Commonwealth-2005 Exercises Unprecedented

Collateral Damage And Barbaric Terrorism 

There Is a Reaction to Every Action, Sir Isaac Newton 

By K Gajendra Singh

07/15/05 "ICH" - - It was not a false cry of ‘wolf, wolf ‘ on 7 July .The wolf had reached London unlike 13 February, 2003 when an alert exercise was organized in London and US cities to influence the UN Security Council vote on the report of Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix for war on Iraq. Next day ,an Arab editorial remarked, “Has UK Prime Minister Tony Blair taken leave of his senses? The sight of tanks and armored patrol vehicles patrolling London’s Heathrow airport suggests so -- does Blair envisage — an Al-Qaeda panzer division –- -Washington appears equally paranoid. Batteries of anti-aircraft missiles have been set up around the city with fighter planes patrolling overhead,—“ Orange alerts, the second highest, were enforced in USA and UK, with helicopters and planes covering the two countries airspace.” How US President George Bush and Tony Blair used panic and fear to manipulate events and their people, with Bush using it for being re-elected.

After reaching London the bad wolf has threatened Italy, Denmark and other members of the US coalition of the willing, many not that willing now. September 11 attacks which stunned USA were like dispatching 21 century Assassins to the court of present day Warlords to create panic , as their predecessors had done in Karakorum, the Mongolian capital of 11 century war lords, but 7 July London bombings could make the heart of Great Britain part of darul- harb (house of war) between Crusaders and Jihadis. Most Muslims refer to western forces in the Middle East as Crusaders. 

During the British colonial rule in India , many intrepid Indian freedom fighters, following a path different than Mahatma Gandhi’s of non violence , reached the English shores and attacked some of the British colonial wrong doers in London. 

After the death of Prophet Mohammed, the Arab armies achieved astounding success within a century , extending the Islamic Empire from the Himalayas to the Gibraltar . To justify aggressive warfare, which is forbidden in Koran, Muslim jurists developed the theology of Jihad. But by the beginning of the 8th century the Jihad momentum had burnt out and the Muslims accepted other religions and other nations, and established diplomatic and trade relations with them. The Jihad was now used for striving for spiritual uplifting. But the Christians found it less easy to forget the Jihad. 

On November 25 ,1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade against Islam, because ‘Seljuk Turks, a barbarian race from Central Asia , recently converted to Islam had swept into Byzantine Asia minor’ ( now Turkey) after their victory in 1071 at Manzikert. For the Christian warriors it had become a religious duty to 'exterminate this vile race from our lands and then liberate the holy city of Jerusalem from the infidels. This Crusade versus Jihad has continued since then .During the first Crusade, Jews were massacred in Europe and in Palestine along with Muslims. In the 21st-century Crusade US neo-cons and Jewish fundamentalists and Israelis have joined hands. 

London Bombings;

Britain was not on al-Qaeda’s hit list in the late 1990s, but Osama bin Laden warned it in October 2001 if UK joined in the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. He said in a November 2002 tape, "What do your governments want from their alliance with America in attacking us in Afghanistan? I mention in particular Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia." In February of 2003, as Bush and Blair went to war on Iraq, bin Laden warned that the U.K. and the U.S. would be made to pay. In October of 2003, bin Laden named Britain as a target for reprisals. A month later, an al-Qaeda-linked group targeted a British bank and Consulate in Istanbul killing its vice-consul. 

A recent CIA report and EU analysts had concluded that an attack on Britain was inevitable, since 70 British Muslims, most of them originally from Pakistan, had joined the Iraqi resistance. Once their skills were honed in the field, they would inevitably return home. Dozens of terrorist sleeper cells are scattered around Europe. Great Britain has long been considered for a revenge terrorist strike, along with the US, Israel, Italy and Denmark. The second line of targeting includes assorted "infidel" countries like Spain, France, Belgium and Germany. Intelligence agencies believe that up to 3,000 British-born or British-based operatives had passed through Afghan training camps to fight against Communist infidels. US led West had then encouraged that traffic. It even brought the Afghan Jihadis to the Balkans to fight against the Serbs in early 1990s thus giving them international exposure and experience. 

Bin Laden's present role in the Al Qaeda and the International Islamic front (IIF) is confined to target country indication, ideological motivation and boosting the morale. Once a target country is decided, it is left to organisations having the capability for clandestine operations in that country to plan and carry out the terrorist strike. Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda GHQ need not necessarily be aware of the details of planning and the progress of its implementation till the strike is actually carried out. 

For the people of London it is a double blow. Caught in the web of brutal power wielders , they have become victims of their wars .More than a million plus had marched through the streets of London protesting against Tony Blair joining the US led invasion of Iraq. During that 15/ 16 February, 2003 weekend peace marches and rallies were held against the impending war by tens of millions all over the world, with over 8 million in Europe alone, spread over 500 cities and towns in 60 countries ; from Auckland and Melbourne it then swept over Asia, Africa and Europe and on to North and South America. 

The protesters belonged to all races and classes, mothers with babies, young and old alike; and from across the whole political spectrum. The protests were the largest ever held, much bigger and more universal than against the Vietnam War, speciallyin Australia, Spain, Italy, UK and USA, whose governments were aligned with USA. The war was launched against the will of the overwhelming members of the United Nations and its Charter. 

Seven by seven (7/7) is the beginning of the revenge attacks for US-UK led attacks against Iraq, Afghanistan , and ongoing Israeli state terrorism against Palestine as warned bin Laden . An Al Qaeda Europe outfit claimed credit for the attacks on 3 subway trains and a red double decker bus in London .In a painstaking process of forensic investigations to identify the bombers and identifying the bodies so far over 50 persons have been declared dead. The British police announced on 13 July that three in a team of four were young British-born Muslims of Pakistani origin , who carried out the deadly terrorist attacks in London, but they were looking for a possible master hand from abroad. 

But there is a fog of confusion in details. Hundreds of race hate attacks have been carried out against Mosques and Muslims in UK ,thus starting a cycle of backlashes. The British experience of Catholic North Irish terrorism now dormant is a different kettle of fish. The Irish wanted to attract attention to their cause and not kill people en masse , except for their hatred of Margaret Thatcher and Britain’s coercive machine. 

One strongly condemns the attacks against innocent civilians in London as the earlier ones in Madrid , Bali etc and admires the Londoners fortitude and stiff upper lip but the knowledge that the suffering has been brought upon them by its own government in spite of their opposition must be a disconcerting thought .So the comparison with the Londoner’s resilience against Nazi Blitzes is not very accurate .Even then it is now accepted that the seeds for the rise of Nazism were sown by the humiliating peace imposed on Germany by the British and the French after the first world war .

A survey by US academics published in the Lancet last October came up with some 100,000 probable civilian deaths so far in Iraq.( the number must be much higher now with robust Iraqi resistance and US inspired civil war like conditions ) "Most died as a result of the violence, but many others died as a result of the increasingly difficult living conditions, reflected in increasing child mortality levels." Over 1750 US soldiers have been killed and tens of thousand maimed and injured in the war by the Iraqi resistance against the occupation. US leaders and Generals have reiterated that they do not do body counts [of Iraqis]. When some one mentioned the dead Iraqi civilians shown on Arab TV channels, one US General advised changing the channel.

London’s Mayor , Ken Livingstone, while opposing Tony Blair ‘s support to the war was prescient: "An assault on Iraq will inflame world opinion and jeopardise security and peace everywhere. London, as one of the major world cities, has a great deal to lose from war and a lot to gain from peace, international cooperation and global stability." There is little doubt that there would be far reaching ramifications on British economy so reliant on tourism and trade from foreign visitors.

Reacting to the London bombings , Robert Fisk in the “Independent’ of London recalled one of bin Laden’s recent video tapes, "If you bomb our cities we will bomb yours." Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden enquired: "Why do we not attack Sweden?" “ And it's no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear" said Fisk. "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.” 

Tony Blair called the bombings "barbaric" – which they were. But “what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism" added Fisk. “if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid ,“ Fisk continued. 

It “would have taken months to plan - to choose safe houses, prepare explosives, identify targets, ensure security, choose the bombers, the hour, the minute, to plan the communications (mobile phones are giveaways) and co-ordination and sophisticated planning .” So terror has come to stay if current policies are pursued.” Fisk then rubs it in. It” represented a total failure of our security services - the same intelligence "experts" who claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none, but who utterly failed to uncover a months-long plot to kill Londoners.

“Trains, planes, buses, cars, metros ie London’s transportation are fair game in revenge .Can one search three million London commuters every day. “And then come the Muslims of Britain, who have long been awaiting this nightmare. Now every one of our Muslims becomes the "usual suspect", the man or woman with brown eyes, the man with the beard, the woman in the scarf, the boy with the worry beads, the girl who says she's been racially abused.

“And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent,” concluded Fisk.

Media is the oxygen for promoting militant’s cause by creating panic and attracting attention , so the timing of G8 summit of worlds richest nations was chosen well in advance. When ever US officials make visits, like President Bill Clinton’s visit to India in 1999 , terrorists carry out attacks. So London bombings succeeded in turning the spot light away from the media coverage of G8 summit held to increase aid and make African poverty history, in defiance of historic wisdom and reality. Except for some of the naïve do good music icons and fans , it is clear that the looting of African resources still continues unabashed . G8 policies on trade and agriculture , and of their multinationals , the IMF , World bank now to be charged with removing poverty are the real cause of the continent’s grinding poverty as UN and many other reports have established. 

The real cause of continuing blasts in the Western world lies in the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and state supported terrorism against the people of theses countries . If these are covered sporadically and arouse little anger in the everyday lives of most westerners “it does not mean the anger and bitterness they arouse in the Muslim world and its Diaspora is insignificant. As long as western politicians wage their wars and their colleagues in the Muslim world watch in silence, young people will be attracted to the groups who carry out random acts of revenge,” said Tariq Ali after the London bombings.

Then it boils down to this; the word "civilization" seems to hold the key to unraveling the complicated web of possible post-attack reaction by the West. Condoleezza Rice termed the attack a "war against the ideals" of Western civilization. Blair termed it "an attack on civilized people" and insisted with confidence that "our values will long outlast theirs". The bells of the "clash of civilizations" predicted by Samuel Huntington and as interpreted by the West seems to be ringing loudly in this discourse. For followers of non-Abrahamic religions, it is a never ending internecine mortal battle for their Gods.

Western media has paid almost no attention to the non- governmental International Tribunal meetings in Istanbul, which produced the most searing evidence to date of the greatest political scandal of modern times: the attack on a defenceless people of Iraq by America and Britain. The tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the invasion and occupation ie, "to examine a vast spectrum of evidence [about the war] that has been deliberately marginalised and suppressed - its legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in the occupation; the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as depleted-uranium munitions, napalm and cluster bombs, the use and legitimation of torture . . . This tribunal is an attempt to correct the record: to document the history of the war not from the point of view of the victors but of the temporarily vanquished."

The war against terrorism took from the very beginning a distinctly racist coloration, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab. US collusion in the subsequent brutal Israeli aggression - all in the name of race and ethnicity - has only served to reinforce this. The new US willingness and threat to intervene in the developing world wherever and whenever it sees fit and setting aside all international laws , treaties and conventions has made the world lawless .So why complain . 

United Kingdom.

In my piece , “ The decline of the American century ”( Asia Times of September 11, 2002) , I had said.” Never have so few annoyed so many. On Iraq and most other international issues only British Prime Minister Tony Blair (reflecting a 19th-century "bomb the natives" mentality) supports Bush. Most British citizens do not support the policy. For acting as lackeys, the British get a disproportionate number of jobs in the UN and other multilateral organizations to act as a stalking horse for the US. 

”The UK has a big Muslim population, which sends volunteers and huge sums of money to support terrorism in the South Asian subcontinent and elsewhere. Many are al-Qaeda members involved in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and other terror-related and hijacking activities. Other European countries such as Germany and France have big Muslim populations of many millions from Turkey and North Africa, mostly on the margins of the society and fertile ground for recruitment. Besides Chechnya and other places in the Caucasus, Russia has a large Muslim population. There is a well-spread-out and long-term danger all over the Christian world.”

USA -Dangers from within;

As for USA I had said ;”The knee-jerk US reaction and quick-fix measures after the September 11 attacks have changed the very basics of US society, its function, transparency and freedoms. Thousands of its loyal citizens and students of Middle East origin and others are being scrutinized, harassed and imprisoned without charge, sometimes for no reason except for their origins. It has alienated loyal citizens of Middle East and South Asian descent, many in key positions. 

”There is talk of military tribunals, something with which the US has a despicable record. During World War II, thousands of US citizens from Japan and Germany were interned. Continuation of similar policies in the 21st century might transform the US from being a melting pot of nations to a "meltdown" of its cohesion, unity and polity. 

”The United States is an idea barely more than 200 years old that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants dominate. There are still questions about what happened to its first Catholic president John F Kennedy and some of his family members. The US is a fragile nation, never tested fully at home. Its internal security and unity are fragile. It has yet to recover from its Vietnam trauma. 

”African-American Walter Mosley, Bill Clinton's favorite novelist, recently said: "Most black people in America were not surprised by September 11. I haven't met one black person who was surprised. Like everyone else, they were shocked by the magnitude of it, and appalled by the deaths, but they weren't surprised by the hate and anger that produced it. Black Americans are very aware of the attitude of America towards people who are different, people whose beliefs are different, people of a different color. We live with that attitude every single day. We know how hated America is." 

The danger to the US "way of life and stability" could come from within, from black American Muslims who now number 3 million to 5 million. Black Americans are now joining the armed forces in large numbers after the compulsory military draft was abolished. 

”The black community and Muslims remember many historic wrongs done to them. Of the 2 million Americans in prisons, two-thirds are non-white. Many feel oppressed by the white power structure and sentencing disparities, which too often fall most harshly on minorities. Islam offers brotherhood, dignity, and a sense of pride and solidarity, especially for non-whites. But many, alienated and disfranchised, are prime targets for radical Islamists who preach a religion of violence, of overcoming oppression by jihad. Many black Americans have experienced maltreatment and dehumanization. Conversion to Islam increased after September 11, even among Hispanics. 

”While Muslims in the Arab world and elsewhere are enraged by the killings of innocent Palestinians and the deaths of half a million Iraqi children because of the US-led embargo, do we know how many bin Laden admirers exist among the black American community? Recent examples such as Ali Mohammed, an ex-US Army sergeant who pleaded guilty to plotting with bin Laden to kill Americans, may be just a speck on the tip of the iceberg. Islam has an old tradition of asymmetrical wars. Al-Qaida cells could soften the Christian West as Turkmen [Seljuk] horsemen did the Byzantine Empire. 

Who needs a regime change?

”A respected non-partisan US think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent report to the White House looked at international opinion polls and concluded: "Around the world, from Western Europe to the Far East, many see the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and contemptuous of others." This cannot be changed by creating brand equity or through marketing techniques. 

”In spite of past US brutalities - slavery, racial discrimination, colonization, the dust and haze raised at Hiroshima of Nagasaki, the decimation of native Americans, terrorization of Africans, Japanese and Vietnamese, illegal bombing of Iraqis, and daily brutal killings of Palestinians by guns, helicopters and F-16s, the September 11 attacks brought universal sympathy. But there are also a lot of crocodile tears. Almost all major countries - Russia, China, Europe except the lackey UK - have been browbeaten and humiliated by the United States. 

”If the American public were told that an attack on Iraq would not be like the 1990-91 computer game and might cause many thousands of casualties (given the low US threshold last tested in Mogadishu), that Arabs might destroy oilfields which bring prosperity to oil companies and cheap gas to their cars, and that US nationals might even be attacked in Muslim countries, Bush's popularity would plummet immediately. [As it is now ] 

”What is needed is not regime change or so-called "US-ushered democracy" in Iraq (as in Afghanistan), in a region of Hama Rule "rule or die". Saudi Arabia is ruled by an incongruous alliance of luxury-loving princes and Wahhabis, who enforce medieval punishments at home and promote fanaticism abroad, yet Washington does not demand regime change there. Another repressive US-supported regime in Egypt continues to provide recruits for al-Qaida. Opening a Pandora's box in the Middle East would release bottled-up historical forces with unpredictable results, like Ayatollah Khomeini after the ouster of the Shah of Iran, who had been supported by the CIA through its Iranian counterpart, SAVAK (Sazamane Etelaat Va Amniate Kechvar, or Iranian Security and Intelligence Service). 

”The United States, with 2 percent of the world's population, controls 30 percent of world resources. And US corporate interests, forming perhaps 2 percent of this 2 percent population, control these massive resources. They want to control the world without accountability, not even to the American people. 

”Perhaps it is in the United States itself where its ill-informed and misinformed people need not just a regime change but a system change. Where energy and military-industry corporate interests have hijacked power from the people to pursue their narrow objectives. Where corporate chiefs enjoy coercive powers even the Communist Party chiefs in the former Soviet Union would have envied. Where blacks, Hispanics and the poor cannot freely choose a president (as in Florida, where only by not counting their votes did George Bush become the president). 

”The United States needs a regime and a system under which people can question, without being labeled unpatriotic or enemies, failures of a system that could not and cannot protect them. Where, unlike the second nuclear bomb in Nagasaki, a repeat of September 11 can be avoided. There were enough concrete warnings - the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attack on the US Navy warship Cole in the harbor at Aden, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, a residence for American GIs, and the bombing of two US embassies in Africa. “

History and Conclusions;

One of the many ludicrous things, which Western leaders and media , specially Americans, trot out repeatedly is “ we and the international community are agreed on this” . Usually along with the US Secretary of State appears the British Foreign Minister. It used to be Robin Cook beside Madeline Albright, nowadays it is a reluctant Jack Straw with Ms Rice. In the Anglo-Saxon family the only persistent support comes from the Australian leaders , while its population opposes the policy. New Zealand and Canadian governments are more careful. 

The system of parliamentary government as it has evolved in ‘mother’ United Kingdom or rather spun around by Tony Blair is a pale shadow of what has been rightly or wrongly claimed on its behalf as a role model. After a decade and half of Conservative rule and the decimation of social and welfare responsibilities of any people sensitive government by Margaret Thatcher, people have no choice but to vote for sweet and fast talking Tony Blair, although in the last elections Labour Party's majority was slashed. In any self respecting democracy, Tony Blair ought to have resigned long ago or been thrown out by the party. 

It is also some commentary on the British political system that the government did not follow the people wishes as demonstrated by over a million people marching against UK joining USA ,now likely to be followed by unpredictable but harmful consequences .There are many good people in UK ,like the UK’s deputy legal adviser who felt rightly that the war was illegal and resigned at the time .There were doubts in the mind of British Army chief about the legality of the war and the Memos leaked since then have proved the machinations and immorality of the decisions taken by the Blair regime. The choice of and quixotic findings of Justice Lord Hutton and Sir Butler , have only undermined peoples faith in British institutions. But why the leaks now ! Why not before the invasion , why now , because the invasion is being unraveled !To earn some Brownie points! 

Unless Christian and Muslim nations turn back from this mortal combat , 7/7 London attacks would only be the beginning of the payoff of the policy followed by British regimes of totally aligning itself with USA. Like an old doting mother , Britannica indulges her way ward son – on right or wrong way. United Kingdom has one of the most class stratified societies, where throughout history ,its toiling masses were made to sacrifice for the rich ruling elite and landed aristocracy; the ‘they’ for the ruling ‘us’. Yes , ‘they’ are rewarded with trinkets ; some ribbons and medals while the spoils of the war are creamed off by their Lordships and Ladies ,living on taxpayers money, some of whose doings only provide déjà vu amusement to prurient minds . There is still enough sense of fair play and justice in the British society, which one hopes will prevail. 

The self gloating and the exaggerated account of British role in recent history is projected assiduously. The British decamped from Dunkirk but it was described as a great orderly retreat. Without the support of USA , the new power after the 2nd world war, U.K along with France and Israel were humiliated following their invasion of Col Gamal Nasser of Egypt who only asserted sovereignty over its property the Suez canal .And without Uncle Sam’ Ronald Reagan’s support , the outcome could have been dicey in UK’s war on Argentina in far way in Falkland islands known as the Malvinas to the Argentines . Day in and day out British propaganda brain washes its own citizens from childhood and others who follow English media and its publications as if the British had won the Second World War. So claim the Americans too. But the truth is quite different.

In the 2nd world war Russians lost around 27 million people , almost 14% of its pre-war population, compared to British losses of around 0.6% of its population and American losses of around 0.3% only.( That the determined numbers matter is being shown in Iraq now.) It was the Soviet determination to resist Nazi aggression and expel the Germans from their land and incredible credible level of sacrifices which caused the majority of German casualties and decimation of its war machine . It was here that the 2nd world war was won .If the Red Army had not succeeded against all the odds in first halting the Germans in 1941 and then inflicting major defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943, it is difficult to see how the western democracies, Britain and the US, could have expelled Germany from its Eurasian empire and its resources. But look at the Hollywood films of grand victories over tattered German armies and battered war machine on the Western front.

At the Asian end another little known fact is that the Chinese who lost an estimated 20 million against Japanese aggression had kept the Japanese bogged down in Asia. If Japan had achieved quick victory in China, large resources would have been available to attack the rear of the Soviet Union, or an increased military presence in the Pacific .Thus China made things easier for the western allies.

Many books have been written by Western authors about the Nazi rapes and the sexual violence unleashed by the Red Army, but little has been written about mass rapes committed by American and British troops. Robert Lilly, a distinguished American sociologist, prepared a book ‘Taken by Force’ based on military archives, a study of the rapes committed by American soldiers in Europe between 1942 and 1945 and suggested a minimum of 10,000 American rapes. Others described a much higher level of unpunished sex crimes. Lilly’s book prepared in 2001 was suppressed and it first appeared in 2003 in a French translation. Time Magazine reported in September 1945: "Our own army and the British army along with ours have done their share of looting and raping ... we too are considered an army of rapists."

Trying to re-live days of colonial glory by supporting neo-colonial adventures and playing in the big-league would only bring an endless war, devastation and misery to the British people. Juggler like contortions and ingenuous TV performances cannot hide UK ’s status as a middle level power trying to stride around the world stage as USA’s stalking horse . 

More than anything else the evolution of a state’s polity in the world, specially in Europe and later on dictated by European powers in Asia and elsewhere ,and after the Second World War by USA , has relied on nationalism based narrowly on religion , language and some kind of shared ethnicity and history. Still we only have Roman Catholic France, Italy and Spain , a Protestant Germany, and white Anglo Saxon Protestant USA, but all claiming to be secular.. On the eastern side , apart from Catholic Poland are orthodox Serbia, Romania , Greece, Ukraine and Russia These sectional religion based national identities are a result of centuries of warfare. The Catholic and Protestant enmity has still not been reconciled in northern Ireland. How secular European nations are, has been fully exposed by their opposition to secular Turkey’s wish to join the Europe Union , even after it has fulfilled all the EU prescribed norms. 

A reading of the history of the Ottoman Empire shows how it was dismantled and destroyed by European Christian powers by exploiting religious and ethnic divisions and cleavages of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multilingual Empire , which had lasted for 600 years. The means used by Europe in promoting cleavages and the consequent violence among ethnicities and religions continued unabated , in the Balkans ( on rise again ), and even in Muslim parts of Ottoman empire ie North Africa and the Middle East . Then there was division of greater Syria, Palestine, Cyprus on similar cleavages. Marshall Tito tried to create a multi- ethnic and multi-religious Yugoslavia from the remnants of the Ottoman and the Habsburg Empires but it too was undone by Western powers in early 1990s. 

Religion was also used as a wedge to partition multi- religious, multi- ethnic and multi- lingual India. The collapse of the Soviet Union came about because of internal contradictions and Christian and Muslim differences. Christian Muslim differences remain acute in Lebanon, Cyprus, Egypt and Sudan. 

The movement of natives to Metropolitan colonial countries specially their capitals was a natural phenomenon during the colonial era. Those who could attain financial, educational and cultural levels of their colonial rulers were tolerated and even accepted with some inter racial marriages. But after the peace following the Second World War when the industrial economies of the former colonial nations expanded , more and more natives were encouraged to come over to do jobs lower down the chain like cleaning streets and heavy work in building and construction industry. A similar equation is being established between West Europe and newly liberated East European countries. But the latter has high education level specially in medical and technical fields which frightens the highly overpaid and coddled west European citizens. As Germany was deprived of colonies after the first world war , it imported hard-working Turks mostly from poorer central and eastern Turkey, of whom 25% are Kurdish. They brought along their differences and problems. In Germany‘s case there are at least no colonial memories to poison inter –racial relations. In France most of the Muslims are from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia and former French colonies in West Africa. They have also brought their religious and ethnic differences to Europe. There are nearly one and half million Muslims of South Asian origin in UK .When there are enough immigrants from Pak occupied Kashmir in some constituencies it even affects labour Government policies on South Asia . 

The relationship between colonial Christian rulers and their Muslim subjects , Arab or South Asian and the antagonism they created have deep foundations from the days of Millennia old Christian Crusades against Islam and exploitation during the 19th and 20th centuries .These memories , embedded in Muslim conscience have now been sharpened by the neo- colonial and imperial policies of USA. Of course USA can be cavalier for the time being as it does not have large poor Muslim populations from the Arab world and South Asia. But if not handled carefully, it is all a matter of time before USA could face up what Europe is facing now ,from its black Afro-Asian community, specially its Muslim component. It was only natural that France and Germany opposed the U.S.-led war on Islam and Iraq. It may be recalled that George Bush’s first clarion call after 11 September attacks was for a Crusade and Infinite Justice. 

USA and its leader; 

Does US regime fulfill the true definition of a democracy i.e. a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It now caters to a narrow but powerful collection of military-industrial and energy corporate interests. After the decimation of red Indians, brutal exploitation and treatment of Afro-Americans, being geographically isolated and blessed with the immense resources, USA developed into a powerful economic republic .But now it seems to have gone astray , totally, specially during the last few decades. The system is now no longer producing political leaders .The nominees of corporate interests occupy almost all top administration posts , including that of the President and the Vice President , which is but natural in an electoral system which demands hundreds of millions of dollars to win a presidential race. Unlike Europe it has not faced even local terrorism like the Irish and Red brigades of Italy and Germany on its soil. September 11 was a searing Baptism by Islamic terrorism. 

Tom Engelhardt, a reputed historian and journalist who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com commented that at the G8 meeting , George Bush offered "heartfelt condolences to the people of London, people who lost lives" and spoke of defending Americans against heightened dangers and extolled the strength of resolve of the other G8 leaders by comparing it to his own ."I was most impressed by the resolve of all the leaders in the room. Their resolve is as strong as my resolve." He ‘presented for the umpteenth time his Manichaean vision of a world of good and evil in which he and his administration are unhesitatingly the representatives of all goodness.” 

“As reality grows ever darker, our president never ventures far from his scripted version of a fictional world that is nowhere to be seen.’ Like he and his deputy had launched a vigorous, completely ludicrous defense of his Guantanamo prison complex-- making [it like ] one of those Caribbean tourist ads - that the prisoners there were lucky to be housed and fed so admirably in the balmy "tropics".” There's very few prison systems around the world that have seen such scrutiny as this one. “The press, of course, was welcome to go down to Guantanamo. 

To Jane Mayer of the New Yorker magazine , who went there , “it struck as a giant dystopian experiment in mind manipulation.” According to Senior Bush's White House physician, a former doctor in the Army Medical Corps, “Today, however, it seems as though our government and the military have slipped into Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The widespread reports of torture and ill treatment - frequently based on military and government documents - defy the claim that this abusive behavior is limited to a few noncommissioned officers at Abu Ghraib or isolated incidents at Guantanamo Bay. When it comes to torture, the military's traditional leadership and discipline have been severely compromised up and down the chain of command. Why? I fear it is because the military has bowed to errant civilian leadership. “ 

According to psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton who wrote the insightful Superpower Syndrome, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration "responded apocalyptically to an apocalyptic challenge"; of how, facing Islamist fanaticism, it offered its own version of a fundamentalist "world war without end"; of how it perversely partnered up with al-Qaeda in a strange global dance of animosity.[Lord Shiva’s tandav dance of destruction] Once again, the London bombs may bolster Bush's waning support domestically, just as his acts globally reinforce the evidently growing support for various al-Qaeda-linked or identified groups.” 

USA-a man-child in power;

” More than anything else, as I watched him that morning in Scotland, I was filled with a sense of sadness that we had reached such a perilous moment with such a man, or really - for here is my deepest suspicion - such a man-child in power. Yes, he genuinely believes in his "war on terror", even as he and his advisors use it to his own advantage. And yes, he's good at being, or rather enacting with all his being , the role of the "war on terror" president. And yet there's something so painfully childlike in the spectacle of him. Here, after all, is a 59-year-old who loves to appear in front of massed troops, saying gloriously encouraging and pugnacious things while being hoo-ah-ed - and almost invariably he makes such appearances dressed in some custom-made military jacket with "commander in chief" specially stitched across his heart, just as he landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln back in May 2003 in a navy pilot's outfit,” added Tom.

Members of the EU, now worried, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the OECD should persuade the US and UK to have a dialogue with the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). With all its failings, OIC is the only organization where all Muslim countries have come together for the first time since the 10th century. The EU-OIC dialogue initiated in early 2003 just before the Iraq war should be revived and invigorated. It is a moot point, if Blair had not so whole heartedly supported Bush , support from Australia , Italy and Spain might have lessened for the mad and evil enterprise and events might have turned out differently.

At micro-level ,Europeans , specially the British are going to have a difficult task and mission , with colonial memories among its Muslims , specially those now living on margins of the society , from where the young and impressionable are recruited and the current Crusade-Jihad environment in the world . Britain could learn a thing or two from India, which has handled jihadis and terrorists , and their depredations since many decades. The British would pompously lecture India on the freedom of political expression of Sikh and Muslim organizations based in UK with links to terrorists operating in India and Kashmir , with BBC even telecasting celebrations by extremist Sikhs at the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Things are going to get worse than better , if at all.

K Gajendra Singh, served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in 1992 -96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the1990 - 91Gulf war), Romania and Senegal . He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies, in Bucharest . Email- Gajendrak@hotmail.com 

But some government simulations of chemical and biological attacks in the past have been somewhat different.

  In the 1950s and sixties, scientists from the Fort Detrick biological weapons program ran a series of tests to determine how easy it would be to expose large numbers of people to a lethal bacteria. Containers of nontoxic bacteria were planted in the New York subway, bacteria was secretly pumped into the Pentagon ventilation system and clouds of bacteria were released in San Francisco. And germs that were meant to sicken but not kill humans were tested on conscientious objectors in the military.

• Leonard Cole, an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Rutgers-Newark in New Jersey. An expert in biological and chemical terrorism, Cole is also the author of "The Eleventh Plague, The Politics of Chemical and Biological Warfare," and "The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story."

AMY GOODMAN: To talk about all this, we are joined by Leonard Cole, who has written a book about the subject. An expert in biological and chemical terrorism, his book is called, The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Chemical and Biological Warfare. Welcome to Democracy Now!

  LEONARD COLE: Hi.

  AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. In a few minutes, I want to go to your next book, which is something I think a lot of people have forgotten about, and that is The Anthrax Letters. That’s right. Who did it, we don't know. But first let's go to this story.

  LEONARD COLE: Sure.

  AMY GOODMAN: The Grand Central experiment or the test that was done just a few weeks ago, do you know anything about it?

  LEONARD COLE: Only what I saw in the newspaper that was reported just a few days back that a non-toxic gas was flowed through the Central -- Grand Central Terminal, and as you said, the purpose was to see what the air flow would be like, so that presumably we could institute some protections and defenses. What I found interesting was that while the newspaper article reported that the gas was non-toxic, that it was invisible, odorless, it did not name the gas, and that would be interesting for to us find out.

  AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's go to something we know more about, and that is a previous experiment in the New York subways. Can you talk about that in as much detail as you know?

  LEONARD COLE: Sure.

  AMY GOODMAN: When did it happen?

  LEONARD COLE: The test in the subways was in 1966, and it was part of an experimental program that lasted 20 years, beginning in 1949, ending only in 1969. During that period, the army acknowledged that some 239 vulnerability tests had been conducted in which large numbers of people, of human citizens of this country, were exposed. They emphasized that the materials that were used to simulate anthrax and other deadly organisms were harmless. But in my research, and in the work that was published in the book, it was very clear that some of the materials were not totally harmless, that when you expose a million or 2 or 3 million people to relatively harmless materials, you still have a certain segment of the population that would be at risk.

  AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about specifically what happened in the subway.

  LEONARD COLE: Sure.

  AMY GOODMAN: How many agents went underground?

  LEONARD COLE: When you use the word agent, it has a double meaning. Sometimes it means human beings who are actually conducting the experiments, sometimes – and the army refers to them, the test, the people actually refer to the organisms as agents that were released. So I’ll try to be careful.

  AMY GOODMAN: So how many agents released agents?

  LEONARD COLE: Well, we don't know how many individuals went down to release. There were probably somewhere, my guess is in the order of anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen. More importantly, the number of bacterial agents that were released ranged in the trillions. In fact, the way this was done was kind of bizarre, and yet interesting. A light bulb was filled with some 87 trillion organisms, something called bacillus subtilis. And this bacillus, this bacterium, and is common in nature. And as I said before, most people would not be affected. However some people in immune compromised situation, very old people, babies, they would be more susceptible. Trillions and trillions were released. Light bulbs --

  AMY GOODMAN: When you say released, you’re talking light -- they're put into light bulbs?

  LEONARD COLE: They were placed in army laboratories in light bulbs and mixed with charcoal. The human agent would carry a paper bag containing some light bulbs filled with bacterium.

  AMY GOODMAN: Black light bulbs?

  LEONARD COLE: I don't know what the color of the light bulbs were. But he would walk down during peak traffic hours to various subway platforms. This was during in a six-day period in September of 1966. As the train would be coming into the station, he would take a light bulb out of the bag, drop it onto the tracks, and as the train entered, you would see a whoosh of darkened air, darkened clouds. The darkness came from charcoal that was a mixed with the bacteria, because the bacteria themselves were invisible. There were various detection devices set up around the subway system so one could then estimate how many bacteria had survived, and how many of them had concentrated in various areas. At the end of six days, as reports were written, the ultimate report said that if a -- as they said, a pathogenic organism were released, that more than half of the people who were riding the subways could have become deathly ill.

  AMY GOODMAN: Do we know about people who got sick?

  LEONARD COLE: In the course of research, some years after, when the public first learned about this, and in writing the book, I wrote to the New York City Subway System or the -- I guess it was the authority -- the Subway Authority and asked for absentee records, people who were not showing up for work, just to see how this was around those dates, and I got a short reply back saying, when I wrote to them -- it was in the early 1980s -- they said they don't have records that go back that far.

  AMY GOODMAN: Because we do know about what happened in the Bay Area, right, with the release of toxins. Can you talk about that?

  LEONARD COLE: Sure. This was perhaps the most dramatic and well-reported incident, which we learned about only decades after it was actually conducted. In 1950, another bacterium, and any doctors or microbiologists will recognize this immediately as not something that you should play around with, it was called serratia marcescens. These bacteria were released from the Bay of San Francisco, a boat was spraying trillions of these bacteria onshore. And this is very interesting, because in San Francisco in 1950, a major hospital, university hospital, Stanford University Hospital was located, and they had never recorded any infections from serratia marcescens. Unbeknown to the doctors or anybody in the hospital, the army released the bacteria. Three days later, a case of the serratia marcescens was discovered in the hospital. A dozen or so occurred in the subsequent months. One of the patients died of serratia infection.

  AMY GOODMAN: What does that mean? What happens to the person?

  LEONARD COLE: These bacteria colonized his heart valve. The bacteria can infect various organs of the body, particularly with weakened people. Now, a person who was in the hospital who had had surgery emerged, became infected, and he died. And what is fascinating is that when the public first learned about this test, mind you, the test occurred in 1950, there were news reports about the test for the first time in the year 1976 and ‘77. The grandson of the -- the grandson of the person who died, Edward Nevin, who died, the grandson is named Edward Nevin the third, was reading about this, as he was commuting from his home in Berkeley, California, to his law office in San Francisco.

  AMY GOODMAN: So he's on the BART, and he’s reading about these tests.

  LEONARD COLE: Exactly. And he's reading about it. And then he sees his grandfather's name mentioned as a person who died from this bacterial infection. And he said, ‘Oh, my goodness, that's my grandfather.’ Well, to cut through a couple of years following that, he instituted suit against the government. In 1981, there was a trial. The Nevin family sued the US government for these tests, and for the death of their grandparent, and it -- they lost the case, but in the course of the trial, he managed to get tons of material that was exposed for the first time, and the public learned about it, much of which I have reported in my own research and book.

  AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cole, do we have reason to be concerned that with heightened fear and concern about a biological attack that these kind of tests to see, for example, air flow, etc., will now continue today?

  LEONARD COLE: Oh, I think that there's no reason to think they won't continue. I mean, certainly, we have evidence by a news report that they were instituted in Grand Central Terminal. My guess is that that would not be the only location. On the other hand, in fairness, we do have to understand that we want to defend ourselves against the possible release of these materials. The question is how you do it, what the material is that you are using as a test agent. If we use anything like the bacteria that were used in the 50s and 60s, we're creating risk situations for millions of people.

  AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Professor Leonard Cole. He teaches political science at Rutgers-Newark. His book is called The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare. You have also written The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story. We're talking about terrorist attacks right now. We know about September 11, we certainly know about Madrid, and what happened in London. Everyone was afraid when the anthrax letters targeted the National Enquirer and killed the post office workers, but seems to hardly ever have been raised. President Bush certainly hardly raises this. What do we know about who sent them soon after September 11?

  LEONARD COLE: Soon, indeed. The first postmarked letters that were later identified were September 18; exactly one week later, they had been sent out. We don't know who did it. When I say we, I mean, the public. The FBI has focused on the notion that it was probably a lone disaffected American domestic scientist who had access to these bacteria, highly refined virulent bacteria, dangerous bacteria, access to them in one of the laboratories in the US.

  There are a lot of things that have happened in retrospect that sound amazing. For example, it wasn't until two years ago or three years ago, actually, in the year 2001, that we even had regulations that required scientists who handle these virulent dangerous bacteria to report to the Centers for Disease Control that they have them in stock. But until now, or until that period, people had stocks of terribly dangerous materials in their laboratories, and nobody would necessarily know about them, except they themselves who had them there. And that was perfectly legal. So, at the time that these bacteria were released, there were possibilities for access, getting to these materials by a lot of people. So, we don't know who did it.

  It is -- I find it quite interesting that the notion that the bacteria were sent out exactly seven days, the first letters were sent out seven days after September 11, and then a whole bunch of other circumstantial dots, as I suggest, would suggest that maybe there was some, at least, awareness by whoever sent them out about September 11 in advance because to prepare this material, to find out who you want to send these poisoned letters to, to get them out and write the letter, and do it all in six days' time, while it's certainly physically possible, but it would be an awful stretch to think that it could be done easily.

  AMY GOODMAN: What is the profile the government has of who this person or people are?

  LEONARD COLE: Amazingly specific. And I can cut through by saying that the profile that they offered on the website, the FBI put on its site, ultimately closely fits somebody who was actually named in the year 2002 by then Attorney General John Ashcroft, as quote, “a person of interest.” The man's name is Steven Hatfill. Hatfill has never been charged. And when the press asked the Attorney General, ‘Well, is he a suspect?’ the Attorney General said, ‘No, no. He's just a person of interest.’ No other persons of interest were named, although ostensibly there were dozens who were being looked at. Hatfill, since his being named, lost his job, can't get a job anyplace and has sued the government for millions of dollars. And his case is still pending.

  AMY GOODMAN: Do you think if the person of interest had been a different ethnic background or religious background, that there would have been a great deal more of attention paid, media focusing on this issue?

  LEONARD COLE: There was a gentleman of Egyptian extract who worked at Fort Detrick, and he was also investigated. He was never named publicly, but the word got out through, I guess through the gossip mill at Fort Detrick and elsewhere that a man of Arab extract who said that he had been discriminated -- suffered discrimination there in any case ultimately was being investigated carefully. There were probably scores of scientists, scores of people who fit the profile, but the only one named, as I say, was Hatfill.

  AMY GOODMAN: And what is your conclusion? 

  LEONARD COLE: I would -- my conclusion -- I don't mean to be glib or flip, I would just say that there's a very good chance that a year from now we will be asking the same question, what is my thought? I don't know who did it. I would say that all options are open. If the FBI has information more than has been released to the public, I think we ought to be hearing more about it.

  AMY GOODMAN: Leonard Cole, I want to thank you for being with us, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Rutgers, Newark. Author of The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare and his latest book, The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story.

MOSCOW: Russia is a likely partner in a plan envisaging construction of 20 nuclear power stations in Iran, a senior member of Iran's Parliament announced. "A plan has been approved in Parliament obliging the government to study the possibility of building 20 nuclear power stations ... Various countries, including Russia, can participate and we hope Russia will continue to cooperate with us on this question," Kazem Jalali, head of the Iranian Parliament's foreign affairs committee, said.

Jalali was speaking during a visit by an Iranian delegation to the Russian capital aimed at developing economic ties between the two countries.

Russia is constructing Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr, part of a technological cooperation agreement with Tehran in 2002 that opened the way for construction of up to five reactors over the coming 10 years.

Both the United States and Israel have objected to the building of the Bushehr reactor, which could be turned on next year, as they claim Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and that having such a facility will be a proliferation risk. - AFP

US misses the next wave: China

Beijing is making the running in Asia, leaving America well behind

By Peter Hartcher.

07/07/05 "SMH" - - WHEN Jimmy Carter was in the White House in 1978, he decided to finish the task of normalising relations with China. It was something that Richard Nixon had started six years earlier, but the Watergate scandal got in the way and the US still did not recognise Beijing as the capital of the one and only China.

So Carter sent his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to Beijing, and a year later China's Deng Xiaoping was trying on 10-gallon hats in Texas and being feted in the White House.

Today Brzezinski, 77, one of the more important thinkers on US foreign policy, remains a close student of China. This is what he sees: "There is no doubt that China is quietly creating a very successful Chinese co-prosperity sphere in East Asia. The countries of the region increasingly are paying China due deference, something to which the Chinese graciously respond."

The term "co-prosperity sphere", of course, carries a dark connotation. It was the euphemism Imperial Japan used for its plan to dominate Asia.

There is a gathering sense in Washington that while China continues to build its power and wealth in the Asia-Pacific region, the US has been falling behind in a contest for influence in the region that is home to half the world's population.

The critique is that the US, preoccupied with Iraq, has failed to tend to its role as the leading power in the region. The potential superpower China, which has been assiduous in cultivating the region, has stolen a march on the reigning superpower.

One development has sharpened this general US unease to a specific point of alarm. It is the East Asia Summit. This summit will convene in Kuala Lumpur in December. One of its explicit purposes is to exclude the US.

A White House official remarked privately that it was destined to become "a plaything of the Chinese".

The summit's advent is a case of delayed gratification for the former Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who first advocated such a grouping nearly 20 years ago. He called the idea the East Asian Caucus; it was quickly nicknamed the Caucus without caucasians. It would have excluded Australia, New Zealand and the US. It was an outgrowth of Mahathir's race-based view of the world, but masquerading as a high-minded pan-Asianism.

But Mahathir was outmanoeuvred. Bill Clinton, in conjunction with Paul Keating and Indonesia's Soeharto, countered by channelling the drive for more regional integration into the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation group. To keep it as politically neutral as possible in a region rife with mutual suspicions and unfamiliar with close co-operation, APEC kept to trade. It had no political, diplomatic or strategic agenda. And when its trade agenda stalled, APEC lost its purpose.

It is now a useful chance for regional leaders to meet - for example, it is the only scheduled annual event where the leaders of China and Japan come face to face. But that's about all it is.

And still Asia, the region with most of the world's military flashpoints, has no real venue where its leaders can discuss the big issues of war and peace, and, in particular, how to avoid the former and extend the latter.

Who has stepped in to fill this void? The 10-country Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), with the strong encouragement of the Chinese, proposed the East Asia Summit.

It is not to be the racial enclave that Mahathir wanted - New Zealand will be an inaugural member, and Australia will be, too, when the Howard Government gets around to signing ASEAN's tokenistic Treaty of Amity and Co-operation. But the summit will satisfy Mahathir's aim of shutting the US out.

Alarmed, the Bush Administration is on the point of acting to try to counter this development. "The East Asia Summit has concentrated the mind of this Administration," says Jim Steinberg, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and former deputy national security adviser to Clinton.

The US Deputy Secretary of State, Bob Zoellick, is working to develop a US proposal for some other form of discussion about security issues in Asia - one that includes the US. He explains his thinking: "I was frequently asked, you know, does the United States want to try to stop China's inroads in South-East Asia? And my answer was, you know, that would be both foolish and impossible. The US response should not be to try to stop someone, it should be to be active in our own right. Our response to others' activism should be activism, not negativism."

In short, the US must enter the new contest over the future shape of Asia if it wants to win it.

Steinberg, a Democrat, concurs with this thinking by Zoellick, a Republican: "It's to Bob's credit that he's understood the US has to have its own proposals as an alternative if we are going to have any chance of influencing the evolution of the security architecture in Asia."

And what sort of influence does the US hope to exert? Zoellick says the aim of US policy is to commit a rising China to preserving the existing rules and norms for the behaviour of nation states: "For 20 years, we've been pursuing a policy of how do we integrate China into the global system. Well, as events in oil markets to soybean markets to currency markets suggest, that integration has occurred. The challenge now is how to encourage responsible stakeholding in those systems, whether they be WTO, whether they be security issues or others."

The US, in other words, wants China to be bound by the structures of global rules of responsible behaviour.

There is irony here. The US wants China to accept the status quo of world affairs at a time when the US is discontented. Zoellick again: "Normally, when you are a dominant power, you try to preserve the status quo. This is one of those rare times in history that a dominant power [the US] is actually trying to transform the status quo" with, for instance, its revolutionary plans for the democratisation of the Middle East.

So the world now sees an ambitious rising power competing for influence in the Asia-Pacific region with a restless superpower. The real trick is to prevent the competition from getting ugly. These are the choppy seas that Australia and all the other countries of the region must navigate. Says Brzezinski: "I don't predict a collision. It's not inevitable. But we have to avoid taking positions that make collision a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald.
 http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/us-misses-the-next-wave-china/2005/07/07/1120704490598.html