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I begin by thanking all the organizers; I know it took quite a lot of efforts to bring us all together. It is a great achievement, and as Mazin Qumsiyeh and Haidar Eid, mentioned, and Lubna Masarwa, yesterday, you also provided a great opportunity for us to meet and we are very grateful to you for this opportunity to meet you and to meet each other. It is easier because of the Israeli oppression to meet here than to meet in Palestine where we should meet and hopefully one day we will all be there without the need to go to the frozen hills of Stuttgart to create a joint life!

And I think that’s the gist of the Zionist story that it does not allow people to meet normal life and to be normal friends that they need to go through all that hardship in order to fulfill a very elementary human impulse to live together.

We live in very bizarre times. On the one hand, we could not have wished as activists for a better Israeli government. I think that this particular government makes any sophisticated analysis about what Zionism in Israel is all about quite redundant. It is very easy to expose not only the Israeli policies, but also the racist ideology behind them. On the other hand, Israel is the most successful economy in the West in the last three years; it has done much better than the Germany, much better than most of the economic powers of the West; its banking system is very stable, its currency is one of the strongest in the world and it doesn’t suffer at all from all the hardships that had affected the Western capitalist economies in the last three years.

The result is a very bewildering gap between what average and decent people in the West think about Israel and the way the Israelis, specially the Israeli Jews, think about themselves. They think that they live in a very successful society, they believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict is over, that the Palestinian question has ended, yes, you have a problem in Gaza, yes you have a problem with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but this is a global problem, this is not a particular Israeli problem; this is part of the so-called war against terror.

We also live in bizarre times because despite of the – and Mazin Qumsiyeh talked about it yesterday in very details way, so I don’t have to repeat it – , we also live in a time where particular and specific Israeli policies are severely criticized. People go and demonstrate against the massacre in Gaza, people go and demonstrate against the attack of the flotilla to Gaza, and yet, nobody dares to attack the ideology that is behind these policies. There is no demonstration against Zionism, because the European parliament even regards a demonstration against Zionism as anti-Semitism.

Imagine, in the days of apartheid in South Africa, if you were not allowed to demonstrate against the apartheid in South Africa, but only against the Soweto massacre… And this is still a great Israeli success. And Germany plays a very important role in this success, that the main problem and the main reason for the criminal policies is not analyzed, is not discussed, is not touched upon, only the symptoms. I am not a doctor, I am not a physician, but I know that if you deal with the symptoms and not with the cause of the illness, you don’t cure the patient.

So, I think that what we really need as activists, and it’s easier to talk to you than I think to people who know nothing about the conflict or are totally on the other side of the coin, that we have to change a little bit what we are doing. Not in terms of our very successful BDS campaign, or the kind of things that we do in Germany and elsewhere in solidarity with the Palestinian people. I think this is an impressive chapter in European civil society activity, nonetheless impressive as was pointed out yesterday than the chapter in the struggle against apartheid, but we are still most of us, are still not using the right language. We, most of us, are still not employing the kind of dictionary that we should employ in order to drive the message home of what are we dealing with.

Because one of the greatest paradoxes of what goes on in Israel and Palestine, is that on one hand it is not a complicated story – we have been there before, European settlers coming either genociding or kicking out the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this. And on the other hand, Israel succeeded with the help of its allies everywhere, including in this country, to build this complex explanation that is so complex that only they can understand it. And you are not allowed to interfere, especially if you are Germans, you are not allowed to interfere in this analysis, because it is very complex.

No, it is not, it is really not complex. And this is why history is so important. Understanding the not so complex history of what the Zionist movement was and is doing to the indigenous, native people of Palestine is what the story is all about. Yes, there are other stories connected to it, I agree, the fate of the Jews in Europe, the holocaust,… I don’t know, the relations between Christianity and Judaism over the last 2’000 years, but these are sidebars. These are not the main story, they belong to the story, but you don’t begin with these.

This is why in Israel, even unfortunately Palestinian students who are Israeli citizens, when they learn about the history of their own country, they begin in Odessa. I remember my Palestinian student in the university saying “can you explain to us why we were born in R…or S… or in the Negev, have to begin our history in Odessa?” They did not even know where Odessa was. And I said, that is because you are under occupation even inside Israel, not just in the West Bank, not just in the Gaza strip, Palestinians inside Israel are also under occupation, and are also under colonization, and if we don’t understand this, we will not break the deadlock.

Because what is called the “peace process” that began in 1967 is taking place on Mars, on the moon…This is the only peace process in history that I know of that had no relevance whatsoever with the problem it was supposed to solve. What they were talking about in Geneva in 1977, in Madrid in 1991, in Oslo in 1993, had very little to do with the essence of the problem. It dealt with the symptoms, I agree, but not with the essence.

And this is the second greatest Israeli success. That not only the public opinion does not deal with the essence, but also the peace process very successfully succeeds in avoiding it. So if you go back to history, and you are using today the right language, you are not anachronistic, as someone was trying to say this morning, you are not anachronistic, you are actually a very relevant updated person. I will explain what I mean.

If you say that Zionism is colonialism, you are the youngest and most updated student of history I have met. Anyone who would try to deter you by saying this is anachronism, this is not helpful, this is anti-Semitism… is anachronistic. And lives on the moon or in Mars, and can continue to talk about something which has nothing to do with what is going on the ground. Actually, if you know Hebrew, you know that the whole Hebrew language, from 1882 until today, which was constructed to describe what the Zionist movement is doing in Palestine, uses, again and again, the word “hityachwut, hituachahut”, and the only way of translating these words is TO COLONIZE. There is no other translation.

So, the Zionist movement in the late 19th century, when colonialism had very good public relations, was very gladly using the word to colonize. But then, they learnt that colonialism was not so popular, so they translated it differently, they found the word settlement, which means something else in English, and they found the word “yes, it is colonized, but it is not like “colonize”, it is a different kind. Again, it is complex, and only we, the Israeli Jews understand why Israeli colonization and why white colonialism in Africa is not the same.”

But if you are not an Israeli Jew, you cannot understand it, if you are not a Zionist Israeli Jew, of course you cannot understand it! And I think this is important to bring back in our teaching, in schools, in our approach to the public, in our negotiations with the political elite in this country, and in the West, to say to them: you are dealing with the last colonialist project and as bizarre as it sounds, even in the XXI century, this colonialist project employs the same tactics of colonialism in the XIX century.

And I think that every decent person in the West, like in the time of colonialism, will not stand on the side of colonialism. But you have to clean your language, you have to clean your mind and you have to think that it is totally irrelevant what people say about what you say. It does not matter what they say… they will regard you as anti-Semitic even if you support the two-state solution because it means you don’t support the two-state solution as they understand it. Because you don’t understand the problem, you think that the two-state solution is a sovereign, independent state over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, no, you don’t understand it.

The state for the Palestinians are two Bantustans, divided to twelve in the West Bank, contained like in a concentration camp in Gaza, has no connection between it, has a little municipality in Ramallah which will be called the government, this is a state. And if you don’t understand that this is a state, it shows that you still have to learn about the complexity of the conflict.

Now, colonialism is one message from the past that we should accept and we should deal with, and we should recruit the veterans as well as the younger cohorts of activists to work for something which universally should be very easy to recruit people for : the fight against colonialism, the fight against the idea that someone from the outside has the right to demolish the life of people in the inside. And they have done it in 1882, in 1948, and they have done it yesterday in the Negev, or in the West Bank and they are going to do it next week if we will continue to talk about peace negotiations, two-state solutions, all kind of irrelevant concepts that have nothing to do with the realities on the ground.

The second concept from the past which I think we should insist on conveying to people, whether we try to protest against something Israel is doing today or whether we will commemorate in January what Israeli had done in the Gaza Strip or when we commemorate in May the crime that Israel committed in 1948, and this is the ethnic cleansing.

It is a concept of course which was developed in the 1990s, clearly because of what happened in the Balkans wars, but even before that, this was regarded by the international community as an unacceptable ideology and policy. Only genocide is regarded by the international community as worst than ethnic cleansing. And quite often the two are interconnected, as we can see in other places, and as we can see in Israel and Palestine. When you are allowed to pursue a policy of ethnic cleansing, don’t be surprised if these perpetrators would one day move to genocide. Because in both cases you have to totally dehumanize the people you are expelling or massacring, even if they are children, they have to be totally dehumanized.

And anybody who lived in Israel long enough as I did, knows that the main corruption of people through military service is the total dehumanization of the Palestinians. That is why a soldier when he sees a Palestinian baby, he does not see a baby, he sees a potential enemy. The road from kicking out the baby from the house, or killing the baby, is not very long. And I think, the message of ethnic cleansing is the message of criminalizing, not the policies of the state of Israel, but criminalizing the state of Israel. And we should do this.

We should do this because only a fascist approach to life would say that in every historical condition a state and a country is the same thing. No, it is not. Sometimes the state is the worst thing that can happen to a country. And the worst thing that happened to Palestine is the state of Israel. If we want to make the country of Palestine a place where people could live as equals, in fact live in many ways better than in other parts of the Middle East, may be even better than in some parts of Europe, is to bring the country back at the expense of the state. I know this is not easy, and this is not about questioning the right of states to exist.

We are individuals, we are activists, we don’t have the power to challenge the right of a state to exist, we cannot eliminate states (Israel has the power to eliminate states, we don’t have the power to eliminate states), what we have is a moral power to say to the people that the kind of state you have founded, and that the kind of state that you are maintaining, is destructive to the country in which you exist. The creation of that state led in 1948 to the expulsion of half of the native population of Palestine. Show me any other situation in history where the international community, under the slogan of peace, would come and say: in order to make this country a peaceful place, I have to kick out half of the people who lived there.

Only in Israel and Palestine we have this bizarre historical moment where the United Nations, embodying the international community’s will, is telling the world that it allows Israel to kick out half of Palestine population in the name of peace. And once you start like this, the history of Israel, it is very difficult to retract; you have to explain that actually you have to study history, and go back to 1947 and 1948, and say that partition, or the idea of partition is an immoral idea. It’s not even a good real politic idea, but that of course you could not know in 1947. I can understand that in 1947-1948, you would have said “let’s see, if we divide the country into two” it might work. Who would have known?

But 60 years later, can you argue that dividing this baby, if you want, is different from the Salomon trial? It is not surprising, you know about the Salomon trial, right? You know about the baby and the two mothers, and that the real mother does not want the baby to be cut into two. We know who is the real mother in the case of Israel and Palestine, we know who is willing all the time, supposedly, to partition it. So I think that the whole idea of the ethnic cleansing is connected to the international support for it, not direct support for it. But the agreement, and the consent of the United Nations, and later on the European community, and later on the United States, to say that this is the way peace can only be possible in Palestine, that the Israelis kicked out enough Palestinians, and took over enough of Palestine to create the “only democracy in the Middle East”.

They corrupted every common sense languages that we had in the West in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the Zionist project. That’s how you create a democracy? By kicking out the indigenous population, so that you can have a Jewish majority? But that’s what all the young Israelis believe. They learn in the political science departments that in order to build a democratic society, where the majority can decide what to do, you are entitled first to define who are the majority, even by means of killing the other side, so that you will be sure what would be the result of the democratic elections.

Israelis don’t find it at all bizarre that if you create a democracy, you can also perpetrate ethnic cleansing, and genocide, so that you get the right electorate for the future democracy. But a lot of people in the West will talk about Israel as a democratic state; because they would say the majority votes and decides what to do. The fact that the majority has to be kept all the time by ethnic cleansing people, by massacring them, by colonizing them, by putting them in great ghettos like in Gaza, is never discussed as part of the Israeli democracy.

And I think we should bring that to the fore. The only way to keep Israel as a democratic state, according to the Zionist ideology, is to continue to be a criminal state. It is almost like allowing people in the worst kind of prison, the worst kind of criminals to have a democratic system, by the force of the guns, by the force of the brutality, by the force of their sheer power.

Now the third and last concept I would like to talk about is, which comes out of colonialism and ethnic cleansing – which are the main driving ideologies behind the Jewish state -, ethnic cleansing and colonialism are the reasons that we have a Jewish state in Israel. This is not what we are taught of course, either as Israelis who were born there, or people who support Israel around the world, we are not told. We are told about two different ideologies : we are told about the need to find the Jews a safe place, and we know it’s not a very safe place for Jews, it’s the opposite (the only unsafe place for Jews is to be in Israel, that’s there most of the Jews have been dying in great numbers since 1948), and this is the place where Jews can recreate themselves as a national movement where they can exercise their rights for self-determination.

But we know that Israel is not interested in the right of self-determination for the Jews, this is why it brings hundreds and thousands of non-Jews from all other the world, to settle in Israel, because what is important for Israel is not self-determination for the Jewish people, what is important for Israel is not make sure that it is not an Arab state. And if you are a Baha’i, and you live on a mountain in the Himalaya, but you are definitely not an Arab, you will become an Israeli Jewish citizen in no time, if you are willing to come over. There is no problem. The rabbis will make sure that you are a Jew, and they may cause you to go through some painful operations – if you are a man -, but all in all, you are welcome because you are not an Arab. And if you are an Arab Jew, you will have to “dearabize” yourself, otherwise you will not be welcome in the Israeli Jewish society.

Now, the third and last concept, and I reach to the end in a few minutes, is the ethnic purity. The ethnic purity of the state and this is related to the right of return. Most of the people, and specially some of our best friends, and I mean it not ironically as I just published a book with Noam Chomsky, I am including him in this, some of our best friends are against the right of return. And their practical explanations, they would say it is unrealistic to tell the refugees that they should look forward for the possibility of returning, that they should be encouraged to think about a different kind of future, and I would say that the departure point for this analysis is not practicality, is not real politic. Because if their basis for analyzing, as Uri Avnery does, as Noam Chomsky does and all out very – and I am not cynically saying our good friends, they are my good friends – , but I totally disagree with them on this, if the basis for analyzing the situation is real politic, then it means that the balance of power determines your attitude.

Well, the balance of power, as we heard yesterday, between the largest and strongest army in the Middle East, and the weakest military powers in the world, right, if this balance of power determines our attitudes, we should not even meet here today. We should give in to the Israeli dictate. We know the Israelis are very clear to what they want, they want to have as much as Palestine as possible, with as few Palestinians as possible, they wanted in 1882 and they want it in 2010. This has not changed. The means have changed, the historical circumstances have changed, but the vision of what would be a thriving successful Israeli society is a society which has as few Arabs as possible, and as much of Palestine as possible. That has not changed. So if real politic determines our attitude, we should give in to this vision.

So in any case, we are not dealing with real politic when we are challenging what Israel wants. And the reason the Israelis refuse even to acknowledge the right of return, let alone practically implementing the right of return, is not because as some people would think because they have a very serious consciousness problem of admitting that they have kicked out and massacred people three years after the holocaust. I once thought that this was the main problem, I admit it. I once thought so, I was hopeful because I am an optimistic, I am not very tall, I would see the bottom half of the glass. So I thought the Israelis don’t want to talk about the right of return because people who were, like Uri Avnery for instance, involved in the ethnic cleansing itself, feel unhappy about it. And if you talk about the right of return, you bring back … this is kind of the panacea, the remedy for the illness.

No, I don’t think this has anything to do with it, unfortunately. It makes a lot of sense from the Zionist point of view, Arabs are not welcome. Whether these are Arabs we kicked out, whether these are Arabs we have never touched, whether these are Arab Jews who want to insist to remain Arabs even if they are Jews, they are not welcome because we want to be a democracy! And this people would want to come in. That’s the major thing, which is behind the Israeli refusal for the right of return.

So when you support the Palestinian, and with this I will end, when you support the Palestinians right of return, you are not only supporting, which I understand we all do, the right of the people who were kicked out to come back if they want to. You are not only acknowledging the crime of the ethnic cleansing in 1948, you are not only abiding by the United Nations resolutions that very clearly support the right of the people to return, and you are saying a very simple NO to racism. That’s what you are doing. You would just say NO to the only racist state we have in the Middle East.

We have not very nice regimes in the Middle East, I agree, the political regimes in the Middle East are nothing to write home about, I would not publicize them as recommendations for future societies to build their politics on this basis, but not one of them is racist. The only racist state is the Jewish state of Israel. One of the only ways of engaging with this racist state is to challenge it on the right of the refugees to return. Not because it is practical, or not practical, because it deals with the genetic code of the Jewish state. The idea that you can colonize is not new, but the idea in the XXI century that you can maintain this colonization by openly maintaining a racist state, should not be acceptable, especially not in this country. THANK YOU.

The text of this lecture has been established by Claudine Faendrich on the basis of the video recording of the Stuttgart Conference, November 2010.

By Ilan Pappe

10 January, 2011

Silviacattori.net

Does the Pentagon Really Have 1,180 Foreign Bases?

The United States has 460 bases overseas! It has 507 permanent bases! What is the U.S doing with more than 560 foreign bases? Why does it have 662 bases abroad? Does the United States really have more than 1,000 military bases across the globe?

In a world of statistics and precision, a world in which “accountability” is now a Washington buzzword, a world where all information is available at the click of a mouse, there’s one number no American knows. Not the president. Not the Pentagon. Not the experts. No one.

The man who wrote the definitive book on it didn’t know for sure. The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist didn’t even come close. Yours truly has written numerous articles on U.S. military bases and even part of a book on the subject, but failed like the rest.

There are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases dotting the globe. To be specific, the most accurate count is 1,077. Unless it’s 1,088. Or, if you count differently, 1,169. Or even 1,180. Actually, the number might even be higher. Nobody knows for sure.

Keeping Count

In a recent op-ed piece, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof made a trenchant point: “The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. Do we fear that if we pull our bases from Germany, Russia might invade?”

For years, the late Chalmers Johnson, the man who literally wrote the book on the U.S. military’s empire of bases, The Sorrows of Empire, made the same point and backed it with the most detailed research on the globe-spanning American archipelago of bases that has ever been assembled. Several years ago, after mining the Pentagon’s own publicly-available documents, Johnson wrote, “[T]he United States maintains 761 active military ‘sites’ in foreign countries. (That’s the Defense Department’s preferred term, rather than ‘bases,’ although bases are what they are.)”

Recently, the Pentagon updated its numbers on bases and other sites, and they have dropped. Whether they’ve fallen to the level advanced by Kristof, however, is a matter of interpretation. According to the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report, the U.S. military now maintains 662 foreign sites in 38 countries around the world. Dig into that report more deeply, though, and Grand Canyon-sized gaps begin to emerge.

A Legacy of Bases

In 1955, 10 years after World War II ended, the Chicago Daily Tribune published a major investigation of bases, including a map dotted with little stars and triangles, most of them clustered in Europe and the Pacific. “The American flag flies over more than 300 overseas outposts,” wrote reporter Walter Trohan. “Camps and barracks and bases cover 12 American possessions or territories held in trust. The foreign bases are in 63 foreign nations or islands.”

Today, according to the Pentagon’s published figures, the American flag flies over 750 U.S. military sites in foreign nations and U.S. territories abroad. This figure does not include small foreign sites of less 10 acres or those that the U.S. military values at less than $10 million. In some cases, numerous bases of this type may be folded together and counted as a single military installation in a given country. A request for further clarification from the Department of Defense went unanswered.

What we do know is that, on the foreign outposts the U.S. military counts, it controls close to 52,000 buildings, and more than 38,000 pieces of heavy infrastructure like piers, wharves, and gigantic storage tanks, not to mention more than 9,100 “linear structures” like runways, rail lines, and pipelines. Add in more than 6,300 buildings, 3,500 pieces of infrastructure, and 928 linear structures in U.S. territories and you have an impressive total. And yet, it isn’t close to the full story.

Losing Count

Last January, Colonel Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told me that there were nearly 400 U.S. and coalition bases in Afghanistan, including camps, forward operating bases, and combat outposts. He expected that number to increase by 12 or more, he added, over the course of 2010.

In September, I contacted ISAF’s Joint Command Public Affairs Office to follow up. To my surprise, I was told that “there are approximately 350 forward operating bases with two major military installations, Bagram and Kandahar airfields.” Perplexed by the loss of 50 bases instead of a gain of 12, I contacted Gary Younger, a Public Affairs Officer with the International Security Assistance Force. “There are less than 10 NATO bases in Afghanistan,” he wrote in an October 2010 email. “There are over 250 U.S. bases in Afghanistan.”

By then, it seemed, the U.S. had lost up to 150 bases and I was thoroughly confused. When I contacted the military to sort out the discrepancies and listed the numbers I had been given — from Shanks’ 400 base tally to the count of around 250 by Younger — I was handed off again and again until I landed with Sergeant First Class Eric Brown at ISAF Joint Command’s Public Affairs. “The number of bases in Afghanistan is roughly 411,” Brown wrote in a November email, “which is a figure comprised of large base[s], all the way down to the Combat Out Post-level.” Even this, he cautioned, wasn’t actually a full list, because “temporary positions occupied by platoon-sized elements or less” were not counted.

Along the way to this “final” tally, I was offered a number of explanations — from different methods of accounting to the failure of units in the field to provide accurate information — for the conflicting numbers I had been given. After months of exchanging emails and seeing the numbers swing wildly, ending up with roughly the same count in November as I began with in January suggests that the U.S. command isn’t keeping careful track of the number of bases in Afghanistan. Apparently, the military simply does not know how many bases it has in its primary theater of operations.

Black Sites in Baseworld

Scan the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report for sites in Afghanistan. Go ahead, read through all 206 pages. You won’t find a mention of them, not a citation, not a single reference, not an inkling that the United States has even one base in Afghanistan, let alone more than 400. This is hardly an insignificant omission. Add those 411 missing bases to Kristof’s total and you get 971 sites around the world. Add it to the Pentagon’s official tally and you’re left with 1,073 bases and sites overseas, around 770 more than Walter Trohan uncovered for his 1955 article. That number even tops the 1967 count of 1,014 U.S. bases abroad, which Chalmers Johnson considered “the Cold War peak.”

There are, however, other ways to tally the total. In a letter written last Spring, Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Barney Frank, Ron Paul, and Walter Jones asserted that there were just 460 U.S. military installations abroad, not counting those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nicholas Kristof, who came up with a count of 100 more than that, didn’t respond to an email for clarification, but may have done the same analysis as I did: search the Pentagon’s Base Structure Report and select out the obvious sites that, while having a sizeable “footprint,” could only tenuously be counted as bases, like dependent family housing complexes and schools, resort hotels (yes, the Department of Defense has them), ski areas (them, too) and the largest of their golf courses — the U.S. military claimed to possess a total of 172 courses of all sizes in 2007 — and you get a total of around 570 foreign sites. Add to them the number of Afghan bases and you’re left with about 981 foreign military bases.

As it happens, though, Afghanistan isn’t the only country with a baseworld black-out. Search the Pentagon’s tally for sites in Iraq and you won’t find a single entry. (That was true even when the U.S. reportedly had more than 400 bases in that country.) Today, the U.S. military footprint there has shrunk radically. The Department of Defense declined to respond to an email request for the current number of bases in Iraq, but published reports indicate that no fewer than 88 are still there, including Camp Taji, Camp Ramadi, Contingency Operating Base Speicher, and Joint Base Balad, which, alone, boasts about 7,000 American troops. These missing bases would raise the worldwide total to about 1,069.

War zones aren’t the only secret spots. Take a close look at Middle Eastern nations whose governments, fearing domestic public opinion, prefer that no publicity be given to American military bases on their territory, and then compare it to the Pentagon’s official list. To give an example, the 2010 Base Structure Report lists one nameless U.S. site in Kuwait. Yet we know that the Persian Gulf state hosts a number of U.S. military facilities including Camp Arifjan, Camp Buering, Camp Virginia, Kuwait Naval Base, Ali Al Salem Air Base, and Udari Range. Add in these missing sites and the total number of bases abroad reaches 1,074.

Check the Pentagon’s base tally for Qatar and you’ll come up empty. But look at the numbers of Department of Defense personnel serving overseas and you’ll find more than 550 service men and women deployed there. While that Persian Gulf nation may have officially built Al Udeid Air Base itself, to call it anything but a U.S. installation would be disingenuous, given that it has served as a major logistics and command hub for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Add it in and the foreign base count reaches 1,075.

Saudi Arabia is also missing from the Pentagon’s tally, even though the current list of personnel abroad indicates that hundreds of U.S. troops are deployed there. From the lead up to the First Gulf War in 1990 through the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military stationed thousands of troops in the kingdom. In 2003, in response to fundamentalist pressure on the Saudi government, Washington announced that it was pulling all but a small number of troops out of the country. Yet the U.S. continues to train and advise from sites like Eskan Village, a compound 20 kilometers south of Riyadh where, according to 2009 numbers, 800 U.S. personnel (500 of them advisors) were based.

Discounted, Uncounted, and Unknown

In addition to the unknown number of micro-bases that the Pentagon doesn’t even bother to count and Middle Eastern and Afghan bases that fly under the radar, there are even darker areas in the empire of bases: installations belonging to other countries that are used but not acknowledged by the United States or avowed by the host-nation need to be counted, too. For example, it is now well known that U.S. drone aircraft, operating under the auspices of both the CIA and the Air Force and conducting a not-so-secret war in Pakistan, take off from one or more bases in that country.

Additionally, there are other sites like the “covert forward operating base run by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi,” exposed by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation magazine, and one or more airfields run by employees of the private security contractor Blackwater (now renamed Xe Services). While the Department of Defense’s personnel tally indicates that there are well over a hundred troops deployed in Pakistan, it counts no bases there.

Similarly uncounted are the U.S. Navy’s carrier strike groups, flotillas that consist of massive aircraft carriers, the largest warships in the world, as well as a guided missile cruiser, two guided missile destroyers, an attack submarine, and an ammunition, oiler, and supply ship. The U.S. boasts 11 such carriers, town-sized floating bases that can travel the world, as well as numerous other ships, some boasting well over 1,000 officers and crew, that may, says the Navy, travel “to any of more than 100 ports of call worldwide” from Hong Kong to Rio de Janeiro.

“The ability to conduct logistics functions afloat enables naval forces to maintain station anywhere,” reads the Navy’s Naval Operations Concept: 2010. So these bases that float under the radar should really be counted, too.

A Bang, A Whimper, and the Alamo of the Twenty-First Century

Speaking before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans, and Related Agencies early last year, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Dorothy Robyn referenced the Pentagon’s “507 permanent installations.” The Pentagon’s 2010 Base Structure Report, on the other hand, lists 4,999 total sites in the U.S., its territories, and overseas.

In the grand scheme of things, the actual numbers aren’t all that important. Whether the most accurate total is 900 bases, 1,000 bases or 1,100 posts in foreign lands, what’s undeniable is that the U.S. military maintains, in Chalmers Johnson’s famous phrase, an empire of bases so large and shadowy that no one — not even at the Pentagon — really knows its full size and scope.

All we know is that it raises the ire of adversaries like al Qaeda, has a tendency to grate on even the closest of allies like the Japanese, and costs American taxpayers a fortune every year. In 2010, according to Robyn, military construction and housing costs at all U.S. bases ran to $23.2 billion. An additional $14.6 billion was needed for maintenance, repair, and recapitalization. To power its facilities, according to 2009 figures, the Pentagon spent $3.8 billion. And that likely doesn’t even scratch the surface of America’s baseworld in terms of its full economic cost.

Like all empires, the U.S. military’s empire of bases will someday crumble. These bases, however, are not apt to fall like so many dominos in some silver-screen last-stand sequence. They won’t, that is, go out with the “bang” of futuristic Alamos, but with the “whimper” of insolvency.

Last year, rumbling began even among Washington lawmakers about this increasingly likely prospect. “I do not think we should be spending money to have troops in Germany 65 years after World War II. We have a terrible deficit and we have to cut back,” said Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank. Similarly, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas announced, “If the United States really wants to assure our allies and deter our enemies, we should do it with strong military capabilities and sound policy — not by keeping troops stationed overseas, not siphoning funds from equipment and arms and putting it into duplicative military construction.”

Indeed, toward the end of 2010, the White House’s bipartisan deficit commission — officially known as the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — suggested cutting U.S. garrisons in Europe and Asia by one-third, which would, in their estimation, save about $8.5 billion in 2015.

The empire of bases, while still at or close to its height, is destined to shrink. The military is going to have to scale back its foreign footholds and lessen its global footprint in the years ahead. Economic realities will necessitate that. The choices the Pentagon makes today will likely determine on what terms its garrisons come home tomorrow. At the moment, they can still choose whether coming home will look like an act of magnanimous good statesmanship or inglorious retreat.

Whatever the decision, the clock is ticking, and before any withdrawals begin, the U.S. military needs to know exactly where it’s withdrawing from (and Americans should have an accurate sense of just where its overseas armies are). An honest count of U.S. bases abroad — a true, full, and comprehensive list — would be a tiny first step in the necessary process of downsizing the global mission.

By Nick Turse

Nick Turse is an investigative journalist, the associate editor of TomDispatch.com, and currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. His latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook. His website is NickTurse.com. To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Turse discusses how to count up America’s empire of bases, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.

Copyright 2011 Nick Turse

The assassination of Salmaan Taseer has shown only too clearly the growing extremism in Pakistan, the radicalisation of its society and the polarisation that is taking hold. This is not just between the religious and the secular, but also the polarisation that the “war on terror” has caused between the various religious sects.

There were no Pakistanis involved in 9/11 and al-Qaida was then based in Afghanistan. The only militancy we were suffering was among the tribal groups who had fought against the Soviets and whose idea of jihad was a war against foreign occupation. Yes, there was sectarian violence, but suicide bombers were unheard of.

So after 9/11, when General Musharraf chose to ally with the Americans in the “war on terror”, it was a fundamental blunder. Overnight he turned the jihadi groups created to fight foreign occupation from supporters into enemies, people prepared to fight the Pakistani army because of its support for the US invasion.

Musharraf then made a second mistake in sending the army into the tribal areas. Our own tribespeople immediately rose up in revolt. Rather than co-opting these people – and, remember, every man is armed – we made new enemies. Then along came the American drones to kill more of our people. Soon, the American “war on terror” was seen as a war on Islam by the majority of Pakistanis and certainly by the Pashtuns in the tribal areas. Terror and extremism intensified.

Every year extremism gets worse, our society becomes more radicalised and the bloodshed grows. This is how you must see the context of this assassination. Society is now so polarised that because Taseer criticised the blasphemy law he was seen as criticising Islam. But that was not what he said. This assassination would not have happened before the “war on terror”.

Imams of different sects are being killed now, and mosques and churches bombed. The fanaticism keeps getting worse. As disturbing as Taseer’s assassination is, just as disturbing is the way his assassin has become a hero. That is why this whole thing is so dangerous, it shows where we are headed.

I have been predicting this from day one. There is no military solution in Afghanistan, only dialogue, so the supreme irony is that in siding with the Americans all we have done is send the levels of violence up in Pakistan. The “war on terror” has weakened the state and then, thanks to the George Bush-sponsored National Reconciliation Ordinance in 2007, which allowed an amnesty for all the biggest political crooks, we now have the most corrupt government in our history. The “war on terror” is destroying Pakistan.

Clemenceau once said: “War is too important to be left to the generals.” He was right; for us it has been a disaster. There is incredible anti-American sentiment here, and the drone attacks only fuel that hatred. We need a change of strategy, otherwise the worst-case scenario will be achieved here; an unstable nuclear state.

It’s not a question of there being no room for moderates, it’s that moderates are being pushed towards extremism. Taseer didn’t say anything anti-Islamic, he just questioned the blasphemy law and whether it should be used to victimise innocent people. His death has caused many moderates to think there is no point in being a martyr. If it makes people such as myself think twice about what we say, then where does that leave us? We are all now at risk.

Crime in Pakistan is now at a level that breaks all records. Yet 60% of the elite police forces are now employed protecting VIPs. Where does that leave ordinary people? Young Pakistanis are being radicalised and the Taliban grow in strength. The US is no longer fighting just the Taliban, it is fighting the whole Pashtun population.

The consequences for Pakistan, with its population of 180 million, are enormous. And there is an impact, too, on Muslim youth in western countries. Graham Fuller, the CIA chief of staff in Kabul, wrote in 2007 that, if Nato left Afghanistan, Pakistan security forces could overcome terrorism and extremism. But, as long as the Americans push Pakistan to do more in the tribal areas, the situation will worsen – until Pakistan itself implodes.

By Imran Khan

No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye. I have no doubt whatsoever that both England and the town dwellers of India will have to answer, if there is a God above, for this crime against humanity, which is perhaps unequaled in history. The law itself in this country has been used to serve the foreign exploiter. My unbiased examination of the Punjab Martial Law cases has led me to believe that 95 per cent of the convictions were wholly bad. My experience of political cases in India leads me to the conclusion that in nine out of every ten the condemned men were totally innocent. Their crime consisted in the love of their country. In 99 cases out of 100, justice has been denied to Indians as against Europeans in the courts of India. This is not an exaggerated picture. It is the experience of almost every Indian who has had anything to do with such cases. In my opinion the administration of the law is thus prostituted consciously or unconsciously for the benefit of the exploiter…

In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good…

The only course open to you, the judge, is either to resign your post, and thus dissociate yourself from evil if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict upon me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to the public weal.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison. He was then termed a terrorist by the racist white empire, including western powers. Many of his comrades, most of them communists, spent many more years. Tortured and exiled. Che was murdered in Bolivia by the CIA. Fidel Castro was jailed and branded untouchable. Cuba is still under an American trade embargo. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, hanged by the British. Young Khudiram Bose, hanged. Two of the Chittagong rebels, hanged: Surya Sen and Tarakeswar Dastidar. Kalpana Dutt condemned as terrorist. Chandrashekhar Azad killed himself in an armed encounter with the police. Or, was he killed? Nehru spent many more years in jail than Gandhi and other Congress leaders. Hundreds of Indian revolutionaries were tortured and brutalised in the kala pani of Andaman’s hell-holes. Great Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca murdered by the Franco dictatorship. Genius scholar Christopher Caudwell killed in Spanish Civil War, plus hundreds of anti-fascist intellectuals. Salvador Allende, elected Chilean leader, killed by the CIA. His friend, poet Pablo Neruda, died soon after, in angst. Dissident writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed in Nigeria. He was fighting for the rights of the poorest against the government and a multinational oil company. Azad and Hemchandra Pandey, killed by subterfuge, clearly in a fake encounter, even as Azad carried messages of talks/ceasefire. Charu Majumdar killed in Calcutta police custody. One generation of Bengal’s young wiped out, tortured, jailed. Chavez, Morales, Lula, all branded Leftists. Lula’s inheritor, Dilma Rousseff, condemned as Leftist Guerrilla Terrorist, is the new elected president of Brazil. Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, along with thousands of Nepali Maoists, branded terrorists. Aurobindo condemned as terrorist. Orhan Pamuk hounded for reminding Turkey of the Armenian holocaust. Sedition case against Arundhati Roy. Chinese Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo jailed for writing a freedom charter. His wife disappears. Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panai in prison for defending pro-democracy protestors.

Dr Binayak Sen. Life imprisonment. Sedition. No evidence. Crime: Four decades of relentless health work for the poorest in the most remote zones of India. And non-violent, peaceful protest against human rights violations. Gandhian with a stethoscope.

Is this a Police State or a Democracy?

By Amit Sengupta

The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah , Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.

The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby nations.

The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad , was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the US-led occupation of Iraq —a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the basis of lies— Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This is called “exemplary” or “collective” punishment and is, according to the laws of war, illegal.

The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to increase their effectiveness.

In a study of 711 houses and 4,843 individuals carried out in January and February 2010, authors Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi and a team of researchers found that the cancer rate had increased fourfold since before the US attack five years ago, and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.

In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in populations in Egypt , Jordan , and Kuwait . Heightened levels of adult lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported.

Child victims of US and UK use of white phosphorus. Destined to a life time of pain and disfigurement.

At 80 deaths out of every 1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times higher than in Egypt and Jordan , and eight times higher than in Kuwait .

Strikingly, after 2005 the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased sharply. In normal populations, 1050 boys are born for every 1000 girls. But among those born in Fallujah in the four years after the US assault, the ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1000 female births. This alteration is similar to gender ratios found in Hiroshima after the US atomic attack of 1945.

The most likely reason for the change in the sex ratio, according to the researchers, is the impact of a major mutagenic event—likely the use of depleted uranium in US weapons. While boys have one X-chromosome, girls have a redundant X-chromosome and can therefore absorb the loss of one chromosome through genetic damage.

“This is an extraordinary and alarming result,” said Busby, a professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Ulster and director of scientific research for Green Audit, an independent environmental research group. “To produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened. We need urgently to find out what the agent was. Although many suspect uranium, we cannot be certain without further research and independent analysis of samples from the area.”

Busby told an Italian television news station, RAI 24, that the “extraordinary” increase in radiation-related maladies in Fallujah is higher than that found in the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US atomic strikes of 1945. “My guess is that this was caused by depleted uranium,” he said. “They must be connected.”

The US military uses depleted uranium, also known as spent nuclear fuel, in armor-piercing shells and bullets because it is twice as dense as lead. Once these shells hit their target, however, as much as 40 percent of the uranium is released in the form of tiny particles in the area of the explosion. It can remain there for years, easily entering the human bloodstream, where it lodges itself in lymph glands and attacks the DNA produced in the sperm and eggs of affected adults, causing, in turn, serious birth defects in the next generation.

The research is the first systematic scientific substantiation of a body of evidence showing a sharp increase in infant mortality, birth defects, and cancer in Fallujah.

In October of 2009, several Iraqi and British doctors wrote a letter to the United Nations demanding an inquiry into the proliferation of radiation-related sickness in the city:

“Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukemias.…

“In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies, 24 percent of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75 percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed.…

“Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects, but premature births have also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is that doctors in Fallujah have said, ‘a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage.’” (See: “Sharp rise in birth defects in Iraqi city destroyed by US military”)

The Pentagon responded to this report by asserting that there were no studies to prove any proliferation of deformities or other maladies associated with US military actions. “No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues,” a Defense Department spokesman told the BBC in March. There have been no studies, however, in large part because Washington and its puppet Baghdad regime have blocked them.

According to the authors of “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah,” the Iraqi authorities attempted to scuttle their survey. “[S]hortly after the questionnaire survey was completed, Iraqi TV reportedly broadcast that a questionnaire survey was being carried out by terrorists and that anyone who was answering or administering the questionnaire could be arrested,” the study reports.

The history of the atrocity committed by American imperialism against the people of Fallujah began on April 28, 2003, when US Army soldiers fired indiscriminately into a crowd of about 200 residents protesting the conversion of a local school into a US military base. Seventeen were killed in the unprovoked attack, and two days later American soldiers fired on a protest against the murders, killing two more.

Razia aged 8. A victim of whitephosphorus attack

This intensified popular anger, and Fallujah became a center of the Sunni resistance against the occupation—and US reprisals. On March 31, 2004, an angry crowd stopped a convoy of the private security firm Blackwater USA , responsible for its own share of war crimes. Four Blackwater mercenaries were dragged from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River .

The US military then promised it would pacify the city, with one unnamed officer saying it would be turned into “a killing field,” but Operation Vigilant Resolve, involving thousands of Marines, ended in the abandonment of the siege by the US military in May, 2004. The victory of Fallujah’s residents against overwhelming military superiority was celebrated throughout Iraq and watched all over the world.

The Pentagon delivered its response in November 2004. The city was surrounded, and all those left inside were declared to be enemy combatants and fair game for the most heavily equipped killing machine in world history. The Associated Press reported that men attempting to flee the city with their families were turned back into the slaughterhouse.

In the attack, the US made heavy use of the chemical agent white phosphorus. Ostensibly used only for illuminating battlefields, white phosphorus causes terrible and often fatal wounds, burning its way through building material and clothing before eating away skin and then bone. The chemical was also used to suck the oxygen out of buildings where civilians were hiding.

Washington ’s desire for revenge against the population is indicated by the fact that the US military reported about the same number of “gunmen” killed (1,400) as those taken alive as prisoners (1,300-1,500). In one instance, NBC News captured video footage of a US soldier executing a wounded and helpless Iraqi man. A Navy investigation later found the Marine had been acting in self-defense.

Fifty-one US soldiers died in 10 days of combat. The true number of city residents who were killed is not known. The city’s population before the attack was estimated to be between 425,000 and 600,000. The current population is believed to be between 250,000 and 300,000. Tens of thousands, mostly women and children, fled in advance of the attack. Half of the city’s building were destroyed, most of these reduced to rubble.

Like much of Iraq , Fallujah remains in ruins. According to a recent report from IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Fallujah still has no functioning sewage system six years after the attack. “Waste pours onto the streets and seeps into drinking water supplies,” the report notes. “Abdul-Sattar Kadhum al-Nawaf, director of Fallujah general hospital, said the sewage problem had taken its toll on residents’ health. They were increasingly affected by diarrhea, tuberculosis, typhoid and other communicable diseases.”

The savagery of the US assault shocked the world, and added the name Fallujah to an infamous list that includes My Lai, Sabra-Shatila, Guérnica, Nanking, Lidice, and Wounded Knee .

But unlike those other massacres, the crime against Fallujah did not end when the bullets were no longer fired or the bombs stopped falling.

The US military’s decision to heavily deploy depleted uranium, all but proven by “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah,” was a wanton act of brutality, poisoning an entire generation of children not yet born in 2004.

The Fallujah study is timely, with the US now preparing a major escalation of the violence in Afghanistan . The former head of US Afghanistan operations, General Stanley McChrystal, was replaced last month after a media campaign, assisted by a Rolling Stone magazine feature, accused him, among other things, of tying the hands of US soldiers in their response to Afghan insurgents.

McChrystal was replaced by General David Petraeus, formerly head of the US Central Command. Petraeus has outlined new rules of engagement designed to allow for the use of disproportionate force against suspected militants.

Petraeus, in turn, was replaced at Central Command by General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who played a key planning role in the US assault on Fallujah in 2004. Mattis revels in killing, telling a public gathering in 2005 “it’s fun to shoot some people…. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot.”

By Tom Eley

Swami Aseemanand is the rightwing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s PR man. His new place in the confession box revealing the role of Hindutva terror may gladden the hearts of the ruling party and the political mechanism, but he is in fact saving the skin of the real culprits. More importantly, this sort of admission of guilt reveals the poor state of our intelligence agencies and security. This isn’t about murder any more, but about martyrdom.

He is speaking the language of Narendra Modi when he says that it was the attack on the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi that made him and his band of saffron terrorists decide that they needed to retaliate. It started with the bomb blast at the Mecca Mosque in Hyderabad followed by the blasts in Malegaon, a Muslim majority area.

Immediately, the antiterrorism squad (ATS) arrested nine Muslim boys under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in the latter case, for they apparently posed a danger and could create “a riot-like situation in the state”. Later, under Hemant Karkare, who was killed in the Mumbai 2008 attack in Mumbai, the suspects turned out to be members of a hardliner Hindutva group, led by Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and an ex-armyman Lt. Col. Srikant Purohit.

In a television panel discussion intelligence expert B. Raman talked about how we need a scientific enquiry into these confessions and the subsequent acts. This is rather interesting, for no one has talked about such scientific evidence needed when the Muslim boys were arrested and several other cases where organisations are branded when they take credit for such acts of violence. Are we to understand that Swami Aseemanand is saying all this to merely show us the power of Hindutva terror?

Is this a wicked ploy to frighten and silence the Islamist jihadis and tell them that the upholders of the ancient culture cannot be silenced? This really is not necessary. We have history to speak, we have riots, we have POTA detainees, we know that Hindutva terror has existed always; it was the infiltration from outside that kept its exposure on the backburner. The current confessions seem to be playing on sentiment using a fine strategy.

As the Swami said, “In the (Valsad) meeting, I also suggested that… (since) a lot of Hindus visit the Ajmer shrine, we should carry out blast there so that Hindus get scared and stop going there. Moreover, I suggested that mostly Pakistanis travel in the Samjhauta Express, so it should also be bombed.”

The first is a passive-aggressive move. It is not about who goes where, but what a place stands for. There are people in Ayodhya, too, close to the Babri Masjid so this argument just does not wash. What is of particular importance here is that they got two Muslim boys to place the bombs along with Sunil Joshi, who the Swami claims was killed by his own men. There is no explanation for it, except to reveal that there are fissures in the group and not everyone might want to go ahead with such plans. In fact, throughout the admission of culpability, there is the subtext of the Muslim role. Apparently, the Abhinav Bharat members were not happy with the RSS’s Indresh Kumar, although he actively participated in their activities. The reason is curious, to say the least. He was supposedly an “ISI mole”. If he was a Pakistani agent, then why would he be a part of their plans? Simple. Pakistan will raise questions and what better alibi than putting the cat among the vultures?

Furthermore, a report states that the radicals objected to him “for his attempt to woo Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir. The RSS leader’s bid to flag off Muslims on yatras — a scheme that went largely unnoticed—had incensed some of the Abhinav Bharat members.” What seems to have gone unnoticed is that the RSS has a strong covert operation going on in Jammu and Kashmir and is the pivot for all the yatras. It is the troublemaker.

That is the reason the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has come to rescue his party. In a counter-confession he said that there may be some radical members but they were told to leave the organisation since there was no place for extremism within it! He said that the accused are not in any way connected to the RSS. Why, then, were they asked to leave? This is such an old trick of the saffron parivar that one does not even get surprised. When the BJP is in trouble, then the RSS acts as its foot soldier. Now the RSS is in the forefront, so the blame is dumped on a few extremists, forgetting that its whole ideology is based on extremism. The mukhotas (masks) that contest elections cannot shed their RSS skin. In fact, it is the saffron blood that courses through their veins.

So, what is the role of Swami Aseemanand? It is to create a soft-focus photoshopped image of the RSS. Has he mentioned any high-level functionary in his confession or any remote link to prominent leaders? Do any of the persons mentioned claim to take their instructions from a higher authority? No. The demon of Hindutva terror is doing its dance and there is no way in which to wish it away. The best course is to accept the extremists in the fringe fold of Hindutva, the over-enthusiastic, misguided people.

The Swami’s lawyer is now saying that he was tortured into making the confession, although he had recorded his statement before a magistrate under section 164 of the CrPC which is admissible in a court of law. Before doing so he gave an insight into this move. He came clean because of a Muslim boy called Kaleem who spent a year and half in jail for the Mecca Masjid blast. Since the Swami knew whodunit, he wanted to ensure that the “real culprits can be punished and no innocent has to suffer”. Kaleem was a nice Muslim boy: “He helped me a lot and used to bring water, food, etc. I was very moved by his good conduct and my conscience asked me to do prayaschit (penance) by making a confessional statement.”

Now, he is on a yatra with the National Investigation Agency (NIA). For over 18 months they have been collecting evidence, but there has not been a cheep from them about the possibility of such a terror group’s hand in the Samjhauta Express case.

All their talk about hideouts and explosive-stuffed suitcases seems feeble before the grand gesture of the Swami and by proxy the RSS. Such is the nature of the legal process that those who light the fire are the ones who get to hide behind the smoke.

By Farzana Versey

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based author-columnist. She can be reached at http://farzana-versey.blogspot.com/

The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal.

Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.

Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”

Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program.

In recent days, the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately announced that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years. Mrs. Clinton cited American-led sanctions, which have hurt Iran’s ability to buy components and do business around the world.

The gruff Mr. Dagan, whose organization has been accused by Iran of being behind the deaths of several Iranian scientists, told the Israeli Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into technological difficulties that could delay a bomb until 2015. That represented a sharp reversal from Israel’s long-held argument that Iran was on the cusp of success.

The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed.

In interviews over the past three months in the United States and Europe, experts who have picked apart the computer worm describe it as far more complex — and ingenious — than anything they had imagined when it began circulating around the world, unexplained, in mid-2009.

Many mysteries remain, chief among them, exactly who constructed a computer worm that appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence.

In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States’ premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world — and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Iran’s enrichment facilities.

Siemens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for America’s nuclear arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet.

The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Iran’s operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults.

“It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable.

Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it.

But Israeli officials grin widely when asked about its effects. Mr. Obama’s chief strategist for combating weapons of mass destruction, Gary Samore, sidestepped a Stuxnet question at a recent conference about Iran, but added with a smile: “I’m glad to hear they are having troubles with their centrifuge machines, and the U.S. and its allies are doing everything we can to make it more complicated.”

In recent days, American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity have said in interviews that they believe Iran’s setbacks have been underreported. That may explain why Mrs. Clinton provided her public assessment while traveling in the Middle East last week.

By the accounts of a number of computer scientists, nuclear enrichment experts and former officials, the covert race to create Stuxnet was a joint project between the Americans and the Israelis, with some help, knowing or unknowing, from the Germans and the British.

The project’s political origins can be found in the last months of the Bush administration. In January 2009, The New York Times reported that Mr. Bush authorized a covert program to undermine the electrical and computer systems around Natanz, Iran’s major enrichment center. President Obama, first briefed on the program even before taking office, sped it up, according to officials familiar with the administration’s Iran strategy. So did the Israelis, other officials said. Israel has long been seeking a way to cripple Iran’s capability without triggering the opprobrium, or the war, that might follow an overt military strike of the kind they conducted against nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.

Two years ago, when Israel still thought its only solution was a military one and approached Mr. Bush for the bunker-busting bombs and other equipment it believed it would need for an air attack, its officials told the White House that such a strike would set back Iran’s programs by roughly three years. Its request was turned down.

Now, Mr. Dagan’s statement suggests that Israel believes it has gained at least that much time, without mounting an attack. So does the Obama administration.

For years, Washington’s approach to Tehran’s program has been one of attempting “to put time on the clock,” a senior administration official said, even while refusing to discuss Stuxnet. “And now, we have a bit more.”

Finding Weaknesses

Paranoia helped, as it turns out.

Years before the worm hit Iran, Washington had become deeply worried about the vulnerability of the millions of computers that run everything in the United States from bank transactions to the power grid.

Computers known as controllers run all kinds of industrial machinery. By early 2008, the Department of Homeland Security had teamed up with the Idaho National Laboratory to study a widely used Siemens controller known as P.C.S.-7, for Process Control System 7. Its complex software, called Step 7, can run whole symphonies of industrial instruments, sensors and machines.

The vulnerability of the controller to cyberattack was an open secret. In July 2008, the Idaho lab and Siemens teamed up on a PowerPoint presentation on the controller’s vulnerabilities that was made to a conference in Chicago at Navy Pier, a top tourist attraction.

“Goal is for attacker to gain control,” the July paper said in describing the many kinds of maneuvers that could exploit system holes. The paper was 62 pages long, including pictures of the controllers as they were examined and tested in Idaho.

In a statement on Friday, the Idaho National Laboratory confirmed that it formed a partnership with Siemens but said it was one of many with manufacturers to identify cybervulnerabilities. It argued that the report did not detail specific flaws that attackers could exploit. But it also said it could not comment on the laboratory’s classified missions, leaving unanswered the question of whether it passed what it learned about the Siemens systems to other parts of the nation’s intelligence apparatus.

The presentation at the Chicago conference, which recently disappeared from a Siemens Web site, never discussed specific places where the machines were used.

But Washington knew. The controllers were critical to operations at Natanz, a sprawling enrichment site in the desert. “If you look for the weak links in the system,” said one former American official, “this one jumps out.”

Controllers, and the electrical regulators they run, became a focus of sanctions efforts. The trove of State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks describes urgent efforts in April 2009 to stop a shipment of Siemens controllers, contained in 111 boxes at the port of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. They were headed for Iran, one cable said, and were meant to control “uranium enrichment cascades” — the term for groups of spinning centrifuges.

Subsequent cables showed that the United Arab Emirates blocked the transfer of the Siemens computers across the Strait of Hormuz to Bandar Abbas, a major Iranian port.

Only months later, in June, Stuxnet began to pop up around the globe. The Symantec Corporation, a maker of computer security software and services based in Silicon Valley, snared it in a global malware collection system. The worm hit primarily inside Iran, Symantec reported, but also in time appeared in India, Indonesia and other countries.

But unlike most malware, it seemed to be doing little harm. It did not slow computer networks or wreak general havoc.

That deepened the mystery.

A ‘Dual Warhead’

No one was more intrigued than Mr. Langner, a former psychologist who runs a small computer security company in a suburb of Hamburg. Eager to design protective software for his clients, he had his five employees focus on picking apart the code and running it on the series of Siemens controllers neatly stacked in racks, their lights blinking.

He quickly discovered that the worm only kicked into gear when it detected the presence of a specific configuration of controllers, running a set of processes that appear to exist only in a centrifuge plant. “The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit,” he said. “It was a marksman’s job.”

For example, one small section of the code appears designed to send commands to 984 machines linked together.

Curiously, when international inspectors visited Natanz in late 2009, they found that the Iranians had taken out of service a total of exactly 984 machines that had been running the previous summer.

But as Mr. Langner kept peeling back the layers, he found more — what he calls the “dual warhead.” One part of the program is designed to lie dormant for long periods, then speed up the machines so that the spinning rotors in the centrifuges wobble and then destroy themselves. Another part, called a “man in the middle” in the computer world, sends out those false sensor signals to make the system believe everything is running smoothly. That prevents a safety system from kicking in, which would shut down the plant before it could self-destruct.

“Code analysis makes it clear that Stuxnet is not about sending a message or proving a concept,” Mr. Langner later wrote. “It is about destroying its targets with utmost determination in military style.”

This was not the work of hackers, he quickly concluded. It had to be the work of someone who knew his way around the specific quirks of the Siemens controllers and had an intimate understanding of exactly how the Iranians had designed their enrichment operations.

In fact, the Americans and the Israelis had a pretty good idea.

Testing the Worm

Perhaps the most secretive part of the Stuxnet story centers on how the theory of cyberdestruction was tested on enrichment machines to make sure the malicious software did its intended job.

The account starts in the Netherlands. In the 1970s, the Dutch designed a tall, thin machine for enriching uranium. As is well known, A. Q. Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist working for the Dutch, stole the design and in 1976 fled to Pakistan.

The resulting machine, known as the P-1, for Pakistan’s first-generation centrifuge, helped the country get the bomb. And when Dr. Khan later founded an atomic black market, he illegally sold P-1’s to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

The P-1 is more than six feet tall. Inside, a rotor of aluminum spins uranium gas to blinding speeds, slowly concentrating the rare part of the uranium that can fuel reactors and bombs.

How and when Israel obtained this kind of first-generation centrifuge remains unclear, whether from Europe, or the Khan network, or by other means. But nuclear experts agree that Dimona came to hold row upon row of spinning centrifuges.

“They’ve long been an important part of the complex,” said Avner Cohen, author of “The Worst-Kept Secret” (2010), a book about the Israeli bomb program, and a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He added that Israeli intelligence had asked retired senior Dimona personnel to help on the Iranian issue, and that some apparently came from the enrichment program.

“I have no specific knowledge,” Dr. Cohen said of Israel and the Stuxnet worm. “But I see a strong Israeli signature and think that the centrifuge knowledge was critical.”

Another clue involves the United States. It obtained a cache of P-1’s after Libya gave up its nuclear program in late 2003, and the machines were sent to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, another arm of the Energy Department.

By early 2004, a variety of federal and private nuclear experts assembled by the Central Intelligence Agency were calling for the United States to build a secret plant where scientists could set up the P-1’s and study their vulnerabilities. “The notion of a test bed was really pushed,” a participant at the C.I.A. meeting recalled.

The resulting plant, nuclear experts said last week, may also have played a role in Stuxnet testing.

But the United States and its allies ran into the same problem the Iranians have grappled with: the P-1 is a balky, badly designed machine. When the Tennessee laboratory shipped some of its P-1’s to England, in hopes of working with the British on a program of general P-1 testing, they stumbled, according to nuclear experts.

“They failed hopelessly,” one recalled, saying that the machines proved too crude and temperamental to spin properly.

Dr. Cohen said his sources told him that Israel succeeded — with great difficulty — in mastering the centrifuge technology. And the American expert in nuclear intelligence, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Israelis used machines of the P-1 style to test the effectiveness of Stuxnet.

The expert added that Israel worked in collaboration with the United States in targeting Iran, but that Washington was eager for “plausible deniability.”

In November, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, broke the country’s silence about the worm’s impact on its enrichment program, saying a cyberattack had caused “minor problems with some of our centrifuges.” Fortunately, he added, “our experts discovered it.”

The most detailed portrait of the damage comes from the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington. Last month, it issued a lengthy Stuxnet report that said Iran’s P-1 machines at Natanz suffered a series of failures in mid- to late 2009 that culminated in technicians taking 984 machines out of action.

The report called the failures “a major problem” and identified Stuxnet as the likely culprit.

Stuxnet is not the only blow to Iran. Sanctions have hurt its effort to build more advanced (and less temperamental) centrifuges. And last January, and again in November, two scientists who were believed to be central to the nuclear program were killed in Tehran.

The man widely believed to be responsible for much of Iran’s program, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a college professor, has been hidden away by the Iranians, who know he is high on the target list.

Publicly, Israeli officials make no explicit ties between Stuxnet and Iran’s problems. But in recent weeks, they have given revised and surprisingly upbeat assessments of Tehran’s nuclear status.

“A number of technological challenges and difficulties” have beset Iran’s program, Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, told Israeli public radio late last month.

The troubles, he added, “have postponed the timetable.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 17, 2011

An earlier version of this story misspelled, at one point, the name of the German company whose computer controller systems were exploited by the Stuxnet computer worm. It is Siemens, not Seimens.

 By WILLIAM J. BROAD, JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID E. SANGER

Reportedly, 19th century Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz once remarked: “Poor Mexico, So far from God, So close to the United States.” His proximity comment applies to Lebanon. Bordering Israel, it experienced decades of belligerent interventions as early as 1954 when Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion proposed supporting the establishment of a Maronite-dominated Christian mini-state.

In 1978, Israel attacked Lebanon and occupied the country up to the Litani River before withdrawing under US pressure, letting UN Blue Helmets (UNIFIL) replace its own forces.

Earlier, during Lebanon’s 1975-76 civil war, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reportedly spent $150 million equipping and training right-wing Maronite Phalange fighters. In September 1982, during Israel’s invasion, they massacred thousands of Palestinian Sabra and Shatila camp residents, an appalling atrocity Israeli forces permitted when Ariel Sharon was defense minister.

On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, slaughtering around 18,000 Palestinians, then occupied South Lebanon until withdrawing in May 2000. It still illegally holds Sheba Farms, the 14-square mile water-rich land near Syria’s Golan, also illegally occupied since 1967 as well as Ghajar, a Lebanese village bordering Golan.

In July 2006, Israel again attacked, killing over 1,000, injuring thousands more, displacing about one-fourth of the country’s four million people, besides inflicting the same mass destruction it did to Gaza during Cast Lead.

Earlier in December 1968, Israeli forces attacked Beirut International Airport, destroying 13 Middle East Airlines planes in response to an alleged Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) attack on an Israeli airliner in Athens.

Later in 1993, Israel launched a week-long offensive against Hezbollah, allegedly in response to rockets launched against an Israeli village. During the operation, heavy Israeli bombing caused massive destruction and displaced around 300,000 Lebanese. It was a prelude to a similar 1996 attack, again against Hezbollah, during which up to 500,000 Lebanese were displaced.

An early 2007 American University of Beirut study documented 6,672 Israeli terrorist acts against Lebanon and Palestine alone from 1967 – 2007, plus thousands more since then.

“Poor Lebanon” indeed, its plight journalist Robert Fisk described in his book, “Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon.” As Israel’s northern neighbor, it’s constantly under threat, especially with Hezbollah a political force, well armed to react in self-defense.

Hezbollah Dissolves Lebanon’s Government

Lebanon’s elected minority, Hezbollah pulled out in protest on January 12, Al Jazeera headlining, “Lebanese government collapses,” saying:

“Lebanon’s unity government collapsed after the Hezbollah movement and its political allies resigned from the cabinet over arguments stemming from a UN investigation into the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former prime minister, in 2005.”

On January 12, ten ministers resigned (then an 11th) after Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri (his son) reportedly refused to convene a cabinet meeting to discuss Hezbollah’s expected indictment by a UN-back Special Tribunal’s (STL) for the killing of his father, Rafik on February 14, 2005.

Without earlier evidence, Hezbollah’s rap sheet includes the 1983 US Lebanon Embassy and Marine barracks bombings, highjackings, hostage taking, rocket attacks against Israel, suicide bombings, and more, charges the organization vehemently denies, saying it responds only in self-defense against militants, not civilians, its leader Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah stating:

“Hezbollah remains on the US and Israel ‘terrorism’ list for purely political reasons and to punish the organization for its resistance to Israeli aggressions against Lebanon and (America’s) plans for the region.”

Expecting its members to be charged with assassinating Hariri, he accused Israel of the crime, presenting visual and audio evidence. It includes real time intercepted Israeli surveillance footage of routes he used to be able to target his motorcade, Nasrallah saying:

“We have definite information on the aerial movements of the Israeli enemy the day Hariri was murdered. Hours before….an Israeli drone was surveying the Sidon-Beirut-Junieh coastline as warplanes were flying over Beirut. This video can be acquired by any investigative commission to ensure it is correct. We are sure of this evidence, or else we would not risk showing it.”

He also said an Israeli spy “confess(ed) in front of a camera that he had repeatedly tried to falsely convince Hariri that (Hezbollah) intended to assassinate him.” Though not a smoking gun, this information warrants serious investigation, especially given Israel’s history of similar acts, inside and outside the region.

According to Lebanese University Professor Hasan Jouni, an international criminal law expert, Nasrallah’s evidence is compelling, saying:

“Logically and legally, in this stage, any new finding should be investigated by the general prosecutor. Sayyed Nasrallah submitted tangible evidence of the Israeli potential role in Hariri’s assassination.” It appears incriminating. “Furthermore, the previous investigations which were circulated here and there should be revised.”

Antoine Airout, North Lebanon Bar Association head, agreed, saying: “Sayyed Hasrallah’s revelations are very serious and objective,” especially given Israel’s long-term interest in destroying Lebanon to seize portions for itself, especially its water-rich south and offshore oil and gas reserves. Blaming Hariri’s assassination on Hezbollah furthers that goal.

In late July, Nasrallah further disclosed the arrest of nearly 100 Israeli spies who’d infiltrated Lebanon’s military and security sectors, including Ret. Army Brig. General Fayez Karam, once head of its antiterrorism/counterespionage units.

For decades, Israel, with US encouragement, arms and financing, pursued imperial wars, state terrorism, politically disruptive acts, and assassinations of key figures like Hariri. Incriminating Hezbollah will, in fact, divert blame from where it belongs.

The dispute between the Hariri camp and Hezbollah paralyzed Lebanon’s government for months, raising concerns of sectarian violence spinning out of control. Current friction pits Hezbollah against the so-called March 14 coalition, composed of Sunni Muslim parties, Walid Jumblatt’s Druze party, and Phalangist Christian groups.

The immediate trigger for dissolving the government stemmed from failure by Syria (supporting Hezbollah) and Saudi Arabia (backing the opposition) to negotiate a settlement, preventing a wrongful STL indictment. Among other concerns is using “false witness” testimonies as evidence to implicate Syria and a group four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals for Hariri’s assassination. In fact, a released WikiLeaks cable quoted senior STL judge, Daniel Bellemare, admitting there’s “no case” against Syria. Nor against Hezbollah.

Moreover, Druze leader Jumblatt told AFP that “Saad Hariri was on the brink of making a major concession” to soften STL’s conclusions, “but occult forces (mainly Washington) prevented him from doing so.” Former Hezbollah Energy Minister Jibran Bassil agreed, telling Lebanon’s Daily Star:

“The other side bowed to external, especially American pressure, ignoring the advice and wishes of the Saudi and Syrian sides.”

Hezbollah Minister Mohammed Fneish said:

“There was an Arab effort which we dealt with positively. We even bargained on it. However, as a result of US interference and the inability of the other side to deal with it, this effort reached a deadlock.”

Hezbollah emerged out of Israel’s 1982 war. On January 25, 1995, the Annex to Clinton’s Executive Order (EO) 12947 listed it as a Specially Designated Terrorist (SDT). Then in 1997, the State Department designated it a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and on October 31, 2001, it was named a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Bush’s EO 13224.

In fact, Hezbollah is a legitimate resistance/political organization, and was part of Lebanon’s government until pulling out. Moreover, in a country with no state-provided social services, it’s offered an array of its own, including medical care, education, micro-finance, reconstruction after Israeli wars and frequent assaults, and other forms of charity.

In 2006, it proved a formidable force against Israel’s aggression, holding its own against vaunted IDF forces, humiliated by their inability to prevail, no matter how much destruction and slaughter they inflicted.

At Israel’s urging, Washington declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization like democratically elected Hamas, Palestine’s democratically elected government. Both are legitimate resistance/political organizations, not terrorists, but whatever Israel wants, it gets.

On June 7, 2009, Lebanon held parliamentary elections. Though Hezbollah got the highest popular vote, the Hariri coalition won a majority of seats. Under the country’s confessional system, they’re divided equally between Christians and Muslims, even though the latter comprise two-thirds of the population, and Shiites are 40%, mostly in Hezbollah’s controlled south.

America and Israel view a Hezbollah-led government a strategic threat. In 2009, conflict might have followed if it won. Both Washington and Tel Aviv back a Hariri caretaker government, and following Hezbollah’s pullout, Haaretz Service, on January 13 headlined, “IDF troops on alert following collapse of Lebanon government,” saying:

Forces “stationed in the north were on alert Thursday over worries that the political turmoil….might spill over into renewed violence on their shared border….A senior officer in Israel’s northern command said commanders were following events….very closely for any sign Hezbollah might try to heat up the already jittery northern border to deflect attention from the political turmoil.”

Hezbollah responds only to Israeli aggression. It remains to be seen if IDF provocations follow. It’s likely if Hezbollah wrests control. However, Lebanon’s Daily Star reports Hariri’s March 8 Alliance majority may name him prime minister.

A later January 15 report said he seeks dialogue as the only solution, while at the same time blaming Hezbollah and its allies for the collapse of Saudi-Syrian efforts to reach a negotiated solution.

It also said parliament is nearly evenly split with Walid Jumblatt’s 12 MPs holding decisive votes. On Saturday, he met with Hariri before planned Damascus talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Daily Star also reported that March 8 Alliance officials may propose their candidate for prime minister and form a new cabinet without March 14 representation. Akkar MP Hadi Hobeish, however, told March 8 factions that naming its own candidate “will take the country into another direction,” suggesting a none too pleasant one.

A January 12 White House statement condemned Hezbollah, stating:

“The efforts by the Hizbollah-led coalition to collapse the Lebanese government only demonstrate their own fear and determination to block the government’s ability to conduct its business and advance the aspirations of all of the Lebanese people.”

On January 14, US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said Hezbollah’s intentions have been “laid bare.” It will have a hard time presenting itself as a “righteous resistance organization” if it continues trying to undermine “international efforts to find the truth.”

Of course, Washington and Israel consistently block it in pursuit of their joint imperial agenda. Hezbollah and Hamas remain irritants in the way.

A Final Comment

On January 14, longtime London Independent Beirut correspondent Robert Fisk headlined, “Lebanon in limbo: a nation haunted by the murder of Rafiq Hariti,” saying:

“Soldiers, soldiers everywhere. In the valleys, on the mountains, in the streets of Beirut. I have never seen so many soldiers….They are supposed to stop the country (from) sliding into civil war, I suppose.”

As early as January 17, “the Hague tribunal of the United Nations will tell us that (Hezbollah members) killed….Rafiq Hariri.” America demands it. So does France, Britain and Israel to strike another blow against its effective resistance.

Until resolved, Lebanon has no government. On January 17, President Michel Suleiman will begin formal talks to reestablish one. Fisk calls it “a frightened state,” but sees no civil war. It remains to be seen what comes next Tel Aviv and Washington. War seems unlikely, but in a volatile part of the world, nothing can be discounted.

On January 13, middle East analyst As’ad AbuKhalil said he sees little hope in Lebanon for “logical conclusions: they never do.” As a result, “expect another lousy compromise to emerge….The absence of a secular alternative ensures (it). We had a chance back in 1976, but (Syria) intervened and prevented the secular leftist outcome of conflict.”

“But make no mistake. (Minority interests have) many advantages: the biggest one being the sheer incompetence and ineptitude (of the) Hariri” led March 14 Alliance. However, the real wild card remains what Washington and Israel may do if things don’t go their way. Belligerence, not diplomacy, is their usual option. Lebanon has many scars to prove it.

By Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

The name printed in bold font on the back of his customised supporter’s shirt is usually “The Arch” when spotted at Newlands, Ellis Park or FNB Stadium (known as Soccer City during the World Cup), and one never fails to admire the gushing joy South Africa’s footballers, rugby players or cricketers feel when they spot him in the crowd.

“The Arch” is approaching his ninth decade, but never misses a moment to defy the sands of time, busting a lung blowing his “vuvuzela”, or singing “Shosholoza” in the crowd.

The colourful sports shirts are in dramatic contrast to the maroon robes we’ve been accustomed to seeing this man of the cloth in over the years.

Granted, there’s a sense of mad adventurousness about him whenever he speaks or sings in a crowd. There’s a lucid childlike cuteness in that squeaky voice, and a cuddly Yoda-esque wise teddy-bear in this old man when he appears on television. Flagging a warning signal, that we perhaps shouldn’t take this odd borderline-senile man seriously. No, because Bishop Desmond Tutu has always been like this, that’s part of his charisma.

But these are strange times…

When the head of the South African Zionist Federation, David Hersch, initiates an online petition against “The Arch”, demanding he be removed as patron of the Holocaust memorial centres in Cape Town and Johannesburg for his “anti-Israel behaviour” and labels his criticism of the policies, (yes, policies) of the state of Israel “morally repugnant” based on “horrific and grotesquely false accusation against the Jewish people”, it’s pertinent to provide a brief reminder to Hersch, and anyone who might be swayed, of the man’s credentials.

Tour de force

South Africa’s first black Anglican archbishop, Tutu was a tour de force against the Apartheid leviathan.

After years battling white supremacist foes, and gaining freedom, his was a voice of unity, refusing to allow post-Apartheid South Africa to fragment along racial lines.

He coined the term “Rainbow Nation” and actively worked to convince white South Africans that they had a role to play in the new era, while simultaneously launching himself fearlessly to address the monstrous socio-economic problems of poverty and HIV/AIDS in the country.

He headed the “Truth and Reconciliation Committee” which gave those guilty of the most heinous crimes, including mass murder, the chance to open up, say sorry and be forgiven to foster a national healing.

Not one to get onto the financial “gravy train” since 1994, Tutu has not accumulated massive wealth. He hasn’t glided into a blissful retirement, content with the activism of his youth, choosing instead, to hold a mirror up to the country, and his former comrades reminding them that they may be free now, but they’re far from flawless.

He has broken ranks and railed against government corruption. He was appalled with the soft diplomacy conducted with Zimbabwe over human rights abuses under the government of Robert Mugabe.

In 2009, when his friend, the Dalai Lama was denied a visa to South Africa because of Chinese pressure and alleged threats to end lucrative business with the rainbow nation, “The Arch” pushed a national soul-searching button by calling it “shameless” and “a total betrayal of our struggle history.”

Xenophobic violence committed by his fellow South Africans disturbed him so much that he wailed publicly, “Please, please stop, please stop!”

He is a founding member and chairperson of The Elders, which tries to put out fires around the world by flexing their aged intellectual and moral muscles. Membership includes Kofi Annan, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mary Robinson, Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter. Not bad company for an anti-Semite?

“The Arch” has spoken out in support of the people of Darfur; criticised rich nations at the G8 summit over the disconnect between what they say and do, what they promise and don’t give. He’s been outspoken over unilateralism in war (with Iraq as the prime example); campaigned for women’s rights; gay rights worldwide and within the church.

Israelis and Palestinians

Theoretically, he could have achieved all this, but still be an anti-Semite, right? Here’s an excerpt of an op-ed he’d penned in 2002, regarding Israel and The Palestinians:

“In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil.

“I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders. What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.”

Tutu continued:

“Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won’t let ambulances reach the injured.”

The words of a raging anti-Semite? Or good wisdom for those politicians spinning on their own axis on that carousel called “The Peace Process” to listen to?

These are strange times. When thousands of birds fall mysteriously from the sky; Sarah Palin cries “blood libel” and one of the great moral sages of our time is called an anti-Semite, there probably isn’t any hope for the rest of us. Strange times indeed.

Wait, as I click the “publish” button, I’m reading that 2,141 people have signed a counter-petition to defend Tutu and his character. Hold on for a sec… make that 2,142. Maybe there’s a semblance of hope for us after-all.

By Imran Garda

As the new year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time high in the United Kingdom. Food riots are spreading across Algeria. Russia is importing grain to sustain its cattle herds until spring grazing begins. India is wrestling with an 18-percent annual food inflation rate, sparking protests. China is looking abroad for potentially massive quantities of wheat and corn. The Mexican government is buying corn futures to avoid unmanageable tortilla price rises. And on January 5, the U.N. Food and Agricultural organization announced that its food price index for December hit an all-time high.

But whereas in years past, it’s been weather that has caused a spike in commodities prices, now it’s trends on both sides of the food supply/demand equation that are driving up prices. On the demand side, the culprits are population growth, rising affluence, and the use of grain to fuel cars. On the supply side: soil erosion, aquifer depletion, the loss of cropland to nonfarm uses, the diversion of irrigation water to cities, the plateauing of crop yields in agriculturally advanced countries, and—due to climate change —crop-withering heat waves and melting mountain glaciers and ice sheets. These climate-related trends seem destined to take a far greater toll in the future.

There’s at least a glimmer of good news on the demand side: World population growth, which peaked at 2 percent per year around 1970, dropped below 1.2 percent per year in 2010. But because the world population has nearly doubled since 1970, we are still adding 80 million pe ople each year. Tonight, there will be 219,000 additional mouths to feed at the dinner table, and many of them will be greeted with empty plates. Another 219,000 will join us tomorrow night. At some point, this relentless growth begins to tax both the skills of farmers and the limits of the earth’s land and water resources.

Beyond population growth, there are now some 3 billion people moving up the food chain, eating greater quantities of grain-intensive livestock and poultry products. The rise in meat, milk, and egg consumption in fast-growing developing countries has no precedent. Total meat consumption in China today is already nearly double that in the United States.

The third major source of demand growth is the use of crops to produce fuel for cars. In the United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009, 119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars. That’s enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive U.S. investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition between cars and people for the world grain harvest. In Europe, where much of the auto fleet runs on diesel fuel, there is growing demand for plant-based diesel oil, principally from rapeseed and palm oil. This demand for oil-bearing crops is not only reducing the land available to produce food crops in Europe, it is also driving the clearing of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia for palm oil plantations.

The combined effect of these three growing demands is stunning: a doubling in the annual growth in world grain consumption from an average of 21 million tons per year in 1990-2005 to 41 million tons per year in 2005-2010. Most of this huge jump is attributable to the orgy of investment in ethanol distilleries in the United States in 2006-2008.

While the annual demand growth for grain was doubling, new constraints were emerging on the supply side, even as longstanding ones such as soil erosion intensified. An estimated one third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through natural processes—and thus is losing its inherent productivity. Two huge dust bowls are forming, one across northwest China, western Mongolia, and central Asia; the other in central Africa. Each of these dwarfs the U.S. dust bowl of the 1930s.

Satellite images show a steady flow of dust storms leaving these regions, each one typically carrying millions of tons of precious topsoil. In North China, some 24,000 rural villages have been abandoned or partly depopulated as grasslands have been destroyed by overgrazing and as croplands have been inundated by migrating sand dunes.

In countries with severe soil erosion, such as Mongolia and Lesotho, grain harvests are shrinking as erosion lowers yields and eventually leads to cropland abandonment. The result is spreading hunger and growing dependence on imports. Haiti and North Korea, two countries with severely eroded soils, are chronically dependent on food aid from abroad.

Meanwhile aquifer depletion is fast shrinking the amount of irrigated area in many parts of the world; this relatively recent phenomenon is driven by the large-scale use of mechanical pumps to exploit underground water. Today, half the world’s people live in countries where water tables are falling as overpumping depletes aquifers. Once an aquifer is depleted, pumping is necessarily reduced to the rate of recharge unless it is a fossil (nonreplenishable) aquifer, in which case pumping ends altogether. But sooner or later, falling water tables translate into rising food prices.

Irrigated area is shrinking in the Middle East, notably in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and possibly Yemen. In Saudi Arabia, which was totally dependent on a now-depleted fossil aq uifer for its wheat self-sufficiency, production is in a freefall. From 2007 to 2010, Saudi wheat production fell by more than two thirds. By 2012, wheat production will likely end entirely, leaving the country totally dependent on imported grain.

The Arab Middle East is the first geographic region where spreading water shortages are shrinking the grain harvest. But the really big water deficits are in India, where the World Bank numbers indicate that 175 million people are being fed with grain that is produced by overpumping. In China, overpumping provides food for some 130 million people. In the United States, the world’s other leading grain producer, irrigated area is shrinking in key agricultural states such as California and Texas.

The last decade has witnessed the emergence of yet another constraint on growth in global agricultural productivity: the shrinking backlog of untapped technologies. In some agriculturally advanced countries, farmers are using all available technologies to raise yields. In Japan, the first country to see a sustained rise in grain yield per acre, rice yields have been flat now for 14 years. Rice yields in South Korea and China are now approaching those in Japan. Assuming that farmers in these two countries will face the same constraints as those in Japan, more than a third of the world rice harvest will soon be produced in countries with little potential for further raising rice yields.

A similar situation is emerging with wheat yields in Europe. In France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, wheat yields are no longer rising at all. These three countries together account for roughly one-eighth of the world wheat harvest. Another trend slowing the growth in the world grain harvest is the conversion of cropland to nonfarm uses. Suburban sprawl, industrial construction, and the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots are claiming cropland in the Central Valley of California , the Nile River basin in Egypt, and in densely populated countries that are rapidly industrializing, such as China and India. In 2011, new car sales in China are projected to reach 20 million—a record for any country. The U.S. rule of thumb is that for every 5 million cars added to a country’s fleet, roughly 1 million acres must be paved to accommodate them. And cropland is often the loser.

Fast-growing cities are also competing with farmers for irrigation water. In areas where all water is being spoken for, such as most countries in the Middle East, northern China, the southwestern United States, and most of India, diverting water to cities means less irrigation water available for food production. California has lost perhaps a million acres of irrigated land in recent years as farmers have sold huge amounts of water to the thirsty millions in Los Angeles and San Diego.

The rising temperature is also making it more difficult to expand the world grain harvest fast enough to keep up with the record pace of demand. Crop ecologists have their own rule of thumb: For each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields. This temperature effect on yields was all too visible in western Russia during the summer of 2010 as the harvest was decimated when temperatures soared far above the norm.

Another emerging trend that threatens food security is the melting of mountain glaciers. This is of particular concern in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau, where the ice melt from glaciers helps sustain not only the major rivers of Asia during the dry season, such as the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers, but also the irrigation systems dependent on these rivers. Without this ice melt, the grain harvest would drop precipitously and prices would rise accordingly.

And finally, over the longer term, melting ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, combined with thermal expansion of the oceans, threaten to raise the sea level by up to six feet during this century. Even a three-foot rise would inundate half of the riceland in Bangladesh. It would also put under water much of the Mekong Delta that produces half the rice in Vietnam, the world’s number two rice exporter. Altogether there are some 19 other rice-growing river deltas in Asia where harvests would be substantially reduced by a rising sea level.

The current surge in world grain and soybean prices, and in food prices more broadly, is not a temporary phenomenon. We can no longer expect that things will soon return to normal, because in a world with a rapidly changing climate system there is no norm to return to.

The unrest of these past few weeks is just the beginning. It is no longer conflict between heavily armed superpowers, but rather spreading food shortages and rising food prices—and the political turmoil this would lead to—that threatens our global future. Unless governments quickly redefine security and shift expenditures from military uses to investing in climate change mitigation, water efficiency, soil conservation, and population stabilization, the world will in all likelihood be facing a future with both more climate instability and food price volatility. If business as usual continues, food prices will only trend upward.

By Lester R. Brown

15 January, 2011

Earth-policy.org

Lester Brown is President of the Earth Policy Institute and author of World on the Edge: How to Prevent an Environmental and Economic Collapse (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011) available online at www.earth-policy.org/books/wote.

NOTE: This piece originally appeared in Foreign Policy on Tuesday, January 10, 2011.