March 11, 2006 - "Communism's ultimate crime against humanity was to go out of business….When the Russians stabbed us in the back by folding their empire in 1991, we were left with many misconceptions about ourselves, and rather worse, about the rest of the world." (GORE VIDAL, Leading American author and thinker).

    One major misconception was that it was only the U.S.S.R. that had an empire - an evil one at that. The U.S.A. never believed in empires. Yet when the U.S.S.R. went out of business the U.S. maintained and/or increased its military presence throughout the world. Today, in addition to its own territory, the U.S. has bases or has some military presence in :
    Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Bermuda, Britain, Canada, Cuba, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, The Netherlands, Panama, The Philippines, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates,….etc…

    This is not an exhaustive list. Indeed, I have omitted those countries in Eastern Europe and in Asia about which I am uncertain.

    On 18 August, 2005 the big news media reported joint Sino-Russian military exercises (in Vladivostok, etc…). Ten thousand soldiers were involved. Why would Russia and China, countries that had their own differences during the "Cold War", come together today in such major military exercises? They were seen as a reaction to increasing American hegemony in Asia.

    The peace-loving people of the world - in which group I am certainly entitled to be enlisted - are disappointed that the demise of the Soviet Union did not bring peace. One would have thought that the world's sole remaining super power would take responsibility, show some leadership, act even-handedly and point the way forward toward total elimination of nuclear weapons, including its own arsenal - the world's biggest.

    Indeed, thanks to America's "oil addiction" - language of President George Bush, not mine - the United States destroyed much of Iraq, and occupies that country, not verily because of any Iraqi attack, but to secure oil loot.

    And that is not an isolated bad example. Sometimes what is left unmentioned in the world news, or is relegated to the "ticker tape" at the bottom of your television screen should comprise the headlines. One example is March 11, 2005, when I saw on BBC…

    "SUDAN GETS WORRIED AS A US CONGRESSIONAL REPORT REVEALS THAT THE US CARRIED OUT NUCLEAR TESTS THERE."

    Peace-loving people would have thought that the cold war policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) would have ended when the U.S.S.R. went out of business. Let me tell you a little more of the madness which prominent American journalist and author JAMES RISEN described in his book.

    That week you must have heard all the threats that the Bush regime made against the Iranian regime. The Iranians in turn responded to the effect that the U.S. can inflict pain but is itself susceptible to pain. The uproar relates to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

    Yet sometime ago, the American CIA played a very dangerous game: The CIA gave a nuclear weapons blueprint to the same Iran. It was a document smuggled out of Russia by a nuclear scientist after the fall of communism. The CIA doctored the blueprint and passed it on to Iran with high hopes of leading them down the wrong path.

    Foolishly, the CIA did not properly consider the probability that the Iranians could employ a Russian, or a Pakistani scientist to correct the blueprint - or could even detect and correct the error themselves!!!