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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Saddam Hussein has decided to drop his suit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Sun, his lawyer said today. As part of the settlement, the former Iraqi strongman will feature in the next season of the riches-to-rags reality series The Simple Life on Fox Television. Like The Sun, Fox Television is part of the worldwide Murdoch media empire.
On Friday, The Sun shocked the world by publishing a front-page picture that showed Saddam, only in white briefs, folding a pair of trousers. The publication of the photos had prompted a U.S. military investigation and condemnation from the Red Cross and Amnesty International. The Sun responded to the criticism by saying that a tyrant deserved no sympathy. Although The Sun is Britain's leading newspaper by circulation, it is still best known for its Page-3 nudes and Man Enters Cage And Bites Monkey kind of stories.
The humiliated former Iraqi leader threatened to sue the British tabloid. On Sunday, his chief lawyer Ziad al-Khasawneh, speaking from Jordan, said, "We will sue the newspaper and everyone who helped in showing these pictures. Sure, Saddam was a tyrant. But then, isn't Rupert Murdoch a war-monger, a scourge of our times. What sort of humiliation should he be subjected to?"
Today, however, both parties seemed to have reached an amicable settlement. Mr. al-Khasawneh said that Saddam had decided to drop the suit. Johnny Headpin, a spokesman for Fox Television in New York, said that Mr. Saddam Hussein and one of his former mates will replace Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in the hit show The Simple Life. A new leading cast has become necessary, as Paris and Nicole have split and are no longer friends.
"The photo controversy provides the right amount of publicity to preempt the next season of our show. It will have the same effect as the Paris Hilton sex tape," Mr. Headpin said. In November 2003, a steamy video of Ms. Hilton with her ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon sprouted like fungus all over the Internet and provided an unexpected but welcome boost in viewer interest for the Fox tv show.
Fox Television still has not decided on who would be Mr. Hussein's buddy in the show. Current frontrunners are Ali Hassan al-Majid a.k.a "Chemical Ali" and former Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan. The show will be shot exclusively in the Baghdad prison Camp Cropper, where former regime members are kept in solitary confinement.
Before the war, Saddam Hussein spent his time among his many Presidential palaces. His offices were typically furnished with Napoleon-era furniture. He used to drink $2000-a-bottle Napoleon-era brandy and smoke expensive Davidoff cigars. Interestingly, the former U.S. Ambassador for Iraq Paul Bremer appropriated the furniture, brandy and cigars for his personal use.
Link to Moral Volcano's Saddam Drops Suit, To Star In The Simple Life
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One year ago, when the UPA alliance was trying to form a government, the DMK chief M. Karunanidhi initially claimed his party will support a Congress ministry from outside.* Later, however, it transpired that the DMK was holding up the formation of the cabinet.¤ Finally, Karunanidhi came out of his shell and complained to the media that his party was being denied key ministries. These ministries, he said, had been promised to the DMK according to an hitherto secret agreeement he had signed with the Congress. (He even displayed the document to assembled media personnel).† Poor Sonia Gandhi‡ had a tough time accommodating Karunanidhi's demands and eventually 12 ministers from the state made it to the Union Cabinet. Other UPA constituents were not so lucky. Those that could not match their greed with numbers had to make sacrifices and many of their ministers made history by getting sworn in without portfolios.
This is how Karunanidhi behaves when he wins. And, that was not an ordinary win; he and his allies had won all 39 Lok Sabha seats. So, imagine how he would behave when he loses. The recent losses in the Gummidipoondi and Kanchipuram bypolls have presented an opportunity. The Hindu reports:
Misuse of Official Machinery: Karunanidhi
The DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, said that everyone knew that the byelection victories were achieved through distribution of cash, contravention of the model code of conduct, and misuse of the official machinery.
The New Indian Express reports:
Money Power Won: DMK
DMK president M Karunanidhi... charged that the AIADMK had managed to secure a victory in the Kancheepuram and Gummidipoondi Assembly by-election only through money power. In a statement indirectly accusing the Election Commission of failing to check the distribution of money by the AIADMK, Karunanidhi alleged that the AIADMK had "hoodwinked" the EC and spent huge amounts of government money to create facilities in the two constituencies. Hinting at a conspiracy between the EC and the AIADMK, he said, "the agreement was that you (Election Commission) pretend to beat me (AIADMK), I will pretend to cry and get things done."
For the bypolls, Karunanidhi had formed a 7-party against the lone AIADMK. Karunanidhi's son M.K. Stalin was in charge of the party’s campaign. Central ministers from the state took part in the campaign. Karunanidhi claimed that the byelections presented a fight between democracy and authoritarianism and it was for the people to decide which of the two should prevail. Apparently and unfortunately for him, the people chose "authoritarianism."
In fairness, it must said that people usually elect the ruling party candidates during bypolls, as people will have to live with the current dispensation until its term runs out. The bypolls were necessitated by the deaths of AIADMK candidates and it must have been unreasonable to expect a voter backlash against the AIADMK. As Jayalalithaa had noted, the 12 ministers in the UPA government have done very little for the state. DMK has also failed to use its influence the Congress to resolve the Kaveri issue. The elections could have been a report card on the performance of the DMK and its partners in the central government rather than a judgement on the AIADMK's performance. A veteran leader like Mr. Karunanidhi should have had the intellectual honesty to know this and the decency to accept defeat. Sadly, the old gent has a small brain and a smaller heart. And, hence, he throws up a tantrum like a baby and accuses the people of giving in to the "money power" and "muscle power" of the AIADMK. This was exactly how he behaved after his controversial midnight arrest. He hoped the state would erupt in an orgy of violent protests. When that did not happen, he called the people of Tamil Nadu names and accused them of lacking intelligence and self-respect.
* - DMK Promises Outside Support - The Hindu (16/05/04)
He [Mr. Karunanidhi] did not agree with a proposition that the DMK was offering conditional support and chided a reporter for suggesting that he was bargaining for more. "If you had known me, you will not ask this question," he said.
¤ - DMK Ministers Not To Take Charge - The Hindu (24/05/04)
In a late night development, the seven Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Union Ministers decided not to assume office. The DMK chief, M. Karunanidhi, said in a statement that this was because the portfolios allocated to the party did not match those in the agreement signed by the DMK and the Congress. "Until the mistakes are sorted out, the DMK MPs will not take charge of any ministerial positions," the statement said.
† - Accord On Portfolios Not Honoured: Karunanidhi - The Hindu (25/05/04)
At a crowded press conference today, Mr. Karunanidhi showed a copy of the agreement that he had signed with Congress leader Janardhana Reddy. According to the agreement, the Ministry of Surface Transport, including the Departments of Shipping and Highways, was to have been allocated to T.R. Baalu. Also, S.S. Palanimanickam was to take charge as the Minister of State for Finance (with the charge of the Revenue Department). S. Regupathy was to get charge of the Personnel Department and Internal Security as the Union Minister of State for Home. The charge of Shipping, Finance and Personnel Departments were not given to the DMK despite the agreement, Mr. Karunanidhi said and added that he was pained over the development.
‡ - DMK Fires The Sulk Shot, Wants Better Portfolios - Economic Times (26/05/04)
In the process, the DMK chief made public a worst kept secret of the Capital - the prime ministerial prerogative of portfolio distribution was handled by people close to Ms. Gandhi and that Mr Singh had little role in it.
Link to Moral Volcano's Karunanidhi Is A Sore Loser
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"RELAX," says CNN, "It's not that bad."But after the war's end, media surveys of Baghdad hospitals alone counted almost 2000 civilian deaths. |
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About: Putin/Poutine
Hi Mr. Safire,
You can't tolerate a Russian President who stands up to the mighty U.S. of A., can you? He burns you up, doesn't he? A bumbling idiot like Yeltsin would have been more to your liking? Or, a hireling like Yushchenko?
It must have surely occurred to you many times in the last few years that your own President looks like a chimp and talks like one. In fact, if you were on the jury for the Prize Ass of the 21th Century Award, I am quite sure you would hand it over to GWB with your own hands. Yet, you poke Putin. This is a travesty of justice, Mr. Safire.
Okay, I know you are fair man. So, when can we see a scintillating piece about Bush? Forget names. How does Bush measures up against Putin, both of them as presidents of their respective countries? Do you think think that the elections that brought them to power were conducted in a fair manner? Do they have any real ideas of their own or do they take orders from someone else? Do they like to play "being President" and let someone else do the job for them? Please, Mr. Safire, let us know.
BTW, the name "Bush" is not so cool either. If you have any doubts, please ask Ms. Whoopi Goldberg. - V. Subhash.
A Brain Teaser
© Swaminathan, 1997. All rights reserved.
Challenge: You have to say 100 words in under one minute. None of the words should contains the letters A, B, C and D.
Clue: This is not a test for your vocabulary.
Solution: Zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, ... ninety-seven, ninety-eight and ninety-nine.
Some Interesting Posts From Indian Bloggers
- Think like an American - from Umm ... Yeah
- Women's Day - from All for a Smile :)
- How P&O Ports fools the Indian Govt and robs Indian trade - from Chennai Kirukkan
* - One reason for Moral Volcano's higher ranking is the fact that it is listed in the DMOZ Open Directory. And, thanks to my gargantuan range of interests, Moral Volcano has a huge vocabulary. Most blogs are intensely personal or limited to a single topic, which greatly limits the size of their vocabulary and search engines tend to look down upon them.
Link to Moral Volcano's Strange Search Requests - XII
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It must have come to a full circle because the ones that are complaining happen to be Americans! Back in those good old days, the U.S. was the champion of "globalisation". To India, this "globalisation" thingy seemed to be the veritable kiss of death. Hence, India did not accept "globalisation" voluntarily; it was forced to do so.
The seeds of the outsourcing industry in India was sown in the early 90s when the country faced a huge balance of payments (BoP) crisis. The problem had been precipitated by the war in the Persian Gulf. India had a fixed exchange rate at that time and had wasted almost all of its foreign exchange defending the rupee. There was only enough foreign exchange to cover one month's imports. India then sent a shipload of smuggled gold to the Bank of England to get hard currency. Because this was not enough, the Indian government went to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan. At that time, the U.S. dollar fetched 26 Indian Rupees. But Wall Street wanted more and they got the IMF to force the Indian government to devalue the rupee. The government agreed in principle to effect the valuation but the decision was kept a secret. A kindly soul in the IMF leaked the decision to a cartel of foriegn banks and they started attacking the rupee with some sort of a vengeance and the rupee started sliding. Forex analysts scoured the wires for information but could not find any official pronouncement relating to the value of the rupee. The best they could come up with was an obscure statement by the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao which implied that he favored the rupee trading in a band. The mole who alerted the foreign banks probably tipped off The Wall Street Journal too, as it broke the news that the Indian Government had agreed to devalue the rupee. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, the U.S. dollar gets 44 rupees. Ideally, given the sizes of the two economies, the rupee should have been trading between 5 and 10 to the dollar.
For several decades prior to "globalisation", American IT companies had been hiring Indian programmers to work on their projects. Unlike in India, being a computer programmer does not evoke much awe or respect in the United States. Computer programmers are called "geeks" and are usually portrayed as complete dorks (with thick glasses and pointy teeth) in films and TV shows. Again unlike in India, Americans tend to find their mates in their workplaces or around them. Computer programming was and is mostly a male bastion and very few women turned out as programmers. With absolutely no date prospects, an American teenager had very little hope for from a career in programming. (This is why most IT conventions are held places like Las Vegas. Strip joints and escort services tend to brisk business when computer programmers are around.)
Back to our issue: Hmmm... American companies typically poached employees of Indian IT companies for this purpose.‡ Because of this, Indian companies found it very difficult to maintain required staff levels. Newspapers were full of articles about "brain drain." However, this "brain drain" started to reverse after Texas Instruments set up shop in Bangalore. Because software was essentially data, it could be developed in India and sent to the U.S. via satellite link. There was no need to ship Indian programmers to the U.S. and settle them there if all that they did was to write computer programs. Thus, Texas Instruments started a flood that continues today.*
India may have become super-competitive but it has paid a huge price for it. India is becoming more and more dependent on foreigners for business. Much of China's growth story has been written by foreign investors. But, India had had a vibrant economy even before it opened up to foreigners. Before liberalisation, India was one of the least trade dependent countries in the world. That situation is being altered now with increasing reliance on exports of not just manufactured goods but also of services.
Middle-class Indians have traditionally spent most of their income on food. (In the developed countries, food expenses are very small. People spend most of their income on non-basic necessities.) Because commodity prices are determined by export prices, Indians have to pay international prices for food items. Even in commodities where India is a net exporter, prices are not cheap. Take coffee, for example. India produces more coffe than it needs and yet most of the coffee sold inside the country is by multinationals. There are few truly Indian coffee brands in the domestic market. With the Indian rupee steadily losing value against the dollar, Indians pay ever-increasing amounts of money for food. This is the reason owning a car is considered a luxury here. The artificially low price of the Indian Rupee has other side effects. Wealth from India gets exported to foreign countries at rock-bottom rates. Imports, on the other extreme, costs more than it ideally should.
Under the "globalisation" agenda, the U.S. asked Third World countries to open up their economies i.e., that is reduce tarriffs on imports, remove restrictions on foreign investment in internal commerce, and reduce subsidies given to domestic producers. Asked why they should be doing this, the U.S. claimed these measures will allow local producers to become internationally competitive. Yet, United States has refused to remove its own protectionist practices. For example, the U.S. insists on producing its own steel. Making steel in the U.S. is so expensive that it does not make any sense. To make it viable, the United States has erected non-tarriff barriers against imports and given huge government handouts to American steel industry.
American government and WTO officials have been lecturing Third World countries to reduce subsidies to their farm sector. Yet, American farmers are among the biggest recipient of government subsidies. Were there no government support, American farmers would simply go out off business. Needless to say, the support given to American farmers hurts farmers in the Third World and is responsible for keeping them in a state of poverty. One must also remember that thanks to the American government, the United States is the biggest producer and exporter of farm produce. As a result of this, many farm commodities are traded in the commercial exchanges situated in the United States. This allows American traders to corner much of the profits from the commerce. American buyers also form cartels to keep prices down. During a given year, they concentrate their purchases in one region and squeeze out growers from another region. When the prices creep up in the former, they quit en masse and shift to the latter where the prices have reached rock bottom. They repeat this every year and keep prices artificially low.
UPDATE (12/05/04): Thomas L. Friedman, a New York Times columnist, has written a book called The World Is Flattening: A Brief History of 21st Century. There is a review of the book by Matt Taibbi at New York Press that reads like Mark Twain's deconstruction of Fenimore Cooper's Deerslayer (Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses).
FLATHEAD: The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman.
By Matt Taibbi
Thomas Friedman in possession of 500 pages of ruminations on the metaphorical theme of flatness would be a very dangerous thing indeed. It would be like letting a chimpanzee loose in the NORAD control room; even the best-case scenario is an image that could keep you awake well into your 50s...
Thomas Friedman does not get... things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius.
It's impossible to divorce The World Is Flat from its rhetorical approach. It's not for nothing that Thomas Friedman is called "the most important columnist in America today." That it's Friedman's own colleague at the New York Times (Walter Russell Mead) calling him this, on the back of Friedman's own book, is immaterial. Friedman is an important American. He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity. Like George Bush, he's in the reality-making business. In the new flat world, argument is no longer a two-way street for people like the president and the country's most important columnist. You no longer have to worry about actually convincing anyone; the process ends when you make the case. Things are true because you say they are. The only thing that matters is how sure you sound when you say it. In politics, this allows America to invade a castrated Iraq in self-defense. In the intellectual world, Friedman is now probing the outer limits of this trick's potential,...
The book's genesis is conversation Friedman has with Nandan Nilekani, the CEO of Infosys. Nilekani causally mutters to Friedman: "Tom, the playing field is being leveled." To you and me, an innocent throwaway phrase—the level playing field being, after all, one of the most oft-repeated stock ideas in the history of human interaction. Not to Friedman. Ten minutes after his talk with Nilekani, he is pitching a tent in his company van on the road back from the Infosys campus in Bangalore: As I left the Infosys campus that evening along the road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: "The playing field is being leveled." What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened... Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!...
* - The famed Indian software industry almost entirely caters to foreigners. There are no original Indian shrinkware that people can buy over the counter.
† - I have found that many of the arguments put forward in these Stealing Their Candy posts run strangely parallel to those in a recent series of articles (Always Low Wages. Always. and Passing the Buck) by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. I have absolutely no reason to believe that Mr. Krugman plagiarised my "work." On my part, let me assure you that my own inspiration to write the Stealing Their Candy posts came from PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak's comments about illegal immigration and outsourcing in his blog.
‡ - In the United States, anyone with programming skills can get a job as a programmer. Academic qualifcations are secondary. This is true even of Microsoft. In India, you need a B.E, B.Tech, or an MCA to get a job as a software engineer. This is so because Indian companies like to tell their overseas clients that all of their employees are engineering or technology graduates. It does not matter if a guy is a civil engineer or a chemical engineer, an Indian software company will hire him and even provide the requisite training. Thousands of B.A. and B.Sc. graduates have been fooled by companies into taking up expensive computer courses by software training companies like NIIT, Aptech and SSI. Many of them were lured by the promise of high-paying computer programming jobs but were denied jobs because of their "inadequate" academic qualifications. (Strangely, when Priyanka Chopra was chosen as Miss World, Aptech did not think twice before taking out an advertisement to show that their students do go places.) Both NIIT and Aptech have software development arms but when it comes to hiring their students, they follow the rest of the industry in hiring only those with engineering and technology degrees.
Also, see Stealing Their Candy - I.
Link to Moral Volcano's Stealing Their Candy - II†
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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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