Moral Volcano is the (now abandoned) web log of V. Subhash. It was started when the HUMOUR section of Virtual V. Subhash (www.vsubhash.com) started overflowing. The name Moral Volcano is from the short story Journalism in Tennessee written by the American writer Mark Twain.
Moral Volcano is not a real volcano; just the name for this website. This site has absolutely no information on morals or volcanoes. You need to improve your search skills. Select this link to find information about real volcanoes. If you were looking for ideas for a class project, then try How To Build a Volcano at About.com. For stories with a moral, visit the site maintained by Srinivas Padmanabhuni. Bye-bye.
MORAL VOLCANO IS UNSAFE FOR CHILDREN AND PREGNANT WOMEN. ADULTS MAY EXPERIENCE DISCOMFORT WHEN READING MORAL VOLCANO. SYMPTOMATIC TREATMENT IS RECOMMENDED.
Any good search engine will bring you here if you type in "moral volcano".
Think George W. is bad? Wait till you read about his father!
Inheritance of Nazi fortunes, financial scandals, coups, assassinations, links to drug trade, and coverups; - all make the former CIA Director and later U.S. Vice President and President George Bush Sr. an unmatchable piece of work.
Buy this book from Amazon.com .
Or, read the free online version at www.tarpley.net
In Jerzy Kosinski's novel Being There, a middle-aged man called Chance Gardener, who has the mental age and development of a six-year-old, goes on to become the President of United States with the help of a few powerful friends while he himself is blissfully unaware of the situation. Peter Sellers chose this novel to make his final film (his masterpiece). Both the novel and the movie were released years before George W. came to the White House. Read my review here.
Gobbledegook! All the time he talked gobbledegook! An' it's for sure a White man's world in America. Hell, I raised that boy since he was the size of a pissant an' I'll say right now he never learned to read an' write - no sir! Had no brains at all, was stuffed with rice puddin' between the ears! Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass an' look at him now! Yes, sir - all you gotta be is white in America an' you get whatever you want! Just listen to that boy - gobbledegook!
Guess Who Came
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Head For The Exit!A Nut Has Brought
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In 1983, Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad as Ronald Reagan's special envoy and met Saddam Hussein, despite evidence that Iraq possessed chemical weapons and had used it on civilians in Iraq and on soldiers in Iran. After his return, Rumsfeld successfully lobbied for financial and military aid for Iraq's war with Iran. Chemical and biological intermediaries and labs were provided by the US to Iraq. Other western countries followed suit. Predictably, Saddam used the weapons in the Kurdish north. In one instance, a set of Hughes helicopters provided by Ronald Reagan was used in a chemical attack that left 5000 dead in a Kurdish village called Halabja. Following this, the US Senate passed a Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have imposed sanctions on the Hussein regime but the Reagan White House blocked it.
Between 1983 and 1988, Saddam used chemical weapons 195 times against Iran killing about 50,000 of their soldiers. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq then became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf shot down an Iranian Airbus killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.
George Bush Sr., as Vice President and later as President, used a number of covert and overt schemes to help with Baghdad's WMD programme. Strangely enough, Israel was one of the countries that helped in the transshipment of banned weapons. Saddam was so encouraged by this level of support that he thought he could get away with an invasion Kuwait. Sam Gejdenson, chairperson of a subcommittee in the US Congress investigating US exports to Iraq, disclosed that between 1985 and 1990 the US government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment used for military applications.
To build the case for the war against Iraq, the Bush administration used the anthrax scare to frighten lawmakers into submission. The US Secretary of State Colin Powell, accompanied by CIA Directory George Tenet, even gave an anthrax demo in the UN Security Council. Interestingly, the anthrax found in Capitol Hill was found to be the same grade as those in the stocks of the US military.
US envoy Bill Richardson with Taliban leaders (circa 1998). See the BBC report for that day.Taliban played host to top US officials including former US assistant secretary of state for South Asia Robin Raphel, her successor Karl Inderfurth, deputy secretary for political affairs Thomas Pickering, and the then-US ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson. Within hours of Taliban's capture of Kabul, Washington moved quickly to announce that it would establish diplomatic relations with the Taliban government. However, the rash statement was quickly retracted. Afghanistan continued to be officially represented at the UN by the defunct government headed by Banruddin Rabbani and the Taliban greatly resented this. Robin Raphael went to the UN to lobby the international community to ignore the extremist threat posed by the Taliban and recognise the government headed by the group. Contrary to popular belief, Afghanistan has significant oil and gas deposits. During the Soviets' decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, Moscow estimated Afghanistan's proven and probable natural gas reserves at around five trillion cubic feet and production reached 275 million cubic feet per day in the mid-1970s. Nonstop war since has prevent further exploitation, but that soon changes. According to the Houston Chronicle, the country may also have as much copper as Chile, the world's largest producer, and significant deposits of coal, emeralds, tungsten, lead, zinc, uranium ore and more. |
In 1989, the former Soviet Union was forced to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan after fighting a prolonged guerilla war with the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen grew opium, which was then marketed in Europe and North America. Law enforcement agencies in these countries also turned a blind eye to the trafficking business. Proceeds from the trade were then used to buy weapons for the Mujahideen. The Russians left behind a government headed by the former intelligence chief Najibullah. The breakup of the Soviet Union made Najibullah's position weaker and he offered to step down in March 1992. This news triggered a wave of defections by Uzbek and Tajik militias, which were allied to his government. In April 1992, a prominent Mujahideen commander Ahmed Shah Masood (Lion of Panjshir valley) moved into Kabul. Najibullah then took refuge in the UN compound in Kabul. Between 1992 and 1996, Afghanistan was in semi-anarchy, as the country was carved into individual fiefdoms by the warlords.
In 1996, Unocal of the U.S. and Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia became interested in mineral wealth of Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. The ideal route to bring oil from the Caspian sea and gas from the Daulatabad gas field (in Turkmenistan) would have been via Iran. Because of US policy of isolating Iran, Unocal and Delta oil thought of building a pipeline via Afghanistan.
Unfortunately for them, Afghanistan did not have a strong regime in place, which could guarantee security for the pipeline. For this purpose, Pakistan created the Taliban with funds from Saudi Arabia and UAE. They took into their rolls thousands of Pasthuns who had enrolled in madrasas adjoining Afghanistan. Because these men had never taken part in war, they were secretly trained and led by officers from the Pakistani army. Arms and ammunition including tanks, howitzers, and other military vehicles were provided Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In 1996, The Taliban crossed the border into Afghanistan. Initially, they were dismissed as a joke but in September 1996, they had captured Kabul. (Also, see Amnesty International reports on Taleban atrocities.)
However, the Taliban could not occupy all of Afghanistan. (They did occupy 90% of it at one time.) At one point when the Taliban was overstretched and the Northern Alliance was poised to attack, the Clinton administration despatched UN envoy Bill Richardson and Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth to Afghanistan to broker a ceasefire and an arms embargo. While the Northern Alliance was being bamboozled, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sent several planeloads of arms and ammunition to Kabul and managed to fully rearm the Taliban. Soon after, the ceasefire failed. This was six months before the US embassies in Africa were attacked and two months after al-Qaeda issued a declaration of jihad to "kill the Americans and their allies - civilian and military."
In 1998, the Al-Qaeda attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Despite this, money continued to flow. Both the Clinton and the Bush administrations gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban under the guise of aid. As late as July 2001, Christina Rocca, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, met Taliban officials in Islamabad and announced $43 million in food and shelter aid, bringing to $124 million the U.S. contribution for that year alone. The U.S. government did not insist on knowing how the money was spent and the flow of dollars did not stop until the attacks on the World Trade Center occurred. It is quite possible that that American taxpayers' money was used to finance the attacks.
To save serious embarassment to the Bush administration, the U.S. media, led by the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and others, has created a notion that the Taliban fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan by tracing its origins to the Mujahideen. The truth however is that the Taliban was not in existence at that time. Taliban was created to fight the Mujahideen, not the Soviets. For more, read CIA and a Blowback World by Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson.
Interviewer: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Interviewer: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Interviewer: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentlaism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
After Libya revealed that it had sourced components and technology for its clandestine nuclear weapons program from a worldwide network of nuclear arms dealers, Dr. A. Q. Khan, the father of the Islamic nuclear bomb, was named as one of the prime movers in this network. On February 4, 2004, Khan confessed on Pakistan's national television that he had hawked Pakistan's nuclear weapons secrets to other countries and begged forgiveness. With American blessings, Gen. Musharraf wasted no time in granting a pardon for Khan. Gen. Mush also claimed that Mr. Khan acted alone and that no one else was involved in the transfer of the technology, which went to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
No action will be taken on Libya because the Bush administration has shown interest in oil wealth of the country. With the exception of Iraq, Libya is the only OPEC country with spare oil capacity. The two Libyan intelligence officials who were suspects in the Lockerbie bombing are under house arrest and not in prison.
Curiosly, a BBC Scotland news report says that a former Scottish police chief had come forward with the information that the key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated and planted by the CIA. In another bizzare happening, the Amsterdam court that had tried Khan in absentia has claimed that it has "lost" the Khan case files. Before coming back to Pakistan, Khan worked as an engineer in the Netherlands at Urenco, an uranium enrichment plant in the 1970s from where he is suspected of stealing nuclear secrets.
As revealed by former premiers Benazir Bhutto and Nawas Sharif, the Pakistani military establishment including President Musharraf are part of the nuclear trade. North Korea made shipments of missile components to Pakistan in exchange for shipments of wheat from Pakistan. Similarly, China had made shipments of ring magnets and other nuclear eqiupment to Pakistan. But illegal trade in nuclear and missile technology and components is not limited to the Third world. During the Clinton years, US aerospace companies (Loral/Hughes) provided China with technologies that were originally banned for export. The clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons programme was aided by voluntary/involuntary transfer of men, material, and technology from the U.S., Britain, and several other European countries.
The prediction that when Nazism goes to America it will be wrapped in an American flag has become a reality. Nazis believed that if you kept on repeating the same lies again and again, the masses would eventually accept them as truth. Yet again, the Nazis have been proved right. The American people have accepted blatant falsehoods as the truth not because they have been presented with some really great evidence but because they have been repeatedly lied to. And the campaign by faux journalism and the resultant faux news is not limited to the U.S. It is being applied all over the world where phoney revolutions have been staged to put phoney democrats in power. From Lebanon to Ukraine to East Timor, falsehoods have won. The strategy may seem to have failed in Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia but the setbacks are only temporary. In important countries like Mexico, elections are conducted by private American companies and the electoral rolls are also maintained by them. As there is no paper trail, it is easy to fix the elections.
American diplomats decide who should win elections in Eastern Europe and Third World countries. Western consultants manage everything on the ground - from running opinion/exit polls (so they can claim election fraud) to training volunteers, journalists, and more importantly "pro-democracy protestors" (vital for any regime change that does not involve the U.S. military). Billions of dollars of U.S. government funds are pouring into the coffers of opposition parties and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Their mandate is simple - bring down the current dispensation and put pro-Western stooges in power.
Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) such as Freedom House (run by billionaire George Soros) play an important role in all this. If U.S. media claims are to be believed, Soros is a philanthropist who "promotes democracy movements" in Eastern Europe. However, funds for these activities come from the American government - mainly from USAID (United States Aid for International Development). Perusing the USAID Yellowbook for 2001, one will be surprised to note that one of the many Ukraine contracts received by Freedom House is worth almost $2 billion. This is interesting because, among other things, USAID even refuses funds for AIDS treatment in Africa. Reason for this anomaly becomes clear if one reads USAID's mandate - to promote U.S. "stategic interests" worldwide.
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Apart from USAID, a wide range of semi-government and non-governmental institutions are involved to promote U.S. strategic interests - National Democratic Institute (NDI) of the Democratic Party, International Republican Institute (IRI) of the Republican Party, U.S. billionaire George Soros' outfits Open Society and Freedom House. The role of intelligence agencies and diplomatic corps requires no mention. The role of the media is curiousy naieve.
Politicians who have take money are identified as "liberals," while those who have not done so are simply called "hardliners." The result is that artificially created protests are considered by the outside world as spontaneous and indigenous. History then gets replaced by the faux news.
American officials openly ask the U.S. Congress for money to "promote democracy" in other countries. (This happens in between demands for huge budget cuts in social spending for American citizens.) No one in America seems to find it odd that democracy could be promoted with money from a foreign country. What is all the more ironical because it was an American who said democracy is by the people, for the people, and of the people.
During the Cold War, intelligence agencies were entrusted with the task of distributing money. Mark Almond, who describes himself as an old cold war swagman who carried tens of thousands of dollars to Soviet-bloc dissidents alongside much better respected academics, is nostalgic about how things have changed. In an article in Guardian he says:
Back in the 1980s, our media portrayed Prague dissidents as selfless academics who were reduced to poverty for their principles, when they were in fact receiving $600-monthly stipends. Now they sit in the front row of the new Euro-Atlantic ruling class. The dowdy do-gooder who seemed so devoted to making sure that every penny of her "charity" money got to a needy recipient is now a facilitator for investors in our old stamping grounds. The end of history was the birth of consultancy.
In many countries, it is not just the manipulation of elections; civil war is encouraged by exacerbating ethnic or religious divisions. One side is provided with with arms and ammunition and the other side is provoked into causing enormous casualities on civilians. Western government, NGOs and media then allege genocide. UN "peacekeepers" arrive, a referendum on secession is held, and a nation is born. What is not mentioned is that the new country is so weak financially that they can't even afford to open embassies in other countries. West-backed politicians who run the country prefer to listen to foreign investors than to their own people. In the end, "poor people" become more poor and less free. The application of "genocide revolutions" found great success in East Timor and is now being actively pursued in Darfur (Sudan) and several other places.
East Timorese people languish in extreme poverty because their government gets very little in revenue. The government has just one purpose - provide security to Western diplomatic corps and foreign investors (made up of solely oil companies). It has no money either for development or for providing essential services. East Timor, it must be noted, has huge reseverves of gas and oil. It could have easily become a rich country but foriegn oil companies have other plans. Australia has claimed that its maritime border extends for 85% of the 600-mile sea separating the two countries. Under international laws, the border should have been drawn halfway between the two countries, which would have given East Timor 100% of its petroleum resources including the oil-rich Greater Sunrise field. In March 2003, tiny East Timor was forced to cede 79.9 percent of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field to big nieghbour Australia. The entire worth of the field was an estimated $50 billion.
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Back when I was in school, there was this program on TV called Race To Save The Planet. Every Sunday, it had this wonderful chick, clad in T-shirt and jeans, sitting on a tree stump with her arms around her knees, talking seriously about future climate change. Climate change? Well, it was supposed to take longer than a lifetime to notice any changes. Only future generations were going to be seriously affected. Unfortunately, climate change seems to have arrived earlier than expected. We have seen some very unprecedented floods induced by torrential floods in various parts of the country and even around the world. (circa 2005) The floods were also preceded by periods of unusually hot weather. My guess is that extreme weather conditions are going to be the norm in future but with increasing severity.
The rise in greenhouses gases in the atmosphere and the consequent rise in global temperatures was expected to cause a slow melting of the ice caps. But, scientists have noted that the area under permafrost around the Arctic circle is fast receding. When peat bogs under the permafrost gets exposed, they start releasing new amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As this picks up momentum, global temperatures will not just rise but will attempt a high jump.
And, the transition from ice to water occurs over a few degrees. So, the ice cap will not just melt, it will break apart! Large sheets of ice will suddenly break off the North pole and swamp countries in its wake downstream. This ice will break off in such huge proportions that countries near the poles will experience doomsday-size floods that will last for several months. Worse, there will be several floods like that; some of them going on simultaneously. And, that means goodbye to countries like Canada and most of Europe. Large parts of the U.S. and Russia will also dissappear. Antartica will only melt because it is on land and does not float on water like the Arctic. Still, large portions of low-lying land in the southern hemisphere will be eaten away by the sea, leaving hundreds of millions without land under their feet.
Possible Solution: Jaime Pressly |
The treatment that our society gives to rape requires drastic change. Instead of considering rape as a form of physical assault, unnecessary emotional baggage is added to it. In our stupid feature films, if a woman is raped, she has to commit suicide. Or, worse, marry the rapist (if it is the hero guy). But real rape victims cannot commit suicide or marry the rapist! Sadly, our society places a high high value on a woman's character. Feminist propaganda does not help either. The lesbians want death sentence for rapists, making it incumbent on rapists to also kill their victims!
Women's activists portray rape as some kind of unbelievably horrible crime that is simply beyond human nature. Flawless as they are made up to be, women DO commit serious crimes! It has been reported that it is usually a woman who harrases her daughter-in-law for more dowry. Many a woman has handed over the matchbox when her son douses his wife with kerosene. And who do you think snuffs the life out newborn girl children? WOMEN!!!
And, they keep on asking when all women will be safe. It is an incredibly stupid question! Will households ever be safe from burglars? Burglaries will occur just as some marriages will end in divorces. Rapes will occur just as some murders are going to be committed. Deviancy is part of any society. It is an inescapable fact of life, unless of course your marooned on uninhabited island.
What can be done is placing necessary measures to ensure speedy justice; not just for rape but for all crimes. Instead, a fuss is created. Names are published. Photos are printed. In the end, the victim wishes she did not have to survive the trauma. Should not rape victims be able to recover from the incident like from a minor road accident? More than the actual crime itself, it is the way society receives the victim that seems to have a lasting effect.
| Trauma | Victim | Victim's Family |
| Road Accident | gets sympathy | finds social support |
| Sexual Assault | gets a stigma | loses social standing |
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Why is the U.S. very much against labelling GM food? In the U.S., we have a policy. If you have a final product that is a substantial equivalent to a conventional product, you need not have to label that it contains GMOs [genetically modified organisms] just because it is a product of GMO; it is a process involved. At the end of the day, it is considered equivalent to the conventional product and so we don't believe in labelling. On the other hand, if you have nutrient enhanced product or a product that contains allergens or toxin, then labelling is required. So we don't believe in process labelling and that is the difference between the U.S. and other countries.Same day as this interview was published in The Hindu, the newspaper's supplement Metro Plus carried the following information in Health Capsules (a syndicated American newspaper cartoon feature):
How do I know if my fish or shellfish is wild, not farm-raised? Beginning in April 2005, all retail fish and shellfish [in the U.S.] were required to be labelled farm-raised or wild-caught and with their country of origin.
A kid who hates freedom. |
"I am not even interested," said Charlie Chaplin when asked whether he was going to have his latest film shown in the U.S. Why, what was wrong? "There is nothing wrong with the American people. It is the top who decay and putrify!," Chaplin explained. Harsh words, no doubt but why? The movie A King In New York was set in New York and yet here was Chaplin (in London, circa 1956) refusing to release the movie in the United States. What made him feel so disgusted and angry? Welcome to the the land of the free.
What many people see of America is not really America; it is Hollywood. Not just foreigners, even Americans see America through the eyes of Hollywood. Take World War II. Many Americans think that it was they who saved the world! (It was actually Russia, led by like-it-or-not Stalin, which was the first to inflict a defeat on the Nazis, free a host of countries from occupation, enter Berlin and take charge of Hitler's bunker.)
Not many know that not until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, America had never entered the War on the side of Britain and France. Or, more correctly, they have absolutely no idea of the significance of this decision. Like the grandfather of George Bush, America was busy trading with Nazi Germany. Many, like Bush family patron William Farris (of Standard Oil, now Exxon), were making their fortunes off Nazi slave labour. The U.S. had also closed its gates to European Jews wanting to flee persecution; (forcing them to go to Palestine where they established Israel and have since remained in conflict with the original owners of the land and with their Arab neighbours.) Franklin Roosevelt spent much of his time assuring his nation that he would NEVER send "their children in harm's way" - certainly a poor foil alongside real heroes like Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle or even Josef Stalin. It was precisely this geographic and political isolation from the conflict, which drew people in the war zone like a magnet to the American continent.
"DO YOU WANT TO DENY YOURSELF THE RIGHT TO BE A MAN?" reads this psy-ops leaflet, dropped by Americans in Vietnam. You don't see RAMBO dropping leaflets like these! He he he! |
So, after sheep-faced Americans joined the war, films like Casablanca were released, which had Americans showing hitherto unseen courage and sparing no effort to save hapless Europeans from evil Nazis. Sure, these films helped sell a lot of "war bonds" to aid the war effort but "war films" continued to be made even after the real war was over - all of them showing Americans as the selfless saviours of the world; all of them conveniently ignoring the enormous sacrifices made by the Russians and the heavy losses made to bear on civilians in the Axis nations. During the War, American soldiers like good soldiers everywhere went about raping and pillaging when they were not busy fighting. In almost all of the war films, Americans GIs were models of good behaviour. It is this image that generations of Americans have believed in, rather than in what history books would have had to offer.
In his book Know Thine Enemy, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA man who worked in the US consulate in Istanbul during the 1980s, provides an insight into how Freedom™ typically operates. Gerecht's job was to debrief would-be Iranian defectors:
"I'd let hundreds of desperate Iranians languish in Turkey. People who'd given me insights never found in books. I'd watched mothers with children drop to their knees and beg for my help... They didn't want money, just a little kindness, a visa out of their personal hell ... [they met] a sympathetic man waiting in a warm room full of food, coffee, tea, alcohol and cigarettes. A US official who'd politely strip them of all their memories and every corpuscle of information and then reopen the street-side door."
Rambo II, starring Sylvester Stallone, has Islamic fighters in Afghanistan portrayed as brave freedom fighters, quite in line with government policy at that time. By the time True Lies starring Arnold Schwarznegger was made, the "freedom fighters" had become "terrorists" both on screen and in the real world! Movies that romanticises military life (aiding recruitment, usually from poorer sections of the American society) such as Top Gun or Black Hawk Down get active cooperation (and under-publicised editorial input) from the U.S. military while others that question military postures have to rope in a foreign government for using their military hardware.
AVERAGE VOTER IN A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY IS A MORON! |
In May 2003, an Iraqi boy who suffered burns all over his body, had his arms amputed above the elbow, and lost 20 members of his family after an American missile hit his home became subject of a media frenzy. Although the boy refused American offers of free medical treatment, Hollywoood went ahead and made a movie starring George Clooney with an expectedly different story ending. In the Balkans, American soldiers have been indicted of raping women and forcing them into prostitution but that did not stop Hollywood from making a movie, which showed the opposite - an American soldier killing another soldier to prevent a rape from happening! George Bush and 9/11 was also subject of a movie. However, it featured no pet goat. In sharp contrast, Micheal Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which attempted to come to terms with truth, was received with unrepressed hostility.
With every war, the deception continues to grow. Even though the fall of the Saddam statue in the middle of Baghdad or the rapturous welcome given to Ahmed Chalabi on his return to Iraq or the daring rescue of Private Jessica Lynch are considered as classics among military psy-ops films, Hollywood remains unbeaten in their effort at perpetuating myths for the U.S. government.
FAKE NEWS = FREEDOM NEWS? |
Sure, Hollywood has no designs on the world and they are in it with the American war machine only because it is a mutually rewarding relationship. However, truth becomes a casualty - not just in war but also in peace. This blackout is made complete by sanitised coverage of world events by the American media.
In Iraq, for example, news reports are solely based on the version provided by the U.S. military spokesman. American journalists rarely leave the safe confines of the fortified "Green Zone" in Central Baghdad. However, to fool the American public, videos shot by Iraqi journalists are placed in the background. The American journalist wears a bullet-proof vest, stands in front of the camera and then files his "report." A white screen (not seen by viewers) placed behind this brave journalist allows video technicians in a New York or Washington D.C. studio to be able to seamlessly mix the two videos, creating the illusion of the journalist having actually visited the scene. With this kind of deception, the American military remains free to drop bombs on houses of innocent people.
Several decades ago, Jawaharlal Nehru remarked,
"They shoot and kill and destroy only for the good of the people shot down. The novel feature of the modern type of imperialism is its attempt to hide its terrorism and exploitation behind pious phrases."
His words remain true to this very day. And, "they" continue to do it with the approval of the American people. Yet, when a 911 happens, you will hear Americans asking, "Why do they hate us so much?"
THIS IS NOT A JOKE. There were actually two pages on the CIA website under the title Iraqi Rewards Program offering rewards for information regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). One web page was in English (at http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm) and the other was in Arabic (at http://www.cia.gov/cia/arabic_rewards.htm, still present.) The CIA removed the English version after a short time. I had saved a copy of the English version, I put it up here and later moved it to www.vsubhash.com. I also added a timeline of the Iraqi Rewards Program.
In case you are wondering, rest assured that the cia.gov domain is used only to host their website. The domain ucia.gov (unclassified CIA) is used for other unclassified purposes. You can see their updates page for references to ucia.gov.
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USAID stands for U.S. Agency for International Development. Andrew S. Natsios, the USAID Administrator says, "I believe America's foreign assistance both serves to accomplish our foreign policy objectives, and expresses the deep humanitarian instincts of the American people." The USAID Yellowbook provides some insight into how American aid is spent. The Yellowbook "is a comprehensive listing of those contracts and assistance instruments awarded during a given year." Currently, only the FY 2001 version of the Yellowbook is available. Perusal of the data in the Yellowbook reveals that the U.S.-based Freedom House was granted a $1.7 billion contract running between 1999 and 2001. Want to guess where the USAID spent the nearly $2 billion of American taxpayer's money? Famine- and AIDS-affected Sub-Saharan Africa? No, it was in Ukraine.
USAID does take part in AIDS relief but the amounts spent are nowhere near what the lucky citizens of Israel or Ukraine get. Under Andrew Nastios, the USAID has favoured prevention than cure. It has simply refused to spend money on antiretroviral treatment. Instead, it has programs that promotes "abstinence, faithfulness and the use of condoms." Nastios opined that Africans "don't know what Western time is" and thus cannot take antiretroviral drugs on time. According to Mr. Natsios, the problem is not with delivering antiretrovirals but that "there are no roads, or the roads are so poor." Lack of roads have not stopped American prospectors from rummaging Third World countries for minerals but delivering drugs, yes, that's a problem. He has also offered new medical evidence that antiretroviral drugs are "extremely toxic," so that as many as "forty percent of people... who are HIV positive do not take the drugs... because they get so sick from the drugs that they cannot survive."
A visitor came from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which is supposed to be a hotbed of American "Neocons" including Richard Perle, Lynne Cheney (wife of U.S. Vice President), George P. Shultz (of Bechtel), etc. For more information on AEI, visit Disinfopedia.
Link to Moral Volcano's American Aid: Who Gets It And Why?
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A former US Army sergeant [Erik R. Saar] who worked as an Arabic interpreter at Gitmo has written a book pulling back the veil on the astounding ways that female interrogators used a toxic combination of sex and religion to try to break Muslim detainees at the US prison camp in Cuba. It’s not merely disgusting. It’s beyond belief... A female military interrogator who wanted to turn up the heat on a 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before 9/11 removed her uniform top to expose a snug T-shirt. She began belittling the prisoner - who was praying with his eyes closed - as she touched her breasts, rubbed them against the Saudi’s back and commented on his apparent erection. After the prisoner spat in her face, she left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner’s reliance on God. The linguist suggested she tell the prisoner that she was menstruating, touch him, and then shut off the water in his cell so he couldn’t wash... "The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," Saar recounted, adding: "She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee. As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand, she said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred. She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward," breaking out of an ankle shackle. "He began to cry like a baby," the author wrote, adding that the interrogator’s parting shot was: "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."
One of the ones I think is really great is Khrushchev Remembers. If anybody in his right mind believes that Nikita Khrushchev sat down, and dictated his memoirs, and somebody -- Strobe Talbot sneaked out of the Soviet Union with them they're crazy. That story is a lie. That book was a joint operation between the CIA and the KGB. Both of them were doing it for the exact same reasons. They both wanted to influence their own publics. We did it our way by pretending that Khrushchev had done all of this stuff and we had lucked out and somehow gotten a book out of it. The Soviets did it because they could not in their system allow Khrushchev to write his memoirs. Thats just against everything that the Communist system stands for. But they did need him to speak out on certain issues. Brezhnev particularly needed him to short-circuit some of the initiatives of the right wing, the Stalinist wing of the party. Of course the KGB was not going to allow the book to be published in the Soviet Union. The stuff got out so that it could be published by the Americans. That doesn't mean that the KGB didn't let copies slip into the Soviet Union and let it go all around. The Soviets achieved their purpose too.
Moral Volcano Raps The Register (15/12/05)
When I saw the title "Women are crap with PIN numbers," I clicked the link to expecting to see something to confirm that women were lesser than us. Instead, I find you saying that "Two thirds of the women questioned used the same PIN for all their cards. Only one in three men adopted the same practice."
This is extremely disturbing because you see I do the same too. When you put a sexist title for an article please take care. Chauvinists like me deserve better. One-third is a significant majority. Many heads of state have been elected to position with less. - Moral Volcano
Link to Moral Volcano's Strange Search Requests - XI
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I got my first introduction to the Internet when my father gave me a TIME magazine supplement on the new phenomenon. It defined the Internet as a network of networks. There was an article about Net etiquette, which informed me that ALL CAPS was SHOUTING. The booklet had lots of such useful information but the one that really caught my attention was about the kind of anonymity that the Internet offered. The article used the historical approach before attempting a fetish with sex. It started off by saying that sex toys were available even during the times of Abraham Lincoln. The author said that the Internet had for the first time given ordinary people easy access to an abundant collection of sex-related material. He also revealed that he routinely masqueraded as a woman and had numerous intimate dicussions with the women he met on the net. The author however clarified that the sex of the other person was sometimes in doubt. He quoted a discussion that ended like this:
Author: I confess I have a beard.
The Other "Woman": So do I.
When Internet access first became available to the general public in India, it was a costly affair. I read in the newspaper that there was a place in Anna Nagar (Madras) where an Internet club offered access for an annual fee of Rs. 2500 with an hourly charge of Rs. 100. So, whenever I went through Anna Nagar, I would tell myself, Somewhere around here, they have this thing called Internet!. Later, the British Council Library near Mount Road offered browsing facilities for a princely sum of 60 rupees per hour. Later, I started going to a place in Anna Nagar for Rs. 25 per hour because the charges in my own town was still at Rs. 40 per hour. While the more advanced of my friends were meeting people online, I was busy searching for job opportunities abroad. Chatting seemed to be an activity worthy of pussies, not for the real man that I was. When I attended interviews, people would express their surprise at the presence of my e-mail address on my résumé, as it was rare in those days for anyone to have an e-mail address. But, they would still ask me if I did a lot of chatting online.
A few years later, I took some of my work friends to an Internet booth to give them an introduction to the Internet and the many facilities (one-eyed blink) offered by it. To my surprise, one of them told me that he had used mIRC once before in his friend's house. To recover my lost superiority, I showed off by starting Yahoo Messenger and connected with a girl from Japan. I impressed her with my Sayanora and Nihon-go (the only two words I knew in Nihon-go, the Japanese language). Later, I got a break between jobs and the net usage charges at Internet cafes were only Rs. 15 per hour. I then used my World Wide Wait times to chat with women, particularly lesbians, as I was fascinated by the concept. The question How do they do it? remained on top of my mind. I had read Sher Hite's Hite Report but that book left me with more questions than answers. I was more in line with what I think was Mae West's statement I can understand the men. But women? How do the insides make love?. Thankfully, a girl from Bombay or Goa helped me out. She said that she often used 69 position. I did not know what this 69 position was but I did ask her if it was anything like how shoes are arranged in a shoe box. She replied, Exactly. My problem was solved.
In my search for lesbians, I used a profile with the name Anita because this name is individuals in India and abroad. Everytime I went into a room, I would immediately get paged by a ten or twenty males. But, it didn't take me long before I found five or six lesbians. I would then quietly exit the room and continue one-to-one conversations. I usually convinced them of my novice status and they were more than willing to let me tap into their experience. Some of the lesbians were very careful about whom they would chat with. They would start off by asking what my bra size and cup size was. I did not know what these things were but such questions were never a problem for me. I would present the same questions to another women and I passed on their answers as mine. Of course, the smarter ones would sense the delay and scram. During these sojourns, I went to a Yahoo! chat room called Mums At Play. I did not know what this room was for and one of the occupants asked me, Do you like children? I did not realise the significance of this question and she soon said bye-bye. Later, I realized that that was a room for pedophiles. I was horrified and perplexed at what these people were doing to the kids. I tried to find out more information with other occupants in the same room but most of them were as ignorant as I was. Chatting during the day has its disadvantages - lots of bloody Indians.
Recently, there was a research study whose conclusion was that people lead double lives online and offline. When online, people tried to pass off as more sophisticated and polished people than they were in real life. Another thing that I observed was that the Internet has the ability to bring the best and worst of human nature. When I put up a notice asking for help in creating foreign language versions of my Subhash VCDPlayer software, I got offers from Brazil, The Netherlands, France and Italy. None of these guys needed anything in return.
Last week, I logged on to Yahoo Messenger after a gap of two months and I found a very old message from a visitor to the Dictionary of Indian English. She said that she needed the translation of a Hindi sentence that someone had sent her in a message (Chal sali chenal rand. I expressed my unhappiness that someone had sent her this message and informed her that people do sometimes tend to behave in an uncivilized manner on the Net (BLINK!). She replied:
thank you very much- i dont know this person. they† keep sending me tons of messages under different names and saying they want to talk to me, i ask them who they are and they say we have spoke before but i have no idea who they are. thank you for translating. thats ok. there are a lot of strange people in the world and many are lurking on the internet. lol. thank you again.
It is said that things are not always black or white but just that they are in various shades of gray. On the Internet, however, the contrasts are a bit sharper.
† - After I suggested that she create multiple profiles and hide her original profile in Yahoo! Messenger, she realized that all those messages were coming from a single person, who was indulging in cyber-stalking.
Link to Moral Volcano's Online Jekyll-and-Hydes
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Thanks to President Abdul Kalam's immense popularity, a book of non-fiction has found a place in several Indian homes. His autobiography Wings Of Fire is a bestseller for years. I got to reading it only now.
The book has an anecdote about Werner von Braun.* von Braun visited in India and Kalam had the opportunity to meet him. von Braun was impressed with the efforts of the Indian scientists in developing indigenous technology and the enormouse challenges they faced in the process. At that time, Indian efforts in the fields of space and nuclear science were looked with suspicion by developed countries and few came forward to help the country. von Braun told Kalam:
America is a country of great possibilities but they look upon everything un-American with suspicion and contempt. They suffer from a deep-rooted NIH (Not Invented Here) complex and look down on alien technologies. If you want to do anything in rocketry, do it yourself... SLV-3 is a genuine design and you may be having your own troubles. But, you should always remember that we don't just build on success; we also build on failures.
Events that followed proved that von Braun was right. After the successful flight of the Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-3), the world reacted with shock. Kalam says:
Gary Milholin, a so-called specialist in missiles and warhead technologies, had made a claim in The Wall Street Journal that India had made Agni with the help of West Germany. I had a hearty laugh reading that German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR) had developed Agni's guidance system, the first stage rocket, and a composite nose cone, and that the aerodynamic model of Agni was tested in the DLR wind tunnel. An immediate denial came from the DLR, who in turn speculated that France had supplied the Agni guidance electronics. American Senator Jeff Bingaman even went to the extent of suggesting that I picked up everything needed for Agni during my four-month stay at Wallop's Island† in 1962. The fact that at that time the technology‡ was not in existence was not mentioned.
In May 1998, India conducted a series of nuclear tests in Pokhran. The biggest surprise was that the tests were conducted in total secrecy. A missile test was scheduled on the same day in Chandipur (Orissa) and American spy satellites were busy observing the missile test and missed the action in the Rajastan desert. But, the Newsweek magazine claimed that American intelligence had indeed spotted the activity. They suggested the spooks were on their way to inform their President but by then the Indian government had already made the announcement to the world. Contrary to this, the U.S. News & World Report quoted an unnamed intelligence official who claimed that spies in the US government had betrayed the locations of American spy satellites to the Indian government. Of course, when it came to doubting the Indian government's claims on the yeilds from the nuclear tests, the American media spoke in one voice. There were even doubts that a thermonuclear test was even conducted! That fact that India had been engaged nuclear research since the 50s, had already tested a nuclear device in 1975 and had been reprocessing fissile material for several decades had no meaning to them. Foreign media crews however roamed the streets to cover protests but were treated to wild celebrations of joy. The irrepressible BBC later made a documentary that showed an unidentified Bishnoi villager (his face was not shown) who claimed that he actually saw a big mushroom cloud after the tests! Again, the fact that it was an underground test escaped them.
Kalam also mentions Tipu Sultan who pioneered the use of rockets in India. After Tipu Sultan was killed in 1799, the British captured 700 rockets and subsystems of 900 rockets. These were then taken to England for reverse engineering. Despite his humble beginnings, Tipu Sultan was way ahead of his time. It is no wonder that he was much maligned by British Company historians.
Abdul Kalam did have his detractors. In the early 60s, he successfully developed a hovercraft in the early 60s called Nandi, which moved on an air cushion of about 40 mm with a load of 550 kg. The project's principal backer was Krishna Menon, the defence minister in Nehru's cabinet. After Menon's resignation, the hovercraft development stopped. Kalam notes ruefully that India continues to import hovercrafts even today.
This kind of waste is not limited to hovercrafts. We keep buying all kinds of weapons from Western countries when they could have been developed in India. Why do we do this? A proper answer to this question can be found if one has read the transcripts from the Tehelka scandal. Buying from Russia or from Indian makers such as HAL offers no thrills to the babus in the Ministry of Defence and to the officers in the military. There are no middlemen involved. There is no party, no kickbacks and no fun. This is also the reason why Indian defence projects like the Arjun Main Battle Tank (MBT) and Advanced Technology Vessel¤ (nuclear-powered submarine) fail to take off.
India has the licence to produce a limited number of Sukhoi-30 aircraft in India. The Russian MAPO-MiG company has also offered to sell top-class fighters to India at prices that are a fraction of similar Western aircraft. Would India buy them? No, they want the American F-16, at least 126 of them. Even the American air force is not buying these outdated aircraft anymore. Several former service chiefs have written to the government protesting the planned purchase. The way United States has behaved in the past should have offered little comfort to the planners. Remember that the U.S. prevented India from acquiring Cray supercomputers. (It is of course a different story that the guys at C-DAC Pune took this as a challenge built more powerful machines.) The United States had also prevented the Russian space agency Glavkosmos from transfering cyrogenic rocket engine technology. The sanctions on Glavkosmos are still in place.
The case with Britain is not much different. British-built Sea King helicopters were grounded because of a lack of spares, which were covered by US sanctions. Yet, India had signed a contract to buy 66 British Aerospace Hawk Advance Jet Trainers. As in the case of F-16s, the Royal Air Force has refused to buy these planes.
Also, when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister, he bought several helicopters from Britain in a deal that was pushed by Margaret Thatcher. The helicopters had numerous safety problems and the entire fleet was grounded. The uselesss hardware started rusting away in a military depot. When the Indian Air Force tried to sell it off as scrap, it made a few embarrassing headlines. Britain put a lot of pressure on the government to stop the sale.
One can never be really sure if weapons bought from these countries will be working for our benefit or for someone else. When India received an aircraft carrier from the Soviet Union, long-range maritime surveillance aircraft from several NATO countries followed the warship, as it sailed from Russian shores to India. Besides this vessel, India had a British-built aircraft carrier. Was the NATO anxiousness about it? No, they always knew exactly where the warship was and did not care much.
When Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister, India installed a civilian radar system in the capital built by the American defence major Lockheed Martin. All aircraft flying in and out of the capital would be visible on the radar, giving the US unprecedented access to real-time military data. During the previous BJP regime, George Fernades fitted several Indian warships with Israeli Barak missiles. Worse still, India is planning to buy their AWACS system, an airborn radar that can track enemy and friendly aircraft. Now, they will know what we do see and what we don't see. In a war, the U.S. can pass on this information to Pakistan if it wants to. Talks are also on with the U.S. to buy Patriot anti-missile complexes, which if deployed will be tracking targets in our airspace.
Already, stringers in the media are passing off salesmen literature as stragic affairs reading. Quoted below is a The Economic Times piece titled Strategic Paradigm Shift by "security expert" K. Subrahmanyam. Content inside brackets are mine.
we have the ability today to translate defence equipment purchases into a larger technology relationship that would cover high-end outsourcing. As a result, even in a short time span, we can foster a reverse dependency by the US...
[American arms industry could really become dependent on India! Hurray!]No US president can give an assurance that Congress would not interrupt sales in the future...
[Not so much of a problem with the Russians or even the French]if our purchases and collaborations turn substantial, the stakes for the US companies and legislators dependent on them would be too high to invoke sanctions lightly...
[In other words, India should greatly increase its weapons import bill with the U.S.]The growing trade gap with the US is likely to lead to pressures on outsourcing...
[Are the Americans really talking about their TRADE GAP with India? Wow!]The debate over data privacy could easily assume a protectionist colouring.
[Americans are stupid. You can get away with huge arms purchases alone. New Indian laws on data protection? Nah, they are not needed.]
Sometime in the 90s, a gadget maker in Britain released a mobile phone that did not feature a receive-call button or a ring tone. The phone automatically picks up the call when its is dialled. Who would buy such phones? Jealous spouses, for example. Suppose a guy suspects his wife is having an affair and entertaining him in the house. The husband could buy this phone and hide it in the bedroom. From his office, the husband can dial the phone, listen to the sounds in the phone's vicinity and thereby keep tabs on his wife. Now, the question is what if the United States uses this technology with the military hardware that they are planning to sell us? Worse, what if the United States is using this technology with the military hardware that have been already sold to us?
* - von Bruan was the famous German rocket scientist who made the infamous V-2 missiles. Thousands of these rockets were manufactured by the Nazis and caused a great deal of damage in London during the Second World War. After Germany's defeat, like many of her scientists, von Braun was taken to the United States. In the States, von Braun was given the top position in the rocketry programme by the NASA. Working for the US Army, von Braun developed the Jupiter missile, the first IRBM (Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile) with a range of 3000 km. In short, there was none bigger than von Braun in the field of rocket science at that time.
† - Kalam went to the US to get trained on sounding rockets. These rockets do not have the capacity to escape into space. They are primarily used for measuring atmospheric phenomenon.
‡ - Breaking all rules of defence research, Kalam employed scientists and researchers from civilian institutions like the IISc and CSIR. For example, it was a team of students who developed computer-based modelling programs for the Agni.
¤ - Officially, Indian government denies the existence of the project. But, a military scientist and Dr. Raja Ramanna clashed openly in a series of articles about the project in the Open Page of The Hindu.
Link to Moral Volcano's Wings Of Fire
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Although the statement "Lies, not love, makes the world go round," was made in the context of human relationships (in the article Bombay Sucks), it symbolises everything that Moral Volcano has been saying. To paraphrase Michael Moore, we live in fictitious times. Lies rule the world.
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Moral Volcano is written by V. Subhash, a former writer for British magazine The Current Bun, where he was noted for his interest in modified sweat glands, which not being the focus of his employer was contributory to his firing. Currently, the author lives with his wife, children and mistress in Virginia, U.S., where he is an active campaigner for the American Nazi party better known by its official name Republican.
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