SC Verdict on 2G Scam:
A Victory for the Struggle Against Corruption and Corporate Plunder
A recent Supreme Court verdict on the 2G scam has ordered cancellation of 122 licenses issued in 2008 and has imposed penalties on the corporations that benefited from corruption. This verdict is notable for the fact that it identifies beneficiaries of corruption – the private corporations, orders the withdrawal of all such benefits achieved through corrupt means, and imposes penalties on those who sought to benefit from such means. Predictably, the corporations hit by the verdict have expressed shock at the verdict, since they obviously expected that they would be treated like sacred cows, exempt from any consequences of corruption.
It must be recognised that in innumerable cases, the same apex court has delivered verdicts protecting corporate plunder. In the 2G case, a better verdict has been possible largely because of the overall climate of resistance to corruption and corporate plunder.
The verdict is also a decisive blow to the UPA Government which had consistently been denying the 2G scam entirely. In particular, the present Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal had, on record, repeatedly claimed ‘zero loss’ in the 2G allocations, and had rubbished any demand for cancellation of licenses. The SC verdict has exposed such propaganda by the UPA Government to be deliberately misleading and false attempts to cover up the scam.
The entire UPA Government, including the Prime Minister and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and the present Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, are collectively responsible, not only for the massive scam, but for covering up corruption and attempting to protect the corrupt. The UPA Government has no right to remain in power, after its efforts to defend and cover up such a major scam have been exposed.
Excerpts from the Supreme Court Verdict
To say the least, the entire approach adopted by TRAI was lopsided and contrary to the decision taken by the Council of Ministers, and its recommendations became a handle for the then the Minister of C&IT and the officers of the DoT, who virtually gifted away the important national asset at throw away prices. This becomes clear from the fact that soon after obtaining the licences, some of the beneficiaries off-loaded their stakes to others, in the name of transfer of equity or infusion of fresh capital by foreign companies, and thereby made huge profits. We have no doubt that if the method of auction had been adopted for grant of licence which could be the only rational transparent method for distribution of national wealth, the nation would have been enriched by many thousand crores.
…but for the vigilance of some enlightened citizens... unsuspecting citizens and the Nation would never have known how scarce natural resource ...has been grabbed by those who enjoy money power and who have been able to manipulate the system.
(Telecom companies) who were benefited by a wholly arbitrary and unconstitutional action taken by the DoT …shall pay cost of Rs.5 crores each.
US, Israel Invoke Terror To Ratchet Up War Threats Against Iran
Bill Van Auken
Both Washington and Israel have seized upon a string of abortive bomb plots in India, Georgia and Thailand to escalate war threats against Iran.
In India, an unknown individual on a motorcycle attached a bomb to a car in which the wife of an Israeli diplomat was riding in Delhi on February 13. The woman and the car’s driver were lightly injured. On the same day in Tbilisi, Georgia, a bomb was discovered attached to an Israeli embassy vehicle and defused. And in Bangkok, Thailand, three individuals identified as Iranians were arrested after a bizarre incident Tuesday in which explosives detonated inside their apartment and one of them blew off his own legs with a homemade grenade.
The three incidents, in which there were no fatalities, were immediately labelled by the Israeli government as terrorist attacks organized by Tehran that, in the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demonstrated why all nations must draw “red lines against Iranian aggression.” “Iran’s terror operations are now exposed for all to see,” Netanyahu said during a Knesset [Israeli parliament] plenum on Wednesday. “Iran is undermining the world’s stability and harms innocent diplomats.”
What was striking about the first two incidents in Delhi and Tbilisi was that they involved the use of devices—bombs attached by magnets to cars—similar to those used to assassinate at least four Iranian nuclear scientists over the past two years.-- As US intelligence officials and Israeli sources have confirmed, those terrorist attacks—the latest of which claimed the life of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist employed at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility, on January 11—were organized by the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, in collaboration with operatives of the MeK, or People’s Mujahedin, a group classified by Washington as an international terrorist organization.
Despite Israel’s assertions, no officials in any of the three countries that were the scene of the latest incidents have charged the Iranian government with responsibility. What all three bomb plots appear to have in common is their inept, amateurish character. This was particularly the case in Bangkok, where the three individuals involved made no attempt at concealing their identities—all of them carried Iranian passports, moved into a building close to an Iranian cultural centre and then proceeded to blow themselves up. In Georgia, a government official suggested that a Georgian employee of the embassy may have been targeted for personal reasons.
Why Iran, if it were to seek revenge for Mossad’s murder of its scientists, would choose to do it in two friendly Asian countries—India is the world’s largest importer of Iranian oil—is far from clear. Nor for that matter does the wife of a low-level diplomat seem a likely target for such retaliation.
One curious piece of information was published in the Times of India Thursday. It seems that the chief of Mossad, Tamir Pardo, flew to Delhi just days before the bomb attack as the head of a large delegation of Israeli intelligence agents. While there he held talks with Indian officials on the possible threat of Iranian attacks.
In India itself, there is substantial scepticism about Israel’s charges of Iranian culpability in the attack. As Times of India columnist Shobhan Saxena commented: “The West, led by the US, has been trying for years to damage India’s ties with Iran, our second biggest supplier of oil. Is it a coincidence that this attack happened just about when Iran agreed to take payment in Rupees for the oil it’s selling to India? The Rupee payment agreement signalled the total failure of western countries to stop India from doing business with Iran. So, if Delhi terror incident leads to a friction in Delhi-Tehran ties, who benefits? The whole incident has to be seen in this perspective...The only country that benefits is Israel.”
...Meanwhile in the midst of the steadily escalating campaign of war propaganda by the US, Israel and the mass media, all depicting Iran as the greatest threat to world peace and security, two US intelligence chiefs presented revealing congressional testimony on Thursday. Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran is unlikely to initiate any war and would only respond if it were attacked. ...Despite the continuous provocations by Israel and Washington, …along with an ever-tightening sanctions regime that is itself tantamount to an act of war, Burgess added that “the agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict.” Testifying at the same hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declared it “technically feasible” that Tehran could produce a nuclear weapon in one or two years, “but practically not likely.”
In other words, beneath the unrelenting attempts to brand Iran as an aggressor that must be stopped from imminently acquiring nuclear weapons, the assessment of US intelligence is that Iran would only act militarily if attacked and is not even close to challenging Israel’s regional monopoly on nuclear bombs.
The lies about “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorism are being used against Iran—just as they were a decade ago against Iraq—to prepare a war of aggression aimed at furthering US imperialism’s aim of achieving hegemony over the strategically vital energy producing regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.
(Courtesy WSWS.org, 17 February, 2012, slightly abridged)