george goes to india

Bowing Before Emperor Bush
PRASHANT BHUSHAN,OPINION, Outlook India

Now that the plenipotentiary Caesar of the world, leading the most viciously amoral administration in living memory, has deigned to honour us with a personal visit, instead of these panting paroxysms of excitement, isn't it time to let him be known what we really think of him?

The Foreign Service bureaucracy is buzzing with excitement these days with the prospect of a US Presidential visit. The almighty George Bush himself, plenipotentiary Caesar of the world has deigned to honour us with a personal visit. The US has been wooing us by inviting us (along with Brazil) to sit at the high table at the G-8 summit. We are being lauded as an "emerging superpower" and being tantalized with a seat at the Security Council. The US government is prepared to concede to us the status of an overt nuclear power and is willing to lift sanctions against supply of nuclear material. Of course, in return for our agreeing to put our nuclear facilities under International AERB supervision. We are at the threshold of a new era of a close relationship with the US, some of our foreign policy analysts think. Who knows, they say, we might even be admitted to NATO. Such is the enthusiasm for entering the US fold that we are willing to give up our prospective partnership with Iran and China for forming an Asian energy grid. The replacement of Mani Shankar Aiyar by Murli Deora in the Ministry of Petroleum is also a pointer in the same direction. Much of the English language media too is clearly enthused by this prospect of India becoming at least the Asian right hand of the US.

All this is happening at a time when the US is led by the most viciously amoral administration in living memory. The Bush Administration controlled by a neo-conservative cabal of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and the current World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz, has not only attacked and destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan, on false pretexts and in gross violation of International law, it has violated or withdrawn from a large number of International treaties including the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty, the treaty to prevent the militarisation of space, the UN Convention against torture, among others. These have seriously compromised international law and order, and have undermined the security of the entire world including the US. As Chomsky succinctly puts it, the US policies in this regard have promoted US hegemony in the world at the expense of Global security and indeed the US’s own security

Preparations are currently under way in the US and Israel to attack Iran, this time with tactical nuclear weapons as well. Even the profuse use of depleted Uranium shells in Iraq has released the radioactive yield of hundreds of nuclear weapons, which will result in the slow genocide of millions of people over the years. Michael Chossodovsky, a highly respected Canadian International policy analyst says that he has seen US administration documents which point to this nuclear attack on Iran being launched as early as March this year. Though Iran is in full compliance with the Nuclear Non Proliferation treaty and is only asserting its right to develop nuclear power, the pretext for the attack is that Iran "harbours intentions of developing nuclear weapons". And it is surely a coincidence that Iran has announced its intensions to stop trading its oil in US dollars and shift to the Euro from March this year. This is exactly what Saddam was about to do when the US attacked and took over Iraq.

Few people know that the US economy today survives precariously on the twin steroids of an oil trade in US dollars and the deposit of the Saudi money from oil sales to the US in US banks and bonds, as well as the Chinese trade surplus in US Bonds.
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