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Letters

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Please note: This Letters page is intended primarily for readers to comment on ATol articles or related issues. It should not be used as a forum for readers to debate with each other. The Edge is the place for that. The editors do not mind publishing one or two responses to a reader's letter, but will, at their discretion, direct debaters away from the Letters page.

June 2008

Saleem Shahzad never blinks on his fondest subject [Re: Islamabad blinks at Taliban threat, June 28]. I wish him some respite. I wish him sweet dreams of his fond old memories. But he is like a fox dreaming of hens ... Why doesn't Saleem Shahzad realize: it is a freedom struggle. They are not Taliban but Afghans fighting to liberate their occupied land destroyed by Musharaff-Bush-NATO .Why does not Saleem Shahzad study history and tell Americans the truth? Stop this madness of the neo-cons' dream, to ... save America from the disintegrative process already fast engulfing it.
Wariss Shaw
Jhang, Pakistan (Jun 30, '08)

[Re: Islamabad blinks at Taliban threat, June 28] Islamabad indeed did blink, but today it is fighting back in Peshawar where an Islamist warlord is challenging Pakistan's central authority and wanting to impose the full power of sharia dos and don'ts. Pakistan's civilian government and military authorities have to deal with the deadly fruit of past military and civilian rule which fostered the growth of militant Islam in the tribal areas of Waziristan. At times, Islamabad followed the British imperial example of terror to quiet rebellion in the border provinces; at other moments, it engaged in negotiations and bribery to keep the peace. Yet, it has gleaned mixed results, the more especially since Taliban rule in Afghanistan allowed Pakistan to maintain what it considers its sphere of influence. The overthrow of the Taliban upset Islamabad's apple cart. The spread of militant Islam in Pakistan itself, which presidents like Zia Ul-haq and Nawaz Sharif encouraged and Benazir Bhutto tolerated, challenge the very foundations of Pakistan itself. As such, a rival focus of power in Peshawar and in unstable Waziristan cannot be tolerated, and hence the use of force to reassert the iron rule of the central government, the more especially since smoking the pipe of peace only encouraged the tribal warlord. Politically militant Islam is reactionary, and in the Peshawar example is regional in scope, and thus is bound to fail. The strategic use of the Pakistani army perforce has to be continuous in calming a turbulent border region and at the same time, Islamabad has to reach out to the tribes to ameliorate living conditions. It is ironic to remark that at the time of partition a tolerant and progressive Islam prevailed in Waziristan, one which even went as far as being against separation of Pakistan from India. The alliance of civilian and military leadership and muscular Islam has led to the internecine warfare and temporary truces we are seeing in Waziristan. Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 30, '08)

I really enjoyed reading A new wrinkle in Japan�s porn boom by William Sparrow [June 28]. We have a saying, "A man and a horse never get [too] old for procreation". I am not, however, sure if every man would be as fortunate as Shigeo Tokuda in virility and courageous enough to show his private parts to female audiences. I do wish him good luck over the age of 100. ...
Saqib Khan
UK (Jun 30, '08)

[ US and China go bump in the Middle East , June 28] China may think that, and act as though, its presence in the Middle East will not clash with America's interests there. Beijing is engaged in wishful thinking. Alan Greenspan, in his memoir The Age of Turbulence, makes the point keenly: President George W Bush's war in Iraq is about oil, and since the Middle East is the fountainhead of oil in the black gold rush of the age, China's profession of its truth goes against the swing of logic of the geopolitical reality there. China's relations with oil-rich Iran and its willingness to provide Tehran with nuclear technology simply make its words ring hollow, the more especially since Mr Bush has been pursuing a bellicose policy, short of war, against Iran's mullahs. Subjectively, if not objectively, in its pursuit for oil, China will continue to bump the US as Washington tries to secure a dominant hold on the Middle East's oil and gas reserves. And this will remain true despite a change of the guard at the White House in January 2009.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 30, '08)

Regarding the article China toys with India's border [June 27], [this] is a problem that India had to deal with since the 1962 incursion of China plus all the other "claims" and downright incursions into India's land. It is time for India to take on China with hard-core diplomacy. If China feels unfettered to interfere in India's territory then why shouldn't India join with the US and support Taiwan's independence? These incursions by the Chinese into Indian territory seldom, if ever, get reported in the media. But if India takes a strong stand that if China continues its surreptitious activity, all it will take India is to strongly endorse Taiwan's independence by word, sale of weaponry, transfer of military technology, and the training of Taiwan's military. This will hit world news and all the secret activity of China regarding India' border can be brought to the world's attention as an explanation of India's support for Taiwan's independence.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, USA (Jun 30, '08)

[Re Cheerleaders turn backs on reality, June 27] John Browne has every right to be angry at the current state of financial reporting and commentary in today's media. It is as though the pundits or as Browne calls them "cheerleaders" are stuck in the hoary days of the counterculture, when transactional analysis was king. If I'm alright, then you're alright. This mindset is seen in the corporate world. Ask anyone how he feels [and] if he doesn't reply with a hearty "great", you wonder if he is really a team player or even someone not to be trusted, or worse. And the same thinking obtains in today's topsy-turvy financial and corporate market, which has gone beyond Candide's Dr Pangloss who sees the world through rose-colored glasses. Take yesterday's announcement by the US Federal Reserve that interests rate wouldn't fall nor rise. That's hardly news, for its chairman Ben Bernanke had announced this non-event months before. Today the Dow Jones Average tanked; many rushed in to buy, which is in itself not unusual, but no one dwells on the the corrosive effects of the subprime cancer, nor rising unemployment, nor in general the sad state of the US economy. Browne suggests that rank-and-file investors are beginning to understand the current crisis which no one dare call by its rightful name of recession. Better late than never. What we are witnessing is a visceral aversion of the cheerleaders in president Bush's America, to face reality. Browne in his frustration as a market analyst is issuing a clarion call which apparently is falling on deaf ears. ... The bills to pay for the cheerleaders' sanguine view of today's volatile markets are coming due, and these very suppliers of pap and false hopes will undoubtedly point the finger of blame at everyone else but themselves.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 27, '08)

[Re Cheerleaders turn backs on reality, June 27] Three cheers for John Browne for saying it like it is. Give him an "I" (Inflation); give him an"R" (recession); give him an "S" (stagflation). He correctly points out that when the pundits of government and Wall Street speak of the economy, we know the opposite of what they say is the truth.
Tom Gerber
USA (Jun 27, '08)

Regarding the article China toys with India's border, by Sudha Ramachandran [June 27]: I think the author has missed out one angle in an otherwise excellent article. China is a dictatorship, and hence perpetually in need of an "enemy" against which peoples' anger and frustration may be directed. The Great Leaders of the Glorious Chinese Communist Party cannot be held accountable by the people (via genuine elections), so when large parts of the population are growing restive or rebellious because they feel that their fair share of economic progress is not trickling down to them, then it becomes time for the leaders to divert their attention by waving the flag and whipping up patriotic feeling to reclaim some territory. ATol itself published some articles a while back about how anti-Japanese sentiments are whipped up whenever Chinese leaders want to divert attention away from their own actions or inactions. Notably, China's 1962 border war with India to "reclaim Chinese territory" occurred exactly when Chairman Mao was facing serious challenges to his leadership following the Great Leap Forward fiasco (upwards of 15 million Chinese wiped out in the process of "modernization").
Amit Sharma
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (Jun 27, '08)

North Korea has handed over today in Beijing, a report of its nuclear activities. As a consequence, US President George W Bush dryly informed his country that he has suspended provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act as it applies to Pyongyang, and that within 45 days he will ask Congress to remove North Korea from the list of terrorist countries. Donald Kirk is right to see in Mr Bush's announcement a "remarkable diplomatic about-face" and a "step down" in seven years of playing hardball with Kim Jong-il's regime. No amount of reasonable explanations or cunning arguments can hide the fact that another panel of the Bush administration's muscular foreign policy has collapsed utterly. It had unwittingly turned North Korea into a member of the nuclear club, and then and only then, did cooler heads prevail in Washington, to engage Pyongyang in negotiations leading up to today's outcome. Establishment of diplomatic relations with Kim Jong-il is but a logical outcome. In certain quarters in the US, Mr Bush's words will be met with disbelief, derision, and cynicism, which is not surprising. Nonetheless, Mr Bush's actions have a broader meaning. In a way, he has sacrificed on the altar of expediency the political survival of South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak, who ditched Seoul's Sunshine Policy and hurried off to Washington after his inauguration in March 2008, to firm up relations with the US, which has put his occupancy in the Blue House in great jeopardy by allowing again the importation of US beef. After all, it is the American president's only significant win in a much troubled and disastrous foreign policy of adventurism and missed opportunities. Mr Bush's move might sound the knell on his dealing with Iran, and perhaps make it easier for his successor in the White House to disengage from Iraq. Over all, undoubtedly, Mr Bush's unilateralism in foreign affairs is a sorry tale of playing for time which will not look kindly on its amateurism.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 27, '08)

[Re Oil speculators leave giveaway print, June 27] Much as Thomas Palley may be correct in identifying speculation as a cause of some of the current oil price appreciation, his advice as to what to do about it is ridiculous. If consumers fill their cars with half a tank when they expect prices to rise, then they lose the additional cost incurred when refilling their tank after the oil price has risen in the meantime. Sensible economic behavior is that if you know you'll need something in a week, and it's likely to be more expensive in a week, buy it now. If the best advice professional economic pundits can give on how to rein in oil prices is to hurt oil speculators by only buying half a tank, then my guess is that prices will continue to go up. In a battle of wills between cash-strapped consumers and uber-liquid oil speculators there'll be only one winner. We are all speculators now.
Sebastian Dakin
Fukuoka, Japan (Jun 27, '08)

China and Taiwan off to a flying start [June 26] raises an interesting non-stated question. The dialogue between Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) has two official bodies of two different political entities, which one would normally call "states", meeting to iron out a common agreement concerning tourism. Are we witnessing a back channel and de facto recognition by Beijing of a separate and independent Taiwan?
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 26, '08)

[Re Neo-con redux?, June 26]. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be for America's neo-cons. Douglas Feith's book has been received with a yawn of disbelief since he is trying to dissociate, and not very successfully, from President Bush's war policies. Paul Wolfowitz, still stung by his forced resignation from the World Bank, may offer revisionist perspectives but he is preaching to the converted. Donald Rumsfeld's awaited apologia pro sua vita [Latin: a defense of one's life] as secretary of defense will meet with a critical and hostile reception, it is easy to say. Vice President Dick Cheney may have a following of sorts, but he is much mocked or excoriated by his own citizens. The American people have turned their back on the war in Iraq by a strong majority of public opinion; they are simply wishing that it would go away. (Afghanistan is a NATO-led military venture so opinions are mixed.) The spate of printer's ink will flow more thickly once the Bush administration is out of office. However, John McCain has embraced a modified neo-con viewpoint; in this, he is ably assisted by Richard Armitage, the man who unwittingly outed, he says, Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, and was on Colin Powell's staff when the general was Bush's first secretary of state. Armitage, a Vietnam vet, was a skilful linebacker in his career as a foreign service officer; he speaks seemingly softly but his fists are clenched to hit his opponents. He is a traditional conservative who will help John McCain embrace a nuanced neo-con's Cold War view on Iraq and Afghanistan. And his influence is showing in McCain's public utterances. On the other hand, Senator Obama's campaign will go toe-to-toe to counter McCain's rhetoric and hawkish pronouncements. Professor Ehsan Ahari may feel gratified to learn that the US State Department is floating the idea of restaffing its long closed embassy in Tehran. Which brings us full circle to the realization that neo-cons can never claim the disastrous ground that they once held, and that any reappearance of neo-conservatism will perforce bear features of a marked revisionism.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 26, '08)

Ismael Hossein-zadeh [Are they really oil wars?, June 25] writes that the Peak Oil theory is "unscientific" and "perhaps even fraudulent". I hope he doesn't mean that oil deposits are a bottomless barrel, because then he will have a hard time getting himself heard in any serious publications dealing with energy issues. How will he explain that US oil production has been falling since the 1970s, and that the North Sea (one of his "promising examples") is virtually collapsing at rates of around 10% per year, after reaching a peak in 1999? F W Engdahl, whom Hossein-zadeh cites in his article, would like us to believe depleted wells replenish themselves, with oil bubbling up from the Earth's mantle, but nevertheless, post-peak wells keep producing less and less. Tar sands? Whatever the costs of tar/oil sands, out of 4.5 million barrels expected to be produced by 2020, only 450,000 will be conventional light and medium crude. By comparison, Saudi Arabia produces close to 10 million. Offshore production is severely limited because of the absence of rigs, and anyway, most of the new fields have yet to go into operation, when real rates of production can be established. All the renewable energy sources in the world won't be able to replace even 10% of non-renewables. Nuclear is out of reach for most developing countries around the world, and carries serious risks. And has Hossein-zadeh wondered where the hydrogen for fuel cell cars comes from? Does he, according to his flat-earth worldview, believe that the cells just run on air? It is true there is an excess of oil now, but that doesn't mean it isn't running out, and by pointing to the role of speculation and war in price spikes, Hossein-zadeh implies that the international market for oil doesn't reflect the true value of it. So, how can he really judge whether Peak Oil is a fraud? It is certainly science - it is falsifiable, as anyone who wanted to disprove it can show that all the wells that peaked suddenly returned to peak production rates. But no one has done that, not so far. The number of discoveries of new oil deposits itself peaked in the 1950s, and has continued on a downward slope since then. Couple that with the post-peak depletion of a considerable part of these, and you have the foundations of Peak Oil. It is no longer a question of "if", but of "when".
Carlos from Ecuador (Jun 26, '08)

Is Russia again in the Great Game in Central Asia? With due respect to former ambassador M K Bhadrahumar [Russia joins the war in Afghanistan, June 25], it does not seem so at first glance, and neither at a second look. By agreeing in principle at a joint counter-terrorism committee meeting in Moscow, the US is allowing Russia an opening to arm the Afghan army and in a small way to re-assert its traditional role in the heart of Central Asia. The agreement is not an "extraordinary comeback" but a controlled entry to the NATO-led war against the Taliban. It couldn't be otherwise. Moscow is not committing any troops; memories are too fresh and [painful] of their long and disastrous war in Afghanistan. Nowhere mentioned in Russia ... do we hear of Russia's endless war in Chechnya nor Moscow's provocative military forays in Georgia. Another way of looking at the US move on the Central Asian chessboard is that owing to the scam that an Albanian contractor played on the US by supplying antiquated weapons and ammunition from China for the NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, the US has found in Russia a safer purveyor of weapons and its geographical proximity to the theater of war makes better sense - and better rubles. Additionally, the joint agreement puts a wedge in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, thereby taking advantage of the lack of favor China shows for Sino-Russian military maneuvers in Central Asia. So, we can posit that with a flourish of the pen, Washington, in a Nixonesque moment, has succeeded in weakening the SCO which pundits are thinking of as a challenge to American global hegemony. Moscow willingly grasped at the opportunity to begin repairing its reputation and re-emerging as a player in a more complex Central Asian setting. And therein lies, it seems, the breakout of encirclement that Washington had originally envisioned when it overthrew the Taliban. But its lack of strategic focus and ill-fated war in Iraq has helped revive Russia's historical hopes.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 25, '08)

The rumor mills are grinding finely the grist of "it is supposed that" and "it is thought that" ever since US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mentioned that North Korea was going to release finally a full account of its nuclear activities [A secret US handshake with Pyongyang, June 25]. Now the US has gone through 18,000 documents which Pyongyang handed over to Washington two months ago, and according to reports in the American press of note, it seems that under President George W Bush, US intelligence sources overestimated and possibly conflated the North Korean uranium enrichment program. So, it is likely that Kim Jong-il's regime will meet the terms of the 2007 agreement, but we won't know that until next week or the week after. If it does, then Ralph Cossa's worst suspicions may come true, ie, that Washington will remove Pyongyang from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List and Trading with the Enemy Act. If that comes to pass, Mr Bush will have scored a major foreign policy breakthrough in a minefield of his administration's foreign policy; a breakthrough more astonishing owing to his initial views on North Korea and his low esteem, if not contempt, for Kim Jong-il. Rumor has it that President Bush is planning a trip to South Korea in July, which would put in jeopardy his newly found ally President Lee Myung-bak who is in bad order with his own people, and if this is so, it wouldn't startle some Korea watchers that the American president might fly to Pyongyang, which would torpedo the political survival of Mr Lee. Stranger things have happened before in American politics.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 25, '08)

The author of Are they really oil wars? [June 25] provides a long overdue examination of the motives of US foreign policy in the Middle East. He correctly questions the most popular variations of theories advancing the motive of oil as the pivotal explanation of US Middle Eastern policies. After discrediting theories having to do with the business interests of US oil companies, he argues that the causes can be found in US militarism, its pursuit of global dominance and above all the domination of its foreign policy decision making by Israeli imperialists. In attempting to discredit oil as the principle motive for the US invasion of Iraq and its heavy military presence in the Middle East, the author attempts to discredit the "Peak Oil" theory. His discussion indicates that he has understood little of what he has read about peak oil except to note the obvious logical irrefutability of the proposition that after consuming large quantities of a finite resource like oil, the world will find it more difficult and eventually impossible to obtain that resource at a cost that makes sense - either in monetary terms or in terms of the laws governing the physical world. I'll leave it to the reader to explore why few, if any, of the author's objections to the "Peak Oil" theory are correct. Their Zionist-militarist explanation suffers from a logical flaw almost as serious: the assumption that US foreign policy is not dominated by hard-headed policy makers acutely aware of their own interests and how to pursue them. For such people, power for the sake of power makes no more sense than selfless altruism. These interests may be hard to see because of their subtle complexity and all the red herrings spread before a public whose cooperation in their pursuit is vital. The subterfuge is necessary because the interests of the US ruling class are increasingly at odds with the survival of its own people and probably, that of the rest of the world. In a nutshell, those interests congeal around the use of money, the US dollar, [and] to control as much of the world's wealth as possible.
Steven Lesh (Jun 25, '08)

What a contrast in quality! I can hardly believe that anything written by esteemed M K Bhadrakumar [Russia joins the war in Afghanistan, June 25] can be found on the same web-page as yet another raving lunacy by Martin Hutchinson [A new model for nastiness, June 25]. While value of diversity might justify lowering of editorial standards from time to time, this degree of slippage on a weekly basis completely negates any benefits that might have been achieved. Besides, ATol already has two in-house clowns (Spengler and Mogambo) and certainly has no obvious need for one more. What it does need, however, is to alert relevant authorities that Mr Hutchinson may be skipping doses of his anti-psychotic medications, or resorting to self-treatment with other ... substances. No one in his right mind can have a view of the world this distorted, I would think.
Oleg Beliakovich
Seattle (Jun 25, '08)

[Re Vietnam�s hard lesson for China, June 25]. In the coming months to a year, we may well see one or two large Asian economies go south, with the most susceptible being the ones whose financial markets are propped up by foreign investments. Vietnam's current nightmare does not stem from the government's inaptitude in managing the crisis; rather, the seeds of disaster were planted long ago when the country's economic planners eagerly and indiscriminately embraced foreign investments. Once a large pool of foreign capital was allowed to become the foundation of its economy, the Southeast Asian nation's economic fate was essentially given to the mercy of foreigners. In the current international system dominated by a fiat currency that is prone to manipulation, movements of the US dollar can wipe out nations' entire treasuries overnight. As the American economy slides deeper into recession and desperately needs an infusion of capital, look for an upward revaluation of the dollar, which would attract the "hot" money currently residing in Asia back to the US while leaving a number of Asian economies high and dry.
John Chen
USA (Jun 25, '08)

I wish to comment on Pakistan calls the shots [June 25] by Syed Saleem Shahzad. Pakistan is no position to call the shots as claimed by the author as it is going through ... upheaval because of political instability, dissension and cut-throat policies of the PPP [Pakistan People's Party] government to destabilize the PML-N [Pakistan Muslim League] led by Nawaz Sharif. However, I agree with Saleem Shahzad that America is playing its game; al-Qaeda is playing its own and the Taliban are prospering in their strategy to take over Afghanistan. It is only because of Nawaz Sharif's rapid ascendancy in the elections that the US is bearing with the PPP government and going along with dismay in its negotiation with the Taliban. Millions of Pakistanis have always doubted and still doubt Asif Zardari's ... past and character ... With people like him and other feudal lords taking over the helm of Pakistan government, the future looks gloomy ... The Taliban and al-Qaeda detect serious dissension and flaws within the PPP ruling party and PML-N, and the so-called "reconciliation", and are prospering rapidly in many parts of Pakistan and within the armed forces. It is in the interest of Pakistan to adopt a non-confrontational policy with the Taliban [because] the major parties have failed to agree on the fundamental mandate [on the] restoration of the sacked judiciary. I believe that Asif Ali Zardari is the wrong man at the wrong the time and in the wrong position to dictate economics, or the domestic and foreign policies of Pakistan ... It is only because of the presently weak Pakistani political situation that [Afghanistan] recently threatened to send troops into Pakistan territory to fight the alleged Afghani freedom fighters.
Jalal Ahmed Rumi (Jun 25, '08)

[Re Pakistan calls the shots, June 25]: The rejection of Mr Nawaz Sharif's nomination for contesting the National Assembly election by the Lahore High Court ... is another sad moment in the political history of Pakistan. Mr [Pervez] Musharraf's anointed judiciary is pliant in the act. ... Asif Zardari is now politically protecting Musharraf by not restoring deposed judges ... for the fear of an independent judiciary [with] independent decisions. It also suits him to keep Nawaz Sharif out of the National Assembly and looks to be secretly in league with Musharraf on such issues.
Wariss Shaw
Jhang, Pakistan (Jun 25, '08)

Peter Schiff speaks with unusual candor. What he is saying in The Fed unreserved [June 24] is heard in whispers in the corridors of government or think-tanks or universities, but rarely reaches the public eye or ear. Mr Schiff is not crying wolf; he sees how current trends are driving the US into a deep recession and possibly worse. Ben Bernanke and the clueless Hank Paulson and, of course, that artful dodger of rhetoric Alan Greenspan have a lot to own up to in the seemingly never-ending real estate and credit bubbles, which are sapping the strength of the US economy and eroding Americans' standard of living. Yet, they front for President Bush, whose slack hold on power favors the private sector over public control and oversight. As such, Mr Bush's economy policy is in shambles. And his minions at the Fed or the Treasury are striking financial waters with a sabre of the unfettered free market, and, like the ancient warrior who commanded the waves to calm, they cannot control the forces at play in the market which, when it comes down to fundamentals, they do not understand. If the foxes are in the US economy's henhouse, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the president.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 24, '08)

In reference to Spenglers article Worst of times for Iran [June 24]: I think Spengler means Israel instead of Iran. Kleptocracy (Olmert under investigation), Israeli mafia running prostitution rings around the world, and despite billions of dollars from Americans, Europeans and even African countries (South Africa particularly), Israel suffers from high inflation and there is a gap between the rich and poor. [Also] Palestinians are being deliberately marginalized. Spengler should do a search and replace of his article and replace Iran with Israel and then he would have hit the nail on the head.
Vincent Maadi
Cape Town (Jun 24, '08)

Regarding Worst of times for Iran [June 24]: Spengler has based his article on the presumption that Ahmadinejad is in peril because his domestic position has become weak and political rivals in the Iranian clergy are conspiring his downfall. As always, Spengler has fallen back to his usual wishful thinking [and] is burning far too many midnight candles writing laborious articles. ... The fact of the matter is that the Iranians are well equipped with formidable WMDs and an abundant fighting force. ... In the event of any war, they will not be fighting with the sticks, stones and marbles as the Palestinians do but will retaliate with the mighty force of religious fervor and will give a bloody nose to Israeli whims. ... President Bush is facing such a backlash at home with his failed Iraq and domestic policies that he will not be able to cobble together necessary backing for a US-led attack, but would not mind to make [Israel] a sacrificial lamb to embrace his whims. One thing that Spengler does not understand is that an important element of Iranian national strategy and military is its ability to conduct terrorist operations in the very heart of Israel with the help of Hezbollah, Hamas and global Muslim fighters. ... Ever since Ahmadinejad made that remark in December 2005 that the Holocaust was a "myth", it has been construed as good enough reason for [Israel] and President Bush to punish Iran. With the oil crisis now jeopardizing Western economies, the need has become so much more urgent to invade Iran and occupy its oil fields.
Saqib Khan UK (Jun 24, '08)

Is Vietnam quickly becoming an economic basket case? Yes and no. As Chan Akya argues in Vietnam's hard economic lesson for China [June 24], currency speculation has driven up the value of the dong, thus affecting the competitiveness of Vietnam's exports, and turning a roaring economic tiger into a toothless lion. Yet, anyone who has ever gone to Vietnam knows that a dong was the equal of a US dollar, and that in the market place you had parity of value. With a sagging US dollar, financial markets are ripe for speculation and mischief in currency manipulation. Weakness in the US dollar opens up creative avenues for selling short on a targeted country's money. And Vietnam is but one example of such keen practices. It is cloudy as to what rational understanding means in Chan Akya's piece, but one meaning is clear: that a command economy in a communist-run Vietnam is incapable of solving the run on the dong or combating inflation. ... This said, it is questionable how Vietnam is a tale of caution for China to ponder. China has run away inflation, a currency pegged to the US dollar which Beijing steadfastly refused to revalue, since exports to the US tipped the American trade deficit to China's advantage, and a command economy. Communist China may serve as a tale of woe for the rest of Asia, since it, despite huge cash reserves, is not handling the effects of a weak dollar and the negative performance of a global economy seriously and is becoming more and more dysfunctional. On the other hand, if Vietnam's economic downturn is becoming a regional horror story, how can you explain the following: companies are fleeing China because labor and manufacturing costs are rising, and are finding Vietnam a welcome home?
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 24, '08)

Regarding Why Iraq won't be South Korea [Jun 20], Pepe Escobar rightly suggests that the brazen attempt by the Bush administration to strengthen its stranglehold on the war-torn nation of Iraq through the implementation of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is driven by not only the forces of nationalism and imperialism, but by those of an associated racism towards Arabs and Muslims. One of America's leading exponents of black liberation theology during the 1960s, James Cone, provides a most damning indictment of the racism that still exists in America today and how it is effectively played out in US foreign policy. In the preface to the 1970 edition of his book A Black Theology of Liberation, he states:

Insofar as this country is seeking to make whiteness the dominating power throughout this world, whiteness is the symbol of the Antichrist. Whiteness characterizes the activity of deranged individuals intrigued by their own images of themselves, and thus unable to see they are what is wrong with the world. Black theology seeks to analyze the satanic nature of whiteness and by doing so to prepare all nonwhites for revolutionary action.

When US President George W Bush first sought to present the case for an invasion of Iraq before the United Nations General Assembly in February 2003, it is no coincidence that it was presented by a black man, the then secretary of state Colin Powell. His successor, Condoleezza Rice, has in all likelihood been chosen to further advance the concealment of any hint that American foreign policy is somehow being conducted in the name of white supremacy. But the true test will surely come if Senator Barack Obama is elected president. He will be faced with the indomitable choice of whether to perpetuate the discredited policies of the Bush administration, which have clearly run their course in Iraq, or whether to pursue a policy that will herald a new revolution in race relations - one where America is no longer derided as "the symbol of the Antichrist".
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra (Jun 23, '08)

The article India tiptoes to the new Middle East [June 21] by M K Bhadrakumar is illuminating. But one conclusion regarding India's relationship with the Arab nations puzzles me. In the article, India considers the Middle East as its "extended neighborhood". I do not believe the reverse is true. The Muslim Middle East has never considered predominantly Hindu India as the Arab world's "extended neighborhood". The Arab nations paid little heed to the myriad problems India has faced after her independence and I doubt if the Arabs will consider "Hindu" India as an extension of their culture and traditions and come to India's rescue when India faces another possible catastrophe.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, USA (Jun 23, '08)

Dear Syed Saleem Shahzad, thank you for your insightful articles on Pakistan and Afghanistan! Your recent piece, Taliban raise a storm in Kandahar [June 20] was of particular interest to me in that it suggests the Taliban may be reading from Vietnamese General [Vo Nguyen] Giap's career and mounting a Tet Offensive-like campaign. Kandahar - the new Hue. [The campaign could] shake local confidence in NATO, build Taliban cadre, kill nascent local coalition-backed leaders, seize Kandahar for a while and further disquiet the American electorate on the eve of an election. The Tet Offensive was conducted between January 30 and September 23, 1968. Nixon was elected for his first term in November 1968.
Roger G Macdonald (Jun 23, '08)

Regarding the article Nuclear find raises the ante against Iran [June 18], the question that needs to be asked is what does this "find" have to do with Iran? What is written as far as Iran is concerned is based on speculation and conjecture. There is not one credible iota of evidence that Iran is engaged in a nuclear weapons program. This is the consensus reached by 16 US national intelligence agencies in December of 2007. It is also what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in its report of May 2008, that "it should be emphasized, however, that the agency has not detected the actual use of nuclear materials in connection with the alleged studies". The IAEA further stated that after 14 unannounced inspections in the last 13 months, "the agency has been able to continue to verify" that Iran has not diverted any of its declared nuclear materials to military use. The continuous evidence-free noise and at times, outright lies, coming from the Bush/Cheney neo-con cabal and parroted around Washington and the world that Iran is engaged in a nuclear weaponization program is just that - noise. These kinds of charges deny the evidence presented by US intelligence agency findings and findings of international bodies. It is like Groucho Marx used to say, "don't believe your lying eyes". And when articles like this appear, one wonders if this is what Scott McClellan (Bush's former press secretary) meant when he spoke about "complicit enablers". Clearly, Goebbels' "big lie" techniques - bullying threats and sanctions - have gone nowhere. For a change, why not try the incentive of unconditional negotiations based on justice and dignity?
Fariborz S Fatemi
Former staff member
House Foreign Affairs Committee
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
McLean, Virginia, USA (Jun 23, '08)

It was [just] a matter of time before China raised prices on fuel. It was two months earlier than Beijing planned, according to Olivia Chung [China fuel hike shakes up markets, June 21]. If any proof be needed, it is obvious that China has become part and parcel of the vagaries and whims of world capitalism. How could it be otherwise, given its rapid economic development and dependency on infusions of foreign capital? China may have a more rigid command economy than say the US Secretary of the Treasury may like, but markets play havoc in the same way they do for the US or Europe or elsewhere. Higher oil and food prices and natural and political disasters are fueling high inflation in China, and are feeding the small fires of social discontent owing to a lackluster improvement in the standard of living. China also became enamored in the casino capitalism of playing the stock market, into which the little people invested hard-earned cash for immediate get-rich gratification. Well, shares fell sharply in value and the turmoil in commodities and the volatility in capital markets made them poorer. And they are feeding a sharp rise in inflation, for which there is no quick fix and no agreement by international organizations nor bilateral discussions say with the US which is the key to solving the problem. So, China will muddle along like everyone else, but it has deep cash reserves which can cushion some effects of the current global crisis but not enough to rein in inflation in its own backyard.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 23, '08)

[Re Bubbles, risk, crunch and war, June 21] To be sure, the inflatable Professor [Cyrus] Bina could turn his own mother into a Cartesian construct. Is this a joke? "In the grand loop of dynamic interaction?" Is post-modern, post-Marxist academic gibberish funny in Chinese?
B Pilacinski (Jun 23, '08)

The popularly known political commentator and journalist Dhruba Adhikary's article Nepal marching to two drums [June 17] seems very informative, analytical and read-worthy. One can be fully informed about how the real but dirty games are being played by power-hungry politicians from reading the article.The hard effort of the writer in attempting to bring out the real situation needs to be appreciated. In fact, Nepal, small from a territorial point of view but great in high culture and scenic natural beauty, is facing a great threat and a very unique and dangerous situation posed by anti-national internal forces as well as external forces. The existing political power structure has almost captured the nation by undermining and ignoring the people's expectations of peace, stability, economic prosperity and a strong Nepal. On the contrary, they are further worsening the situation by making the nation a captive of indecision. The daily life of general people is becoming harder, the supply of daily goods including drinking water has been decreasing and insecurity and other sufferings taking larger shape. But the leaders have neither time for nor interest in these immediate concerns of the people. The people of Nepal have almost lost their hope of a better and prosperous new Nepal through the ongoing activities of current leaders. One of the greatest and most irreparable mistakes of the current leaders is making a hasty decision in abolishing the monarchy because of the timing and the role of anti-national external forces ... Keeping the institution of the monarchy as a guardian and a symbol of unity would have been of greater benefit to the people and the long-term stability and peace of a unified Nepal.
Dibakar Pant (Jun 20, '08)

Too much of the reporting on Iran is framed on the premise that Iran is the problem. The reality is that Iran is the prize. Iran's energy resources are a prize sought after by the US, Europe, China and India. The US is at a serious disadvantage in competing fairly for this prize (because of its support for Israel; its overthrow of [former prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq]; its invasion of Iraq; and many other reasons), but it also cannot contemplate losing it. Since it absolutely must have it, the US has decided to steal it. By framing the reporting on the premise that Iran is the problem, the media is assisting in this attempted theft by shielding the thieves from view and censure. There are so many possible approaches to theft, and the issue is which of them will eventually be favored by US policy makers. This is how the reporting on Iran should be framed. Will a policy of total rape and pillage like that employed in Iraq be required; or perhaps just a violent mugging will do; or can a non-violent policy of fraud and embezzlement get the job done? Whatever policy is chosen it will certainly be a criminal one. Any reporting that takes the US's false frame that Iran is a problem in need of a solution as its basic premise is not only faulty, it is complicit in an intended crime against the people of Iran.
Terry Greenberg
Vancouver, Canada (Jun 20, '08)

The dynamics of oil and gas have changed, but, as John Browne observes [G-8 fails to sound the charge, June 20], not the thinking of US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson when it comes to free markets and the volatile oil and gas sector. It is common knowledge that the strength or weakness of the US dollar is inextricably tied to the price of a barrel of oil. This truth apparently is either beyond the former CEO of Goldman Sachs or he simply chooses to turn a blind eye to the obvious. Instead, he grasped the meaning of Lord [John] Maynard Keynes' aphorism which more or less goes like this: if you owe the bank a million dollars, you're the bank's prisoner, but if you owe the bank 100 million the bank's your prisoner. And this is certainly true for the US dollar. G-8 countries have snapped up and accumulated America's debt obligations over the years. Their holdings are staggering, and with the deliberate policy of a weak dollar, especially under Mr Bush's watch, the G-8 nations have lost money. What's more, they cannot or will not change currency horses in mid-stream, fearing the worst in world markets. And, Mr Paulson knows this full well. As such, he can speak with effrontery to the G-8 who are looking not only to rescue the dollar from itself but to bolster their positions. And he can get away with it.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 20, '08)

South Korean president Lee Myung-bak has apologized not once but twice for his decision to allow the re-importing of US beef. His show of contrition, as Donald Kirk reports [Presidential apology falls short, June 20] has fallen on deaf ears; it has not put an end to daily protests; nor has he asked for the wall of shipping containers to be dismantled. He remains isolated from his own people. Although he sent his Minister of Trade Kim Jong-hong to Washington to renegotiate the agreement on US beef imports to South Korea, the Bush administration remains cool to Mr Lee's plea. In fact, at one point, the press announced the adjournment of the talks after they had hardly begun. They are now on, but the bargaining will be long and grueling. And even if US trade representative Susan Schwab and the US Department of Agriculture arrive at a solution satisfactory to President Lee, he will have lost face with his own people. Mr Lee's clueless accession to Mr Bush's demands on US beef has left him a weak chief of state. Given the protests and rising inflation and high fuel prices, his stay in office seems untenable. Saying this, it does not necessary follow that the free trade agreement is tied to Mr Lee's political future. For there are enough reasons for South Korea and the United States to ratify it.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 20, '08)

Being a Texan and an engineer in the oil-drilling business, let me offer a perspective that no one in the media has dared to propose, even in whispered prose. The idea is prevalent among all those struggling to pay gasoline bills that they are getting a raw deal, that oil is priced too high, and that it is only the slimy conspiracy between Big Oil and Greedy Politicians that prevents us from enjoying cheaper-than-water fuel for our Hummers. If only we could turn back the clock to the good ol' days, if only we could allow the "free market" to dictate the true price of oil, then milk and honey and crude would flow through the streets again and we could all go back to our profligate ways. But what if oil wasn't overpriced? What if, instead, it is only now that the politics and subsidies of the past have been eliminated from suppressing the true price of oil? What if only now is the price per barrel a real reflection of its vital, life-giving power? Indeed, if you look at petroleum and its derivative products of plastics, medicines, gasoline, lubricants and fertilizers, one could reasonably argue that this liquid paleontological detritus is the very lifeblood of civilization. And just like its biological analog, without it, modern society ceases. I ask you, how much would you pay for your blood? I'll bet a whole lot more than what oil has been priced at for the last 60 years. So perhaps now oil has broken its chains of artificial constraints formed by a cozy relationship between high-living Arab sheikhs and Anglo-American tycoons and is now achieving its long-deserved status. Yes, this bodes ill for the future, but, by borrowing another oft-used analogy, the crackhead will ultimately do anything to satisfy its addiction, everything, that is, except kick their habit.
Hardy Campbell (Jun 20, '08)

Are we all North Koreans now? [June 19] is a spunky headline. It sounds as though it is a catch-all topic on a term-end examination. In reality, the situation is more complex. It is true that the price of a barrel of oil is spiraling upwards; that, obliquely, food prices are soaring; and that natural disasters are increasing more frequently and with serious consequences globally. But to say broadly, everyone is suffering equally, requires a leap of faith. Industrialized countries, which are just as dependent on oil and selective food imports, say, won't see their citizens stripping trees for their bark nor making mud pies mixed with grass to fill empty stomachs as you might see in North Korea or in the Horn of Africa. And then, there a political element which goes understated in John Feffer's reporting. If we look only at the example of North Korea, the demon of famine haunts that country today. Disastrous floods in 2007 doomed that year's harvest; and not only that - with a new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, who initiated a tougher policy towards Pyongyang, the generous humanitarian gifts of much needed fertilizer have all but dried up. Thereby, at one stroke, Mr Lee's new tack has crippled better 2008 crops in North Korea and killed South Korea's Sunshine Policy as we know it. Thus we see that Pyongyang will be more than ever dependent on goods and fertilizer from other sources in exchange for low reserves of hard currency. Contrast this with the Ukraine's breadbasket of large swathes of land offering up wheat; Kiev is equally dependent on import of fuel and has suffered the whims of nature, but to say Ukrainians suffer to the same degree as North Koreans or even starving Ethiopians [shows] the pointlessness of Feffer's question.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 19, '08)

[Re US in military misstep over African oil, June 19] AFRICOM or US Africa Command, is, as Antonia Juhasz correctly observes, based out of harm's way in Germany. She does not ask the obvious question as to why a command with a mission in Africa is in the heart of Europe. The dying Bush administration may be accused of recklessness in foreign policy and military adventurism, but it does draw a line on Africa. The US may have increased imports of oil from Africa, yet it is not wholly dependent on African oil. It has not the imperious need of France to intervene in the internal squabbles of former colonies. In fact, if you look at the first string of countries from which US companies tap into Africa's rich oil deposits, only Nigeria poses a risk, not Libya, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, or Cameroon. The touchy French have hardly blinked an eye when US oil giants signed deals with Gabon. Juhasz enumerates potential flash points; she suggests possible political unrest where so far there is not heavy US oil investment. AFRICOM serves another function: it is in place were a rival power challenges or tries to stop the flow of oil to the West. Africa's messy political disputes dissuade foreign intervention which, as we have seen France's role in Cote d'Ivoire or Chad, is not worth Washington's candle for intervention.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 19, '08)

[Re China has an 'old friend' in Medvedev, June 18] A change in leadership in Russia has not affected the growing relations between Beijing and Moscow. And why should it, strategically or tactically speaking? China and Russia bilaterally, and in a wider and looser [group] of Central Asian and East Asian countries, cooperate on a number of issues. None for these two economically prosperous countries is more important than forming a pole as a countervailing force to President George W Bush's brash and counterproductive unilateralism. So far, identity of views and a common purpose have not proven strong enough to challenge the Bush administration. On one hand, Russia, now in the hands of Dmitry Medvedev, is consolidating the reins of central power which his predecessor and now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin began; on the other China has begun lecturing the US about its cavalier approach to economics, and not only that, Beijing is paying back Washington with lectures on the need for tighter regulation of industry and markets and better financial health. It long remembers smug Washington's hectoring about the evils of a command economy. It is easy to understand China's concerns. It holds billions of US dollars in America's debt, which have greatly depreciated in value owing to a weakening dollar; this is partly Beijing's fault since it steadfastly refused to revalue its currency which it pegged to the US dollar. So its stubbornness has cost it big money. Saying this, the balance of power is not shifting to firm up the Sino-Russian friendship to challenge US hegemony. And with a new president in the White House, conditions may change its nature.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 18, '08)

How many times does the seemingly dying US manufacturing sector have to be drawn and quartered and then cut up into even smaller pieces again? Well, as many times as necessary, it seems, to make a point. The Bear's Lair in The murder of US manufacturing [June 18] draws a bead on General Electric, a multi-billion dollar corporation, to whip. GE is wanting to divest its appliance division, and a Chinese company is waiting in the wings to snap it up for a bargain. IBM cast off its computer business which the Chinese picked up and today we know it, through heavy advertising, as Lenovo. By spinning off its PCs, IBM handed Lenovo a gift of millions that it had spent in research and development and the sweat in grabbing market shares. IBM sold it when the going was too rough and the returns on the bottom line not robust enough for its senior management and institutional shareholders. GE, as Martin Hutchinson observes, will do the same for the very same reasons. The once "cash cow" has dried up. What is left unsaid is that large or even medium-sized corporations are simply following a prescribed scenario of capitalism: huge profits, low costs. Such is the nature of the beast of liberal economics that it seems anachronistic to charge it with murder. The Bear's Lair leaves unmentioned start-up companies in manufacturing which are alive and more or less well in the US. Given the sad shape of today's American economy and the dearth of jobs, US labor relatively speaking is almost at bargain basement prices. The US workforce has an unbeatable record in productivity at falling wages, but transnational corporation like GE and IBM hardly care when it comes to feathering senior management salaries which are questionable, and it highlights that the US government lacks the political will to dun these very companies who have, like Esau, sold America's manufacturing birthright for a mess of potage.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 18, '08)

Spengler's article The pope, the president and politics of faith [June 17] makes some valid points as to the common ground between President George W Bush and Pope Benedict XVI. But, like Saqib Khan correctly pointed out, Spengler also engages in a massive dose of wishful thinking. Ever since it became clear that the Western powers did not have enough soldiers to subdue Muslim unrest, he has been producing bromides speculating that non-European Christians will produce the extra troops needed to subjugate the Saracen. First it was supposed to be Africa, now somehow it is China. No conceivable Chinese government (barring Vichyist ones cooked up in Washington) would abandon the project for an Eurasian Energy and Security Grid in favor of playing Prestor John. And why does he think Chinese Christians would push for this policy en masse in the first place? Dr Sun Yat-sen was a Christian, but that did not stop the West from clinging to its neo-colonial domination of China, so much so that it forced him to look to the Soviets for help. The Taiping King Hong Xiuquan was also a Christian, but that didn't stop the West from sending troops and ships against him. Only naive children or fanatic adults conduct politics based on what values people profess to hold, rather on what they actually do.
Jonathan X (Jun 18, '08)

In his article Myth-makers caught short in oil speculation [June 18] by R M Cutler, citing a Financial Times article, writes that refiners in the US "are paying record premiums for high-quality crude oil ... something that they would hardly be doing in the absence of strong demand in the physical oil market". Yet how does that square with the fact that gasoline demand in the US, the world's largest consumer of crude oil, fell 3.8% from last year? That "the week ending June 6 marked the seventh straight week that gasoline demand has been below 2007 levels," according to an article by Reuters citing data from Mastercard? F W Engdahl's last two articles on oil speculation [Oil price mocks fuel realities, May 24, and Speculators knock OPEC off oil-price perch, May 6, pointed to this odd fact that the Financial Times and Cutler chose to ignore - and this ignorance is the more peculiar in the case of Cutler, given that he's an academic and expert who spends more time researching and thinking over a subject than a mere non-investigative reporter.
Carlos from Ecuador (Jun 18, '08)

[Re Iraq takes a turn towards Tehran, June 17] Sami Moubayed goes from peak to peak. What makes his reporting outstanding is that he understands American foreign policy far better than American reporters do. Contrary to what many Americans think, Barack Obama, if elected president, may end up being worse than George W Bush. It's a dead certainty that John McCain, if elected, will be worse. Among the factors driving the US into a strategic corner is the ballooning national debt together with the weakening dollar. Although the dollar may soon rally for several months, it will then resume the race to the bottom that is drawing in all the world's paper currencies. That means American leaders know they won't always be able to keep replacing the military hardware that their deluded foreign policy is squandering. Their remedy is to use what's left before it becomes obsolete.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, USA (Jun 17, '08)

Re Miracle to mirage in Vietnam, June 17. The Vietnamese economic meltdown provides an excellent case study of a modest nation with out-sized aspirations that wants to run before it knows how to walk. Dizzied by spectacular economic success and intoxicated by massive inflows of foreign investment, the Southeast Asian republic was but a few short months ago walking tall with ambitious designs on being a regional superpower, both economic and geopolitical. Little did the Hanoi mandarins realize that as foreigners were happily helping them draw up blueprints for replacing China as the world manufacturing base and for countering Chinese hegemony, control of the country's economy was unwittingly transferred into strangers' hands. As various theories vie to explain the Vietnamese economy's sudden nosedive, one potential consequence is the specter of another Asian financial crisis, which would scare investment away from Asia and back to the US. To be sure, Vietnam possesses all the attributes needed to become another Asian tiger, but at the moment, the country seems nothing more than a sacrificial lamb at the altar of great-power geopolitics. As such, the manner in which Vietnam emerges from the current unpleasant episode will have ramifications that go far beyond the mere recovery of a dinged dong and of a bruised national ego.
John Chen
USA (Jun 17, '08)

[Re Miracle to mirage in Vietnam, June 17]. The current climate in the stock market, property values, and investment in Vietnam is a reflection of a worldwide economic downturn. Doi Moi or economic restructuring has been able to do so much; lack of political and economic reform, not to mention widespread corruption and regional rivalries and inter-Vietnam Workers Party squabbles, is impeding any sensible way to deal with a faltering economic environment.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 17, '08)

Joseph Winder's advice to the US in Washington fiddles while Seoul burns [June 17] is to give into South Korean "feeling and emotions". I don't think so. The science clearly favors the US's position and the real reasons for the South Korean protests are xenophobia, anti-Americanism and Korean farmers not wanting any competition for their beef which costs more than US$20 a pound. South Korea sells 700,000 cars into the US market to US's sales into Korea of 5,000 cars, and the South Koreans think they are being exploited. Mr Winder claims South Korea is a "linchpin of the United States' Asian security"; I believe it is more like a thorn in our side. The South Korean teachers' union is very left wing and they have been spreading anti-Americanism for more than 20 years. The vast majority of South Koreans under 45 years of age have very negative feelings towards the US. I believe a better policy would be to make South Korea an object lesson for the world and shaky American allies. I believe the US should completely withdraw our forces from Korea, and let South Korea try to deal with the North and China without US backing. What will happen to international investing in South Korea without the US there as a guarantor of Korean stability?
Dennis O'Connell
USA (Jun 17, '08)

[Re US in Washington fiddles while Seoul burns, June 17] Joseph Winder has every reason to worry. Judging by the US Department of Agriculture's dismissal of South Korean president's Lee Myung-bak's plea to renegotiate the agreement on the reintroduction of US beef imports to South Korea, he realizes that Bush administration might not be willing to come swiftly to help him out of his current crisis. Even though he has sent a member of his own government to Washington to reopen talks, the former president of the Korean Economic Institute is uneasy that the minister will go away empty handed. Mr Winder does recognize that Mr Lee is inexperienced in governing a country, his tenure as mayor of Seoul and his uneven record at running Hyundai notwithstanding. It is one thing being mayor or seeing over the affairs of a large private company; it is another thing when you are running the world's 12th largest economy and navigating through the shallow political waters. Mr Lee rode into power with a landslide victory and the goodwill of the business community at home and abroad especially in the US, which at long last had a man in the Blue House who wanted warmer ties and was pro-business. By allowing the import of US beef, not only did Mr Lee show that he was a political novice but more importantly he was insensitive to the desires of ordinary citizens. As a result, spontaneous protests arose and are continuing and growing in scope and depth with each passing day. More and more are heard calls for Mr Lee's resignation. To head off this, his entire cabinet expressed a desire to resign; it wasn't accepted. Mr Lee's decision on beef is causing disruptive economic policies, particularly his plan to accelerate privatization, and has caused a political earthquake. Thus, Mr Winder's angst. He sees current protests threatening the free trade agreement of which he wrote and spoke of highly. He also knows the desultory responses of the Bush administration to crises, which more often than not are ill chosen. In brief, he is hopeful, but at the same time cognizant of the dangers of the US beef fluff up which the sitting US ambassador to Seoul inflamed by the lack of diplomatic tact.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 17, '08)

In reference to the long, brain-twisting article, The pope, the president and politics of faith by Spengler. I would like to tell him that it is his wishful thinking that Muslims in European countries are converting to Christianity and the truth is the other way around. Muslims are buying churches in vast numbers in Europe as the Christians have abandoned their religion and accepted secularism, materialism, greed, moral debauchery and licentiousness as their newly found religion. Mosques are full, but the churches stand empty and are becoming discos or gambling bingos. In the recent visit of President George W Bush to Italy, several Italian newspapers cited Vatican sources suggesting that Mr Bush might be prepared to convert to Catholicism. A source also hinted that Mr Bush is the most "Catholic-minded" president since John F Kennedy. George William Rutler, a New York priest, recently said that President Bush "is not aware of how evangelism by comparison with Catholicism, may seem more limited both theologically and historically". The Vatican plays a duplicitous role against Islam and condones the illegal invasion of Iraq, killing of nearly 1 million innocent Iraqis and destruction of the country. ... Fury still continues and has angered Muslims all over the world over radical remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI last year in a speech during a pilgrimage to his native Germany in which he linked the noble faith of Islam to violence and terrorism, quoting a 14th-century barbaric Christian emperor who said that Prophet Mohammed's command to spread Islam by the sword had produced "evil and inhumane" results. But the Pope's "apology" later on over those Islamophobic remarks failed to calm the outrage over his comments. What made his comments about Islam so incredible was that he conveniently ignored Christianity's own barbarous past ... One must wonder why the Vatican has not played any significant role aimed at building bridges between different cultures and mending what politicians like Bush and Tony Blair destroyed in recent years. Not only did the Pope chose to quote old, highly offensive remarks against the Muslims, he also ignored the fact that during the time the Catholic Church was cementing the barbarism of Europe's dark ages for centuries ... the Muslim world, from southern Europe to China, was setting milestones for literature, philosophy, art, architecture, medicine, chemistry, physics, biology, math and music. Manuscripts on law, botany, etiquette and fashion were being produced and students from Europe, Africa and China converged in their tens of thousands upon the vast and illustrious universities and libraries of Baghdad, Damascus, Cordoba, Seville and Cairo. Charging Islam with intolerance is wrong and ignores the 1,000 years of glorious co-existence among Muslims, Christians and Jews. Islam did not spread by the force of sword. The fact of the matter is that it spread many times, more rapidly at times of peace than it ever did at times of war, both during the time of Prophet Mohammed and ever since, and that’s why it's the fastest growing religion in the world until today.
Saqib Khan
UK (Jun 17, '08)

Regarding Saleem Shazad's Rattled Pakistan looks to Musharraf [June 14]: I do not agree with Saleem Shahzad that Musharraf is the man who can stop further air strikes or land incursions by the NATO forces into Pakistan's territory. Pakistani people will most certainly react most violently against the Americans and NATO countries if any more Pakistani soldiers or civilians are killed or its air space or land are violated. In fact, the whole of the Pakistani nation and not only the lawyers blame Musharraf for the US's repeated incursions and killing of the innocent. Musharraf is living the last of a cat's dangerous lives and hanging by a thread on a thin wire. He is a US puppet who has stooped so low as to allow Pakistani territory to transport arms and logistic supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan. Every Pakistani wants him to leave and be impeached for crimes against the nation. He is probably the most hated and unpopular man in the country at present and the longer he stays in office, [the more] it will help the US to destabilize Pakistan and create dissension among the newly elected politicians. He wanted to be an absolute ruler of Pakistan and in the process made a mockery of Pakistan's constitution and the Supreme Court's chief justice and 60 judges whom he sacked only because they did not stoop to his orders. These judges were mercilessly sacked, house arrested with their families and children and for over four months not paid any salary or compensation, and many were beaten up by his police.
Jalal Ahmed Rumi
Pakistan (Jun 16, '08)

[Re 'Crusading spirit' caught in Thai political mill , June 13] The King has publicly proclaimed the importance of keeping Thailand "Thai". I totally agree with him. It is a beautiful country filled with many places of natural wonder, a fascinating culture and history, friendly people and fresh air; except, of course for Bangkok. Thailand and much of Asia has been embarking on a new era of international education and has many exciting new challenges to overcome to make this new era a reality. When it comes to adopting international educational standards, any system that is explicitly based upon the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of its own culture will have great difficulty integrating into or adopting a system where appointments are made and responsibilities are given based solely upon a meritocracy. A meritocracy may be defined as a system where position is based solely on demonstrated ability (merit) and talent rather than by wealth (plutocracy), family connections (nepotism), class privilege, cronyism, the will of the people (as in democracy) or other historical determinants of social position and political power. Standards based meritocracies are systems that must be blind to arbitrary preferences and are the hallmark of international education. To be truly "international", standards in education must trump any biases. Even when standards are adopted and ethical principles agreed to, independent oversight and strict enforcement is a required component to keep things fair without the necessity to resort to legal action through the courts. Thailand is a wonderful country in which to reside and visit. I hope that it may one day also become a great place for students from foreign lands to come for international education that is admired and recognized globally. Thailand is a Mecca for standardized medical treatment, why not make it the country of choice for international education, too?
Dave Linehan (Jun 16, '08)

Regarding The rise and rise of China's Mr Tears [June 11] by Maochun Yu. It makes many people nervous if the American policy makers rely on excerpts like Maochun Yu of the US Naval Academy for important decisions on Sino-US relations. Maochun Yu, PhD, not only resorted to false information with regard to the flood in Hunan in 1975 by naming it "Yangtze River flood", but also displayed total ignorance concerning the fact that many Tibetans and other ethnic groups live in the recent earthquake disaster area. Premier Wen's eyes were filled with tears when he saw the sufferings of the victims and the loss of lives caused by the natural disaster. The eyes of 1.3 billion Chinese and many in other countries were also filled with tears when they saw on TV what had happened and how the premier was leading the rescue and relief efforts to help the quake victims, including Tibetan Chinese. Yet, Maochun Yu, PhD, should dare to claim that "... the sharpest criticism of Wen's tears has been related to his complete lack of sympathy for the suffering of Tibetans". According to Maochun Yu, the former slaves of his dear political monk, the Dalai Lama, are not Tibetans; only the so-called "freedom fighters" supported by "true democracy" activists are Tibetans though these activists never know or try to define what "true democracy" is. Do they mean the "true democracy" in which a president lied a whole country into a bloody war and then joked about the "weapons of mass destruction"? Maochun Yu should know that the ordinary people in China would choose a leader who could not hold back tears when he sees the people he is expected to take care of suffer, over a leader who jokes about the miseries that he has caused to his own people. As for the [Tiananmen Square] crackdown, Maochun Yu should know that the Chinese today have come to realize that it was the first, but failed, color revolution and they support the government's decision to take firm action after a curfew imposed more than 30 days before.
Junming Jiang (Jun 16, '08)

In my letter published by ATol on June 6 regarding Senator Barack Obama's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, I omitted one important fact: that when Obama declared Jerusalem should be the "undivided" capital of Israel, he failed to make such a declaration in his first speech to AIPAC in March 2007. Obama's stand on this issue has proven to be extremely shameful and disappointing; and as Pepe Escobar correctly notes, in Gaza: Mogadishu or Dubai? [June 14], "Public opinion in the Arab world - where there's enormous goodwill towards Obama - was dismayed, if not appalled." Obama is indeed attempting to match his Republican rival, John McCain, who made a similar declaration on his visit to Jerusalem in March. He is also further distancing himself from the pro-Palestinian position of his spiritual mentor of the past 20 years, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But since Obama's recent speech to AIPAC, it appears the Israeli parliament has been emboldened to do two things. First, the announcement this past week that the construction of 1,300 new Israeli homes will go ahead in the highly contested region of Arab East Jerusalem. Second, the parliament passed in preliminary reading a bill last Wednesday to consider Jerusalem as capital of Israel and all Jews worldwide. The bill, which was submitted by the right-wing Israeli National Religious Party, passed in the ruling coalition with a majority of 58 to 12. It is these very disturbing developments that highlight yet again that Jerusalem, which is home to the sacred sites of Judaism and Islam, stands at the epicenter of what is history's longest-running dispute for religious supremacy. Jerusalem is the engine room of the Middle East conflict and the wider "war on terror", and for Obama to capitalize politically on such Israeli aggression will certainly render any future presidency of his a serious obstacle to peace.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra (Jun 16, '08)

Hello from Bangkok, The Kingdom of Thailand. The land of smiles. Having resided in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) for several years, I'm convinced South Koreans are opposed to opening their markets to American-made goods and that recent demonstrations in South Korea have little, if anything, to do with American beef imports. In my opinion, over the years South Koreans have been pampered by the United States, causing a backlash against Americans in South Korea. In my opinion, the Republic of Korea is simply a partner, not an ally, of the United States, and isn't an important player in the defense of the United States. Therefore, the United States should depart from South Korea, leaving only Kunsan Air Force Base as a deterrent to any aggressor. Fifty-eight years of the US sitting in South Korea needs to come to an end. The United States has overstayed its welcome in the Republic of Korea. South Koreans are proud people who want to be in charge of their own future and destiny.
R D Morrison
Bangkok (Jun 16, '08)

Fifty-six years since India's China war ended in New Delhi's defeat, the tensions between India and China have abated. Yet the causus belli has not. The ill-defined border in the Himalayas remains a chronic rash on relations between the two countries. And such is the reason, as Sudha Ramachandran explains [in India takes the high ground against China, June 14], for New Delhi's reopening of its Daulat Beg Oldi airfield in Ladakh, which is within a stone's throw from a part of Jammu and Kashmir provinces under Chinese occupation since 1962. You would think that it was time Beijing and New Delhi would put an end to this tripwire, but each through pride and inheritance from imperial China and the British Raj will not budge from frozen positions. And so although India and China do cooperate in many matters, Chinese presence for more than a half-century on Indian territory is like the pebble in the shoe whose flashes of discomfort and pain simply won't go away.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 16, '08)

Former US Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has yesterday grandly announced a "pronounced turnaround" in the credit markets, and sees light at the end of the tunnel in the subprime-mortgage market. He should have read Lehman and the liars [June 14] before rushing to judgment. Greenspan's words betray the inanities and insanities of the long sorry trail of tears of a financial crisis for which he is partly responsible.The fall of the house of Lehman, it seems, is following the same route as Bear Stearns, with one mitigating circumstance. More of that later. Like Bear Stearns' Jimmy Cayne, Lehman's Martin Fuld is a rough-and-tumble banker, who took a small banking house to the top of the debt market. To stop the hemorrhaging of Lehman's stock which has lost 60% of its value in the last few months, he has willingly sacrificed his stars, and put in a man from the equities department like Cayne did. That move didn't help Bear Stearns nor will Fuld's help Lehman, but for this reason: although Lehman cannot throw off the burden of its deep exposure in subprime mortgages, he does enjoy the US government's liberal lifeline of assistance which Bear Stearns did not until it agreed to sell itself cheaply. Lehman's Fuld on the other hand sits on the board of the NY Fed, the chairman of which, Tim Gaithner, helped engineer the Bear Stearns takeover by JP Morgan Chase. So, Fuld enjoys an insider's chance that Lehman, tottering on the edge of collapse in insecure financial markets, might still enjoy the confidence and the wherewhithal which would save it from failure. As the Bear Stearns example shows, the US government and investment bankers were slow to recognize the grim significance and magnitude of the crisis. Not only that, Ben Bernanke is trying to stanch holes in the leaking ship of America's finance capitalism. He does not know how to quiet the volatile markets reeling from huge subprime-mortgage debt, and he now has to tackle rising inflation owing partly to the deliberate US policy of a weak dollar. And he is hitting all the buttons to correct markets, and it isn't working. US Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, once the king of Wall Street at the head of Goldman Sachs, has proven ineffective, too. Yet, money is on the failure of Lehman Brothers by March 2009, and the new president will have more on his hands than he could ever have bargained for.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 16, '08)

[Re War on Iran: Law the first casualty , June 13] I think it very unlikely that the US would start a war with Iran over the latter's nuclear program. It is indisputable that American neo-cons, Zionists and evangelicals would readily sacrifice the most fundamental interests of the US in order to serve their "Israel-first" ideology. However, starting yet another war under the current economic and political climate would come close to national suicide. And, despite the pronouncements of semi-senile warmongers like John McCain, this country has not yet gone stark raving mad. There's still a modicum of rational self-interest left in most Americans. I think we should take President Bush at his word when he says that "all options are on the table" when it comes to Iran. While keeping in mind that doing nothing would, by definition, have to be one of those options.
Jose R Pardinas, PhD
San Diego, CA, USA (Jun 16, '08)

I couldn't agree more with Professor Klare's piece US garrisons and global gas stations [June 14]. Even when I worked in the Middle East oil industry (Iran and the UAE), I was convinced that simply "buying this stuff from these people", in a trade deal involving our technology, would be a far better approach to energy acquisition than political stealth, intimidation and the threat of military force. Furthermore, I came away from that part of the world convinced that, if the people of those oil/gas producing countries ever decide that US Big Oil is not going to have their resources by the means mentioned above, then that is the way it will be; unless, of course, the "Western" street is willing to pay $10 a liter for gas at the pumps. I have worked in the oil/gas industry all of my working life; I have flown over the fields in Iran; I know just how vulnerable the industry's producing and processing infrastructure is. So I heard the truth spoken in a comment made on TV a couple of years ago, that went something like, "Hell, a guy on a camel with a stick of dynamite can take out a refinery." Amen! And one more thing: The consequence of "fuel-by-force" will not be simply an escalation of American military death and injury, worldwide; the ordinary American citizen will find him/herself progressively more unwelcome and at risk planet-wide. It's time Uncle Sam's nephews and nieces completely overhauled Washington's foreign policy.
Keith E Leal
Pincher Creek, Canada (Jun 16, '08)

Dennis O'Connell (letter, June 10) is technically correct that former US president Harry Truman allowed negotiations to seek an end to the Korean War. My comment regarding Truman's "unwillingness to negotiate" was careless and wrong. I just hope Mr O'Connell's complaint doesn't imply that he is more concerned with unfairness toward war criminals than than with war crimes themselves. Truman allowed negotiations. Good for him. And while negotiations were ongoing, he allowed the wholesale bombing of northern Korean cities, power plants, and dams (to flood the countryside). Truman and the Joint Chiefs apparently believed that what was good for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was good for the townsfolk and city dwellers of northern Korea. In a fit of humanitarianism, Truman held back our atomic weapons, as conventional carpet bombing and napalming seemed to be doing a marvelous job of leveling all the major population centers of northern Korea. Even America's staunch ally, Winston Churchill, was appalled at our use of napalm on civilian populations. If the tables had been turned, how willing do you imagine Americans would have been to negotiate with an enemy willing to rain fire and floodwaters upon civilians? Would we have held to the current mantra that "You can't negotiate with terrorists"?
Geoffrey Sherwood
New Jersey, USA (Jun 13, '08)

Today Seoul has taken on an air of carnival. It has that feeling of a happening, a spontaneous outpouring on to the streets of South Korea's capital. It has a political coloring and a movement in allegro tempo that protesters of 40 years ago would envy. At Seoul the world is looking with wonderment on a giant street fair where South Koreans from every walk of life have come to protest President Lee Myung-bak's fateful decision to allow the reintroduction of US beef. Sunny Lee's Party time at South Korea's protest 2.0 [June 13] captures well the brisk liveliness of the moment. Where some feared violence and confrontation, we now see a massive peaceful protest challenging Mr Lee's hold on power. South Koreans' sense of irony has come into play to mock and shame the man. In today's press - online and in print - there's a wonderful photo of a wall of shipping containers heavily greased which the Lee government constructed to block protesters from coming to the gates of the Blue House. Well, this hasn't stopped the protest's creativity coming into play; protesters did scale but not jump over the wall; it's become a people's monument for change. They've planted flags on top with slogans, pasted wall posters on the slick ship containers; and what's more mocked Mr Lee the more by comparing him to the Yi dynasty minister Lee Wan-yong who aided and abetted Japanese expansion into Korea. And if that supreme insult had not sunk in, with healthy, derisive laughter, protesters dubbed the hastily assembled wall of shipping containers with a sign reading "from here starts the US state of Korea!" Protests are entering their 43rd day, and with each passing minute President Lee is becoming more and more isolated from an electorate who hardly six months ago had given him a landslide victory at the polls. It is not idle speculation to wonder if Lee Myung-bak's term in office will be even shorter than John Chang Myung's?
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 13, '08)

[Re The day the slacker died, June 10] American "slackers"? By Asian standards, we've always been "slackers". We are a goal-oriented people who think in terms of results rather than ritualistic work patterns. Coats and neckties and kow-tows - how quaint! How stifling of new ideas and new methods!
James AF Compton (Jun 13, '08)

[Re Bernanke aggravates trade deficit risks, June 12] Is Peter Morici talking in a dream? Instead of wasting time writing an anti-China article and blaming China for the oil price and US economic problems, he should focus on the real reason for the world’s economic troubles. If dollar hegemony is over and the US stops printing money irresponsibly to cover up credit problems created by US banks (Next up-the credit default swap crisis, June 12), the United States' "trade deficit will be cut by a third", and two-thirds of the world's economic problems will be solved quickly ...
Tang (Jun 12, '08)

I appreciated the bare bones Q&A style for the article A search for unity [June 12], as well as no "think" from the interviewer, just the raw data. However, I found the following quote from Omar Bakri Mohammed rather more "raw" than I would've liked:

The Divine Objectives of Al-Muhajiroun are:
To invite individuals, groups and the whole society to Islam to embrace it or to accept it as the political norm or a way of life.
To establish public awareness about Islam.
To institute the sharia.
To influence public opinion in favor of Islam and Muslims.
To unite Muslims in facing threats to the ummah on a global scale.
To create a "fifth column" community pressure group to work for the recreation of the caliphate globally.

Not necessarily startling that he believes this - he is hardcore Salafi - but that he had the nerve to tell it to the kaffirs [unbelievers]. I couldn't imagine any Englishman, or any other non-Islamic person, seeing these declared goals and not wanting to have him deported immediately. If that's the kind of framework of civilization the cleric wants, then England was not the right place for him. Instituting the sharia is a nice way of saying "eliminating your existing legal system". It is actively seeking revolution and overthrow, under the guise of faith. As for the caliphate, we really aren't interested in your offer, thanks all the same. It's enough to have to fend off submission to the New World Order ...
Jack
Manila (Jun 12, '08)

I am rather troubled by the commentary The rise and rise of China's Mr Tears [June 11] by Maochun Yu of the US Naval Academy. More specifically, I am surprised by some grave historical errors penned by a presumed expert on East Asian history, and an ethnic mainland Chinese by name to boot. In particular, this refers to "the 1975 Yangtze River flood that killed at least 85,000 people", the very first example Professor Yu cites for the Chinese Communist Party's "mass relief and propaganda campaigns of the past" that were allegedly more intense than the current ones regarding the recent devastating earthquake. For one thing, the 1975 flood occurred in the province of Henan, which even a poor student of Asian geography would hardly link to the Yangtze, as our "professor of East Asia and military history" did. This catastrophic flood started with the burst of the Banqiao reservoir dam, shortly after midnight on August 8, 1975, in the Huai river system under the heavy rains brought by a typhoon. This triggered an immediate domino sequence of the collapse of dozens of dams downstream. The flood, with probably the greatest death toll in Chinese or even human history, affected some 20 counties and cities with a total population of 12 million. But alas, almost all were located in the province of Henan, at quite some distance from the Yangtze River. Secondly, diametrically contrary to Professor Yu's claim, at the time there were hardly any mass propaganda campaigns for fighting the flood, let alone the ones that were more intense than the current campaigns after the Sichuan earthquake. Because the CCP government at the time tried its best to cover up this largely man-made disaster as a non-event, much less revealing its extent and death tolls. There was only a handful of official reports on the people of Henan "fighting a local flood," and a junior vice premier Ji Dengkui was dispatched to the province for a short visit. A documentary film of the disaster was labelled "for internal circulation only" and circulated strictly among water conservancy professionals. It was not until the mid-1980s when the event and its severity were gradually publicized and acknowledged. It is also for this prolonged official suppression that the exact number of victims remains an enigma to this day. One may naturally question the accuracy and truthfulness of other "facts" Professor Yu cites in his evidently axe-grinding commentary. But an even greater concern is the impact of such strongly opinionated "expert views" driven by blatant historical errors on future Sino-US relations.
Yu, Shiyu
Columnist, United Morning News (Lianhe Zaobao)
Singapore (Jun 12, '08)

[Re Bernanke aggravates trade deficit risks, June 12] US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke should learn to hold his tongue, but he doesn't, and what's more cannot. He's caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand he's to assure markets in turmoil, and on the other to stimulate growth. The almost 10% rise in the US deficit on trade in goods and services in April notwithstanding, Bernanke is hinting at a rise in interest rates which (horrors!) raises the specter of the inflation bogeyman. More likely, he will maintain the status quo which won't by any stretch of the imagination boost an anorexic US dollar, nor bring manufacturing jobs back to America's heartlands to alleviate mounting unemployment, nor stimulate a lackluster economy with a less than 1% annual growth. On top of this, the price of a barrel of oil keeps reaching towards a new high; food prices are soaring; and the US is slouching towards a severe recession. (Already in the corridors, the d-word or "depression" is being bandied about.) No one should expect much other than maintaining the status quo, from either Ben Bernanke or US Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, for they are but the servants of unfettered free markets, and they are both wedded to tired and failed solutions. Peter Morici has good advice for Ben Bernanke: think twice before speaking and show more common sense in approaching an economic crisis with disturbing political and economic consequences.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 12, '08)

[Re letter from Mona, June 11] I am in one of the most violent cities of Pakistan; I have relatives in the Ahmadiyya community living close to me. I have never seen any kind of crimes committed by anyone against them in my life.
Sohail Aziz
UK (Jun 12, '08)

I read Time overdue for a world currency [June 6] with great interest, and was gravely concerned by the authors' support for a world central bank. It is curious that, after writing an indictment of the US Federal Reserve (The Fed's unholy legacy, June 4), they would essentially advocate a world-wide Fed. They assure us that a world currency would be tightly regulated and constrained by a "constitution" as strong as [the US's]. For those who have not noticed, the United States constitution is under attack by those who advocate centralization of power to fight a physical threat, rather than a financial one. It should be further noted that the existence of the Federal Reserve is in direct conflict with the constitution, which declares that Congress shall have control over coinage of money and only gold and silver shall be legal tender. It is easy to understand the appeal of a world bank. On paper, it would make things so much easier. Uniform standards, and unified control over monetary policy. Unfortunately, it requires surrender of a nation's financial sovereignty and a huge consolidation of power. Regardless of whatever constitution bound its actions, it would become corrupt as a matter of course. When it did, individuals and countries would be financially emasculated, and would have little or no recourse. Currently, individuals can buy out of one currency to another, and essentially give a vote of no confidence. If controllers of a world currency shrugged their constitution and pursued an inflationary policy, as controllers of currency nearly always do, today's chaos would be replaced by unilateralism. Unfortunately, for the average individual the effects would be much the same. We should not continue failed policies by increasing their size and scope and assuming the results will change. We need to revert to the policies which made the US prosperous, and let the nations of the world follow at their discretion. Consolidating greater amounts of power into the hands of fewer people will yield predictable and disastrous results.
Michael Stewart
New York (Jun 11, '08)

A hearty round of applause for Purnendra Jain for Sinophile Rudd loses Asian friends [June 11]. He skillfully took the wind out of the sails of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's idea for a new arrangement in security, political and economic matters in ... Asia. It is no secret that Mr Rudd has made a Faustian bargain with China; his country's economy heavily depends on sending Australia's primary materials to a fast-growing industrial China, and he has sought strong Chinese investment in Australia. Prime Minister Rudd's object - all sublime in floating his trial balloon of security in Asia - is a Trojan horse for allowing in a China whom its neighbors prefer to leave out in the cold.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 11, '08)

US beef row steers Seoul into chaos [June 1] provides background on why South Koreans object to the importation of American beef. The anti-beef protests are threatening the very presidency of Lee Myong-bak; it almost seems unimaginable that he walked into the Blue House on the strength of a landslide victory at the polls earlier this year. Judging by the violent protests that are now calling for him to step down, it is a sure sign that he badly misread the pulse of South Koreans when it came to allowing ... the reintroduction of US beef. Much was expected of his pro-business agenda and his call for closer ties with the US, yet his not completely thought out decision on American beef is turning into an affair of lese majeste. Mr Lee, in his fellow citizens' eyes, has committed a cardinal sin; he had forgotten that the quality and texture of beef in South Korea is in itself a religion. Consequently, the selling of US beef has taken on the character of a heresy, and as such, Mr Lee's grasp on power is slipping, in spite of his appeal for patience and for delaying the reintroduction of US beef for 30 months. With each passing day, the protests are making it almost impossible to remain at his post. Saying this does not in any way mean that the anti-US beef protest will spill over to demands for a withdrawal of US troops from South Korea. To say so is a misreading of events there. Mr Lee's departure from the Blue House will not deprive his party, the Grand National Party (GNP), of a majority in parliament. The GNP already has an able candidate in the person of Madame Park, the daughter of the former dictator Park Chung-hee, who would never call for the withdrawal of American troops, but who would take a different tack on American beef.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 11, '08)

Re The cost of credit seizure and Food summit overlooks price-surge ingredient [June 11]. Not only is excessive liquidity causing the dangerous upsurge in commodity prices worldwide, it also is steadily stripping the US dollar of its pretense as the world reserve currency. Sure, flooding the global market with wave after wave of paper money may allow the Fed to delay the onset of recession in the US, temporarily save the banking sector's seared ass, and artificially pare down the national debt, but the potential long-term damage done to the greenback, and by extension to the US and its economy, may ultimately prove immeasurable, irremediable, and irreversible; or, more simply, tragic.
John Chen
USA (Jun 11, '08)

In Pentagon blocked Cheney's attack on Iran '[June 10], Mr Porter believes as many Americans do that [US Vice President Dick] Cheney's reckless Middle East policy has been thwarted by less rabid leaders. Certainly Cheney has never listened to anyone without power; and Bush has been like a lapdog when Cheney has made his wishes known in the past. If [General David] Petraeus is the doormat that he appears to be in his public appearances, the corrupt Cheney may get his way and draw the US into a potential powder keg in the Persian Gulf with such a great disruption of the oil flow that we will pay over $10 a gallon in the US, even if oil is available. Cheney is so self-centered, power-driven and arrogant that causing global travail doesn't enter his one-track imperialistic mind. If the US Congress had any backbone, Cheney would have been impeached long ago ... when [Ohio Congressman Dennis] Kucinich first proposed it.
Jim
Southern California (Jun 11, '08)

Dear Syed Saleem Shahzad, I enjoyed your article Pakistan at the mercy of marching lawyers [June 11]. It was well written. Pakistan not only needs to focus on the freedom of the judiciary but religious freedom also. If Pakistan continues to commit crimes against the Ahmadiyya community it will continue on the course of destruction.
Mona (Jun 11, '08)

While being an overall enlightening piece on Wen Jiabao, The rise and rise of China's Mr Tears [June 11] by Maochun Yu is unfortunately concluded with a typically Western assumption that fails to appreciate the special nature of the Chinese political system. [The line] "If Zhao were not indecisive or did not cry in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or if he instead stood on top of a tank sympathetic to the pro-democracy forces" may express the far-fetched dreams of some Western observers, but I believe Mr Yu knows better and I wish he had been more realistic, offering his presumably Western readers insights less palatable [but] more valuable.
Luca Schicho
Europe (Jun 11, '08)

I believe Geoffrey Sherwood's letter in regards to the article A new light on the Korean War [June 5] is unfair to former [US] president Harry Truman in his claim that Truman dragged the war out for two more years by his "unwillingness to negotiate". The negotiations to end the Korean War lasted for two years except for a two-month recess called by the North Koreans and Chinese. The main sticking point in the talks was Truman's insistence on not returning prisoners who did not want to go back to the communists. Since large numbers of the North Korean army were conscripted from South Korea this was a fair demand. Over 50,000 North Korean POWs and Chinese refused repatriation. Of the 70,000 South Korean POWs held by the North only 8,000 were returned. Many historians blame Stalin for continuing the war against the wishes of China and the North Koreans. With the death of Stalin in March 1953 peace was able to be achieved in July 1953.
Dennis O'Connell
USA (Jun 10, '08)

It is interesting to see Dr Kaveh Afrasiabi's dredging up the specter of the ratification of the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (AMPO), as a point of reference to bolster his argument in Iran shadow over US-Iraq security pact [June 10]. Almost a half-century ago, with US army, air, and naval units confined to barracks, the Eisenhower administration bribed, threatened, and infiltrated the opponents of the AMPO through a very active CIA and its front organization, as well as other US governmental agencies. Iraq today has a heavy but inefficient civil and military presence. The US's manufacturers and military can and will try to force its unwilling clients in the Maliki government and rump parliament to ratify a security treaty which would replay in a way the UK's occupation of Iraq almost a century ago. Iran should be worried for sure, but there is armed resistance to the US presence in Iraq, which willy nilly, the "surge" notwithstanding, it cannot defeat. Time is not on the Bush administration's side, for a new president in the White House may well have a different view on America's presence in Iraq. He may draw useful lessons from Mr Bush's quagmire there. Iraq prefers to deal with Iran on its own terms. It would be a serious error to think that since Iran is Shi'ite and Iraq has a majority Shi'ite population, that these two countries agree on all matters. Nationalism, more than religion, has a trump card to play there.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 10, '08)

By reading Jim Lobe [Hawks still circling on Iran, June 10], you learn a lot. In spite of his reservations, the time for invading Iran has passed. The overheated rhetoric spewed from the lips of the Cheneys or Olmerts at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is an indication of both the giddy brutality and coarsening of the hawks' political speech. Putting Iran in its place is no longer a viable item on the agenda. The Olmert Kadima-led Israeli government had to distance itself from former defense minister and current infrastructure minister Binyanim Ben Elezer's jeremiads against Iran, threatening it with a nuclear shoah (June 6, 2008). Rumors out of Washington of a US invasion in August have met with denials. Intemperate words and threats simply highlight the slowly collapsing structures of hawkish dreams. As long as the Bush administration remains in office, experience shows that it will not abandon such pipe dreams. Which all goes to say, it has learnt little from its debacle in Iraq. Iran's president Mahmud Ahmadinejad has early caught on to the game of the Israeli and American hawks. Thus, he taunts Israel and the US with boasts that surely make their blood boil but in full awareness that they cannot act on their threats. It is not for the lack of courage that Israel may not carry out its threat, nor the US for that matter, but it is the realization that invading Iran will bring these two countries down in a towering inferno and posterity's condemnation.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 10, '08)

Ever since America ascended, it has been predicted with some regularity, particularly in times of economic shocks, that it will soon decline; and these predictions continue to this day (for example Fareed Zakaria in The Post-American World) [See also The mythical post-American era, May 20]. And yet America hasn't declined. The failure of these predictions may have to do with innovation. It is something that America does particularly well and something that fundamentally alters the equations that pundits use to make their forecasts of doom.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Jun 10, '08)

Regarding Pentagon blocked Cheney's attack on Iran by Gareth Porter [June 10]: Uncompromisingly warmongering friends, aides and the vice president assembled by US President [George W] Bush believe that America should "inspire fear" and attack Iran with its full might before it is too late. They even consider Condoleezza Rice's diplomacy as dangerous, weak and lenient towards Tehran. Dick Cheney, one of the leading warmongers, is hankering and hawking for a military action before President Bush leaves the White House. ... It is now accepted that all along Kazakhstan's oil and gas reserves are the crux of all the planning and de-stabilization of the region, which started with Afghanistan and Iraq; next Iran and finally a confrontation with Syria. This is to possess 20% of world's oil reserves, for the domination and free access to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, to bully the region, control oil prices and supply to the world. With oil prices soaring to extreme heights and threatening leading economies' flagrant lifestyles, it must be done for the sake of the West's and Israel's survival. With Bush and Dick Cheney at the helm, a full-scale bombing of Iran would appear [to be certain], any time before January 20, 2009, when they leave office. I believe that a blueprint is already made up with the help of ... Israel to initiate such an attack, followed by the full backing of the United States arsenal. Dick Cheney and his cabal want to destroy Iranian mullahs' dreams of possessing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The matter is so serious that the president of Iran has ordered his country's leading banks to transfer billions of dollars of assets from Europe to the Central Bank of Iran to prevent them being frozen by international sanctions. Dick Cheney's other sinister plan is to put Russia and China on the cold war footing that is already surfacing in Europe. But the [consequences of] bombing Iranian nuclear installations will engulf the globe. Dick Cheney is the real motivator and propagator of America's evil foreign policy and the power behind Bush. He has shown the same disrespect to his boss as does a dog to a lamppost.
Saqib Khan
UK (Jun 10, '08)

Regarding Chinese leaders shift focus by Willy Lam [June 7]: The Chinese government is once again imposing control over its people's right to express resentment for not doing enough for the victims after the unusual latitude shown after the Sichuan earthquake. More and more people and the parents who lost their children are openly voicing anger to foreign journalists ... and getting into conflict with officials. It is reported that many school sites have been sealed on police orders; over 100 people from Juyan were prevented by police when they tried to file a civil suit at Dujiangyan court. The Chinese government has instructed state-run media to focus on the "positive heroism" and drop negative reports on "tofu" sub-standard construction responsible for the death of so many children. But China's radical newspapers are ignoring the order and highlighting corruption in the building industry and bureaucracy. From now on, the media coverage of the earthquake has lost the gloss of openness that Beijing initially tried to project to the world. Old habits die hard!
Saqib Khan
UK (Jun 9, '08)

For E W Namu [letters, June 6]: Young Koreans are profoundly ignorant of the Korean War for the same reason many Americans, and people the world over, are ignorant of the dark chapters of their histories. They bury the uncomfortable, the damning, and the humiliating under a mountain of mythology. A smattering of East Asians and Americans struggle, and make small steps of progress, to have their people come to grips with historically recent traumas: Japanese conduct during WW II; Chinese fratricide during the Cultural Revolution; American terrorism (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, My Lai, and the brutal bombing of northern Korean towns and cities during the Korean War). Thanks to the basic decency of Americans, after the bombs have blown, the dead buried, and moral qualms muted, we try our damnedest to make amends. Hundreds of millions of Taiwanese, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese have enjoyed incalculable peace and prosperity due in large part to the American presence in East Asia. Your father didn't live to see the incredible, hopeful rise of East Asia. He only experienced the brutality of the Korean War - a war that US president Truman could have ended through negotiations two years, and over a million lives, before its terribly overdue end in 1953. Your father's sullen attitude toward his Korean war experiences may have been due to a realization that so many lives were lost pointlessly during those last two years of the war. All due to an unwillingness to negotiate. Sound familiar? It was the first war that Americans could not claim to have won. Not to be welcomed home as conquering heroes was a heavy burden for veterans of the Korean War to bear, especially when memories of the euphoric WW II victory celebrations were so fresh. No Korean War veteran, or their descendants, should feel slighted by young Korean ignoramuses. The good and bad that have come to pass as a result of the war are there for all to see. We honor the sacrifices of those who fought in, or were victims of, the war, by remembering them, by faithfully acknowledging both the good results and the terrible, and by vowing to learn from the frailties that lead us into such wretchedness.
Geoffrey Sherwood
New Jersey, USA (Jun 9, '08)

Chris Hedges' article What it means when the US goes to war says what everyone who wants to fulfill the promise of being human should read, study and think about. It would probably serve the readers of Asia Times Online very nicely if Spengler (and those on his emotional/intellectual level) were locked in a room with the same article and not released until committed to memory, although this too would probably fail because these kinds of things cannot be memorized but only ascertained through mental and emotional clarity, in the moment. Those heartless creeps, thugs and their enablers who advocate warfare as a means of addressing conflicts between nations (or worse, as a means to dominate and exploit another region's labor and/or resources) should be ashamed of themselves as they advocate the murder of innocent human beings. But of course this is asking too much, war makers are ultimately proud of their crimes and call those crimes "patriotism". We're all capable of brutality, as Hedges points out, but some of us are a lot more susceptible to the lies and propaganda that feed into mass violence than others. Nation states like the US and other aggressors simply would not be able to get away with what they get away with if people accepted and demanded truth. Probably not in my lifetime, but it is always good to hope. Currently, we live mostly in a world of delusion where evil is called good and good is called evil. The worst hypocrites of all are leaders of nations and their automaton loyalists, for whom, when they commit violent crimes, it is right, and when others do the exact same thing, it is wrong. Why the human race puts up with such behavior is maddening for us all. Every nation on earth should by law have a Department of Peace, whose main objective is to find every possible means by which peaceful conflict resolution and problem-solving can replace war. What a waste ...
Jerry Gerber
San Francisco (Jun 9, '08)

[Re Chinese leaders shift focus, June 7] After most major earthquakes with high death tolls in areas of high population density, I often have the same thought. It seems to me that Willy Lam fails to comprehend the magnitude of the recent Sichuan earthquake. He states, "According to structural engineer Guo Xun, a National Seismological Bureau (NSB) researcher who conducted surveys right after the quake, a high percentage of school buildings in the affected zone had flouted government construction criteria by using 'minimal amounts' of steel and concrete." First, I tend to think that any standard is not designed for most residential and school buildings to withstand a Richter 7.9 earthquake. Second, most residential buildings in the USA (and Canada) have no concrete except in the footings and no steel except in the fasteners in the wood structure. So are American residential buildings even more tofu? North Americans have vast land both for the cultivation of timber and for the erection of single-story or two-story buildings of wood structure. Where have they got the land? We all know the history behind the abundance of land for Americans and Canadians. Even technologically advanced Japan, with its failed plan of conquest, is vulnerable to heavy losses of life in earthquakes. The American exemption from severe losses of life in earthquakes was built mostly upon usurpation of a vast continent. Ultimately, when Americans include persons of mixed native blood, the whole story of usurpation of a continent becomes a quaint historical interest and calls for celebration by all Americans, all enjoying the same exemption. What is the worth of any cultural uniqueness for any persons in any part of the world? Zero, I tend to think. Who really needs to be a Cherokee or a Tibetan to be happy? Nobody. The Sichuan earthquake has an auspicious silver lining in terms of the reciprocal views between the Chinese and the West.
Jeff Church
USA (Jun 9, '08)

Regarding The people's new opium [June 7], of course this is right about the rise of Confucianism in China nowadays. Why do you think the Chinese equivalent of the French Maison Descartes, the German Goethe Institute, and the Spanish Instituto Cervantes popping up all over the world is called Confucius Institute? In Confucian tradition, one should judge a person not by his words, but by his deeds, and with this criterion, Zhou Enlai, Wen Jiabao and many other communist leaders, up to Deng Xiaoping, are or were full-blooded Confucianists rather than Marxists, regardless of what they say they are. Not to mention the Chinese foreign policy of the last 30 years, which to the trained Confucianist eye is much more characterized by Confucianism than Marxism. And imagine the practical benefits. Almost all of the 60-plus million overseas Chinese are Confucianists, and the common bond with Japan, Taiwan, the two Koreas, Hong Kong, Singapore, even Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, is Confucianism. Besides, many other foreigners who live by the credo "Don't do to others what you don't wish them do to you" are actually Confucianist, though they usually don't realize that yet. It's just that the perennial trouble with Confucianists is that they are not very good at battle, strife and defense. You need the communists for that; that's their raison d'etre. Meanwhile, be prepared for some nasty Confucius bashing when the Western mainstream media start to realize all this and re-aim their guns. Your sneaky little title "people's new opium" is already a foreboding of much more rancor to come. Typical of ATol to always lead the way, in right or wrong. Ganbei! (Cheers!)
Migrant Worker
Luxembourg (Jun 9, '08)

Regarding Kaveh L Afrasiabi's Obama already mired on Middle East road [June 6]: The speech delivered by Senator Barack Obama before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington this week, in which he declared his solid support for Israel and his determination to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear capability, cannot be simply reduced to him being "put on the defensive by his Republican rival". Obama made almost the exact same comments in his speech to AIPAC in March 2007, when first declaring his run for the presidency. The American-Muslim activist and journalist, Ali Abunimah, explained that in 2000, at a University of Chicago fundraiser, Obama was forthright in his criticism of US foreign policy and in his call for an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Abunimah then went on to reveal that:

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 in a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the US Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing. As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, 'Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.

Given the apparent turnaround in Obama's position between 2000 and 2004, there can only be one real conclusion: that the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, have heavily impacted the American political landscape. This explains why Barack Hussein Obama has had to repeatedly reassure voters that he has never practiced Islam. But the fact also remains that Obama has had the audacity to declare to the American people that the US-led war in Iraq should never have been authorized and should never have been waged; and that, if elected president, he is willing to personally negotiate with those whom his current Republican rival considers to be beneath contempt.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra (Jun 6, '08)

No one should be surprised at senator Barack Obama's much-awaited remarks before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He took his cues about Israel, Palestine, and Iran from the habit of thinking that surrounds US political life, and more than ever his words have taken on a strong ideological and political coloring now that he is the presumptive candidate for the presidency of the Democratic party. If the Palestinians and other Arabs or Iranians thought otherwise, the scales now have fallen from their eyes and ears. Dr Kaveh Afrasiabi in his commentary Obama already mired on Middle East road [June 6] has had little trouble unraveling the weight of Mr Obama's words as it relates to Iran. Mr Obama met Israeli expectations, and if this was not enough, Mrs Clinton, who threatened to unleash an Armageddon on Iran should it attack Israel, grandly gave her seal of approval to the junior senator from Illinois' speech. Professor Afrasiabi makes the pertinent remark, that went over everyone's head, that even though Mr Obama blurs his views on Iran with the war-like utterances of Senator McCain, the Democratic party hopeful has but one object in mind: being elected the next president of the US! Thus, although he may know better, he also knows that AIPEC's blessing will gain him votes and money, and as such, the devouring logic of self-deception and denial of the realities on the ground in Israel, Palestine, and Iran simply reflects the blindness that Mr Obama is willing to assume without suffering the results. Senator Obama has thus donned a straightjacket of his own making, and although he knows the truth of what is happening in the Middle East, he is willing at the same time to not accept it.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 6, '08)

[Re Failed expectations in US trade policy, June 6] Robert Cassidy never mentions "peak oil". Furthermore, Cassidy seems to be arguing that the slave-labor wages paid to Chinese workers have little to do with the decisions by multinational CEOs to outsource production to China - thus enriching themselves with stock options at the expense of their stockholders, employees and host countries. Some would call it "looting". (In fact, slightly beneath the surface, Cassidy admits that Chinese workers are underpaid by at least 40% simply because their government engages in tricks with the value of their money.) But even with those emissions, Cassidy concludes "free trade agreements" - the wheels of globalization - are a bad deal for just about everyone but Wall Street and the CEOs. How much worse would the case be if Cassidy factored in the likely fuel costs of transporting goods from China to the rest of the world a few years hence? This whole business is crazy! Under the thrall of "financial capitalism", the old industrialized nations are allowing themselves to be stripped of the means to support their people. In all of those countries there are now far too many people to revert to a hunter-gatherer culture. We all depend on industrial technology for our lives now. Allowing all that technology to be centralized in one location half way around the world from billions of people who depend on it is truly "Suicidal Statecraft" - also a few people who understand the game can continue to accumulate more of the increasingly worthless money resulting from the increasingly desperate expedients required to keep the game going.
Steven Lesh
USA (Jun 6, '08)

As I read A new light on the Korean War [June 5] by Sung-Yoon Lee, I had to stop and reflect on what the Korean War has meant to me. I was born as my dad was being shipped to Korea in 1950; this after serving four years in WW II. My dad was a happy person most of the time, but became very sullen whenever asked about war experiences. My dad died at a very young 43, just prior to my 13th birthday, probably because he was a heavy smoker ... this [is one of] the untold damages of the life of a soldier during conflict. Fast forwarding to the present day, I am constantly amazed at the complete blank in the younger Koreans' minds when it comes to the 1950-1953 time period. As was recently conveyed to me in an e-mail exchange, as a soldier doing his mandatory 26-month tour in South Korea, the writer said that in boot camp the sergeant asked the inductees who was Korea's worst enemy - Japan, China, or the US - and over 90% believed the US to be their worst enemy. ... [Why] the complete lack of care by the Seoul government to correct this interpretation? I feel insulted, and infuriated that my dad spent one second in Korea, and the veterans from all the other countries that took part in the conflict should feel equally slighted. Their efforts to keep a country free don't even deserve a footnote.
E W Namu
Iowa, USA (Jun 6, '08)

[Re Prince Charles, defender of Islam, June 4] Publishing such patent nonsense as Fazile Zahir's claim that Prince Charles has turned Muslim only undermines your otherwise excellent website. It is so ludicrous that it is not even "speculative fun". To his credit, Prince Charles has made an effort to avoid the brutish and hidebound attitudes of the British aristocracy by recognizing that other religions, ideologies and cultures have something positive to say - that is all.
Susil Gupta (Jun 5, '08)

[Re Obama's moment, Notes and Quotes, Jun 5] Ever since Thomas Jefferson penned the immortal words of the American Declaration of Independence, in order to uphold the self-evident truth that all people on this Earth are created equal, the American dream has been tormented by the scourge of racial inequality. But with US Senator Barack Obama securing the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, the stage is now set for one of the greatest milestones in the history of American democracy. Nothing could have borne this fact out more than the resignation last month of Senator John McCain's chief advertising strategist, Mark McKinnon, who claimed that he would not work against an Obama candidacy on the grounds that it would send a great message to the country and the world. An Obama presidency would indeed help fulfill the long-held dream of the black civil rights activist, Dr Martin Luther King, who dreamed of the day when his four children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. It would be an unprecedented inspiration to the three million black Americans whose incarceration infamously constitutes the largest prison population in the history of human civilization. It would bring hope to a world at war, where a coalition of predominantly white European nations, led by the US, is waging a "war on terror" against people of the Islamic faith, who all happen to be afflicted with the common curse of being [non-white]. And it would send a powerful message throughout the Middle East and beyond that Western-style democracy is not necessarily a cover for the imperialistic forces of white supremacy, but it is a means by which those whose lives are relentlessly oppressed by the inhumane forces of discrimination and fear can be finally set free.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra (Jun 5, '08)

[Re Cheap talk, pricey banks, June 5] Have US Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke in the United States and US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in Abu Dhabi suddenly [found] religion when the two spoke on Tuesday June 3, 2008, talking up the US dollar? Let's face it, had the barrel of oil not hit the unprecedented benchmark of $135 last week, we wouldn't be witnessing born-again free marketeers intervening conjointly in the market place. The reaction was swift, as Chan Akya notes: foreign markets began buying the US dollar in preference to the Euro and the Japanese yen, thereby injecting some strength into an anemic American currency. Bernanke's and Paulson's spiel had a desired effect, driving down the price of a barrel of oil, as well as on gold and other commodities. If economic and political realities were different, neither Bernanke nor Paulson would have felt compelled to push for a stronger dollar. But the present state of turmoil in the US markets, owing partly to the subprime meltdown, forces a new look at the US dollar, which until now the Fed and the Treasury had [allowed] to beggar the foreign holders of US billions. Clueless, the Bush administration sallied forth into turbulent economic seas without seeing the connection that the strength or weakness of the US dollar is inextricably tied to the price of oil and commodities and prone to speculation. Washington is not too concerned by sovereign funds which will buy into big banks with high mortgage-backed debt or purchasing large non-voting shares of US corporations which are poorly performing. It is a way of buying back bloated reserves of US dollars in foreign hands. Were the sad state of the US economy not so worrisome, Bernanke and Paulson would look more risible and faux naifs than they appear. Yet though the flesh may be willing, both lack the political will to enforce a bold strategy for the weak US dollar. And if that is not sad enough, Lehman Brothers, it seems, is now fighting for its life, and before you know it the Fed and the Treasury will have to come to the rescue in a way that they did for Bear Stearns.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 5, '08)

[Re A new light on the Korean War, June 5] Dr Sung-Yoon Lee deserves our respect for bringing to our attention that in June 2008, we are approaching the 58th anniversary of the Korean War. Historians call it the forgotten war, and forgotten it is. And more the pity, it is a war that has never had closure; it is inactive thanks to the Armistice of 1953. And forgotten, it simply reinforces the old adage out of sight, out of mind. For sure, it should be better taught in school curricula, but it is not. And that is ever more the shame. On June 25, we should honor with a moment of silence the men and women who fell in that war and the civilians alive today who bear its scars.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 5, '08)

[Re Prince Charles, defender of Islam, June 4] The simple answer to Fazile Zahir's speculation that Prince Charles has converted to Islam is probably the following. Quietly, although as a royal he is traditionally bound to support the Church of England and institutional faith, his beliefs are "New Age". This is a modern path of independent, syncretic spirituality which recognizes and draws on wisdom and methods derived from traditional faiths, plus new ideas based in psychotherapy, humanism and new cosmologies, and rooted particularly in the personal experience and judgement of each individual. It recognizes that a person can be spiritual without having to be religious. In this context, conversion to a particular faith is not the issue. Prince Charles clearly sees (as I do) that Islam has much to teach the world and the West - especially in its social tenets - and that the Western way is crying out for a deepening in its values. But this doesn't mean conversion, or attention solely to Islam - it means openness and a global spiritual perspective. Britain nowadays has arguably as many practicing Muslims as Christians, but the big unspoken statistic concerns people who practice independent holistic spirituality, whether through yoga and meditation, love for nature and humanity, or merely a sensing that there's far more to life than materialism. In his official role, Prince Charles must be religiously diplomatic, and seeks to defend faith in distinction to no-faith. But privately I think his life and beliefs lean toward this independent spirituality, which naturally will have respect for all that is good and relevant in any belief system. In my own case, I owe a lot to Tibetan Buddhism, but I would not call myself a Buddhist - it's just that the Tibetan teaching of wisdom and loving kindness serve me well in my life and, working as I do to bridge the gulf between Palestinians and Israelis, I am thankful for this spiritual taproot as a reference point in an otherwise tricky arena!
Palden Jenkins
Glastonbury, England (Jun 4, '08)

This refers to the interesting article Kingless Nepal looks for a president by Dhruba Adhikary [June 4]. It was indeed a very interesting piece of writing on the thematic issue that Nepal is currently preoccupied with. However, the writer seems to have messed up two separate issues that India has always eyed, ie, Nepal's water resources and the so-called "Indian security umbrella". The Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1950 is more tied to the issue of security whereas the importance of Nepal's water resources is a new and highly prioritized phenomenon by India. In order to grab this natural resource, Nepal's southern neighbor can go to any extent, [from] diplomatic blandishment to over-interference. The Maoist leaders are being excessively cajoled by India so as to accomplish their grand design. As far as the issue of not strictly complying with the provision of the interim constitution is concerned, Adhikary has rightly pointed out how the "unloved statesmen" of Nepal were blinded by impatience in abolishing monarchy. In fact, it was again an agenda advanced by India and covertly backed by India. While declaring the country a republic all norms of parliamentary procedures were willfully circumvented. Indian envoy to Nepal Rakesh Sood's involvement in Nepal's internal affairs is absolutely despicable and against the spirit of good neighborliness between two sovereign nations. Not only are his meetings with politicians and frequently made remarks undiplomatic, his recent meetings with the chief justice of Nepal and their discussion on political matters are equally unwanted. It shows how India is fishing in Nepal's troubled waters to secure undue advantages.
Ratna Bahadur Rai
Kathmandu (Jun 4, '08)

If Senator [John] McCain doesn't like "anti-Semitic rants", he should stay away from the likes of John Hagee, Rod Parsley and fundamentalist Protestants in general. They may support the Israeli state, but for reasons of their own, not out of Philo-Judaism. Of course, "anti-semitism" includes the anti-Arab bigotry common in the US.
Lester Ness
Kunming, China (Jun 4, '08)

[Re And the winner is ... the Israel lobby, June 3] Another one of Pepe's broad strokes and one that is a "must read" for untold millions of Americans. Given the state and ownership of the [mainstream media] in America [this] will never, unfortunately, take place until it's too late. Mr Escobar's overview is somewhat one-sided in the sense that whenever there is a winner there has to be a loser. And the loser in this case is the US. It was a group of Zionist hard-liners that proposed and sold the Bush administration on "A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" devised and prepared for Bibi Nethanyahu [then prime minister of Israel] by Richard Perle and others in 1996. In an interview in the Times of London, Ariel Sharon is quoted as "demanding" that Bush invade Iran after cakewalking into Iraq. The famous cakewalk has proven to be a disaster at a cost of close to $4 trillion in addition to thousands dead on all sides. The present status of American policy and standing not only in the Middle East but globally attests to the decline of the US prestige and importance. For the US to regain a modicum of its past standing it will have to be the winner rather than allow "the lobby" to be. As Omar [Khayyam] wrote, "the moving finger [writes]; and having writ, moves on".
Armand DeLaurell (Jun 4, '08)

The complete passage of the poem found in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1048-1123) as translated by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883):

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

[Re And the winner is ... the Israel lobby, June 3] The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's [AIPAC] bash in Washington celebrating Israel's 60th year as a nation, acts as a foil for John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton to score points and gain financial and electoral support from Jewish Americans, for the right to claim the Oval Office in 2009. Senator McCain brought his standard brand of irony against Barack Obama whom he rightfully sees as his Democratic rival in this year's presidential race. Senator Obama committed the cardinal sin of not only wanting to wind down a failed US war in Iraq but also calling for talks with Iran, which Israel sees as one of its nemeses in the Middle East. So, the American style of politics obliges Mr McCain; and tomorrow Mr Obama and then Mrs Clinton will play for votes of American Jews by being more hawkish on issues in the Middle East than Mr Olmert's Kadima-led government. Now it is common knowledge that through the good offices of America's allies - Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar - Israel is engaged through back channels, a strategy much used by former US president Nixon and the doyen of secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, in seeking resolution of outstanding differences with Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah. It is also well known that Israel has never shied away from dealing with Iran when it suits its purposes. So the earful of anti-Semitic rants which the three American politicians are fulminating against, have little to do with the reality on the ground in the Middle East, and more to do with drumming up unlimited support in financial and military aid for Israel - which, like the kingdoms of Israel and Judea of yore, always lived under the shadow of a major power who protected the Jews.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 4, '08)

[Re Beijing and Seoul turn a new page, June 4] It is refreshing to read an article saying that South Korean president Lee Myung-bak is doing something right. His opening towards Beijing, in Dr Jing-dong Yuan's estimation, is cause to hope that closer ties with China augur well for stability on the Korean Peninsula in particular and in Northeast Asia in general, firmly based as they are on economic and strategic pragmatism. Yet, will the new approach to China reverse the fortunes of Mr Lee who, after four months in office, has seen his popularity tumble to 20%? Already dozens of demonstrations in the last month are a sign that his much-touted governing rule of thumb of pragmatism and reciprocity has sorely misread the mood of his fellow South Koreans who gave him a majority in the 2008 presidential elections. The demonstrators have even gone so far as to call for Mr Lee to step down from office. He has quickly wasted his popularity by signing a free trade agreement with the US, allowing once again the import of American beef, which popular belief thinks is tainted with the dreaded mad cow disease, and he has isolated South Korea in negotiations with and about North Korea. This in the face of a potential agreement between Pyongyang and Washington on the nuclear and trade and economic issues. Now, President Lee has to look past his failed policies, and learn to shout so that his voice can be heard above everyone else's. In fact, since inflation in South Korea is rising and the won is weakening, he has more problems than he bargained for. China is more than willing to oblige Mr Lee with a helping hand. Beijing sees a way to put a brake on the South Korean president's strengthening of lax ties with the US which it sees as a military competitor in Northeast Asia, and a means of warning North Korea to rein in its eccentric maneuvers. In this Dr Yuan sees a positive political marker for the beleaguered Mr Lee.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 4, '08)

Pepe Escobar's And the winner is ... the Israel lobby [June 3] somewhat distorts the history of Jewish Americans' support for the Iraq adventure. Actually, in contrast to the "2007 Gallup study ... according to which 77% of American Jews were opposed to the Iraq war", most Jews supported the war at the time. American Jews are overwhelmingly Democrats, but in January 2003 a poll commissioned by the American Jewish Committee found that 59% of Jews supported war against Iraq, compared to other Democrats, who opposed it by 52% to 44%. It is in this context that we should place the pro-war support and lobbying of not just AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] but even the most liberal groups such as the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. The Israel lobby may not be "always representative of the larger community" but its instrumental role in our current round of Wars to Obliterate Israel's Enemies was not at odds with mainstream Jewish opinion. Thank you, nonetheless, for this courageous article, for when it comes to this so-called "most effective general-interest group across the entire planet" the gloriously free American media maintains a mysterious silence.
Frizzled
USA (Jun 3, '08)

Rationally there is little to argue with in Pepe Escobar's And the winner is ... the Israel lobby [June 3] . The facts check out about AIPEC and other Zionist organizations which are continuing to press Israel's case in the US. A longer view will show that US policy did not always march in lock step with Israel, and thus the need for AIPEC came about. President D W Eisenhower exercised his veto when the Ben Gurion government with the UK and France seized the Suez Canal in 1956. And more recently, [George H W] Bush forced Israeli premier Itzhak Shamir to attend the Madrid conference to begin the long road to peace between Israel, the Palestinians, and Arab states. As we all know even the much touted Oslo Accords remain a dead letter. These are old verities, and [George W] Bush has solidly linked his foreign policy to Israel's designs on Palestine and his Arab neighbors. Escobar neglects the effective side of America's support for Israel since the end of 1967 war. Call it guilt for not lifting the quota on Jewish emigration before World War II, thereby saving Jewish lives from the Nazi prison camps, or the proud feeling of giving birth to the Zionist state in 1948, or the ineffable American embrace of an Israeli democracy in a feudal Middle East, or an almost complete identity of views of Washington and Jerusalem on a laundry list of foreign policy. Americans on the whole look upon Israel as a friend, like it or not. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, which the US championed, and it falls in an election year. At the big AIPEC bash embattled Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert will be the star and alongside him the three candidates running for the White House. They will mouth precious pieties which is a stock vaudeville shtick for US candidates, for votes of a small, but active American Jewish voting community, with funds not unlike other lobby groups in order to fill depleted election coffers, and yes, playing to the eternal Jewish fear that they are strangers in a foreign land, and that although for them the US is the golden Medina, the existence of a Jewish state is a guarantee that should they be forced to leave America, there is a homeland for them, even though this fear is more existential than real. Thus, AIPEC is not a winner but the gut reaction of Americans for Israel is, given the shadow play of American politics. J Street, a more liberal lobby, has now come on the scene to challenge AIPEC's primacy; for the present, they lack the political and monetary clout. We should not kid ourselves that objectively and subjectively they do not differ in their defense of America's wholehearted support for the Jewish state; they differ in that they are willing to play a variation on the theme.
Junzo Nakamura (Jun 3, '08)

I would like comment on And the winner is ... the Israel lobby [June 3] by Pepe Escobar. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served under president Jimmy Carter recently said that AIPEC is too powerful while the slur of anti-Semitism was too readily used whenever its influence and power is called into question. Last year, he defended Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer [when they were] accused of questioning ... Israel ... and the Jewish lobby. The Jewish organization is involved in "McCarthyism" and who [would] dare criticize the brutalities of Israel against the innocent Palestinians? This Jewish establishment controls the jugular vein of America and has strangled US foreign policy by every dirty trick in the world ... Fact of the matter is that it is not only in the US that the Jewish lobby is powerful; Western economies are suffering from Jewish Zionist economic and political strangulation. Their next target is Iran because it dares to challenge Israel's military supremacy in the Middle East.
Saqib Khan
UK (Jun 3, '08)

[Re And the winner is ... the Israel lobby, June 3] The power of AIPAC has long been known. It has now extended its tentacles in Canada with the multi-partisan CJPAC [Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee] and has moved to stifle any dissent against Israeli policies from a nation that once had a history of strict interpretation of international law. Since the Canadian government of the day refused to enter in the Iraq war , the knives have been drawn. I always think of Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More in the Lion in Winter when More asks Henry why it is so important to have him support his divorce. Henry said "You are a good man Sir Thomas, but even more important is that you are known to be good." That is what Canada once brought to the table. The sad thing about this lobby, and the AIPAC, is that they put forth the notion that they speak for the Jews of Canada. They do not. Something as simple as a rebuttal to an op-ed piece in a local newspaper by an interested citizen brings forth an organized wrath to block any further debate on any issue. The organization works hard to demonize you and have the editorial staff of the paper yellow flag any correspondence. You have hit a raw nerve and you must be put in your place. The topic is rarely challenged because they cannot. Easier to demonize. I cannot help but recall the words of Rabbi Elmer Berger who stated, so truly, that "after the Palestinians the Jews were the next greatest victim of the Zionist movement". He was so right. They deserve so much better.
Miles Tompkins (Jun 3, '08)

The first thought which came to my mind after Pepe Escobar's article And the winner is ... the Israel lobby [June 3] was "so, what is new?" Is it news any longer that all three presidential candidates are queuing up to be nice to Israel and, by extension, threatening to Iran? One of the main reasons behind the Iraq fiasco provided by the neo-cons and their fellow travellers was making the Middle East safe for Israel ... What, however, is really sad and scary is the Israel lobby's influence over the policy makers of the key Middle Eastern countries. Their failure to take any strong and positive actions in domestic and international policy making, apart from making "slightly warm" noise from time to time, for fear of losing the patronage of the US, a declining power, perhaps speaks of the real influence of the Israel lobby that is Mr Escobar's perspective.
Tutu G
UK (Jun 3, '08)

Pepe Escobar's excellent piece And the winner is ... the Israel lobby, June 3] tells truths that will never be seen or heard on the American MSM [mainstream media], thanks to certain interests who largely own the medium that shapes the message. And the message being shaped for gullible American is that Iran is in need of a "democracy intervention" by the US, on behalf of Israel. Even the dead guy, Bin Laden, has been reaching out from his grave in Pakistan to try and spook us slightly dumb Americans into fighting another of Israel's wars. The lobby's many tentacles reach out to virtually all levels of government in the US, even down to the state level. That they can and do influence American policy overseas and at home is evident ... After Tehran has been turned into a pile of rubble, it won't be long after that the lobby, acting in concert with its vast media organ, will start broadcasting agitprop about another of Israel's "existential" enemies, Saudi Arabia. They already have a good punch line to use by repeating over and over to "Remember 9/11 and remember that 14 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia". And with that, America, which has been described as the country with the best-educated, but least-informed citizenry, will be frog-marched into fighting another war for Israel.
Greg Bacon
Ava, Missouri, USA (Jun 3, '08)

I slavishly read your highbrow, most erudite web site. However, it badly needs an overhaul. It needs to be made functional and, above all, user-friendly. And, yes, keep Spengler, no matter the cost.
Walter Pongratz (Jun 3, '08)

The badly needed overhaul is under way. It's a massive job, however, and we can't put a date on it yet. - ATol

At last, I found a decent paper! Excellent story by Sami Moubayed on the Syrian talks. Keep up the good work.
Linda Agerbak (Jun 3, '08)

Jim Lobe [Now it's a blockade against Iran, May 29], has done a great service by elaborating on how the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal are being manipulated to hype a war against Iran. Another paper that deserves the same mention is the Washington Post. These are papers that can best be described, in the words of Scott McClellan, as "complicit enablers" in helping the Bush/Cheney neo-con cabal's schemes to attack Iran. For example, in a scurrilous editorial on May 28, the Washington Post asked "will there be consequences for Iran's stonewalling the UN nuclear inspectors?" Just a day before that editorial, the Post had run an article on May 27, on page A7 that the new report of the IAEA, though still raising questions about Iran's past nuclear activities, also said "it should be emphasized, however, that the agency (IAEA) has not detected the actual use of nuclear materials in connection with the alleged studies." The report goes on to state that after 14 unannounced inspections in the last 13 months, "the agency (IAEA) has been able to continue to verify" that Iran has not diverted any of its declared nuclear materials to military use. The real question is, why write such an editorial when it is at odds with the facts unless you have been duped? And, have the editors of the opinion pages learned nothing from their experience of being manipulated in the run-up to the Iraq war?
Fariborz S Fatemi
Former Professional Staff Member
House Foreign Affairs Committee
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
McLean, Virginia, USA (Jun 2, '08)

To whom is Stop the Fed before its too late [May 31] addressed? Surely not the US Federal Reserve. [Authors] Askari and Krichene are not skating on thin ice in analyzing what they see as the Fed's erroneous pursuit of a re-inflationary policy. Yet they beg the question as to who is going to stop the US Fed? No one will deny that the subprime crisis has disorientated America's financial wizards in and out of government; the best and the brightest talent that the US has is flailing in the waters of a severe meltdown of easy money which is touching ever corner of the American economy. US Fed head honcho Ben Bernanke and US Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, it seems, are trying any measure to keep free markets free and markets free from tight regulation. At the top of their list is to save the big financial institutions which along with benign neglect of the Bush administration have caused the present turmoil and uncertainty in world market places. The august Financial Times of London reported that the big bracket banks have raised US$37.5 billion as a precaution of a large write-off of subprime debt at the end of June 30, 2008. Now such inflows of liquidity to the big banks means that there is little to rescue to homeowners faced with foreclosures or alleviating rapidly rising food prices or any palliative to relieve the hardships forced on the ordinary citizen. The US Congress is also slow to react, even in an election year. Although Askari and Krichene's plea is laudable, no amount of reasoning or appeal to good commonsense will stay the spokesmen of the Bush administration in the US Fed or at the US Treasury from the current practices that these two academics and economists call for.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 2, '08)

[Re How the Pentagon shapes the world, May 31] An all-volunteer military breeds incompetence and corruption, thus making it easier for politicians to design, shelter and hide their schemes for enriching themselves and their friends. Many folks are unaware that American politicians can always skirt the law by adding yet another link to the chain through which their votes for pork bring home the bacon. Peace campaigners and warmongers are peas in a pod: both camps raise the alarm but want somebody else to do the dirty work, which is why the all-volunteer structure has endured and thrived, allowing private contractors, consultants and mercenaries to take over the waging of war, and also freeing the top brass in the Pentagon to come up with ways of lengthening their reach within and outside the government. One need only look at the make-up of the security forces protecting the American military chief in Iraq. They usually aren't currently-enlisted troops. As far as the possibility of bringing back the draft goes, Frida Berrigan's silence is deafening. Although national conscription wouldn't solve problems, it would shift the military toward toward shorter-term, more-talented members whose eyes and ears would be likelier to head off some of the creeping rot. In Rome, things started going downhill as patricians stopped serving in the military themselves and started hiring mercenaries in their place. At the same time, the military increasingly held the Roman senate hostage in order to get higher pay and more power. In the US, some members of the elite still encourage their offspring to serve, but without a draft the effect is nil. Barack Obama is just as starry-eyed about the all-volunteer military's capabilities as John McCain is, so Frida Berrigan can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing she can carry on trying to distract us from thinking of the draft.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, NC, USA (Jun 2, '08)

[Re US terror drive stalled in political quagmire, May 31] Youm-e-Takbeer [Day of Liberation] is always an occasion for a politician in Pakistan to perorate, to stir the patriotic blood of the masses, and to verbally dance on the edge of demagoguery. And former premier Nawaz Sharif seized the occasion this year, for it marked a milestone - the 10-year anniversary of Islamabad's testing of a nuclear device. As if by coincidence the father of Pakistan's A-bomb, nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who admitted selling atomic secrets to North Korea, Libya, and Iran, repudiated his 2004 televised confession admitting such acts, which he now claims was wrung out of him during house arrest, even though then general President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him. Sharif's heated speech took aim at the overbearing interference of the US in Pakistan's internal affairs, and at Musharraf for being President Bush's cat's paw. Be it the Lal Masjid killings or the incarceration of AQ Khan or the removal and home arrest of the chief justice of the supreme court, Sharif finds a foreign hand. Not excusing the heavy hand of the US in Pakistani politics which go back more than a half century, Sharif's words are fueling the discontent felt in the bazaars, the towns and cities, and among all classes and Islamic religious tendencies, for the inability of Pakistan to solve its own problems of long date. Musharraf is an easy pole of attracting the country's wrath, for Sharif is attacking him as a civilian president not as the general he once was. The military is the country's eminence grise, its arbiter of power, which Sharif knows full well. He was chased out of office by then general Musharraf for malfeasance and corruption, fleeing for his life to exile in Saudi Arabia. So Sharif's words on Youm-e-Takbeer are a savvy mixture of resentment and getting even with his nemesis Pervez Musharraf , and a keen realization that he cannot directly attack the military unless he wants to cut short once more the path to political power. Thus, his attack on the US and a weakened but not yet out of the picture Pervez Musharraf.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 2, '08)

Interesting article by William Ratliff, The makings of a China-Latin love affair [May 31]. You can already see the demure Asian maidens India and Japan being lured into Africa by that brazen Chinese female barging her way in, and you bet that same Chinese [woman] now hustling into Latin America will soon be joined by a yet more emboldened and ever-less bashful India and Japan. It's not democracy that is in real danger, as Ratliff surreptitiously fears, but the Latino (and African) macho culture hampering true growth. ... I hope to see more of these "South" articles. We all know that "A" in ATol stands for Asia, but no harm in letting it include Africa and the south-of-the border Americas. Besides, many of your articles already exclusively focus on the US, with no one complaining.
Migrant Worker
Luxembourg (Jun 2, '08)

May Letters

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