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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Last year, when the Lok Sabha votes were being counted I was in front of the TV with several others. Everyone but me was cheering for a Congress victory. Not that I cared for BJP politicians, I just did not like the prospect of India being ruled by a foreigner. However, it turned out that Sonia had received a call from her NRI* conscience and declined to become PM. A large number of Congressmen gathered outside her room, their faces moist with (crocodile?) tears.† Pranab Mukherjee cried in front of TV cameras and begged Sonia to reconsider her decision.‡ I was very excited when a lay Congress worker got onto the top of a car with a pistol to his temple and staving off others who were frantically trying to "save" him. Sadly, he did not kill himself. It was all a farce, enacted for public consumption, just like the one after The Gang of Three (Sharad Pawar, P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar) rebelled against Sonia Gandhi in 1998. In a letter to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the three had questioned why Sonia Gandhi, a foreigner, was being projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate. When the CWC got to discuss the letter, the rebels were nowhere to be found. Sonia then resigned and plunged Congress into crisis. Sonia "loyalists" camped outside 10 Janpath and enacted a spectacle that set the standard for similar demonstrations ever since. Aroun Shourie has written a very amusing commentary on the events of that day. I have edited it for brevity.
Congress Culture
By Aroun Shourie
"Without Sonia, the Congress is zero," declared a Congress leader when Sonia Gandhi resigned on May 17. "We all feel orphaned," they all said. The first element of Congress culture, therefore, remains - a commitment to truth.
And then there is sacrifice, the readiness, as they keep saying to lay down their lives for their leader. Delhi Congressmen seized their geographical advantage. They were the first to arrive round and about Sonia Gandhi's residence - on May 17 itself. The Congress MLA, one Mukesh Sharma, described alternately as being close to the Chief Minister, Ms. Sheila Dikshit and Sajjan Kumar, declared that he was going on a fast unto death to persuade Sonia to take back her resignation. Contingents started arriving. Competitiveness was much in the air- who has been able to get to see her, how much time did she spend with whom... Resolutions followed resolutions. Even the super-secularist The Hindu was less than overwhelmed. "Not surprisingly, the current crisis is also being used to demonstrate loyalty to the leader - important when elections are around the corner," it noted. "Since practically all state unit chiefs are Sonia appointees, the chorus of support and condemnation of the three CWC leaders for daring to question her legitimacy to rule the country follows the true Congress tradition..."
Innovative Ways
May 18: "Makeshift tents came up on both sides of Akbar Road to accommodate the striking activists," reported The Asian Age. "Agitated Congressmen, who tried to find out innovative ways to show their anguish, burnt effigies..." Once again the Delhi Congress Pradesh Committee was able to organise the biggest turnout, the paper said. "The MLAs, who offered to resign, were on a relay hunger strike. But the other Congressmen did not appreciate the concept of relay hunger strike. "We do not believe in the relay thing. We are on a continuous indefinite strike," said former Andhra PCC president V. Hanumanta Rao." "The surprise of the day, however, was the Delhi legislator, Mukesh Sharma," The Asian Age reported. "Mr. Sharma was the first to go on hungerstrike on Monday. But on Tuesday, he was missing. Even the local Congressmen were surprised at his disappearance."
"One tried to set himself ablaze, dozens shed tears, including Arjun Singh, twenty lay down on the road, hundreds fell at her feet, one MLA refused to let go [of her feet], thousands promised more," reported The Indian Express. But as there had been no word from Sonia, the paper said, "youngsters decided to provide some action. A bottle of kerosene oil in hand and tears in his eyes, a youth Congress worker screamed, 'I will immolate myself'. All eyes, cameras turned towards him, the cops rushed to save him from himself. Snatching away the bottle they firmly evicted him. While he was being taken away, former National Students Union of India president Alka Kapur announced - to all who cared to hear - that this was no empty threat."
"The another batch hit the road - literally," the Express account continued. "Twenty youth Congress workers lay down on the road covering themselves with party glory and Sonia posters. Apparently fired by all this, senior party workers devised their own ways. Every Congress worker, who could possibly resign, did..." The four chief ministers of Congress-ruled states topped the list of resigners. The resignations conveyed one signal to those outside the party, and another one to those in it -- the two being encapsulated successively in two clauses of The Economic Times report that day: "The resignation spree, clearly designed to give an honourable route for Mrs. Gandhi to come back as the party president, signalled the total isolation of the rebels..." "And those who could not resign," said The Indian Express, "pitched tents - separate one for each frontal organisation - and sat on hunger strike... However, the odd one could be seen slipping away for some good old-fashioned lunch..."
The usual acrimony between netas and the wretched praja: "The leaders had started arriving around 2.30 p.m. to register their presence," reported The Pioneer. "The Working Committee meeting was scheduled to start at 4 p.m. They though it would be all over after a few rounds of slogan shouting... The meeting got delayed... They found themselves drenched in sweat by now... Mineral water bottles were ordered. This infuriated the workers who had been brought in tempos... After much noise, and NDMC water truck arrived."
Mukesh Sharma had disappeared. The contingent from Delhi was clearly dwindling. Roster-duty was decreed. MLAs accompanied by ministers will sit on relay-fast, the organizers announced. The relay had but begun, and confusion broke out about the timings that each batch had to observe... But soon an even greater threat loomed. "When the Andhra Pradesh Congress State unit erected a shamiana just outside the AICC headquarters in the forenoon," reported The Pioneer, "the DPCC and Youth Congress workers went into a tizzy. 'We have no tent here, no banner. How will Madam get to know that we are also here?,' some DPCC office-bearers were heard discussing. And soon enough there sprang up a line of tents for works of the DPCC, YC, Sewa Dal, and umpteen other organisations...." The tents up, a new problem erupted. Several of the leaders, the paper said, could not be traced in their respective tents. "Meanwhile, an enterprising soul went one step ahead and surreptitiously pinned a banner of the UP Congress, proclaiming 'Salman Khurshid zindabad', on one side of the tent set up by the AP Congress unit. The shrewd move was exposed only when..." The Times of India too noticed the fast evaporating. "Even as eager hands reached out for the kulfis sold by a vendor," it reported on May 19, "a sharp reprimand was hurled through the sultry air: Don't eat in front of reporters. The hands were quickly withdrawn. City Congress leaders were of course not as 'indiscreet' as the activists... The 'fast' to start with was 'indefinite'. Later it was turned into a 'relay hunger strike'... But there was confusion about how long it would be before the next group took over. Some said it was a six-hour shift. Others said it was for twelve hours..."
Enterprising Spirit
Even the participants were not uniformly impressed. "All this is dramabazi, everyone wants to impress madamji,' said a Youth Congress activist," reported The Times of India, "even as he himself posed for some television cameras." By the next day, the range, variety, quantity of delicacies had multiplied; thanks to the spirit of enterprise the party has done so much to stimulate. "On the food front," The India Express reported on May 20, "Om Prakash and his golgappas were the first to arrive. Close on his heels was the bhelpuri man, the chana-masala mixer and the coconut man. They did brisk pre-lunch business, and the word obviously got around... Lunch was topped off with desert. The choice was between the different varieties of kulfi or ice cream..." But "if wasn't as if the supporters were just eating and drinking. They were also cheering on the entertainment truck that drove up and down the road..."
There were serious projects too. "Meanwhile," reported The Times of India that day, "Indian Youth Congress president Manish Tiwari threatened to take 'direct action' against the rebels. While refusing to say what he would do, Mr. Tiwari said: 'Just wait and see what happens when Mr. Sangma reaches here on Thursday from the US." Blame-slinging was in full-swing. The Pioneer quoted Delhi Congress leaders accusing their chief minister, Sheila Dikshit of "stunts to hog the limelight." The fast-unto death-or-disappearance of Mukesh Sharma was cited as one such stunt. "The MLA's action was focused on garnering media spotlight," the paper quoted an MLA from outer Delhi saying. "His messengers were in the newspaper offices much before the scene had heated up..." Far from going through with his fast unto death, Sharma had not turned up even for the relay fast, his colleagues complained. In fact, there had been a purpose to the relay fast, his colleagues complained. In fact, there had been a purpose to the relay fast itself, a Minister in the Delhi government told the paper: "The relay hunger strike had to be adopted to ensure the presence of at least six legislators at one time. Otherwise there wouldn't be a soul present." "The dharna against the rebel troika turned into a carnival with music, crackers and plenty of food. Some sat on hunger strike to lend dignity while others danced to parodies of Hindi film songs. It seemed like a huge barat enjoying a picnic under the tree-lined avenue..," The Pioneer reported.
There was action too. "The 'street play' on Akbar Road continued unabated for the third day," The Pioneer reported, "with harried Congressmen zipping in and out in their air-conditioned cars to convince their party president to rejoin..." One Manju Sachdeva was said to have attempted to burn herself to death. Prudently, it would seem. "Manju Sachdeva took time to pour kerosene herself, waiting to catch the attention of other party workers and police personnel. So the moment she lit a match, there was chaos as a flood of saviours surrounded her..." She was rushed to the hospital, where she survived with "zero percent burns!" Only the pallu of her sari had got singed a bit. "Nonetheless," The Pioneer reporter observed, "the incident provided Congress agitators some inspiration. 'We must keep up the struggle,' they muttered even as they jostled with each other to grab tumblers of mineral water." Nor were Congressmen wanting in distant Bhopal. "Protest turns farcical," The Hindu's headline ran.
Five Congressmen gathered and declared that they would jump off a seven storeyed apartment building. The police, as well as the press had been alerted well in time. "Before they began their ascent, they were dutifully garlanded by fellow-Congressmen," The Hindustan Times recorded. Four of them were stopped by policemen. "They did not offer even an iota of protest," The Hindu's report said. The fifth managed to reach the top floor with some Congressmen and policemen in tow. "His attempt to 'sacrifice' his life for the cause of his leader," The Hindu told its readers, "came to an end when he found the door leading up to the terrace locked. He left after posing for the photographers." But Bhopal had even more committed devotees. "By this time," The Hindu continued, "about a dozen Congress activists, including some women, had gathered near the statue of Jawaharlal Nehru at the Roshanara Square for committing 'self-immolation' with the passersby acting as ready audience. After posing for the photographers, they started pouring on each other 'kerosene'. Immediately after water jets from two fire-tenders stationed nearby were aimed at them and within no time their tryst with fire and the summer heat was turned into a cold water treat. "The deed done and recorded on film for posterity," The Hindustan Times said. "Talking to The Hindustan Times members of the self-immolation squad... said they were all serious about their bid to end their lives but were prevented by the police." That paper added that "The police, in the interim, had almost disappeared from the scene having convinced themselves that no one really wanted to jump off the terrace."
In Delhi, the action was more energetic. A former Congress legislator from UP climbed a tree, and declared that he would not come down till Sonia relented. Congressmen gathered around this new hero, as did the police, entreating him not to do something so drastic. "Finally, after an hour or so," reported The Indian Express, "Samrat climbed down, but only after police officials assured him that they would not beat him up. Meanwhile, the Delhi MLAs who have so far been maintaining a quiet round-the-clock vigil outside 10, Janpath, said that they would immolate themselves," the paper disclosed. But, prudence personified, they said they would do so on the seventh day if by then Sonia had not withdrawn her resignation. The Times of India reported others also taking the pledge to immolate themselves - in the future. As well as the man on the tree.
Effigies upon effigies of the three villains kept being burnt. "To add to the melee," the paper told us, "various leaders also take out their rag-tag crowd for a quick chakkar shouting slogans in an attempt at solidarity. So, there is Girija Vyas with her small contingent, followed hastily by Salman Khurshid with his clutch of ragged supporters. After shouting and burning some more effigies, Khurshid soon went back to his office to escape the heat...."
"A meeting of that orphanage - the Congress Working Committee - was scheduled. As he arrived, Sitaram Kesri was punched in the stomach, he was hit in the face, his spectacles were snatched, his Gandhi cap was grabbed and torn up, his car windowpane was smashed. Jitendra Prasad was roughed up... Salman Khurshid's supporters," The Economic Times reported, "were heard going up to him and telling him that they had 'done it'."
"Kesri eventually staggered into the meeting, and sent his colleagues into a panic," The Indian Express reported, "as he collapsed on the floor, he wouldn't move for fifteen minutes, eventually he had to be revived with a glass of water. "He wouldn't stop howling," The Economic Times said. "He couldn't understand what was being done to him: The Gandhi cap, isn't it the one he had placed at the feet of Sonia not long ago? (Why) this distrust? Isn't he the one who just the day before had," as The Indian Express reported, "worked himself into another emotional storm and tried to stop Sonia from walking out of Monday's meeting...?" "Kesri apparently caught hold of her hand," The Indian Express reported, "and begged her not to go, saying she was like his daughter and he was like her father." And within two days, this... The next day, on her way back from Rajiv's samadhi, Sonia dropped by at his house. "Sudden silence at 10, Janpath," ran the headline of The Indian Express as it summed up, what Pranab Mukherji, would call "the ground realities" of the day. The only piece action was provided, the paper said, by youngsters of the NSUI who locked up the party headquarters. "They said that since everybody had resigned there was no point in keeping the office open," the Express reported. "They threatened that they would not let anyone enter till Sonia came and unlocked it herself." Given the stamina of Congressmen, they soon settled for Oscar Fernandes to do the honours.
The mystery, however, was in the sudden evaporation of the circus. What had happened? The Times of India of May 23 had the answer. That visit to Kesri's house done, Sonia had stopped outside her house to meet the hunger-strikers. They were unshaven, in unkempt clothes. Concerned, moved, worried, she asked the AICC office to depute a team of doctors to them, and render medical help. "Most of the [hunger] strikers," The Times of India reported, "were reportedly found by the team of doctors 'quite well fed and fit as fiddles'."
* - Non-Resident Italian
† - Many of the Congressmen assembled outside Sonia's door where newly elected MPs. They were already very anxious about whether they would be given cabinet posts. Madam's sudden turnaround only added to the mounting tension. The lachyrmal expressions could have been real after all.
‡ - Perhaps for his moving performance, Pranab got the coveted Defence post.
Link to Moral Volcano's White She-Devil - IV
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Matt Taibbi stands out odd among American journalists - probably a reason why he had to leave NY Press. His writing is laced with great wit and biting sarcasm. For an article about the U.S. presidential election, Taibbi went undercover and infiltrated a Republican party campaign office as a volunteer. In a story about the USA Patriot Act, Matt wondered if the John Ashcroft character was hiding something in his pocket or was just happy to see him. His review of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's book World Is Flat was blistering. (Many die-hard followers of Friedman now claim they never considered the NYT columnist very seriously.) Matt's coverage of Pope John Paul's (How could they tell?) death offered an opportunity for his detractors to make it personal. NY Press is a free newspaper (i.e. it is distributed free) and could not stand up to the pressure.
But, it wasn't his ruminations about the dead Pope or the vain Friedman that got him in trouble. Taibbi was a marked man because of his unusually frank and informative articles on Russia and Eastern Europe. During the Balkan crisis, American journalists simply added a by-line to Pentagon press releases and printed them as news stories. Taibbi, who had lived and worked several years in Russia, was different. In Meet Mr. Massacre, he revealed that the U.S. claims of genocide* by the Serbians were false and that the allegations were being vetted by dubious individuals with little or no credibility. His Oligarch R Us article about Mikhail Khodorkovsky was probably the last straw. Wall Street must have decided enough was enough.
So who is Mikhail Khodorkovsky? Well, he is an interesting character to say the least. A piece of work, some people say. If you believe the BBC or the CNN, then Khodorkovsky is someone whose industriousness has caused all-round envy and whose "political ambitions" had put him in direct confrontation with President Vladmir Putin. No mention about his dubious rise from rags to riches; nothing about his connections to Western capital; just the oft-repeated rant about the lack of democracy and the return to the Soviet-style command economy.
The Khodorkovsky story began in the final years of the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Union was rich in resources, gross inefficiencies in the system had created artificial shortages. Because of its arms race with the West, the USSR was spending nearly one-third of its GDP on defence. When Gorbachev came on the scene, he initiated the Perestroika reforms that allowed a limited form of private enterprise. Because much of the populace was doctrined in Marxist ideology, it was only natural-born crooks who made it first through the gate. Boris Berezovsky (the biggest of the notorious "Oligarchs"), for example, took to looting state enterprises. The Soviet Union had incentive program to encourage foriegn investment in the country. To take advantage of this scheme, Berezovsky formed a front company in Switzerland, which then created a joint venture with a Soviet automobile company. He also started a car dealership for selling the cars created by the joint venture. Cars were bought at less than cost price by the dealership and sold at an enormous profit. After systematically destroying the company, he then proposed to buy it. Berezovsky made more such purchases including that of the Aeroflot airline company. After the fall of the communism, Berezovsky emerged as the richest man in Russia. He had prominent holdings in the media, whose partisan coverage helped determine the outcome of elections.
On his part, Khodorovsky took to importing computers to kickstart his rise to fame(?) and fortune. The U.S. had placed severe restrictions on export of dual-use items to Warsaw Pact countries. Because the socialist block could not manufacture top-performing mainframes and servers like the West, the Kremlin devised elaborate smuggling and transshipment routes. For items like pesonal computers, it was willing (thanks to Gorbachev's Perestroika) to allow a few private individuals to devise their own schemes to import computers. Khodorkovsky was one of the few individuals to enter this business and because of the huge demand for PCs, he became enormously successful. Banks at that time charged huge amounts of interest to provide hard currency. So, Khodorkovsky decided to enter the money business. Although dealing with hard currency was the privilege of a select few, Khodorkovsky had no trouble in obtaining the necessary permissions and started the Menatep Bank. Khodorkovsky's associate Platon Lebedev helped the bank setup a labyrinth of offshore entities where illicit money from Russia could be hidden. Soon, big government departments including the Ministry of Finance, the State Taxation Service, the Moscow city government and the main Russian arms exporter were doing business with him and large sums of money were suspected of being secreted out of the country through Menatep. The money laundering business is supposed to have netted him a rich crop of contacts and supporters in the Party.
George Soros meanwhile had failed in his attempt to court the Gorbachevs with his money. He had pumped enormous amounts of money into the charirty efforts of Raisa Gorbachev. It was to be a cover for money laundering but the Gorbachevs would not take the bait. The mini rebellion by foriegn minister Eduarde Shevarnadze did not cause any serious damage to communism. Soros then switched camps and started backing rising star Boris Yeltsin. Like Barkis, Yeltsin was willing. Foriegn consultants were now running his election campaign. Arun Nehru, who was part of Rajiv Gandhi's cabinet, recalled in an op-ed article a meeting between Gorbachev and the late prime minister. Gorbachev asked how Rajiv managed to get dissidents in his party to stop bothering him. Rajiv replied that he gave them important positions in the government, which seemed to satisfy them. Nehru speculated whether this advice prompted Gorbachev to let Yeltsin become the President of the Russian Federation, the largest republic in the USSR. Yeltsin, however, could not have been made to lie low. Encouraged by the West, he wanted more. His insidious campaign and Gorbachev's failure to contain him led to a coup by the KGB. Although the coup failed and added much to his popularity, Yeltsin still was not top dog. Yeltisin exhorted other Soviet republics to clamour for as much freedom as possible and they responded by secession. USSR was no more and Gorbachev's post was made obsolete. Where the CIA had failed, Soros had won.
After Yeltsin took charge, he initiated the ruinous economic reforms under the advice of economists nominated by the World Bank. Insiders in his government began to put the Russian state to sleep. The socialist setup was torn down, which left millions without job security. Senior citizens were denied their pensions. Corrruption became endemic and tax collection fell. Roman Abrahamovich, the owner of the Chelsea football club, had a novel way of beating taxes. He got himself elected as the governor of the remote province of Chukotia. Then, he gave huge tax-breaks to locally registered companies, namely his own oil companies, which had moved their registered office to the area.
Meanwhile, valuable state enterprises in oil, gas, banking, etc., were being driven into mountainous debt by deliberate mismanagement. Taibbi gives a modus operandi:
I’ll set down one example, from a story I did many years ago about Russian minerals company called Avisma, which eventually filed suit against its owners here in the States, naming Khodorkovsky’s Menatep as the chief villain. Menatep (allegedly, I have to say in America) bought the company, then forced its directors to sell its commodities to a Menatep shell company called TMC at pennies on the dollar. TMC then sold the goods (mainly titanium) to Western investors at cost. To make matters worse, TMC then (allegedly) induced Avisma to buy materials from them above cost. Readers are invited to imagine what words like "forced" and "induced" mean in this context. In the end, nothing was left but a skeletonized carcass. Any Brooklyn restaurant owner who has been taken over by the Lucchese or Gambino families will recognize this technique.
Thus, billions of dollars were taken out of the country every week. Meanwhile, newly rich Russians started importing all kinds of consumer goods. As the value of the local currency started plummeting, Russians were beginning to hoard American dollars. Politically, things could not be worse. Yeltsin used tanks to shell the White House, the Russian Parliament, where MPs had staged a rebellion. The Western governments did not even blink. In Chechenya, the state first allowed an insurgency develop and then used excessive force (much of it directed at civilians) to quell it.
In 1996, Yeltsin was up for reelection. It was certain that he was going to be trumped by Communist leader Gennady Zhuganov. So, in 1995, under the advice of the World Bank, Yeltsin initiated a massive privatisation programme where Russia's most valuable state enterprises were auctioned off at rock-bottom prices, under the direction of Yeltsin daughter's Tanya. Only a select few were invited for the auctions and winners were selected in a totally opaque manner. Among the companies sold in this manner was Yukos, Russia's second largest oil company. The auction was conducted by Menatep bank and the winning bid (although it was not the highest bid) was made by a company controlled by Menatep! Menatep agreed to pay $300 million and take on debts of about $2 billion. However, by the end of 2003, Yukos' market capitalization stood at $27 billion.
Apologists for Khodorkovsky say that under his astute management, Yukos had turned valuable. Apparently, but if one digs deeper, situation was quite different. Yukos had proven reserves of over 12 billion barrels, which puts it in the same league as Chevron. Getting Yukos for $2.3 billion was a steal in every sense of the word. Because Menatep had no experience in the oil industry, they employed foreign oil services companies to improve Yukos' oil production. Just anybody with a lawyer and a telephone line could have done this. When Khodorkovsky was in good terms with Yeltsin-nominated successor Vladimir Putin, the oligarch was noticeably quite frank about the nature of the sale.
In those days, everyone in Russia was engaged in the primary accumulation of capital. Even when laws existed, they were not very rigorously followed. Therefore, if you conducted yourself too much in a Western manner, you were simply torn to pieces and forgotten.
- Khodorkovsky in an interview to Paul Klebnikov, the author of Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia and The World's Billionaires: The Oligarch Who Came in from the Cold
Outfits like Menatep acquired many such companies. Because they had no experience in managing the industries they bought, the oligarchs called themselves as financial-industrial groups. But, basically, they were just crooks with top political connections inside the country and good financial links to the world outside. In time, they went on to own 90% of the Russian economy. The oligarchs had complete control of the media and were able to get Yeltsin reelected. Uri Avnery in Counterpunch explains:
At the time, President Boris Yeltsin was in a steep decline. On the eve of the new elections for the presidency, his rating in public opinion polls stood at 4%. He was an alcoholic with a severe heart disease, working about two hours a day. The state was, in practice, ruled by his bodyguard and his daughter; corruption was the order of the day.
The oligarchs decided to take power through him. They had almost unlimited funds, control of all TV channels and most of the other media. They put all these at the disposal of Yeltsin's reelection campaign, denying his opponents even one minute of TV time and pouring huge sums of money into the effort. (An interesting detail: they secretly brought over the most outstanding American election experts and copywriters, who applied methods previously unknown in Russia.)
The campaign bore fruit: Yeltsin was indeed reelected. On the very same day he had another heart attack and spent the rest of his term in hospital. In practice, the oligarchs ruled Russia. One of them, Boris Berezovsky, appointed himself Prime Minister. There was a minor scandal when it became known that he (like most of the oligarchs) had acquired Israeli citizenship, but he gave up his Israeli passport and everything was in order again.
Because of failing health, Yeltsin nominated Putin as his successor and left the scene altogether. The oligarchs thought Putin would also dance to their tunes but the man whom the Voice Of America would get hoarse calling the "ex-KGB spy" had other plans. He began put a stop to rot that was eating away the state. He re-established state control of the oil assets of the nation. The oligarch control of the media was broken and were asked to keep off politics. Tax collection improved and at last things started taking a turn for good. Khodorkovsky decided this was bad and started financing political parties and media opposed to Putin. Khodorkovsy confessed he had even given money to the communists. Taibbi explains what happened next.
I’ll give Putin this: He has balls. Unlike Boris Yeltsin, who dropped to his knees for every greasy hood with a dollar for eight consecutive years, Putin decided to make an example of Misha. In America, we settle these disputes by giving the F-117 contract to a different company. In Russia, the methods are a little different: an untimely car accident, an exploding briefcase, a mysterious fatal illness contracted after a routine phone conversation. Absolutely the most civilized of these options is imprisonment and seizure of assets. This is the route Putin took with Khodorkovsky. In response to the latter’s decision not to abide by the laws of gangsterdom, Putin decided, for once, to enforce the laws of the state.
Wall Street reacted with horror. Khodorkovsky was trying to sell his stake in Yukos to ExxonMobil. This would have allowed the U.S. to counter-balance the OPEC in the oil market. They had undertaken a massive PR exercise to make Khodorkovsky more ameliorable to the West. The way he had came to fortune made him look like a modern-day version of the original robber barons, Rockfeller and Morgan. Lord Jacob Rothschild,† giving his approval, said, "Khodorkovsky is a progressive businessman who is devoted to Russia."
Here are some excerpts from an interview given to Kommersant, in June 2002, fifteen months prior to his arrest. The interview was not published on a request from Khodorkovsky's office, which thought he had been too outspoken. They allowed it to be published in 2005 soon after his sentencing.
They write about you and YUKOS much more in the West than in Russia. The situation was the same three-four years ago but back then the publications were negative. Whereas now they are only positive. This strongly resembles “promotion” in the West. Has the time come?
It is a bipartite situation: we have changed and the attitude of the West has changed. If we take the time when business began things were pretty clear: one should abide by the laws but there are no laws.
Or there were laws but with loopholes.
Which means there were none. So people did what they wanted. These were the conditions under which the original accumulation of capital took place. We did shape some moral requirements to ourselves but those were our moral requirements so we should not even mention them today. They corresponded to the society we lived in. Then gradually the legislative field began taking shape, we continued functioning in its boundaries but it was still quite wide. Which it remains today by the way.
The term "money laundering" is quite widely used. However, apparently there exists the notion of "image laundering" as well. It was not for nothing that in your interviews in the West you mentioned Rockefeller as an example for imitation. However, Rockefeller “got laundered” only in the third generation – it was only his grandson that became “clean”. There were 100 years separating him from his grandfather. And it seems as though you would like to race through these 100 years during your lifetime.
I sure would. This is an objective requirement in business – the one who is faster will win. You are not surprised by the fact that the way from a horse to a railroad took thousands of years whereas from a railroad to a spaceship – only one hundred years. The same applies to the Rockefeller issue. I was in Harvard and heard the director of their business school speak. He said that Khodorkovsky was Rockefeller, Rockefeller's son and Rockefeller's grandson in one person.
Nationalisation of Yukos undid everything. Both Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were jailed. Menatep partners Leonid Nevzlin and Michael Brudno were absconding and later surfaced in Israel. Although Yukos affair was not to the liking of Russia's fledgling stockmarket, the public's attitude to the saga has been largely indifferent. However, if you believe the Western media, Khodorkovsky has numerous supporters among ordinary Russians and on the surface it seems to be true. The millions of dollars that the US embassy and the Open Russia Foundation spends on "civic education programs to promote democratic values" is being put to work. Taibbi explains how.
The papers have gone so far as to portray Khodorkovsky — a man whose name causes grown men to spit uncontrollably in every part of the Russian empire — as an anti-Soviet martyr along the lines of Andrei Sakharov. The Globe, normally the most sensible source of Russia coverage, even ran an AFP photo showing a woman holding a sign that reads, "Free Khodorkovsky."
The "pro-Khodorkovsky" demonstration that this woman was a part of is the kind of thing that no journalist with any shame would ever touch. In Russia, it is well-known that "spontaneous" demonstrations on behalf of elitist monsters are usually paid productions. I once went to a demonstration of "Moving Together," the so-called Putin Youth movement, in which the attending kids were given tickets to see Shrek in return for appearing. At another, a demonstration on behalf of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s neo-fascist LDPR party, demonstrators were given free beer. They even gave me some. The LDPR has the best parties in town.
Taibbi concludes:
Many of us who spent the 90s in Russia became aware over time that the aim of the United States was to create a rump state that would allow economic interests to strip assets at will. The population in this scheme was to be good for consuming foreign goods produced abroad with Russia’s own cheaply sold raw materials. The aim was a castrated state, anarchy, a vast, confused territory of captive consumers, cheap labor and unguarded oil and aluminum.
* - Genocide was cited by Clinton administration as the reason for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
† - In December 2001, the Open Russia Foundation was established by Khodorkovsky in London. Jacob Rothschild and Henry Kissinger sit on its board. The foundation formally awards grants to academic institutions and non-profit organizations. It is also active in the U.S. where it was launched in the heart of the U.S. establishment, the Library of Congress.
Also read:
Link to Moral Volcano's Darlings of the West - IV
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Billed as "the project of the century", the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline is now complete. BP says it cost $3.6 billion* to build - making it the costliest oil pipeline in the world. The pipeline starts in Azerbaijan, goes through Georgia and ends in Turkey, connecting the landlocked Caspian Sea with the Mediterranean. The ideal route to take Caspian oil out to its markets would have been through Iran or Russia but this is something the West has been keen to avoid.
The U.S. has established an airbase near Ceyhan at Incirlik. A massive military deployment around the pipeline has been planned. F William Engdahl, writing in Asia Times, says:
On April 12, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to Baku, his second vist in four months, to discuss demands to create a US military base in Azerbaijan. The Pentagon already de facto runs the Georgian military with its US Special Forces officers and Georgia has been asked to join the NATO. Now, Washington wants to have direct bases in Azerbaijan proximate to Russia as well as to Iran. The Pentagon has also allocated $100 million to build a Caspian Guard of special forces military, ostensibly to guard the new BTC pipeline, though the latter was deliberately built underground to make it less vulnerable, one reason for its high cost. Part of the Pentagon money would go to build a radar-equipped command center in Baku, capable of monitoring all sea traffic in the Caspian. The US wants airbases in Azerbaijan, which naturally would be seen Tehran and Moscow as a strategic provocation.
The 1,770 kilometer-long pipeline will take 6 months and 10 million barrels of oil to fill from end to end. Oil filled at Baku will take 10 days to reach Ceyhan. The pipeline is expected to carry 1 million barrels a day from the Caspian sea. But, where is this oil going to come from?
Production in the entire Caspian region currently stands at only 2 million barrels per day (bpd). The Caspian sea has proven reserves of 33 billion barrels of oil, making it the third largest in the world. (The Persian Gulf has over 700 billion barrels.) Turkey has no oil. Georgia has lots of mineral water.† And, Azerbaijan? Well, it is suspected that Azeri authorities vastly overestimated their reserves and sold the idea to the Americans, who seemed to have swallowed it whole. Either that or the Americans have some secret information about the oil reserves that they are not telling anyone.
To make the pipeline more viable, Azerbaijan offered to let Russia send its oil through the pipeline. To add pressure, Turkey placed restrictions on Russian oil tankers that currently take oil across the Black Sea through the narrow Bosphorous straits. Russia has so far refused to join the project adding that its oil will bypass the Bosphorous with the new Burgas pipeline, which runs over Bulgaria to Greece. Thus, the only other country that can make the project viable is Kazakhastan. However, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhastan is a cool player who does not place all his eggs in one basket. He likes to keep a safe distance from both Moscow and Washington. Today, companies from Russia, North America, and Europe are already working in Kazakhastan. There is a possibility that Kazakhastan's oil and gas go East to China. If it did, then the BTC pipeline would be doomed. So, many observers wondering if the U.S. is giving shape to a "color revolution" for Kazakhastan.
A study of the color revolutions of Eastern Europe and Central Asia are a good way to measure how much money the U.S. has spent to help make Western oil companies like BP richer. During elections in Ukraine, the U.S. embassy was seen in great action. Special camps were conducted to train journalists in "democratic values." The U.S. financed the exit polls, which predicted a huge win for the pro-Western candidate Yushchenko. When Yushchenko lost, the "pro-democracy activists" from the youth movement called Pora (It's Time) (which again was financed by the U.S.) effected the "Orange Revolution." Elections were conducted again and the pro-US candidate Yushchenko won. In Azerbaijan, a "good dictator" (pro-American) Haidar Aliyev was in power when the pipeline talks began. Engdahl continues:
Former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was a consultant to BP during the Bill Clinton era, urging Washington to back the project. In fact, it was Brzezinski who went to Baku in 1995, uofficiall in behalf of Clinton, to meet with then Zeri president Haidar Aliyev, to negotiate new independent Baku pipeline routes including what became the BTC pipeline.
Brzezinski also sits on the board of an impressive, if little known, U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC). The chairman of USACC in Wahsington is Tim Cajka, president of ExxonMobil Exploration. Other USACC board members include Henry Kissinger and James Baker III, the man who in 2003 personally went to Tbilisi to tell Eduard Shevardnadze that Washington wanted him to step aside in favour of the US-trained‡ Georgian Shaakashvili. Brent Scowcroft, former national security advisor to George H W Bush, also sits on the board. And, Cheney was a former board member before he became the U.S. Vice-President. A more high-powered Washington team of geopolitical fixers would be hard to imagine. This group of prominent individual certainly would not give a minute of their time unless an area of utmost geopolitical strategic importance to the US or to certain powerful interests there.
When Haider Aliyev died, his son Ilham Aliyev succeeded him in an election that was rigged but to the U.S. was fair. But, things are not going very well for him. The U.S. is now financing opposition groups fashioned on the Ukrainian Pora. Central Asian republics lying in the direction of a possible Kazakhastan-China route are now facing serious threats. A radical Islamic movement led by Hizbut-Tehrir (HT) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is operating from the Ferhana valley whose stated aim is to create a pan-Central Asian caliphate covering Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. Hizbut Tehrir operates from Whitehall, London. Britain has refused to ban it although Germany has already done so. Interestingly, the group is now headed by an IT professional named Jalaluddin Patel.
* - The project was financed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is owned by Western countries.
‡ - They literally coached him - no metaphor is used here.
† - The pipeline goes through the Borjomi region of Georgia. Borjomi is home to Georgia’s mineral water industry, which contributes 10% percent of Georgia’s exports. It is also the largest employer and contributor to the budget in this economically depressed region. While the BTC consortium has pledged to adopt extra safety measures in the Borjomi region, such as thicker pipes and additional block valves, members of the mineral water industry worry that the market for mineral water is dependent on image and reputation, and that the Borjomi brand could suffer irreparable harm, even if there is no spill or leakage. Georgia is known throughout the former Soviet Union (FSU) for its mineral water resources. The Borjomi brand of mineral water has been distributed throughout the FSU for more than a century and is widely recognized. There have been reports that the BTC did not really fulfill the promises in their haste to complete the project ahead of schedule. The Georgian government is powerless to do anything because as part of the agreement with the BTC consortium it has ceded sovereignity over the narrow stretch of land where pipeline has been laid. This has prompted many commentators to refer to the BTC pipeline as Pipelineistan.
UPDATE (04/01/06): Last year, China acquired PetroKazakhastan, a Canadian company with operations in Kazakhastan. China also built the 988-kilometer-long Atasu-Alashankou pipeline a record 10 months to carry the oil from the oil fields of PetroKazakhastan.
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Link to Moral Volcano's Darlings Of The West - III**
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