There is an old tradition among kids: you’re the teacher’s pet and you want to get even with someone, say a bigger classmate, for something or other. You can’t take him on directly. So what you do is wait till you see the teacher coming, and just before he sees you, you hit the character you want to get even with. And when, quite naturally, he retaliates, you fall on the ground, screaming and doing your best to show that you’re dying.

Sounds familiar?

I guess I’m not the only one to be amazed and more than a little shocked by the media condemnation and slanted reporting of the Georgia-Russia war. All right, I know the media are scum, but when the BBC joins CNN in declaring Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s dictator, as some kind of latter-day democratic messiah, it’s obvious someone is telling some mighty big whoppers.

Let’s get to the point: Georgia picked, provoked, and began this fight. Georgia attacked South Ossetia, bombed Russian peacekeepers and Russian citizens, and converted the capital of South Ossetia into a sea of ruins. Georgia tried to do all this while the Olympic opening ceremony was on, in the apparent belief that it could get away with it while the world’s attention was diverted. Georgia miscalculated very, very badly and has now come a humongous cropper.

But Georgia is a prospective NATO member, a slavishly pro-Bush vassal led by a man who was a lawyer in the US and is more American than Georgian, and the “enemy” in this case is Russia, which is the enemy because it is no longer the supine and spineless entity it was under Yeltsin.

So we know who the teacher is, and who the teacher’s pet is.

And do we need to talk about the kicking and screaming? Georgia claimed Russia was bombing its capital’s airfield and barracks (which I would personally love to see done) – all signs of Russian aggression – and yet welcomed the French foreign minister in that airport with no sign of bomb damage. Where were the bombs, then? What bombs could these be? From the Special Effects laboratories of Hollywood?

When NATO accuses Russia of using “disproportionate force”, I might wonder, you know, why they used such masses of men and machinery to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. I might even wonder why it’s not “disproportionate force” for the so-called State of “Israel” (incidentally a major backer of Georgia) when it shells and bombs and bulldozes entire Palestinian villages and towns because a crude rocket lands somewhere, quite harmlessly, or when a kid throws a stone at a Zionist occupier.

Now let me say what I think Russia should do, regardless of what Russian President Medvedev actually does: Russia should annex all the liberated enclaves of Georgia, reduce the rest of the place to a charred cinder, and not stop until Mikheil Saakashvili’s head is displayed on a spike outside the ruins of his presidential palace.   

Why?

Because Russia needs to make an example of Georgia. Georgia is hardly unique: it’s one of a string of US controlled puppet regimes that are being used in order to “box in” Russia and China, the only two world powers capable of stopping American military hegemony.

This then is why Georgia must be wiped off the face of the earth: first, to provide an example to the other vassals of what they can expect, and, secondly, to demonstrate to potential vassals like India the utter impotence of American military and diplomatic efforts against a nation that stands firm.

In 1939, the then USSR fought and won a decisive battle over invading Japanese troops at Khalkhin Gol in Manchuria. So decisive was this victory and so devastating to the Japanese that even when the USSR was at its weakest in 1941-2, the Japanese never even tried to launch a military strike against them. Accordingly, the Soviets could concentrate their forces against the Germans and defeat them first.

If the Russians now crush Georgia decisively, they could well be creating a new Khalkhin Ghol and eliminate a lot of future conflicts. Remember, they’re the injured party in this war, whatever the US media may say (the same media that talked of WMDs and so on…)                

Oh citizens of India brave, hearken unto me

Vast is the danger that wants us not-free.

It is called, cross my heart hope to die

That nefarious, scheming, Pakistani ISI.

You’ve heard about it all your lives, I know

And the horrors daily more terrible grow    

Bomb blasts are passé, terrorists all trite

The ISI has other ways to carry on the fight.

Remember that traffic jam that made you lose your flight?

It was because the ISI sabotaged the traffic light

And the plane that got an engine snag, didn’t fly?

Some wires were cut, courtesy ISI.

When drought strikes because there’s no rain

It’s the ISI at its work again.

And when debts mount so farmers poison drink

It’s the ISI that’s raising a stink.

Factories proud symbols of Indian economic might?

You can bet the ISI hates the sight

So they sneak in child workers, isn’t it a shame

What foul play characterises the ISI’s game.

Turn on the TV, there’s nothing really on

Except soap operas that never seem gone

Brain dead characters play endless roles

Better believe it, they’re all ISI moles.

Rising prices, no money in the banks?

‘Tis the ISI that should get your thanks

Economy tanking, no take home pay?

The ISI’s happy at ruining your day.

Riot and burning, mayhem in the street

Civil society in rout and retreat

Stress and tension make your head spin?

The ISI celebrates somewhere with a grin.

Rats in Mizoram state ate all the rice?

The ISI’s been meddling with the birthrates of mice.

Wells been shrinking and lakes all ran dry?

Who d’you think did it all? Why, ISI.

Servant in Delhi killed old man and wife?

It’s the ISI promoting civil strife.

Corrupt cops refuse the poor all aid

It’s another gamble the ISI made.

Floods in Mumbai, fascists on the march?

It all happens on the ISI’s watch.

Crime in Calcutta, crooks in Chennai?

Due to your friendly neighbourhood ISI.

Yes the politicians steal, but do you know why?

It’s because they were paid by the ISI.

Stock market crashes courtesy ISI

And it makes all the journalists lie.

Maoist rebels and weightlifters on dope

Poacher film actors, other things we can’t cope

Trains run late, while forests disappear?

It’s all ‘cause the ISI’s been here.

Beware brothers, check on your child

The ISI’s planned to drive him all wild

They’ll hook him on music and turn him on fun

Before you know it the harm’s all been done.

Laugh not brothers, I warn you so true

The ISI is out to get all of you.

Look under your bed, look up at the sky

Everywhere, everywhen, lurks the damned ISI.

Sometimes you can see a plan unfold so clearly, so openly that you wonder why everyone else can’t see it too.

The latest is Georgia’s sudden pugnacity against Russia, and its rhetoric that it will shoot down Russian planes. Now I know Russia’s military hasn’t nearly recovered from the collapse of the USSR, but it’s not a local militia level force either. It can wipe out Georgia in a week flat.

So what’s so new – what’s happened that suddenly got Georgia’s goat over and above the longstanding Abkhazia and South Ossetia “disputes”?
Just suppose I’m right and the Zionazi tail that wags the American dog, with or without the Americans, is about to attack Iran. Not invade and occupy, but carry out a relatively limited bombing campaign of a few days’ duration. Since Russia and China can be relied on to stand by Iran, both diplomatically and in terms of military supplies, it makes sense to distract them as far as possible. The first attempt may well have been the Dalai Vicuna’s stooges and their attempted rebellion at Lhasa earlier this year, but the Chinese crushed that flat. But China is now obsessed with the Olympics and wouldn’t like them disturbed, so why not focus on Russia exclusively?

I don’t think Georgia is going to actually provoke a war with Russia, because it would be incinerated long before its Americans controllers would (if they did at all) come to its aid. But sharply raising tensions could just tie down the Russians long enough for a short Iran bombing campaign.

The pieces are nicely falling into place.   

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.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the War On Terror.

I believe I’m far from the first person to point out that you can’t have an actual war on terror, because “terror” isn’t something one can fight. One might as well say one is declaring war on phobias, or something similar.

Now if one is going to talk about “terror” as being synonymous with “terrorism”, then too you can’t have a war on terror, because “terrorism” is a tactic. If one wants to make war on terrorism, therefore, one might as well say one is making war on bombs, or trenches, or something. As soon as it becomes necessary and useful, they’re going to use it again.

In any case, I believe we need to answer this question: what is terrorism, anyway? If you mean it the random killing of “innocents”, well then, the sort of war hero who shells towns from the safety of a fortified green zone or the bomber pilot who raises firestorms or A-bombs a city is as much a terrorist as the best of them.

Clearly, we need a proper definition of the word. Here is my attempt, therefore: terrorism is any strategy that seeks, through the application of fear, to get a people or an administration to modify its behaviour in accordance with the wishes of the user of the strategy. Fair enough?    

Now if you agree that my definition is correct, we suddenly find some other uses for this oh so very convenient word. If you now say, on the eve of an election, that “if my opponent wins, then rivers of blood will flow in the streets because the evildoers (in whatever form they come) will have a free hand”, and if the populace, terrified by the visions you raise, vote for you, is that or is that not terrorism? If you claim that mushroom clouds will rise from your cities unless you immediately invade a hapless land on the other side of the globe, and your people, brains numbed by the images you bombard them with, agree to the invasion, is that terror, or isn’t it? If you claim that unless “tough new laws” – meant, of course, to apply only to members of certain well known racial or religious minorities – are immediately promulgated, “the terrorists win”, is that not terrorism? In all this, if you conveniently hide the fact that the average person’s chances of being run down in the street by a drunk driver are ten thousand times greater than of dying at the hands of “terrorists”, that’s another piece of the application of mental terror.  

It’s not coincidental that the casualties of the War On Terror (including Jean Charles De Menenzes, remember him? He was shot on the London Tube by British police who then, falsely, claimed he’d been running. Well, if a gang of characters suddenly began chasing me with guns, I’d have run too) far outstrip the casualties caused by “terrorists”. It was always meant to be that way – to make an example. See, we’re so tough we won’t hesitate to blow away innocents!  You better watch what you say or do! 

It’s a War OF Terror. That’s the only way it makes sense.  

You’ve read Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin? If you’re Indian, you’ve read Tavleen Singh as well? And you wish – of course you wish, don’t you? - that you could write like them?

Yes, you can. Here’s how to be a true-blue right wing columnist:

First, make sure you find a media outlet. This is never very difficult, because an infinitely greater part of the media is controlled by right wing owners than left wingers. Look for magazines and newspapers that, for instance, back the invasion of Iraq or the right of corporations to strip the planet of resources as they chose. Publications that deny global warming are an excellent vehicle for your writing.

Make sure you know your market. As a right wing columnist, you won’t actually make any new converts. You’ll be writing for the converted. Fortunately, the number of right wingers in any given free market society is pretty high, so you won’t lack for readers. You’re in much better shape than the lot who write for the left, as will be obvious when you read on…

OK, so you’ve got your vehicle and you’ve got your readers. What next? How do you write?

The average right wing reader is, you must understand, not overburdened with a capacity for thought. Also, he or she isn’t constrained by what most people would consider good taste in language. For a right wing reader, irony is wasted. Sarcasm is wasted. You must drive it home, and in the crudest of language.

For instance, suppose you want to say something against some left winger. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, call him someone who may have taken a left, er wrong, turn. It will go a thousand metres above your readers’ heads. Call him an antediluvian idiot, a godless commie traitor, whatever. Just make sure you’re abusive. Your readers will lap it up.

Next, present every unsubstantiated accusation against your ideological opponents as if it were received truth. If someone says, for instance, that someone else knows someone who has heard that some leftist politician was seen in a restaurant with a woman who might not have been his lawfully wedded wife, call it proof of how that godless commie traitor is subverting family values.

Then, if any corporate lobby says something, remember that you must take it as the truth, and defend it vigorously, no matter how asinine it is. If, for instance, some company says everyone should burn their houses down, say that this should be done because all the rebuilding necessary will stimulate the economy. Trust me, this will go down well.

Present every question as a nationalist one. To put it more explicitly, hide behind the flag. Posit every question as us-versus-them. A good healthy dose of xenophobia can be relaxed only to accommodate nations which are so totally subservient to yours that they are virtually colonies.

Don’t forget – dispense with logic. Logic is the preserve of the centre and the left. Your position not only doesn’t need logic, logic is inimical to your standpoint. You can’t, for instance, defend the divine right of kings (or in this case corporations) without a total shutdown of all logical faculties.

Use religion shamelessly. The average right winger is a primitive religious nutcase. If nationalism won’t get him, religion will. Defend all religious violence by the religion your column is backing; and denigrate all other religions. You may, if circumstances so dictate, spare a few good words for fellow right wingers like the Dalai Lama, but only in order to target the left.

So here’s a sample right wing column, penned by yours truly:

…and we have idiots like that commie Bill the Butcher saying that religion shouldn’t mix with politics. I ask you – this nation was built on religion, it was meant to be a Christian country. That’s the way the Founding Fathers meant it to be. Anyway, when you come down to it, who would you rather have in charge – someone who has a faith in the Lord, to whom the Lord talks, or a godless commie traitor who wants to hand this nation over to CHINA, lock, stock and barrel?

The first thing those commies will do is strip you of the right to defend yourself. Then, once you have no weapons, they can take right over and hand over the country – and that means your town, your job, your house – to RUSSIA and CHINA. Guard your right to own a gun. Guard it well.

Then, again, those commies will try and deny your children a good sound religious education, so that they lose faith. The first thing they plan to do is teach evolution in schools and then, before you know it, your children are Satan’s slaves, homosexuals and suchlike.

After that, they intend to take your livelihood from you. They’ll say the companies that employ you are destroying the earth. Where’s the evidence for that? Nowhere. But they want to drive your employers out of business and then they’ll hand your job over to CHINA.

You get the idea…now get down to doing it.

Don't know about you - but if you're Indian, like me, whatever your political orientation, you ought to be feeling deeply disturbed at the sort of  photo up above, of "President" George W Bush with "Prime Minister" Manmohan Singh.

All right, I know, both these characters are illegitimately occupying their seats. Neither has been elected to his position and each is a puppet controlled by a fairly well known source of power. But still, while Bush has been repudiated by most of the American people, Singh continues to be the darling of middle class India, so he, at least, can claim to be representing India. All right so far?

Well, then, I am not happy to see the prime minister (if only notional) of India smiling subserviently while Bush pats him a pet dog. It's - however - a perfect illustration of the relationship between these two mountebanks.

So, I’m not at all surprised that Manmohan Singh’s making such a hullabaloo out of his “nuclear deal” and that he’s been caught out in lies – contradicted by a State Department staffer, a flunky, no less. Since he’s been caught out in one lie, one wonders how many more there are…and several are so glaringly obvious that one can only conclude the media are deliberately ignoring them.

First, the usual claim is that the Nuclear Deal will solve all our energy problems. Some of the votaries of the deal, in the first burst of enthusiasm, claimed immediate energy benefits from the deal. As, slowly, reality seeped in, they agreed reluctantly that the deal would have the benefits, take care of all our problems, and so on – but only a couple of decades down the line. All right, let’s say, in a couple of decades - so will the Nuclear Deal solve those problems?

Of course not.

Power from nuclear energy supplies just 4,120 megawatts, that’s less than 3%, of India’s power output. Even if all the planned nuclear plants materialise, and function at maximum capacity (more on that in a moment), nuclear origin power will supply no more than seven percent of our power by 2050. That’s the reality of “energy security”.

Then, the second claim is that nuclear energy is clean, efficient and cheap. Balderdash. Nuclear plants may not emit spumes of charcoal smoke like thermal power plants, but they leave highly toxic wastes for which there is no known disposal method that works; especially in the Indian context, where radiation leaks (as at Jadugoda) are common, the effects on people living around the plants will be nothing short of horrendous. So much for “clean”. Now for “efficient”. The Indian Atomic Energy Department set a target of 43,500 megawatts of power from nuclear reactors by 2000, that was seven years ago. To date, as I pointed out, it has achieved 4,120 MW. Brilliant efficiency. In fact, worldwide, nuclear power systems are inefficient and unsafe. And as for cost - the Massachsetts Institute of Technology said nuclear power costs 40 to 60 % more than gas or coal powered systems. Did I hear someone say "cheap"?

Then, the lies go on, the Nuclear Deal won’t have any effect on India’s independent foreign policy. Who are they kidding? It’s already had an effect, long before taking hold – remember how India voted alongside America against Iran, not just once but twice, last year? Even when the country could have abstained, even when non-aligned countries abstained or voted against America, India went ahead and voted against Iran. Don’t tell me voting against a near neighbour against whom no evidence has ever been presented was something India did naturally.  

So, nuclear power is insufficient to meet our needs, and it is also unsafe, inefficient, expensive, and dirty, besides compromising our foreign policy. So just why is it that the government of India is determined to institute this agreement?

It’s because of the last point. The Nuclear Deal has, obviously, nothing to do with energy security – but it has everything to do with turning India into a vassal of the US empire.

You see, the vermin who run this government have one dear wish – to turn India into an American appendage and loyal camp follower. Every foreign policy initiative they have taken since coming to power has been geared to that end. First came joint exercises between the USAF and the Indian Air Force, and that was followed by American troops being trained in the Indian counterinsurgency school at Vairengte in Mizoram – from where they went off to murder innocent civilians in Iraq. Meanwhile India pledged to support the highly destabilising and unworkable American missile defence systems, and again began raising the possibility of sending Indian troops abroad (if not to Iraq then at least to Afghanistan) to help in the “war on terror”. And then came the purchase of American C130 transports and the troop landing ship USS Trenton, a museum piece discarded by the American Navy. Meanwhile, the Americans also bid to sell India F16s and F18s, apart from other military hardware, and in another blog I shall discuss why they are almost certain to win that order. Then the American carrier USS Nimitz docked at Chennai and its crew were given the freedom of the city without even the formalities of passport and visa, the government falling over itself to declare it didn’t have any nuclear weapons on board (a claim its own officers didn’t make). The Nimitz and the Kitty Hawk, another carrier, are due back in Indian waters next month to “exercise” with the Indian Navy before going off to bomb Iraq or maybe Iran.

Yes, this government is determined to make India as much an American vassal as, for instance, Thailand. The stakes are huge.

Why are the stakes huge? With the amount of money involved, the gigantic sums floating around, and historical Indian tendencies to kowtow to the foreigner, do you really need to ask?

I know that Manmohan Singh is a professional liar, but it’s time to come clean. It’s a pity that the only genuine opposition in the country – the Left – hasn’t pulled the plug on this crooked regime yet.

Until it does, Bush can continue patting his simpering blue-turbaned lapdog, who’s proudly announced that he’s been invited by Bush to Crawford and will ride in a golf cart with the Master Of The Universe.

Watch this space.

Happy Independence Day, people.

I’m sure you’re all excited and all about India turning sixty. I mean independent India turning sixty. I mean “independent” India turning sixty.

I’m sure you are.

After all, we’re a nation on the fly, we’re poised for take-off, we’re the coming tiger. We’re the new Godzilla in the making, the self-confident nation, bursting with energy at the seams. We are.

Yeah.

Just three years ago, the people of this country threw out a government that shouted from the rooftops about how India was shining and everything was A-OK for everyone, looks like we’re treading the same path again.

After all, unemployment and crime are rising, the environment’s degenerating with frightening rapidity, the power of the fundiwack right wing’s growing by the day – in the name of “patriotism” or “culture”, the educational system, already stumbling, is on the verge of collapse what with “reservations”, if corruption has ever been at a higher level I should like to know when, farmers keep killing themselves daily, and we’re at the bottom of the Human Development Index.

So what?

The stock market is still flying high. No matter that almost no Indians own shares and that the market’s being openly manipulated by foreign holding companies. It makes people feel good to hear the Sensex is at fifteen thousand or whatever.

The middle class is spending more than ever before. So what if more people than ever before are poorer than ever?

OK, so maybe the cities are reeling under collapsing infrastructure, burgeoning slums, but we have a Nuclear Deal – who wants any more?

And we may be throwing away the independence that we received on a platter, but who cares as long as you can buy the latest Harley Davidson – even if we need to tie ourselves round the neck of a collapsing outlaw regime to do it?

While writing this, I got a text message from Airtel, my service provider, saying “We are Indians. We are the GREATEST. We stand head and shoulders above all others becoz (sic) we are INDIANS. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY.”  

In the meantime our "middle-class hero" of a "Prime Minister" says every little thing's gonna be all right...

Sure.

There was a man called Phul Chand Ram. An executive director of the Food Corporation of India, in charge of the North East Circle, he was a very high ranking official. Terrorists of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) abducted him for ransom on April 17 along with his official chauffeur. They let the chauffeur go after a few days, on April 22, and demanded a ransom of 210 million rupees for Ram’s release, along with the release of two of their battalion commanders, who were in detention (if anyone is interested, the two are Mrinal Hazarika, former commander of ULFA’s 28^th Battalion, and Pallab Saikia of the outfit’s 27^th Battalion). As usual in India, nothing happened except a lot of political blame being swapped around. Ram remained in custody of the ULFA and the ULFA men remained in the state’s jails.

Then, twelve days ago, on June 30, the army declared that a body had been dug up from a shallow grave on a river bank and that it belonged to Ram. It was highly decomposed, but was promptly identified as Ram by his son, Pravin (who had “absolutely no doubts” that it was Ram), his maid (or as she said, “adopted daughter”) June Murmu, and by sundry Food Corporation of India officials. None of them had any doubts and the body was taken back to Delhi and cremated, while the army gloated that it had pressed the ULFA so hard that it had had no option but to kill Ram so as not to lose him to the army (as if that was something to be proud of – they pressed ULFA into killing the hostage! Wonderful! The military mind…bleh). In the meantime the entire media (in the East of the country, since the rest of the nation couldn’t care less) and no less than our nation’s not-so-beloved “prime minister”, Manmohan Singh, condemned the killing. So far so good.

Now the plot thickens. On July 3, the day of the cremation, ULFA declared that the body was not Ram’s, that Ram was very much alive and that he was in its custody, and that the dead man was an “army informer”. Since ULFA has a prior history of killing people and then claiming they were alive, nobody at first took it seriously, at all. Some challenged ULFA to let him speak to his family, knowing ULFA couldn’t exactly resurrect the dead. Still skin and hair samples taken from the corpse were sent to a lab for DNA testing – where the lab people said the samples were so badly handled they might prove useless for any and all purposes.

And then, on the sixth of July, the “dead” Ram himself phoned his family and talked to them for eight minutes, declaring himself to be alive and well and asking for the release of Hazarika and Saikia, the two ULFA in custody. This kind of…blew a hole…in a lot of carefully constructed stories. Now Pravin Ram suddenly said that he had been “confused” and may have “incorrectly identified” the body he had long since cremated as that of his dad.

Lovely, don’t you agree? I remember a friend asking me (facetiously) that since the funeral rights of the corpse had already been completed, just who would occupy Ram’s reserved place in heaven, the owner of the corpse or Ram himself. A really, really good question for the Hindu Right to ruminate over.

OK, so back to the old tale. India has a quite remarkably bad and inconsistent record of negotiating with terrorists. Sometimes it has rolled over and surrendered to all demands; at other times it has been soft at times when it should have been hard and hard at times when it should have been soft. Twice in the last few years, high profile terrorist hostage takings have resulted in craven surrender from India – in 1989 in Kashmir and in 1999 in Kandahar. Both times, terrorists were released from prison. All that happened was that the terrorists became bolder than ever. So this time it was quite a hot potato and nobody wanted to touch it. The state government said New Delhi was responsible; the national government in New Delhi passed the buck right back to the state. Wunderbar, as the Germans would say. Wonderful.

Meanwhile, as it became more and more difficult to pretend that Ram was actually dead, the army began to investigate just who the corpse might belong to. It came across the name of an army soldier named Sunil Kumar who was “missing.” It had  just about declared that the dead man was Sunil Kumar when (going by the photos of the body, which was now of course a pile of ash) Kumar’s wife said the body was not Kumar’s…so who the hell was it?

Now, on the tenth of July, PC Ram himself wrote a letter to the state government asking for the release of the two ULFA men. Although the official stance was still that – pending proof – Ram was dead, no one could believe that – in any case the average Indian has learned not to take the Indian government seriously on anything. The chief minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, had spent the interim period safely abroad, so he could claim he had nothing to do with anything and hope to come out smelling of roses. 

[Now let me just take an interlude to explain that comment about astrology with which I began this post. I had predicted to my friend that the army would most likely kill Ram {of course as I’ve pointed out more than once in this blog, the Indian Army is legally (by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act) entitled to kill anyone on suspicion alone and can’t be challenged in court } if it came across him; he was just too damned inconvenient for too many people alive. My friend didn’t actually take me seriously then. All right so far?]

Then, on the night of July 11, in a village called Borkar Panitema, just 35 kilometres from the city of Guwahati, something happened. At 8.45pm, the power was cut off and a large military force swooped down on the village. Soldiers from the Army and two other forces – the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force – blocked all roads leading out of the village, while men of the Assam Armed Police raided the house of a farmer, Gobinda Deka. According to neighbours, there was an outburst of firing that lasted for ten minutes, followed by a lull. And then there was sporadic firing that continued for three hours.

Somewhere around midnight, police (going by their account) finally entered the house after crushing all resistance and found three bodies – two were of ULFA terrorists of the 709^th Battalion, identified as Rahul Deka and “Bullet” Changmai. The third corpse was of PC Ram, with sundry wounds and a bullet in his head.

The police and army said they had no way of knowing that Ram was there and it was quite a routine operation, and he was “killed in the cross-fire”. Quite a reasonable explanation?

Not on your life.

In fact there is no reason to believe what the army and police have said. Their account stinks to high heaven.

Let’s see why.

First off – the owner of the house, a farmer called Gobinda Deka, said the ULFA group had been moving round the district for all of two months and was not exactly unknown to the villagers. There had been three terrorists and an elderly man who was not too well and whom the villagers had taken to be a senior ULFA commander. The team, he said, had turned up in his house the day before the assault and forced him to give them shelter. One of the three ULFA had left by bicycle just an hour before the attack; the other two, when the attack started, had forced Deka, his wife, and his son to another room where they suffered not a scratch.

Now the Assam police and the Army have – by their own account – quite a good intelligence net; who is going to believe that they knew (as they said) that an ULFA team was present at the particular time and in the particular house, but didn’t know who was part of it? They should certainly have known whether a senior ULFA leader was in country; if not, the elderly man could only be a captive, and the only captive right now was Ram…and don’t forget they certainly could identify the dead ULFA by name and unit almost immediately. That requires a good intelligence input!

Then, the two ULFA men were armed with two AK56 rifles, an M20 pistol, two hand grenades, and an improvised explosive device – not to mention plenty of ammunition. Yet the army and police say that although they fought for three hours, they only fired “about a hundred rounds” of ammunition and did not use the grenades. And they didn’t manage to kill or injure any one of the attacking force. This is rather remarkable in view of the fact that the attackers used parachute flares for illumination (suicidal against defenders in a position like a house, since the defenders would be hidden and it would be the attackers who would be illuminated) and would have been lovely targets as they charged across the courtyard (look at the graphic and picture above).

Of course, we mustn’t forget that Gobinda Deka and his family are thoughtfully bundled into a room by the ULFA, right across the courtyard, so as to be out of harms’ way; but the ULF