Carbon hysteria reaches its logical conclusion

The Optimum Population Trust (OPT), a UK-based “think tank” and registered charity, has launched a new initiative urging wealthy members of the developed world to participate in carbon offsets that fund programs for curbing the population of developing nations. The scheme is being promoted as a more cost-effective way to reduce CO2 emissions than investing in alternative energy sources and offers a way for elitist racists to feel ethical in their quest to exterminate the third world masses.

A BBC News article on the proposal dutifully reports the OPT’s proposal and their justifications for proposing it. They note that the program is designed to fund “contraception” programs in poor nations, a term that helpfully obscures the fact that such programs—including those run by FPA, one of the agencies listed as a supporting organization of this new program—have used bribes to get poor men and women to volunteer for sterilization. The article does, however, allow space for a detractor of the proposal to point out that even if one does accept that limiting carbon emissions is necessary (which it is not), the focus on limiting emissions of people in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is in itself nonsensical: “Carbon emissions from people in much of sub-Saharan Africa are so low that they can barely be counted.”

What this error exposes, however, is not that the OPT has set its sights on the wrong target. In fact, they are simply introducing the idea as a politically expedient precedent which will eventually be expanded to include the developed world as well. Indeed, this is merely the latest such proposal from the group, which has previously said that the world’s population must be cut by as much as half and the UK’s population reduced to as little as 17 million in order to reach “sustainable levels.” The group’s patrons include world renowned environmental campaigners, academics and media figures like Jane Goodall, James Lovelock and Sir David Attenborough.

One patron of the Optimum Population Trust who stands out is Jonathon Porritt, a well-known baronet and a green campaigner who advises the likes of Prince Charles on environmental matters. He has long argued the link between “environmental sustainability” and enforced abortions. He once claimed to be “unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.” He is also on the board of BBC Wildlife magazine, perhaps explaining why BBC News tends to treat every pronouncement from the OPT as if it were a major policy announcement (see this and this and this for starters).

Another prominent OPT patron is Paul Ehrlich, George W. Bush’s chief science advisor and co-author (with his wife, Anne, and Obama’s science advisor, John P. Holdren) of Ecoscience, a 1977 textbook that outlined in painstaking detail the various measures that the governments of the world could take to confront the “problem” of population, from forced abortions and one-child policies to mass sterilization of the populace through the contamination of the water supply. One representative passage reads:

“The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”

With such patrons in its ranks, it is hardly surprising that the group would endose a plan to sterilize the poor in the name of reducing carbon emissions. Of course, the green rhetoric of “sustainability” and “carbon reduction” is only the latest garb for a very old ideology, eugenics, a 19th century junk science which concluded that the human race consisted of genetically “superior” and “inferior” breeds. Unsurprisingly, this long-since discredited hucksterism, invented by an inbred group of British gentlemen scientists concluded that inbred British gentlemen scientists were the master race and everyone else was expendable.

When the Jewish holocaust exposed the eugenics cult for the genocidal ideology that it is, the once-thriving eugenics societies had to go underground. Some did this by merely changing their name: the British Eugenics Society became the Galton Institute in 1989, for example. Others changed their focus. The American Eugenics Society morphed into the Population Council, a group formed by John D. Rockefeller III, and refocused its attention on the problem of overpopulation and sustainability. Under the cloak of “scientific” research into the discredited Matlhusian bunkum of overpopulation. In latter years, this merged quite nicely with the now discredited junk science of “manmade global warming” to provide a perfect front for the eugenicists.

If any further evidence were needed that the green rhetoric of carbon offsets were merely another front for the rabidly racist ideology of eugenics, perhaps the clearest indication can be found on the Galton Institute home page. Here, the group that once openly called itself a eugencis society brags that one of its main functions is to serve as a funding vehicle for Marie Stopes International, an organization whose founder was a rabid racist who advocated sterilization of non-whites and the poor.

And the eugenicist’s agenda rolls on…

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak

“We still believe it’s time for diplomacy, probably tough diplomacy, there is a need for tough sanctions, preferably based on Chapter 7 of the (UN) Charter,” Barack told reporters at a press conference in Vienna on Monday.

Iran faces pressure to stop enriching uranium, with the major powers claiming its civilian nuclear program is cover for a nuclear weapons program.

Along with the major powers, Israel — the only player in the Middle East with a nuclear arsenal — accuses Iran of trying to produce a nuclear weapon and maintains that a “nuclear Iran” is the prime existential threat to its security. Under such a pretext, it has threatened Iran with a military option.

However, unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have never found evidence that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted.

In addition, Iran has called for the total eradication of all weapons of mass destruction.

Former chief of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) General Mohammad Asad Durrani sits down with Press TV and talks about the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan. The following is the transcript of the interview:

Press TV: General Durrani, US intelligence officials say that the CIA has cancelled the Blackwater contract but other reports indicate that there are at least three thousand Blackwater agents in Pakistan. What do make of these conflicting reports?

General Durrani: This may be true that the Blackwater’s contract has been cancelled but then this is also understood that such people are under a different name, whether it is Xe or Dyncorp or in any other form of private contractor-ship that they can be employed. In our case, such people have been around for a number of years now. Lately their number has increased. Some rationalization had been made that these people were required to provide security to more Americans coming because of the package they have worked out for Pakistan. But then on ground, there [are] a number of them, some of them in training facilities trying to suggest that they are there to train the police or the army or the air force.

Of course, I can also add that none of these organizations are very happy that they have been offered. Some of them have even refused training because they believe that they can be trained by them. But, in that form they are there. Others are certainly providing security and there is also a third group, which goes around, especially in the frontier area, with the NGOs and bring(s) the intelligence collection. So, the number I am not aware of but there is a contingent which is present in Pakistan.

Press TV: Analysts say that Blackwater agents are involved in bombings and that they are fomenting insecurity in Pakistan. What is your opinion?

General Durrani: My assessment is that they — either themselves or most probably through others, through the locals — do carry out some of the explosions. You see the idea is that there are other groups that are not acting on their behalf, which are acting locally because of so many reasons. They are not happy with our policy. They are not happy with whatever is happening in Afghanistan. The idea is to carry out such actions, like carrying attacks in the civilian areas to make the others look bad in the eyes of the public. Even those groups who are not targeting the civilians or were not going essentially for Pakistani targets … people should turn against them. And the second idea, which I think more or less they have succeeded, is to force the Pakistani [government] to even under take such operations where I was not initially willing to go.

Press TV: CIA officials say Blackwater has been in Pakistan to help with drone attacks. Is this the only reason why the CIA has hired Blackwater agents?

General Durrani: You see I am not aware of this statement as [of] yet. The headquarters, some of them come here to direct or carry out what we call target identification. I doubt it very much that this would be the job of people whom I consider to have been understandably involved with Blackwater operations. These operations of target identification have to be done un-reclusively. They should not look like Americans; they are people who are trained to match with the background. Intelligence work; and I cannot say that the Blackwater’s people are trained in such manner, learning the language, learning the local customs, so that they can go into those trouble areas.

Press TV: Blackwater is known for killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why has the Pakistani government allowed such a notorious US security firm to operate in the country?

General Durrani: You’re absolutely right. I think this is about the best question that one can pose. People either were naive that they did not believe that these were Blackwaters or these people would not get involved in it. The second theory goes around that they may have come with the consent and with the knowledge of some of the people that we have in the government — among which I do not know, I cannot say very much. If it is not the ambassador of the United States who has cleared them, who has sent them, or people here, these agencies, who have accepted them. But that is one of the perceptions. But essentially it is correct that anyone who comes and we allow those people [to] come without proper security clearance, without proper vetting and investigation, then it is indeed our fault.

Despite repeated denials, the CIA has now confirmed that US security contractor Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, has been operating in Pakistan.

CIA spokesman George Little said that agency Director Leon Panetta has terminated a contract with Xe services that allowed the company’s employees to load bombs on CIA drones at secret airfields in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Although the spokesman denied that Blackwater was currently involved in CIA operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, his comments, contradicted past US assertions that the company does not operate in Pakistan.

Other than the US administration, the Pakistani government and Xe itself had denied that the company was operating in Pakistan.

Little did say, however, that the contractor still provides so-called security or support assistance to the US intelligence agency in the two countries. He did not elaborate further on exactly what that role involves.

While the New York Times published CIA’s claim that Blackwater employees no longer have an operational role in the agency’s covert programs in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Guardian posted a quite different article.

Citing comments from an unnamed former US official, the British daily reported that Blackwater was still operating in Pakistan at a secret CIA airfield used for launching drone attacks.

According to the official, who has direct knowledge of the operation, Xe employees patrol areas surrounding the Shamsi airbase in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

Blackwater gained its notoriety mainly from its activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iraqis have launched several cases against the company in US courts over violent attacks carried out by the company against unarmed people, including an unprovoked 2007 shooting spree in Baghdad that killed 17 civilians.

After the Baghdad incident Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services.

The company CEO Erik Prince also is facing allegations by a former US marine and a past employee that he organized the murder of witnesses that could have testified against his company during the hearings.

He has also been accused by the two witnesses, whose identities have not been disclosed by the courts for safety purposes, of having anti-Muslim sentiments, “encouraging and rewarding the destruction of Iraqi life”, and arms smuggling.

CIA confirmation of Xe involvement in Pakistan comes a day after the New York Times reported that links between Blackwater and the CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan have been closer than has yet been disclosed.

A US Congressional committee is apparently investigating links between Blackwater and American intelligence services.

The paper said that Blackwater staff had participated in clandestine CIA raids.

Blackwater is a sensitive subject in Pakistan where its name is associated with drone strikes, bombings and violent activities that have left hundreds of civilians dead.

Before the US avowal, some Pakistani TV stations had already aired images of what seemed to be “Blackwater houses” in Islamabad. Several papers had also published reports accusing certain US officials and journalists of being Xe operatives.

Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, has even offered to resign if it is proven that Blackwater is present in Pakistan.

However, it remains to be seen whether he will keep that promise now that the CIA has confirmed that Blackwater is and was working in Pakistan.

Top US officials say there is a “real discussion” going on right now about launching drone attacks against the Balochistan capital city of Quetta. The comments are the latest in a series of threats against the city, one of Pakistan’s largest.

Though the Pakistani government has looked the other way and even provided behind the scenes support for the various US drone attacks against Pakistan’s tribal areas, officials say a strike on Quetta would be a deal-breaker.

“We are not a banana republic,” one official declared, adding that a US attack on Quetta “might be the end of the road.” Pakistan’s military has likewise repeatedly warned against attacks on the city.

The US threats are ostensibly designed to counter the Quetta Shura, a group of Afghan exiles supposedly running much of the insurgency from the city. Pakistan has repeatedly denied that the Shura even exists, though on Friday Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar insisted that security forces had degraded them to the point they no longer pose a real threat.

December 8, 2009: For the second time this year, India has grounded its Su-30 fighters because one of the aircraft crashed. This time, the grounding of the 98 Su-30s in service is expected to last only a few days. Earlier this year, in May, its Su-30 fighters were grounded for a month after one of them appeared to develop engine problems and crashed. One of the pilots survived, but the parachute of the other failed to open. Four days before the Indian Su-30 went down, a Russian Su-35 also crashed because of engine problems.

The Su-35 is an advanced version of the Su-30, and uses a similar engine. Earlier this year, Russia grounded all its MiG-29 fighters to check for structural problems, after one of them came apart in flight. All this is particularly upsetting to Indians, who had been assured by the Russians that the Su-30 was a modern (built to Western standards of reliability) aircraft. Such assurances were necessary because of earlier Indian experience with the MiG-21, and Russian aircraft in general. So far this year, India has lost twelve military aircraft, most of them of Russian design.

MiG-21s to accidents between 1991 and 2003. When consulted, Russia pointed out that India had insisted on manufacturing many of the spare parts needed to keep MiG-21s operational, and many of these parts were not manufactured to Russian specifications. While Russia does not have a reputation for making the highest quality equipment, their standards are often higher than Indias. It’s no secret that much of the military equipment made in India is pretty shabby by world standards.

Most of the 110 pilots lost in these MiG-21 accidents were new pilots, which pointed out another problem. India has long put off buying jet trainers. New pilots go straight from propeller driven trainer aircraft, to high performance jets like the MiG-21. This is made worse by the fact that the MiG-21 has always been known as a tricky aircraft to fly. That, in addition to it being an aircraft dependent on one, low quality, engine, makes it more understandable why so many MiGs were lost.

The MiG-21 problems were overcome by 2006, a year in which no MiG-21s were lost. One of the main causes of many crashes was finally traced to bad fuel pumps. India improved maintenance, spare parts quality and pilot training to the point that the aircraft was no longer considered the most dangerous fighter to fly.

But India was not the only one, besides the Russians, who had problems with Russian made warplanes. During the Cold War, the U.S. had several dozen Russian aircraft they used for training their fighter pilots. Despite energetic efforts to keep these aircraft flying, their accident rate was 100 per 100,000 flying hours. That’s very high by U.S. standards. The F-22 has an accident rate is about 6 per 100,000 hours, mainly because it’s new. F-15s and F-16s have an accident rate of 3-4 per 100,000 flight hours. India, using mostly Russian aircraft, has an accident rate of 6-7 per 100,000 hours flown (compared to 4-5 for all NATO air forces.) The Indian rate had been over ten for many years, and it is still that high, and often higher, with other nations (including Russia and China), that use Russian aircraft designs.

New aircraft always have higher accident rates, which is how many hidden (from the design engineers and test pilots) flaws and technical problems are discovered. The F-22 is expected to eventually have an accident rate of 2-3 per 100,000 flight hours. This is part of a trend.

Combat aircraft have, for decades, been getting more reliable, even as they became more complex. For example, in the early 1950s, the F-89 fighter had 383 accidents per 100,000 flying hours. A decade later, the rate was in the 20s for a new generation of aircraft. At the time, the F-4, which served into the 1990s, had a rate of under 5 per 100,000 hours. Combat aircraft have gotten more reliable and easier to maintain, despite growing complexity, for the same reason automobiles have. Better engineering, and more sensors built into equipment, makes it easier for the user and maintenance personnel to detect potential problems. Aircraft used the computerized maintenance systems, currently common on new aircraft, long before automobiles got them. Unless you have a much older car that still runs, or a real good memory, you don’t notice the enormous increase in automobile reliability. But older pilots remember, because such changes are a matter of life and death if you make your living driving an aircraft. And commanders know that safer aircraft give them more aircraft to use in combat, and more aircraft that can survive combat damage and keep fighting.

Unmanned aircraft have a much higher rate, which is largely the result of not having a pilot on board. The RQ-1 Predator has an accident rate of about 30 per 100,000 hours. Older model UAVs had much higher rates (up to 363 for the RQ-2A). Strat Page.Su-30s Got A Little MiG In Them

Pakistani security forces have arrested another three US citizens working at the American Consulate for filming sensitive installations in the eastern city of Lahore.

Police arrested three American nationals including a woman in the Sherpao bridge area of Lahore as they were filming sensitive government buildings, a Press TV correspondent reported.

According to Pakistani police all three were employees of the US embassy.

The US citizens were taken to a police station and later released after a three-hour inquiry.

Police have impounded their vehicle for legal action as it was bearing false license plates.

The woman, identified as Morgan, works for the press department at the American Consulate in Lahore. She was arrested while actually taking pictures of a check-post near the Sherpao Bridge.

The Pakistani daily The Nation reported that after a thorough search of the woman, the security personnel recovered 11 pictures in her possession, which included photos of different police check-posts in the area.

The Pakistani foreign affairs ministry was not available for comment when contacted by Press TV.

The move came just days after authorities arrested five US nationals from the eastern city of Sargodha, believed to have gone missing in Washington D.C. last month.

The US nationals, with alleged links to al-Qaeda, were arrested on suspicion of plotting a terror attack.

LAHORE: In a stunning revelation, US private security service agency, Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, has claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had asked the agency to kill Pakistani nuclear scientist, A Q Khan.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Prince said the CIA had asked the Blackwater to eliminate Khan, however, authorities in Washington “chose not to pull the trigger.”

“Dr Khan’s inclusion in the target list would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged,” Prince said.

Prince has also admitted to Blackwater’s participation in some of the CIA’s most sensitive operations, including raids on suspected militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Prince said Blackwater’s, which now known as Xe Worldwide Services, role changed remarkably after its officials started providing security cover to CIA operatives in the field.

Raids on suspected insurgents in Iraq, known as “snatch and grab” operations, were mostly carried out during nights between 2004 and 2006.

NY Times

India’s governing Congress Party faced an angry backlash on Friday against the possibility of dividing one of the country’s largest states, Andhra Pradesh, with opponents staging protests in southern India even as advocates for creating other new states began agitating elsewhere in the country.

The police tried to break up a tussle between lawyers in support of a Telangana state, left, and those against it Friday outside the court in Hyderabad, India.The political crisis has dominated the news in India this week, as Congress Party leaders in New Delhi agreed late Wednesday night to start the process of creating a new state out of the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh. National leaders made the decision in response to a 10-day “fast unto death” by an advocate for Telangana statehood that had evolved into a national melodrama.

But even as Telangana supporters were rejoicing, the crisis quickly shifted in the opposite direction, as opponents of the proposed partition protested in other regions of Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, 130 members of the 294-member State Assembly tendered their resignations. In much of the southern and coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh, daily life came to a standstill on Friday as general strikes were called to protest dividing the state.

“All the leaders and others are sitting in the town’s main square to oppose the division of the state,” said a journalist in the Anantapur district of the southern part of the state.  The situation presented the Congress Party with a dilemma of its own making. The party’s high command in New Delhi had agreed to start the process of creating the new state as a concession to end the hunger strike by K.Chandrasekhar Rao, a regional political figure. Mr. Rao’s fast had led to student demonstrations in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, and a two-day general strike that almost completely shut the city down.

But the late-night concession by leaders in New Delhi apparently caught Congress Party lawmakers in Andhra Pradesh unawares. The state is divided into three distinct regions, and many lawmakers from the two regions outside Telangana found themselves pinned between a decision made in New Delhi and angry constituents at home.
“I am sandwiched between my supporters and my high command,” said J. C. Diwakar Reddy, a six-term Congress Party assemblyman from the Anantapur district. “In that situation, I just submitted my resignation. My main grievance is that we were not consulted before they made this decision.”

Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy, speaker of the State Assembly, confirmed that 130 members had resigned, including 76 from the Congress Party, though none of the resignations had been accepted. “I am consulting constitutional experts on the issue,” the speaker said. “I will also call them one by one. There is no time limit for me to accept these resignations.”

In New Delhi, Congress leaders seemed to backpedal slightly. The Indian news media quoted unidentified officials as saying that a “broad consensus” would be necessary for the statehood movement to proceed.  Meanwhile, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a delegation of Congress Party lawmakers from Andhra Pradesh on Friday that “nothing would be done in haste,” according to one person who attended the meeting.  In Andhra Pradesh, Konijeti Rosaiah, the state’s chief minister and a member of the Congress Party, tried to play down the situation by telling local journalists that no oral or written commitment had been made. He also beseeched all political parties to demand that their supporters abjure from any violence on the streets.
“We have to be peaceful,” Mr. Rosaiah said during an appearance before the State Assembly. “Political parties should take responsibility that protests are peaceful.”   The architecture of India’s political system has been evolving since the country became independent in 1947. Initially, leaders used linguistic divisions to carve out large states, but as the country has continued to grow, new states have been gradually added in response to different claims. Three new states were added in 2000, bringing the total to 28 states and 7 territories controlled by the national government. Even now, some Indian states — notably Uttar Pradesh, with more than 160 million people — are larger than most countries.

Andhra Pradesh itself has more than 77 million people and stretches over a huge swath of land along the country’s southeastern coast. It was born from a political shotgun marriage in 1956, as leaders in New Delhi merged the coastal regions with the interior region of Telangana, which also included the city of Hyderabad. The arrangement was conditional to ease the fears of discrimination or exploitation by people from the Telangana region, who were outnumbered in the new state.

But in the decades that followed, Telangana advocates say the promises of equitable treatment were never fulfilled. Riots broke out over the issue in 1969, and a statehood movement simmered for decades until it finally exploded this week during Mr. Rao’s hunger strike.  Indian news media reported that advocates for statehood in other regions also had started agitating. The reports included accounts of some people beginning new hunger strikes.
Creating a state can be a lengthy undertaking here. In Andhra Pradesh the process is supposed to start with a vote on a resolution for statehood by the State Assembly, though the resignations make this uncertain.

Facebook has this morning taken down one of the most popular ‘fan-pages’ on its site without offering as much as an explanation to nearly 20,000 of its members.

The page titled ‘SYED ZAID ZAMAN HAMID: OFFICIAL’ has been taken offline for what Facebook calls ‘violation of terms and conditions’, without providing details as to exactly what term or condition was violated.
Zaid Hamid is Pakistan’s most highly rated and popular Security and Defence analyst, with regular tv appearances on all major Pakistani channels as well as Doha based Al-Jazeera TV and occasionally on Indian media. He has featured in many popular tv shows, covering a wide rage of topics such as Islamic history, philosophy, and regional security and geo-politics. Zaid has also featured alongside Ali Azmat, a veteran of the Pakistani popular music scene, in a show titled ‘Iqbal ka Pakistan’ on the youth-oriented ‘AAG’ tv channel; one of the most watched tv programmes with the highest ratings for the tv network.

Zaid Hamid is one of Pakistan’s most popular figures and has in a very short time become the voice of the youth of Pakistan who feel frustrated at the incompetence of the US installed democratic government. In his tv programmes, Zaid has constantly called for a complete review of Pakistan’s relations with the United States, due to the latter’s inability to purge the influx of weapons and funds from Afghanistan directed to terrorists in Pakistan.

Zaid’s facebook page, launched just over a month ago, had reached almost 20,000 members before it was taken offline by facebook, and was used mainly for updates on upcoming television and public appearances, and sharing photographs and videos of Zaid’s TV appearances.

Facebook have yet to provide an actual explanation as opposed to a generic automated message. Untill the time that facebook provides the exact reason for taking down Mr.Hamid’s page, it will be considered as yet another attempt to silence the critics of the US-backed government of Pakistan and will only add to the disenchangtment of Pakistan’s youth with the current establishment.

Join the protest group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=197788883468&ref=nf