Ajit Randeniya

The most poignant memory of the disgraceful Bush and Blair campaign of lies on the bogus Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) was the 5 February 2003 presentation by General Colin Powell (the twenty first century slave of the American ruling junta) to the UN Security Council.

Against the backdrop of Picasso’s Guernica, the mural that depicts the inhumanity of war which adorns the UN podium, cynically covered with a blue curtain for the occasion, Colin Powell submitted: ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligenceƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚. He continued: ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities.ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ These words were followed by images of trucks, supposedly mobile WMD labs, and he dramatically held a test tube in the air, supposedly filled with the Anthrax virus.

As things turned out, the highly scientific and sophisticated ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”evidenceƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ Powell produced against Sadddam Hussein and the Iraqis had been fraudulently manufactured by the US and UK governments! True to form, six years later this week they are trying the same tactic again: this time on Sri Lanka, as revenge for ignoring their demands.

The American ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”superƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ intelligence network is offering the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) with ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-evidenceƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ of war crimes in the form of satellite images acquired by the National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency (NGA): a long-nosed NGA spokesman, Marshal Hudson is reported to have told the British Times newspaper that his agency had been monitoring Sri LankaƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s conflict zone for the State Department and he has some ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-evidenceƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚!

They worked hard to secure the minimum number of signatures required to schedule a session of the UNHRC; having just managed 17 votes through possible collaboration of one or two puppet governments, coercion of others and of course, a certain level of bribery and corruption, now the long noses are attempting to gain as much out of this sneaky, nonsensical exercise as possible.

As with every move of the US, there are a number of fraudulent motives behind their campaign to call up a UNHRC meeting on Sri Lanka, as well as their offer of ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-secret satellite intelligenceƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚. The motives include: the need to divert world attention from Afghanistan; spreading misinformation about the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-intelligence capabilityƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ of the ruling military-industrial-scientific complex; justification of the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-raison d’etreƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ of the NGA; and to influence the share price of the company that is providing the satellite services to NGA.

The US secret service infrastructure (its embassy and diplomatic network, other aid agency and NGO fronts) assisted by Reuters, AFP and AP spend as much time spreading misinformation as they do gathering information. This is done with the aim of misleading countries like China and Russia about their military capabilities.

The NGA long-nose Marshall Hudson has boasted that the agency had been ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-monitoring the conflict zoneƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ during the final stages of its battle against the LTTE, and had provided images to the State Department. He also boasts that the NGA has software which can recognise and analyse differences between images ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-that could indicate damages from bombs or heavy artilleryƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚: this claim is simply ridiculous.

As a person with over two decades of familiarity with the inner workings of the Western military and other intelligence apparatus, this writer can vouch that there is no practical way how any satellite image (of whatever resolution) could be used: a) to pass judgment on the strength of the artillery used in a battle field; and b) more importantly, to determine as to ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-whoƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ fired any such artillery. One only needs the most superficial knowledge about satellites and satellite images to understand the totally ridiculous nature of this bluff.

One of the best examples of the limitations of satellites as a spying tool came from India and Pakistan in 1998: America‘s intelligence agencies with satellites, communications intercepts, agents and analysts, were unable to detect India‘s Pokhran nuclear tests of 11 May 1998, or the subsequent Pakistani tests. The US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman at the time, Richard Shelby, called it a “colossal failure” by the CIA. The explanation of the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”master of lyingƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ the CIA Director at the time, George Tenet (not the real name) was that India deliberately chose a period of frequent sandstorms to conduct the underground blasts!

In a nutshell, nothing much about satellite capability to monitor things on the surface of the Earth has changed since then, despite incremental increases in the resolution of images. The frequency of satellite cover is predictable and its imaging capability is seriously affected by natural factors.

Visible satellite images are essentially photographs of physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth from space, obtained as part of what the spy communities grandiosely call “geospatial intelligence”. Such images depend on visible light for clarity of detail and therefore obtainable during daylight hours only, and is affected greatly by the cloud cover. Infrared satellite technology that is used to overcome such problems is of no great help either due to the lower resolution of the images.

The utility of satellite images is, at best, limited to military mapping and planning missions only, when accompanied by extensive digital analysis and interpretation in the light of information from other sources; it is not useful for much else. Most satellite imagery needs to be supplemented with aerial photography which has higher resolution, but is more expensive to obtain. It is well known that the commercial aeroplanes flown by most Western airlines are discreetly fitted with spy cameras to obtain such data.

Hudson has admitted to the Times that the resolution of the satellite pictures did not exceed half a meter per pixel and did not allow night vision. However, he has hedged his bets by saying that the NGA used ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-software to recognise and analyse difference between images that could indicate damages from bombs or heavy artilleryƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚. If they are planning to correlate something like the diameter of a speck in their ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-high-techƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ image with the explosive power of artillery, they will only be kidding themselves!

In order to understand the fraud involved in the Yankee promotion of such inexact technology for the purpose of determining whether the Sri Lankan government forces used heavy artillery, one needs to understand the background to the players and events involved. ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ 

The NGA, the prime culprit in this conspiracy was formerly known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), tasked with supporting the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-state of readinessƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ of US military forces. NIMA was renamed NGA, and is currently located in Bethesda, Maryland, but will eventually be relocated in 2011 at the New Campus East to be constructed near Fort Belvoir, VA.

The US government’s most ambitious spy satellite program ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-Future Imagery ArchitectureƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ (FIA) designed to equip the NGA with state-of-the-art imagery failed after five years of R&D by Boeing, at a cost of than $10 billion, forcing the NGA to get its raw imagery from commercial operations. The GIA uses images from the GeoEye-1 commercial satellite that orbits the Earth 423 miles above. Moving at 4.5 miles per second, it passes over any given point on earth once every three days. This means that there is a gap of three days between any two photographs of the Sri Lankan battle zone the GIA will receive!

The NGA GeoEye-1 satellite is owned by a company named ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-GeoEyeƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ based in Dulles, Virginia that sells imagery obtained through three Earth imaging satellitesƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬‚GeoEye-1, IKONOS and OrbView-2, to the CIA, Departments of defense and Homeland Security, airlines and shipping lines and oil and gas companies. GeoEye is publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

The development and launch of GeoEye-1 was also part funded by the US tax payer to the tune of $237 million, and is contracted to buy $197 million worth of imagery over 18 months; the NGA certainly needs some runs on the board badly to be able to justify these billions of expenditure to the US tax payer, and some commercial income to survive!

They canƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢t be serious in asking the UNHRC to commit people for ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”war crimesƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ based on images collected once every three days from an area so adjacent to the Bay of Bengal, a part of the Earth where dense cloud cover is normal as evidence to prove that they used more power than was necessary!

Luckily, this discussion is moot because the purpose of this conspiracy is to save NGAƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s skin and to raise the share price of GeoEye by informing NASDAQ of its ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”future potentialƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢.

The State Department has bought a puppy!!!