HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon?

"Seldom does a book become the seminal voice of reason when pitted against dangerous conspiracies that advance the agenda of special interests. Jerry E. Smith's HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy does just that. With utmost logic, it paints an accurate picture of governmental technology run amok in its attempts to spread American hegemony at any cost - perhaps even including planet Earth."



Vin Smith Host/Producer

Vin Smith's Midnight Bookworm

Broadcast nationally on CRN Digital Talk and the National Radio Network

Weather warfare

Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare, says Michel Chossudovsky
Rarely acknowledged in the
debate on global climate change,
the world’s weather can now be
modified as part of a new
generation of sophisticated
electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and
Russia have developed capabilities to
manipulate the climate for military use.
Environmental modification techniques
have been applied by the US military for more
than half a century. US mathematician John
von Neumann, in liaison with the US
Department of Defense, started his research
on weather modification in the late 1940s at
the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms
of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’.
During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding
techniques were used, starting in 1967 under
Project Popeye, the objective of which was to
prolong the monsoon season and block enemy
supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The US military has developed advanced
capabilities that enable it selectively to alter
weather patterns. The technology, which is
being perfected under the High-frequency
Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is
an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative
– ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint,
HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction,
operating from the outer atmosphere and
capable of destabilising agricultural and
ecological systems around the world.
Weather-modification, according to the US
Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report,
‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible
options to defeat or coerce an adversary’,
capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of
floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes:
‘Weather modification will become a part of
domestic and international security and could
be done unilaterally… It could have offensive
and defensive applications and even be used
for deterrence purposes. The ability to
generate precipitation, fog and storms on
earth or to modify space weather… and the
production of artificial weather all are a part
of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’
In 1977, an international Convention was
ratified by the UN General Assembly which
banned ‘military or other hostile use of
environmental modification techniques having
widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’
It defined ‘environmental modification
techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing –
through the deliberate manipulation of natural
processes – the dynamics, composition or
structure of the earth, including its biota,
lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or
of outer space.’
While the substance of the 1977 Convention
was reasserted in the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) signed at the 1992
Earth Summit in Rio, debate
on weather modification
for military use has
become a scientific
taboo. Military analysts
are mute on the subject.
Meteorologists are not
investigating the matter
and environmentalists are
focused on greenhouse gas
emissions under the Kyoto
Protocol. Neither is the possibility
of climatic or environmental manipulations as
part of a military and intelligence agenda,
while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader
debate on climate change under UN auspices.
The HAARP Programme
Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona,
Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas
that transmit, through high-frequency radio
waves, massive amounts of energy into the
ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere).
Their construction was funded by the US Air
Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Operated jointly by the Air Force Research
Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research,
HAARP constitutes a system of powerful
antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local
modifications of the ionosphere’. According to
its official website, www.haarp.alaska.edu,
HAARP will be used ‘to induce a small, localized
change in ionospheric temperature so physical
reactions can be studied by other instruments
located either at or close to the HAARP site’.
But Rosalie Bertell, president of the
International Institute of Concern for Public
Health, says HAARP operates as ‘a gigantic
heater that can cause major disruptions in the
ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long
incisions in the protective layer that keeps
deadly radiation from bombarding the planet’.
Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the
largest ionospheric heater ever built’.
HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a
research programme, but military documents
confirm its main objective is to ‘induce
ionospheric modifications’ with
a view to altering weather
patterns and disrupting
communications and radar.
According to a report
by the Russian State
Duma: ‘The US plans to
carry out large-scale
experiments under the
HAARP programme [and]
create weapons capable of
breaking radio communication
lines and equipment installed on
spaceships and rockets, provoke serious
accidents in electricity networks and in oil and
gas pipelines, and have a negative impact on
the mental health of entire regions.’
An analysis of statements emanating from
the US Air Force points to the unthinkable: the
covert manipulation of weather patterns,
communications and electric power systems
as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the US
to disrupt and dominate entire regions.
Weather manipulation is the pre-emptive
weapon par excellence. It can be directed
against enemy countries or ‘friendly nations’
without their knowledge, used to destabilise
economies, ecosystems and agriculture. It can
also trigger havoc in financial and commodity
markets. The disruption in agriculture creates
a greater dependency on food aid and
imported grain staples from the US and other
Western countries.
HAARP was developed as part of an Anglo-
American partnership between Raytheon
Corporation, which owns the HAARP patents,
and British Aerospace Systems (BAES). The
HAARP project is one among several
collaborative ventures in advanced weapons
systems between the two defence giants.
The HAARP project was initiated in 1992 by
Advanced Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI), a
subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Corporation
(ARCO). APTI (including the HAARP patents)
was sold by ARCO to E-Systems Inc, in 1994.
E-Systems, on contract to the CIA and US
Department of Defense, outfitted the ‘Doomsday
Plan’, which ‘allows the President to manage a
nuclear war’. Subsequently acquired by
Raytheon Corporation, it is among the largest
intelligence contractors in the World.
BAES was involved in the development of
the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna
array under a 2004 contract with the Office of
Naval Research. The installation of 132 highfrequency
transmitters was entrusted by
BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc.
The project, according to a July report in
Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s
Electronic Warfare division. In September it
received DARPA’s top award for technical
achievement for the design, construction and
activation of the HAARP array of antennas.
The HAARP system is fully operational and
in many regards dwarfs existing conventional
and strategic weapons systems. While there is
no firm evidence of its use for military
purposes, Air Force documents suggest HAARP
is an integral part of the militarisation of
space. One would expect the antennas already
to have been subjected to routine testing.
Under the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a mandate
‘to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic
information relevant for the
understanding of climate change’. This
mandate includes environmental warfare.
‘Geo-engineering’ is acknowledged, but the
underlying military applications are neither
the object of policy analysis or scientific
research in the thousands of pages of IPCC
reports and supporting documents, based on
the expertise and input of some 2,500 scientists,
policymakers and environmentalists.
‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the
future of humanity, but has casually been
excluded from the reports for which the IPCC
received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Michel Chossudovsky is a Professor of
Economics at the University of Ottawa and
an editor at the Centre for Research on
Globalization, www.globalresearch.ca
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/haarpecologist.pdf

Invasion of the Bling-ionaires: Meet Britain's most jaw-droppingly ostentatious tourists who have supercars flown from the Middle East to UK by privat

A sunny Thursday afternoon in August and the cars circling Harrods need to be seen to be believed. Million-pound Bugatti Veyrons - normally a rare sighting, even on the well-heeled streets of Central London - are, around here, about as common as Ford Fiestas.
Other cars, in a display that could rival anything in Monaco or Goodwood, drive round and round the block, pausing at the rear each time to see if their masters are ready for collection.
In the cafes surrounding the department store, every single table is taken by people from the Gulf states and the Middle East — Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Dubai.




A young Arabic man leaving his vehicle outside the Berkley Hotel in Central London

Welcome to Knightsbridge — or, as it is better known to locals, ‘Little Kuwait’.
For British residents, the summer is all about anescape to the sun; a fortnight in the South of France, the Italian Riviera or Spain. We Brits want sand, sangria, heat and a swimming pool. Anywhere but the sticky, filthy city.
For the mega-wealthy billionaire families of the Gulf states over here this summer
will tell you that they come to London because, unlike in the U.S. or France, they are made to feel welcome,’ says Hussam Baramo, the Syria-born features editor at Al Quds newspaper, a daily paper widely-read by Middle Eastern people in London. ‘They like London because they think it’s safe and friendly.’
And here, they can bring their cars with them. Around the corner from Harrods, I
saw one Veyron with every inch of its bodywork coated in gold; another, chromed all over.
Behind it, I watched a Veyron in pearlised white with shiny chromium wings making a noise like a scalded Rottweiler.
The Saudi number plate on this car was ‘999’. I watched the driver get out. He was around 25 and dressed like an off-duty Lewis Hamilton. I complimented him on his car and asked how he got it over to London. ‘In my plane,’ he said, grinning.
The car was parked in a pay-and-display’ bay, but its driver did neither. The auto show continued with a Rolls-Royce Phantom customised with a stainless steel bonnet. The number plate on this car is simply ‘1’. Later that day I Googled this vehicle and discovered that a couple of years ago its Dubai-based owner paid £9 million for the registration number alone.




Ajman Crown Prince Sheikh Ammar
A long Maybach limousine, painted in distinct orange and matt black, purred through the melee. The letters ‘RRR’ are picked out on the vehicle’s boot in a diamond-studded font.
A handsome young man and his friend, both dressed like aspirant R&B pop stars (faded jeans, Hermes belt, one of those Ralph Lauren polo shirts with the over-sized horse logo, pastel suede Hermes driving shoes, and bronze tint sunglasses) got out.
This is Crown Prince Sheikh Ammar bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, the incredibly glamorous and fun-loving son of the multi-billionaire HRH Sheikh Rashid Bin Humid Al Nuaimi of Ajman.
Ajman, in case you didn’t know, is the smallest emirate in the United Arab Emirates, but has grand plans to become a mini Dubai. RRR is the banner
for the Crown Prince’s vast portfolio of orange and black super cars — the
letters stand for Rich in Real Estate Resources.
‘How do you go about writing tickets to these guys?’ I asked a traffic warden
in Basil Street. ‘It’s impossible,’ he shrugs, showing me the computerised ticket machine he wears around his neck.
'My machine only has numbers and letters on it. Their number plates are just . . .’ He tailed off, struggling for the right word.
‘Squiggles?’ I suggested. ‘Yes. There are no keys on my machine for those.’
Last week, the wardens seemed to arrive at a solution to the problem of ticketing cars with squiggles for number plates; they started clamping them instead.
Early victims were a£1.2 million Koenigsegg CCXR (one of only six ever made) and a £350,000 Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SuperVeloce which were illegally parked outside Harrods.
But the traffic wardens aren’t the only ones ruffled by the fleet of supercars flooding the area.
Residents living near the Knightsbridge store say their night-time peace is being shattered by the owners racing their sports cars through the streets, describing it as being ‘like the starting grid at Le Mans’.
They have now forged a campaign group and aired their grievances to Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, claiming that police and council have failed to act.
Some of the Middle Eastern visitors keep summer-houses in London — there are said to be more than 100 billionaire Saudi families with second homes in the Knightsbridge area alone— while others prefer out-of-town locations such as Bishops Avenue in North London (also known as ‘Millionaires Row’), Coombe Hill in Kingston and St George’s Hill in Weybridge, Surrey.
Next summer, many of them will take up residence at the new Knightsbridge development One Hyde Park that occupies a plum position opposite Harvey Nichols and next to the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where appartments cost up to £100 million.
Here, Arab summertime residents will be able to enjoy the super-luxe environment of heated floors and chilled ceilings, personalised entry systems that can include six levels of access, and a secure underground car park for their Rolls-Royces and Ferraris.


Eyecatching: The £1.2m Koenigsegg and £350,000 Lamborghini clamped outside Harrods

'Our Middle Eastern customers are usually looking for flats with between three to five bedrooms and a 24-hour porter service, usually with a view of Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens,’ says Paul Hyman, sales manager at Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward’s Bayswater branch.
‘Properties of this type are hard to come by, but wealthy Arab businessmen can generally pay over the asking price.’

During August, whole floors of hotels around Hyde Park are block-booked for Middle Eastern oligarchs, while staff up their game by flying in topnotch Arabic entertainers for private shows in the biggest suites, adapting
restaurant menus and parking the guests’ flashest cars out in front.

During the days, the men sleep in, while the women have their drivers drop them in Hyde Park where they walk in giggly groups, stopping to soak up the coolness and cloudy skies on the benches or lying on the grass in large circles with their friends.

To them, London is a welcome vacation from the restrictive, repetitive, stultifyingly predictable drudge of blandly luxurious life back home.

Many of the younger, more frustrated Saudi girls strip themselves free of the restrictive burka altogether, whooping and shrieking with delight as they change into tight jeans and vertiginous heels on the plane, as soon as Gulf state airspace
is cleared.
Once in London, the girls go round either in large groups or chaperoned by Mum, who is normally clad in a headscarf and big shades — think Joan Collins does Jumierah Beach (one of the most exclusive resorts in Dubai).

The boys like to sit outside Knightsbridge cafes all gussied up in Arabpreppy finery, two or three mobile phones each, keys to Ferraris and Lamborghinis chucked down next to their napkins.

The young females from the more liberated countries, such as Bahrain and Dubai, are dolled up like big-eyed, honey-skinned Jennifer Lopez lookalikes.

The girls who choose to keep wearing their burkas — mostly Saudi Arabians — I am told often sport the kind of make-up that hasn’t been in fashion in the West since the end of the silent movie era. Bright red lipstick, generous helpings of cranberry rouge, eyes kohl-lined in the style of Dusty Springfield.

A spokesperson for luxury concierge service Quintessentially says: ‘About 20 per cent of our clients are from the Middle East. ‘One member requested Quintessentially Travel arrange a weekend break to Ibiza on a private jet, with a fully chartered yacht waiting for their use. Another wanted a personal shopping experience requesting that two designer stores be closed for their private viewing.’ Many others prefer to shop at home.
‘During August, we will often be asked to take a selection of our most expensive diamond necklaces, rings and bracelets to a suite at a hotel in Knightsbridge,’ says jeweller Stephen Webster, whose shop is on Mount Street, in nearby Mayfair.
‘Arab customers like to shop late, but our store isn’t permitted to have late-night opening . . . so we are happy to take the store to them.’
Another famous London jeweller, who would not be named, said: ‘They like big pieces and coloured stones. The sums they are prepared to pay for them are incredible. It is not unusual for Middle Eastern customers to spend £20 million in a single visit.’
When they are not shopping or tearing around in their cars, the Arab billionaires go to the Derby, Royal Ascot and the Berkshire Festival of Falconry, sponsored by the Abu Dhabibased Emirates Falconers’ Club and attended by His Highness Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan.

Of course, London — especially during these credit-crunched times — falls over itself to court Arab business.
Middle-Eastern shoppers are expected to spend £250 million in London this summer, an increase of 11 per cent on last year.

When the people at Harvey Nichols discovered that the amount of money Middle Eastern people in London were spending was rising so dramatically, the department store decided to start using Arabic advertisements
in-store. Summer opening hours were extended to 9pm all week, and all cafe menus were modified to
include Arabic translations and a Halal food offering.

Harvey Nichols’ Fifth Floor food hall now even offers a smoking terrace for customers that comes with the shisha pipes so beloved of Middle Eastern people. One Harvey Nichols advert showed a picture of a single Lanvin shoe. The words, written in Arabic, read, ‘The English are known for having bad teeth, that is why they need beautiful shoes’.

It doesn’t matter. Very few Londoners can read Arabic, and very few Middle Eastern people fraternise with British people anyway. They’re just here for August, then they disappear, like ghosts.

PAKISTAN FLOOD NASA LATEST PICTURES

HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems globally."

"‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize."

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’. During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes: ‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’

In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’ It defined ‘environmental modification techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing –through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.’

While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has become a scientific taboo.

Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices.

The HAARP Programme

Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere). Their construction was funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Operated jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local modifications of the ionosphere’. According to its official website, www.haarp.alaska.edu , HAARP will be used ‘to induce a small, localized change in ionospheric temperature so physical reactions can be studied by other instruments located either at or close to the HAARP site’.

Why Cameron should count his fingers after shaking hands with Pakistan's Mr Ten Per Cent

By MICHAEL BURLEIGH

Fairly or not, Pakistan is synonymous with angry men who bomb people or take to the streets in protest.

An effigy labelled ‘Cameroon’ was burned in response to the Prime Minister’s comments about the country ‘looking both ways’ when it comes to fighting the Taliban.

Nonetheless, Pakistanis have a good sense of humour. There are many jokes about President Asif Ali Zardari, who this weekend plans to tackle Cameron about his comments when the pair meet at Chequers.

Handshake: David Cameron with Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari last year

Here’s a typical example: Pakistani robber: ‘Give me all your money!’

Zardari: ‘Don’t you know who I am? I’m the president.’

Robber: ‘OK. Give me all my money.’

Such a quip illustrates perfectly how the Pakistani leader is viewed by his people: corrupt, venal and materialistic.

However, the joke runs thin when you realise censorship laws ban anyone from emailing or texting jokes about the President (with the threat of 14 months in jail) and, as part of a crackdown on opposition groups, 500 websites including YouTube, Facebook and Google have been outlawed.

Zardari has been nicknamed Mr Ten Per Cent (and more recently, Mr Hundred and Ten Per Cent) for his rumoured habit of skimming off millions in kickbacks.

Indeed, before winning power he spent more than a decade in jail following corruption charges.

A typical story about Zardari relates how a businessman who owed him money was allegedly seized by thugs, who strapped his leg to a remote-controlled bomb and forced him to go to a bank to withdraw the cash.

Zardari’s powerbase derives from the political reputation of his wife Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in December 2007.

She had carried the torch for her father Zulfikar, the one-time prime minister who was hanged in 1979 for authorising the murder of a political opponent.

Benazir was a charismatic figure who championed Pakistan’s poor, becoming prime minister in 1988 and 1993.

In much of the Third World, political power is about dynastic entitlement, and the Bhutto-Zardari alliance was no exception.

Jet set: Mr Ten Per Cent arrives at Heathrow accompanied by his son Bilawal, seen scratching his head, and daughter Aseefa, who's holding his hand

Indeed, the Pakistan Peoples Party, which Zardari took over after his wife’s death, is referred to as the Permanent Plunder Party. Not only dogged by a reputation

for corruption, the president faces accusations of gross insensitivity for failing to return home to help tackle Pakistan’sworst floods in its history, which have so far killed up to 1,200 people and forced two million to flee their homes.

Critics understandably say he should be ‘trying to support his people, not swanning around in the UK and France’.

But the truth is that Zardari seems more concerned with self-aggrandising meetings with Cameron and the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and advancing his family’s political future rather than tackling homegrowntragedies.

Indeed, it seems that a priority on his trip to Britain is to attend a rally in Birmingham to further his 22-year-old son Bilawal’s fledgling political career.

This mummy’s boy Oxford graduate, often seen in jeans and nautical themed T-shirts, is being groomed as his parents’ successor.

With opportunistic filial piety, Bilawal bears the Bhutto as well as the Zardari name.

At least there is proof Bilawal did graduate from Oxford — unlike his father, who claims to have studied at the non-existent London School of Economics and Business (a claim made just after a college degree became mandatory for Pakistani MPs.)

Another mystery is how the ruler of a country with desperate poverty and rampant illiteracy seems to be worth a rumoured £1.2 billion, despite having spent 1997 to 2004 in jail while corruptionand murder charges against him were investigated — and then dropped.

And there were the unsavoury episodes when one of his wife’s brothers was poisoned and another murdered after prolongedrows with Benazir and Zardari about hidden assets.

Originally from a minor landowningfamily, Zardari’s boat came in through an arranged marriage in 1987 with the Bhutto political clan, who have huge landholdings in Pakistan.

Though they occupied a £30 million official residence in Islamabad, with 110 acres, money was immediately diverted from funding urban parks to acquire a further 11½ acres of protected woodlands for a private polo park and parking for Zardari’s friends.

At this point, it’s worth pointing out that most Pakistanis live on just £1.25 a day.

Flood horror: Soldiers assist a boy out of a boat after he was rescued from heavy floods in a village of Deira Din Panah, in Pakistan's Punjab province

Though Zardari had no official position other than as consort to his imperiously liberal wife, he was always at hand whenever government defence contracts, broadcast licences, projects to build power stations and sugar mills, or export licences for textiles were up for grabs.

Among the reported scams is one in which a Swiss company paid 9 per cent commission into offshore accounts linked to Zardari in return for inspecting the Customs duty of all imports to Pakistan.

In a country where just one in 100 people pays income tax because of poverty, duty receipts are critical to maintaining the government’s income. This move is alleged to have netted Zardari nearly £7.5 million.

Another arrangement allegedly involved giving a Dubai merchant a monopoly of the gold imported from the Gulf into Pakistan.

According to a New York Times investigation shortly before the monopoly came into effect, £6 million was allegedly sent from the gold dealer’s company in two tranches to Citibank deposit accounts linked to Zardari.

Money is said to have been recycled via front companies in the tax-friendly British Virgin Islands into numerous overseas properties and many more in Pakistan, as well as a string of Pakistani sugar mills.

Land deals seemed to involve controversial valuations. For example, one plot worth two billion rupees was acquired for a bargain 62 million rupees.

The Bhutto-Zardari property portfolio includes a country club and polo ranch in Florida; a country estate called The House of the White Queen in France (where he stayed this week); and luxury apartments in London’s chic Pont Street in Belgravia.

Part of the portfolio is a 355-acre estate in Surrey called R Rockwood, which is up for sale for £7.5 million, though when he bought it, Zardari’s declared wealth was just £300,000.

Lavish home improvements have been made to the property. Tiny LED lights over the four- poster bed in the master suite mimic the stars in the night sky.

Bizarrely, Zardari has recreated the interior of the local Dog and Pheasant pub in the house after he tried to buy it, but the publican refused to sell. The house’s 30ft Lalique glass dining table alone cost £120,000, not to speak of the tiger-skin rugs and crystal chandeliers.

Such opulence is grotesque, particularly in light of the questionable circumstances surrounding the way the president obtained his wealth.

Now this controversial figure has arrived in Britain, apparently to lecture Cameron about how serious his government is about combating the nests of terrorists who lurk all over Pakistan.

Karachi in turmoil: Pakistani men queuing to buy fuel after the second night of violence in the capitali yesterday

By refusing to cancel the trip and return home to his flood-ravaged nation, he’s clearly made the decision that his presence in Europe will guarantee that the West will continue to pour huge amounts of aid into his venal swamp.

And, no doubt, much of this financial support will be diverted to the country’s powerful army — which is rumoured to be even more corrupt than Zardari.

All British governments have had to deal with unsavoury characters.

Apparently, this is the price we must pay for preventing any other Pakistani-related bombers, like those who stalked our transport system on 7/7, from hitting Britain.

Indeed, Pakistan is fast becoming the breeding ground for much terrorism and when we do eventually pull out of Afghanistan, ensuring Pakistan’s support will be vital to the stability of the region.

Not that he needs me to tell him, but when Mr Cameron entertains this dreadful fraud at Chequers, he should sup with a very long spoon.

MICHAEL BURLEIGH is author of Blood And Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1300498/Cameron-count-fingers-shaking-hands-Pakistans-Zardari.html#ixzz2UH0o6XnE

The Takeaway from 91,000 Leaked Secret Documents on Afghanistan: It's Bad. Very Bad. Time to Go

As unexpected as a checkered tablecloth in a pizzeria, the administration is playing down any revelations about Afghanistan, but we can draw our own conclusions.

To say the release of 91,000 classified documents has revealed a disconnect between our public position on Afghanistan and the actual situation on the ground is like inferring a disparity between yoga and bayonets. Dawn dishwashing liquid and green olive tapenade. A tray full of Southern Comfort old-fashioned sweets and a herringbone Segway.

Unlike the Pentagon Papers, we can’t even work up a good outrage, mainly because come on, 91,000 documents. That’s like reading all seven Harry Potter books thirty times over. I don’t care how authentically rustic your wand is, nobody’s doing that. There’s even questions as to whether it’s 91,000 documents, 92,000 documents, if all the documents have been released or more are being held in reserve for we mere Muggles.

I know. What’s a thousand documents amongst friends? Well, there’s your problem. We don’t have any friends. Corruption over there is endemic, pandemic and epidemic. Our allies aren’t necessarily allied on our side. The fighting is going badly and a halfway decent deep-dish pizza crust remains a concept the Afghanis seem unable or unwilling to embrace. Not to mention Democracy.

Unplug the drain and the ring around the tub is we’ve been there 8 years and things are so not getting better. As a matter of fact you could say the movement more resembles whatever is the opposite of getting better. Don’t even mention quagmire. Hah. Hah. We sneer at your quagmire. Our Afghanistan participation makes a quagmire look like a refreshing dip in a spring fed pool with buckets of frosty beer within reach and cold cucumbers slices on our eyelids. Spa spangled bog.

This dastardly document dump also managed to tick off Pakistani officials who dispute claims that the ISI, their intelligence agency, is collaborating with the Taliban. “These allegations are always repeated.” Hmm. Curious as to why those allegations would always be repeated, eh what? Maybe because, like the sun and those silly allegations about the rising in the East, they’re… TRUE?

And for those of you surprised by the amount of grandstanding caused by the WikiLeaks disclosures, either you forgot it was an election year or have been making too many side trips to the magic brownie counter in your medicinal marijuana store. A veritable slew of Congressmen are sharpening their budget scalpels, asking how we can toss Pakistan a couple billion a year in foreign aid while they’re helping Afghani insurgents? With friends like these, who needs enemy combatants?

As unexpected as a checkered tablecloth in a pizzeria, the Administration is playing down any revelations. “Nothing new to see here. Everything generally known. Move along.” Perhaps, just not generally known by the general public. Privately, White House officials anticipate using these leaks to pressure Pakistan to play nice. Yeah. Right. Dream on, big river. You got a better chance convincing Lindsay Lohan to give up all her nasty habits and start wearing one.

If this leak tells us anything, it’s that this is not a winnable war. Right now, America has a lot of stuff on a lot of plates and keeping them all spinning is neither cheap nor easy. Afghan plates, on the other hand, are not very full and they seem to like it like that. Especially when deep-dish pizza crumbs can get them beheaded. As they say in Animal House, “If I were us, I’d be… leaving.”

Will Durst is a San Francisco based political comedian who often writes. This being an example of questionable merit. Catch his stand up at a benefit for the Oasis Theater Ensemble in Wausau, Wisconsin, on Friday August 6th. 2 shows. And as part of the Comedy Talks series on August 15th at the San Francisco Presentation Theater with Robert Morse and Shelley Berman. For tickets: comedytalks.com or 800.838.3006. His new CD, “Raging Moderate,” now available from Stand Up! Records on both iTunes and Amazon.