I rarely watch TV. It was early evening, about 6 pm in Delhi, when a friend called and said, 'Have you seen it?' I asked, 'Seen what?' 'Switch on the TV and watch CNN or BBC', said my friend. One tower was smouldering. Perhaps this was on the channels many minutes before I switched on.  

No one, it seemed, knew what had happened. One channel said an aircraft had hit, another a small plane, some speculated it was possibly a missile. My daughter walked in, was immediately glued to the TV. Most of us forgot any urgent work on hand.  

Having read about the rock solid American air defense system, I wondered why not a single fighter jet was visible over New York City, at least to reassure the people they were there. Why was not a single helicopter flying over the tower to rescue those trapped above the burning floors, the way it was 'done' in the Hollywood blockbuster 'The Towering Inferno?' The media said fire-fighters were on the scene. Wouldn't it take longer to climb up than to be dropped by helicopter on the terrace and commence rescue work? A sense of urgency was missing. 

We saw the second plane hit the North tower and explode into a ball of fire. As TV cameras stayed focused, we could see not one fighter anywhere. Nothing was flying over a city under attack - except hijacked airliners. 

Then we were told another plane had hit the Pentagon and soon after we saw the South Tower collapse. As channels showed horrific scenes of the collapse from all angles, reports came of the fourth hijacked plane crashing near Shanksville. A little later the second tower collapsed. If this was war on the US of A, why were there no fighters over New York City?

Planes crashing in DC and not one fighter in sight? One whale of a white plane doing a slow turn up over the DC sky? A lone helicopter over NYC? We can't ever forget this. 

Too many terrifying things were happening, in real time. Past midnight, we saw WTC-7 collapse, perhaps bombed by terrorists. Still no sign of any fighter over NYC. America was under attack and not one fighter screaming over America? People were waving from burning WTC and jumping to their deaths, but the world's mightiest military force remained grounded. 

Over breakfast next morning we discussed what we had seen. Terrible guys, these hijackers. But much was worrisome about the events. As days passed I could pin down three things nagging me: (a) the collapse was too fast, too methodical and almost identical, (b) virtually no aircraft parts or bodies were shown near the Pentagon crash site and nothing at Shanksville, except a hole which was rather unusual, and (c) the response of the US air defense system. I also thought Americans are perfectly capable of answering these questions, so why should I worry.

Much was happening here as well. In December, our Parliament was attacked, reportedly by terrorists from across the border. Around May 2002, a New Zealander working in our firm told me her parents were asking her to return home as there was threat of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. I found it a bit unusual as we have friends in government; I knew tension was mounting, but nothing of the sort she described. 

Slowly 9/11 faded in my memory. Nevertheless, inexplicably, I spent more time on the Internet learning about terrorism and the US government. A friend with a doctoral degree in Aviation Management and an engineering first degree in Avionics, who travels regularly to the US, told me how Americans are a 'transformed people'. 'They are afraid,' he said. This was confusing and I dismissed it as a bit of exaggeration. The people of America scared because four planes were hijacked?

Changed perception of US government

Looking back, it was the US occupation of Afghanistan, a South Asian country and neighbour, and the repeated statements coming out of DC that the world 'will have to choose' that actually changed my perception of the US Government. These were chilling statements. Choose what?

We knew Taliban had denounced the attacks on September 11 itself, and that they had nothing to do with the hijacking, so why was the US administration demonizing the Taliban? [The same Taliban was a creation of the CIA and Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence, and the ISI itself a creation of CIA. 'The Taliban government was set up in 1996 as an Anglo-American client state': Mahdi D. Nazemroaya; 17 October 2006, www.GlobalResearch.ca]

The attack on a poor wretched country without even a shard of evidence of its being an aggressor came as a shock. Oh yes, Al-Qaeda were bad people. The good guys were after the bad ones, but was there a need to 'smoke 'em out?' The good guys had also sponsored the bad guys.  DC was using the language of ruffians. 

I celebrated my 50th birthday that December. At this age, if I have to choose living under a ruffian and death, I'll choose the latter. I don't want to live under a corporatocracy of criminals. DC was using a language that changed me.

Then I found some friends in cyberspace. We discussed farming, gardening, food security, malnutrition in India, but would invariably end up discussing 9/11. By 2003, around the time of the attack on Iraq, we had enough information that showed a rather ugly side of the US Government and its allies. Not that we were not aware of America's destructive wars in Asia, starting with the nuking of Japan to interventions in Tibet, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. And India.

Soon we learnt neutrality was not an option they had left for any one on planet earth. And there was no hope of a better society if one cooperated. All peoples everywhere were being systematically enslaved and subjugated. When we learnt what depleted uranium was doing to the men and women fighting the private wars of corporations under the US flag and in the name of the US Constitution, we were shocked. The rulers were deliberately killing and maiming their own soldiers and profiting from it.    

One thing led to another, and soon we were part of a global network of friends, sharing information, raising questions, seeking answers. But mostly, we were researching, reading, analyzing, and reappraising events in the light of better information and data. My concerns made me travel to Oz and meet some people who could tell me more and there I got another piece in the missing jigsaw as to why water was being fluoridated. And mind-control techniques.

As a graduate student of management in England, well meaning teachers had led us to believe that creative intelligence, core competency and lateral thinking gains market power, but sustaining it requires honesty. That was theory. In practice, just a handful of corporations and banks were running the world, regulating the regulators, buying off politicians, poisoning the world, poisoning people in hundred different ways, plundering consumers, pauperizing resource-rich societies, using US and NATO soldiers to blow up any opposition. 

It was a lawless world of business, with laws written by paid managers and enforced by bullets. That's not the way we learnt to do business, but that's the way business had always been done, world-wide, since the so-called industrialized world was born. Colonialism had morphed into globalization of corruption and mindless loot. 

The picture that emerged during these post-9/11 years was one of complicity and corruption at the highest levels of power, particularly in the US and EC countries, and of complete collapse of governance worldwide. Some of the brightest minds emerged as mass murderers and environmental terrorists. Historians tell us Fascism was defeated in 1945; we discovered that Fascism was globalized in 1945, that historians always lie.

Take an example from South Asia. The division of India was planned much before the last British Governor General landed in Delhi to supervise the transfer of power. Probably as early as 1942, when the strategic importance of oil in the European Elites' wars was recognized. Churchill recognized this much before as First Lord of the Admiralty, a post he held from 1911 to 1915.

Pakistan was carved out by the Western elite for an army to protect the eastern and southern flanks of oil-producing regions, just as Israel was carved out of Palestine on the western. The justification for a Jewish homeland - Israel - was presented as an honourable and humanitarian cause for holocaust victims, just as Pakistan for the Muslims. Hindus were demonized much earlier in South Asia to create a schism, just as Islam was demonized to justify an endless war. Strategic interests determine who is demonized, but spineless secularist historians in India and the West would have us believe that religion is a problem.

Seducing the world

The world has been seduced in many ways. Transparency International (TI) is projected as the watchdog of global corruption. It conducts annual surveys of countries based on the perception of businessmen how clean a country is in terms of doing business. Our government is corrupt; I believed TI correctly reflects our daily lives. We have to bribe at every level to get services that are our birthright and for which we pay taxes. Deep inside I felt the people of this beautiful country are in a vice-like grip of unending corruption of politicians and bureaucrats; Indians flourish when they go west. 

According to TI, the least corrupt nations are the likes of Denmark, Sweden, Singapore; most corrupt, consistently, is Bangladesh. USA ranked 16th in 2001 and to 20th rank in 2007. Britain became less corrupt, moving from 13th rank in 2001 to 12 in 2007, which must count among the greater achievements of many recent Prime Ministers. Israel slid from 16th to 30th position, indicating that a little corruption is actually good when one controls the world's largest armada. A few citizens of this country were actually caught cheering the collapse of a nation from the top of a hot rod jalopy when bodies were falling from the towers.

Some of the most corrupt countries, TI would have us believe, are China, India, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2001, Afghanistan, not ranked by TI, 2001-04, slid almost to the nadir at 172. So did Iraq, from 129th to 178th. Physical occupation, the mother of all theft, apparently doesn't rank as a dishonest act in the analytical framework of TI. Neither does genocide.

Pakistan, the most dependable ally of the Western Union in the Global Honest War on Terror (GHWOT), slid from relative honesty at 79th in 2001 to a poor 138th in 2007; some achievement for being a trustworthy ally of honest nations! This country trains and provides logistic support to various acts of terrorism on behalf of the US and NATO forces.

China, the powerhouse economy, slid from an honesty rank of 57th in 2001 to 78th in 2007. The leader of the most honest nations had no problem selling municipal bonds to a relatively dishonest one. Ditto for Indians. They started with a relative dishonesty ranked 71st to slide to patent dishonesty in 2004, when all floodgates to US and European investments were opened, to rank 90, then recovered the previous position of honest-eminence ranked 72nd in 2007. That was a bad hiccup at the height of bonhomie with the 'honest west'. 

Using TI data, if one draws three concentric circles, the 'most honest western countries' would cluster around the centre, nearly all 'peaceful client regimes' around the middle circle, and those 'targetted for resource plundering' on the periphery. The message being conveyed to billions around the world is that poverty, deprivation and poor governance are a consequence of corruption, whereas economic health of the western world that of honesty. Therefore, we are led to believe that the west is superior, to be emulated; the rest of the world corrupt, inhuman, bestial, to be civilized.

That civilizing mission is reinforced day-in and day-out by the mainstream media and Reader's Digest, particularly the electronic media, relentlessly justifying interventions of western powers. That mission was well articulated by Macaulay in 1835, by Huntington in 1993. The west told the world what to believe, the rest of the world believed what it was told. The non-believers were done in. But that was never a story, not on prime time.

No third world country has ever raised a finger at the US of A, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Holland; these great imperial powers plundered our society. All we want is to be left alone in peace, but that is not acceptable to the lone super power controlled by a few families from Europe.  

Sitting with a friend in Tasmania some years ago, I thought aloud: what is development and what is the essence of the difference between a handful of western countries and the rest of the world?

I told my friend: your roads are properly paved, you don't have to bribe the transport authority to get a driving license, you can reach from point A to Z using A-Z and people know how to use A-Z, you don't queue up for hours in a hospital to get basic medicare, power supply is stable with fewer black-outs, your basic needs are well supplied and taken care of. With basics taken care of in a relatively honest fashion, common people do not have much to complain. When these common people compare their life with mass media projections about the rest of the world they find themselves right on the top of WTC1 or 2, or even WTC7, from where even a janitor can look down upon the rest of us. But that day the rest of the world was watching 1, 2 and 7, symbols of the technologically most advanced society, collapsing right in front of our eyes.

Why were there no fighters over New York City? The terrified Air Force One was kept flying from one place to another all day without fighter escort? There were no fighters over NYC because the powers that control the US armed forces, who nominated the mentally challenged PotUS, wanted the American people to see their power. They wanted every living room on planet earth to feel that power. The mission was actually accomplished during those nine odd hours when PotUS was close to stratosphere and terra firma was trembling, but he was perhaps told to announce it from USS Abraham Lincoln.

Global seducers like TI have allies: the BBC, CNN, Fox TV, and in India CNN-IBN, the Star TV network, etc. India has probably around seventy channels. The major news channels have chosen to remain intellectually challenged.

Michel Chossudovsky succinctly summarized this:
"The US and its allies, which uphold the practice of torture, political assassinations and the establishment of secret detention camps, continue to be presented to public opinion as a model of Western democracy to be emulated by developing countries, in contrast to Russia, Iran, North Korea and the People's Republic of China" 
[13 April 2008, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8673] 

Must we listen?

The US has UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada as key allies, a core group of seven. The ruling elite of the western powers has roots in Europe and many are related. Russia is also part of this gang, but let us keep Russia and Japan out of the most corrupt G-6, and the picture becomes less hazy.  

The G-6 talks of eliminating poverty…we must listen. In the process, they have perhaps eliminated over 100 million poor, and that is a gross underestimation, because I believe the US alone has directly or indirectly killed that many. For each dollar of over-the-table western aid to developing countries, over ten is squeezed under the table with complicity of third world leaders. A report says corrupt Indian politicians hold US$ 1.5 trillion dollars in Swiss Banks, more than the sum total of all unaccounted money held by others.
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=103

The G-6 tells the world that 'Terrorism' is bad. 'Unimaginable resources have been expended on measuring and tackling terrorist finances, but little attention is paid to problems such as tax evasion by western trans-national corporations and rich individuals' (Ibid). When those who should be honestly paying their taxes don't pay up, the tax burden falls on small shopkeepers and individuals. But we must listen. And those unpaid taxes actually finance 'global terrorism' of the few led by the illegal government of the US of A.

The G-6 talks of climate change…we must listen. The poor world is burning too many trees…we must listen and keep silent when most fossil fuels are burnt by just a handful of western nations. The G-8 Plan for Climate Change actually looks like a plan to change the climate. Richard Heinberg says US alone will need fifty million small farmers in post-oil world; by the same equation India would need over 190 million, and would be short of farmers, yet farmers are committing suicide; more will die with HAARP engineered climate change. 

The G-6 talks of worldwide scourge of HIV=AIDS=Death…a lie we all must accept. Should we question this illogical, baseless inference, we can be HIV-ed and AID-ed to a painful premature death. That is actually going on right now the world over. Drugs are introduced without proper testing everywhere and doctors taught to prescribe those drugs. Millions have died yet not once a doctor has been hanged for prescribing death. Legalized genocide…and deathly silence.

The G-6 talks of water wars…we must listen and privatize our rivers. The G-6 talks of food shortages…we must listen and buy poison-laced foods from the world's largest criminal corporations. Listen to this: "There is no way for anyone to choose to eat nano-free," says Miller, co-author of a report called Out Of The Laboratory And Onto Our Plate, Nanotechnology In Food And Agriculture.

The G-6 talks of energy crisis…we must listen and buy oil only in dollars, a piece of paper printed by 13 of the most corrupt banks that constitute the Federal Reserve. The whole world is led to believe this piece of paper is worth its weight in gold! Not even worth the paper on which it is printed, but the whole world must keep exporting physical goods against no promise to redeem its value in anything more than worthless paper; even toilet paper is more honourable, measured for size. And that seduces Americans as much as it seduces the rest of the world.

When G-6 talks of 'genetic engineering'…we must listen and ignore the deaths of American citizens who were illegally fed genetically-engineered food and died. We must ignore the deaths of American citizens because western leaders are 'honest.' When G-6 talks of vaccinations…we must listen, never mind if the 80+ deadly vaccines cause the immune system of members of their own armed forces to collapse and turn the world's immune systems deficient.

When the G-6 talks …we must listen and cooperate because the rest of the world has no option. The rest of the world has no option because any option is subject to ratification by G-6; Russia and Japan are merely baggage to reinforce world belief in the politics and economics of hope.

Prime-time statements of 'honest' leaders, full of wisdom, knowledge, trained in the art of governance, great men straddling the world like Colossus, solving problems. There were times I believed them. I am sure you all did too.   

The collapse of a belief

9/11 reconfigured a belief system. I hope it trickles down faster than the trickle down theory of bored economists. 'We create problems, Western leaders solve the world's problems,' thus spake MSM. The denizens of the wilderness, the third, fourth or fifth worlds were forced to believe that western leaders are honest, therefore the western world is better than ours. 

Western leaders would tell their citizens: 'look at these poor wretched souls; give us some money, and we shall make the world a better place!' And the rest of the world told, 'look we have created a most civilized society, the affluent society, and if you wanna be part of it, do as we say.' And that money, the stolen money from their own tax-payers was used to steal our resources like land, water, biodiversity, minerals and energy, all over the world, from the destitute that need them for survival. Now even the atmosphere is up for grabs; militarization of space will further ensure who grows corn or rice or millet. 

Western citizens are plundered in our name. We are plundered for profiteering of the few. It took 9/11 to drive home that message. It exposed the true nature of the US of A as a country run by a small coterie of very rich sociopath humans who use its army to control global resources.

9/11 was perhaps the most spectacular crime ever committed; the whole world watched as the evidences were destroyed. But much remains right in front of our eyes. We look but don't see.

Sociopaths rule, OK!

"These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything… And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage… These are congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire," wrote late Kurt Vonnegut in 'Custodians of Chaos' in A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America. Today we call them 'sociopaths'; they kill entire societies, entire nations and endanger the planet.

2008 elections will decide whether the planet lives or dies. In that election, only a handful of mind-controlled, semi-literate, Americans will vote. These few millions will decide whether billions should live and how. The defective humans have an agenda; non-defective ones none.

The story of Afghanistan is what can happen when defective humans powered by cocaine capture political power and use the military might of the USA. The use of 'area deniability weapons' have ensured that life can't thrive there.

The story of Iraq is what can happen when defective humans powered by cocaine capture political power and use the military might of the USA.

"Iraq's population at the time of the US invasion in March 2003 was roughly 27 million, and today it is approximately 23 million. Elementary arithmetic indicates that currently over half the population of Iraq are either refugees, in need of emergency aid, wounded, or dead."
(Dahr Jamail, Global Research, December 2007)

Fascism was globalized in1945. Democracy was blown up into nano particles on 9/11. An excellent example was set in Afghanistan and Iraq for us to see the consequences if we don't crawl on our knees. The hundreds of solid internment camps across the world are gentle warnings to ensure the world crawls. It doesn't matter which country we belong to; democracy is as dead in the US of A as elsewhere.

There is no space for neutrality and no future in supporting the criminals. If we don't oppose the global terrorists, tomorrow we shall all wake up in a KBR sepulcher, erected through a no-bid contract, buried alive or semi-dead. Revolutions are born not with a hope of a better future; they are ignited when there is no hope.

The author is an accredited management consultant, writer, and researcher