TARAFITS

Romania’s Capitalist Dream Turns into Nightmare

2012-02-09T08:57:00.001-08:00

Romania's Capitalist Dream Turns into Nightmare

Another Victim of Neo-liberal Capitalism

Romanian President Traian Basescu accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Emil Boc, heading a centre –right coalition on Monday, 6 February following massive street protests for weeks, first such ones after the fall of Communist leader Nikolai Ceausescu 22 years ago .Boc joins a list of European leaders felled by public fury at massive spending cuts introduced at IMF 's behest , as part of neo-liberal reforms medicine. The IMF had rescued Romania's state finances in 2009 with a 20 billion-euro ($26-billion) loan on condition of deep cuts in government spending,

Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu, former foreign minister and foreign intelligence service chief will form the new government. Ungureanu's statement that he will continue the unpopular economic reforms will do little to calm popular anger and unrest. The people are distrustful of intelligence chiefs as it reminds them of Ceausescu's dreaded Securitate (secret police). But as elsewhere in Communist countries say Vladimir Putin in Russia , the security services attracted the best brains and after the collapse of the communism , being well placed in the corridors of powers , most former spooks have done well and even flourished, except a few at the very top who were toppled .

In spite of enough petroleum, gas, water and land and other resources, the loot under the Washington led policy of neoliberal capitalism has transformed Romania into the second poorest country in Europe Union (EU)

Finally the truth is coming out , the suffering masses have risen against neo-liberal capitalism enforced under US domination in Romania as they have elsewhere , across north Africa , the Middle East , except perhaps in Gulf Cooperation Council led by Saudi Arabia and egged on by Qatar two feudal kingdoms like others in GCC promoting democracy in Syria after having bloodily implanted it in Libya , with western energy and other interests taking over the resources .How about some freedoms and democracy in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The author who was ambassador at Bucharest in 1981 -84 , then entering a most difficult phase , spent nearly 10 years ( 1997 -2007) as an independent freelance journalist in Romania under the spreading wings of neoliberal capitalism , a Wall Street and the City, London gift to humanity. Soon after reaching Bucharest , an old grizzled Romanian engineer told the author that financiers were taking over the country and soon everyone will be indebted and spend the rest of lives in repaying the loans , which really benefitted the corrupt ruling class.

Strategically located on the Black Sea, Romania is a large country with a population of 23 million in the region, where population of most of its neighbors is less than 10 million. Its military importance was brought home when US war planes used Romania's airport near Constanza and other facilities after March, 2003 after NATO ally Turkey's parliament turned down US request for use of its land bases and airports to attack Iraq. There have been reports of Romania having allowed use of its military and other facilities for US rendition for torture.

Romanians , who consider themselves as Latin people in Slav lake were never happy being part of the mostly Slav Communist block and followed an independent line in foreign affairs , somewhat like de Gaulle's policies in Western block .After the breakup of the Soviet Union and Communist bloc, Romania assiduously cultivated Europe for entry into Europe Union (EU) and USA for Nato membership .The latter efforts bore fruit in November 2002 when its admission into Nato was approved at the Prague summit in spite of many institutional deficiencies.

For whatever the strategic configurations in Eurasia between USA, Europe Union, Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia and now destabilized Middle East, Romania will remain an important strategic asset. Its vast rail and road network linking it to central and Western Europe and the seaport of Constanza on western shores of the Black Sea would provide a commercial hub across the Black Sea for Europe Union's export to energy rich countries like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan after oil and gas starts flowing out the Caspian Basin. But following US policies blindly and its total dislike of the Russians has stopped Romania from benefitting, say in the transport of energy from central Asia, Caspian region and Iran to Europe.

The Romanian leadership was very exultant when joining NATO. "it would be a new beginning," said Romanian President Ion Iliescu. It will allow Romania "to be integrated into the civilized world, and to receive necessary support for internal reform." Indeed, many Romanians saw entry into NATO almost as a divine gift that will transform the country after a decade of post-communist bungling and looting by its politicians.

The Legend of Dracula

For centuries, Romania was ruled by the Ottoman Turks, and Romanian Prince Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, on whom the Dracula myth is based learnt some of his blood-curdling tactics when he was held as a hostage in the Ottoman capital Istanbul in the late 1400s. Tepes is a greta national hero . The Romanians in general dislike the Russians, and have little love for other Slavs too. Lying in the path of marauding hordes and armies from the Eurasian steppes and elsewhere throughout its history, it possesses an ethnic mix of a richness and beauty that few other countries can match.

Romanians claim that they are a Latin island in a Slav lake, with their cultural moorings in France . Two millennia ago, for two centuries, Roman legions were garrisoned here; some were from Catalonia in Spain and even Palestine . Their mixing with the local Dacian people gave the Romanian language its Latin character - in fact it is quite close to Italian, and even the Catalan dialect.

If Romania is described as a part of the Balkans, Romanians demur: "We are north of the Danube River, and entirely European," as Traian Basescu, a former mayor of Bucharest, then said. And they were reluctant communists. The system was forced on them by the invading Soviet army after World War II. Many Romanians confided to the author in the early 1980s that they wished that they had been liberated from the Nazis by the Americans, and not by the Soviet Russians.

Romania is fortunately self-sufficient in oil and gas, unlike its neighbors. It has rich agriculture land and was known as the "bread basket" of the Balkans. But now only 60 percent of the land is cultivated and land ownership laws are not clear or fully implemented; nor has land been distributed, with collective farm mangers from the past still making hay. Except for the summer months when vegetables and fruits sprout from the rich fertile soil, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and other simple fruits and vegetables are imported from Holland, Greece, Turkey, Spain and Italy. If state farms could be leased to agriculture and horticulture entrepreneurs from Turkey , Israel or India , Romania could not only feed itself, it could flood Europe with its fruit, vegetables and flowers.

The massive tourist infrastructure built by Ceausescu has been eroded, dismantled and destroyed over the past decade. In the absence of maintenance, hotels parceled among cronies have fallen apart, but room rates are on a par with West Europe . This discourages businessmen and keeps tourists away from Romania 's legendary fresco-painted churches and monasteries, scenic sights, Black Sea beaches and winter holiday resorts. Before being admitted in 2007 in to EU conditionally (along with Bulgaria), mafias from neighboring countries like Greece, Italy, Turkey had infiltrated the country's economic and political life. Despite making some progress in fighting corruption and organized crime, both Romania and Bulgaria have been severely criticized in by EU over a catalog of failings, which could delay the two nations from joining Europe's passport-free Schengen travel zone. The objections are only to semiskilled and unskilled labor, not to their doctors and engineers.

After the collapse of Communism in end 1990, the hapless masses were required to transform themselves into free marketers, entrepreneurs and agriculturists, a herculean task for those where the state controlled everything. Before the masses could learn even the ABC , they were thrown at the mercies of Mafias and corporate .Then big cooperates like Metro , Carrefour etc were allowed in 2006 , the small shop keepers and retailers were stopped in their tracks and had to close shop .

Neo-Liberal Attempts in India for SDI in Retail must be Resisted and Stopped.

The western retailer's chains were not interested in promoting agriculture in Romania and had earlier closed its fine textiles manufacturing and readymade export business, creating misery and unemployment all around. The consumer is happy to begin with, buying vegetables imported in winter from Holland, Spain, Turkey, Syria and even Jordan .After monopoly control, the consumers feel the pain too ,like the local producers .But it too late

Ceausescu; the most influential leader in Romanian history; Soros Poll 2007

A Soros Public Opinion Barometer made public in end 2007 showed that Romanians put Nicolai Ceausescu as the most influential leader in Romanian history ahead of post Ceausescu era leaders like presidents Basescu and Ion Iliescu, as well as Kings Carol I and Mihai I and others .Although after capture of Ceausescus and their Kangaroo Court trial and murder , the authorities did not disclose the place ( in Bucharest where he is buried ) but poor and misery laden people have traced it and regularly place flowers and candles at the supposed tombs of the Ceausescu couple .

After a year's stay in Bucharest in end 1998, I had written the article below on Romania under capitalism and globalization, the buzz words then.

ROMANIANS' AMERICAN DREAM COMES UNSTUCK

TRANSITION IN POST- CEAUSESCU ROMANIA

(Published slightly edited by Khaleej Times as Romania's Capitalist Dream Turns into Nightmare 3 January, 1999)

Like Count Dracula, if Romanian dictator Nikolai Ceausescu could rise from the dead, he would not complain about his comrades executing him after a sham trial. He would understand that, but letting US and Capitalist symbols pollute Romania , known as Dacia in ancient days, for even under communism, recourse to its national past and a Foreign policy diverging from Communist block provided acceptance and the underpinning for his regime .The symbols of victorious power, glittering neon lights of Coca Cola. KGC, MacDonald's, and even Sony and Daewoo would have hastened his return to the nether world.

Western media led by Radio Liberty and Free Europe during the Cold War had convinced most Romanians that they were the lost Christian brothers whom West wanted to liberate from the tyrannical and atheist communist regime .Those who could go to the West returned with glowing stories of freedom and of shops full of undreamt goodies. To counteract this, when his regime televised a Hollywood soap opera to highlight Western decadence, Romanians instead took it that once they had democracy and capitalism everyone would live in luxury with only board-room and bedroom battles to take care off and life would be a round of night clubs, casino bars, soda fountains and bowling alleys. But the reality has turned out to be very bitter, harsh and brutal leaving them confused and disoriented, selfish and even unfriendly.

It was preached and fervently hoped that market driven economy will usher in unlimited prosperity. Yes, for 5/6 % of the population, (who live as in European Union and think Euro-currency); wheeler dealers and unscrupulous smart Alecs, most entrenched in power since Communist era, exploiting old party networks and newly elected ones. But for the majority, victims of a free fall of 40/% in GDP since 1990, life is a dreary unmitigated misery with falling employment, rising inflation .Pensions of retired professors military officers, engineers have been reduced to $50 per month while prices are at par with West Europe .Yes, the shops are full of imported goods but, only to watch for the majority. And the country is now aglitter with symbols of victorious superpower and its ideology instead of huge wall sized posters of a youthful looking Nicolai Ceausescu staring at you. Romanians can have passports for the asking but get no visas. They are unwanted in West and if they do reach there are promptly deported back. An industrialized Romania is fast getting Africanized into an exporter of semi-finished goods .Social engineering in reverse has reduced a socialist middle class and intellectual elite to penury and starvation. Yes, there is a democratic constitution, multiparty system, liberal and global economy

Being the most Stalinist regime with an omnipresent Securitate force (most still in place .A health Minister, an ex- Securitate informer, was made to resign) no dissent or alternate leadership emerged as in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary. So the same old nomenklatura controls the levers of power .State enterprises are run as personal fiefs as in the past. Barring transfer of flats to tenants (more than 80% of population lives in flats built during Ceausescu era) for nominal sums to win the elections, until end 1996, under President Iliescu there was not even a pretense of reforms. So there is little change in old economic structures. There is a 'dog in the manger' policy. Incapable of handling complex business and industrial activity they would not let others in. Foreigners want to buy it cheap, perhaps sometimes true, but the cash gobbling inefficiently run enterprises with massive current account deficits are corroding the entrails of national economy while apparatchiks are eating into national wealth and undermining future prosperity.

Except for those from foreign trade ministry and state export enterprises the rest had no idea at all of how to trade, run a business or industry. So they are learning by doing -the hard way. Many set up rows after rows of snack shops, Casino bars and kiosks selling the same soft drinks, beer and hard liquors with fancy names like Sheriffs, Texas , Hollywood , Bingo Pall-mall or Chez Gabi. But unlike Hollywood serials there are few customers. Many which had opened with great fanfare and glittering facades have downed shutters. Now deserted and abandoned along with silent and rusting industries they have become symbols of the vanquished in the Cold War. And living examples of Romanians' American dream come unstuck.

Since last two years the so called reform coalitions are perpetually squabbling in and out of Parliament, fighting for jobs for their cronies (govt servants can be party members) Barring few, professors like President Constantinescu and others who are hapless and ineffective, others have joined in the privatization of public assets into their own names or their friends and relatives with everyone looking for a fast buck. There is little transparency in privatization or elsewhere leading to unfair practices. With insider trading the stock exchange has become moribund. Even in acute economic austerity, a minister wanted to order Bell Helicopters for $ 2 Billion, even embarrassing USA .When accused of kickbacks he fished out the draft contract on TV showing that it did not include any commission clause. President's own Security chief was involved in large scale systematic smuggling of aircrafts full of contra-band cigarettes through a military airport. A well meaning President and Prime Minister, another professor, unable to comprehend, lacking the will or resolution prefers travelling abroad to avoid facing problems at home...

There is little regulation and rule of law. The swindling of life savings of millions in get rich quick pyramid scheme in Club up North with the regime's connivance if not participation are living examples. But lotteries still do a thriving business. Mafias attracted from Italy , Greece , and Turkey and elsewhere have linked up with officials and are spreading its tentacles. Little has been done to establish property laws, banking regulations or stock market, a necessity for the Milton and system of laissez faire. The banks are being used to enrich the politicians and their cronies. Visas are difficult even for businessmen because some Romanian diplomats trade in them. The first interface for visitors and tourists are the taxi drivers of Bucharest , always ready to make a killing, Reasonable cabbies charge only four times, many extorting $100 from the airport for a $10 trip. And there is no recourse or law the establishment seems to imply OK you wanted freedom, democracy and capitalism. You have it.

Romania started with many natural and built in advantages to soften the pains of transition to market economy. It has a strategic location on Black Sea for NATO and as cross roads for trade between energy rich Caspian countries and Europe . Almost self sufficient in oil and gas unlike its neighbors, Romania has rich agriculture land and was known as the "bread basket' of the Balkans. But now only 60% of the land is cultivated. Land ownership laws have not been passed nor land distributed with collective farm mangers from the past making hay. Romanian wheat is more expansive than from neighboring Hungary. Except for a few summer months when some vegetables and fruits sprout from rich fertile soil, year round even beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and other simple fruits and vegetables are imported from Holland , Greece , Turkey , Spain , or Italy .

The massive tourist infrastructure built by Ceausescu is being eroded, dismantled and destroyed fast. In the absence of maintenance, hotels parceled among cronies, are falling apart but rents are at par with West Europe which discourages businessmen and keeps tourists away from Romania 's legendary fresco painted churches and monasteries, scenic sights, Black Sea beaches and winter holiday resorts. And now with economies collapsing in ASEAN, Russia and elsewhere, investors are wary of investing any where, more so in Romania. Still inspite of many problems, because of big market of 23 million and hopes to join NATO and EU, it offers good opportunities for investors. Imports from the Gulf, are on the increase with many Iranians and Arabs doing retail business. There are over two hundred thousand Muslims mostly of Tatar and Turkish origin, whose freedoms were more or less suppressed during the Communist era. But they are now much freer to worship and getting organized .So are the Gypsies, who were persecuted earlier. With their inborn flair for trade they are doing exceedingly well in marketing of flowers, vegetables and fruits. But there is a growing emergence of racism against Arabs and Asians and anti-Semitism, for the latter Romania was known even in the past but it had been kept in check under communism

Unfortunately the most devastating development with long term consequences is the precipiticious fall in educational standards. Romania was rightly proud of its exacting high standards in technical and medical education and tens of thousands mostly from Arab countries but even from the West and USA used to study in its polytechnics and universities. But shrinking budgets for education leave little money for labs or books with Professor's salaries declining to $100 per month. Life is a struggle and there is little teaching .Instead teachers try to earn money otherwise and elsewhere neglecting their duties .So the new engineering and medical graduates might be literate but will be uneducated. Similarly health and culture, with a very high reputation in music, ballet and theater, have also suffered. With no role models and no discipline or regulation, the young have taken to enjoying themselves. More than 60% failed their high school examinations. Tall, slim and beautiful , some stunningly so, a result of multiethnic mixture ,the new generation presents a pleasing sight ; the effervescence of sheer youth, joie de vivre bubbling up after decades of communist uniformity and drabness .If any one wanted , like in Venezuela , one beauty Queen after another could be chiseled out year after year.

Indo Romanian Relations

Traditionally Romanians have been fascinated by India ,its history, culture, religion and spirituality .Over centuries thousands of Indian classics or books on India have been translated .Rabindra Nath Tagore, who visited Romania in 1926 is a household name. Sanskrit has been taught at Universities since last century. Poets and intellectuals like M.Eminescu, M.Eliade and S.Al-George have brought Indian philosophy, religion, art, history and poetry to Romania and acted as interpreters to the West. The Indian Embassy has done a splendid job in keeping the flame of Indian culture alive by holding seminars, exhibitions, publication of books with a bust of Tagore having been recently unveiled at the prestigious National Theater.

But the new generation is Western consumer oriented. The story of Dr Amita Bose, who had taught Sanskrit, Bengali and Indian culture in Bucharest for twenty years is a tragic example. In the new era she was confident and enthusiastic to do even more, but the authorities under the spoils system dismissed her without much ado and appointed instead one of her own but inadequate pupils. Heartbroken, Dr Bose died soon after, unwanted in her country of adoption and unsung in India, whose cultural ambassador she had become. But she has left behind thousands of students, many still pursuing Sanskrit studies and Indian philosophy. But one wonders if some who after a few years of Sanskrit and philosophy translate Gaeta and other India classics into Romanian do it for love or to earn publishers royalties.

India always had a strong economic relationship with Romania, which helped her in oil and refining industry in 1950s. Romania was a major buyer of iron ore and supplier of urea, chemicals and steel products. Inspire of many problems , because of its location ,a big market of 23 million and a candidate for NATO and EU, it offers good opportunities to Indians to invest in pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals, furniture ,textiles, steel, petrochemicals and fertilizers (with 30 million tons of refining capacity). Currently India is a major buyer of Romanian products which at US$ 177 million in 1996 ($239 million in 95), were more than its combined exports to China , Japan and Korea or total exports to Latin America . But there are unnecessary hurdles in grant of visas to Indian businessmen, simply because some Romanian diplomats were trading in visas in its missions in Amman and Bonn etc. During Ceausescu era Romania always supported India on Kashmir but now it takes an equivocal stand, not on merits but perhaps to please USA , while it badly treats its own Hungarian minority in Transylvania, even objecting to setting up a Hungarian language university.

While it took communism 50 years to discredit itself (and 80 years in Russia) unbridled capitalism let loose on hapless and unprepared populace has done so here in 8 years only, which could make capitalism the most tortuous and hardest path from Communism to authoritarianism or worse. Romanians continue to suffer as they have done throughout history, ever obedient to the powerful. The youth who had sparked the 1989 December spontaneous revolution, stolen by the older nomenclature, have lost faith and become disheartened. Not that people want communism back, but there is nostalgia for Ceausescu among the elderly who miss the social equality and security system; almost free medical aid, subsidised food and housing Regrettably the Capitalist world glorying in the defeat of Communism has proved to be very short sighted and has been hypnotized by its own propaganda of the victory and efficacy of Capitalism

Of course unlike after the WWII there was no alternative political and economic system to frighten the USA and thus there was no Marshal Plan. (And the money? considering the cost in East Germany alone!) Also it is doubtful if it would have succeeded everywhere in the absence of a receptive economic soil. (How money seeped out from Russia) It takes a generation and more to establish respect and obedience for laws on property, commerce, banking, stock exchange and to have the requisite economic institutions and infrastructure in place. With the very concept of capitalism as panacea for all being questioned now, even in the West, because of its collapse even after its prescriptions were followed under IMF tutelage in South East Asia for decades and its being in trouble even in Korea, Japan, Brazil, it could only further strengthen the suffocating control of the old guard in Romania and elsewhere taking a cue from Prime Ministers Mahathir, Primakov and others. While Bill Clinton and Parrot quibble about a few thousands jobs in election debates , West expects reformers or former Communists turned 'democrats and free marketers ' to let millions down the poverty line-only a dip in the prosperity curve drawn by Business school shock therapists - and get re-elected democratically. It is not an easy dilemma for most former communist's states. The least the West ought to have done and can still do is to organize and implement a massive' Marshal Plan 'for training and retraining of managerial cadres.

K.Gajendra Singh; Bucharest, Romania. 18 December , 1998

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/08/amb-rtd-k-gajendra-singh-cv-post.html

Post Bretton Woods; Emerging Outlines of New International Monetary Order

2012-01-29T10:56:00.001-08:00

Post Bretton Woods; Emerging Outlines of New International Monetary Order

Petrol Bourses are Modern Silk Routes

"History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role", Leo Tolstoy

"Keynes's collective work amounted to a powerful argument that capitalism was by its very nature unstable and prone to collapse. Far from trending toward some magical state of equilibrium, capitalism would inevitably do the opposite. It would lurch over a cliff," --- Hyman Minsky.

In 1960s, while returning from Algiers by boat via Marseilles, I found that the French shop keepers were very reluctant to accept US dollars, preferring Algerian Dinars .It was said that the French were converting their reserves of US dollars into gold .Why were the French and president Gen De Gaulle doing so! ( It became clear by 1971)

Because at the end of WWII in 1944, agreements were drawn up at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA to establish a new monetary management system to avoid worldwide economic disasters like the great depression experienced in the 1930's. Under this agreement the International Monetary Fund was set up along with the World Bank. Both the institutions have been used to maintain and expand US financial hegemony around the world.

Bretton Woods established the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world, replacing the British pound sterling and required world currencies to be pegged to the dollar rather than gold.

The demise of Bretton Woods began in 1971 when Richard Nixon took the US off of the Gold Standard to stem the outflow of gold. But the dollar has remained a 'fiat currency," backed by nothing but the promise of the US federal government." But the 1971 US action, referred to as the Nixon shock, created a situation in which the United States dollar remains the sole backing of currencies and a reserve currency for the member states.

Thus USA which had promised an ounce of Gold for US$ 35 went back on its international commitment , causing loss to those who held US dollars and not gold as reserves .So do not be surprised if Washington devalues $ or even refuses to reimburse trillions of dollars of debt , many countries hold in US dollar denominated securities .

In any case by 1976 the principles of Bretton Woods were abandoned all together and the world currencies again became free floating. But Bretton Woods remains an important template for forex traders.

At the Bretton Woods II conference in New Hampshire in April last year funded by US speculator billionaire George Soros , who finances regime changes in US favour , he admitted that "The big question is whether the U.S. dollar should be the reserve currency; and, added that in fact, it no longer is." The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University professor, and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank admitted that the US dollar as the reserve currency is hurting the entire world. The US Federal Reserve has failed, and inequality in the US was reaching a tipping point that hurts the economy and society, with policymakers sending the US further in the wrong direction.

Stieglitz who also chairs the U.N. General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, has argued for "a global reserve currency and called for a new "global system," saying the current one is "fundamentally unfair because it means that poor countries are lending to the U.S. at close to zero interest rates.""

During the last few years many countries including the five BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have held many meetings including at the summit level and called "for a restructuring of the World War II-era global financial system and an eventual end to the long reign of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency."

Petrodollars; US-Ibn Saud dynasty nexus;

Since the 1930s after the discovery of oil in the Arab peninsula, a critical development in the history of oil industry, there is the nexus between US and Saudi Arabia and a compact between the Saudi ruling elite and the puritan Wahabis, to handover the peninsula's oil wealth and revenues for western exploitation and benefit in return for protection to the Saud dynasty. This nexus has stood the test of time between successive Saudi and US governments. Washington has done everything to maintain the feudal regime in power, a regime which controls "the largest family business" in the world and lacks any popular mandate. ( It has not stopped Riyadh from interfering in other nations affairs across the Muslim world for greater freedoms and 'democracy 'i.e. in Syria , earlier in Libya etc)

This nexus began with first Franklin Roosevelt, then Dwight Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter to George H.W. Bush. Declared Roosevelt after meeting Saudi Arabia's king aboard a warship in 1945, "I hereby find that the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." Carter, in 1980, put it even more forcefully: "Let our position be absolutely clear. Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States." It was clear even before WWII that oil had become the vital strategic commodity for expanding military and economic clout .During WWII, the Nazis occupied Romania for its oil and went for the oil fields in Azerbaijan, both countries then big oil producers.

Even a major reason for the partition of Hindustan was to protect western oil wells in the Middle East. Late Indian diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila in his well researched book 'The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition', documents how the British leadership across the political spectrum , Conservatives and Labour , intrigued ,told lies , divided the Indian subcontinent and created a weak state of Pakistan which would be reliant on the West. Because Mahatma Gandhi with this opposition to violence and war, and emphasis on peaceful means to resolve all disputes and Jawaharlal Nehru with his non-real politic idealism and vision of creating friendship and understanding among colonized and exploited people of Asia, Africa, Middle east and elsewhere, would not join Western military pacts to protect from the Soviet Union, the oil wells in the Middle East dominated by Western oil companies.

Washington backed its commitment to protect Saudi Arabia with military treaties reaching into the Middle East. Apart from NATO and CENTO, U.S. military bases are stretched into east Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf to protect ME oil. Then came the Rapid Deployment Force and the U.S. Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet, now based in Bahrain. The 1991 Gulf War led to a massive expansion of the U.S. military presence in the region, including putting US troops on sacred Saudi soil, a major cause of anguish and deep resentment among conservative Muslims, specially the likes of the recently assassinated Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida and other such outfits.

Then came the 2003 illegal US led invasion of Iraq for its oil , publicly proclaimed by powerful deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and others like Alan Greenspan .The invasion and brutal occupation has resulted in the death of over a million Iraqis , devastated the people ,divided and destroyed the state .But the outcome has been discomforting and to the contrary .The fierce Iraqi resistance has 'broken the US army' on the ground , making Washington to think many times to land large body of troops elsewhere. A Shia led pro-Tehran elite now controls Baghdad .Thus Iran's position has been strengthened against which Washington has developed a visceral hatred since West's gendarme in the region ,Shah of Iran was ousted in 1979 and US diplomats in Tehran Embassy held hostage .

All efforts are now being made to weaken Iran, directly or by weakening its allies; the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Assad regime in Damascus. But Russia and China are offering strong resistance, especially Moscow, against regime change of its ally Bashar Assad in Syria, since it will adversely affect its strategic position in the Mediterranean after the loss of Libyan ports. Washington with Saudi (and Qatari) finances has been exploiting the revolt of Arabs in north Africa against US puppet rulers of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere by promoting Muslim Brotherhood and other religious groups, as it has always done ie against nationalist and socialist regimes of Nasser in 1950s and 1960s and recently Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammer Gaddafi in Libya.

US remains determined that the business and trade in petroleum and gas is carried out and nominated in dollars, not only by Saudi Arabia but other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as ordained but by others too. It is this template which acts as the spine for dollar as the reserve currency. But major changes are emerging.

Shifting of Economic Power from West to Asia

John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist of $9 billion strong Sprott Asset Management, said last year "When you look at the financial condition of the United States at the federal level, at the state level and at the municipal level, I don't see any way out of this. There's too much debt, interest rates are far too low. If interest rates really reflected what's going on, this risk in the debt and the risk of inflation, they would be hundreds of basis points higher and under that event the debt couldn't be serviced. So there will be some form of default."

Financial Times (London) warned last year that the US dollar will lose its status as the reserve currency in 25 years and would be replaced by a portfolio of currencies according to a survey of central bank reserve managers who collectively control more than $8,000 billion, unlike in the past when they said the dollar would retain its status as the sole reserve currency. -- The dollar would be replaced by a portfolio of currencies within the next 25 years. Central banks have bought about 151 tons of gold so far this year, led by Russia and Mexico, according to the World Gold Council, and are on track to make their largest annual purchases of bullion since the collapse in 1971 of the Bretton Woods system, which pegged the value of the dollar to gold. The Yellow metal

Would be the best performing asset class over the next year, citing sovereign defaults as the chief risk to the global economy.

US debt now amounts to over $ 14 trillion , equal to its GDP .Even in this GDP , the financial industry contributes 40%.The US economy is now 20-25 % of world GDP unlike 50% after WWII and is being artificially sustained by a stimulus of $ 2.8 trillion .There are no green shoots of revival , unemployment continues to rise . US economy remains in recession .The 1930s recession was overcome by WWII which allowed its protected ( from war) industry to run full steam and indebt European and other countries .With many industries disappearing or in decline , even the automobile one ,the US economic downhill can only worsen.

For the first time ever, the United States lost its perfect credit rating as Standard & Poor's reduced its long-term debt assessment in August last year from AAA to AA+ with a negative outlook.

In announcing the move, the ratings agency said a deal that week to reduce the nation's debt did not go far enough and exposed paralyzing political dysfunction. The downgrade could cost the government and ordinary consumers billions of dollars by jacking up interest rates the U.S. must pay on its $14.4 trillion debt and a host of rates consumers pay for items such as mortgages, car loans and credit cards.

Has the Critical moment of Paradigm Shift Arrived

In an article of 26 October, 2011, titled 'The End of the American Era', Prof Stephen M. Walt stated that 'THE AMERICAN ERA' began immediately after World War II. Europe may have been the center of international politics for over three centuries, but two destructive world wars decimated these great powers. So is USA in many wars .Paul Kennedy's best-selling Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, had argued in 1985 that America was in danger of "imperial overstretch." He believed that Great Britain returned to the unseemly ranks of mediocrity because it spent too much money defending far-flung interests and fighting costly wars, and he warned that the United States was headed down a similar path.

A new Reserve currency to challenge the dollar – What's really going on in the Straits of Hormuz.

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2012/01/a-new-reserve-currency-to-challenge-the-dollar-whats-really-going-on-in-the-straits-of-hormuz/

Speculation and talk about a Settlement or Reserve Currency has been going for quite some time, especially in the last few years. David Malone, author of the "The Debt Generation" has focused considerable attention on the financial systems. The Settlement Currency just means the currency both parties agree is stable, internationally trusted and accepted, and in plentiful supply which may not be the case for their own currencies. China and some other countries want to challenge the US and dollar hegemony with the eventual goal of creating an alternative reserve currency backed by gold rather than the dollar or by debt. These countries have been buying lots of gold and include Russia, China and India among others .They are talking about the need for a new reserve currency to replace the dollar.

Malone noted media reports that India was talking to Iran about moving out of dollar settlements so as to be able to buy Iranian oil despite a US embargo. India said it was discussing settling payments in Gold since Iran does not buy much from India unlike from China. India has also signed a settlement agreement with China to use the Yuan. China and Russia have been trading directly in their own currencies and using them both interchangeably for settlement for over a year. As the "The China Daily "article reported that Beijing is allowing greater use of its currency for cross-border transactions to reduce reliance on the US dollar, after Premier Wen Jiabao said in March last year that he was "worried" about holdings of assets denominated in the greenbacks.

Then on 26th December 2011 Bloomberg reported, Japan and China will promote direct trading of the yen and Yuan without using dollars and will encourage the development of a market for companies involved in the exchanges. China is Japan's largest trading partner. Japan will also start in 2012 buying Chinese debts. How much Dollar debt will either of them buy? They have both already been buying less.

On Dec.28 last year the Iranian news service reported that Iran and China signed two agreements on expansion of trade ties and joint investments. These trades too will not be settled in Dollars or in Euros.

"The China Post" reported that on the last day of 2011, US President Obama had signed a new law imposing sanctions on banks dealing with Iran….Sanctioned institutions would be frozen out of U.S. financial markets. But as the article went on to report, with only barely concealed delight, the threat may be as hollow as the dollar itself. The law comes with exemptions which may eventually highlight America's plight rather than its might.

"The Iranian oil embargo blowback "

While events and changes have been taking place as do all major historical movements and changes, perhaps the US and EU decision to put more sanctions against Iran and for EU not to buy Iran oil from July may be one of the straws that breaks the US Camel of Dollar Reserve Currency .Iran is an important oil supplier to emerging Asian countries like China, Japan, South Korea and India.

India whose prime minister committed Indians of deep love for George Bush, a few years ago, as a result of one harmful policy after another against India by Washington, finding its back stretched has decided that New Delhi, faced with difficulties to make payment by banks for Iranian oil will even settle the accounts in gold bullion, according to media reports including one close to Israel.

Veteran journalist Pepe Escobar puts it colourfully in his Asia Times column "The Iranian oil embargo blowback ";

"Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, "Unilateral sanctions don't help matters". The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, exercising immense tact, nevertheless was unmistakable; "To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches."

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, "We have very good relations with Iran, and we are putting much effort into renewing Iran's talks with the 5+1 [Iran Six - the United Nations Security Council permanent members plus Germany] mediators' group. Turkey will continue looking for a peaceful solution to the issue."

BRICS member India - alongside Russia and China - also dismissed sanctions. South Korea and Japan will inevitably extract exemptions from the Barack Obama administration.

All across Eurasia trade is fast moving away from the US dollar. The Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone, crucially, also means that Asia is slowly disengaging itself from Western banks.

The movement may be led by China - but it's irreversibly transnational. Once again, follow the money. BRICS members China and Brazil started bypassing the US dollar on trade in 2007. BRICS members Russia and China did the same in 2010. Japan and China - the top two Asian giants - did the same only last month.

Only last week, Saudi Arabia and China rolled out a project for a giant oil refinery in the Red Sea. And India more or less secretly is deciding to pay for Iranian oil in gold - even bypassing the current middleman, a Turkish bank.

Asia wants a new international system - and it's working for it. Inevitable long-term consequences; the US dollar - and, crucially, the petrodollar - slowly drifting into irrelevance. "Too Big to Fail" may turn out to be not a categorical imperative, but an epitaph." concluded Escobar.

Under US pressure ,EU declared economic war in the form of an Iranian oil embargo , beginning July , never mind many of their refineries are suited to light Iranian oil , although Libya can make up for some of the loss, the only thing the invaders have set right since Gaddafi lynching . Libya remains chaotic, with torture and strong trends towards a possible civil war, showing that West was only interested in stealing Libyan oil, having earlier gulped its assets in Western banks.

Against ill thought bluff moves, chess players in Iran have acted fast. The Majlis (Iranian parliament) is discussing the matter of sanctions and EU embargo on 29 January and may decide to cancel right away all oil exports to any European country that approved the embargo .A member of Parliament Nasser Soudani: declared "Europe will burn in the fire of Iran's oil wells."

Wrote Ambassador M.K.Bhadrakumar in his recent blog;

"The week ahead promises to be of momentous importance for the Middle East - and for international security. Two templates are overlapping in Tehran. One, Iran's Majlis is voting today on a legislation to put embargo on oil exports to Europe w.e.f coming week. The indications are that the law will sail through and may forthwith secure the approval of the Guardian Council.

Iran's retaliation has huge implications for international security. Put simply, we are all wading into unchartered waters. There is high probability of a chain reaction with oil price skyrocketing. The analysts have only been dabbling in the subject, as the latest disclosure by Reuters from Tehran suggests.

"The Reuters report says that all European companies with pending oil contracts with Iran are going to be hit. For Italy's Eni, for instance, the buyback contracts are worth $1.5 billion. Again, around 70 refineries in Europe will need to be shut down if the light, 'sweet' crude from Iran is unavailable. So, it all goes far beyond a matter of shortages in crude supply that Saudi Arabia can somehow make up.

Significantly, Saudi FM Prince Saud Al-Faisal has been quoted as saying that there is no 'binding decision' by the GCC countries in response to the EU's sanctions against Iran and adding, most interestingly, that they will only defer to decisions made by the UN. The FM underscored the importance of a "balanced market" for oil.

Riyadh is obviously having a multitude of considerations, which certainly includes Saudi Arabia's long-term relationship with Iran and the logic of geography that places the two countries as neighbours. Prince Faisal was speaking on the sidelines of a GCC-Turkey conference in Istanbul on Saturday where Turkish FM Ahmed Davutoglu categorically distanced his country from sanctions against Iran.

Meanwhile, the IAEA inspectors have arrived in Tehran. Iran's dialogue with the IAEA is resuming after a gap of 3 years. Most western assessments are already pessimistic about the prospects of the talks, while Iranian FM Ali Akbar Salehi has sounded hopeful.

The IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano, ominously, has dimension "to Iran's nuclear programme. Unlike Mohammed ElBaradei, who had a mind of his own, Amano holds the American brief and seems to be working toward the objective of referring Iran to the UN Security Council.

Ironically, he acknowledges that he has no proof in hand that there is any military content to Iran's nuclear programme. Equally, the renowned former IAEA director Hans Blix has suggested that there is still room for diplomacy.

But if the intention is to browbeat Iran, the inspectors aren't going to get anywhere. The supreme leader's advisor and elder statesman Ali Akbar Velayati has forewarned that Iran won't blink. Tehran is on guard that the IAEA inspectors are possibly holding a western brief. Velayati said:"We [Iran] have always been open with regard to our nuclear issues and the IAEA team coming to Iran can make the necessary inspections. We will, however, not withdraw from our nuclear rights as we have consistently acted within international regulations and in line with the laws of the non-proliferation treaty. Furthermore, wherever Iran has any nuclear activities, the IAEA cameras have constant monitoring ,adds Amb Bhadrakumar.

If EU hopes that Saudi Arabia will bail out , whatever the spin in Western corporate media – Riyadh does not have the spare capacity. Saudis will be happy with higher prices is high oil prices, as they have indicated ,to bribe - apart from repressing - its own population into forgetting about Arab revolts against US puppets in Arab states in north Africa and Yemen. It is likely that the Europeans will be compelled to buy oil at higher prices indirectly through intermediaries. This will hit Club Med countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece, having little time to find a possible alternative to Iran's light, high-quality crude. Greece - already facing the abyss - has been buying heavily discounted oil from Iran. The oil embargo may even precipitating a Greek government bond default - and have even cascading effect in the Euro-zone (Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain – and even beyond)

Reaction to sanctions and embargo

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, "Unilateral sanctions don't help matters". Foreign Ministry in Beijing, said "To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches."

Even Turkey which has been cajoled and enticed into supporting Saudi policies by Yesil Surmaye aka Green Money from Riyadh since 2001 , finds that its Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu policy of 'Zero friction with neighbours ' has ended in tensions with all its neighbours and the passage of Armenian genocide bill in French Parliament . Davutoglu, who recently visited Tehran to sort out differences said "We have very good relations with Iran, and we are putting much effort into renewing Iran's talks with the 5+1 [Iran Six - the United Nations Security Council permanent members plus Germany] mediators' group. Turkey will continue looking for a peaceful solution to the issue."

BRICS member India - alongside Russia and China – is opposed to sanctions according the media including a website close to Israel. India will keep buying Iranian oil and paying in rupees or even in gold. After being led by the noose and hood winked by Washington on Indo-US Nuclear Treaty which has given no freedom from NSG regime or access to advanced technology, not allowed to work out an energy security policy with Iran and others, New Delhi is moving away from total obedience to Washington, since the replacement of a policeman National Security Adviser by a strategic expert.

Oil Bourses

West controls the oil trade via three current oil markers , all US dollar denominated: North America's West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI), North Sea Brent Crude, and the UAE Dubai Crude. The two major oil bourses are the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) in New York City and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in London & Atlanta.

US led west and its oil companies manipulate oil prices .Now the stimulus of over three trillion dollars is used to play around the stocks in the world and use this vast almost interest free sum for speculating in commodities and oil .Energy expert and economist William Engdahl has proved clearly, how a large portion of high oil prices paid by the world goes into the pockets of western speculators who have free access to massive funds from US and allied banks.

A defiant president Saddam Hussein of Iraq had converted in 2000, all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to Euros. When U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD .It is now clear that the invasion of Iraq had little threat from Saddam's so called WMD program but with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.

Iran has been planning its own independent oil bourse since 2005 .In middle ages when trade was mostly done by caravans along Silk Routes , the empires vied with each other to control them and fought wars (See War Over Silk Routes and Petro-Bourses: Would History Repeat Itself ?) http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2010/08/war-over-silk-routes-and-petro-bourses.html

The Iranian Oil Bourse in Kish took some time to develop as a Petro bourse ,a fourth oil market, denominated by the Iranian rial, the euro and other major currencies. It opened for business on February 17, 2008, a joint venture between Iranian ministries, the Iran Mercantile Exchange and other state and private institutions. It is located at the Persian Gulf island of Kish and is designated by Iran as a free trade zone.

During 2007, Iran asked its petroleum customers to pay in non US dollar currencies. By December 8, 2007, Iran was reported to have converted all of its oil export payments to non-dollar currencies. The Kish Bourse was opened in a videoconference ceremony on February 17, 2008, despite last minute disruptions to the internet services to the Persian Gulf regions.

According to Iran's Press TV, Iran's international oil bourse was officially inaugurated in July 2011. The opening ceremony was attended by Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Economy Minister Shamseddin Husseini, and Caretaker of the Oil Ministry Mohammad Aliabadi.

National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was expected to offer 600,000 barrels of heavy crude oil for sale on the first day launch of the bourse. Ali Akbar Hashemian, the managing director of Iran Mercantile Exchange, said the NIOC planned to offer 50,000 barrels of Iran's crude on the bourse on a regular daily basis, once all the necessary requirements are satisfied. Iran, OPEC's second-largest oil producer, has the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia.

Conclusion

US led West and the world itself is entering an unknown territory. The only definite outcome is the reduction and perhaps elimination of US led Western hegemony since WWII and almost a rogue elephant like run in the world since the Fall of the Berlin Wall .But how long will it take US to be reduced in influence and economic and military reach !The first shoe fell in September 2008 .

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19656.htm

When will the second shoe fall?

Let me conclude with a historic parallel .After centuries of warfare, both the Byzantine and Persian empires collapsed .The Soviet empire collapsed in 1990s. Is it now the turn of the US led Western hegemony!

In end 1993 , along with six ambassadors resident in Ankara I flew to Baku , capital of Azerbaijan , to present our first letters of credence to president Haidar Aliev , a former senior member of the Soviet Politburo , from Azerbaijan After the letters ceremony and calls on ministers , I called on resident ambassadors in Baku .The new US embassy was quite large and imposing , the British, smaller undergoing renovation; the Israeli , extensive extensions and renovation .

But I was in for a shock when I called on the Russian ambassador, who's Residence, consisted of a couple of rooms in an Intourist hotel. Russians were the masters of Azerbaijan till it broke away a few years earlier.

The point I want to make is that the Russians who lorded over Azerbaijan till recently were reduced to such straits that its Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary was confined to a suite in a two star hotel you find near old Delhi Railway station .But this kind of thing is not new in history . After all USSR had lost the Cold War , which was a tabletop nuclear war exercise between the two mighty adversaries .Moscow just could not match huge sums Washington poured into military expenditure . Washington now spends over US$ 700 billion for its defense and over $ One Trillion in all on National Security according to Chris Hellmen in Tomgram.

Ambassador (retd) K.Gajendra Singh 30 January, 2012.Mayur Vihar, Delhi

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/08/amb-rtd-k-gajendra-singh-cv-post.html

Why Washington is opposed to Vladimir Putin election as Russian President

2012-01-12T05:09:00.001-08:00

Why Washington is opposed to Vladimir Putin election as Russian President

There seems to be no limit to Washington's idiocy in international relations, when clearly as a premier economic power US is declining fast and like a seriously diseased patient, on drip, just about surviving. Yes , it spends over $ 700 billion on defense at the behest of military and energy combine underpinned by corrupt financiers and bankers , who benefit .American people be damned .Like a rogue beast it goes around damaging nations and threatening everyone around the world .Yes ,it still has great destructive power with Iran in its sights since 2003 .But US and Israel would not remain unscathed of the terrible consequences . It is not 1945 and WE or Israel would not get away using nukes against a non-nuke state. Not only would the Muslim world including Saudi Street, the whole world not tolerate such an action.

US debt equals its GDP and has a trade deficit of $500 billion and survives only by increasing its debt to other nations including China , whom it treats as an adversary with regular menaces .To counter the US a financial bully , because the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement made US dollar the reserve currency by mid 1950s ,which Washington is manipulating and exploiting with IMF and the World Bank help guard US interests ,many nations like China, Russia, Iran ,India ,Brazil ,Venezuela among others are making arrangements for settlement of bilateral trade in their own currencies thus avoiding the use of US dollar as reserve currency . Apart from Iraq's oil which Washington coveted , Saddam Hussein's decision not to sell oil in US dollars was an unforgivable act for US loot to continue , so the illegal US invasion of Iraq and its destruction .Not that US has been able to exploit Iraq oil .

USA has destroyed international law and Human rights and Geneva conventions, beginning with George Bush who soon after election tore up more international treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world in past 20 years. Former president Billy Carter, a respected elder statesman moaned in the Washington Post as early as September 2002 that, "formerly admired almost universally as the pre-eminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life." Since then US along with poodle England and now Sarcozy have broken innumerable treaties and conventions.

Caught in the Iraqi quagmire, US had to withdraw its forces from Iraq. It had little choice .Ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, decorated Marine Col Murtha had said in end 2005 that the US army in Iraq was 'broken, worn out' and would be withdrawn. It is not an exact parallel but the people of USSR and its military had destroyed 80% of Nazi war machine , but the Anglo-Saxons by false narratives and helped by propaganda and films like 'The longest day' ,'Gen Patton' etc have fooled the people that US alone won the war . It is lie.

It is the people of Iraq and their resistance against the occupation which brought the US ground forces to its knees and leading to the withdrawal of US troops .For history of Iraq invasion and brutal occupation see here.

As for the situation in Afghanistan, where US wants to hang on to the bases in non-Pushtun areas , likely to come under the control of the former Northern Alliance , the backbone of president Hamid Karzai's power base, Washington is now pathetically dependent to supply its troops in Afghanistan via northern routes i.e. central Asian republics , whose leaders do not trust Washington .It is to be seen how the fundamental differences in an unequal marriage between Washington and Islamabad , would be resolved for supplies to Afghanistan, now under suspension . A peaceful solution will and can come about only by the consent of all stakeholders, specially the countries in the region.

Faced with terrible economic and other fundamental problems the suffering people of America are protesting daily all over America, but the Nobel Peace (?) Prize Laureate president Obama is now obsessed with his re-election, as the nominee of the corporate interests, who have brought US to this miserable state and finance all presidential candidates. What a galaxy of candidates? The American people deserve better .A busy and humming armament industry US suits the corporate interests. French president Sarcozy also believes and is following US leadership and macho military behavior, in his re-election campaign.

Post Balkan Wall Fall Eurasia

After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, a triumphant US led capitalist West went about dismantling the Union of Socialist Republics and 'induced' Moscow's erstwhile allies in Europe to join NATO. US & NATO forces dismembered the multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual Slav and orthodox Yugoslavia , which with religious and ethnic affinities was strategically closer to Russia .

Using the pretext the 119 attacks on US symbols of economic and military might in New York and Washington, which more and more people are now coming round to believe was an inside job or at best allowed to happen like "Pearl Harbor" which brought US into WWII, Washington, instead of attacking Saudi Arabia and Egypt, from where most of the hijackers originated, first bombed Afghanistan, coercing ally Pakistan into joining it or get bombed to stone age and installed a former UNOCOL consultant Hamid Karzai as the new ruler in Kabul after the Taliban leadership disappeared into Pakistan and northern Alliance marched into Kabul. Then on flimsy grounds US illegally invaded Iraq in 2003 for its oil.

Taking advantage of the unraveling of USSR into many states now in utter disarray, under the pretext of US led 'War on terror' in Afghanistan, Washington acquired bases in the heart of central Asia; in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the last adjoining China's turbulent Turkic speaking Uighur province of Xinjiang.

Washington then organized US franchised (like McDonalds, KFC outlets) street revolutions financed by US non-governmental fronts and organizations, CIA and Washington's envoys in former Russian allies in Europe and in Moscow's near abroad. It succeeded in Serbia (from which Montenegro was detached making it landlocked), Georgia and Ukraine , but failed in Belarus . In Uzbekistan, where the regime change was attempted a few weeks after Kyrgyzstan regime change in March 2005, feisty Islam Karimov expelled the US forces from its base. In Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan ,US puppets were replaced .Georgia was bashed up 3 years ago .Washington is now begging the central Asian states to let supplies go to Afghanistan for its troops .

How West organizes its Franchised Revolutions:

"Elections are a moment of triumph," gloated USA Today after the so called Orange Revolution. It added that " the potential is clear: Ukraine's Orange Revolution was fueled by young voters in Kiev, who created Web sites and wrote rap songs to inspire voters. They ate at the McDonald's off Independence Square and lined up at Coca-Cola kiosks for drinks. The Orange Revolution is the latest in what appears to be a slow trend toward more democracy among the former Soviet republics and satellite states, including Georgia in 2003, Serbia in 2000 and years earlier in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Yes, the same tactics were applied by the US triumphantly in Serbia in 2000 to topple Slobodan Milosevic. Michael Kozak, the US ambassador in Minsk, then sought to emulate the success in elections in Belarus against the authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko, but failed.

There were many write ups in Guardian, Globalsearch and other websites which have documented western agencies' support to such revolutions. According to New Statesman Yushchenko was supported covertly by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Freedom House and George Soros' Open Society Institute, the very entities, which had helped oust Shevardnadze last year. The NED has four affiliate institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). They" provide technical assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide."

"In Ukraine, the NED and its constituent organizations funded Yushchenko's party Nasha Ukraine (Our Ukraine), as well as the Kiev Press Club. Freedom House, along with "The Independent Republican Institute (IRI) "were involved in assessing the "fairness of elections and their results". IRI had its staff in "poll watching" in 9 districts, and local staff in all 25 districts. "There are professionals outside election monitors from bodies such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but the Ukrainian poll, like its predecessors, also featured thousands of local election monitors trained and paid by western groups. ... They also organized exit polls which gave Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed."

Of course, western media and governments are committed to the "Freedom of the Press". They organize exit polls and then feed disinformation into the Western news chain, create and fund "pro-Western", "pro-reform" student groups, who then organize mass displays of civil disobedience. (Read Traynor, in Guardian) "In the Ukraine, the Pora Youth movement ("Its Time") funded by the Soros Open Society Institute is part of that process with more than 10,000 activists. Supported by the Freedom of Choice Coalition of Ukrainian NGOs, Pora is modeled on Serbia's Otpor and Georgia's Kmara. The Freedom of Choice Coalition acts as an Umbrella organization. It is directly supported by the US and British embassies in Kiev as well as by Germany, through the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (a foundation linked to the ruling Social Democrats). For full Ukraine Elections Confirm Rollback of US Hegemony

Russia's Putin a major obstacle against Western domination.

Vladimir Putin remains a major obstacle in US led western policy to continue and lengthen their dominance over the rest of the world. Russia in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to Western hegemony and law of the jungle (beasts –are more considerate in destruction than say US and UK in Iraq).

So the standard lies and propaganda against Putin.

USA with blatant political and financial support tried to organize street revolutions ( as discussed above) in Russia against the recent parliament polls in which Putin's party did badly .But basically these were aimed at stopping Putin becoming president again in March ,2012 .Dr William Engdahl , a world reputed independent journalist, historian and economist , has a very perceptive , detailed and documented essay on the subject below ;

Amb (Retd) K.Gajendra Singh, 12 January ,2012 ,Mayur Vihar, Delhi

Why Washington Wants 'Finito' with Putin

The Shady National Endowment for Democracy & The Prime Agenda of 'Whoever' is Next US President

By F. William Engdahl

January 10, 2012 "BFP" -- Washington clearly wants 'finito' with Russia's Putin as in basta! Or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya–enough! Hillary Clinton and friends have apparently decided Russia's prospective next president, Vladimir Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans. Few however understand why. Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower.

On December 8 several days after election results for Russia's parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin's United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, "The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers."[1]

Putin went on to claim that Clinton's premature comments were the necessary signal to the waiting opposition groups that the US Government would back their protests. Clinton's comments, the seasoned Russian intelligence pro stated, became a "signal for our activists who began active work with the US Department of State." [2]

Major western media chose either to downplay the Putin statement or to focus almost entirely on the claims of an emerging Russian opposition movement. A little research shows that, if anything, Putin was downplaying the degree of brazen US Government interference into the political processes of his country. In this case the country is not Tunisia or Yemen or even Egypt. It is the world's second nuclear superpower, even if it might still be an economic lesser power. Hillary is playing with thermonuclear fire.

Democracy or something else?

No mistake, Putin is not a world champion practitioner of what most consider democracy. His announcement some months back that he and current President Medvedev had agreed to switch jobs after Russia's March 4 Presidential vote struck even many Russians as crass power politics and backroom deal-making. That being said, what Washington is doing to interfere with that regime change is more than brazen and interventionist. The same Obama Administration which just signed into law measures effectively ripping to shreds the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution for American citizens[3] is posing as world supreme judge of others' adherence to what they define as democracy.

Let's examine closely Putin's charge of US interference in the election process. If we look, we find openly stated in their August 2011 Annual Report that a Washington-based NGO with the innocuous name, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is all over the place inside Russia.

The NED is financing an International Press Center in Moscow where some 80 international NGOs can hold press briefings on whatever they choose. They fund numerous "youth advocacy" and leadership workshops to "help youth engage in political activism." In fact, officially they spent more than $2,783,000 in 2010 on dozens of such programs across Russia. Spending for 2011 won't be published until later in 2012. [4]

The NED is also financing key parts of the Russian "independent" polling and election monitoring, a crucial part of being able to claim election fraud. They finance in part the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties "GOLOS." According to the NED Annual Report the funds went "to carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agitation, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of electoral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections."[5]

In September, 2011, a few weeks before the December elections the NED financed a Washington invitation-only conference featuring the Russian "independent" polling organization, the Levada Center. According to NED's own website Levada, another recipient of NED money, [6] had done a series of opinion polls, a standard method used in the West to analyze the feelings of citizens. The polls profiled "the mood of the electorate in the run up to the Duma and presidential elections, perceptions of candidates and parties, and voter confidence in the system of 'managed democracy' that has been established over the last decade."

One of the featured speakers at that Washington conference was Vladimir Kara-Murza, member of the federal council of Solidarnost ("Solidarity"), Russia's democratic opposition movement. He is also "advisor to Duma opposition leader Boris Nemtsov" according to NED. Another speaker came from the right-wing neo-conservative Hudson Institute. [7]

Nemtsov, one of the most prominent of the Putin opposition today is also co-chairman of Solidarnost, a name curiously enough imitated from the Cold War days when the CIA financed the Polish Solidarnosc workers' opposition of Lech Walesa. More on Nemtsov later.
And on December 15, 2011, again in Washington, just as the series of US-supported protests were being launched against Putin, led by Solidarnost and other organizations, the NED held another conference titled, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation Make a Difference? The featured speaker was Tamirlan Kurbanov, who according to the NED, "most recently served as a program officer at the Moscow office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he was involved in developing and expanding the capacities of political and civic organizations; promoting citizen participation in public life, youth engagement in particular." [8] The National Democratic Institute is an arm of the NED.

The shady history of NED

Helping youth engage in political activism is precisely what the same NED did in Egypt over the past several years in the lead up to the toppling of Mubarak. The same NED was instrumental by informed accounts in the US-backed "Color Revolutions" in 2003-2004 in Ukraine and Georgia that brought US-backed pro-NATO surrogates to power. The same NED has been active in promoting "human rights" in Myanmar, in Tibet, and China's oil-rich Xinjiang province. [9]

As careful analysts of the 2004 Ukraine "Orange revolution" and the numerous other US-financed color revolutions discovered, control of polling and ability to dominate international media perceptions, especially major TV such as CNN or BBC is an essential component of the Washington destabilization agenda. The Levada Center would likely be in a crucial position in this regard to issue polls showing discontent with the regime.

By their description, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a "private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, with funding from the US Congress, NED supports more than 1,000 projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries."[10]

It couldn't sound more noble or high-minded. However, they prefer to leave out their own true history. In the early 1980's CIA director Bill Casey convinced President Ronald Reagan to create a plausibly private NGO, the NED, to advance Washington's global agenda via other means than direct CIA action. It was a part of the process of "privatizing" US intelligence to make their work more "effective." Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, said in a Washington Post interview in 1991, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."[11] Interesting. The majority of funds for NED come from US taxpayers through Congress. It is in every way, shape and form a US Government intelligence community asset.

The NED was created during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto CIA, privatized so as to allow it more freedom of action. NED board members are typically drawn from the Pentagon and US intelligence community. It has included retired NATO General Wesley Clark, the man who led the US bombing of Serbia in 1999. Key figures linked to clandestine CIA actions who served on NED's board have included Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros and Elliot Abrams. The Chairman of the NED Board of Directors in 2008 was Vin Weber, founder of the ultraconservative organization, Empower America, and campaign fundraiser for George W. Bush. Current NED chairman is John Bohn, former CEO of the controversial Moody's rating agency which played a nefarious role in the still-unraveling US mortgage securities collapse. As well today's NED board includes neo-conservative Bush-era ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan, Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad.[12]

Putin's well-rehearsed opposition

It's also instructive to look at the leading opposition figures who seem to have stepped forward in Russia in recent days. The current opposition "poster boy" favorite of Russian youth and especially western media is Russian blogger Alexei Navalny whose blog is titled LiveJournal. Navalny has featured prominently as a quasi-martyr of the protest movement after spending 15 days in Putin's jail for partaking in a banned protest. At a large protest rally on Christmas Day December 25 in Moscow, Navalny, perhaps intoxicated by seeing too many romantic Sergei Eisenstein films of the 1917 Russian Revolution, told the crowd, "I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and the White House (Russia's Presidential home-w.e.) right now…"[13]

Western establishment media is infatuated with Navalny. England's BBC described Navalny as "arguably the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia in the past five years," and US Time magazine called him "Russia's Erin Brockovich," a curious reference to the Hollywood film starring Julie Roberts as a trade union organizer. However, more relevant is the fact that Navalny went to the elite American East Coast Yale University, also home to the Bush family, where he was a "Yale World Fellow." [14]

The charismatic Navalny however is also or has been on the payroll of Washington's regime-destabilizing National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to a posting on Navalny's own blog, LiveJournal, he was financed in 2007-2008 by the NED. His Washington NED contact person was Frank Conatser.[15] A facsimile of an email exchange between Navalny and Conatser fronm November 17, 2007 is partially reproduced here.

ГРАНТЫ
From: Frank Conatser [mailto:frankc@NED.ORG]
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 12:12 AM
To: Navalny Alexey; Aleksey Navalny
Cc: John Squier; Marc Schleifer
Subject: NED Agreements No. 2006-576 & No. 2007-688
…
Frank Conatser
Grants Administrator for Eurasia
National Endowment for Democracy
1025 F St, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20004
202-378-9660 (phone)
202-378-9860 (fax)
(Excerpt from email exchange between Alexey Navalty and NED)[16]

Along with Navalny, key actors in the anti-Putin protest movement are centered around Solidarnost which was created in December 2008 by Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and others. Nemtsov is hardly one to protest corruption. According to Business Week Russia of September 23, 2007, Nemtsov introduced Russian banker Boris Brevnov to Gretchen Wilson, a US citizen and an employee of the International Finance Corporation, a financing arm of the World Bank. Wilson and Brevnov married. With the help of Nemtsov Wilson managed to privatize Balakhna Pulp and Paper mill at the giveaway price of just $7 million. The enterprise was sucked dry and then sold to the Wall Street-Swiss investment bank, CS First Boston bank. The annual turnover of the mill was reportedly $250 million. [17]

CS First Boston bank also paid for Nemtsov's trips to the very expensive Davos World Economic Forum. When Nemtsov became a member of the cabinet, his protégé Brevnov was appointed the chairman of the Unified Energy System of Russia JSC. Two years later in 2009 Boris Nemtsov, today's "Mr. anti-corruption," used his influence reportedly to get Brevnov off the hook for charges of embezzling billions from assets of Unified Energy System. [18]

Nemtsov also took money from jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 1999 when the latter was using his billions to try to buy the Russian parliament or Duma. In 2004 Nemtsov met with exiled billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky in a secret gathering with other exiled Russian tycoons. When Nemtsov was detailed by Russian authorities for allegations of foreign funding of his new political party, "For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption," US Senators John McCain and Joe Liberman and Mike Hammer of the Obama National Security Council came to support of Nemtsov. [19]

Nemtsov's close crony, Vladimir Ryzhkov of Solidarnost is also closely tied to the Swiss Davos circles, even founding a Siberian Davos. According to Russian press accounts from April 2005, Ryzhkov formed a Committee 2008 in 2003 to "draw" funds of the imprisoned Khodorkovsky along with soliciting funds from fugitive oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and western foundations such as the Soros Foundation. The stated aim of the effort was to rally "democratic" forces against Putin. On May 23, 2011 Ryzhkov, Nemtzov and several others filed to register a new Party of Peoples' Freedom to ostensibly field a presidential candidate against Putin in 2012.[20]

Another prominent face in the recent anti-Putin rallies is former world chess champion turned right-wing politician, Garry Kasparov, another founder of Solidarnost. Kasparov was identified several years ago as being a board member of a Washington neo-conservative military think-tank. In April 2007, Kasparov admitted he was a board member of the National Security Advisory Council of Center for Security Policy, a "non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security." Inside Russia Kasparov is more infamous for his earlier financial ties to Leonid Nevzlin, former Yukos vice-president and partner of Michael Khodorokvsky. Nevzlin fled to Israel on being charged in Russia on charges of murder and hiring contract killers to eliminate "objectionable people" while Yukos vice-president. [21]

In 2009 Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov met with no less than Barack Obama to discuss Russia's opposition to Putin at the US President's personal invitation at Washington's Ritz Carlton Hotel. Nemtsov had called for Obama to meet with opposition forces in Russia: "If the White House agrees to Putin's suggestion to speak only with pro-Putin organizations… this will mean that Putin has won, but not only that: Putin will become be assured that Obama is weak," he said. During the same 2009 US trip Nemtsov was invited to speak at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, perhaps the most influential US foreign policy think-tank. Significantly, not only has the US State Department and US-backed political NGOs such as NED poured millions into building an anti-Putin coalition inside Russia. The President personally has intervened into the process.[22]

Ryzhkov, Nemtzov, Navalty and Putin's former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were all involved in organizing the December 25th Moscow Christmas anti-Putin rally which drew an estimated 120,000.[23]

Why Putin?

The salient question is why Putin at this point? We need not look far for the answer. Washington and especially Barack Obama's Administration don't give a hoot about whether Russia is democratic or not. Their concern is the obstacle to Washington's plans for Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet that a Putin Presidency will represent. According to the Russian Constitution, the President of the Russian Federation head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office in the Russian Federation. He will take direct control of defense and foreign policy.

We must ask what policy? Clearly strong countermeasures against the blatant NATO encirclement of Russia with Washington's dangerous ballistic missile installations around Russia will be high on Putin's agenda. Hillary Clinton's "reset" will be in the dustbin if it is not already. We can also expect a more aggressive use of Russia's energy card with pipeline diplomacy to deepen economic ties between European NATO members such as Germany, France and Italy, ultimately weakening the EU support for aggressive NATO measures against Russia. We can expect a deepening of Russia's turn towards Eurasia, especially with China, Iran and perhaps India to firm up the shaky spine of resistance to Washington's New World Order plans.

It will take more than a few demonstrations in sub-freezing weather in Moscow and St. Petersburg by a gaggle of corrupt or shady opposition figures such as Nemtsov or Kasparov to derail Russia. What is clear is that Washington is pushing on all fronts—Iran and Syria, where Russia has a vital naval port, on China, now on Russia, and on the Eurozone countries led by Germany. It has the smell of an end-game attempt by a declining superpower.

The United States today is a de facto bankrupt nuclear superpower. The reserve currency role of the dollar is being challenged as never since Bretton Woods in 1944. That role along with maintaining the United States as the world's unchallenged military power have been the basis of the American Century hegemony since 1945.

Weakening the role of the dollar in international trade and ultimately as reserve currency, China is now settling trade with Japan in bilateral currencies, side-stepping the dollar. Russia is implementing similar steps with her major trade partners. The primary reason Washington launched a full-scale currency war against the Euro in late 2009 was to preempt a growing threat that China and others would turn away from the dollar to the Euro as reserve currency. That is no small matter. In effect Washington finances its foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere through the fact that China and other trade surplus nations invest their surplus trade dollars in US government Treasury debt. Were that to shift significantly, US interest rates would rise substantially and the financial pressures on Washington would become immense.

Faced with growing erosion of her unchallenged global status as sole superpower, Washington appears now to be turning increasingly to raw military force to hold that. For that to succeed Russia must be neutralized along with China and Iran. This will be the prime agenda of whoever is next US President.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.

Endnotes:

[1] Alexei Druzhinin, Putin says US encouraging Russian opposition, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 8, 2011
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jonathan Turley, The NDAA's historic assault on American liberty, guardian.co.uk, 2 January 2012, accessed inhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/02/ndaa-historic-assault-american-liberty .
[4] National Endowment for Democracy, Russia, from NED Annual Report 2010, Washington, DC, published in August 2011, accessed in http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/russia.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] NED, Elections in Russia: Polling and Perspectives, September 14, 2011, accessed in http://ned.org/events/elections-in-russia-polling-and-perspectives.
[8] NED, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation Make a Difference?, December 15, 2011, accessed inhttp://ned.org/events/youth-activism-in-russia-can-a-new-generation-make-a-difference .
[9] F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, 2010, edition.engdahl press . The book describes in detail the origins of the NED and various US-sponsored "human rights" NGOs and how they have been used to topple regimes not friendly to a larger USA geopolitical agenda.
[10] National Endowment for Democracy, About Us, accessed in www.ned.org.
[11] David Ignatius, Openness is the Secret to Democracy, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September-6 October,1991, 24-25.
[12] F. William Engdahl, Op. Cit., p.50.
[13] Yulia Ponomareva, Navalny and Kudrin boost giant opposition rally, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 25, 2011.
[14] Yale University, Yale World Fellows: Alexey Navalny, 2010, accessed inhttp://www.yale.edu/worldfellows/fellows/navalny.html.
[15] Alexey Navalny, emails between Navalny and Conatser, accessed in Russian (English summary provided to the author bywww.warandpeace.ru ) on http://alansalbiev.livejournal.com/28124.html.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Business Week Russia, Boris Nemtsov: Co-chairman of Solidarnost political movement, Business Week Russia, September 23, 2007, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1648.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Russian Mafia.ru, Vladimir Ryzhkov: Co-chairman of the Party of People's Freedom, accessed inhttp://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1713.
[21] Russian Mafia.ru, Garry Kasparov: The leader of United Civil Front, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1518.
[22] The OtherRussia, Obama Will Meet With Russian Opposition, July 3, 2009, accessed inhttp://www.theotherrussia.org/2009/07/03/obama-will-meet-with-russian-opposition/.
[23] Yulia Ponomareva, op. Cit.

Fwd: Why Washington is opposed to Vladimir Putin election as Russian President

2012-01-12T05:01:00.001-08:00

Why Washington is opposed to Vladimir Putin election as Russian President

Post Balkan Wall Fall Eurasia

After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, a triumphant US led capitalist West went about dismantling the Union of Socialist Republics and 'induced' Moscow's erstwhile allies in Europe to join NATO. US & NATO forces dismembered the multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual Slav and orthodox Yugoslavia, which with religious and ethnic affinities was strategically closer to Russia.

Using the pretext the 119 attacks on US symbols of economic and military might in New York and Washington, which more and more people are now coming round to believe was an inside job or at best allowed to happen like "Pearl Harbor" which brought US into WWII, Washington, instead of attacking Saudi Arabia and Egypt, from where most of the hijackers originated, first bombed Afghanistan, coercing ally Pakistan into joining it or get bombed to stone age and installed a former UNOCOL consultant Hamid Karzai as the new ruler in Kabul after the Taliban leadership disappeared into Pakistan and northern Alliance marched into Kabul. Then on flimsy grounds US illegally invaded Iraq in 2003 for its oil.

Taking advantage of the unraveling of USSR into many states now in utter disarray, under the pretext of US led 'War on terror' in Afghanistan, Washington acquired bases in the heart of central Asia; in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the last adjoining China's turbulent Turkic speaking Uighur province of Xinjiang.

Washington then organized US franchised (like McDonalds, KFC outlets) street revolutions financed by US non-governmental fronts and organizations, CIA and Washington's envoys in former Russian allies in Europe and in Moscow's near abroad. It succeeded in Serbia (from which Montenegro was detached making it landlocked), Georgia and Ukraine, but failed in Belarus. In Uzbekistan, where the regime change was attempted a few weeks after Kyrgyzstan regime change in March 2005, feisty Islam Karimov expelled the US forces from its base. In Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan ,US puppets were replaced .Georgia was bashed up 3 years ago .Washington is now begging the central Asian states to let supplies go to Afghanistan for its troops .

Russia's Putin a major obstacle against Western domination.

So the standard lies and propaganda against Putin.

Amb (Retd) K.Gajendra Singh, 12 January ,2012 ,Mayur Vihar, Delhi

Why Washington Wants 'Finito' with Putin

The Shady National Endowment for Democracy & The Prime Agenda of 'Whoever' is Next US President

By F. William Engdahl

Democracy or something else?

The shady history of NED

Putin's well-rehearsed opposition

Ryzhkov, Nemtzov, Navalty and Putin's former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were all involved in organizing the December 25th Moscow Christmas anti-Putin rally which drew an estimated 120,000.[23]

Why Putin?

Ban on Gita ,Upanishads & Geetanjali in Turkey in 1970s !

2011-12-30T10:02:00.001-08:00

Ban on Bhagavad Gita in Russia And

Ban on Gita ,Upanishads & Geetanjali in Turkey in 1970s !

From the Ambassador's Journal

The current controversy about the ban on Shrimad Bhagavad Gita in the city of Tomsk, Siberia (Russia) by the prosecutor who branded it as 'extremist' literature and its reversal by a Judge on 28 December, brought to my mind a similar ban in Turkey in 1970s.

The case against the ban by Hindus in Russia in the city court has been going on since June. The Indian government intervened diplomatically with the embassy in Moscow taking up the matter with the Russian government and Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna speaking to Russian Ambassador Alexander Kadakin in New Delhi on 27 December.

During the author's posting at Ankara, Turkey ( in 1969-73) one day the media suddenly splashed the news that the government of Turkey had banned Gita, Upanishads, a few other Indian religious books ,apart from Rabindranath Tagore's Geetanjali and some of his other writings. This came as unpleasant surprise to the Indian Embassy then headed by Ambassador KR Narayanan, later to become the president of the Indian Republic .

Naturally there was anger and furor in India with questions raised in the Parliament and the media going ballistic like after the recent banning of the Gita in Siberia.

Of course the ambassador took up the matter at the highest level , but first I went over to see Kaya Toperi , minister and deputy spokesman at the Turkish ministry of foreign affairs dealing with such matters .Kaya , who was counselor in the Turkish Embassy in New Delhi was recently posted back home .We had known each other well, since I was undersecretary dealing with west and south Europe including Turkey .

After a cup of Turkish coffee, I jokingly asked Kaya that I had read Gita and Upanishads many times in translations and had not been able to fully comprehend its various interpretations and meanings .I was interested in meeting the gentleman, who had read Gita, understood it and then decided to ban it . Kaya, who was aware of the furor in India, laughed and explained that his ministry and censor regularly receive bundles of books to be reviewed for ban, from time to time.

After the 1971 military' half coup followed by crackdown on extremist students in Ankara , Upanishads, Gita, Geetanjali and other Indian books were found along with writings of Karl Marx, Engels and Lenin in leftists den and were sent to departments including foreign ministry in a big bundle .Since no one went through them , and reminders were piling up , the whole lot was returned without any examination for the ban. The censors recommended ban to the Prime Ministry and the whole bundle beginning with Communist writings and including Indian spiritual books and Tagore's writings was banned at a cabinet meeting, which only could take such decisions.

The ban was lifted at the next cabinet meeting in a month or so.

Most Turkish friends were very embarrassed by the ban ,since there was a section of Indology in Ankara university .There were Turkish students and scholars of Indian philosophy and literature , with an Indian teacher of Sanskrit and Hindi at the Ankara university .

Although after the Bolshevik revolution in Czarist Russia ( an inveterate enemy of the Ottoman empire ) , Socialist Moscow sent financial and military aid to Kemal Ataturk for Turkey's War of Independence against the European Imperialist powers led by Great Britain , which he accepted but he did not allow Communism to take roots in the republic . Communist party remains banned in Turkey even now. Ankara joined NATO was a strategic necessity to counter Moscow's territorial claims on Turkey after WWII.

But the student and academic community in Turkey, situated at the cross roads of ideas from Europe and West and central Asia and Africa acquires diverse and vibrant ideologies and beliefs and are passionate about them. So there has always been vibrant leftist and communist student community which regularly agitated against the US and its policies during the Cold War. The Political Science department of Ankara university has produced Turkey's top civil servants as well as many of its political leaders including Abdullah Ocalan, now imprisoned chief of the Kurdistan Workers' Party aka PKK (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan ) fighting for autonomy and cultural rights for Kurds since 1984, which is Communist and Kurdish nationalistic in its ideology .

Thus the leftist intellectuals and students in Ankara and elsewhere in Turkey, apart from Karl Marx and Mao also studied the Naxalbari movement of Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal whose posters were found in student dormitories. They were also interested in Indian and other philosophies and literature.

It is pertinent to recall that Tagore's writings were very popular in Turkey .In fact , late Bulent Ecevit , then head of the Republican peoples' party (RPP) , established by the republic's founder and father , Kemal Ataturk ,and later prime minster a few times had translated not only many poems of Tagore's Geetanjali but even had learnt Bengali and Sanskrit to better understand Gita .More on Turkish-Hindustani.

Amb (Retd) K.Gajendra Singh , 30 December , 2011. Mayur Vihar, Delhi.

BULENT ECEVIT, Former Turkish Prime Minister; FOLLOWER OF GEETA AND INTERPRETER OF GEETANJALI

2011-12-28T09:31:00.001-08:00

BULENT ECEVIT, Former Turkish Prime Minister

FOLLOWER OF GEETA AND INTERPRETER OF GEETANJALI

A Tribute ( From Ambassador's Journal)

Bulent Ecevit, five times Turkish prime minister and a key political player for almost half a century died on 5 November, 2006 , aged 81 after a long illness. Apart from 1974, he was twice premier ; from 1977 to 1979, with his last stint from 1999-2002. Representing the coalminers of Black Sea coast town of Zonguldak, as labour minister he gave the Turkish workers the right to strike for the first time in Turkish history .

Ecevit was also a poet, and had also worked as a journalist.

In 1974, on a visit to London from Paris ,I switched on the BBC Television and saw Ecevit, then premier for the first time ,who had just sent the Turkish troops to Cyprus, where they still stay put, being interviewed. When asked what gave him the courage to send in the troops, which many other Turkish Premiers in the past would have liked to do but dared not. Apart from other reasons he said that he was encouraged by the teachings of Bhagavata Geeta ; if one was morally in a correct position, one should not hesitate to fight injustice against mighty and even against ones near and dear ones. Earlier I had read an interview in the International Herald Tribune , in which the interviewer remarked on the books in Ecevit's library and among others , he prominently pointed out the Bhagvat Geeta and Nehru's Glimpses of World History, which Ecevit said had affected him profoundly.

In spite of stereotyped , West promoted notion of the terrible Turk, following centuries of Crusades and Jihad between them, Turks are no different from other people and having never been enslaved are a proud people. Turks hold India and its leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi , Indian civilisation and culture and the democratic system in the highest regard, not withstanding their having been on the other side during the Cold War and their quid pro quo support to Pakistan on Kashmir, for the latter's support on Cyprus.

When I returned to Ankara in 1992 as Ambassador , ( having been earlier in Turkey from 1969 to 1973) he was in the opposition .At my first meeting I requested Ecevit to elucidate his views on Geeta's role in his decision to invade the Republic of Cyprus. He said that Turkey along with UK and Greece was one of the Guarantor powers in the Cypriot Constitution according to which , if a change was brought in the status of Cyprus , it could act with them to restore the situation. The Greek Cypriot leadership in league with Greece after a coup had declared unity with Greece ( Enosis ) and as Britain was dithering ( from taking any action ),Turkey had no option but to protect Turkish Cypriots and its interests.

As for Geeta's influence in his decision making he said that he abhorred violence in politics and even in international relations, but he was convinced that the situation created by the Greek Cypriots brought the Greek border with Turkey right into Cyprus and enlarged it. It would have led to constant tensions and perhaps a full scale war between Turkey and Greece, sooner or later . So with a heavy heart he ordered the military strike as he felt that he was morally right and the action would ultimately produce less strife and violence in the long run.( While he was quoting Geeta in international media, we , of course, were denouncing the Turkish invasion in the UN and elsewhere).

As to her personal sensitivity to life , even animal life ,in a military exercise in 1979 ,prime minister Ecevit was greatly pained and concerned with the agony of an injured horse, much to the disgust and chagrin of his Military Chief, Gen. Kenan Evren.

Ecevit mentioned Bhagvat Geeta again when I recalled his defeating the legendary and venerable leader Ismet Inonu ( who warned Nehru during his 1960 visit to Turkey , not to trust Communists aka China and against opposition sent some mountain guns to India after 1962) in the contest for party leadership in 1972. Inonu was the right hand man of Kemal Ataturk , Turkey 's liberator, founder and moderniser. Inonu became Turkey's president after Ataturk' death in 1938 ( and earlier was most of the time prime minister ) and adroitly kept Turkey out of the Second World War. He played a vital role in Turkey's transition from one party rule to multiparty democracy in late 1940s.

After the 1971 Army ultimatum which forced prime minister Suleyman Demirel to resign, Ecevit and Inonu , in opposition , had different perceptions of the political situation. Ecevit had opposed the ultimatum, while Inonu had acquiesced in, not to exacerbate the political situation at that juncture. Ecevit said that he had the greatest regard for Inonu, a father figure ( Bulent' s father was Inonu's personal physician and close friend) and who was his teacher and leader( like Dronacharya !) , but he differed from his teacher very strongly and in order to make up his mind and choose the right path , he again studied Geeta before taking up the political fight against Inonu. Inonu lost; he resigned from the party and died a year latter at the age of 89.

Ecevit was born at Istanbul in 1925 and as a young man took some Sanskrit lessons at the Indology department of Ankara University .

When he was posted as Cultural Attaché in the Turkish Embassy in London , his love for poetry and a philosophic bent of mind made him study of Rabindra Nath Tagore's Geetanjali and Bhagvata Geeta.. He learnt Sanskrit to better understand Geeta and Bengali to appreciate and translate Tagore's writings .He was surprised to find similarities between Turkish and Sanskrit and Bengali , not only in the vocabulary but in the syntax also (he told me this after he read my article). He said that he had translated only a few poems from Geetanjali. He would like to do more but his profession gave him little respite. He also translated Ezra Pound and TS Elliot.

Tagore's works, Geetanjali ( in full), Gora, Hungry Stones, the Gardener, Chitra, Stray Birds etc, perhaps more than 20 works have been translated into Turkish , most , longtime ago, but some recently. In 1971, after the military crackdown on leftists, mysteriously Upanishads, Geeta, Geetanjali etc were banned. On enquiries, it was revealed that these books were found along with writings of Karl Marx, Engels and Lenin in a leftists den and in the bureaucracy as no one went through them , all were banned. The ban on Indian writings was soon lifted. The leftist students apart from Karl Marx and Mao also studied the the Naxalbari movement of Charu Najumdar and Kanu Sanyal.

Ecevit visited India in 2000 and fulfilled his dream of going to Shantiniketan , where he was honoured for promoting Bengali literature .

6 November ,2006 , Bucharest

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan , Romania and Senegal . He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies.

Fw: BULENT ECEVIT, Former Turkish Prime Minister; FOLLOWER OF GEETA AND INTERPRETER OF GEETANJALI

2011-12-28T09:28:00.001-08:00

BULENT ECEVIT, Former Turkish Prime Minister

FOLLOWER OF GEETA AND INTERPRETER OF GEETANJALI

A Tribute ( From Ambassador's Journal)

Ecevit was also a poet, and had also worked as a journalist.

Ecevit was born at Istanbul in 1925 and as a young man took some Sanskrit lessons at the Indology department of Ankara University .

Ecevit visited India in 2000 and fulfilled his dream of going to Shantiniketan , where he was honoured for promoting Bengali literature .

6 November ,2006 , Bucharest

50 Articles on US led Illegal War on Iraq & Occupation; 2002-11

2011-12-23T00:33:00.001-08:00

50 Articles on US led Illegal War on Iraq & Occupation; 2002-11

FOUNDATION FOR INDO-TURKIC STUDIES

Tel/Fax ; 43034706 Amb (Rtd) K Gajendra Singh

Emails; Gajendrak@hotmail.com A-44 ,IFS Apartments

KGSingh@Yahoo.com Mayur Vihar –Phase 1,

.http//;tarafits.blogspot.com Delhi 91, India .

23 December , 2011.

50 Articles on US led Illegal War on Iraq & its Occupation; 2002-11

"The war in Iraq is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions – undermining America's global legitimacy – collateral civilian casualties, – abuses, – tarnishing America's moral credentials . Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability." Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to US President Jimmy Carter.

"History is but glorification of murderers, criminals and robbers." - Karl Popper

"When there is a general change of conditions, it is as if the entire creation had been changed and the whole world been altered." - Ibn Khaldun

"History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role" -Leo Tolstoy

The Moving Finger Writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to Cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. –Omar Khayam

Number of Iraqis killed as result of US led illegal war and occupation 1,455,590

An estimated 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced as a result of the war into Syria, Jordan and internally .Over one million widows and many million orphans created .The country is divided ,destroyed and decimated almost beyond recognition.

http://tarafits-archives.blogspot.com/2010/02/destruction-of-worlds-eastern-heritage_26.html

Number of US military personnel killed 4,801

Number of US military personnel seriously injured, maimed and mentally affected sixty to eighty thousand

Cost of war and occupation US$ One Trillion approx so far.

Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes calculations put it a more than $3 trillions.

Neo-con leader Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had championed a $60 billion figure, adding that much of the cost might well be covered by Iraqi oil revenues; the country was, after all, floating on a "sea of oil." ("To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he told a congressional hearing.)

--------

I have written regularly on Iraq war & propaganda since August, 2002 analyzing the situation and assessing future developments , which have generally stood the test of time .It is a result of 8 to 10 hours, 24/7 surfing and watching CNN &BBC ( till lies were repeated )and European channels after 9/11 .

I had a ringside view of 1991 Gulf war from Amman (1989-92 ) and moved to Ankara (1992-98, earlier spell 1969-73), with accreditation to Baku ,with earlier postings at Cairo and Algiers in 1960s and France 1970s. Apart from Turkey and Jordan , I headed Indian missions in Romania and Senegal .

Out of over 400 in depth online articles on international affairs , over 100 pieces are on the Iraq war  and the region . Fifty odd key articles from 2002 to 2011 with URLs and brief synopsis have been listed below. ( these can be easily googled)

My articles have been copied by up to many scores of websites/blogs/newspapers all around the world including of US universities of New York, Columbia, Colorado, California ,Utah etc ,think tanks and websites from rightist 'Free Republic " to leftist Salon.com, "Zmag" etc and in other western  countries, Turkish ,Kurdish , Arab ,Armenian, Greek and Serbian websites ,also in Israel , Asia , Africa and all over the Islamic world from Kyrgyzstan to Nigeria and Indonesia to Morocco. Atimes has a Chinese edition too.

The articles have been translated into Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, French, German, Italian , Spanish , Danish , Russian , Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese etc .

The articles have been used /hosted by, Christian Science Monitor and other websites in USA , London Economist , Channel IV, Pravada, Russian Times , many newspapers in Turkey , Lebanon , Gulf , Central Asia , Japan ,Pakistan ,Israel etc .

I have delivered lectures on Iraq war and its occupation at many universities, defence institutes and cultural and other centres in India since 2004.

I was frequently interviewed in Bucharest (1998-07) by BBC Hindi Radio program , on Turkey, Iraq, Russia , Caucasus , Central Asia etc .Also by Slovenian National TV and Realitatea of Bucharest, Star and Sahara in India.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in cooperation with Iran outmanoeuvered Bush and the Pentagon and got the United States to sign the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement, forcing US combat troops to leave by end December,2011, but Washington still has thousands of mercenaries and others in its Vatican city size large embassy in Baghdad .What about its many bases and Kurdish north Iraq , almost its protectorate since 1990 .US is already stoking the flames of Shia Sunni divide and conflict with help from Riyadh ,Amman and Ankara in the region .

List of 50 articles including 7 on decline and fall of US hegemony with URLs and synopsis is given below;

Before the March 2003 war on Iraq :

1. The Bush family's phony wars 27 August, 2002 .
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DH27Ak01.html
An entire region from Jordan to Iran is on the brink of catastrophe as it awaits one man's decision on how he will pursue his family' vendetta .India's former Ambassador to Jordan looks inside the Pandora's box which George Bush holds in his hands - Editor Atimes

For the Bush family, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is the tempting Apple in the Middle Eastern Garden of Eden. The results of succumbing to the temptation to take a bite could be as disastrous as they were for Adam and Eve.

(Written when George W Bush along with old chieftains and neo-cons handed over by his father along with Tony Blair were beginning to beat the war drums )

2. The decline of the American Century 11 September, 2002 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DI11Ak06.html

BUCHAREST - It is the afternoon sun that dazzles onlookers though it is past its prime. That sums up the height of US power before last September 11. If the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki without fear of retaliation was the acme of the American Century, then the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbols of economic and military might, could be termed the beginning of the end of the American Century.

3. Iraq and the war of words
By K Gajendra Singh 29 January , 2003

www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EA29Ak02.html

The US administration led by President George W Bush, with loyal support from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has waged a personalized war on Saddam Hussein for months. Armadas of battleships and massive war-making machines are now moving towards Iraq , and military exercises are covered daily in the international press.

As many people agree, though, the war does have a lot to do with oil. As an oil expert recently observed, "The Americans have nothing against the people of Iraq , but our way of life is dependent on 20 million barrels a day, and half of it has to be imported. We are like a patient on oil dialysis. It's a matter of life and death. The smart people [in Washington ] all know this, but it is not generally advertised on the kind of shows that most people watch: MTV and soap operas."

4. MIDDLE EAST- Iraqi Mosaic in Pandora's Box 17 February, 2003
www.saag.org/papers7/paper607.html
Iraq is a delicate mosaic, which must be handled carefully, but a US led war would shatter and scatter it to bits. Whenever post Saddam Hussein Iraq is discussed in USA and elsewhere, not enough serious thought is given to ethnic, religious and other differences of its constituents and their tortuous history, which go to make Iraq a delicate mosaic.

After the war

5.West vs East, at daggers drawn 3 April, 2003
By K Gajendra Singh www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED03Ak01.html.

Veni, vidi, vici ("I came, I saw, I conquered") spoke Julius Caesar in 78 BC at a town called Zile, 300 kilometers northeast of Ankara , after victory in a battle lasting barely four hours over Pharnaces II, son of Mithradates VI of Pontus . Mithradates the Great (meaning "gift of the Aryan god Mithra"), a common name among Anatolian rulers, had contested Imperial Rome's hegemony in Asia Minor .

Of course, the self-styled successors of Imperial Rome, the hawks in the US administration, had hoped to emulate Caesar after a few days of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the cities of Basra , Baghdad and Kirkuk . But the reality has been quite disillusioning - even to the point of bringing some "Shock and Awe" home to the United States.

6. Iraq's history already written 15 July, 2003 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG15Ak01.html
Written soon after the US appointed Iraqi governing council under Viceroy Paul Bremmer , with historic parallel to British regime established by Sir Percy Cox after the First World War , which ended in the assassination of King Feisel and his detested PM Nuri-el Said ending the Hashemite line in Iraq.

7. BAGHDAD BATTERED UN: Need to have a hard look By K.Gajendra Singh 4 September , 2003

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers8%5Cpaper779.html

"The UN's own 9/11 [September 11] crisis. " Former US ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke on devastating 19 August bombing of UN compound in Baghdad. "Who sows war reaps terrorism"-A Paris anti-war protest banner in February, 2003.
Indian Troops to Iraq: Discussions with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon reaching India in a few days time and Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee discussions with Turkish leaders in Ankara in mid-September. No Indian troops were sent to Iraq.

8.Turkey: 'Sow war and reap terror'
By K Gajendra Singh 22 November, 2003
Turkey: 'Sow war and reap terror' (Clinton's role in the rise of al-Qaeda)
Sow war and reap terror - A banner in a February peace march in Paris
Many disquieting messages have been sent with the two car bombings in Istanbul on Thursday, just five days after attacks on two synagogues and coinciding with Queen Elizabeth's hosting of United States President George W Bush in London

9. Occupation case studies; Algeria and Turkey 7 January, 2004 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FA07Ak01.html
The situation in Iraq on the ground would be similar to Algeria after WWII and Turkey after WWI when they were colonized and occupied . Fierce resistance .Unlike Germany or Japan after WWII as most western analysts were gleefully predicting .A historical analyses and comparison .

10. COMING OUT OF CHAKRAVHYU ( military trap)- US's Iraq Exit Policy! www.saag.org/papers9/paper894.html 15 January , 2004

Illegal and most ill prepared project .It is becoming quite obvious every day .Hamid al-Kifai, a spokesman for the United States-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, in rejecting on January 12 a call made by Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that general elections be held ahead of a power transfer to Iraqis, has opened the way for even more uncertainty and unrest following the decision to create a Kurdish federal area in the country.

11. IRAQ WARS: WESTERN MEDIA- PROPAGANDA ARMS OF GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATE INTERESTS 12 March, 2004 By K Gajendra Singh www.saag.org/papers10/paper948.html
"Demand a broader view." BBC – "-of 840 experts interviewed on American news programmes during the invasion of Iraq, only four opposed the war "BBC-DG Dyke. How ever, BBC itself gave in its over all coverage a mere 2% time to opposition's anti-war voices, -- according to Media Tenor; a Bonn-based non-partisan media research organization.

12. Iraq: A perplexing predicament  By K Gajendra Singh        10 June, 2004 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF10Ak01.html

Finally, after ignoring the United Nations and diminishing it before the illegal invasion of Iraq in March last year, the United States, faced with the prospect of the unraveling of its ill-planned project in Iraq and the Greater Middle East, has turned to the world body to give its occupation some sense of legality. In the end, the UN Security Council's members obviously acknowledged that the strategic implications of a substantial US failure in Iraq were too serious even to contemplate

13. Dropping the sovereignty baton By K Gajendra Singh     2 June, 2004
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF02Ak06.html

"It was by force that the sons of Osman seized the sovereignty and Sultanate of the Turkish nation; they have maintained this usurpation for six centuries. Now, the Turkish nation has rebelled and has put a stop to these usurpers and has effectively taken sovereignty and Sultanate in its own hands." Kemal Ataturk .

The post-June 30 government being assembled for Iraq is likely to be as unpopular within the country as the now defunct US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. ED

14. Turkey, Israel aim to forgive and forget By K Gajendra Singh 27 July, 2004
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG28Ak02.html - 67k - 27 Jul 2004 - Cached - Similar pages

-- In his May 25 meeting with Israeli Infrastructure Minister Yousef Paritzky, Turkish PM Erdogan asked the Israeli minister: "What is the difference between terrorists who kill Israeli civilians and Israel, which also kills civilians?"—Ankara is upset with Israeli games in north Iraq ...
The likely consequences of the Great Game in Kurdish Iraq including Israeli machinations .

15. Turkey snaps over US bombing of its brethren 18 September, 2004
By K Gajendra Singh http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FI18Ak02.html

The United States claims that attacks on the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar - home to Turkey's ethnic cousins, the Turkmens - were to root out terrorists. Others say that the US has unwittingly been drawn into a devious Kurdish plot. Either way, Ankara has warned the US in no uncertain terms to lay off: this is a pot not to be stirred

16 NEW BUSH ERA BEGINS: DECKS BEING CLEARED FOR HOLY WARS By K. Gajendra Singh 27-11-04
http://www.saag.org/papers12/paper1174.html

In ancient days, before the start of a battle, warriors galloped up to enemy front lines and challenged them. That seemed to be the purpose of the last Osama bin Laden video released just before 2 November presidential polls in USA . Just in case; Laden wanted to make sure that President George W. Bush was re-elected. But then, even Sen. John Kerry had promised more of the same, but along with allies, mostly Christian nations

17. WOULD 30 JANUARY ELECTIONS MAKE OR BREAK IRAQ? by K. Gajendra Singh http://www.saag.org/papers12/paper1185.html 10-12-04

A debate is raging inside Iraq, Washington and Moscow and in neighbouring capitals and elsewhere whether the polls scheduled for next January to elect a Constituent Assembly for Iraq should be held or postponed, with various parties taking different positions. While USA, the Iraqi government appointed by it and Iraq's Shiite leadership are insistent on sticking to the date, Iraq's Sunnis, many Sunni governments in the region, Europe Union and Russia are opposed to it and have suggested postponement. Even if the elections were held as scheduled, would it solve Iraq's problems and keep it a united country?

18. The Kirkuk tinderbox    By K Gajendra Singh     22 January, 2005
 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA22Ak01.html

There is much media focus on the inauguration of US President George W Bush for his second term, as well as the Iraqi elections scheduled for January 30. But the ethnically divided city of Kirkuk in north Iraq remains a dangerous tinderbox. Even the losing US presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, who voted against the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as the next secretary of state in the Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee, felt compelled to warn of possible turmoil in Kirkuk, which has been a bone of contention between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens - Turkey's ethnic cousins, with Ankara taking up their cause regularly.

19. IRAQI KURDS FLEX MUSCLES -RICE WAS NO TURKISH DELIGHT By K Gajendra Singh 15 Feb 2005 file:///C:/Users/gajendra/Documents/SaagFiles/SgKurdsFlexMscl15F.htm

http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers13%5Cpaper1254.html
On February 13, soon after the announcement of provisional results of 30 January elections for Iraq's new Parliament, Turkey said that the results failed to ensure a fair representation for all ethnic groups and called for measures to compensate for flaws and irregularities in the electoral process. The Kurdish alliance of Kurdish Democratic party (KDP) and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) won over 25% of the vote , giving it a kingmaker's role . It has already suggested 72 year old Jalal Talbani ,PUK leader , for the President's post .The alliance is likely to join with the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) , which is supported by the religious establishment and won over 47% of the votes. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's slate got 14% votes, while the slate of President Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni managed only 2%.

20. New Iraq Government: Allenby's Damascus or Rumsfeld's Baghdad - April 4, 2005

http://www.turkishweekly.net/op-ed/723/new-iraq-government-allenby-s-damascus-or-rumsfeld-s-baghdad-part-1-.html
"Just you wait until we have democracy in Iraq, and I'll throw you in jail!", said one lifelong opponent of Saddam Hussein to another at the Iraqi opposition conference in London organised to promote his 'heirs' by the Anglo-Saxons in December , 2002 ," and to bring about stability, rule of law and democracy in Iraq." That the conference did take place was an achievement in itself. Many a times the proceedings degenerated into scenes from the film "Lawrence of Arabia " with the Arab tribes squabbling and fighting after reaching Damascus following the with drawl of the Ottoman forces in the First World War in the wake of the military onslaught led by the British General Allenby , with guerilla support from Arab tribes of Sharif Hussein of Hijaj .

21. Neo-Cons Grip Slipping as Iraqi Resistance Morphs Into Liberation War or Worse By K Gajendra Singh; June 30 ,2005

http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers15%5Cpaper1435.html  ,

Bush offers old wine in old bottles; To uplift his sinking popularity and avoid becoming a lame duck President, six months after his second inauguration, on the first anniversary of the sham transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis, President George W. Bush offered nothing new to the Americans or the Iraqis - more of the same. Addressing the nation from Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, Bush called for staying the course ( and going overboard the Niagara falls of Iraq as some critics said long ago ). An emotive defence institution was chosen again to tap patriotic fervour and rally the military, which is becoming uneasy at the falling home support for the war in Iraq. Ironically, Bush himself avoided military duty in Vietnam.

22. Neo-Cons Middle East Project Brings It to Boil: Now, the Constitution Fiasco. August 30 , 2005

http://www.opednews.com/populum/link.php?id=3580
"The nation-state offers most of its members a stronger sense of security, belonging or affiliation and even personal identity, than does any alternative large group" - Karl Deutch.
It has been said that democracy is not only a form of state and administration but a philosophy of life and an outlook. And for a nation's constitution to manifest the authority of the state and its laws, it must be based on a general agreement among all its citizens.

23. Saddam Trial: Another Western Kangaroo Court K Gajendra Singh October 20, 2005

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10691.htm
"It's all about justifying the US invasion"- A top Swiss legal expert The charade trial of illegally toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by yet another Western organized Kangroo court finally opened under a veil of secrecy on 19 October and was adjourned to 28 November. Saddam Hussein was defiant and claimed that he was the legitimate President of Iraq as he had done when he was first charged in July, 2004. (TRIAL OF SADDAM HUSSEIN & THE RULE OF LAW www.saag.org/papers11/paper1046.html ) He and six co-defendants are accused of killing 143 people after an unsuccessful assassination attempt on him in 1982. Western media was miffed at the show of defiance by the combative and aggressive former Iraqi leader.

24. Flawed Referendum Would Morph Iraq Into Regional Black Hole By K Gajendra Singh October 27 2005

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/12/flawed-referendum-would-morph-iraq-into.html
"Democracy is not alone a form of state and of administration. It is a philosophy of life and an outlook on the world. The authority of the state and its law is derived from general agreement among citizens upon the main postulates of philosophy of life". President Masaryk.
US franchised 'Landmark" towards democracy brings Iraq to precipice's brink
Ten days after allegations of wide spread fraud , Iraq's Election Commission on 24 October declared that the referendum had ratified the Constitution as in the third province of Nineveh, out of 18 provinces , only 55 % voted against it .If it were 2 /3^rd the Constitution would have collapsed.

25. US Franchised Torture Refuses To Go Away- Gajendra Singh www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11601.htm 20 January,2006.
01/18/06 "ICH" -- -- The ramifications of US franchised torture and street revolutions in Serbia, Georgia ,Ukraine , Kyrgyzstan et al are not going to go away . The recent fence-mending visit to Washington by the newly sworn in right wing German Chancellor Angela Merkel was overshadowed by human right violations and torture at US base in Guantanamo and rendition of terrorism suspects to prisons in Europe and elsewhere by CIA.

26. Before the March 2003 US-Led Invasion of Iraq 31 March,2006
By K Gajendra Singh file:///C:/Users/gajendra/Documents/SaagFiles/SgIrWarPre03Aj31M.htm

"This young century will be liberty's century and Iraq and Afghanistan were poised to become examples for the rest of the Middle East of peaceful, democratic societies, Gorge Bush told the UN General Assembly ,"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state" — Noam Chomsky

On the 3^rd anniversary of the US led illegal invasion of Iraq , a number of comments have appeared in Western media, saying I told you so . Many have been consistent in their views .But many changed the course midway , some remarking that the operation to colonise Iraq should have been better planned and executed , sitting in their plush corporate financed think tanks and media offices .They remain out of touch with the reality on the ground .

27 The Great Western Demonology Circus: Now the Halabja Show

By K Gajendra Singh April 10, 2006

http://bgtruth.blogspot.com/2006/04/great-western-demnology-circus-now.html

Western leaders and in house corporate and subservient media, continue to line up one show after another. Soon after the death of Serbian nationalist hero Slobodan Milosevic's death in western custody, which ended his trial ( the Hague tribunal did not even allow him to be treated in Moscow ), another third world leader has been put on trial ,Charles Taylor of Liberia . Just a little side show.

28. The Generals Revolt-A Symptom Of U.S. Malaise 23-04-06
by K. Gajendra Singh www.Informationclearinghouse.com MWCNews.com, Al Jazeerah.info

"War is too serious a matter to be left to Generals" or to civilians who have never seen a battlefield.

The retired generals' revolt only highlights the malaise in the US polity which has crept in , specially in recent decades. The disconnect between an arrogant, ill informed Administration and the military executors of its policies in Iraq has opened a Pandora's box which hopefully might become the tipping point for much needed changes in US polity.

29. U.S. Dunkirk In Iraq; The Tipping Point 06/20/06

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13697.htm

In an excellent recent piece 'Nightmare Scenario' in the respected US magazine 'The Nation ', Nicholas von Hoffman ,speculates that the badly outnumbered American expeditionary force in Iraq , now in danger of being trapped in spite of all its firepower, could possibly face some kind of a military defeat. Already the number of US soldiers dead has crossed 2500 and counting ; two per day , with tens of thousands maimed and injured.

30.The Mother Of All Battles: For Oil 12 July,2006

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/July/12%20o/The%20Mother%20Of%20All%20Battles%20For%20Oil%20By%20K%20Gajendra%20Singh.htm

Noam Chomsky's comments on the" Israel lobby 'in US article by two respected US university professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt hit the nail on the head ,where in he points out that US and Israel interests coincide in the West's policy to control hydrocarbon energy resources ie petroleum and gas, ever since the emergence of its importance in warfare and economy. Chomsky points out how western energy corporations have flourished with "profits beyond the dreams of avarice" with "the Middle East (ME) their leading cash cow."

31. The US Empire –Beginning of the End Game 24 Nov,2006
http://www.rense.com/general74/usempr.htm

A 15th century Ottoman Sultan Murat II arranged for Mehmet II , not the favourite son , to be trained in the art of governing at the capital city Edirne ,under an able Grand Vizier. Mehmet II had been a wild and disobedient brat, so Murat II advised his teacher use of the rod , which was done to good effect. A Sunni, Sultan Mehmet II fell under the unwholesome influence of a Shia cleric, fought with the Grand Vizier and the military Janissaries rebelled. Before Mehmet II could create further mess, Murat II returned from Manisa, where he had retired for spiritual pursuits and took back the reins of the empire.
32. The Moving Finger and the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group December 19, 2006

http://www.chowk.com/Views/Education/The-Moving-Finger-and-the-Baker-Hamilton-Iraq-Study-Group

The Moving Finger Writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to Cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. –Omar Khayam

It took the US Congress 3 years, after the Washington led illegal invasion of Iraq against world opinion, to establish on March 15, 2006 , a bipartisan Commission, the Iraq Study Group (ISG), to salvage something from the bloody Iraqi quagmire. There is now a full fledged civil war with Iraq slipping towards breakup, under US led occupation.

33 The US-Saudi-Wahabi Nexus ! 1 January,2007

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=451

"History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role", Leo Tolstoy By K Gajendra Singh

When the powerful US Vice-President Dick Cheney made a rare long haul to Riyadh in November , reportedly it was to create against Iran , Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon , a new US led Sunni alliance in the region, composed of the six Gulf Co-operation Council states, pro-US Arab governments in Cairo and Amman and willing NATO allies with covert support from Israel.

34. SADDAM HUSSEIN; VICTIM OF OLD WEST JUSTICE & VENDETTA http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m29623&hd=&size=1&l=e January 7, 2006
After illegal invasion, barbaric occupation, now Kangaroo court execution

The world seeks America's leadership, looks for leadership for a country whose values are freedom and justice and equality." Texas Governor George W. Bush in 2000.
President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, overthrown after the US led illegal invasion of Iraq in March, 2003 , against UN Charter and world opinion , became an other victim of 'Old West Justice' exercised by European colonizers and Americans ( against Red Indians and Blacks ) during the last few centuries . He was hanged on 30 December morning in Baghdad under US occupation by Washington controlled government of exiles, quislings, embezzlers and war lords.

35. Texan Poker Bluff and Persian Chess Moves

By K Gajendra Singh 21 January, 2007
http://www.chowk.com/Views/Education/Texan-Poker-Bluff-and-Persian-Chess-Moves

"The arrogance of military power has led to a grave crisis - and to a decline of the United States' role and influence." Mikhail Gorbachev.
"The president is living in a dream world,'' US Sen. Barbara Boxer.
On Iran , US Administration has reached the pre-Iraq invasion rhetoric level of 2003 , when against the UN Charter and world opinion ,President George Bush decided to invade Iraq after having assembled a naval armada and air and land forces in the region ,cheerlead by a subservient US media . Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are accusing Tehran of developing nuclear weapons and exporting terrorism, just as Saddam Hussein was allegedly doing. Iran is also not abiding by U N resolutions on its nuclear weapons program, which, like Iraq then, it denies it has. UN Nuclear Agency in Vienna has found no proof of a weapons program .Neither there was one in Iraq in 2003. Almost all accusations made by US President , his deputy and others , exaggerated by US corporate owned media proved to be false.

36. Russia Broad-bands Relations with Middle East
by K. Gajendra Singh 18 February, 2007

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=404

Energy is at the centre of Russia's strategic partnership with the European Union. Oil is the cause of its struggle with the US over the routes of pipelines from the Caspian and Central Asia –Le Monde.
Moscow's relations with the Middle East during the Cold War were mostly focused on socialist and nationalist regimes, ranged against Kingdoms and conservative Western allies, but USSR's collapse and its disintegration saw its influence shrink. Now a coherent Russian Federation around an Orthodox Slav core, minus the old ideological, ethnic and religious mixed baggage, under an astute President Vladimir Putin has assiduously re-built, almost from a scratch ,its influence in the region, and taking advantage of the follies of the Bush administration, is broad banding relationships from Rabat to Riyadh.

37. Beware; USA & Allies Stoking Shia-Sunni Divide
by K. Gajendra Singh 23 March, 2007

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=31577
"We could expect an epic battle between Shi'ite extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al-Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country [Iraq] - and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict." President George Bush in his State of Union address.

" Mr Bush looks increasingly like a general who has run out of ideas, troops and hope ." Commented 'The Guardian'

US led western talk of a Shia-Sunni war looks troublingly real, although the option is now on slow backburner. The policy of divide and rule is as old as the Roman empire – a constant guide to the Christian West and implemented ruthlessly during its colonial onslaught on the rest of the world. Evolution of Western nationalism based on a narrow definition of shared religion, ethnicity, language, culture or history after centuries of religious and ethnic wars was then employed to divide multi religious and pluralistic empires and kingdoms in the East and South during its crusade of colonial wars and expansion, masked as 'civilizing mission ' or 'white man's burden' 'or 'saving the soul' by converting natives to Christianity.

38. Iran-UK Stand-off: A Clash of Civilizations
Iran Pardons Blair's Dozen and Jane Bond 8 April, 2007

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=380

"U.K. has suspended boarding operations in the northern Persian Gulf while the Royal Navy reviewed its procedures " First Sea Lord Admiral Jonathon Bond (no relation of James Bond).

Iranian Chess Masters Choreograph the Crisis End;
It was a virtuoso almost flawless choreography which ended the two week long Iran-UK crisis (with USA lurking at the back and Europe not far behind) following the James Bond like British intelligence intrusion into Iranian waters. Even the Times online admitted "The captives, including Leading Seaman Faye Turney, 26, were released yesterday in a stunning piece of political theatre by President Ahmadinejad, who brought a bizarre but welcome end to a 13-day drama that held the possibility of violent escalation."

39.Gen Taguba Unveils Abu Ghraib, US Gulag - http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m34046&hd=&size=1&l=e 27 June, 2007

Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world : Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

"From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service. And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values."US Gen Antonio Taguba.
A senior US General in Iraq to Gen Taguba --" the abused detainees were 'only Iraqis.'"

40 . IRAQ 'S DOOMED 'SURGE' ONLY WIDENS GATES OF HELL http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m34176&hd=&size=1&l=e 3 July ,2007

"Be nice to America, otherwise we will bring you democracy." A bumper sticker in New York
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. Albert Camus
Television images showed a man running down a smoke-filled street in Baghdad holding a lifeless baby above his head. Smoke was rising off the baby.

41.The Decline And Coming Fall Of US Hegemony
by K.Gajendra Singh 31 March ,2008
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19656.htm

"History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role", Leo Tolstoy

31/03/06 "ICH" -- - When I went back to Ankara in late 1992 to head the Indian Embassy, many of my friends from the Turkish Foreign Office from my 1969-73 tenure as First Secretary, were going out as ambassadors to newly independent states in Central Asia and the Baltic, following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Looking at the creation of so many new missions, a cheeky young Turkish diplomat in the Foreign Ministry said rather mischievously than hopefully, that only if United States of America broke up into 50 independent states, could he ever hope to head like them a Turkish Embassy, in north America. --

But the wish of the young diplomat is not going to be fulfilled any time soon, if ever. But still—

42. WESTERN MILITARY-CAPITALIST CIVILISATION IN DISARRAY

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=236 25 Sept 2008

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m47513 , http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0386.htm

"Credit easing does not and cannot substitute for earnings, wages or tax revenues." Max Wolff
"The [US] financial system is out of control and has led the economy into a wildly turbulent sea of heavily leveraged speculation.-- the road ahead is dark and unknown." Steve Fraser author of" Wall Street: America 's Dream Palace ."

"Before the US economy can truly begin to expand again, the savings rate must rise to pre-bubble levels of 8pc--$2 trillion of household debt must be eliminated", Economist David Rosenberg

43. Corporate Culture and Greed Sink the American Republic

http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0442.htm 17 May ,2009

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people. �We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can�t have both.� Said US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis 80 years ago

"Over-grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." --George Washington (1732-1799), First US President

.
"[The] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." --Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th US President, Farewell Address, Jan. 17, 1961

44. Another Sovereignty Transfer Charade in Baghdad
http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=162

Iraq; the Goose that lays (Black) Golden Eggs! 4 July,2009
130,000 GIs Stay Put on Iraqi Soil

"This war [in Iraq] is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. ... it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad." — Thomas Friedman in New York Times 30 November, 2003 .

"Despite the agreement with Iraq, the United States would continue to have fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond 2012. --The reality is that we're going to have 10 Army and Marine units deployed for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan." Gen. George Casey, US Army chief of staff on May 26, 2009 .

First transfer of 'Sovereignty' to Iraq on 28 June, 2004
People and media have such short memories. The first charade of transfer of sovereignty to Iraq was conducted in a secret, short and pre-poned ceremony from 30 June to 28 June, in Baghdad .

45. Confirmation of Pressure on Dollar and US Decline
by K. Gajendra Singh http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0493.html 8 October, 2009

London's 'The Independent' of 6 October has focused attention on the coming fall of US hegemony beginning with the pressure on US dollar , following the not so secret meetings between Arab states , China, Russia, Japan and France to stop use of the US currency for oil trading

46 Bush and Blair accused of War Crimes ; Kuala Lumpur Tribunal

By K Gajendra Singh 7 November . 2009

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2009/11/bush-and-blair-accused-of-war-crimes.html

For any endevour against war crimes and injustice a first step has to be taken .In this case a number of steps based on morality , ethics and international law have already been taken

In the minds of the majority of world's population ,War crimes have been committed by Anglo-American leadership and others and their armed forces with the connivance of the UN as in the case of the attacks on Yugoslavia and the dismanling of the state, Afghanistan and in the case of 2003 invasion of Iraq against UNSC opinion and its Charter .

47.Complaint against George Bush & others in the International Criminal Court & warning to Obama

For Crimes against Humanity 23 January ,2010

Prof Boyle requests International Arrest Warrants for Rendition & Torture

Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world : Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Illinois University professor Francis A. Boyle has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the "Accused") for their criminal policy and practice of "extraordinary rendition" ie enforced disappearance and consequent torture perpetrated upon about 100 human beings. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitute Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C. While United States is not a party to the Rome Statute the Accused ordered and were responsible for the commission of I.C.C. statutory crimes within the respective territories of many I.C.C. member states, including several in Europe. Consequently, the I.C.C. has jurisdiction to prosecute the Accused for their I.C.C. statutory crimes under Rome Statute article 12(2)(a) that affords the I.C.C. jurisdiction to prosecute for I.C.C. statutory crimes committed in I.C.C. member states.

48.Chilcot Iraq Inquiry; Another British Whitewash of 2003 Illegal Invasion; Tony Blair continues to lie still 2 Feb 2010

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2010/02/chilcot-iraq-inquiry-another-british.html

The British are past master in holding enquires to whitewash their quasi-legal or illegal activities and crimes. So the outcome of the public Iraq enquiry by Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues in regard to the decision to invade Iraq and the role of then prime minister Tony Blair was broadcast live by BBC and others .But the outcome would be another whitewash

Wrote George Monbiot in 'The Guardian' of 26 January ; " The only question that counts is the one that the Chilicot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression.

49. The Looming Mother of all Economic and Social Crisis

http://www.mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/2405-k-gajendra-singh.html, 11 May 2010

On Thursday, May 6, 2010 , ninety minutes before the end of the trading day, the U.S. stock market almost melted down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,000 points. The market recovered before the end and closed down 348 points, or 3.2%, like a giant 747 narrowly averting a crash landing, but the questions of the day are: What happened? And what does it mean?

50 "End of Combat Mission" in Iraq; another Charade

After Sovereignty Transfer and Mission Accomplished! Sept 5,2010

Operation Iraqi Freedom – A Great Criminal Misadventure

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2010/09/end-of-combat-mission-in-iraq-another.html

"History is but glorification of murderers, criminals and robbers." -Karl Popper

" The limits of American military power have been laid bare in the killing fields of Iraq; Iran has been transformed into the pre-eminent regional power; --- a resurgent Taliban is leading an increasingly effective guerrilla war in Afghanistan; and far from crushing terror networks, the US and its allies have spread them to Pakistan--- Pakistan is being ripped apart by the fallout from the Afghan occupation. If the US escalates, the impact will be devastating-- The country now shows every sign of slipping out of the control of its dysfunctional civilian government - and even the military that has held it together for 60 years, " Seumas Milne in The Guardian

New American Century Project Ends in a Catastrophe

President Barack Obama in his 18 minute address to the US people on 31 August, 2010 on the so called 'End of Combat Mission' in Iraq , said ,"This milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that our future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment. It should also serve as a message to the world that the United States of America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership in this young century"

51.7th Anniversary of the War Crimes at Fallujah

by K. Gajendra Singh 22 November,2011 http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=11643

K L War Crimes Tribunal unanimously convicts Bush and Blair for 'crimes against peace'. According to media reports the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal unanimously found former United States president George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of "crimes against peace". The tribunal found that the two had planned, prepared and invaded the state of Iraq on March 19, 2003, in violation of the United Nations Charter and international law. Post Script Post Sept 2008 Crippled Economy & US Strategic Decline *Smoke and Storm Signals* K.Gajendra Singh, 4 July.2011 http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=11174 "Starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, --and all -- by 2014, " President Barack Obama in June2011 US debt now amounts to around $ 14 trillion , almost equal to its GDP .Even in this GDP , the financial industry contributes 40%.The economy is now 20-25 % of world GDP unlike 50% after WWII and is being artificially sustained by a stimulus of $ 2.8 trillion .There are no green shoots of revival , unemployment continues to rise . US economy is in recession .The 1930s recession was overcome by WWII which allowed its protected ( from war) industry to run full steam and indebt European and other countries . "Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations, "Michael Parenti--" the subject of imperialism has been sanitized, so that empires become "commonwealths," and colonies become "territories" or "dominions". Imperialist military interventions become matters of "national defense," "national security," and maintaining "stability" (Or civilizing missions, saving the souls and more recently ," Operation enduring freedom "in Afghanistan, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and 'Humanitarian intervention' in Libya) *How Empires Collapse--suddenly* ---But I was in for a shock when I called on the Russian ambassador (in Baku in end 1993 ), whose Residence consisted of a couple of rooms in an Intourist hotel . Russians were the masters of Azerbaijan till it broke away a few years earlier , because of policies of glasnost and perestroika by a somewhat naïve Mikhail Gorbachev. Ambassador (Retd) K.Gajendra Singh ,December 23 , 2011.Mayur Vihar, Delhi

50 Articles on US led Illegal War on Iraq & Occupation; 2002-11

2011-12-22T22:31:00.001-08:00

50 Articles on US led Illegal War on Iraq & Occupation; 2002-11

FOUNDATION FOR INDO-TURKIC STUDIES

Tel/Fax ; 43034706 Amb (Rtd) K Gajendra Singh

Emails; Gajendrak@hotmail.com A-44 ,IFS Apartments

KGSingh@Yahoo.com Mayur Vihar –Phase 1,

.http//;tarafits.blogspot.com Delhi 91, India .

23 December , 2011.

50 Articles on US led Illegal War on Iraq & its Occupation; 2002-11

"The war in Iraq is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions – undermining America's global legitimacy – collateral civilian casualties, – abuses, – tarnishing America's moral credentials . Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability." Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to US President Jimmy Carter.

"History is but glorification of murderers, criminals and robbers." - Karl Popper

"When there is a general change of conditions, it is as if the entire creation had been changed and the whole world been altered." - Ibn Khaldun

"History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role" -Leo Tolstoy

The Moving Finger Writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to Cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. –Omar Khayam

Number of Iraqis killed as result of US led illegal war and occupation 1,455,590

An estimated 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced as a result of the war into Syria, Jordan and internally .Over one million widows and many million orphans created .The country is divided ,destroyed and decimated almost beyond recognition.

Number of US military personnel killed 4,801

Number of US military personnel seriously injured, maimed and mentally affected sixty to eighty thousand

Cost of war and occupation US$ One Trillion approx so far.

Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes calculations put it a more than $3 trillions.

--------

Out of over 400 in depth online articles on international affairs , over 100 pieces are on the Iraq war  and the region . Fifty odd key articles from 2002 to 2011 with URLs and brief synopsis have been listed below. ( these can be easily googled)

My articles have been copied by up to many scores of websites/blogs/newspapers all around the world including of US universities of New York, Columbia, Colorado, California ,Utah etc ,think tanks and websites from rightist 'Free Republic " to leftist Salon.com, "Zmag" etc and in other western  countries, Turkish ,Kurdish , Arab ,Armenian, Greek and Serbian websites ,also in Israel , Asia , Africa and all over the Islamic world from Kyrgyzstan to Nigeria and Indonesia to Morocco. Atimes has a Chinese edition too.

The articles have been translated into Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, French, German, Italian , Spanish , Danish , Russian , Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese etc .

I have delivered lectures on Iraq war and its occupation at many universities, defence institutes and cultural and other centres in India since 2004.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in cooperation with Iran outmanoeuvered Bush and the Pentagon and got the United States to sign the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement, forcing US combat troops to leave by end December,2011, but Washington still has thousands of mercenaries and others in its Vatican city size large embassy in Baghdad .What about its many bases and Kurdish north Iraq , almost its protectorate since 1990 .US is already stoking the flames of Shia Sunni divide and conflict with help from Riyadh ,Amman and Ankara in the region .

List of 50 articles including 7 on decline and fall of US hegemony with URLs and synopsis is given below;

Before the March 2003 war on Iraq :

(Written when George W Bush along with old chieftains and neo-cons handed over by his father along with Tony Blair were beginning to beat the war drums )

2. The decline of the American Century 11 September, 2002 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DI11Ak06.html

www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EA29Ak02.html

After the war

7. BAGHDAD BATTERED UN: Need to have a hard look By K.Gajendra Singh 4 September , 2003

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers8%5Cpaper779.html

10. COMING OUT OF CHAKRAVHYU ( military trap)- US's Iraq Exit Policy! www.saag.org/papers9/paper894.html 15 January , 2004

The post-June 30 government being assembled for Iraq is likely to be as unpopular within the country as the now defunct US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. ED

14. Turkey, Israel aim to forgive and forget By K Gajendra Singh 27 July, 2004
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG28Ak02.html - 67k - 27 Jul 2004 - Cached - Similar pages

16 NEW BUSH ERA BEGINS: DECKS BEING CLEARED FOR HOLY WARS By K. Gajendra Singh 27-11-04
http://www.saag.org/papers12/paper1174.html

17. WOULD 30 JANUARY ELECTIONS MAKE OR BREAK IRAQ? by K. Gajendra Singh http://www.saag.org/papers12/paper1185.html 10-12-04

18. The Kirkuk tinderbox    By K Gajendra Singh     22 January, 2005
 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA22Ak01.html

20. New Iraq Government: Allenby's Damascus or Rumsfeld's Baghdad - April 4, 2005

21. Neo-Cons Grip Slipping as Iraqi Resistance Morphs Into Liberation War or Worse By K Gajendra Singh; June 30 ,2005

http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers15%5Cpaper1435.html  ,

22. Neo-Cons Middle East Project Brings It to Boil: Now, the Constitution Fiasco. August 30 , 2005

23. Saddam Trial: Another Western Kangaroo Court K Gajendra Singh October 20, 2005

24. Flawed Referendum Would Morph Iraq Into Regional Black Hole By K Gajendra Singh October 27 2005

26. Before the March 2003 US-Led Invasion of Iraq 31 March,2006
By K Gajendra Singh file:///C:/Users/gajendra/Documents/SaagFiles/SgIrWarPre03Aj31M.htm

27 The Great Western Demonology Circus: Now the Halabja Show

By K Gajendra Singh April 10, 2006

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13697.htm

30.The Mother Of All Battles: For Oil 12 July,2006

http://www.chowk.com/Views/Education/The-Moving-Finger-and-the-Baker-Hamilton-Iraq-Study-Group

The Moving Finger Writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to Cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. –Omar Khayam

33 The US-Saudi-Wahabi Nexus ! 1 January,2007

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=451

35. Texan Poker Bluff and Persian Chess Moves

By K Gajendra Singh 21 January, 2007
http://www.chowk.com/Views/Education/Texan-Poker-Bluff-and-Persian-Chess-Moves

36. Russia Broad-bands Relations with Middle East
by K. Gajendra Singh 18 February, 2007

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=404

37. Beware; USA & Allies Stoking Shia-Sunni Divide
by K. Gajendra Singh 23 March, 2007

" Mr Bush looks increasingly like a general who has run out of ideas, troops and hope ." Commented 'The Guardian'

38. Iran-UK Stand-off: A Clash of Civilizations
Iran Pardons Blair's Dozen and Jane Bond 8 April, 2007

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=380

"U.K. has suspended boarding operations in the northern Persian Gulf while the Royal Navy reviewed its procedures " First Sea Lord Admiral Jonathon Bond (no relation of James Bond).

39.Gen Taguba Unveils Abu Ghraib, US Gulag - http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m34046&hd=&size=1&l=e 27 June, 2007

40 . IRAQ 'S DOOMED 'SURGE' ONLY WIDENS GATES OF HELL http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m34176&hd=&size=1&l=e 3 July ,2007

41.The Decline And Coming Fall Of US Hegemony
by K.Gajendra Singh 31 March ,2008
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19656.htm

"History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role", Leo Tolstoy

But the wish of the young diplomat is not going to be fulfilled any time soon, if ever. But still—

42. WESTERN MILITARY-CAPITALIST CIVILISATION IN DISARRAY

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=236 25 Sept 2008

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m47513 , http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0386.htm

43. Corporate Culture and Greed Sink the American Republic

http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0442.htm 17 May ,2009

44. Another Sovereignty Transfer Charade in Baghdad
http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=162

Iraq; the Goose that lays (Black) Golden Eggs! 4 July,2009
130,000 GIs Stay Put on Iraqi Soil

45. Confirmation of Pressure on Dollar and US Decline
by K. Gajendra Singh http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0493.html 8 October, 2009

46 Bush and Blair accused of War Crimes ; Kuala Lumpur Tribunal

By K Gajendra Singh 7 November . 2009

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2009/11/bush-and-blair-accused-of-war-crimes.html

For any endevour against war crimes and injustice a first step has to be taken .In this case a number of steps based on morality , ethics and international law have already been taken

47.Complaint against George Bush & others in the International Criminal Court & warning to Obama

For Crimes against Humanity 23 January ,2010

Prof Boyle requests International Arrest Warrants for Rendition & Torture

48.Chilcot Iraq Inquiry; Another British Whitewash of 2003 Illegal Invasion; Tony Blair continues to lie still 2 Feb 2010

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2010/02/chilcot-iraq-inquiry-another-british.html

49. The Looming Mother of all Economic and Social Crisis

http://www.mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/2405-k-gajendra-singh.html, 11 May 2010

50 "End of Combat Mission" in Iraq; another Charade

After Sovereignty Transfer and Mission Accomplished! Sept 5,2010

Operation Iraqi Freedom – A Great Criminal Misadventure

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2010/09/end-of-combat-mission-in-iraq-another.html

"History is but glorification of murderers, criminals and robbers." -Karl Popper

New American Century Project Ends in a Catastrophe

51.7th Anniversary of the War Crimes at Fallujah

by K. Gajendra Singh 22 November,2011 http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=11643

K L War Crimes Tribunal unanimously convicts Bush and Blair for 'crimes against peace'. According to media reports the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal unanimously found former United States president George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of "crimes against peace". The tribunal found that the two had planned, prepared and invaded the state of Iraq on March 19, 2003, in violation of the United Nations Charter and international law. Post Script Post Sept 2008 Crippled Economy & US Strategic Decline *Smoke and Storm Signals* K.Gajendra Singh, 4 July.2011 http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=11174 "Starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, --and all -- by 2014, " President Barack Obama in June2011 US debt now amounts to around $ 14 trillion , almost equal to its GDP .Even in this GDP , the financial industry contributes 40%.The economy is now 20-25 % of world GDP unlike 50% after WWII and is being artificially sustained by a stimulus of $ 2.8 trillion .There are no green shoots of revival , unemployment continues to rise . US economy is in recession .The 1930s recession was overcome by WWII which allowed its protected ( from war) industry to run full steam and indebt European and other countries . "Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations, "Michael Parenti--" the subject of imperialism has been sanitized, so that empires become "commonwealths," and colonies become "territories" or "dominions". Imperialist military interventions become matters of "national defense," "national security," and maintaining "stability" (Or civilizing missions, saving the souls and more recently ," Operation enduring freedom "in Afghanistan, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and 'Humanitarian intervention' in Libya) *How Empires Collapse--suddenly* ---But I was in for a shock when I called on the Russian ambassador (in Baku in end 1993 ), whose Residence consisted of a couple of rooms in an Intourist hotel . Russians were the masters of Azerbaijan till it broke away a few years earlier , because of policies of glasnost and perestroika by a somewhat naïve Mikhail Gorbachev. Ambassador (Retd) K.Gajendra Singh ,December 23 , 2011.Mayur Vihar, Delhi

TARAFITS

Romania’s Capitalist Dream Turns into Nightmare

Post Bretton Woods; Emerging Outlines of New International Monetary Order

Would be the best performing asset class over the next year, citing sovereign defaults as the chief risk to the global economy.

But I was in for a shock when I called on the Russian ambassador, who's Residence, consisted of a couple of rooms in an Intourist hotel. Russians were the masters of Azerbaijan till it broke away a few years earlier.

Why Washington is opposed to Vladimir Putin election as Russian President

Fwd: Why Washington is opposed to Vladimir Putin election as Russian President

Ban on Gita ,Upanishads & Geetanjali in Turkey in 1970s !

BULENT ECEVIT, Former Turkish Prime Minister; FOLLOWER OF GEETA AND INTERPRETER OF GEETANJALI

Fw: BULENT ECEVIT, Former Turkish Prime Minister; FOLLOWER OF GEETA AND INTERPRETER OF GEETANJALI

50 Articles on US led Illegal War on Iraq & Occupation; 2002-11

Number of Iraqis killed as result of US led illegal war and occupation 1,455,590

An estimated 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced as a result of the war into Syria, Jordan and internally .Over one million widows and many million orphans created .The country is divided ,destroyed and decimated almost beyond recognition.

Number of US military personnel killed 4,801

Number of US military personnel seriously injured, maimed and mentally affected sixty to eighty thousand

Cost of war and occupation US$ One Trillion approx so far.

7. BAGHDAD BATTERED UN: Need to have a hard look By K.Gajendra Singh 4 September , 2003

35. Texan Poker Bluff and Persian Chess Moves

40 . IRAQ 'S DOOMED 'SURGE' ONLY WIDENS GATES OF HELL http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m34176&hd=&size=1&l=e 3 July ,2007

But the wish of the young diplomat is not going to be fulfilled any time soon, if ever. But still—

42. WESTERN MILITARY-CAPITALIST CIVILISATION IN DISARRAY

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=236 25 Sept 2008

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m47513 , http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0386.htm

Post Script

Post Sept 2008 Crippled Economy & US Strategic Decline Smoke and Storm Signals K.Gajendra Singh, 4 July.2011

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=11174

How Empires Collapse--suddenly

50 Articles on US led Illegal War on Iraq & Occupation; 2002-11

Number of Iraqis killed as result of US led illegal war and occupation 1,455,590

An estimated 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced as a result of the war into Syria, Jordan and internally .Over one million widows and many million orphans created .The country is divided ,destroyed and decimated almost beyond recognition.

Number of US military personnel killed 4,801

Number of US military personnel seriously injured, maimed and mentally affected sixty to eighty thousand

Cost of war and occupation US$ One Trillion approx so far.

7. BAGHDAD BATTERED UN: Need to have a hard look By K.Gajendra Singh 4 September , 2003

35. Texan Poker Bluff and Persian Chess Moves

40 . IRAQ 'S DOOMED 'SURGE' ONLY WIDENS GATES OF HELL http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m34176&hd=&size=1&l=e 3 July ,2007

But the wish of the young diplomat is not going to be fulfilled any time soon, if ever. But still—

42. WESTERN MILITARY-CAPITALIST CIVILISATION IN DISARRAY

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=236 25 Sept 2008

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m47513 , http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0386.htm

Post Script

Post Sept 2008 Crippled Economy & US Strategic Decline Smoke and Storm Signals K.Gajendra Singh, 4 July.2011

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=11174

How Empires Collapse--suddenly