US: TERROR POLITICS?

Why Osama will be...!
Alive! There are reasons to kill Osama, and there are reasons to keep him alive; Pakistan, and the US, look decisively tilted towards the latter

May 11, 2010: In context with the failed attempt of the Times Square bombing, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warns that Pakistan would face “severe consequences” if a future terrorist attack on US soil was traced back to Pakistan and said, “…Pak officials know where bin Laden, al Qaeda, Mullah Omar and the Afghan Taliban leadership are.” A few days later, she reiterates her warning (albeit in a relatively softer tone) and said, “There is more that Pakistan must do to face what is now a common enemy…” May 12, 2010: The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates bellows, “The relationship between the two anti-terror allies [aka, USA and Pakistan] has improved significantly over the last two years.”

In the two statements above, which are obviously contradictory, the usage of word “ally” does raise critical concerns. When one juxtaposes this with the latest leakage of thousands of secret US military records by a whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, which proves Pakistan’s deep complicity in terrorist activities, US pro-Pak political intentions suddenly become suspiciously dangerous, as the US and especially Barack Obama ostensibly are still not convinced enough to declare Pakistan as a terrorist state, amazingly turning a blind eye to what seems crystal clear to the rest of the world!

But wait! Barack’s bent clearly must be a put-on, in his efforts to get Pakistan’s assistance to catch Osama bin Laden, right? At least initially, it seemed so. But of late, Barack’s double entendres just can’t be ignored. While Barack announced that his administration would stick with pulling out US troops from Iraq (down from a peak 150,000 to 50,000 by the end of this month), he has concurrently increased the deployment of US soldiers in Afghanistan (up from 68,000 to 100,000). With a shrewd redeployment, it’s quite clear that the US is simply gaining avenues to increase its influence over Central Asia. Without the excuse of hunting down Osama bin Laden and Taliban, the US would surely have faced global admonition on troop deployment.

On the other side of the coin, the presence of Osama and the controlled nurturing of Taliban and anti-India elements allows Pakistan to keep receiving spectacularly humungous aid from the US, most of the moneys going to the personal pockets of local bureaucrats and politicians in Pakistan, a handful of who – by some accounts – are now close to becoming billionaires. Pre-Osama, from 1991 till 2000, Pakistan received $434.2 million as economic and military assistance aid from the US. Post Osama (9/11), from 2001 till 2009, Pakistan has received a shocking $15 billion from the US; and Obama had deftly announced another hollering $7.5 billion in October 2009! 

Newsweek reported late last year that officials at the US embassy in Islamabad alleged that “Pakistan misspent some 70% of the US funds!” Pakistan is also accused of “running a double game with the money, keeping the Taliban at bay just enough to persuade American benefactors to keep their wallets open.” Not that this was a State secret; but the benign nature of Barack Obama’s response – or lack of it – is astounding! On August 2, 2010, Obama commented that Pakistan is beginning to “take the fight to violent extremists within its borders.” That sounds as far from the truth as possible.

Thomas Friedman writes in this week’s issue of The Sunday Indian, “The 9/11 attack was basically planned, executed and funded by radical Pakistanis and Saudis.” Fareed Zakaria confirms, “70 percent of the terror plots uncovered in the past decade can be traced back to Pakistan,” a country which, Zakaria adds, is “the epicentre of Islamic terrorism!”

Is Barack Obama blind or are we plain nutty? The practice of keeping anti-social elements alive for political and economic benefits is not just a western phenomenon. In the Asian continent, the most famous case was of a forest brigand cum smuggler in Southern India, called Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, who – in spite of being charged of murdering 184 people, poaching around 200 elephants, smuggling ivory and sandalwood worth $24,600,000, kidnapping the who’s who of the political and entertainment world – never saw the local government ordering swift action against the criminal, mainly because a considerable amount of money flowed into the territory due to his staying alive and in action.

Similar is the case with bin Laden. His living means more to Pakistan than to any other entity. Barack’s refusal to call a spade what it is, will go down in history as perhaps the worst two-faced moves ever made. Friedman quotes, “If you are in a poker game and you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s probably you!” Obama, ever wondered why Chelsea never invited you for her wedding?

END OF THE WORLD

From Mayan to ‘Obama’yan

Yes, we can’t (duh) 

Perhaps it’s already too late to save the world of its various ills; a primer

“State of Fear”. That is the name of a book where the late Michael Crichton talks about eco-terrorists who are attempting to create a ‘state of fear’ to press forward their point-of-view regarding global warming. There have been several prophecies from almost all civilizations pointing toward the end of the world. Be it the Mayan 2012 prediction or the Chinese oracle of the I Ching or the internet bot software program – ‘Web-Bot Project’ (which predicted that a reversion of the earth’s magnetic poles will devastate the world in 2012) – all forecasts have boiled down to a specific date of the end of the global society to peddle their postulation.
Surprisingly, we are not questioning the credibility of these oracles; instead; we are forwarding the premise that perhaps all these oracles who did get it right (their forecasts, that is) for all the wrong reasons (of course, the dates were all kooky) dug up a bigger problem – and that was that all the ‘other’ forecasts which were positively more pertinent and had a better chance of seeing the light – or dark – of the day were also relegated to the standard bin of ‘end of the world’ theories. To contribute our mite to the weight of the bin, is this issue’s section of Scrutiny, in which we pretend to be the first ones to be predicting how and why the end of the world is nearer than you thought and why Obama might end up being able to do nothing about it.
At least geo-politically, what we are seeing around is surely nothing less than steps towards the end of the world – the rising tension in Middle East, strategic moves by Russia, emergence of China and South Asia in making themselves potently loaded with nuclear weapons... Economists who support the growth of nuclear arsenal (yes, they are there!) forward the hypothesis that in the modern era, weak countries are arming themselves not with an intention to attack, but with an objective to dissuade other stronger countries from attacking them. The theorem does hold credibility – when Pakistan attacked India’s borders, India was constrained in its response due to Pakistan’s visible atomic base.
However, those are not democratic and sane governments that rule all countries across the world. Studies have shown, but obviously, that even a limited nuclear war would devastate the world. And the day an autocratic or military ruler decides push has come to shove and the time to decimate the opponent is now, many more than the two of us would wish we were living near the Thames in London.
What the world today requires is a foolproof non-proliferation policy. Comprehending the vibes, Obama has already amended his policy to protect the world from nuclear terrorism. During his April 2009 speech in Prague, he delineated his arms control and non-proliferation agendas and promised a US-led international effort to secure “all vulnerable nuclear materials” within the next four years. That is the most far reaching agenda any US President – for that matter, any premier across the world – has announced in history. To start it up diplomatically, in the recent G8 Summit in Italy, he announced a Nuclear Security Summit in 2010 to combat nuclear smuggling and prevent nuclear terrorism.
Obama knows his priorities too well – the US considers climate emissions control its last priority on the ‘save the world’ list; the December Copenhagen summit will be proof enough. We aren’t complaining about that...

Alpha (decay) male

Alpha males that we all are, none of us believes a nuke attack will ever happen in our lifetimes – so we write this treatise to the alpha female

With around 2000 nuclear weapons on high alert and ready for launch, the nuclear Armageddon is just waiting for its reincarnation. We provide some ‘what if’ details.
There are currently more than 30,000 nuclear weapons of which 8,000 are currently operational. In 1977, the US Department of Defense predicted 265 million casualties from a full-scale US-Soviet nuclear war. United Nations Disarmament Committee states there are more than 16,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons ready for deployment and another 14,000 in storage. With regional tension intensifying, especially among nuclear-rich countries, the probability of nuclear war can’t be denied.
Around 50 nuclear weapons are reportedly deployed against each other by India and Pakistan, targeting their megacities. An incident involving Israel and a neighbour (particularly Syria and Lebanon and to some extent the Palestinian areas) may stimulate the Arab nations to fight. Even the nuclear tensions in Iran and North Korea are increasing. Iran’s nuclear program and North Korea’s nuclear testing spree adds to the complexity. Factoring in nuclear terrorism creates a creepy new dimension with enhanced risk. A nuclear country with a terrorist presence could trigger a nuclear war easily. After the US attempt to push Russia’s neighbours into NATO and the EU, the probability of a US-Russia flash war, though feeble, still can’t be done away with. NATO has stationed around 500 nuclear weapons in Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Turkey. When it comes to the mightiest, the US and Russia keep hundreds of missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads on high-alert, 24 hours a day, that reach their targets in less than 30 minutes.
So what if a ‘mild’ nuclear bomb detonates, say in the subcontinent (ten times the power of Little Boy)? In the 30 million subsequent deaths, NRDC (Natural Resources Defence Council) calculated that almost 22.1 million people (in India and Pakistan) would be exposed to lethal radiation doses of 600 rem (units that measure the effects of ionizing radiation on humans) in the first two days after the attack. Add to this, 8 million people would be affected by 100 to 600 rem. In general, besides the local destructions, any nuclear war in any part of the world would result in a ripple effect. A study on the ‘Atmospheric chemistry of regional nuclear war’ suggests that the hot smoke from a burning city would tear holes in the ozone layer. Research by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder proves that the increased ultraviolet radiation (from the ozone loss) would double the DNA damage along with increasing the cancer rates manifold. This would also reduce crop yields and starve hundreds of millions the world-over.
It is now clear that even a limited and local nuclear war involving less than 100 low-yield weapons, apart from killing a minimum of 20-25 million people, would activate a decade of cold climate titled the ‘nuclear winter’ (report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science). This limited war would also generate 1 to 5 million tonnes of carbonaceous smoke particles, darkening the sky. NASA predicts that 40% of this smoke would stay in the stratosphere for 10 years. The Journal of Geophysical Research concludes through climate model simulations that even a small nuclear conflict would cause mayhem on the atmosphere by “cooling it twice as much as it has heated over the last century.” The journal reports that on an average, global surface cooling of –7°C to –8°C would remain for years – this could well make global temperatures colder than they were 18,000 years ago.
Like we mentioned, it is much easier (and faster) to die from the effects of a nuclear disaster than from those of global warming. Black humour aside, the world in general should gather behind Obama to support his effort to make the world free of nuclear weapons. What would work against him is the fact that the US has extremely less moral authority on this issue. Well, they’ve carried out 1050 plus known nuclear tests till date..

W o r l d : G e o - s t r at e g i c L o c at i o n

Roach’s good face!

Why you have no idea what’s going on in the Arctic and the Antarctic!

When it comes to environment and environmental concerns, nothing can beat the global warming issue. Global warming already contributes to anything above 150,000 deaths and five million illnesses annually, as per research reports by the World Health Organisation and the University of Wisconsin. But then, as they say, there’s a good face to every roach that lived. Since civilisation, the Arctic and the Antarctic were the only two regions that did not experience any kind of colonisation. How much longer, you ask? We say, a question too late. A few countries are all set to turn the tables in their favour and commercially exploit this melting issue. With global warming intensifying, new resources and new avenues of commercialisation are gradually getting exposed. So what, you ask again – well, weren’t countries already studying penguins in these caps? Wake up Rip, you really have no idea what’s going on!
The North Pole first. The Arctic icecap is rapidly melting, thus opening up access to massive natural resources and creating shipping shortcuts that could save billions of dollar. It is estimated that over 50% of the ice cover in the Arctic region has disappeared since the last 2-3 years, resulting in the opening up of new sea routes. Countries like Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway are leaving no opportunity to claim their control over this area. Since August 2007, strategic bomber patrol flights (predominantly Russian) are a regular affair over the region. Not for anything else, but to keep an eye over the activities of other countries over this region. In the same year, in 2007, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also showed his interest in sending naval patrol vessels to Arctic and setting up a training centre along the Northwest Passage. He further announced the building of a deep-sea port (at Nanisivik) and a military base (at Resolute Bay). The very next year, in 2008, Canada conducted its largest military exercise ever. A few months back, in July 2009, Denmark’s MPs approved plans to set up an Arctic military command and task force. Likewise, Norway is also considering exploration for oil and natural gas in its Arctic volcanic island of Jan Mayen.

If Russia thought it had had a head start, today, the region is covered by strategic bomber flights of Canada, Norway and Denmark too – of course, with the Russian navy patrolling the waters. This unconventional growing interest of various countries over ‘dead’ region can be explained through researches conducted by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Norwegian company StatoilHydro that predicts that the Arctic hides 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas deposits.
The studies further reveal that the region may contain nine billion barrels of oil and 86 trillion cubic feet of gas. Extending this research, British Petroleum, Europe’s second-largest oil company, estimates the region to hold nothing less than 200 billion barrels of oil or up to 50% of the world’s undiscovered hydrocarbons. In September 2006, Gazprom completed drilling in a few areas of Shtokman field (estimated to have 3.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and more than 37 million tonnes of gas) and expects the gas production facility to be operative by 2015.
Add to it the newly discovered sea routes, which are saving huge amounts for shipping companies. Warming can take a walk, many companies use icebreaker ships to cut the ice, their cost and transit time. A fast-dedicated sea-lane is being planned between the Arctic port of Murmansk (in Russia) and the Hudson Bay port of Churchill (in Canada). Arctic routes are unbelievably giving substantial competition to Panama and Suez Canals; and their biggest selling point is that as of now – unlike the Suez or Panama – there are no fees for Arctic routes, unless of course polar bears attempt to fleece you. Talking business, even South Asia’s giant, China, is gearing up to exploit this business model. China has one large “research” icebreaker, the Snow Lion (Xuelong), which is being used in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Since China’s economy is highly dominated by exports and international trade, such low cost shipping route would add to its profit. Beluga Shipping, on September 12, 2009, became the first shipping company to travel through the Northeast Passage without an icebreaker ship as an escort. A few weeks later, even German merchant ships MV Beluga Fraternity and MV Beluga Foresight from Ulsan, South Korea arrived through the passage at Yamburg, Siberia.

Some newspapers report that while the “journey from South Korea to the Netherlands, for example, is about 12,658 miles, by using the Northeast Passage, approximately 3,452 miles (and 10 days) can be shaved off, thus saving about $300,000 per vessel.” Studies show that by avoiding the Suez Canal, the trip from Asia to Europe is shortened by almost 5,000 km. Even South Korean and Singaporean shipyards are busy building massive new icebreakers; and Japan is strategically lining up its shipping industry to exploit the routes.

If North Pole is the mistress, the South Pole is the pole dancer. Like Arctic, various studies suggest that the thick ice cover over the Antarctic continent is home to the world’s largest reservoir for fresh water – holding 30 million cubic kilometres of ice, which is equivalent to 75% of earth’s fresh water. Seismic tests suggest there could be about 60 billion barrels of oil under the hidden ocean floor. It all started in the year 1959. In order to protect Antarctica’s ecology and to prevent military activities, mineral mining, unofficial scientific research and other ecologically harmful practices/initiatives, twelve countries signed the infamous Antarctic Treaty. But then, like almost all other global treaties, this treaty was also not able to contain the greed of the already greedy world.
By the end of the 20th century (late 1990s), many countries had consolidated their control over parts of Antarctica. Argentina had a control over various areas since long. By 1994, permanent occupation was also observed. Earlier, in 1982, the Brazilian government had launched its first Antarctic expedition – and in about a year had successfully built their first base (Comandante Ferraz). Furthering this neo-colonisation procedure, in 1991, Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello became the first president to spend three days in the occupied area – and all this to again fortify their claim. This was followed by a visit of 13 Brazilian parliamentarians to the base (in January 2008 and then in January 2009). Another Latin American country’s claim on Antarctica is a matter of hilarity and dispute in global forums.

Chile’s officials claim that Antártica Chilena, a ‘province’ on the continent, historically belongs to the country and is as old as Chile itself. To further its claims, Chile maintains a permanent civilian population (130 plus), a small school and even a bank on the province. But the oldest coloniser among them all, predictably, is the United Kingdom. The country had a continuous presence in the South Atlantic region since 1833 (the area is today called the British Antarctic Territory or BAT). The UK went as far as undertaking a secret wartime military operation (the infamous and ignored Operation Tabarin in 1943 – during WWII) in that territory. BAS, or the British Antarctic Survey, is currently administrating the research and control in the area. Hilariously, last year, to commemorate the centenary occupation of British rule, the BAT issued its first legal tender coin. Not to forget the US, which of course has NASA’s bases in the continent (NASA believes that Antarctica’s surface ‘is quite similar to that of one of the moons of Jupiter’. Right, we get it now!).
The geopolitics game begins with New Zealand and Australia recognising the BAT and UK returning the favour by recognising the Australian claim on the continent. But then these two ‘friendly’ neighbours do not recognise the Argentine or Chilean territories; the compliment is paid back vice versa. Seven countries (France, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Brazil, New Zealand and Norway) have made eight territorial claims (two by Norway and one each by others). And the interesting fact is that these claims have been recognised only between these seven countries. Why are all these manipulations critically dangerous for the world? That’s because it won’t be long before a nuclear armed nation with a cannonball leader stakes its claim to a valuable portion of Arctic or Antarctic, and announces it will go to war with any country that disputes the claim or tries to evict them from the area. We’re betting 60 billion barrels of oil that that time will be pretty soon!