I was on Mike’s site discussing, among some other things, the alleged Americocentricity of bloggers from the US and their inability to look at people or events from other parts of the globe. This was panned as a fairly typical expression of American insularity and ignorance. And in a sense that criticism is valid.

As always happens, however, that criticism, like all generalisations, is badly flawed beneath the surface. We have here enough American bloggers who write about other parts of the world, or when they don’t know, admit they don’t know and express a wish to know. But they are, also admittedly, a small fraction of the American blogosphere.

All right, let me say right out that on this topic I’m not neutral, but also I’m not condemning the Americans. I am not condemning them because I do not believe that there’s anything extraordinarily insular about Americans per se. Yeah, they’re self-obsessed, and they behave like the US is the only nation that matters. But then ask an American and he or she can at least tell you how many states the US has, can recount a sanitized version of its history, and give a rough idea of the existence of a world outside its shores, even if they can’t identify any of it on the map.

But I lived in North India and I saw for myself the mentality of the North Indians, who comprise about half the Indian population. The average ignorant American is also the uneducated American, who has probably a less than high school education and has a low grade employment. The educated American with the college degree may or may not be contemptuous of the rest of the world, but he will know about it. The average North Indian, even if he be among the “educated” ones, thinks the world comprises some of the states of North India, specifically Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, the cities of “Dilli” and “Bambai” (Delhi and Bombay/Mumbai), a vague “Madras” that includes all of South India – the East might as well not exist – and an even vaguer Abroad called “Amreeka”. He will not be able to locate India on the outline map of the world, but will consider himself the greatest patriot in the world. I am not joking.

I’m sure all of you who aren’t Americans will have met people of the type I mentioned in your own countries, people abysmally ignorant to a greater or lesser degree. The bigger and more populous the country, the more likely that this sort of situation will exist.

All right, so how does one explain the fact that the Ignorant American seems to be so much more visible than the Ignorant Indian/Chinese/Brit?

First, because the number of American bloggers – at least in English/Americanish is very great both in relative and absolute terms, they’re very visible.

Secondly, because of the United States’ government’s arrogant and overbearing attitude, we all, let’s face it, bear a subliminal grudge against the US and at least subconsciously take it out on Americans even if they are innocent of that fault. To put it simply, someone like me would more easily forgive ignorance or arrogance in a German or a Brazilian than in an American.

Third, of course, is the fact that Americans are self-centred because their system encourages them to believe that the US is the centre of the universe. You just take a look at the rhetoric of American politicians, such as Madeleine Albright going on about how the US “stands taller” or Hollywood where the world is regularly threatened by aliens and zombies and so on, but the “world” always means America.

Ultimately, of course, it’s your choice. If you don’t like an American (or Indian or Britisher or Frenchman or whatever) you’re at liberty to ignore him or her. Don’t visit his page, don’t get locked in pointless arguments unless you want to.

You don’t like the US government. I don’t like the US government. Any number of Americans don’t like the US government. Just don’t extend your dislike of the government of the country to individuals unless you have particular reasons to hate them individually.

And, of course, anyone reading this is free to hate me as well.  

Before I begin, let’s get something clear: I don’t mean this to be a prediction. I don’t do concrete predictions, because they’re all too likely to fall flat on their faces. It’s more that I’m doing an exploration of the realms of the possible.

Now I have no evidence that an attack on Iran by the US and/or its alleged ally, “Israel”, is inevitable or even seriously contemplated. However, here are the reasons I think such an attack is not impossible:

1. The first reason is the nature of the Zionist regime. It’s no great secret that for all its democratic pretensions, the Zionist regime is in trouble. It’s one of several countries in the world that keep its people under the thumb by the use of terror – not terror directed at the people directly, but terror as in keeping them in a state of perpetual fear. (This is also the way the Bush regime acted between 2001 and 2006, before people simply got tired of being afraid.) In any case, you can only use fear so long before it either drives people away or else desensitises them. This is happening now in “Israel” with more Jews moving out than are actually moving in. I say “Jews”, not “people”, because as far as the Zionist regime is concerned the non-Jews might as well not exist, as Golda Meir once stated officially.

So the Zionist state faces major problems. If it does nothing, the Arabs will simply swamp it because of higher birth rates and because even with total American protection, the Zionist entity cannot kill or ethnic cleanse every Arab within “Greater Israel”. It is trying to even things by importing fake Jews like the Mizos of India, a Mongoloid people some of whose members claim to be one of the “lost tribes of Israel” and who are using this as a passport to what they fondly imagine to be a “better life”. But there are simply not enough Jews, fake or genuine, willing to immigrate into “Israel” to even things out.

The second option before the Zionist state is to begin a war. A war can be sure to attract domestic support – just look at the US between 2001 and 2003. You can do anything in a war, accuse all opponents of being unpatriotic, anything. They will fall in line at once.

The last time, “Israel” started a war in 2006 against Lebanon which it was sure of winning easily; but it got its ass whacked right and proper by Hizbollah, which it therefore describes as a “terrorist” force. In fact, it’s obvious that the Zionists can’t win an asymmetric war. Despite turning the entire Gaza strip into a giant concentration camp, they have yet to defeat Hamas, a much smaller and weaker foe than Hizbollah.

So the Zionist entity can’t win a war against guerrillas, and it knows it. It can, however, fight and win a conventional war. This is because not only does it have automatic access to the most effective American weaponry and electronics, but also because it has a nuclear arsenal which it will use if faced with defeat. And because of reasons I shall examine shortly, it can be certain of being allowed to get away with that.

So, here is the first reason why there may be an attack on Iran: the fact that the Zionazi entity called “Israel” needs a war.

2. The second reason there may be a war is the nature of the Bush regime in the US. Anyone who seriously thinks that the neocons have been chastened by the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences is badly mistaken. Neocons don’t inhabit the same world as you and I do: they live in a fantasy world where black can be white and vice versa. They refer to you and me as people who live in the “reality based world” and proclaim that they “create their own reality”. You cannot expect sane thinking from such people because they have no ability to sanely process their inputs. You can find plenty of examples right here on this site of neocon thinking processes.

Just because Bush is on the way to being gone doesn’t mean the neocons are down and out. Bush himself will want to go out on a high; even he knows that the Iraq invasion has not exactly increased his popularity and he will want the tag of a “victorious” war president. A quick and facile “victory”, before the costs of war set in, will allow him to claim that he won the war; it was his successor who lost it.

Then, the US economy is in recession, and needs stimulation. War is a marvellous stimulant of an economy like that of the US (the Great Depression was finally cured by World War II), which is largely dependent on the military/industrial complex. Actually, with its massive donations to the political establishment, it’s now the military/industrial/political multiplex (MIP for short), and can – does – influence US government policy, as Eisenhower himself admitted a long time ago.

Of course, you shouldn’t forget the fact that the Republicans are on the defensive in the November elections: no one can really expect McCain to win. But McCain is the alleged “war hero”, unlike the “Muslim” Obama. So if there is a war, it automatically drastically strengthens McCain’s hand and lets the neocons stay in power for four years more.

And here we come to another little fact that doesn’t get mentioned much in polite society; the Zionist lobby and its effect on US politics. I say Zionist lobby advisedly, not Jewish, because the only raison d’ etre of this lobby is the protection and promotion of the interests of “Israel” and not of Jews anywhere else. However, the Zionist lobby works hard at equating Judaism with Zionism, so any anti-Zionist viewpoint can be condemned as anti-Jewish. Because the Zionist state needs a war, as I said, the Zionist lobby will argue in favour of this war. It will ensure the US does everything possible, and more, to make sure the Zionazis can get away with doing anything and everything in the course of this war. And because the Zionist lobby and the Zionazi entity seem to have an incredible influence on US foreign policy, they will try and force the US to fight “Israel’s” war for it. This is at least as true if the Democrats are in power as if the Republicans are; remember Hillary the Klingon saying she will “obliterate” Iran if it attacks “Israel” and Barack Obama (how I hate writing the man’s first name on MS Word, since it always auto-corrects it to “barrack”) saying Iran is "the greatest strategic challenge to the United States in the region in a generation".

3. The third reason there may be a war is the nature of the regime in power in Tehran. Now there are plenty of reasons to support Iran in this “controversy”; it’s the underdog, it’s obviously being targeted through no fault of its own, it’s the victim of neo-imperialism and economic megalomania. But at the same time it’s impossible to deny that there are many, many things wrong with the Islamic republic. It’s impossible to deny that the people are restive and there is mass disillusionment with the Ahmadinejad regime, which like the Lula government in Brazil (to mention only one example) systematically betrayed the promises it made when it came to power. This wouldn’t have mattered if Iran was a theocratic monarchy like the great US ally in West Asia, Saudi Arabia, or a complete and ruthless dictatorship like Egypt, another (now there’s a surprise, I think not)  US ally. But Iran is a democracy, with (at least relatively) free and fair elections, and politicians who fail to keep their promises should be prepared to pay for it with their positions come poll-time.

So, although President Ahmadinejad certainly never said that “Israel” should be wiped off the map (and – as I shall discuss – even if he had said it, he had no way of making it happen), he has been working to keep tensions high as a way of gathering support behind his regime, quite like the way the Zionazi entity has been operating on its own people. It may even be that the Iranian regime wants a limited attack carried out on it; this would be a nice cause celebre to gather the support of the population as the defender of the country.

Then, the Iranian armed forces, though much stronger than the pathetic Iraqi and Afghan armies, are extremely weak. Iran has never really recovered from the Iranian revolution and the eight year Iran-Iraq war. It ended up using waves of child soldiers in that war to attack Iraqi positions, so parlous was its inventory of weapons. And it has not really added much to that since then. Its air force still uses F4 Phantoms of Vietnam War vintage and F14 Tomcat fighters without spare parts. It has a speedboat navy and an infantry army. It certainly has neither nuclear weapons nor a programme that could produce any rapidly, because that would have automatically rendered it immune to American aggression (remember North Korea?). It does have some ballistic missiles, but there’s good reason to believe the capabilities of these missiles is exaggerated. All this is significant because it means that Iran is not a significant opponent in a conventional war. Its armed forces can be rapidly overwhelmed, so long as one doesn’t want to occupy the nation afterwards. In short, it’s just the sort of weak opponent the US loves to attack.

4. The fourth reason there may be a war is the slew of right wingnut regimes coming to power in the European Union, from Merkel in Germany to Sarkozy in France and the return of Berlusconi in Italy. These three countries are the driving force of the EU, and the foremost thing in common between the three gangsters in charge of these nations is that all three seem to think that having right wing economic views oblige them to have ultra-right wing political views as well, including support to neo-colonialism. I think it’s safe to say that had Merkel and Sarkozy been in power in 2003, Germany and France would have enthusiastically joined in invading Iraq.

I’m leaving Britain out of the discussion about European regimes because Britain, whichever party is in power, has so long surrendered its independence that it has no longer any pretence to a foreign policy of any nature; the White House only has to whistle and 10 Downing Street will promptly turn somersaults.

5. The fifth, admittedly speculative, reason there may be a war is the current Indian government’s determination to turn itself into a servant of the US. As I said here, there are excellent reasons to believe that the Unclear Deal our “prime minister” signed with Bush has hidden protocols; and here is my reading of those hidden protocols:

(a) India, which has one of the world’s largest economies, will throw it open to American firms without any of the normal checks and balances;

(b) India, with enormous and growing expenditure on its defence forces, will award all the lucrative contracts to the Americans; and

(c) India, with one of the world’s strongest and most brainless armies, led by officers who are totally subservient to the politicians, will send troops to enforce any future US occupation. There is a precedent. Even without any Unclear Deal, the then Indian government all but sent troops to Iraq in 2003. It identified the divisions to be sent and the military commanders all accepted their orders without demur, until they found out that they wouldn’t be paid by the Americans for putting their lives on the line, when they suddenly lost their enthusiasm. Meanwhile massive public outrage at the invasion also scuppered the government’s enthusiasm for the project. But the present government seems to be determined to enslave the country at all costs and doesn’t look like it gives a damn for what the people think.   

The Indian army matters as a factor in there being a war because the US is so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that it’s difficult to see it managing another occupation on its own. It needs warm bodies – cannon fodder on the ground. Most of its official “allies” have had enough of sacrificing their own personnel for Uncle Sam’s benefit, so it needs India, which gives not a damn about its soldiers’ lives. It gives not a damn about its soldiers’ lives because in India only the poor and the dispossessed join the army, not the elite who actually run things and who openly say that there is nothing more important than keeping Washington in good humour.

6. The sixth reason is the mindset of the American people. After all, the neocon propaganda machine doesn’t have to convince everyone in the world. It only has to convince enough of the American people to “manufacture consent”, as the phrase goes. I’m sorry if I’m offending any Americans here, but I know of no other people in the world who could have been brainwashed so easily into believing that Saddam Hussein was behind the 11/9 (so-called ”9/11”) attacks. Perhaps it comes from living in a country which refuses to allow mass logical thinking. It still refuses to use even the metric system and most of its people refuse to admit evolution even happened. Such people aren’t too difficult to brainwash, it seems to me. The propaganda machine is already in full swing.

Once the American people are convinced of the need for a war, the American government can claim popular support for its war and can order its vassal states to fall into line. As we saw during Iraq, the vassal governments uniformly ignored their own peoples’ opinion and decided to send troops to help in the invasion. Won’t be all that different this time round.  

OK, so these are the reasons why there may be a war. If there is a war, how might it go? The way I see it, it depends on the strategy the Americans and their Zionist controllers follow.

1. If the war consists of a limited bombing attack on one or more Iranian nuclear sites. This is the least likely scenario if one thinks the Zionists actually believe that Iran has a nuclear programme. It would do only limited damage, unite the Iranian people behind Ahmadinejad, and the Iranians would likely really begin on a nuclear weapons programme. It would most probably not react too aggressively, limiting itself to shooting down as many of the enemy aircraft as it could (and Russia is supplying surface-to-air missiles to even things up a bit) but would also most likely reduce oil production as a retaliatory measure. The price of oil would go so high the current rates would be called the “good old days”.
2. If the war consists of a massive bombing campaign on numerous Iranian sites, whether carried out by “Israel” or the US or a combination thereof, with or without the use of nuclear weapons. This is the most likely scenario. It would probably succeed in destroying the bombed sites. Tehran would have no choice – it would have to retaliate. This it could do by missile attacks against American bases in West Asia, and against “Israel”, but these would achieve little because ballistic missiles without nuclear weapons are not very destructive. It would almost certainly also block the Straits of Hormuz, closing off a good percentage of the world’s oil supplies. This they can do temporarily with missiles and substantially less temporarily by sinking blockships in the Straits. This is the same technique Nasser successfully used in Suez in 1956. Again, the global oil prices will rise sky-high.
3. If the war consists of an invasion and occupation of Iran. This is possible but not probable, because controlling a nation the size of Iran isn’t so simple even with Indian vassal troops doing the dying on the ground. Afghanistan and Iraq, with readymade ethnic and religious divides to exploit, still hold out against the invaders. There’s no reason to think the Imperium will be more successful in Iran, a nation which is much more homogeneous and united behind its government. The war will go on and on and on.

All right, let’s assume there has been a (major) war. Who benefits?

1. The Zionist regime benefits, in the short term, for reasons I mentioned earlier. It will not survive in the long term, but the timeline for its final collapse is so far off that it will help no one alive now, Palestinian or Iranian.
2. The neocons benefit because of the boost their election chances will receive.
3. The MIP multiplex benefits because of massive new orders for weaponry.
4. The US oil industry will be ecstatic because increasing oil prices will swell its profits and because right wing politicians will seize the opportunity to press for drilling for oil in ecologically fragile zones like Alaska and for attacks on other vulnerable oil producers like Venezuela to take over their oil industries.

And who loses?

1. The Iranian people, of course. This is obvious.
2. The Palestinians, since the Zionazis are likely to attack them while the world’s attention is focussed on Iran.
3. The soldiers of the attacking nations, whether Americans or Indian vassal troops or whatever, since in each case people with no personal stake in the military will be sending poverty draftees to die. 

I don’t say there will be a war. But reading what I do here, and re-reading what I’ve just written, I’m fairly certain that there will, and very soon, too.

We have a democratic country here, you know.

Yes, we do. It’s – we’re told – the world’s “biggest democracy”, whatever that may mean.

So in this democratic country, a man who has never won so much as a municipal level election can become (officially) the prime minister and the so-called leader of the land.

And in this democratic country, such a man, unelected and a glorified chair warmer, signs a treaty (i discussed it here) with George W Bush (someone who he acknowledges as a friend and whom he likes to be photographed with, usually simpering while Bush pats him like a pet dog) and claims that that treaty is immune to discussion in Parliament and that the details of its contents are a secret.

Let’s remember that Bush stole the 2000 election openly and arguably the 2004 election (which in any case he would not have been fighting from the same position if he had not stolen 2000) as well, and we see that two illegitimate “leaders” signed a scrap of paper and passed it off as a binding treaty.

Now, this binding treaty refers to the supply of fuel to nuclear reactors in India, and is said to be the solution to all our energy problems. This is so fatuous that nobody can seriously believe it. Even if all the energy from the reactors is harnessed at maximum efficiency, not more than 8% of the energy we need is going to come from the reactors. That’s right – 8%.

So since the deal is being pushed through with a sort of indecent haste, including betraying key allies, one needs to know just what the hell is being hidden, because something most certainly is.

I shall be returning to this topic.  

                                               TOP SECRET

VETTING REPORT ON PROSPECTIVE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

To

The President of the United States

For his eyes only.

Dear Mr President

As per your instructions, this department has considered the capabilities and liabilities of potential successors to you in the White House and hereby presents its findings. As you will see, we had to reject most prospective replacements, though fortunately we finally found one candidate whom we consider in most respects ideal.

So let us examine the first candidate:

George Washington.

Pros: War hero.

Cons: Virtually everything else. Consider:

1. He is supposed to be incapable of telling a lie.
2. He rebelled against established authority. In other words, he is a dangerous freethinker who cannot be trusted to know what’s good for him.
3. He is stern-faced and feels it is beneath his dignity to shake hands. He will never make a good impression with voters.
4. He does not acknowledge God’s authority in his doings. He has been instrumental along with other similar radicals in not including any mention of God in the Constitution and for pressing for separation of Church and State.

Verdict: Reject.

We shall, accordingly, pass on to the second candidate.

Abraham Lincoln.

Pros: Good orator.

Cons: Again, just about everything else. Here are some problems:

1. Poor background. He comes from a log cabin – he could never provide the financial backing for a proper Presidential bid.
2. Endemic lack of practicality. He is too literal minded in his honesty for his own good.
3. Lack of patriotism. He opposed the war against Mexico.
4. Personal appearance. He is ugly, completely unphotogenic. Also, a beard makes him look untrustworthy.
5. Family life. His wife is a shrew, and therefore a liability. We would have to keep her hidden in the background.
6. Anti-business mindset. He opposed the right of agricultural communities in the South of the US to own, operate and dispose of cheap self-repairing and replicating farm machinery on the specious grounds that the units of such machinery were slaves.

Verdict: Reject.

The third candidate:

Jesus Christ.

Pros: Instant brand recognition.

Cons: Although on first sight he would seem to be the perfect candidate, the problems begin once one takes a closer look.

1. He is for the poor man against the rich. Can you imagine what would happen if such dangerous ideas were to be allowed to gain ground, Mr President? Communism! That alone would be enough to reject him, but there is so much more.
2. He is against the establishment.
3. He is against the commercialisation of religion.
4. He is unmarried and surrounded by male companions. This would instantly rouse suspicions that he is gay.
5. He is again bearded and most people would think that makes him untrustworthy
6. He is poor.
7. He has no sense of self-preservation. In fact he seems to have a martyr complex.
8. His parentage is wholly unreliable.
9. He is a total peacenik. He could never be relied on to lead the country in time of war.

Verdict: Reject.

And so we come down to one final candidate, Mr President.

Lt William Calley.

Pro: There are many points in his favour.

1. War hero. We are aware that he’s considered in certain quarters to be a war criminal, but, Mr President, that term no longer means what it used to mean.
2. He’s strong minded enough, Mr President, not to allow stupid laws to come in his way when it comes to protecting the United States.
3. He is not afraid to follow through on his beliefs.
4. If necessary, he is willing to lie to protect his mission.

Cons: These are few and correctible.

1. Calley is not particularly rich. He can always be advanced the money through the party or from private donors.
2. The “war criminal” taint. As we have pointed out, we can with ease turn this on its head and to our advantage.

So, Mr President, we suggest the search for the ideal candidate is over. We strongly recommend that you begin the process of projecting Lt Calley and that corporate backers be discreetly sounded to start with campaign contributions. As for Lt Calley’s running mate, may we suggest, for virtually the same reasons, Col Oliver North?

If neither Lt Calley nor Col North is interested in running, we suggest you approach Charles Manson. He is a true leader of men.

                                                                   Moneygrabber and Co, Inc.

                                                                                        Consultants.        

We live in a strange, strange, strange world.

There is a nation which occupies the territory of another people, attacks and kills innocent civilians regularly – on TV!, denies them access to food and water and medical aid, uses internationally banned and morally indefensible policies of collective punishment, calls its victims terrorists, and justifies it as the necessity of survival.

You would think that nation would be an international pariah, despised and rejected by all thinking and feeling nations and individuals. Wouldn’t you?

Before we answer that question, let’s look at another country. This country stands accused of occupying the territory of another people; although the country in question claims the territory had historically belonged to it ; although not one person has claimed, far less been able to prove, that this country regularly bombs, bulldozes, starves or otherwise seeks to destroy the people it is supposed to be occupying. It’s said that this country is settling people from one part of the nation in this “occupied territory” and “destroying the indigenous culture.”

You would think this country hasn’t done anything other nations haven’t done before, in places like, oh say Hawaii, for example, would you? Yet, when it comes to it, which is the country you think draws international opprobrium – as measured in terms of media coverage and speeches made by people looking for publicity? Which?

Silly question. The country that bombs and starves people always gets the pats and bouquets. The other country – which hasn’t done any such thing, which in fact, as I shall set out to posit, has in fact improved the standard of life of millions of supposedly “occupied” people – is the one which is the target of a hate campaign.

Yes, OK, you know the two countries I am talking about. The first isn’t what I’m going to write about here – I’ve written often enough about my absolute abhorrence for the policies of that particular pseudo-state to need to repeat anything at this point. No, let’s move on to the other one.

Unless you’re deaf and blind and without access to the news media – in which case you aren’t reading this blog – you know all about the Olympic Torch and its travails following the riots in Lhasa, the capital of what is officially the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China – in order to maintain brevity I shall refer to it as “Tibet”, making sure that you understand that by calling it “Tibet” I am not suggesting that it is a nation or that I’m about to make any claims about the historicity of China’s claims on Tibet. However, since the whole argument is about “Tibetan independence” I’d just like to point to a couple of things:

First, no Chinese government, Nationalist or Communist, has ever claimed Tibet to be anything else than a part of China, even if temporarily separated because of the weakness of the centre.

Also, the same media which pillory China for allegedly invading and colonising Tibet in 1949-50 seem to have no problem with “Israel” for invading, colonising, displacing and ethnic-cleansing the Palestinian people from their lands – a process that continues to this day; nor do they utter a cheep about the Moroccan colonisation of the Saharwian Arab Democratic Republic, where a total demographic transformation is being brought about, or for example Pakistan in Baluchistan or the Turkish occupation of Kurd areas or …well, you get the idea.

Having said that, let’s put aside the Tibetan question as unresolved (not that I believe any such thing – I support the right of countries to live as multi-ethnic identities if they should choose to do so and in such cases the citizens of any one part of a nation should be free to live where they want). But for the purpose of this argument, let’s say that the “Tibetan independence movement” is talking at least half-sense, that they had a historically independent nation that was invaded and colonised in 1949. Let’s assume that this invasion and colonisation is so much more evil than the bombardment and genocide of Palestinians and Kurds and, if one is to go back a few centuries, the Native Americans that this becomes the centre of a storm of legitimate protest. I’ll, very temporarily, grant all that. Fine?

The usual image presented in the Western media, of course, is of a Shangri La defiled by Chinese Communist butchers and murderers. Apart from the fact that Lost Horizons, the James Hilton book that created Shangri La, is – take it from me – almost unreadable and totally illogical, there are a few problems with that picture.

First and foremost is the little fact that there was no idyll to be defiled by Chinese troops in 1949. Tibetans were a poor and illiterate people living in a totally undeveloped society, ruled over by a feudal theocracy that put “reincarnated” monks over them as living gods. When the Chinese point this out nobody can seriously contradict them. Nor can they logically deny – since they have been saying, and saying, and saying, that the Chinese control everything in Tibet and the locals have no rights at all – that any and all development there has occurred due to China. With me so far?

How do they try and wriggle out of this self-painted-into corner? They – in the shape of such pseudo-liberal commentators as the Canadian Gwynne Dyer – claim that “Ah…but Tibet wouldn’t have remained at that level if the Chinese had stayed out! Tibet would have progressed!”

Would it?

Let’s see – we don’t really have to speculate, you know. We can just see the fate of two other monarchies in the region, both ruled by living gods like Tibet was. Those are Nepal and Bhutan. The former is a mess of the first water where a desperately poor peasantry finally rose in Maoist revolt against a corrupt royal regime and a compliant parliament and drove both from power. The latter is a mess of the first water which was so primitive it had not even a currency of its own till 1967, where a desperately poor peasantry is fobbed off by fancy terms like “gross national happiness” and where the ethnic Nepali-speaking population has been ethnically cleansed and is living in refugee camps in Nepal for the past two decades. There’s no reason to think the fate of Tibet under the feudal theocratic regime would be any better.

As I have said elsewhere, I don’t believe for a moment that the Tibetan “refugees” who were born and brought up in other lands and have lived there for their entire lives will even for a moment consider actually moving to Tibet if it got independence today. The “independence movement” is more an outlet for them than anything, a desire to prove that they are relevant, because it automatically – such is the current situation internationally – guarantees them a place in the sun. So they decide that the time has come for another round of protests.              

Now, the Olympics weren’t granted to Beijing yesterday – the world has known for half a dozen years who would be hosting the 2008 Olympic Games. For all these years damn-all happened on the “Tibet independence” front. Then, suddenly, as the Olympics grew close, out of nowhere or so it seemed, the Tibetan “independence movement” suddenly woke up to the realisation that there was a “silent genocide” (whatever that might mean) going on in Tibet, and the “peace loving” Tibetans attacked and murdered personally blameless Chinese civilians in Lhasa in the view of television cameras (yes, I have seen the visuals). Just in case someone might say the Tibetans had picked a fight, Tenzin Gyatso (aka the Dalai Lama, and I shall not not not give in to the temptation to call him the Dalai Llama) claimed that it was Chinese soldiers in Tibetan clothes and monks outfits who staged the whole thing. Yes, of course, that makes complete and absolute sense. If I were a Chinese desperate to ensure that the Olympics were going to be the most successful ever, the best thing I could do is to provoke clashes that would be certain to rouse a hostile media storm. It sounds completely logical – doesn’t it?

In fact it sounds so logical that I’ll remind everyone that Tenzin Gyatso, who is a man of peace, accepted a medal from George W Bush last year – who is a man of peace all right. What was that Shakespeare had Mark Anthony say about Brutus being an honourable man?

So I hope you will excuse me if I echo the Chinese view of Gyatso as a holy crook rather than a living saint.

As far as the attacks on the Olympic Torch go, then – I feel the whole torch thing is bloody silly, having no connection at all to the sports and being an invention of Adolf Hitler to boot – but the torch is a part of the Olympic ceremony, and silly or not, it’s been a part of every Olympics since 1936. Therefore, if the Olympics are to be kept free of politics, however notionally, the torch has to be protected as completely as the runners in the marathon, for example. Just as you wouldn’t allow Gyatso’s followers to disrupt the athletics, you can’t let them disrupt the torch. “Freedom of speech” can’t cover this.

Suppose, this time, they allow the attacks on the torch. What happens next time, then? The British, who are going to host the Olympics in 2012, are incredibly stupid if they think you can put the genie back in the bottle. Next time there may be protests by Argentines against the occupation of the Islas Malvinas (“Falklands Islands”) or by Mauritius citizens against the occupation of Diego Garcia or by Scots against the occupation of Scotland, and so on. What then? China might even organise some of the demonstrations in retaliation. Why not? Turn about is fair play, or isn’t it?

And, of course, the "protestors" are far from all Tibetan - a high proportion seems to be white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and one can form a fairly good estimate of where their political sympathies lie. I'd love to see how many of them would be willing to protest against "Israel".

Just wait till the Olympics are over. Suddenly, overnight, the “Tibetan issue” will fall off the media radar like a stone, what with the American presidential election coming. In any case, after the thrashing the rest of the world will get at Chinese hands on the sports field, most people wouldn’t want to remember these games anyway.   

What does one do when people whose job – whose entire purpose in life – is to keep track of changing seasons express shock and amazement when spring follows winter? Don’t you think that there is perhaps just a little something a little bit wrong somewhere?

The red flag is all set to flutter above Kathmandu, and the Indian diplomats and media people who were all camped out in Nepal – and whose job includes being able to interpret the writing on the wall – profess to be taken by surprise. They had hoped (and said) the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) would, at best, come in third behind the right-wing Nepali Congress and the ineffectual Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist).  

I was in Kathmandu for ten days, just before the elections - I left on the day of the election, actually - and it comes as absolutely no surprise to me that the CPN (Maoist) is doing as well as it has.

The Maoist leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ("Comrade Prachanda") enjoys almost rock-star status in Nepal. Maoist flags flutter from rickshaws and like bunting, from buildings. It's a mystery to me as to why Indian media and diplomats claim to be shocked and/or mystified by the results. It was obvious what was coming. I knew it from Day Two.

The people of Nepal are not fools. They know that without the CPN (Maoist) and its long drawn People’s War the corrupt regime of the king, Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, would still be firmly in place and that all talk of egalitarianism would be no more than hot air.

That the Maoists knew they would win was evident also in their insistence on a proportionate representation system ballot. In this parties win seats as per the percentage of votes they win, and is a much more accurate indicator of who enjoys how much support than the "first past the post' system followed by India. One would think that this fact would be obvious to everyone. Not to India's media, evidently, nor to our diplomats. I remember one of the worst Indian newspapers (no prizes for guessing which one, it’s notorious and I’ve cited it many times here) claiming hilariously that the Maoists were afraid of losing, that’s why they wanted the proportional representation system!

Also it comes as no surprise that certain elements in India, who are always "championing democracy", as well as their political masters in Washington, should be “troubled” by the verdict of this entirely democratic election. For such people, democracy only exists when the right candidate (in more senses than one) wins. So we have some news channel holding a discussion on how the Maoist win in Nepal will adversely affect India – as though it were any of our business, and as though we could do anything about it.

I’m tired tonight and about to hit the sack. I shall certainly have more to say on this topic as soon as I accumulate some time and energy. In the meantime, a word of advice to our esteemed America-worshipping “leaders”: have no fear. Nepal won’t be the lapdog it was under the horrible kings, but it won’t be an enemy either – unless you force it to be.

And to our reporters and diplomats: grow eyes and ears, if necessary by genetically programmed stem cell injections. The state will pay. Oh how it will pay.

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night

What immortal hand or eye

Dared frame thy fearful symmetry?

                                         - William Blake

There are hardly any tigers left.

According to the latest census figures, India has just about 1400 in the wild – and I think that’s an overestimate.

All these years we were being fed wildly optimistic accounts of how many tigers there were – and these figures, invented by who knows what method, were pitched towards impressing the powers-that-be. The penny dropped when a tiger sanctuary – Sariska – turned out to no longer have any tigers at all. The number of tigers has dropped by over 2000 in just five short years.

Let me just make a comment here – the tiger is India’s national animal. What the significance of this is, I shall talk about in just a moment.

Of course the days when tigers were openly hunted by “maharajas” and British sahibs on elephant back are long gone. They are still poached in secret for their claws, skins and fat (used as a massage oil, of all things), but far more are murdered by poison bait or starved to death by killing their prey animals and wiping out their forests.

According to apologists, India’s people are all now sensitised to the need to protect the tiger. Yeah, right. This is why a possibly pregnant tigress that strayed into a Bengal village recently was chased, beaten with iron rods and stoned for eighteen hours before being rescued by forest officials and subsequently, her wounds still untreated, released. This is why the numbers of tigers are falling by the day.

Of course the news channels are making media hay while the sun shines. NDTV24x7, queen of TV twit news channels, is running a “save the tiger” campaign, complete with people “signing up”. I’d be seriously amazed if a single tiger is ever saved by these methods. All this will do is, as usual, enrich the mobile service providers.

Of course the political parties are making some noises about this – the government has sanctioned a one time fund of Rs 500 million to save the tiger without, naturally, mentioning how it’s supposed to be used. The same government sanctioned Rs 1250 million manned space expedition, in the same budget.

I’ll tell you there’s one set of people who will be ecstatic if – or rather when – the tiger becomes extinct in the wild. It’s the Hindu Right.

The Hindu Right, you see, wants the cow to be declared the national animal. Once the tiger is extinct, it can present this as a fait accompli and the government of the day, unless it comprises solely the Left parties (dream on) will promptly cave in.

In a few years, I can assure you, a bovine with a dung smeared tail and shrivelled udder will be the national symbol. And – given our national character – a good thing too.

A cow-brained nation deserves the emblem it gets.   

Jug Suraiya is a member of the editorial staff of what is arguably India’s worst newspaper, The Times of India. Normally, I enjoy reading his columns, because he has some smidgen of a sense of humour – something rare in Indian columnists of any hue.

Anyway, to get to the point – in one of his recent columns, after tipping his metaphorical hat in the direction of Barack Obama, he went on to write at some length as to why he wanted, craved, ached for Hillary Clinton to become President of the United States: to wit, that she was a woman, and he, Suraiya, had once talked to some redneck in the US who scoffed at the idea of a woman ever being US president.

In other words, it’s the same old tired argument as was trotted out by the likes of Gloria Steinem: support Clinton (the erstwhile Rodham Clinton, let’s not forget, ladies of a feminist persuasion who back her because of her double X chromosomes) because she’s a woman – nothing else matters, not her politics or lack thereof, not her blatant waffling on key issues like Iraq, nothing but the fact that she’s a woman.

Hell, as I said before, on that basis, if I were American, I’d vote for Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin before I’d vote for Clinton. At least those two are upfront about being evil vindictive right wing bitches – they aren’t trying to hide it. What you see, where they are concerned, is what you get.

As for Suraiya: I wonder if he has something against a black man becoming president of the US, then?