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.
Also, read
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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Moral Volcano is the only blog that I visit regularly. Otherwise, I keep myself away from blogs. Recently, I've been visiting some Indian blogs, trying to find words for my Indian English dictionary, and was surprised by the number of comments they were receiving. I couldn't help compare that to the virtual zero that I was getting. No one dares to comment because the Strange Search Requests posts makes them feel uncomfortable. Moral Volcano has a highly sophisticated system in place for invading the visitor's privacy. I can tell if a visitor's cervix needs a bigger diaphragm (Yes, it is that good). And, I don't let the the ones that dare to comment get off easily. They almost always go away with their tails on fire. I am a bad bad person. So, I couldn't believe my eyes when John C. Dvorak mentioned Moral Volcano in his Dvorak Uncensored blog.
Dvorak is a computer god.† He has written numerous books that have become classics in computer literature. If you visit the PC Magazine website, you will find a mugshot of his on the home page. Dvorak is also related to the inventor of the Dvorak simplified keyboard. I guess many bloggers would kill to get this kind of attention. Mr. Dvorak also speculated that I might be working for Dell Inc. That was the only good thing he said about me. Rest of it was bad, real bad. Am I anti-American? Let me think. Hmmm... I am the owner of the domain HelpTheCIA.com.
But that can only mean I am not a big fan of the American government. Well, I guess it comes with the territory and I will have to live with it. Moral Volcano is about saying it as it is. It is also about kicking unspanked derrières all the way to hell. There are so many owners of unspanked derrières virtually saying "Spank me! Spank me!" and it is hard to resist. If people in the media were doing their job, I would not have started Moral Volcano. The result of course is that that I get mail from offended Americans who proudly put "American" below their name. I hate to defend myself but considering that people are reading too much into my rants I must say that my feelings are the same as those of former Prime Minister of Sri Lanka SWRD Bandaranaike: How could I be hostile to a country that produced Mark Twain? Finally, the bit about American software stuff: Most of the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis. Did that stop America stop from using Saudi oil?‡
* - Mr. Dvorak wrote:
I never said I didn't like your site or that it was bad. I did say it was anti-American, and from my perspective it is. But that still doesn't mean the blog is bad. It's just an observation. I think you are overreacting. That said I am not expeting to read anything positive about the USA here. But it's interesting at least.
I replied that this post was written in a mock-hurt style and that I was only pretending to be outraged. I also mentioned that I fully understood his views and that his mention was a big thing for me. I did however tell him that if I were anti-American, then I probably would also have to be anti-Indian because I have not spared Indians with my sarcasm.
† - Mïmï Smith, Mr. Dvorak's wïfe, also wrote to me. She found it hilarious that I referred to him as a "god." Being an Indian, identifying someone or something as a god comes naturally. Apart from Mr. Dvorak, I also worship Dennis Ritchie, Rob Pike, Brian Kernighan, Jerry Peek, Neil J. Rubenking and several others. Thanks to them, I am now addicted to a computers and programming. My mother says that whenever she sees me at my PC she is reminded of bats (animals that hang upside down from the roofs of caves), as I have my hands stuck to the keyboard all the time.
‡ - Don't call me rude. Lesser mortals don't get the mischievous wink in Mr. Dvorak's remark. Humour, it seems, is dificult to understand. Last Christmas, I wrote a fake news story titled Santa Claus Outsources To India. I made fun of all parties to outsourcing - those against, those for and those actually doing it in India and abroad. But few people got the message. My article was quoted by 100% Americans (think GBS) in many places on the Web to attack outsourcing. They were under the impression that the article was written by an American! One 100% Indian called it "another in a series of whino posts from America." Moral Volcano is not an ordinary blog. It yearns to live up to the standards set in Mark Twain's Journalism in Tennessee. The Chief Editor of Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop should be able to give his approval for Moral Volcano. This is all I am up to. In other words, I ♥ America.
Link to Moral Volcano's John C. Dvorak Slams Moral Volcano*
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A country pays for its imports with hard currency. It obtains hard currency from exports, remittances by expatriates and foreign investments. Even European countries with hard currencies on their own operate in this manner. The only exception to this rule is the United States of America. The U.S does not have to export anything to pay for its imports. They simply have to print more dollars. Surprised?
If an Indian oil company needs to buy crude from the Gulf, it has to pay in U.S. dollars. For this, the oil company pays Indian rupees to a bank and gets US dollars in return. The bank has a supply of U.S. dollars from exporters, foreign investors, expatriates and foreign tourists. If the demand for U.S. dollar is high and not enough to meet supply, then the dollar value in relation to the Indian Rupee will rise. If there is a huge inflow of U.S. dollars and there is not enough demand from Indian importers, then the value of the Indian Rupee will increase against the U.S. dollar. To prevent the value of the Indian rupee from fluctuating wildly and thereby affecting the health of the Indian economy, the RBI accumulates foreign currencies in its forex reserve. When the value of the rupee falls against the dollar (and hurts importers), then the RBI will sell dollars from its reserves. If the value of the rupee rises against the dollar (and hurts exporters), then the RBI will "mop up" or buy dollars from the open market. The ability of the RBI to protect the currency against wild swings is directly linked to the size of our forex reserves.
But the hundreds of billions of dollars in the reserve is not in the form of currency bills. No, there is just not enough room for that. When someone sells dollars to a bank, all it gets is an assurance from a foreign bank that a given number of dollars has been transferred. When the RBI buys dollars from the market, it in effect buys this assurance. The RBI then sells this assurance and buys low-yield American Treasury bonds. These bonds are nothing but I-Owe-You (IOU) notes. Thus, nothing of real value ever leaves the shores of the U.S.; only assurances. Unlike people in the rest of the world, Americans can go on accumulating huge debts while the world gobbles up ever-increasing amount of counterfeit portraits of dead American presidents.
The central banks of Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, India and several other nations have been subsidizing American profligacy by mopping up huge amounts of dollars from the market. The Federal Reserve (the American central bank) had steadily decreased interest rates to 1%. Low interest rates meant that there was no incentive for Americans to save money. Low interest rates also also meant that they could afford to borrow more and care less. Inevitably, the U.S. dollar sank against the Euro. It seemed initially that the Federal Reserve was trying to support American exporters and hurt Eurozone exporters. Unfortunately for the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank did not blink first. Rising oil prices and mounting deficits had their effect and forced the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates. Although interest rates have moved up since then, the increases have been very marginal. Yet, it has already started hurting. A record number of American citizens and businesses have filed for bankruptcy. Horrified credit card companies have forced the Bush administration to take steps to make it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy.
Outside the U.S., the world has started showing signs of shifting away from the dollar. Diversification of foreign exchange reserves is the new mantra. The strongest signal so far has come from the Russian central bank, which openly said it was reducing the shares of dollars in its reserves and increasing the share of Euros. Similar but less clear signals have come from Japan,‡ Korea, and even China.† There is now more than $1.5 trillion of American treasury bonds in the reserves of Asian central banks around the world. Should they move even a small portion of this hoard to the Euro, the U.S. dollar will start to depreciate even faster than it does now. It will also make the recovery of the American economy even harder. Even though the price of oil has increased with the fall of the dollar, many Gulf governments are finding the value of their dollar investments* slide. They might also try to shift trade in crude oil to the Euro. Trade in crude oil is invoiced in U.S. dollars and this is the main reason for its strength and prominence. So, when Iraq threatened to shift to Euro, U.S. President Bush launched a war and occupied that country. The same thing cannot be repeated with every other oil producer, as the American military is already stretched thin (The U.S. has troops stationed in over 120 countries.) and the U.S. government has run up a huge deficit, which is slated balloon uncontrollably in future.
In The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, an alliance is defined as the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket they cannot separately plunder a third. The situation with the dollar is similar to that. The fortunes of Japan and China are so deeply wedded to the American economy that they are unlikely to dump the dollar in a flash. But, things are so bad that the dollar will crash even if there is no diversification i.e., it will crash if either central bank stops its purchase of American treasury bonds. Strangely, if the U.S. dollar does crash in the end, the American economy will not be the one that is most affected. Surprised?
When you owe a bank a thousand dollars, the bank owns you. When you owe the bank a billion dollars, you own the bank. If the US Federal Reserve goes bust, then central banks holding American treasury bonds¤ will have no option but to recyle American money into toilet paper, much like what Russia did with the Soviet Rouble. And, we in the Third World have the most to suffer because governments never go bankrupt; they force others into bankruptcy.
UPDATE (11/04/05): I found this article about Jim Rogers in Corporate Dossier of The Economic Times. Rogers is a (former?) associate of George Soros. George Soros is famous for his bet against the British Pound in the early 90s when the Britain had entered the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Had the arrangement been successful, Britain would have eventually adopted the Euro. When Britain was forced out of the ERM, Soros supposedly earned $2 billion. While many people remember Soros on this bet, a lesser known fact is that he lost $2 biilion when Russia defaulted on its debts in 1998. He later lost $700 million when he predicted that dotcom stocks would go bust and they failed to do so. He then made huge purchases in the same group of stocks and when the boom eventually did go bust, Soros had lost almost $3 billion. Now, that should have made me think twice before quoting Jim Rogers. Rogers is also an eccentric analyst and many of his world views are a bit bizarre. Anyway, I am going ahead with quoting him, as I had forgotten about the derivatives timebomb in my article. Derivates are complex financial products. They have become extremely controversial after the failures of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) (run by Nobel Prize winning economists) and the 233-year-old (British) Barings Bank. The Clinton administration took the unusual step of intervening in the market to prevent the LTCM failure from having a cascading effect on the U.S economy.
The American economy may well go down just like the Roman or the British Empire did. America owes to the rest of the world $8 trillion (trillion with a "t" as in tandoori) and it’s a very serious debt.
(Semi-government mortgage) Companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have over one trillion dollars in debt, and they don’t even know how much debt they have. They have so many derivatives that they don’t know about that too. Companies like GE are carrying on a sham, it’s not a real company — there’s huge financial engineering and the largest bank, JP Morgan Chase, owns trillions and trillions of derivatives and we can have a gigantic debt collapse soon.
The worst-case scenario maybe that we fall into some kind of debt crisis both due to the gigantic foreign debt as well as huge internal debt. I’m not saying that it’s going to happen, but if something precipitates America can go bankrupt very quickly. The currency will lose a whole lot of value, there’ll be exchange control in America and that’ll be very bad for the world.
* - With rising interest rates, General Motors is close to going bust. It has $300 billion in debt. What's bad for General Motors is bad for America?
‡ - On 11/03/05, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi addressing the parliamentary budget committee said "I think that diversification of the reserves is necessary. We should decide what investments are profitable and dependable at the same time."
† - Ukraine has dropped its dollar peg and has linked its currency to a basket of currencies, which includes the Euro.
¤ - Recently, Indian goverment mooted the idea of using a portion of the forex reserves to fund infrastructure projects. This makes sense because the dollar has lost 30% of its value in the last few years. Alarmed at the prospect of having to pay on its debts, the U.S. government got the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to warn India against tapping the foreign exchange reserves. Rating agency Standard & Poors (S&P) threatened to downgrade India's investment ratings. Both China and Thailand, which were also thinking along the same lines, have received similar warnings.
Also, see Lose The Dollar - I (dated 5th January 2004).
Link to Moral Volcano's Lose The Dollar - II
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Scene: On a street outside Madras Central station. A foreign tourist picks out a local from the crowd and asks for some information.
Foreign tourist: Could you tell me where I can get a postcard?
Local: Go to the post office. It’s over there.
Foreign tourist: (slowly) No, I need a postcard (draws a rectangle with his fingers).
Local: (slowly) Yes, go to that post office.
Foreign tourist: No, I don’t… I need a card with a photograph on one side, you can write something on the other side. You post it...
Local: You need a greeting card?
Foreign tourist: No, a postcard.
Local: A picture-postcard?
Foreign tourist: Yes.
I was the local guy. The incident illustrates the fact that simple words like "postcard" mean different things to different people. Like many Indians, I had such great confidence in my English-language capabilities that I did not see this coming.
Another thing the incident taught me was that the language we speak is only as good as the audience. During hey days of the British East India Company, experienced Indian servants spoke English so well that it unnerved their masters. As can be expected, the Indians were ordered to speak English like "Indians."
Our English may work fine within India. But, it needs some work if we are going to use it with foreigners whose mother tongue is English. For most of them, English is the only language they will ever learn to speak or use. Indians, however, learn an Indian language first and then proceed on to English. Our English then becomes affected by the knowledge of our Indian mother tongue. This is why most Indians "speak in English," while Americans and Brits simply "speak English." We say "too good" when we actually mean "very good." Many Indians claim that Indian English is very close to British English. This is outrageous and nothing could be far from the truth. (I am not of course suggesting that we all join a school for British butlers.) When we speak, we simply translate word-by-word from our mother tongue to English and blurt it out. American and British expatriates working in India are always surprised to find that they don't have to really care about the order of the words in a sentence; so long as all the words are present, the Indians always seem to understand.
Having lived in India for all of our lives, it is always a challenge to write knowledgeably for people living abroad. In the United States, there are laws for everything and for the most part these laws are assiduously followed. In places like New York City, the police will take away your wife and children if you are caught committing any traffic violations. While working on a topic about traffic rules, I wrote that a road user should always yield "to the right-of-way of another road user." On the lawless Indian roads, the maxims "This is my grandfather's road" and "Might is right" rules. Hence, a colleague thought that the sentence should be about the driver yielding his "right-of-way to another road user." If in doubt, it is always best to ask the natives and that was what we did finally.
Thus, despite our best efforts, the ugly Indian in us somehow makes his appearance. When we speak English, we make references to copulation (sh*t) and excrement (f*ck), even when members of the opposite sex are present. Using the same words in an Indian language would have got us excommunicated. Here, I am reminded of a story in the Economic Times titled Pretty Crass: We Are Like This Only about Indians who visit 5-Star hotels and use the swimming pool facilities in their daily-use undergarments. You see, they have never heard of special garments called "swimwear." These are the same people who laugh when someone uses words like "is-style" or "is-spoon."
The problem is that we never know when we are wrong. If our language does not raise eyebrows, it can always raise a great deal of laughter. Peter Sellers made fun of Indian doctors and their diag-noses. Indian English can cause so much hilarity that there is an Indian character called Apu Nahasapeemapetilon in The Simpsons cartoon precisely for this purpose.
Native English speakers are by no means sticklers to correctness. They are also worried about their diction and vocabulary. In the United States, the New York Times is considered the ultimate standard for English. Studies have shown that the Times has one of the biggest vocabularies of any person or publication. Despite this, the Times is eminently readable by one and all. Our English teachers have long considered BBC English as the standard. How does the Times and the BBC achieve this status?
Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, Swami Vivekananda, and Raja Ram Mohun Roy were all known for their mastery of the English language. All of them wrote in a language that was simple and whose flow was natural. Many Indians, in their attempt at sophistication, make use of complicated sentence constructs. Couple this with inappropriate use of prepositions, metaphors and clichés. Such writing can get really bad reviews. A sentence such as, "I have one foot in the graveyard and the other on a banana peal." has its charms, but I draw the line at, "On one hand I scratch my scalp and on the other hand I explore my nostrils." Such constructs are not all for seasons and serve no real purpose in technical writing. Based on my observations, I have found that we are prone to misuse words like 'just,' 'only,' 'to,' and 'too.'
In our ongoing battle against errors, we have also made ourselves slaves to standards. One such standard is about passive voice. We have been told to avoid passive voice and go the whole hog with active voice. I find this rule totally ridiculous. Imagine an American news anchor announcing the Kennedy assassination. She will say, "At 10:10 this morning, President Kennedy was fatally shot dead by unidentified assailants in Dallas, Texas." Not, "Some nice gentlemen put holes Kennedy’s head." Passive voice has its uses. If the focus was on the assassins, then of course active voice would have been appropriate. The rule should have been about the focus of the discussion, not about the voice. Poets, writers, philosophers, and statesmen have been using passive voice for several centuries until Microsoft Word came up with an objection.
I am not an expert in English. So, I will simply recommend the Wikipedia page about Indian English. The section devoted to Grammar, idiom and usage in Indian English will be very useful for Indian writers.
Dictionary of Indian English
For connoisseurs of Indian English, I have a Dictionary of Indian English with over 400 entries (even more hidden in the database) complete with alternate spellings, euphemisms, misspellings, mispronunciations, politically incorrect terms, slangs, etc.
* - This piece was written as part of my activities at work, where I masquerade as a technical writer.
Link to Moral Volcano's Ban The British Language!*
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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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