakistan, which is already facing serious challenges because of the assassinati

If we are so sure of business cartels, why aren’t we busting them? If we have evidence of cartelisation, why isn’t that being made public to expose them? Why haven’t we pinned down the blame and penalised cartel members? The near-defunct Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission is believed to have instituted some inquiries into cartels and the government has proclaimed it is examining its legal and administrative powers to act against cartels. But the perpetual debate raging for several years is so much up in the air that the repeated references to cartels is now bordering on fatigue. The government has a moral responsibility to ensure that the term doesn’t gather comical intensity. It reminds me of captivating TV documentaries of the mythical 20 Saddam Hussein look-alikes. Apparently, they never existed. Or, for that matter, an entire cover story in an international magazine (with illustrated graphics) of Mullah Omar’s lavish air-conditioned mountain-side bunkers — with miles of motorable tunnels — in Afghanistan that could withstand nuclear bombs.

Don’t be surprised if the next cartel announcement from a minister is followed by peals of laughter like every reference to the ‘foreign hand’ did in the Parliament in the 1980s. At the current hit rate of cartel exposure, some day, the epitaph of the ‘cartel’ would proclaim that these were mysterious creatures like the Yeti or the extra-terrestrial that were never discovered on the face of the Earth.

While the ministries themselves have done little else but threaten action, what is ironic is that the Competition Commission — the regulator that has been authorised by the Parliament to investigate and recommend (not act, unfortunately!) into competition issues such as the cartels — has been left in a state of disuse since the Act was passed in October 2007. So much so that the enthusiastic one-man member of the Competition Commission Vinod Dhall is now nearing retirement in November.

Dear ministers, please take some radical steps before cartels gain mythological significance. Raid companies, jail a CEO or book him under the Essential Services and Maintenance Act. But please don’t let cartels go down in history as a CIA-like lore — mythical and mystical.

If we can’t, then let’s take this to another level of intellectual frustration. Let’s blame the CIA.

rajeevdubey@abp.inThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

(Businessworld issue 13-19 May 2008)
http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Columns/Blame-The-CIA.htmlContested Meanings: India's National Identity, Hindu Nationalism, and the Politics of Anxiety
Journal article by Ashutosh Varshney; Daedalus, Vol. 122, 1993

Journal Article Excerpt
Contested meanings: India's national identity, Hindu nationalism, and the politics of anxiety



by Ashutosh Varshney


THE PRIMARY IMPULSE OF THIS ESSAY is explanatory, not normative. It is important to keep this distinction in mind because the subject--the rise of Hindu nationalism--generates strong emotions. While dealing with Hindu nationalism, the customary intellectual tendency is to denounce or celebrate, not to explain. For an academic analysis, however, explanation must take clear precedence over denunciation or celebration.

The essay makes three arguments. First, a conflict between three different varieties of nationalism has marked Indian politics of late: a secular nationalism, a Hindu nationalism, and two separatist nationalisms in the states of Kashmir and Punjab. Hindu nationalism is a reaction to the two other nationalisms. In imaginations about India's national identity, there was always a conceptual space for Hindu nationalism. Still, it remained a weak political force until recently, when the context of politics changed. The rise of Hindu nationalism can thus be attributed to an underlying and a proximate base. Competing strains in India's national identity constitute the underlying base. The proximate reasons are supplied by the political circumstances of the 1980s. A mounting anxiety about the future of India has resulted from the separatist agitations of the 1980s, and from a deepening institutional and ideological vacuum in Indian politics. India's key integrative political institution since 1947, the Congress party, has gone through a profound organizational decay, with no centrist parties taking its place. And secularism, the ideological mainstay of a multireligious India, looks pale and exhausted. Claiming Ashutosh Varshney is Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University. to rebuild the nation, Hindu nationalists present themselves as an institutional and ideological alternative.

Second, India's secularism looks exhausted not because secularism is intrinsically unsuited to India and must, therefore, inevitably come to grief. That is the principal claim of the highly influential recent writings by T. N. Madan and Ashis Nandy.(1) Insightful though their arguments are, Madan and Nandy do not sufficiently differentiate between different varieties of secularism. The secularism of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi was not a logical culmination of the secularism of Nehru. Politics over the last decade discredits the kind of secularism practiced by the various regimes in the 1980s. It does not discredit secularism per se.

Third, though a reaction to separatist and secular nationalisms, Hindu nationalism poses the most profound challenge to the governing principles and intellectual maps of an independent India. Hindu nationalism has two simultaneous impulses: a commitment to the territorial integrity of India as well as a political commitment to Hinduism. Given India's turbulent history of Hindu-Muslim relations, it is unlikely that Hindu nationalism can realize both its aims. What happens to India, therefore, depends on how powerful Hindu nationalism becomes, and the way in which this contradiction is resolved.

The national question is, of course, not the only contentious issue in India. Apart from the national order, two other orders--social and economic--have been challenged in recent times. The traditional caste hierarchy of the Hindu social order, slowly eroding due to the political equality of liberal democracy, has been explicitly confronted by politics emphasizing the mobilization of lower castes. The Fabian socialist core of the economic order is in its death throes, being attacked by an emerging market orientation and international openness in the country's economic policy. Some of this change is welcome in India, but much of it has come suddenly and simultaneously. Because of the simultaneity of change at several levels, and especially because of threats to the nation's integrity--the most serious since independence--Indian politics in recent years have been experienced by a large number of Indians as an anxiety, as a fear of the unknown, and on occasions such as the demolition of the Ayodhya mosque, even as a loss of inner coherence. A yearning for reequilibrating designs that can impose some order on anxieties is unmistakable. Politics remains central to this enterprise.

THE CONTEXT: THREE CONTESTING NATIONALISMS IN INDIA

People everywhere have an idea of who they are and what they owe

themselves .... The liberation of spirit that has come to...
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=JLdD8QMH5rjGJSn7Z2b9DlLQzlG5W1qtQ34VY5GZjlyTTwFy2GFM!-1211074435?docId=5000149893

on of one of two top-most popular leaders in the country.

There is, however, an admission by these official circles that the kind of security that should have been provided to Benazir Bhutto was not there; thus, making it easy for the assassins to get her.

It was not only Benazir Bhutto who was dissatisfied with the security provided to her by the government but Nawaz Sharif, too, on Monday voiced serious concern over his security
http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/04/gen-kayani-suspects-foreign-hand-in-assassination-to-destabilize-and-denuclearize-pakitan/

BUSINESS BEAT
Blame The CIA...

If we are so sure of business cartels operating in the country, why are we not exposing them?


BY RAJEEV DUBEY
09 May 2008

We have a favourite punching bag these days — industry cartels. We trust them as much as the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or its Pakistani counterpart, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). And, like in the Indira Gandhi era of CIA-bashing, we blame them for anything and everything. If Indira Gandhi’s politicians held the ‘foreign hand’ responsible for India’s foreign exchange crisis as much as for Lal Bahadur Shastri’s mysterious death, our leaders and bureaucrats pick on cartels for anything from commodity price increases to food shortage. In current popularity, they could outdo the Indian Premier League cheerleaders. But rightly or wrongly, industrialists have begun fearing the term as much as the dreaded FERA (Foreign Exchange Regulation Act).

The problem is that the ghost of the cartels has now become bigger than the cartels, if any. Even without revealing a single cartel, the analysis around them has reached ridiculous proportions: their amorphous nature and their ability to come together and disintegrate at will; their vice-like grip over the industry and pricing; their secret meetings; their leaders and the lack of them. Short of having a cult following, they are everything.

Getting into the act, the prime minister has raised concerns about cartels. The finance minister and the commerce minister have both hurled numerous arrows in the dark in the form of public threats to these amorphous entities and their possessors, saying that industries such as cement and steel are “behaving like a cartel” and that if their “behaviour” doesn’t change, the government would take strict measures. At different points in time, sugar and grains have also borne the brunt of such threats. But rarely have these been acted upon as publicly as they have been issued. Now that the spiralling raw material prices are causing a slowdown in the economy, the threats are back.

But as the din around these nebulous entities gets louder and louder, the inaction over them has exposed the small talk.


If we are so sure of business cartels, why aren’t we busting them? If we have evidence of cartelisation, why isn’t that being made public to expose them? Why haven’t we pinned down the blame and penalised cartel members? The near-defunct Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission is believed to have instituted some inquiries into cartels and the government has proclaimed it is examining its legal and administrative powers to act against cartels. But the perpetual debate raging for several years is so much up in the air that the repeated references to cartels is now bordering on fatigue. The government has a moral responsibility to ensure that the term doesn’t gather comical intensity. It reminds me of captivating TV documentaries of the mythical 20 Saddam Hussein look-alikes. Apparently, they never existed. Or, for that matter, an entire cover story in an international magazine (with illustrated graphics) of Mullah Omar’s lavish air-conditioned mountain-side bunkers — with miles of motorable tunnels — in Afghanistan that could withstand nuclear bombs.

Don’t be surprised if the next cartel announcement from a minister is followed by peals of laughter like every reference to the ‘foreign hand’ did in the Parliament in the 1980s. At the current hit rate of cartel exposure, some day, the epitaph of the ‘cartel’ would proclaim that these were mysterious creatures like the Yeti or the extra-terrestrial that were never discovered on the face of the Earth.

While the ministries themselves have done little else but threaten action, what is ironic is that the Competition Commission — the regulator that has been authorised by the Parliament to investigate and recommend (not act, unfortunately!) into competition issues such as the cartels — has been left in a state of disuse since the Act was passed in October 2007. So much so that the enthusiastic one-man member of the Competition Commission Vinod Dhall is now nearing retirement in November.

Dear ministers, please take some radical steps before cartels gain mythological significance. Raid companies, jail a CEO or book him under the Essential Services and Maintenance Act. But please don’t let cartels go down in history as a CIA-like lore — mythical and mystical.

If we can’t, then let’s take this to another level of intellectual frustration. Let’s blame the CIA.

rajeevdubey@abp.inThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

(Businessworld issue 13-19 May 2008)
http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Columns/Blame-The-CIA.htmlContested Meanings: India's National Identity, Hindu Nationalism, and the Politics of Anxiety
Journal article by Ashutosh Varshney; Daedalus, Vol. 122, 1993

Journal Article Excerpt
Contested meanings: India's national identity, Hindu nationalism, and the politics of anxiety



by Ashutosh Varshney


THE PRIMARY IMPULSE OF THIS ESSAY is explanatory, not normative. It is important to keep this distinction in mind because the subject--the rise of Hindu nationalism--generates strong emotions. While dealing with Hindu nationalism, the customary intellectual tendency is to denounce or celebrate, not to explain. For an academic analysis, however, explanation must take clear precedence over denunciation or celebration.

The essay makes three arguments. First, a conflict between three different varieties of nationalism has marked Indian politics of late: a secular nationalism, a Hindu nationalism, and two separatist nationalisms in the states of Kashmir and Punjab. Hindu nationalism is a reaction to the two other nationalisms. In imaginations about India's national identity, there was always a conceptual space for Hindu nationalism. Still, it remained a weak political force until recently, when the context of politics changed. The rise of Hindu nationalism can thus be attributed to an underlying and a proximate base. Competing strains in India's national identity constitute the underlying base. The proximate reasons are supplied by the political circumstances of the 1980s. A mounting anxiety about the future of India has resulted from the separatist agitations of the 1980s, and from a deepening institutional and ideological vacuum in Indian politics. India's key integrative political institution since 1947, the Congress party, has gone through a profound organizational decay, with no centrist parties taking its place. And secularism, the ideological mainstay of a multireligious India, looks pale and exhausted. Claiming Ashutosh Varshney is Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University. to rebuild the nation, Hindu nationalists present themselves as an institutional and ideological alternative.


Second, India's secularism looks exhausted not because secularism is intrinsically unsuited to India and must, therefore, inevitably come to grief. That is the principal claim of the highly influential recent writings by T. N. Madan and Ashis Nandy.(1) Insightful though their arguments are, Madan and Nandy do not sufficiently differentiate between different varieties of secularism. The secularism of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi was not a logical culmination of the secularism of Nehru. Politics over the last decade discredits the kind of secularism practiced by the various regimes in the 1980s. It does not discredit secularism per se.

Third, though a reaction to separatist and secular nationalisms, Hindu nationalism poses the most profound challenge to the governing principles and intellectual maps of an independent India. Hindu nationalism has two simultaneous impulses: a commitment to the territorial integrity of India as well as a political commitment to Hinduism. Given India's turbulent history of Hindu-Muslim relations, it is unlikely that Hindu nationalism can realize both its aims. What happens to India, therefore, depends on how powerful Hindu nationalism becomes, and the way in which this contradiction is resolved.

The national question is, of course, not the only contentious issue in India. Apart from the national order, two other orders--social and economic--have been challenged in recent times. The traditional caste hierarchy of the Hindu social order, slowly eroding due to the political equality of liberal democracy, has been explicitly confronted by politics emphasizing the mobilization of lower castes. The Fabian socialist core of the economic order is in its death throes, being attacked by an emerging market orientation and international openness in the country's economic policy. Some of this change is welcome in India, but much of it has come suddenly and simultaneously. Because of the simultaneity of change at several levels, and especially because of threats to the nation's integrity--the most serious since independence--Indian politics in recent years have been experienced by a large number of Indians as an anxiety, as a fear of the unknown, and on occasions such as the demolition of the Ayodhya mosque, even as a loss of inner coherence. A yearning for reequilibrating designs that can impose some order on anxieties is unmistakable. Politics remains central to this enterprise.

THE CONTEXT: THREE CONTESTING NATIONALISMS IN INDIA

People everywhere have an idea of who they are and what they owe

themselves .... The liberation of spirit that has come to...
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=JLdD8QMH5rjGJSn7Z2b9DlLQzlG5W1qtQ34VY5GZjlyTTwFy2GFM!-1211074435?docId=5000149893

June 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
God Bless you, Sir, for your service and for your courage in speaking the truth about what it is that is taking place. On February 12, 2002, 63 citizens from a town with a population of 270+ turned out at a city council meeting upon invitation from their Mayor. At issue was the public safety hazard caused by an exotic animal farm operating in illegally and irresponsibly in their midst. The meeting was called to order and the Mayor announced that anyone who attempted to speak would be escorted off the premises by a Mower County, MN Deputy. A woman rose to speak and the deputy was summoned. As it turns out, the business was part of a organized criminal enterprise that involves the CIA and FBI in Minnesota. They ran drugs, guns, and money through this exotic animal �sanctuary� and had plans to make 50 more of these so they could centralize their operations. It used to be that the press would scream and the FBI would jump when those types of blatant violations occurred. But not anymore. The #2 guy for Minnesota�s Department of Public Safety is also a CIA agent and complaints like the civil rights violations go to the attorney in the AG�s office who represents the DPS so�..no one could see the problem with those abuses of power. We�re in the midst of a soft coup in this country, and the people are too dumbed down to see it. I am both angry and sad to see and understand what is happening, in large part because it degrades and devalues the sacrifices made by those who died (and killed) to preserve our freedom and the integrity of the Constitution.
Oscar Ladner Says:
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I agree with Mr. Jack Lancaster 1000%. I am an 84 year old former combat infantryman in WWII in Gen. Patton�s 3rd Army and served in Patton�s Raiders. Here in Mississippi we have the redneck Organized crime, Dixie Maffia, the Italian Mafia, and others, all of them using Hitler�s tactics and worse. Black mail, extortion, set ups, lying, stealing and just about any dirty thing you can think of without regard to any person. I have fought it without much assistance because I could see it happening. We have a fight on our hands to save this Nation. God Bless America. Oscar Ladner
fascistUSA Says:
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Where to begin? Gestapo literally translates to �Homeland Security�.
I can state facts all day long about how Amerika/Nazi Germany/Fascist Rome are all similar - even the same damn Salute!
Oh, yeah. Fluoride is Poison. That junk added to our water to �make our teeth� better. It was used in Nazi Germany to control the Population. Makes you Submissive and lowers your IQ. Don�t believe me? Google search �fluoride� and �toxic� or even �poison�.
TV is Brainwashing. Sorry, I thought I better add that Fact. Your Brain works on Waves: Alpha, Beta, ect. TV puts you into Alpha Relaxed state. Makes it easier to Influence a person. Words like �conspiracy� and �theories�. When you hear someone repeating the �words� there�s a good chance that person is TV Brainwashed. Let�s not even mention all The Subliminal Messages.
I can keep spouting Facts all day, but Why? I give you something better. Almost all the Answers.
Illuminati, Empire of Cities : Ring of power, Zeitgeist (zeitgeistmovie.com), and Esoteric Agenda. ALL on Google Video.
John Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 am
When I first started thinking the same thing a few years ago, everyone told me I was paranoid. I didn�t understand how anybody could miss it. Then I saw a story in the paper one day about a woman who had survived Auschwitz. She was old, in her eighties I guess, but she was leaving America, where she had lived for the last fifty years I guess, and going back to live with relatives in Germany, because what she saw happening here reminded her of what happened when the Nazis started to take over in Germany. She said that she could never go through that again, and the signs were unmistakable.
It must have been at least three years ago when I saw that story, and knew for certain that I was right.
Since then I�ve read maybe three or four stories about and articles by older people, some German, some American, who remember that terrible time very well, and have tried to warn us today about what they see happening.
These people know what they are talking about. They know how these things happen, how bit by bit, day by day things get just a little bit worse until one day, it is too late.
There is a book edited by Marvin Mayer that is a collection of interviews done with German civilians who lived under Nazism, titled �They Thought They Were Free.�
If you�re reading this, you ought to get the book if you can, but if you can�t at least go to Amazon and read the excerpts from the book. I recall that one man said that every day, bit by bit, the government a little more secretive, a little more distant from the people.
The reasons offered were the same ones we hear. National security. Alleged terrorists, who at the time were the communists.
And things began to change around him. There were book burnings back then, and renewed emphasis on Christianity, and the German race as being unique and superior of course.
The man was a professor, and he said that he kept waiting for the big event, the big injustice that would draw everyone into the streets protesting the government. But things didn�t happen like that. Instead it was a steady encroachment upon the people�s right�s, day by day, and often in such incremental ways that it was easy to rationalize them, and to say to one�s self well, this is really not all that much.
He was a professor and he was very involved with his work, and so it was easy for him to be distracted.
I remember one quote. He said �Please believe me, to live under this is not to know it is happening, until one day something happens that forces you to face it, to face what you have become. But then it is too late.�
He said in his case he was walking home with his young son one day and they saw a man who lived in their neighborhood and he heard his son mutter
�Dirty Jew�.
And then he realized that he was living in a different country, that the forms were still the same, he still did the same things every day, but the emotions behind those forms had changed, and it was now a culture of hate.
He says there were a number of people he knew who committed suicide when they understood what was going on.
He didn�t have any advice for how others could recognize the process in time, and stop it.
And truthfully, I think it is too late now here. You have to challenge people when they start telling lies. When they start to turn every converstation into a screaming match, when they lie about other politicians you can�t let them get away with it. You have to call them out in public, and humiliate them as liars and show what their intent is.
Because Abraham Lincoln was wrong. You may not be able to fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of the people enough of the time for long enough to get into power. And once there, in a position to control what people hear, read, and see; and to punish your enemies, who is going to stop you?
Jacob L Says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 am
This man is totally un-american - there is a real and terrible danger out there, far worse than the Nazis ever were, and it�s threatening to destroy the ENTIRE WORLD, never mind America, and it�s called ISLAM. There�s a global islamic consipracy out there, and they�re working with the communists in China Im pretty sure, and they�re going to destroy us all - we need to strike first - lock up the moslems, and any sympathisers - that�s why we�ve been building concentration camps - WE SHOULD USE THEM!


Palash Biswas



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Palash Biswas