257 China to connect High Speed Rail to Europe. Caucasus bottleneck

China to connect High Speed Rail to Europe. Caucasus bottleneck

(1) China to connect its High Speed Rail System to Europe
(2) New Silk Road traverses Caucasus bottleneck - Eric Walberg
(3) Great Game: Russia joins Turkey vs Israel & West - Eric Walberg
(4) The Afghan ant hole - Eric Walberg
(5) True extent of Ukraine famine revealed in British journalist's diaries

(1) China to connect its High Speed Rail System to Europe

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 25.03.2010 01:01 PM

Inhabitat ( New York )

http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/03/15/china-to-connect-its-high-speed-rail-all-the-way-to-europe/

China To Connect Its High Speed Rail All The Way To Europe

by Bridgette Meinhold, 03/15/10

China already has the most advanced and extensive high speed rail line in the world, and soon that network will be connected all the way to Europe and the UK! With initial negotiations and surveys already complete, China is now making plans to connect its high speed rail line through 17 other countries in Asia and Eastern Europe in order to connect to the existing infrastructure in the EU. Additional rail lines will also be built into South East Asia as well as Russia, in what will likely become the largest infrastructure project in history.

China hopes to complete this massive infrastructure project within 10 years, which will include three major rail lines running at speeds of 320 km/hour. The first will go from King’s Cross Station in London all the way to Beijing (8,100 km as the crow flies) and will take approximately two days. This line will also then extend down to Singapore. A second HSR line will connect into Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia. The last line to be built will connect Germany to Russia, cross Siberia and then back into China. The exact routes have yet to be determined.

Financing and planning for this monstrous project is actually being provided by China, who is already in serious negotiations with 17 countries to develop the project. China states that other countries, like India, came to them first to get the project rolling, because of their experience in designing and building their own HSR network. Financing for the infrastructure will be provided by China and in return the partnering nation will provide natural resources to China. For instance, Burma, which is about to build its link, will exchange lithium (used in batteries), in order for China to build the line.

China benefits because it will be able to transport materials cheaply into manufacturing centers inside its borders and the Eastern Hemisphere benefits by getting a fast, efficient, low carbon transportation system. Considering China has already become the global leader in HSR, their leadership in this new venture could reasonably shift the balance of power in their direction. Also, get ready for a huge influx of HSR station designs in the coming years.

Via CleanTechnica and Edmonton Journal

Rail Maps via The Transport Politic:
http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/03/15/china-to-connect-its-high-speed-rail-all-the-way-to-europe/china-international-hsr-plans/

(2) New Silk Road traverses Caucasus bottleneck - Eric Walberg

To: shamireaders@yahoogroups.com
Date: 09.03.2010 06:28 AM
Subject: [shamireaders] Russia, Azerbaijan/Armenia: All road lead to the Caucasus

Russia, Azerbaijan/Armenia: All road lead to the Caucasus

Georgia is eager for another war, but there are other fires there which refuse to die -- Russia's battles with terrorism and separatists and Azerbaijan's bleeding wound in ethnic Armenian Nagorno Karabakh, notes Eric Walberg

23 March 2010

http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=234:russia-azerbaijanarmenia-all-road-lead-to-the-caucasus&catid=37:russia-and-ex-soviet-union-english&Itemid=90

The Russian Federation republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, North Ossetia and Ingushetia have experienced a sharp increase in assassinations and terrorist bombings in the past few years which have reached into the heart of Russia itself, most spectacularly with the bombing of the Moscow-Leningrad express train in January that killed 26.

Last week police killed at least six suspected militants in Ingushetia. Dagestan has especially suffered in the past two years, notably with the assassination of its interior minister in last June and the police chief last month. The number of armed attacks more than doubled last year. In February, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev replaced Dagestan president Mukhu Aliyev with Magomedsalam Magomedov, whose father Magomedali led Dagestan from 1987-2006. Aliyev was genuinely popular, praised for his honesty and fight against corruption, but was seen as too soft on terror.

President Magomedov has vowed to put the violence-ridden region in order and pardon rebels who turn in weapons."I have no illusion that it will be easy. Escalating terrorist activity in the North Caucasus, including in Dagestan, urges us to revise all our methods of fighting terror and extremism." He vowed to attack unemployment, organised crime, clan rivalry and corruption.

Violence continues to plague Chechnya as well. Russian forces have fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya since 1994, leaving more than 100,000 dead and the region in ruins, inspiring terrorist attacks throughout the region. Five Russian soliders and as many rebels were killed there at the beginning of February. According to the Long War Journal, in February, Russia's Federal Security Bureau (FSB) killed a key Al-Qaeda fighter based in Chechnya, Mokhmad Shabban, an Egyptian known as Saif Islam (Sword of Islam), the mastermind behind the 6 January suicide bombing that killed seven Russian policemen in Dagestan's capital Makhachkala. He was wanted for attacks against infrastructure and Russian soldiers throughout Chechnya and neighbouring republics.

Since the early 1990s, militants such as Shabban have operated from camps in Georgia's Pansiki Gorge, and used the region as a safe haven to launch attack inside Chechnya and the greater Caucasus. The FSB said Shabban "masterminded acts of sabotage to blast railway tracks, transmission lines, and gas and oil pipelines at instructions by Georgian secret services."

This is impossible to prove, but Georgia was the only state to recognise the Republic of Ichkeria when Chechens unilaterally declared independence in 1991 and his widow Alla has a talk show on First Caucasus TV, a station located in Georgia and beamed into Chechnya. Interestingly, from 2002-2007, more than 200 US Special Forces troops were training Georgian troops in Pansiki, though neither the Americans nor the Georigans were able to end the attacks on Russia.

Medvedev said last month that violence in the North Caucasus remains Russia's biggest domestic problem, arguing that it will only end once the acute poverty in the region and the corruption and lawlessness within the security organs themselves is addressed. He has undertaken an ambitious reform of security organs and the police throughout Russia with this in mind.

Sceptics may point to the parallel between the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and Russian policy in the north Caucasus. Yes, there is a Russian geopolitical context, but the comparison is specious. These regions have been closely tied both economically and politically to Russia for two centuries, which Abkhazian President Sergei Bagpash shrewdly decided to celebrate last month in order to ensure Moscow's support.

The patchwork quilt of nationalities of the Caucasus has survived under Russian sponsorship and now has the prospect of prospering if left in peace. Politicians like Bagpash make the best of the situation, as do sensible politicians throughout Russia's "near abroad". To alienate or try to subvert a powerful neighbour and potential friend as does Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is plain bad politics.

The other Caucasian conflict is the long running tragedy of Nagorno Karabakh, which unlike the other conflicts pits two supposed NATO hopefuls against each other. The war occurred from 1988-94, dating from the dying days of the Soviet Union, when Armenia invaded Azerbaijan, carving out a corridor through the country to seize the mountain region populated for over a millennium largely by ethnic Armenians. A ceasefire was finally achieved leaving Armenia in possession of the enclave and a corridor, together consisting of almost 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territory. As many as 40,000 died, and 230,000 Armenians and a million Azeris were displaced.

A Russian-brokered ceasefire has been followed by intermittent peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United States, France and Russia. But it is clear that Azerbaijan will not rest until its territory is returned. "If the Armenian occupier does not liberate our lands, the start of a great war in the south Caucasus is inevitable," warned Azerbaijan Defence Minister Safar Abiyev in February. "Armenians must unconditionally withdraw from our lands. And only after that should cooperation and peace be established," said Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev last week. Armenian and Azerbaijani forces are spread across a ceasefire line in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, often facing each other at close range, with shootings reported as common. Last week an Armenian soldier was killed.

Russia, culturally closer to Armenia, is resented by Azerbaijan as biased, and indeed there has been no commitment by any of the peacemakers or Armenia to return the territory. But the playing field changed dramatically after Georgia's defeat in its war against Russia in 2008, setting in motion unforseen regional realignments throughout the region.

First was rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, which at first set off alarm bells in Baku, relying as it does internationally on the support of Turkey, which closed its borders with Armenia in 1993 in response to the Armenian occupation. Turkey established diplomatic relations with Armenia last year in keeping with the Justice and Development Party's "zero problems with neighbours", but says ratification by parliament and a full border opening will not happen until Armenia makes some concessions to Azerbaijan.

Moscow has also been pursuing a charm offensive with neighbours in recent years, and was successful in getting both Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents to sign the Moscow Declaration in November 2008, though the warring sides subsequently have managed only to agree on procedural matters.

Key to all further developments throughout the region is the role of the US and NATO. Until recently, it looked like NATO would succeed in expanding into Ukraine and Georgia. It is also eager to have Azerbaijan and Armenia join. Not surprisingly, these moves are seen as hostile by Russia. If the unlikely happens, this would mean the US has important influence in all the conflicts in the Caucasus. But would pushing Armenia and Azerbaijan, two warring nations, into the fold help resolve their intractable differences?

Though both have sent a few troops to Afghanistan, the very idea of warring nations joining the military bloc is nonsense, and noises about it can only be interpreted as attempts to curry favour with the world's superpower. Azerbaijan has much-covetted Caspian Sea oil and gas, but Armenia is Christian and Azerbaijan Muslim, and Armenia has a strong US domestic lobby which will not go quietly into the night. Any move by Washington to meddle in the dispute without close coordination with Moscow is fraught with danger for all concerned -- except, of course, the US.

As an ally to both countries, and with important historical and cultural traditions, Russia remains the main actor in the search for a solution. Including Turkey in negotiations can only improve the chances of finding a regional solution which is acceptable to both sides. Such a solution requires demilitarising the conflict, hardly something NATO is expert at. As both countries improve their economies, and as long as ongoing tensions do not erupt into military conflict, they can -- must -- move towards a realistic resolution that takes the concerns of both sides into consideration.

Since 1991 a new Silk Road has been opened to the West, stretching as it did a millennium ago from Italy to China and taking in at least seventeen new political entities. All roads, in this case, lead to the Caucasus, and US-NATO interest in this vital crossroads should surprise no one. US control there -- and in the Central Asian"stans" -- would mean containing Russia and Iran, the dream for American strategists since WWII.

The three major wars of the past decade -- Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) -- all lie on this Silk Road. The US and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance had no business invading any of these countries and have no business in the region today. Rather it is Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, Turkey et al that must come together to promote their regional economic well being and security.

War breaking out in any one of the Caucasus disputes would be a tragedy for all concerned, for the West (at least in the long run) as much as for Russia or any of the participants. But the forces abetting war are not rational in any meaningful sense of the word. After all, it was perfectly "rational" in Robert Gates's mind to help finance and arm Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1979. The planners in the Pentagon or NATO HQs argue "rationally" today that their current surge in Afghanistan will bring peace to the region.

And if it fails, at least the chaos is far away. Such thinking could lead them to try to unleash chaos in any of the smoldering and intractable disputes in the Caucasus out of spite or a la General Jack Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 "Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", a film which unfortunately has lost none of its bite in the past four decades. ***

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/

(3) Great Game: Russia joins Turkey vs Israel & West - Eric Walberg

From: chris lenczner <chrispaul@netpci.com> Date: 26.03.2010 05:45 PM

Great Game playoff: Russia/Turkey vs Palestine/Israel

Eric Walberg

In Russia, Turkey and the Great Game: Changing teams <http://www.ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=222> the new line-up of the players in the Great Game was set out. Here, Eric Walberg considers the implications for the Middle East.

http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=225:-great-game-playoff-russiaturkey-vs-palestineisrael

A vital playing field in today’s Great Game is Palestine/Israel, where again there is a tentative meeting of political minds between Russia and Turkey. In defiance of the US and much of Europe, both endorsed the Goldstone report into atrocities committed during Israel's invasion of Gaza in December 2008, where 100 Palestinians died for every Israeli casualty. Neither government is captive to Israel in the way European and US governments are, though they both have important economic relations with Israel.

Israeli dissident writer Israel Shamir commended the Turkish leaders at a conference in Ankara in December: "Your president, Mr Gul, said a few days ago to our president, Mr Peres, that he will not visit Israel while the siege of Gaza continues. Turkey is no longer an American colony. You stopped joint air force exercises with Israel and the US. You expressed your clear anger over the horrors of Gaza. Now you pay more attention to the area where you live; you play an important role already and are destined to play an even greater role. So much depends on you! We feel it every day in Palestine."

He called on Turkey, as inheritor of the Ottoman-era responsibility for Palestine, to follow the lead of the Spanish and British judges who issued arrest warrants for Chilean General Pinochet and Israeli prime minister Tzipi Livni for murder, and issue an arrest warrant for the infamous Captain R, accused of murdering a Palestinian child Iman Al-Hams, but feted in Israel as a hero. "A Turkish warrant for his arrest should await him wherever he goes," just as "according to Israeli law, if a Turk does wrong to a Jew in Turkey, he may be snatched, arrested, tried and punished in Israel. Turkey should introduce a symmetrical law, covering offences against Palestinians who otherwise are not protected by law."

Though unlikely, this would be wildly popular in Turkey. Similarly, unlike brainwashed Westerners fed daily doses of pro-Israeli media, Turks and most Russians have no use for the Zionist project. True, over one million Russians took up the tantalising offer of instant Israeli citizenship in search of a better life, qualifying as Jewish merely via marriage or with as little as one grandparent racially Jewish. But, despite the chauvinism of the Russian-Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, many of these Russian Israelis, too, have no use for the Zionist project, with its innate racism, some even marrying Palestinians. Many are returning to Russia, bitter at the way they are treated by sabra (Jews born in Israel). The natural sympathy of these and non-Jewish Russians is for the Palestinians.

The Soviet Union was one of the first states to recognise the state of Palestine after the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, and Russia has maintained that position. As Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki said during a visit to Moscow last year, the “fact there is a Palestinian embassy in Moscow is a sign of the strength of our relationship.” Visiting Russia a week after the Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman, he found the Russian position on the peace process and the question of Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories unchanged.

As a member of the so-called “quartet” of negotiators (along with the European Union, the United States and the United Nations), Russia has stuck to the principles of the “road map” for peace, which requires Israel to freeze expansion of settlements in the occupied territories as a condition of further talks.

Russia has 16 million Muslims, about 12 per cent of the population, and Western-style Islamophobia -- and, the flip side, Judophilia -- is largely absent. It recently attended the Organisation of Islamic Conference as an observer and expressed interest in joining. The problem with asserting a clear policy towards Muslim countries, including Turkey, is of course the tragedy of Chechnia and the persistence of Islamist terrorism within Russia, resulting in anti-Muslim sentiment in Russian cities, which thrive on cheap labour from the “stans” and where much of the small-scale trade has been run by Chechens and other "blacks".

Shamir explains: "In Europe, if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim neo-Nazi groups, you'll find that they thrive on Jewish support. In Russia, Jewish nationalists and Zionists try to rally the Russians against their Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of the Russian Church, or of Russian nationalism. The most fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised by crypto-Zionists."

As is the case in all countries of importance, the Zionists have their lobby in Russia too. Yevgenny Satanovsky (that's right), the president of the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow, using the royal we, argues, “For us, there is no distinction between ‘rebels’ and ‘terrorists,’ as there is in Europe. They’re all part of the same jihad, and on this we agree with Israel.” But while busy promoting anti-Muslim sentiment among Russians, he fails to mention the support that his colleagues give to those very forces.

The Zionist footprint in Chechnia was hinted at during the scandal surrounding the murder of Russian FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2008. In a Le Carre twist, Litvinenko converted to Islam on his deathbed, attended by exiled Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev and exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whose Zionist credentials are well known. While the nature and extent of Mossad activity in the Caucasus is impossible to know for sure, there is no doubt that abetting terrorists is a useful way for Israel to apply pressure on the Russian government, and that Russian security forces do their best to keep track of it.

Turkey, Russia and Palestine all share a common geopolitical threat in the form of US and Israeli global plans, from NATO expansion eastward and US-Israeli plans to wage war on Iran, to the ongoing US-Israeli colonisation of what remains of Palestine. Just as Russia must struggle against NATO expansion eastward, intended to encircle and contain Russia, "if the US and Israel do take Iran, Turkey will be encircled and cut off. The fate of Palestine also depends on the fate of Tehran," writes Shamir.

Shamir congratulated the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) on its resounding reelection in 2007: "The East returns to God, and finds its own way. Istanbul has followed Gaza: the AKP-ruled Turkey will be a friend to Hamas-ruled Palestine, to Islamic Iran, to Orthodox Greece and Russia, to the religious anti-occupation forces of nearby Iraq. She will again take her place of pride as the centrepiece of the Eastern mosaic, while its pro-American and God-hating generals, the Turkish Dahlans, will creep back to their barracks. Faith in God unites us, while the nationalists had divided us." The shift in Turkish politics since then only confirms Shamir's words.

Is there is a pax russia unfolding? Ukraine is poised to turn back the anti-Russian policies of the Orange revolutionaries. Both Ukraine and Turkey depend heavily on Russian energy supplies, and their political course is responding to this as well as to an aversion to the aggressive nature of US foreign policy around the world. If Georgia rids itself of its pro-US anti-Russian president, suddenly US hegemony in the region evaporates.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite their bitter standoff now have good relations with both Turkey and Russia and will inevitably have to bury their hatchet as their conflict loses its ability to mobilise support in the interests of power politics. The Iranians sensibly refuse to cave in to Western and Israeli pressures. Their star can only rise as the US and Israel’s sets.

(4) The Afghan ant hole - Eric Walberg

From: efgh1951 <efgh1951@yahoo.com> Date: 24.03.2010 01:39 PM
Subject: [shamireaders] The Afghan ant hole

The Afghan ant hole

NATO plans for Afghanistan this year are shaping up nicely: negotiate with the Taliban, but at the same time kill them in Kandahar and Kunduz, observes Eric Walberg

A joint operation involving several thousand troops was launched in Kandahar last week, the second one this year after Operation Mushtarak in Helmand province. Kandahar has been the bailiwick of 2,500 contingent of Canadian troops who have suffered heavy losses in this mountainous home of the Taliban. It is ruled by a Canadian national, Governor Tooryalai Wesa, a close friend of President Hamid Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, chairman of the Kandahar provincial council, infamous for his involvement in the drug trade.

Already, there are strong indications from Marja, that the new offensive will run into trouble. The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing there two weeks ago that killed 35. Though Marja now has one coalition soldier or policeman for every eight residents, after dark the city is like "the kingdom of the Taliban", said a tribal elder in Marja. "The government and international forces cannot defend anyone even one kilometre from their bases."

The new governor of Marja, Haji Abdul Zahir, like Wesa, a foreign national (German) parachuted in by the occupation forces, said the militants post "night letters" at mosques and on utility poles and hold meetings in randomly selected homes, demanding that residents turn over the names of collaborators. The Taliban "still have a lot of sympathy among the people." Zahir has no idea how many Taliban are still in Marja. "It's like an ant hole. When you look into an ant hole, who knows how many ants there are?"

Marja district MP Walid Jan Sabir scoffed at Zahir's denial that the Taliban were beheading collaborators. "He is not from the area and he is only staying in his office, so he doesn't know what is happening." He predicts the situation will deteriorate and return to "chaos" as "the Taliban and Marja residents all have beards and turbans so it's impossible to distinguish them."

Will these campaigns in Marja, Kandahar and Kunduz subdue the Taliban and bring them to the negotiating table, the newly professed strategy of the occupiers? It should not be forgotten that Karzai himself was a member of the Taliban government from 1995-98, before Unicol hired him as an insider to try to clinch an oil pipeline deal. His effortless transition to US protege suggests he was probably already on the US payroll, along with his less reputable colleague Osama bin Laden. Though Karzai sees negotiations as the only way out, comments by other ex-Taliban officials who have cast their lot with the occupiers, however reluctantly, are not encouraging. 

The leading coopted Taliban, Abdul Salam Zaeef, holds no hope whatsoever. Zaeef was the Taliban's minister of transportation until he became ambassador to Pakistan. His post-911 news conferences, where he condemned the attacks, insisted Osama bin Laden was not responsible, and offered to send him to a third country for trial, are now the stuff of legend. Despite his diplomatic immunity, he was arrested, held at Bagram and Guantanamo, and, according to his hot-off-the-Columbia-University-press My Life with the Taliban, tortured.

He was released in 2005 and returned to Afghanistan, where he was installed in an upscale home around the corner from ex-Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil and lives more-or-less under house arrest. In 2007 he called for a unity government and negotiations with the Taliban, no doubt at the prompting of his beleaguered former comrade-in-arms Karzai. However, in a recent interview, he gave no hope for the reconciliation process, as the US is "a monster" that is "selfish, reckless and cruel", and the "reintegration process will further strengthen the Taliban."

Hakim Mujahed, a former Taliban ambassador to the United Nations, reconciled with Karzai several years ago, and is currently the head of a Taliban splinter group Jamiat-i-Khuddamul Furqan, which still has not been incorporated into the US-controlled Afghan political process. He told the US-funded Radio Free Afghanistan that reconciling with the Taliban through a traditional Loya Jirga will not work "as long as the foreign powers – the United States and Britain in particular – don't agree with this. The first important thing is to lift the sanctions on the leaders of the armed opposition. They are blacklisted and multimillion-dollar rewards are offered for them." He wants Saudi Arabia to mediate. Clearly with Zaeef in mind, he argues that if a Taliban were to attend a Loya Jirga, "he might get captured the next day and end up in Guantanamo Bay. Our president has no authority to even release somebody from Bagram."

Mulla Salam defected to the government three years ago in Helmand and was made district administrator of his native Musa Qala district as a reward. He sees the British occupation as a blatant act of revenge for their defeats in Afghanistan in the 19th century and regrets his decision, like Mujahed calling Karzai a powerless president. "We are still slaves. Foreign advisers are sitting in the offices." He complains that no Afghan minister can even visit Helmand without the permission of British military commanders. The British troops "haven't served our people and have yet to build schools or mosques in Musa Qala." Poor Salam's days are numbered as he has barely survived several assassination attempts. There will be no "reconciliation" for the likes of him.

Then there is Abdul Ghani Baradar – second in command only to Taliban leader Mohammed Omar – whose recent capture in Karachi was hailed by the US as a sign that Pakistan was getting serious at last. His arrest appears to have backfired big time. Not only has Pakistan refused to extradict him, but Karzai is apparently furious over the capture, as he was supposedly negotiating with Baradar to split the Taliban and coopt moderates.

Former UN special representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide, who stepped down this month (in disgust?), asserted last week that the arrest was a huge mistake, stopping a secret ongoing channel of communications with the UN, and revealed that he had been holding talks with senior Taliban figures for the past year in Dubai and other locations. He suggested Pakistan was deliberately trying to undermine the negotiations, as it ultimately wants to control the political landscape in Afghanistan, however rocky and dangerous for its own stability. "I don't believe these people were arrested by coincidence. The [Pakistanis] must have known who they were, what kind of role they were playing," adding it would now take a long time before there was enough confidence between both sides to really move forward.

"I see no evidence to support that theory," immediately harrumphed US envoy to AfPak Richard Holbrooke, insisting that the US had no involvement in any of Eide's talks, and knew of them only in a "general way". In line with the Washington line, he heaped praise on Pakistan for the capture. At the same time, he welcomed "reconciliation of all Afghans", whatever that could possibly mean. Of course, Pakistan protests its innocence, understandably preferring the American version of events. It just happens to have presented Washington with a multi-billion dollar bill for its selfless battle in the "war on terror". Publically at least, Karzai is all smiles, calling (ominously?) Pakistan a "twin" during a visit to Islamabad last week.

A bizarre theory about the capture promoted by McChrystal is that Baradar, deemed more pragmatic than other top Taliban leaders, was "detained" to split him from fellow insurgents. McChrystal said recently that it was plausible that Baradar's arrest followed an internal purge among Taliban leaders, that Omar himself, angry about Baradar's negotiations with Karzai or the UN or whoever, squealed on him and tipped off Pakistani intelligence officials. But both McChrystal and Holbrooke are so out-of-touch with reality that we can probably safely assume that the opposite of what they say about anything.

During his trip to Afghanistan last week, Defence Secretary Robert Gates – the guy who in fact calls the shots – made the real US policy clear. He said it was premature to expect senior members of the Taliban to reconcile with the government, that until the insurgents believe they can't win the war, they won't come to the table. Said Heritage Institute researcher Lisa Curtis ghoulishly, "The military surge should be given time to bear fruit."

The purpose of undermining the feeble attempts by Karzai or Pakistan or the UN or Bob's-your-uncle to undermine the resistance is hard to fathom, considering that negotiations are now part of US policy. At the pompous London conference on Afghanistan in January, US advisers even came up with the very American idea of simply bribing them with a cool half billion greenbacks, a strategy that Russian officials (tongue-in-cheek?) also have urged on the Americans.

A key US protege in the Pakistan military with close contacts with the Taliban in Pakistan, Colonel Imam, said the idea of paying members of the Taliban to change sides would not work and only bogus figures would come forward. "It is shameful for a superpower to bribe." He seconds Zaeef's conclusion that negotiations, like Lisa's strategy of mass murder, are fruitless. The Taliban cannot be defeated and they will not be weakened by the recent capture of even senior commanders such as Baradar.

"The movement is so devolved that commanders on the ground make most of their own decisions and can raise money and arrange for weapons supplies themselves. The Taliban cannot be forced out, you cannot subjugate them," he said. "But they can tire the Americans." Obama is "doing what you should never do in military strategy, reinforcing the error. They will have more convoys, more planes, more supply convoys, and the insurgents will have a bigger target. The insurgents are very happy." Of all the thousands of men he trained, he said, religious students like Mullah Omar were the most "formidable" opponents because of their commitment.

Hamid Gul, a former director of the Pakistani intelligence service, says the insurgents want three things from the US before talks could begin – a clearer timetable on the withdrawal of troops, an end to labelling them terrorists, and the release of all Taliban militants imprisoned in Pakistan and Afghanistan. What could be more obvious?

So Mr Obama, even if you ignore your own loyal opposition in Congress, where a motion to withdraw immediately garnered both Democratic and Republican support 10 March, even if you ignore the thousands of loyal Americans who marched on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq 20 March, calling for the same, please listen to these voices of reason. ***

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/

(5) True extent of Ukraine famine revealed in British journalist's diaries

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 22.03.2010 08:35 AM
Subject: [wvns] Ukraine famine revealed

Jack Malvern 

The Times

November 13, 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6914869.ece

Millions of peasants were starving. Children were turned against adults as they were recruited to expose people accused of hoarding grain. Stalin sealed the border between Russia and Ukraine to ensure that news of the famine would not spread, but one journalist was able to break through to discover the truth.

Gareth Jones, who revealed the story of the forced famine that claimed the lives of four million people in Ukraine in the 1930s, recorded the words of Stalin's victims in his diaries, which he then used to prepare his dispatch.

The public can see the diaries for the first time today as they go on display at the University of Cambridge.

One entry from March 1933 describes how Jones illegally sneaked across the border from Russia to interview peasants. "They all had the same story: `there is no bread; we haven't had bread for two months; a lot are dying'," he wrote.

Times Archive, 1933: Children to catch grain thieves

The packs are composed of about a dozen children led by members of the Union of Young Communists Soviet grain war

Soviet harvest difficulties
Mr Gareth Jones: obituary, 1935

Russia must reform or fall, says Medvedev

"They all said: `The cattle are dying. We used to feed the world and now we are hungry. How can we sow when we have few horses left? How will we be able to work in the fields when we are weak from want of food?' "

Jones escaped without being detected and sent a "press release" from Berlin, which was printed in Britain and America. The report included an encounter on a train with a Communist, who denied that there was a famine. "I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A fellow passenger fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist subsided."

Despite his first-hand account of the starvation, the story of what has become known as the Holodomor (Ukranian for "the famine") was not widely followed because it was disputed by other Western journalists based in Moscow who wished to placate their contacts. Walter Duranty, a British-born correspondent for The New York Times, opined that Jones's judgement had been "somewhat hasty". He suggested that Jones had a "keen and active mind" and that his 40-mile trek near Kharkov had been a "rather inadequate cross-section of a big country".

Jones, who wrote occasionally for The Times, was forced to leave the
Soviet Union and was dead within two years after a mysterious encounter with bandits in China. He was 29.

Jones's relatives, who discovered his diaries in the 1990s, believe that his kidnap in China may have been arranged by Soviet spies. David Lloyd George, who consulted Jones on foreign affairs after he stepped down as Prime Minister, hinted that Jones was killed because of something he knew. The diaries, which are on display at the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge until mid-December, lay forgotten for more than 50 years.

Then Gwyneth Jones, who was 94, discovered a suitcase containing her
brother's belongings. Margaret Siriol Colley, 84, Jones's niece, said: "I remember when he was captured, and the 16 days of awful agony as we waited to learn whether he would be released."

Rory Finnin, lecturer in Ukranian studies at Cambridge, said that Jones's diaries finally give a voice to the peasants who died as a result of Stalin's collectivisation policies. Grain was requisitioned for urban areas and for export to countries including Britain.

Historians continue to debate whether Stalin was deliberately punishing Ukranian nationalists, but it is clear that he allowed the famine to occur. He sealed the border between Russia and Ukraine and punished peasants accused of "hoarding grain".

Mr Finnin said: "There were a smattering of stories here and there [but] but I don't know if Western historians gave [the famine] the serious attention that it receives today."

Diary extracts

"With a bearded peasant who was walking along. His feet were covered with sacking. We started talking. He spoke in Ukranian Russian. I gave him a lump of bread and cheese. `You could not buy that anywhere for 20 roubles. There just is no food.' We walked along and talked, `Before the war this was all gold. We had horses and cows and pigs and chickens. Now we are ruined. We are the living dead. You see that field. It was all gold but now look at the weeds.'"

"He took me along to his cottage. His daughter and three little children. Two of the smaller children were swollen... `They are killing us.' `People are dying of hunger.' There was in the hut a spindle and the daugher showed me how to make thread. The peasant showed me his shirt, which was home-made and some fine sacking which had been home-made. `But the Bolsheviks are crushing that. They won't take it. They want the factory to make everything.' The peasant then ate some very thin soup with a scrap of potato. No bread in house."

"Talked to a group of peasants. `We're starving. Two months we've hardly had bread. We're from Ukraine and we're trying to go north. They're dying quickly in the villages.'"

"[In Karkhov] Queues for bread. Erika [from the German consulate] and I walked along about a hundred ragged, pale people. Militiamen came out of shop whose windows had been battered in and were covered with wood and said: `There is no bread' and `There will be no bread today'."