Prof. Michel Chossoduvsky in the case studies of several countries in his book "Globalization of Poverty" has attributed conditions in these countries, to the contemporary 'Project for the New American Century' (Empire), with inevitable fratricide, economic genocide and political balkanization of nations. True that the oil and gas rich nations and Israel enjoy a higher precedence as targets. This in the US assessment justifies pre-emptive war. However, in a PNAC based on the concept of an unending war on terror and unending wars, is universal in its application though the time-lines of the phases are varying. As Bush says, "who can tell where one begins, and the other ends".

Pursuit of the military strategic doctrine of Imperial Globalization, in contemporary times (new Imperial Grand Strategy) is of similar genre as the barbaric terror unleashed on nations and continents colonised and plundered, on the indigenous people in South America, the Red Indians, Africans, Indians, and Asians in the last four hundred years. The methodologies, ideological underpinnings, deception, deceit are fundamentally the same. Only the daisy-cutters are aimed from high above, the targets are the same. (The revised plans of the US Space Command, go "beyond control" of Space for military purposes to "ownership of space" which is to be 'permanent' according to the NS, 17 September 2002 Document. The Pentagon Planning document, partially leaked, has no historical parallel, to attack any target where from space.)

As the high visibility wars are being progressed, a whole host of agendas with their action plans are being simultaneously operationalized. Nations are divided into ethnic mind-sets; hate and identity politics are fuelled, leaderships and governments are subverted, and growth of a comprador elite is encouraged. The institutions of the "Republic" are broken up by the very same people, now rented out, whose job it is to uphold them, the diplomatic, military, police and intelligence agencies of the nation are staffed through a system of 'certification' or pre-clearance, rendered subservient to the imperial interest. Simultaneously, local terrorist outfits and anti-state (people) actors are operationalised through receipts from thriving businesses in narcotics, gun-running, dirty-money transfers and Mafiosi selling 'pseudo-religious rituals and symbolisms of hate. This is the internationalisation of the terrorist armoury, while Corporate Globalisation simultaneously drives the politics and economics of unprecedented accumulation of surpluses and global finance defrauds nations, without paying taxes. The Imperial State says that it is there to save the victim states by its pretense at 'drug-enforcement', for example, while actually subverting and recruiting military and police officials, extending its 'extra-territoriality' of laws and enforcement tools, to also subdue the people. A majority of narco-outfits receive external material, intelligence and operational support. Afghanistan is but one example of the consequences of narco-terrorism giving birth to the Taliban, Al Qaeda other actors for a predetermined purpose, that is for the control of whole geographic regions. The US of course now says Al Qaeda and associates are spread over more than 60 countries, all on the US hit-list. (One needs to recall 'Operation Phoenix in Vietnam as one more in the series of examples). Al Qaeda's patron saint is none other than the US.

Prof. Chossoduvsky may kindly permit me the indulgence of summarizing from his Yugoslavia case study. The sequence is relevant to so many of our nations and to anti-imperialist movements. We ought to have a historical memory but 'greed' apparently causes total amnesia in those who govern us. Only months ago Prime Minister Mohammed Mahatir stated "the rich nations fuelled terrorism and poverty in the third world and certainty did everything to turn a country against itself". Speaking to the UN General Assembly on the 24th September, 2003 he focussed on 'Imperialist Europe'.

The Yugoslavia case study is entirely relevant to South Asia as shown below:

• IMF-WB-US Department of Treasury imposed runaway import liberalization devastated the Yugoslavia industry.
• The Central Government was directed to suspend payments due to the federated republics and regions, which fuelled the process of balkanization and secession, resulted in the de-facto secession by Croatia and Slovenia in June 1991, egged on by NATO.
• Massive privatisation of all socially owned or state sector enterprises and sale to Western corporated was insisted on at nominal book value, as part of the restructuring program.
• Supporting legislation drawn by Western financial consultants and lawyers to safeguard the "rights of foreign creditors" and unrestricted entry permitted to foreigners not only in industry, but in banking, insurance and service sectors.
• The entire nationalized banking sector was dismantled.
• Practically one-half of the workplace or more was laid off due to privatization.
• Ethnic strife and ethnic cleansing with the strategic objective of the break-up of Yugoslavia by funding and supporting of violent secessionist groups by Western Intelligence agencies and ISI and private military companies (PMCs) in US and UK (details of the world-wide operations of the PMCs are in www.icij.org), hiring mercenaries of Arab/Afghan fighters trained in the killing fields of Afghanistan, the Kosovo Liberation army and its Al-Qaeda arm, financed through drug trafficking, white slave traffic and supplied with unlimited arms, first initiated in Croatia.
• The November 1995 Dayton Accord, initiated by the US and EU installed a full-fledge colonial administration (a la DFID in the State of Andhra Pradesh and being progressed in Kerela by the ADB (Politics of Reform: the ADB in Kerela by K Ravi Raman of Centre of Development Studies, Thiruvanathpuram), in Bosnia, with expatriates. Article VII of the Dayton Accord stipulated that the first Governor of the Bosnian Central Bank will be appointed by the IMF and will not be a citizen of Bosnia or Herzegovina. (In South Asian countries, the Governor has to be 'certified' by the IMF).
• The entire inflated so called peace keeping expenses were paid for by the new autonomous republics and the foreign debt was divided proportionately between them. Oil exploration in Bosnia was commended thereafter by the American Oil Company, AMOCO, in much the same patterns as in Iraq and West African countries.

The Iraq invasion is being referred to as a 'Corporate oil invasion' and it is so. The PMCs are fanning out in the region. The Corporate media, including the BBC, are feeding the US public and listeners, with deceptions and disinformation as partners of the Imperialist Enterprise. The proliferation of Terrorist organization has been a direct consequence of the Globalization project, its other half, deliberately diversionary.

The growing economic empire, as James Petras in his book "Globalisation Unmasked' emphasizes, was matched even earlier to Iraq II by the growing willingness to use force in Central Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, to increase the US military budget and to appoint hard-line presidential intelligence and security advisers, to direct covert and overt military interventions. Washington is prepared "to defend its newly re-gained economic ascendancy, by 'free trade', if possible, by military force, if necessary".

The new global regime of the WTO sets enforceable rules for nation states, the important exception is Art. XXI of the GATT which provides a freedom for military spending for any reason related to national security... to maintain order. The International financial institutions have also given a carte-blanche to defense budgets and do not exercise any scrutiny, in comparison with warfare budgets, and push for privatisation of industries and services. The interest of 'Defense-military' corporation are over-riding and have a clear precedence over those of the society. Military spending is the basis of much of the 'New Economy'.

Project for the New American Century and Fascism

The key elements of the PNAC project in South Asia are bought out elites and compromised leaders, collaborating in the subversion of the most vital institutions of the Republics including the criminal justice system. The judiciary, the military, civil servants, the intelligence agencies are all beholden and increasingly obligated to the US Administration. This vast region south of the Hindu-kush and the Himalayas, stretching into the lap of the Indian Ocean is literally a stone's throw away from our Arab, Central Asian and South East Asian brothers. With the rich oil and gas finds in Central Asia we are thanks to the strategic concerns of the US Project and the Oil Corporates (major oil arteries are only a few hours sailing distance and the trans-Afghanistan energy pipeline right there) in the strategic reckoning of the US vide the 17 September 2002 National Security Document. China is an additional factor in the US calculus.

Perhaps it needs to be reiterated that the "war on terror" is an Imperial War to secure US global and strategic domination and economic interest. Force is integral to the process of Globalization or the Empire, to ensure uninhibited access to markets, energy supplies and strategic resources. Even in the earlier era colonial armies and police were available to the imperial states both for security and expansion in the non-European world and for inter-state competition and all out war in Europe. The hidden hand of the market needs the "hidden" fist for back-up. That is what Kossovo was about. That is what is halted, thanks to Iraqi and Palestine resistance. Tony Blair is right, "the (imperial) war against terrorist is a wider war for a new world order".

The South Asian market is of 1500 million people, never mind the 800 million desperately poor, and the 400 million eking out a miserable living, deprived of their livelihoods thanks to the SAP/SALS of the IMF, free trade, TRIPS, MAI regimes of the WTO, the US and the TNCs. Nevertheless the Corporates can offer their goods to an estimated 300 million consumers. Not only the goods but the siphoning-off of surpluses, via the unrestricted use of private banking, hawala channels and OCBs. The new champions of religion are beating their drums in crescendo, to create diversions from this uninterrupted loot. Behind there are the criminal political mafias, in and out of Government's, its hidden face, carrying on the "Great Business" of drugs, arms, dirty money laundering, child and women trafficking; above all impoverishing people, depriving them of their livelihoods, aiding privatization or stealing publicly created wealth, looting public money in banks and public FIs, by non-payment of huge loans, manipulating the stock markets, defrauding pension and provident funds, all in the name of liberalization. Some say this is capitalism, essentially it is barbarism. The substantive issue is the militarization of globalization, both in the world scale and the regional context. The big increases in public spending on the military, para-military and police forces is one dimension. The huge imports of arms from the "North" another. The push of the Arms industry in the US, its all pervasive influence, the push of the star wars program (the key to US military effectiveness permitting instant engagement anywhere in the world), the R&D devoted to new nuclear weapons system, protecting property, protecting people, the RNEPs or the deep penetration nuclear devices, the new micro-nukes, the galloping pursuits of chemical and biological weapons of the race-specific genes variety for example, are to induce fear and terrorize the non-Western world. The US has a million troops located in five continents, Carrier Battle Groups deployed in all oceans, and military bases of different types, specially in and around energy and mineral resource regions. All this shapes the minds of the power elite to "Have will use" thinking.

In South Asia we have a dangerous mixture of military power, and the strenuously pursued project of the militarizations society, essentially the militarization of the majority communities. This is proceeding apace in several insidious ways, covert and overt, in India, in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and has the potential to tear them apart into shreds as an inevitable consequence of Globalization 'shorn of its rhetoric is Corporate Fascism. The Globalization Project, for example needs the 'Hindu' militias and the "Internal Enemy" as an absolute must. Mussolini was candid to define "Fascism as Corporatism; when State power merges with Corporate power". Because we are face to face with Fascism I request your indulgence to elaborate a little. "It is impossible to conceive the Nazi (fascist) movement without war: German martial glory was its Father, its first musketeer is its Leader; the war's hardly spirit its soul" (Herst Von Mesch's book, Kreig als Saat (War as Seed), published in Breslam 1943). There is enough evidence in the public domain that this is well underway. An indigenous version, inspired by the original fascists, linked with global fascism. It is not just cheaper and cheaper labour, informalisation and contract labour or steadily depressing wages imposed by Corporate fascism, in fact slave labour in sweat shops, depriving the people of health care, minimum nutrition, hospitals education for their children, water via privatization, taking away of hard won rights of collective bargaining won over a century of sacrifices and struggle. Will there be a revolt of the slaves? How is it to be waged? Perhaps the seeds of destruction lies within. Their much vaulted strength has vulnerabilities that the organized resistance in little Cuba, Palestine and Iraq appear to have exposed.

Briefly in South Asia "Terrorism" has been used as a matter of state policy in Particular after the Vietnam war; when the costs in terms of direct deployment of troops in a declared war/ counter insurgency were found to be financially and in terms if human lives, no longer acceptable to domestic public opinion (therefore the resort to PMCs and para-military infiltration as in Northern Ireland). Countries unwilling to abandon the path of independent political and economic development, are primary targets of terrorism, used as an alternative means of warfare; the ground was laid by more than one intelligence agency; executed through various mercenary leaders and groups, financed in many cases by the drug trade. The training of mercenary terrorists and deployment was and is criminal, in violation of International Law and Charter of the UN. Civilians, state forces, heads of State, development projects, schools, hospitals, are all target... (Niloufer Bhagwat in "Islam the New Enemy of Imperialism" ). Economic Terrorism, imposed by the PNAC invariably leads to 'Economic Balkanization' and complements the fragmentation of hitherto peaceful societies and nations.

A steeply rising curve of violence in society, coincident to the fuelling of hate and identity politics appears to be the direct consequence of the initiation of Globalization (privatization and liberalization) process in South Asia, tearing the age long cohesion of societies apart.

Sri Lanka

SriLankan by the seventies had achieved remarkable success in nutritional levels, thanks to a rupee a kilo rice program, literacy levels, schools mid-day meal program and a reasonable employment satisfaction. Then in 1980, the then President Jayawardane desired to make Sri Lanka another Singapore, by opening the economy. But first the Ramil minority was to make way for majority jobs, public services and the school system. Privatization, foreign takeovers, FDI at any cost became the order of the day. Steady social and economic progress was abandoned in the pursuit of capitalist development. Ethnic strife sprouted with the foreign sponsored and financed LTTE, with overseas headquarters in London and Belgium, to initiate a fratricidal war, another minority group supported by the Saudis fronting for their master's in the South-East with no end in sight. Drugs and gun-running operations in collusion with the Burmese-Indian-Thai and later the Pakistani Mafiosi became the LTTE's mainstay. In Israeli training camps, separated by just a kilometre or two were LTTS, the SriLankans and a host of Asian detachments known to be pro-Arab! That was real International cooperation. Sri Lanka was truly stopped in its tracks. Norwegian, fronting for the US, broker peace, notwithstanding.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh as a consequence of Imperial vivisection of South Asia into two States of India and Pakistan was for many years at first a politico-economic colony of West Pakistan, then became Independent in 1971, and thereafter within four years a military junta took over in a CIA supported assassination of the President, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in an army coup. Military rule continued for a long while supported by the Saudis who bank rolled the clergy and others, and in fact continue to do so as directed. The poor are desperately poor, share a language and culture with Indian Bengal. However the minorities and the poor are constantly pushed out to Tripura, Assam and West Bengal, to keep the pot boiling. BD intelligence even supports insurgency in Tripura and North-East India. Though there have been recent finds of oil and gas off-shore and on-shore, there is enough explosive mixture in Indo-Bangla relations to make external forces happy, while the desperately poor fight over the crumbs thrown by such multi-nationals as Reebok and Disney garments at between five cents to 15 cents a day in competition with the Mexican, the Indonesian and the Chinese poor.

Myanmar

The military junta in power is willing to deal with all in all manner of things behind the curtains. Myanmar is well located for this kind of trade with South East Asian countries. The UNOCAL Company as documented by the National Lawyers Guild (US) and other organizations in the US, in a memorandum to the Attorney General of California against the activities of this Company in the US and other Companies has complained that this US Company used slave labour supplied by the military government in areas of Myanmar.

The Sub-continent

For narcotics and gun-running Myanmar is part of South Asia. Moreh is North-East India, located near the border is the centre of the trade. Many figures in the Government of India are involved and this is an open secret. The area is a second home to a few of them, ostensibly because they love the Nagas, the Manuouris, the Arakanese, the Kukis, Zomis and others! Free trade is the soul of democracy, keeping the Indian Army and the para-military tied up in knots. One of the reason an Indian Navy chief was removed was that he acceded to General Roy Chowdhry, the Army Chief's request for intercepting arms and narco shipments from Thai offshore, via the Andaman islands to the North-East.. This had hurt the Minister of Defense and his friends, the Arakanese 'Foreign Minister'. The North-East is one of the largest criminal mafia operations on the sub-continent, and there terrorist outfits are well connected to other terrorist groups in India, including Nepal, Pakistan, LTTE, Afghanistan, Kashmir and our Kahlistan Liberation Army (KLA). Narcotics, gun-running, and dirty money operations are interlocking and have a common 'God father' in the foreign banking system and India's own private sector, 'Hawala' system, an informal but highly efficient money transfer operation. All the terrorist groups are closely connected to right wing religion groups who claim monopoly on 'nationalism' and give certificates to other citizens on their patriotic commitment. A large number of places of worship are used as hubs for business operations. They are inter-connected by extensive networks with foreign agencies and organizations, across the South Asian and beyond globally.

The LTTE has bases in London and in Benelux cities, the Sikh Separatists in the US (earlier in Canada), the 'freedom fighters in Kashmir in London and New York, the Naga and Mozo fronts meet the Government's negotiators in Amsterdam and Switzerland. Pakistan based terrorist brigades have been sponsored by the CIA and Saudi Intelligence. The Taliban until two months prior to 9/11 was paid for by the US. The 'other Commanders' are also paid in bags by the US. Why has the question not risen to the fore that the host nations for all terrorist operating in South Asia are cities and towns in Western countries while their Government's loudly proclaim pre-emptive action against those who 'harbor terrorist'. The Pakistani establishment was subverted as early as the 1950s when military rule and membership of the CENTRO carried huge rewards and continue to do so. They are Bush's words 'allies', while the Indian rulers have been vying to replace them. A progressive regime which took over in Afghanistan in 1978, brought in land reforms, schooling for girls and women, no purdah, reducing the power of the clerics and the war (drug) lords. The rest is history. As Ahmed Rashid's book graphically describes it became the training cum breeding ground for the erstwhile 'Mujahiddin' now 'terrorist to the US'. We also now have guest freedom fighters who murder, rape, and loot women, children, fellow Muslims in the Kashmir Valley while turning the minorities into refugees; the stage and central government's have done little to help the people with development and job opportunities as befits a constitutional, secular democracy on which the Kashimiri people's accession to India was predicated. With a fundamentalist 'Hindu' (actually non-Hindu) central government in power, fully backed by the US Administration things are actually going the classical fascist way, and the institutions of the State, including the Constitution stand subverted, with the Rule of Law already a casualty.

I would not like to make any elaborate comments on Pakistan, except that one people were divided into three countries in a reordering of South Asia in 1947, as a matter of deliberate policy by British imperialist, who long to return in the whole South Asia. They have in one sense. Seceded elites, have always been a part of the imperialist project, through India is a complicated country with its diversity yet the people share a common bond and a common destiny.

In India, the largest country in South Asia the subject of the Internal Enemy needs attention as it is at the core of the militarization of Globalization in South Asia. The fascist party, BJP, also known as Sangh Parivar (family) has its organizational cultural and inspirational roots in Mussolini's Black shirts (Marzai) and Hitler's Nazi Party (swastika, the Fuerher, the Aryan race, the final solution for the minorities, the internal enemy). Allied with it are a large number of Corporates, out own indigenous versions of the Krupps, IG Farbens, Siemens, Funks and their international partners in the US and UK, the Dupont's, the Fords, the ICI and so on. We have almost all the Big Business in a joint operation with politicians and bureaucrats, to loot from the public sector banks, public financial institutions, in the privatization of hugely profit making public sector banks enterprises, on the same pattern as in Latin America, Mexico, Russia, EE. Like there, here too it customs duty, sales tax as long as you pass on and share the loot. Money laundering, official tax amnesty schemes, more and more exemption for those who make super profits are the order of the day. Privatization is briberization says Stiglitz and privatization is the biggest fraud since independence, bigger than the exorbitant arms imports with the heftiest commissions. This is the stuff of which the militarization of South Asian societies are made.

It is the hate and identity politics of certain political formation, flush with unlimited funds, that is militarizing societies at the grass roots. The biggest achievement, says the BJP Government and the Party is its fight against 'terrorism'. Not a day passes when tend of citizens, with names that denote a denomination are arrested and their homes and localities raided, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2002, POTA, the indigenous equivalent of the Patriot act, since violence, both state sponsored and its counter, has increased. All this suits Corporate Globalization to the 'tee'. It is the best diversion that could be conceived and operationalised. There is only one mother of all issues, a temple for deity who already has millions of temples built for him, while his billion devotees don't have a roof over their heads! The fascist live by the 'Big lie' and the media faithfully repeats these lies in every edition. Aggressive religious identity and agenda are pursued by both sides.

In policy terms the logic of the internal energy was publicly announced, a few months ago that ... A core of true democracies such as US, Israel, and India can effectively fight terrorism because they are themselves prime targets and therefore, must form an alliance. According to India's National Security Adviser, there is no need to define terrorism or discuss its causes... it is apparently enough to decide that all terrorist come from a particular course. The Deputy-Prime Minister in another statement in Los Angeles in June this year said, "post 9/11 and December 13th (2001), the abortive 'terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament building, both attacks have a common source, and that the 'common source' has described the US, Israel and India as its three main enemies. Both the National Security Adviser and the Deputy Prime Minister hold the view that there is not much time to waste on discussing the possible causes... 'In other words political solution are a waste of time'. Both these policy statements came as these persona were in the US, one speaking at the American Jewish Society in Washington. Both were authorized statements and the Indian ambassador in the US was duly present. Both promised their hosts that 17,000 Indian troops would be sent to Iraq, soon!

Even in the Parliamentary election meeting in 1999, the Prime-Minister of India, casting aside the Constitution, declared that 'his party did not need the votes of a particular community'. This is not a pre-fascist stage as some progressives like to describe. It is fascism. Indian style, slow and steady, following a carefully calibrated program, keeping the shell of democracy intact, subverting the Constitution and the institutions of the Republic every hour, with the initiative firmly in their hands. The 'Opposition' is kept off-balance.

The Kashmir valley is sought to be handed over to the United States (Kashmir Study Group Report, December 1998, published from New York and blessed by the PM, Atal Bahari Vajpayee). The report recommends the trifurcation of the state communal basis. US technicians are already there ostensibly to supervise ground sensors purchased from US firms, for border surveillance. Israeli advisers are also in place in New Delhi and Kashmir on how to tackle insurgency! Police stations manned by the British police are also a feature alledgedly to investigate crimes committed in Britain by Kashmiris Separately the US pursues an agenda to build/share military bases in India. The FBI, CIA and the DEA operate in Delhi and other cities, keeping safe the Government from its own people.

There are reports, not without foundation, that British agencies, used well trained UK immigrants, to help the killer squads, in Ahmedabad the capital of Gujarat in March 2002, during the state sponsored program. This yet another instance of the evolving relationship between our fascists and the US-UK empire.

The most vicious and diabolical program underway in India is militarization of the minds of the people, using the media to brainwash the people, and use of old festivals of the land to distort the idea behind each one of them, to prepare them for an indigenous 'final solution', having identified the 'internal enemy'. Counterparts of the 'Balilla' institutions of fascist Italy have been nurtured from the 1940s and now have the direct support of the State's administrative and financial resources. The idea as you would be familiar was first conceived by Mussolini for the military regeneration of Italy. We are witnessing the military re-generation of the 'hinduyat' a fascist concept, the ideology of those who line-up with RSS/VJP. Their objective has for long been the military re-organization of Hindu society, all in favor of organized violence, in the form of militarisation. Globalization or Corporate Fascism needs them and supports them financially. Mussolini, and Hiltler used to say "our desire for peace and collaboration with Europe is based on millions of steel bayonets".

Mussolini is the original inspiration for the Indian Fascist party. In his doctrine of fascism he says, "I absolutely disbelieve in perpetual peace which is detrimental and negative to the fundamental virtues of man... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people... Fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiated the doctrine of Fascism. (the RSS) our native fascists says further, "As a consequence there will no longer be any distinction between the citizen and the soldier, between the civilians and the military man in uniform: (Marzia Casolari: Hindutya's tie up in the 1930s - archival evidence).

Nepal

Nepal has formally never been under foreign rule, though de-facto it was a British protectorate. The Nepalese are very poor, struggling between a feudal oligarchy, monarchial and democratic dispensations. They have been in the past British Empire's soldiery and now also serve in the Indian army on account of historical and cultural ties. The rulers have not delivered so there is a rising tide of peasants struggles, though it is difficult to predict its orientation. The cadres of this movement are said to control most of the country side. Their recent successes has been the pretext for stationing US advisers and military assistance to Nepal as also the signing of a US-Nepal anti-terrorism pact. China is reportedly not happy. How the future will unfold is anyone's guess. Separately the US has publicly states that the Left Front Government in West Bengal is anti-democratic, even though it has been democratically elected in centrally supervised elections for the last nearly three decades. Is this a portent of a "Regime Change" solution for India, should elections results, not be agreeable to the PNAC.

Afghanistan

Much has been documented on Afghanistan and its hapless people that it is not perhaps necessary to summarize here the main course of events and the role of Afghan persona and organization. Ahmad Rashid has faithfully recorded what we need to remember. The Narco trade flourishes in a joint venture. NATO has come right to our doorstep, uninvited in its new imperial role, discussed and decided in its councils, ten years ago. That is the central reality with which South Asia must live. NATO in the Balkans has already dismembered countries and effected 'regime changes'. It will adjudicate on 'failed states' and act upon to establish benign empires administered through non-residents of the likes of Karzai and Chalabi, where and when it decides.

Alternatives

No one here is ready to concede a pre-determination of the inevitability of the victory of the New Imperialist project. Imperialism has its own vulnerabilities: political, in its economics, culturally, and indeed in its seeming possession of overwhelming military power. Just as the US is internally becoming 'two nations', countries and peoples in the South are already split into two unequal halves. The majority have numbers on their side but control of less than 15% of the wealth. The ruling elites are busy facilitating the transfer abroad of the national resources. The perceived sense of injustice of the majority is potentially a political, revolutionary force in the making, provided of course it can be melded into local and national level organizations, connected globally. It is to give impetus to this collective process that conferences such as this are being held. Many substantive ideas and alternatives have been articulated. However, organizationally we are yet inadequate.

'The call for Arab unity' issues through AL-AWDA by Muzna Shihabi is a purposeful document relevant to us all. As a document to inform us of the plunder, pillage and destruction of Iraq, Rania Masri's 'Constructing or deconstructing Iraq (?)' is a comprehensive reference paper. The ANSWER coalition in the US is on the streets leading a coalition of people and organisations, representing an estimated one third of the American people, despite the incessant propaganda of the Corporate media with the 'Big Lie' which Hitler would have applauded. ANSWER is organising the anti-war, anti-PNAC movement uniting the American people and the people of different countries against US imperialism, corporate globalization which manipulates the slogan of "war on terror" as a diversion to carry out the social transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, within the US and accumulation globally. ANSWER has a similar perspective as us on 'pre-emptive, unending war', the use of US troops and military as private security detachments of Corporate America's plunder of Iraq's oil riches, acceleration of the program if micro-nukes for use against poor of the world and the growing fascist program of militarization at home in the US. The Jakarta Peace Consensus in which delegated from 24 countries participated this year 21-24 May also deserves support. Some people have called the growing people's consciousness as the 'Other Super power'.

The theoretical framework is already apparently in such worlds as those of Professors Chossodovsky and James Petras & Veltmeyer, among other creative thinkers. The immediate frontlines in Iraq, Palestine and Cuba are an inspiration. We have some idea of the others who are targets of the neo-imperial powers who have been identified as the "Axis of Evil". Global solidarity is our duty, because humanity is the victim on every front.

The adversary has some key vulnerabilities. Vietnam now Iraq, Cuba and Palestine, Venezuela and other movements have demonstrated this. The precision guided weapons used in Iraq werein some cases nowhere near precise, the cruise missiles launched in such great numbers, did not achieve their advertised kill probabilities, their logistics train was so thin and stretched that it could have been cut into pieces. It did take more than five days to take the small port of Umm Qasr. The military victory came after the use of napalm, daisy-cutters, bunker buster, perhaps the most intensive aerial bombing in the history of warfare, against a people starved, sick and impoverished by 12 years of preceding economic blockade and no-fly zones where even water purification chemicals were disallowed. The protracted war against the invaders has barely begun and the PNAC people are beginning to admit that the Project is in deep trouble. More importantly the 'Arab Street' appears to be changing. The Arab people may have begun to realize that their rulers have been betraying them to the Imperial masters in the US. The real change will be when the Arab people begin to think for themselves and organize resistance to this betrayal.

President Saddam had switched over the oil accounts to the Euro as a small step. That sent shock-waves to Wall Street. Iran and perhaps Russia, may do the same. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE will not, except for token amounts. Recall that it was Saudi Arabia that had secretly signed the agreement on petro-dollar accounts in US banks and the dollar denominated International oil trade pact which is the key to the dollar's and therefore, the perceived strength of the US economy and the 'green-back's' exchange value as the world's reserve currency. Wihile freely selling their oil to all countries just the act of accepting payments in their national currencies could change the balance of forces in the world. PNAC could be vanquished on just this one act!

The US is not militarily invincible. Politically, the Bush Administration has lost credibility at home and abroad and the US economy and the Corporates, except the oil and defense industry corporates, are operating at the margins. If the people who oppose US hegemony and corporate globalisation stop buying products that these MNCs market, the major corporations will be in queue for Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. This notwithstanding the successes of the 'oil majors, backed by the US military in obtaining the control of new energy resources in Central Asia, East Europe and West Africa, by deceit. Military occupation of countries and a fake war against terror have to be reckoned with.

The costs of drilling one barrel of oil in Iraq is approximately one sixth and that in Saudi-Arabia one-third the cost of extracting a barrel of oil in mainland United States. There is almost nothing except some medicines, surgical equipment and software that we do not produce or are not available from alternative sources. If we do not buy their product we are by individual acts opposing their empire at its grass-roots. If we do not use their banks, insurance companies, investment, brokerage and consulting firms to defraud our own people, that empire will be on the run. Some people say it will run wild, is it not already running wild! Then the chances are that it may run out of gas! Even the British Empire ran out of gas at the end of WWII. Gandhi's non-cooperation movement, emulated by the civil rights movement in the United States, and boycott of foreign goods may be relevant in some situations.

The poor farming communities in the 'South' are beginning to understand the consequences of GM foods and seeds being dumped on them, as demonstrated so visibly by Kenya, Botswana and Nigeria at Cancun, that subsidized agriculture, exported by heavily subsidized US food exporting MNCs destroy their livelihoods. A movement to return to organic exporting beginning to gather momentum, replacing profiteering un chemical fertilizers and pesticides which have poisoned indigenous soil and water resources. Our people are beginning to understand how their own governments have sold them out colluding in the theft of invaluable genetic resources, plant and animal wealth, their human rights through TRIPS, and the WTO regime fronting for the US TNCs in particular. The inducements by WB and IMF to turn from food and edible oils sufficiency to food dependency by the false allurements of turning cash crops to pay back debts incurred by their elites to import luxury goods. This is the stuff that revolutionary consciousness is made when it reaches a threshold. The people are waking upto the "Water Barons" as far away as 'Bolivia' and the Philippines. Water which belongs to all is being privatized to enable profits for the few. When this is opposed, police and military force is used to crush the opposition, sometimes with US advisers who raise the familiar cry of terrorism and terrorists. This is yet another dimension of our common resistance agenda against globalisation.

There is no alternative to organizational unity and purpose, of people learning to run parallel administrations or even government's exemplifying real democracy. They can meet all the basic needs of the people from food, water, health, education, housing and employment though to start off they will do so at minimum subsistence levels. The movement of Zapatistas in the Chapias in Mexico, parts of Bolivia and Colombia, in Brazil by the MST in the freed lands, turning largely from the military to the political mode, is a lesson that small, impoverished communities can establish self-governments demonstrating independence from, and defiance of a central government that has by its illegal acts notwithstanding the experience, by betraying the interest of the people (notwithstanding the experience of the December 2001 popular uprising in Argentina leadership and party).

In waging a counter to the economic warfare imposed by the Corporate Empire, led by Wall Street, supported by the US Treasury, WB, IMF, WTO and the TNCs with the support of the Bank of International Settlements, BIS, which coordinates the G-7 agenda, several thinking, sympathetic economists including Kavaljit Signh have been suggesting a package of measures, to rein the ravaged of the speculators and currency raiders:

Introduction of the Tobin Tax to be administered by a new UN authority
A new Bretton Woods to review the IMF and WB, as also the BIS, to bring them back to their original purpose. To transform them from their role as the world's biggest money lenders, enticing elites to sleep walk into debt traps or in other words to re-structured and 'reform' the world's financial architecture. Till then the SAPs, SALs and the Reforms' programs, 'good governance' etc could be put on hold. There is enough on the record to hold these institutions to account for deception and fraud.

Prime Minister Mohammad Mahatir's suggestion to adopt and re-introduce the 'Islamic Golden Dinar' as the currency of exchange for oil producing and other Islamic countries is worthy of consideration when the over valued $ is in reality a 'paper' which buys goods and services for the US.

In a situation where after 30 years of unilateral decision taken by the US of delinking the US dollar from the Gold Standard, we have a $ along with the USA, skating on thin ice. We have the further dangerous, unreal world of financial instruments, derivatives, all paper underwritten by several types of banks, dealing in investments, brokerage, forward trading, futures (new terminologies are coming into such quick circulation ordinary mortals can hardly keep up). We have OFCs, OCBs that is Offshore Financial Centres and Offshore Corporate Bodies, Mauritius routes, providing free financial space with unregulated financial players, such as trust companies, shell companies, hedge funds, brokerage houses, not to forget junk funds, the savings and loans, and the KPMG scandals emptying their pockets, again and again.

The brokerage, investment, insurance functions have been combines as 'Super Banks', scantified or to be scantified by the Basle Convention. Casino Capitalism is disguised as the new saviour.

These are all challenges to the People's movements as the war alternates between the battle-field and the board-room. It is countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and EU that invest hundreds of billions of dollars every year, to keep the US dollar afloat. In 2003 the US needs nearly a trillion dollars owned by foreign entities to buy US treasury and US private housing mortgage bond/funds (as per reports the Saudis have a trillion dollars in US Securities and another trillion in US Banks).

Brent of the Friends of the Earth, quoted by Kavaljit Singh says "People's movements need a quantum leap from Washington to Wall Street." We need to build alternative strategies to the operations of global finance capital and build up public pressure for stringent regulatory mechanisms and disclosure standards. Mergers and Acquisitions, Multilateral Agreements on Investments, Capital Account Liberalization have to be scrutinized by the people. Social control over global financial flows by people's movements and elected bodies to counter globalisation project is essential.

Ultimately the militarisation of globalisation is a Transnational Companies Board-Room agenda (despite its military sting) for which the military, PMCs government structures are hired, bought and sold.

I would like to conclude by quoting Dr. Fidel Castro, "When you ask why all this threatening to use force against 80 countries... it is because what they are really afraid is not actual terrorism... what they fear more than that is the rebellion of the people... what they hear are the movements that build awareness and mobilize public opinion... making it impossible for G-7 and WTO to meet... That is why they react with such fury and arrogance with the idea of using their formidable, brutal, blind and seemingly invincible power to sow panic and terror amongst all the people of the world.

The consequence of this will be even greater resistance, even greater opposition, even greater protests, even greater discontent on the art of the species, threatened not only by the worst form of slavery and colonialism ever known, but also endangered by its very survival.

It is this awareness that has mobilized people from the middle classes in the industrialized countries, who have gained greater knowledge of the dangers looming in the environment and over their very lives and the lives of their children and grand children."

Admiral Vishnu Bagwig
Former Chief of Naval Staff (India)
e-mail: vbhagwat@vsnl.com

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