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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 2010

[Re Mistah McChrystal - he dead, Jun 25] Great article. I'd just like to add a few supporting observations. General McChrystal took on the task of implementing COIN in the Afghan realities in June 2008: The main idea is to encourage Afghan President Hamid Karzai to operate a democratic military-police state to shut-down the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other insurgent organizations. Pakistan is another theater. Counter-insurgency (COIN) is the US Marine Corps' 1996 field manual or doctrine on operating in a counterinsurgency environment, authored by General David Patraeus and General James Amos.
According to http://www.icasualties.org/OEF/, US Hostile-Fatalities in Afghanistan during May 2008 to June 2009 were 170, but for June 2009 to May 2010 the toll was 391. Also, US casualties for the 10 months June 2008 to April 2009 were 766; for June 2009 to April 2010, the count was 2,789. In General McChrystal's tour, the number of US soldiers killed was more than double and casualties more than triple those under General McKiernan. These statistics may have exceeded projections of the United Nations-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and indicate that the insurgency is growing rather than being contained.
The job of the ISAF is to assist the Afghan government in the establishment of a secure and stable environment to reconstruct and develop the state.
The remarks of General McChrystal and Rolling Stone are negligible compared to the deeds and letters of General MacArthur. In April 1951, the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not find MacArthur guilty of of insubordination or violation of any orders, but he may have stretched them. President Truman relieved him of command on April 11, 1951, before the planned nuclear retaliation against Chinese airbases in Manchuria and Shantung. In the global news, it looks far better to have McChrystal dismissed due to the Rolling Stone article, rather than concerns about Afghan operations. It's now General Patraeus' turn with the COIN.
General Patraeus supports President Obama's July, 2011 drawdown of some US troops after an upsurge of 30,000 US troops and 9,000 NATO personnel this year. Obama's policy accords well with a statement by General Sir David Richards' (the UK's Chief of the General Staff): "The combat role will start to decline in 2011, but we will remain militarily engaged in training and support roles for another five years, and we will remain in a support role for many years to come." US Secretary Of Defense Robert Gates remains steadfastly and wisely silent on political issues and remarks.
Bruno Petro Canada (Jun 30, '10)

[Re Deception and denials in Myanmar] You have to wonder about the wisdom of analysts who remained skeptical of Myanmar North Korean cooperation based on the fact that Myanmar broke off relations with the DPRK in 1983 after the bombing of a South Korean aircraft. Twenty seven years have passed since then and the world has changed. US media has frequently commented on the Burmese military government ties with North Korea. Both are 'pariah' nations. It is logical that they hook up. It is not the first time rumors have circulated about North Korea's export of military hardware and nuclear technology to the Burmese junta. If anything it goes to show how sanctions against the DPRK have little bite since they can be circumvented.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 30, '10)

For all its little details, perhaps truths and untruths, this article did not really discussed the poltical reasons/motives for why Myanmar ( in its generals' subjective world) would need nuclear weapons. Is it just bringing up another bogey man to thrash someone one does not like? David Chiu
Canada [Re Truly detached from war, Jun 25] This was an excellent piece, and I certainly agree that the Afghanistan war is folly in so many ways that it is hard to keep count. But the notion that drone warfare is somehow dehumanizing or "cheating" is just wrong. War has always been about finding ways to hit your opponents without letting them hit back - and then complaining when the other side plays the same game. Deal with it.
The same Afghani insurgents that complain about being attacked by unmanned drones have no problem attacking American troops with roadside bombs and booby-traps. And the same Americans troops that have no problem killing Afghanis with drones or bombers operating at 50,000 feet complain bitterly about being killed by remotely detonated explosives. I'm sure that when the first person invented the spear that their opponents armed with shorter clubs felt that this was somehow cheating. And then when archers outranged the spear, or firearms the archer, or howitzers the rifle, or airplanes the battleship main gun.
War is about killing people. It is often fought for stupid reasons, and always hurts a lot of good people. But if you are going to fight one, realize that it's about killing people. Letting your opponents get a free shot at you won't make war cleaner, or smarter, or less common. It will just let your opponent get a clean shot at you, which is always stupid.
Timothy Gawne
United States (Jun 29, '10)

[Re Pyongyang's $65 trillion bill for US enmity, Jun 25] So Pyongyang wants the US to simply give it $65 trillion? Who do they think they are, Goldman Sachs? Timothy Gawne (Jun 29, '10)

[Re Pyongyang's $65 trillion bill for US enmity , Jun 25] Let's frame "Pyongyang's $65 trillion bill for US enmity" differently. Today is the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War. It has never had a conclusion; it has no peace treaty; it is frozen by a 57-year Armistice Agreement. Seen in this light, North Korea has calculated the "fees" of a seemingly never-ending war on a divided Korean peninsula. Simply put, the US is in a state of war not only against Pyongyang but also Beijing if you care to read the terms of the armistice.
America can move quickly on hostile relations with old adversaries like China which is now its largest holder of US debt. On the other hand, its diplomacy flows as slow as molasses when it comes to hastening a peace agreement with North Korea. Small wonder that after 60 years of open US enmity towards North Korea, Pyongyang is presenting Washington with a $65 trillion bill. Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 28, '10)

[Re Iran vote shows China's Western drift, Jun 24] China is not confused. China is pursuing what it does best - improving the lives of its people for the last 30 years. This is the best of times to eradicate poverty, superstition and build infrastructure for the new millennium without international diversions. There is no external competition in this world that deserves more attention than its own welfare.
Kai Liu
United States (Jun 28, '10)

"The GOP representatives from my home state never cease to provide embarrassing gaffes, bloopers, crimes, misdemeanors and treasons that invariably cause their head-shaking, non-Texas colleagues to gag with exasperation." - Hardy Campbell.
Actually, they give us a lot of laughter, Mr Campbell.
"The vast majority of the population does not understand the wars that we are fighting." - Ysais Martinez.
There's no secret, Mr Martinez. Bush said G-d told him to do it! Which god and how the message was communicated are questions yet to be answered. Likewise, the question, why did the rest of congress, army, populace go along?
Lester Ness
Changchun
China (Jun 28, '10)

Looking at the G-8 and G-20 summits with the wrong values, Canada spent over US$1 billion, hoping to avoid the violent protests that marred recent gatherings of these global forums in Pittsburgh and London. The challenge was open to all contestants. Come and test yourself! There was a big self-esteem reward to the ones able to beat the security labyrinth. So, not surprisingly, downtown Toronto was in chaos Saturday as roving bands of G-20 protesters smashed windows and set fire to police vehicles. Protesters with masks and gas had fun participating in a stand off with riot police on Bay Street.
Challenge and fun are the two keywords here. Nobody is paid on the protesters side. Many of them pay hundreds of dollars to go there, knowing they will wake up in jail in the morning. Shields, clubs, tear gas and pepper spray police used to push back the marchers are only toys black-clad protesters play with. Police give them away free! Hundreds of videos were made of these live games. They will worth their weight in gold as souvenirs.
The Toronto police chief blamed the destruction on violent "anarchists". The ones to blame are the ones creating the game they proposed to these players. As usual, Canadian police and security services do not think outside the box. They bought over $1 billion of gas for the G20 protesters' bonfire.
Michel Gourd
Quebec, Canada (Jun 28, '10)

Wonderland Commandment 433: "Thou shalt covet, desire and acquire all the riches of the earth. When thou shalt suffer the consequences of thy greed, avarice and cupidity, thou shalt shake thy fist in anger at those who satisfied thy wants, and rail and rant at all the villains around thou, save the one wearing thy shoes."
One of the chief attributes of Wonderhoodship is the privilege of having no accountability, responsibility or culpability for any and all actions, lifestyles or behaviors. This philosophy of having a built-in Get-Out-of-Jail-Free-Card pervades every sinew of our Wonderocracy. Presidents lie about terrorism and war-provoking WMDs and get lifetime retirement benefits. Corporations relocate their business overseas and yet get more tax breaks. Bankers wash their hands of any taint from the subprime debacle, then fill those now-hygienic hands with bailout loot. Drug-snorting celebs blame the pressure of fame for their addictions and do year-round tours of talk shows. Adulterous preachers and pedophile priests blame dat ol' Debbil and whatever's in their pants, then the fleeceable suckers flock to hear them repent ad hypocritum.
A veritable cottage industry has arisen in ways to deflect and PR manage blame, criticism or opprobrium, so that Wonderlanders can not only proceed through life with their actions divorced from consequences, but actually profit from their transgressions. Go ahead! Commit any and every crime in the book, invent some more laws and then break them with a sledge hammer. Everything'll be OK in Wonderland, 'cuz, like some miracle high fat, high fructose food you can consume without gaining an ounce, you can proceed your merry way through WonderLife without a tinge of guilt, remorse or regret.
Without apologizing for BP's evident technical, ethical and managerial ineptitude, their upper management has, at least, accepted responsibility for the well blowout's pollution (well, of course, they would; they're furriners.) But once again, given the opportunity to do some soul searching about their own collective responsibilities concerning energy gluttony and its associated perils, instead, and all too predictably, Wonderlanders have turned to fact-deaf ears, outstretched money-grubbing hands, moralizing, wagging fingers and a nice long swim up the river DeNial.
President Jimmy Carter, in his unfairly-labeled "Malaise" speech of 1979 (the same year of the previous worst blowout in Gulf history), attempted to do what leaders are supposed to do; take the courageous but unpopular stance that America had to change its energy-guzzling ways. But the GOP neo-cons, who make their living making Americans believe it'll always be 1955, pounced on his political bravery with both taloned feet, lambasting him for having the temerity to suggest that Wonderland couldn't have it all and more, with none of the namby-pamby sacrifices the non-Wonderworld had to make do with limited resources. The response to such un/anti/non-Wonderlander thinking was predictably irresponsible, selfish and regressive; Ronald Reagan was elected president. That amiable but addled actor told Wonderlanders what they wanted to hear; not only could they continue to despoil the planet and disproportionately consume global resources but they could simultaneously defeat the Soviet Union, spread democracy and free enterprise and make the creed of Wonderlandism the goal of every country. The massive debts Reagan incurred, the neo-con nightmare wars he spawned and the destruction of American industry and the middle class he exacerbated are legacies that Wonderlanders will live with until the Chinese foreclose on this misguided experiment in plutocapitalist abuse. Here in Texas, though, our nutcase neo-con school boards will make all that Jimmy Carter's fault.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Jun 28, '10)

[Re Mistah McChrystal - he dead, Jun 24] I don't know what media Pepe Escobar is talking about. In the United States Barack Obama is the god of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, and fellow travelers. They worship our president day and night and promote the talking points of the White House. The only channel criticizing the president is Fox News but they do it because they also have an agenda to follow. That's why we (Americans) have few sources of information to turn to that provide factual, accurate, non-bias information. In the drive-by media you will never find a piece of journalism like Gareth Porter's "Switch to Petraeus Betrays War Crisis".
However one thing is clear -and I hope Mr Escobar is paying attention - and it's that the liberal media in America does not want the war. The vast majority of the population does not understand the wars that we are fighting. Initially they said that "Americans are fighting for oil" however a journalist who is not lazy will find out that the costs of our wars are way beyond any amount of oil that any pit in the Middle East can produce. So oil is out of the question because it only account for a small fraction of the money and lives that America has sacrificed.
Any North American reader will also ask Mr Escobar to clarify his widely used expression: "Full spectrum dominance" when referring to our military strategy. I have said it before. Mr Escobar gives too much credit to the Pentagon. For instance, Pakistan's skepticism of the American strategy is very meaningful in this context. The Pakistanis do not give too much credit to our strategy and I bet they would not consider the Pentagon a "full spectrum dominance" force.
But make no mistake about it, when Americans are scammed and toyed around with, our diplomats send letters and push for UN sanctions, in contrast when Iranians or Pakistanis are scammed they send a team of ISI or Iranian intelligence assassins. Leaving that aside, I believe that the wars are complete non-sense and sucking our resources dry... and they say that not even Alexander the Great could conquer the region today known as Afghanistan.
Ysais Martinez
United States (Jun 25, '10)

[Re Iran vote shows China's Western drift, Jun 24] China never does anything which goes against its own interests. Jian Junbo should not worry too much about Beijing's betraying the Third World. Does not he recall that China threw its prestige and its resources to prop up the Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi at the very same time he had apartheid South Africa's fighting for his cause? That example alone suffices as proof that China does what it wants to do and damn high minded principles.
Mel Cooper Singapore (Jun 25, '10)

Bless those Special Ed Texas Republican hearts. The GOP representatives from my home state never cease to provide embarrassing gaffes, bloopers, crimes, misdemeanors and treasons that invariably cause their head-shaking, non-Texas colleagues to gag with exasperation. The latest foot-in-mouth faux pas, by Texas Congressman John Barton involved his accurate depiction of himself and his party as quiescent, pliable stooges of Big Oil, ever ready to genuflect in pathetic obsequiousness to their corporate masters. At the latest hearing on BP's Gulf disaster, the buffoonish Barton apologized to BP's laughable CEO, the hope-he's-a better-yachtsman-than-PR-dude Heyward, for being "shaken down" by Obama.
Even that appalling excuse for a minority leader, the vapidly tanned John Boehner, choked on that one. Subsequently a chastened Barton climbed down off his high horse with an apology that showcased the Texas education system's failures in basic English grammar, if not its religious community's failures at basic moral and ethical living. But Barton is just the latest trained clown-monkey to show off his craven and callous servitude to Big Money; Rick Perry, Dick Armey, Tom DeLay and the Godfather of Texas corporate whore-mercenaries, George W Bush, have all blazed a trail of rampant corruption, kickbacks, illegal campaign contributions, concocted wars, brazen lies, intimidation, Wall-Street-caving legislation, look-the-other-way deregulation, economic voodoo and good ol' fashioned aw-shucks high treason.
I find nothing more embarrassing to me as a Texan than its GOP members, whose faces invariably wind up in police mug shots, checkout-lane scandal rags or the wrong side of congressional hearings. I can only pray that Texas comes to its senses some day and throws all of these scalawagging Republican scoundrels into the hoosegow, with a rope-necktie party to follow.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Jun 25, '10)

[Re McChrystal's war goes to Washington, Jun 23] Pity poor General McChrystal, he of the overactive mouth and poor recollection of the constitution. He is the luckless successor to the British, Greek, Persian, Mongol, Sikh and Russian commanders whose hopeless task was to pacify a country where even the rocks throw rocks at each other.
He knows that the inevitable end of the Afghan misery is retreat, defeat and humiliation. He knows that pouring more of Wonderland's illusory wealth and very real blood into the cauldron is futile, stupid and useless. He knows that his country is morally in the wrong, killing innocent Afghans because they happen to be Afghans living in their homeland of Afghanistan. He knows the constitution puts military decision-making in the hands of the civilian politicians. He knows he should keep his mouth shut.
So doing what he did, blatantly criticizing or insulting his political superiors in the Rolling Stone interview, he is committing at best a transparent act of insubordination and worst an act of military-career suicide. But let me suggest a method to his calculated madness. If he quits this open-ended quagmire, he will be labeled a quitter, coward, or, worst of all in the neo-lexi-con, a cut-and-runner. But by demonstrating his contempt for Democrat civilian interlocutors, he welcomes dismissal by a hated black-Muslim-commie president and the relief of not being the US commander who "lost" Afghanistan when the last marine leaves with his tail between his legs. He also accepts the likelihood of being the latest darling of the Desperately-Seeking-Anyone-Except-Sarah Re-Puke-ican party, eager for a messiah to lead them back to the promised land of Eternal Pork and Contractor-Kickback Paradise. Look for the soon-to-be-replaced McChrystal to be adorning billboards near you.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Jun 24, '10)

Re: Back to the Kaiser's world, Jun 22] It's amazing how in the short historical span of little over one century, the yin and yang of world order is about to complete one full circle. Americans will forever be ruing the two decades after the fall of the former Soviet Union, during which successive US administrations recklessly frittered away a golden opportunity to remain indefinitely the lone global hegemon. But before anointing China the next superpower, events in the coming decade will need to be carefully monitored. Much can happen during this volatile period of flux, not the least of which is a passing of the baton from the current leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, a tandem that by most measures has performed superbly in steering the country.
On a separate note, Peter Morici wrote, "During the boom, China facilitated such folly by using its dollars to purchase US Treasury securities, and that kept US long interest rates artificially low, even in the face of Federal Reserve efforts to rein in spending." Yes, the Fed was a paragon of monetary discipline during that time, even today, and Morici's awesome power of observation/ratiocination is second to none. According to Morici, ''China's yuan policy makes the Fed nearly irrelevant.''
The Federal Reserve, by virtue of its sole possession of the dollar-printing presses, enjoyed carte blanche in manipulating dollar hegemony; that the institution squandered its privileged power in merely a few years' time warrants criminal investigation into its treasonous policies that destroyed the US economy. When things go wrong, look outwardly to cast the blame; let's see where that juvenile mindset will take this nation.
John Chen United States (Jun 23, '10)

[Re Big is beautiful in Laos, Jun 22] Lao prime minister Bouasone Bouphavanh is no fool. His country's shift to aid from regional neighbors is a matter of dollars and sense. China, South Korea, and Japan have the money and do not impose harsh terms for investing money as, say, the US.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 23, '10)

[Re Core concerns spark Iran reaction, Jun 22] One wonders if US policymakers have considered the precedent they are establishing with their economic bullying of Iran over the trumped up nuclear issue. The downward path of the US economy produced by actions of those same policy makers points to the day when our economic power will be much less than that of other nations. Then, "what goes around comes around", will come into play.
Tom Gerber
United States (Jun 23, '10)

[Re Cheering with 'the enemy', Jun 21] Andray Abrahamian makes an obvious point which escapes most Western journalists. In sports, Koreans from the North and South are one in rooting for the home team. It makes for great amusement to hear endless commentary on no one knows anything about what happened to the North Korean 1966 World Cup team who knocked champion Italy out of the running in the first round. Fact checking is a lost art in the West's media; a British documentary "Game of their lives" is devoted to the 1966 players. It even played in US art houses a few years ago. And suddenly Jong Dae-se is shot into prominence as "the" North Korean 2010 World Cup star''. Once again, we find that ignorance about North Korea makes for silly news coverage. Had anyone bothered to look, he is not unknown as a player but is an unknown quantity for those who think nothing good can come out of North Korea.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 22, '10)

[Re Iran's new revolutionary politics, Jun 18] The article about Iran's diplomatic offensive in the Americas exposes yet another Wonderlander fantasy. It is a given in the United States that whatever is good for America is good for the world (whether they like it or not), and conversely, if the US opposes any nation's attempts at sovereign independence, everyone else has to hop on that bandwagon too.
The logic for this arrogance is fundamental(ist); as the heroic defender of Western civilization and Judeo-Christian values, Wonderland imagines itself as the only thing separating Rome (the West) from the Visigothic hordes (the East) at the gates. But Rome fell to the barbarians for a very good reason; Rome's glory days were over, and it was the Goths', Vandals' and Huns' turn to party hard in the Colosseum. Similarly, now that the future has a definite non-American tint to it, previously acquiescent stooge nations are separating themselves from an increasingly embarrassing, doddering, toothless Uncle Sam, who doesn't realize that he's no longer a 250 pound stud linebacker for his championship high school team anymore.
With the leadership role previously occupied by the dinosaurian ex-football star vacant, a whole host of eager beavers and feisty up'n comers are jockeying for position and making alliances, trade deals and transregional blocs. The risk of being on the Losing Side of History with failed imperialist states like Britain and Wonderland motivates these nations to break bread with unlikely friends, regardless of cultural or ideological differences. These young buck states are flexing their Gringo-free muscles and forging anti-imperialist alliances that will marginalize an increasingly hysterical and shrill Wonderland, desperate to reclaim faded Cretaceous glory.
Make no mistake, though. Washington will see all the Iranian flirtation within this hemisphere in zero-sum terms; any plus for Iran in the way of peaceful cooperative relations is a negative for America's hostile military-driven policies. Nothing infuriates Wonderlanders as much as the success of peaceful negotiations and diplomacy, especially if you've spent the best part of 30 years painting the peacenik diplomats as lunatic maddog jihadists from hell.
As Wonderland credibility inevitably sinks below the horizon, panic, paranoia and petulance will set in. The neo-cons will start hallucinating about Iranian terrorists swarming over our border with Mexico or sneaking onto banana boats sailing from Guatemala into US ports. They will conjure up every doomsday scenario the Faux Nutters can cram into a Oral FoamFest broadcast and beat the war drums loudly and often.
But this isn't Kansas in 2003 anymore, Dorothy. The options for Wonderlander Warmongers are dwindling with the proportionately shrinking budget and expanding unemployment rolls. So all that neo-con fury and rage will be directed at home-grown liberals, minorities and civil liberties (who are really the Republican's primary enemies anyway.) I suppose the nutsackless neo-con Neanderthals can always crawl on their hands and knees to beg the Chinese for a war loan. The only reason Beijing won't ask for California and Las Vegas as collateral is that by then they'll already own those outright.
Hardy Campbell (Jun 22, '10)

"Delight me with some terrorist acts perpetrated by southern Evangelical Christians." - Jonathan Howie
Read up on the history of lynching, Mr Howie. There's quite an overlap between the regions where lynching was most popular and where the Southern Baptists were most popular. Perhaps you don't remember when Southern Baptists explicitly taught White supremacy, but I do. "Woe to those who are at ease in Zion."
Lester Ness Changchun, China (Jun 22, '10)

[Re Diplomacy tried, and not trusted, Jun 18] Donald Kirk's article makes for sad reading. On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, American ''officials and assorted advisers and experts'' - some puzzling over how to deal with North Korea for a half century - fall back on failed policies. Consider the DPRK's nuclear program. Few are willing to acknowledge that former United States president George W Bush's myopic tack towards Pyongyang spurred it on to test a nuclear device. Its testing sent Bush's diplomats very quickly back to the negotiating table, alas without noticeable results. Consider, too, the six-party talks formula of six nations in order to give a domestic shield from critics. Stalemate. Another fanciful conceit is that China will and can decide what is best for Kim Jong-il. Apparently, the US is deaf to a sharp lecture delivered by a senior political analyst of the PLA (People's Liberation Army), to Secretary Geithner & Co a few months ago. His gist: the Chinese military has purchase in not twisting Pyongyang's arms. The list of how Washington has dropped the ball is long and sorry. To reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula, you have to talk directly to North Korea, like it or not. At present, President Barack Obama has embraced the worst aspects of the Bush administration; and worse, for he is ramping up steps short of war. It is time to think outside the closed box and reconvene a Geneva Conference. The goals are simple: a peace treaty ending the stalemated Korean War; cross-diplomatic recognition between the US and DPRK; and a sensible course of measures to "denuclearize" the peninsula, reduce frictions with Japan and South Korea. In this sense, the US will have the complete support of China and Russia.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 21, '10)

[Re Letter from Jonathan Howie, Jun 18] It may come as some surprise to Mr Howie that the United States is racist. I come from Canada, and Canada is racist. What I'm saying is that racism is everywhere.
There are two avenues of racism. One you can legislate against job discrimination, school entry etc. Then there is the other avenues, more personal, like when someone even uses the word "brown skinned" to describe Muslims that bombed the World Trade Center. They were Egyptians, Saudis and from the United Arab Emirates. Their mastermind was Saudi. Adding an adjective like "brown skinned" tells me that Hardy Campbell is right. I worked in the US 30 years ago. The first thing I noticed was the racism. There was freedom all right ... freedom from. .. but not much freedom to.
Hardy Campbell is from Houston so he will appreciate this. In 1979. I was interning in western Canada, the football Texas of Canada. There was a young man who went undrafted who came to Canada to play quarterback. I have never witnessed anyone who could throw a football like him, then or now. And I still hear the media talking about black managers etc etc. It wasn't an issue in Canada; it was never an issue why a black man should have any trouble managing a game that he played all his life. He was adored here in Canada, he was a true professional and a gentleman. He had it all. There was only one reason he couldn't fulfill his dream, and we all know why.
And Hardy Campbell is one of the best letter writers in Wonderland.
Miles Tompkins
Canada (Jun 21, '10)

Barack Obama entered the White House riding a wave of promises of change, reform and "new justice". Since then, of course, we have seen how little his word means in the real world of back room deals, purchased compromises and midnight handshakes. So I have struggled to come up with the appropriate analogy for Obama; is he Zelig, the fictional Woody Allen character who morphed into everyone he was around in order to gain acceptance, or simply a Benedict Arnold, ready to trade one convenient allegiance with another for personal gain?
Only with the news of Spain's shocking defeat in the World Cup to lowly, yodeling Switzerland did the proper metaphor come to mind. Obama, as the semi-white, semi-black personification of the Spanish football team: is the man who filled millions with hope of renewed glory and unfulfilled expectations, displaying his oratory talents and political skills to millions whose hopes and aspirations went with him to Washington, the Big Show. But just as Spain, whose history in the Big Show of the World Cup has been nothing but disillusionment and despair for the Spanish people, failed once again to live up to its hype, promise and expectations, so has Obama let his fans down in the stadium of WonderPolitics. Despite Americans being skeptical of politicians who have promised much but failed to deliver, they, like Spain's fans, held out one more scintilla of hope that this time would be different, this Obama-Spain would live up to its/his propaganda, PR and potential. But, like Charlie Brown's repeated hopes that Lucy won't pull that football away at the last second, inevitably Obama betrayed those forlorn hopes; selling out, choking under pressure, retreating, backpedaling, falling on his behind or just falling behind, losing trust, confidence and support, and becoming just another politician/football team that promised much but yielded nothing but tears and jeers.
Of course, to be fair, Obama/Spain both have chances to recover, as their term/tournament is as yet unfinished. Time remains to reverse course and show the intestinal fortitude and strength of character they've hinted at before, but I suspect their fans, once burned and ad repeatum shy, have learned their lessons. I'll put it this way: I predict a demoralized Spain will have more success at the tournament's end than the underachiever Obama will by 2012, and they won't even make the quarter-finals.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Jun 21, '10)

[Re Pyongyang purge echoes Stalin , Jun 15] The contrasting emphases of Yong Kwon's article and Pepe Escobar's Pyongyang Journal (AToL, Feb 25) are remarkable. Yong Kwon indicts the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-il, for bloody purges, executions and the starvation of anywhere from a half million to over a million of Kim's countrymen in the famine of 1995-98. Escobar, instead, is concerned that many in the West unfairly call Kim ''evil''.
He believes that it is important that Kim loves to laugh (He may be on to something. Hitler loved music and circus acts. Stalin, like Kim, loved the cinema, especially musical comedies. He, too, loved to laugh! And they all enjoyed dancing...on the graves of their enemies).
Escobar says that the streets of Pyongyang have been swept clean of beggars (during the famine, countless North Koreans were eating tree bark and grass in the countryside, but absolutely not in the pristine diorama of Potemkin-yang). Remember how US-led UN sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq supposedly led to an increase in infant mortality, and all the moral indignation that aroused? Nobody blamed Hussein. It was the fault of those baby-killers in the US. Yet when starvation and a dramatic increase in infant mortality hit North Korea, it was just that darned weather and perhaps some slipshod agricultural planners. It couldn't be ineptitude or callousness at the top.
Escobar is very understanding of the stresses felt by dictators like Kim, and wonders if Kim would like to get away from it all and anonymously enjoy a visit to a mall somewhere. Yong Kwon, I imagine, is more concerned with whether or not the people of North Korea want to get away from Kim Jong-il and their stunted lives on Orwell's Animal Farm. Like Stalin and his merry band of Western fellow travelers, Kim can rest assured that after another wearying day of keeping an entire nation under lockdown, he's got the sympathy of freedom-haters everywhere.
Geoffrey Sherwood
United States (Jun 18, '10)

[Re A North Korean leadership car crash, Jun 17] There is a long history of "convenient" car crashes in North Korea. As Pyongyangologists should know, nothing is left to design in choosing a heir to the throne in the DPRK. Alas, no one is privy to the wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the scenes. Partly this is owing to the black out and non recognition of North Korea by the world community. Consequently, the North Korea watcher has to fall back on faulty historical analogies, fanciful future scenarios, etc. Aidan Foster-Carter not too long ago in the columns of Asia Times Online wished that the DPRK should simply go away. It won't. It is better to talk to it than light a candle in the dark and get spooked by menacing shadows of one's imagination, you would think.
Nakamura Junzo Guam (Jun 18, '10)

I am really disturbed by the hate letters of Hardy Campbell. Calling America a racist country is insanity. I would invite this self -hating America to name a country on earth where blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and other minorities have a better life than in the United States of America. I would invite Hardy Campbell to name a nation on earth where its citizens are as free as they are in the United States of America.
Name one country in the Muslim or African world where women have more rights than they do in the United States of America? Please delight me with a country ruled by blacks where the society is more fair and prosperous than the United States of America. Name one Islamic country, Hardy, where people make more money, are more prosperous, enjoy more human rights and have more freedoms than we do in the United States of America? Delight me with some terrorist acts perpetrated by southern Evangelical Christians. For your information brown skin Muslims are the ones who destroyed our World Trade Center, who bombed innocent civilians in the Islamic Republic of England (sarcasm) and who killed many people in Spain.
If you hate America so much and if your life is so awful in our soil why don't you move to Iran, North Korea or some rats' hole in Africa? People like you Hardy do not deserve a nation, you deserve to live in a failed state, ruled by black dictators or even worst some Islamic country where the royal family swims in a pool of billions while the rest of the so-called country starves. The groups that you seems to exalt live off welfare from the taxes that people like myself pay.
Jonathan Howie United States (Jun 18, '10)

[Re Call the politburo, we're in trouble, Jun 16] Long ago, that sagacious Republican president Eisenhower warned the USA against the, "military industrial complex". We failed to heed his words. Now we are in the frying pan ready to fall into the fire.
Ron Mepwith
United States (Jun 17, '10)

Does anyone besides me see a possible connection between the "missing German torpedo" in the waters off Taiwan, and the Cheonan incident? Maybe I'm too old and have witnessed too many US "sleights of hands" to think rationally ... or maybe not.
Ken Moreau
New Orleans, United States (Jun 17, '10)

The Council of Foreign Relations report "US policy toward the Korean peninsula" calls for "rollback" in dealing with North Korea. That the blue ribbon task force signed on to this document to a man, with a few minor objections, signals a return to Cold War thinking. "Rollback" is a code word for repelling the Communist enemy at the Iron Curtain or the Bamboo Curtain. The "experts" seem to have forgotten that the North Koreans forces with Chinese volunteers "rolled back'' the UN forces headed by the US the 38th parallel during the Korean War.
The CFR report is the fourth on North Korea; it simply recycles the same tired formulas. One noticeable feature, it suggests talking to everyone other than North Korea. China will and should decide Pyongyang's fate. Not only is this an approach to failure, it highlights a bankruptcy of ideas. The president of the CFR had an op-ed piece in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal in which he called for engaging, not rolling back, North Korea. In brief, "US policy toward the Korean peninsula" is a dead letter.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 17, '10)

Racism, the most essential element of the Wonderlander zeitgeist, has had to cope with the enlightened times of affirmative action, all-black sports teams and a looks-like-chocolate-tastes-like-vanilla president. Long gone are the lynch parties, coloreds-only drink fountains and Jim Crow laws that characterized the white supremacist mentality of yesterday.
But with the new times comes new ways to bottle old wine. The neo-con Grand Old Party has always been innovative in packaging its neo-racism so as to cloak it in a thin veneer of American core principles. Fighting racial quotas in schools or jobs is their way of defending "democracy," of course, and defending the right to fly a Confederate flag is a clear endorsement for free speech. Blah blah blah. So should we be surprised at the latest and most shameless effort yet to make the Republican-engineered financial debacle of 2008 the product of Non-White Joe Blow American greed?
Yes, the Wonders of Wonderland never cease. Now the party that gave us Reagonomics, fiasco wars, astronomical deficits, irresponsible deregulation and sucking up to Wall Street campaign contributors is making the case that all those subprime foreclosures are simply the result of poor Americans (read minorities) reaching way, way beyond their grasp. Knowing full well they could never make those mortgage payments, those blackards (no pun intended but I'm certain the Republicans wouldn't disagree) connived to seduce those unsuspecting moguls of international finance into lending them money they knew full well would never be repaid. Dastards! Did those black and Latino families really expect us to believe that they sat down and listened to those Anglo-Saxon and Jewish brokers, developers and bankers promising them easy credit and had no idea they were being lied to? The fact that the US government was cheerleading them all the way to fulfill the American Myth should have tipped them off. Do they think us fools, or worse, Democrats?
So it is that the GOP, so adept at concealing its agenda of racial, cultural and class division behind the facade of Good Ol' 'merican values, is trying to once again make their hapless victims the Bad Guy. They did that after Hurricane Katrina too, using images of minority looters desperate to feed their families to justify white neglect, indifference and abandonment. Never mind that the GOP's predecessors exploited, abused and killed thousands upon thousands of minorities in order to support the rotten plutocapitalist structure of days gone by. No, that's not nearly enough. Now it's their modern successors who bamboozle, hoodwink and lie to the descendants of those former slaves and lettuce-pickers into thinking they can aspire to the white privileges the Republican racists so ardently defend as exclusively their domain. And to the Teabagger crowd (or as I like to call them, the Hoodless, Toothless Klan) that kind of obfuscation, deception and dissembling is music to their ears, finding scapegoats among the non-white Others who the scared whiteys are convinced are nothing but a bunch of welfare queens and wetback invaders.
Like all Republican plots against Americans, there are unexpected consequences sometimes, like the economic backlash those Sand Crackers in Arizona are suffering from, due to their muddle-headed immigration laws. But never fear, white America; though there will be casualties in this stealth race war the GOP is conducting, their path to renewed racial supremacy will be undeterred by reason, fairness or the Wonderland constitution. Look for more clever ways for the Republicans to appeal to the ever more frightened, angry and racist white Americans. I fully expect some GOP-funded scientist to make the claim that it's all those heat-absorbing colored bodies that are making the ice caps melt.
Hardy Campbell
Houston, United States (Jun 17, '10)

[Re Iran's Greens deserted, June 15] Another excellent article destined for my favorites folder for future reference. Ismael Hossein-zadeh informs us, among a great many things, "Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's main challenger, is also marginalized and the influence he had a year ago has evaporated". I do not find this particularly surprising. I believe it was Robert Fisk, no fan of President Ahmadinejad, writing in The Independent last year after the election that he believed the election results were largely accurate. Fisk was of the belief that Mousavi attempted to win the election solely by restricting his campaign to Tehran and other major centers. Demographically, that was never going to work because the larger population reside outside those areas.
Further, Ahmadinejad had for years before, with little power or resources, done his level best to improve pensions and conditions for the poorer classes, Ahmadinejad's very power base. Elsewhere, other people give credit to the belief that many of Mousavi's supporters are people who did well previously under the shah and would love to return to those days, something Ahmadinejad's voters and sympathizers view with absolute abhorrence. Personally, I'd be surprised if Mousavi's Green Movement hadn't been penetrated by sinister Western influences, another fact not lost on many Iranian voters.
Ian C Purdie
Sydney, Australia (Jun 16, '10)

[Re The Pentagon strikes it rich, Jun 15] Isn't it a ringing irony that the former Soviet Union found the minerals and rare earths in Afghanistan, and the US published its findings, but it is the Chinese who in the long run will benefit? Beijing has already a contract in its pocket for exploiting Afghanistan's rich copper deposits. It is willing to pay for the building a railroad which will bring to China that necessary commodity to feed its infant and thriving high tech sector.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 16, '10)

As an unrepentant bibliophile, I browse bookstores with the same frequency that a Republican dallies with underage interns. Invariably, the history section that I haunt divides its tomes in general terms, eg, Military, US, Asian, etc. There is a notable exception to this. One event stands above all others in its ubiquitous segregation of its own shelves from the generic rest. This event has one specific racial group and tragedy as its focus, even though the same kind of tragedy occurred to many other different races and categories of people throughout human history. The Holocaust of World War II has been distinguished from all other genocides, and the advocates of keeping this particular version in the public eye insist their motivation is that "This never happen again". But if the sincere intent of these so-called humanists is to ensure that the act of genocide not occur again anywhere, you would find history sections devoted to the Armenian massacres, the Kampuchean autocide, the aboriginal eliminations by the Brits, Americans, etc. But you would have to browse the general shelves for those subjects, whereas the Holocaust, and specifically the Jewish experience in the Holocaust, somehow merits its own stand-out and conspicuous shelves. Even there, though, you will be hard pressed to see any books that do more than whisper about the gypsies, homosexuals, communists, Slavs, etc that suffered the same fate as the Jews during the war. No, as far as the Holocaust-reminders are concerned, the Holocaust is exclusively a club for Jews and Jews alone; non-Jews need not apply. "Six million" will be bandied about as the figure that justifies this exclusivity, of course, and there's no doubt that if numbers alone were the reason for this possessiveness, few would quibble.
But it seems obvious to me that the math logic conceals a more pragmatic, political and propagandistic ploy. Israel and post-Holocaust Jewry were determined to avoid another genocide but they are quite aware that money and influence alone were not enough. They had that before the war and it did the Six Million little good. What was missing then but not now is the understanding of the Jews that they had been isolated from the Gentile mentality and thus little empathy for their plight was available. So a conscious effort to bang the Holocaust drum often and loudly began, with the result that an unending torrent of Jewish Holocaust literature, film, plays, poems and art has flooded global culture, especially in Wonderland. Portraying the Jews as innocent victims of Nazi hate through this cultural blitzkrieg (sorry, I couldn't resist) was intended to inculcate guilt, sympathy and compassion in the Gentile American. And this PR bombardment has succeeded in not only painting Jews in the pristine colors of innocent lambs but deterring any criticism of Israeli excesses.
So news of Israelis murdering Palestinian women and children, or supporting bloodthirsty dictators, or assassinating whoever and whenever they please, flies way under the sycophantic, obsequious Gentile media-radar, terrorized as it is by the ever-present images of the Holocaust, accusations of anti-Semitism, the multiple organs of Jewish intimidation (B'nai B'rith, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, etc) and the growing number of lunatic Jesus-freak evangelicals convinced they can convert Israel into a post-Rapture Christian Kingdom on earth.
But using the Holocaust to sugarcoat, whitewash and justify modern Jewish sins is a cynical affront to the memory of all those truly innocent people who died because of hatred and intolerance. Try as they will, though, Israel's own hateful intolerance and cruel distortion of history will not escape attention from the Highest Authority. Read your Old Testament, O False Israel, and learn the wisdom of the Book of Daniel. Your weight is wanting, and the Medes and the Persians are at your doorstep. Many will rejoice at the world's deliverance from your tyranny, and rest assured, that day is fast a'comin'.
Hardy Campbell
Houston, United States (Jun 16, '10)

Congratulations, Andreas Ardus, for pointing out another of Spengler's historical howlers! I've given up. Whenever I see Spengler's face, I think of Proverbs 26:11, and move on.
Lester Ness
Changchun
China (Jun 16, '10)

[Re The state we're in, Jun 14] Our Spengler writes: "It doesn't help when two groups of ethnic Turks, the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, slaughter each other in a former Ottoman province." While the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks both are Turkic peoples and the pan-Turanian strivings of the 20th century Turkish nationalists have reached there indeed, the area of the conflict itself - Kyrgyzstan - has never been part of the Ottoman Empire or has any other portion of Central Asia. Following the demise and further fragmentation of the Mongol realm, as Turkey and Persia coalesced into mighty empires, the Turkic tribes in Central Asia were largely left to their own devices until Russian domination was imposed there toward the end of the 19th century.
Andreas Ardus
Estonia (Jun 15, '10)
The article has been amended accordingly.

[Re Neo-cons lead charge against Turkey, Jun 10, '10] Mr Lobes' article on the neo-con sturm und drang over Turkey's "betrayal" of Israel and its American stooge highlights the dilemmas posed by the sunset of Imperial Wonderland. The Turks, who have invested much in turning from the Muslim world to the Christian-lite West, have seen the tide turning on overextended, overleveraged America and how little the West really values Turkish secularism anyway.
Try as they might to play ball with the imperialists, in the end it's all to no avail; Raptureholic racism will always be ready to tar an unobsequious non-Christian nation with the familiar and tired epithets of "terrorist" and "fundamentalist" or (horror of horrors) anti-Semites! So the Turks are aligning its stars with the anti-imperialists, whose vanguard states yawn at the thundering and oral foaming from an emasculated Washington and an impotent Tel Aviv. They know that the America of 2010 is the Britain of 1956, another Anglo-Saxon empire doomed by its absurd forays into the ravenous maw of the Middle East (no coincidence Israel's vital roles in both the Suez and Iraq/Afghanistan debacles.)
Turkey, having read the tea leaves, will soon be followed by Indonesia, Malaysia and a whole host of other moderate Islamic states that feel like Washington's abused, misused mistresses. The Muslim world now knows that the West's war is not only against Islam but a war for Islamic oil and resources and the Westernization of the Muslim soul. The snake-oil mantra of free enterprise and democracy isn't selling well anymore though, because, frankly, the products are an embarrassing bust at home. And the NATO/IMF/Wall Street/World Bank cabal's options are dwindling every day. Whatcha gonna do, Wonderlanders? Invade a NATO country? Send the abused, misused Iraqi Kurds over the border and march on Ankara? Maybe cut off their oil? Oooh, maybe if you stop selling them weapons that'll make'em hurt big time. Yeah, that's the ticket; Wonderland is the ONLY place on earth that makes those.
I can't wait for the photo op of the Turkish president as he puts his cojones on the table next to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmud Ahmadinejad when they form their anti-imperialist front. I understand that Obama's were cut off long ago and are hanging on a wall in the Chinese president's villa, available for return and reattachment once a trillion dollar check is mailed to Beijing.
Hardy Campbell
Texas, United States (Jun 15, '10)

[Re Pyongyang purge echoes, Jun 14] This brings small beer to the table. An appeal to the authority of the late Michel Foucault seems besides the point. History has a millennia-old record of purges. Projecting a new "purge" in North Korea is problematic. It is a matter of guess work or reading tea leaves. It brings little to our less than authoritative understanding of the regime. Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 15, '10)

[Re Seoul's space hopes crash, Jun 11] That was a week for South Korea: the failure of launching a rocket into space, a call for a shake up of its military over the sunken corvette Cheonan, and the continued erosion of support for the Lee Myung-bak government. What good does it do to engage in finger-pointing for the disintegration of the "KSPLV-1" (Korea Space Launch Vehicle 1) minutes after take off? Simply put the program is not up to snuff.
Consider the "mild coverage" accorded South Korea's latest attempt in space technology with the uproar and suspicions about North Korea's a few years ago. Pyongyang simply went about its business of making strides in rocket technology, which Seoul has not.
There is no Aesopian moral here of great import. South Korea has to return to the drawing boards and do due diligence if it wants to join the league of satellite launchers.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 14, '10)

Re The trillion-dollar failure, Jun 9] With reference to the 10th article in Henry C K Liu's series on the post-crisis outlook, at the end of the article, Liu states the following:

Meanwhile, in the United States, a conservative populist movement that calls itself TEA (Tax Enough Already) Party is gaining popular support and can easily be transformed into a fascist political force. Left unsaid in TEA Party rhetoric, besides protest against rising taxes, is protest on the prospect that the tax money should be spent on the poor, rather than bailing out the errant financial elite.

If you actually attended a Tea Party event, you would know that most of the anger, as expressed in signs and rhetoric, is directed against the bailouts of the "errant financial elite" and the resulting debt that will be passed onto our children and grandchildren. Welfare spending wasn't mentioned in the three events in New Jersey (a high welfare state) that I attended. TEA is an anti-Fascist movement. It is the alliance of the government with big business that is the very definition of fascism. Just ask Mussolini ...
Steve Bertz (Jun 14, '10)

[Re The World Cup war, Jun 11] Pepe said it best: football may be a beautiful game, but it has been vulgarized by commercialism, consumerism, capitalism and FIFA.
Sengkai Wong
Singapore (Jun 14, '10)

[Re Neo-cons lead charge against Israel, Jun 10] The salient fact that seems to be ignored in discussion of Israel is that Israel is a European colony. As the last gasp of European colonialism, it is not the fact that Israel was built by Zionists, but that they were Europeans.
This explains Israel's one-time support of apartheid South Africa, just as it supports the placing of Palestinians in the position of subhumans whenever Israel contacts them. The mindset of Israel is that all others are inferior and may rightly be exploited and mistreated by Israel.
Ron Mepwith
United States (Jun 11, '10)

[Re Neo-cons lead charge against Israel, Jun 10] Imagine! The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) wants to suspend Turkey from NATO. Why? Because they are involved in a diplomatic mission that follows the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty when dealing with Iran? Because they are a historically trusted friend of the Afghan people? Because it is the most effective winners of hearts and minds of the population there?
Perhaps the only gratifying feature of communism was that when you were through, you really were through. Why in the name of the honor are we even listening to John Bolton, Richard Perle, Wolfowitz, Wermser et al? Always prepared to go the extra mile to spill someone else's blood. And unfortunately the good people of Israel will suffer for it. These guys won't be happy until they haven't a friend in the Western world. And in the meantime, the Soviets are laughing all the way to the bank, while America, and her poodle to the north, Canada, carry the yolk of revisionary Zionism that will not stop until they all end up at the bottom of the well. Them fellows should be in jail.
Miles Tompkins
Antigonish (Jun 11, '10)

[Re Iran sanctions as good as 'used tissue', June 11] Here again goes the UN Security Council with another round of hypocritical rubbish. I was astonished both China and Russia supported these sanctions, but al-Jazeera carried an opinion piece, "Israel shakes down China", suggesting China simply went along rather than risk having Israel attack Iran, thereby jeopardizing China's access to energy supplies. There also appears elsewhere to be a growing body of opinion which believes that were Iran to in effect actually build a nuclear weapon, the danger is not that it might be used against Israel, for that would ensure Iran's own self destruction, but the mere fact Iran would have neutralized Israel's supremacy in that area. A fact totally intolerable to Israel.
Ian C Purdie
Sydney, Australia (Jun 11, '10)

Here's a new angle on Israel's attack on the Mavi Mamara: Israel was going to teach Turkey a lesson for its criticism of its brutal pre-emptive war on Gaza. And what a lesson it was, what with nine dead, many injured and a whirlwind of condemnation worldwide. Israel right-wing government took aim at the Muslim charitable organization IHH which it equates in its calculus with the same weight as Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran.
Israel's bully tactics are resulting in diminishing returns for the Hebrew state and a bane for its protector the United States. Israel's message is clear: if you're not with us, you're against us, and if so be prepared for brutal treatment.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 11, '10)

"As good as gold," goes the aphorism that probably predated King Midas and his double-edged touch. Worth, value, and "goodness" are intangible and elastic concepts that gold has served to fix and standardize through 40 centuries of human commerce. In spite of the limited utility of the metal, its heavy weight and difficulty in storing and moving, the yellow material has remained unchallenged as an alternative to human manipulations of value, which, like all things homo not-so-sapiens, is subject to politics, emotions and delusion.
If something is compared to gold's durable worth, it becomes synonymous with dependability and quality. Neither silver coins or paper currency have ever entered the lexicon as such benchmarks of intrinsic value, and certainly not stocks, bonds or other imaginary, intangible concepts of voodoo economics. There are sound reasons why the World Cup that will be presented to the planet's football champion in July is not made of shredded collaterized derivatives or subprime mortgages. So this serves as a partial explanation of why gold is once again achieving historic high prices, as the old markers of artificial value, such as political stability, currency convertibility and government trust, have eroded, frayed and vanished. But a double game is being played; while the capitalists hype up the "recovery" rhetoric to inflate their worthless shares of dwindling companies, they surreptitiously inflate gold prices by stockpiling their own Day-of-Reckoning Insurance, gradually turning their devaluing stocks and bonds into gold.
The competition between rising stock and gold prices betrays this hypocrisy, which until recently has been to Wall Street's delusional advantage. But, like football, initial advantages can disappear in the second half, as fatigue and fear sets in with the "free enterprise" crowd and they move from stocks to hard commodities. The game is tilting towards the Yellow Gang, and the referee is looking at his watch. Beset with those nasty facts of profound financial infrastructural damage that didn't miraculously get fixed with a few 15 second soundbites on the six o'clock news, the doyens of make-believe wealth are not only smelling the golden roses but buying them too. The suckers on the sidelines, still clinging to their 401k fantasies and the hope against hope that the clock will be turned back and Ike will be back in the White House and tail-finned Caddies will once again roam a white-ruled earth, will be caught with their gold-less pants down. Maybe they can use all that worthless paper wealth to cover their econo-nudity.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Jun 11, '10)

[Re French snub costs Taiwan's military”, June 9] The author has a perplexing way of using an adjective. He writes: “Taiwan's navy that year bought six Lafayette frigates from France's Thomson-CSF, a deal which led to a major scandal in both countries. It became apparent that the French company had paid huge kickbacks of reportedly US$400 million to French and Chinese officials to make the procurement go smoothly.” The less informed reader will be perplexed: if Taiwan were a country as one of “both countries”, why would payment to “Chinese” officials make procurement go smoothly? In “When Taiwan's Chinese-language daily the Liberty Times reported that Taipei”, the author takes care to indicate that the Liberty Times is not Chinese. Moreover, obviously “Taiwanese” is in the author's vocabulary, as in “Didier Cornolle had lived in Taiwan for five years and was married to a Taiwanese woman”. Last, Taiwan is not vulnerable due to this spat with a military suppler called France; Taiwan is extremely vulnerable from both the threat and actuality of attrition from afar because it is an island without energy so close to the Chinese mainland. Eventually, Taiwan will be required to start a war if it is determined to retain its de facto independence. Military readiness has to be based on this realistic future. The Chinese mainland will not start a war as long as it can pressure Taiwan more and more with ease and impunity without one, for decades to come.
Jeff Church
United States (Jun 11, '10)

[Re Trillion dollar failure, Jun 10] Much has been said over the past few months about the ramifications of the eurozone financial crisis, and who would win or lose. Liu believes that the falling euro would present problems to China's efforts to diversify its foreign reserve holdings away from the dollar. I would rather disagree. I see this as a splendid opportunity to increase euro holdings in China's basket of currencies. Why wouldn't anyone want to buy low when the euro is a bargain? Does anyone really believe Europe will crash and default into oblivion? Not me.
Chenliyen
Wisconsin, United States (Jun 11, '10)

[Re Fethullah Gulen's cave of wonders, Jun 8] Well, it is difficult to take seriously such commentary from one such as Spengler who is so deeply committed to his own Zionist Torahate or whatever it may be called. Given that his Zionism clearly postulates that its people are the truly exceptional and all the Goim are mere cattle - what can we expect.
This is the Mr Hyde to the David Goldman's Dr Jekyl - a brilliant individual with clearly a split personality. Great entertainment but dangerous as there may be innocents who will take this nonsense seriously.
Allen Jay (Jun 10, '10)

[Re Fethullah Gulen's cave of wonders, Jun 8] Boo! the pan-Turkic, pan-Middle Eastern, Pan-European, pan-American, pan-African, pan-Asian, pan-Antarctic, and global Peter Pan Islamo-Fascist Caliphate cometh again! Run, run, the end is nigh! Those crazy Muslims and their financial derivatives and resource-theft based FIRE economies are coming to take over our way of life! Why do they hate us? We won the Nobel Peace prize! We had to shoot the 19-year old kid five times in the head from as close as 45 centimeters because, by G-d, he was an existential threat!
Jubin Ajdari
Los Angeles (Jun 10, '10)

[Re War and succession on the peninsula, Jun 9] The tack that South Korea and the US have taken toward North Korea even before the sinking of the Cheonan is a casebook example of what not to do. Now Seoul and Washington are delaying naval exercises in the China Sea. They are at sixes and sevens about how to proceed at the UN and turning off the money tap. Plainly speaking they are twisting and turning in the wind, in order to deal with Pyongyang face to face. They think that they are buying time, but in the end they are falling into a trap of their own making. Threats, sanctions, and saber-rattling are no substitutes for good old-fashioned diplomacy.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 10, '10)

[Re The method in Israel's madness, Jun 8] Mr Escobar's article is very good, but (like most journalists) he ignores the clout of the religious right on US policy. Millennial enthusiasm is at a high pitch these days and has an impact on US policy and politics.
Lester Ness
Changchun, China (Jun 10, '10)

Am I a cynic or a true citizen of Wonderland USA? Why do I believe that all this hoo-ha about "new and tougher" sanctions against Iran is just another plutocratic ploy to enhance the profit margins of those American and Israeli firms that will continue to do clandestine, lucrative smuggling operations to the conveniently vilified Islamic Republic? I mean, really, is anyone fooled by all this huffing and puffing about trade embargoes anymore?
It's been obvious to me for some time now that the groups who will profit most from these so-called financial wars are the security agencies and corporate allies of the Tail and the Tail-Wagged Dog (ie, Mossad and CIA.) They charge a premium to the American, Israeli, European and Asian firms (including North Korea) that are addicted to the trade with Iran for delivering embargoed material with the proper forged documents, a trade that both Mafiesque groups are notorious for perfecting.
Remember, we had this "embargo' in place when so-called right-wing, terrorist-hating neo-cons fell over themselves to make lucrative deals with the nascent Islamic demons in the Iran-Contra scandal. Does anyone think that the intervening years have lessened the neo-con desire for free-market profit, even with the Devil as a partner? Indeed, since then, the CIA has and is continuing to make oodles of cash from their weapons/drugs smuggling, manufacturing/farming, processing, transporting and selling businesses, while the Jewish spooks fittingly specialize in bank corruption, money laundering and financial fraud.
Sanctioning trade is the CIA's favorite scam, though. The embargo money finds its way into the pockets of the politicians who pass such anemic legislation, of course, in a never-ending spiral of corruption and false patriotism, while the intelligence services get carte blanche to mark up embargoed goods and pocket a piece of the difference. The Iranians, naturally, blow smoke out their ears at the imperialist pagans, but let's face it, they cut deals too and get part of the "embargo premium' that passes through secret hands at midnight. The Pasdaran and their mullah buddies split the take for their own pet "black" projects that would never get official approval, just like the nuke-peddling North Koreans and Pakistanis do on a regular basis. Maybe I'm the one who sitting on a mushroom, puffing on a hookah, but seems like these 50-year exercises in regime-change failure are doing people on all sides a world of greenback good. If you think this farce will end soon, take another puff from my pipe, please.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Jun 10, '10)

[Re Najib pressured to keep subsidies, Jun 8] Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak cannot do much in reforming Malaysia's political landscape. His UMNO (United Malays Nasional Organization) is a tissue woven out of alliances. He cannot pare down subsidies without fanning a revolt among his allies. Nor can he risk alienating his Chinese and Indians partners. So if reform needs be, it will be minimal. Najib has to look "strong" and masterful in steering the nation in the shoals of economic hardship, the more especially since the Barisan Nasional government he heads is losing its grip on outlaying states, as it did recently in Sarawak.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Jun 10, '10)

Recent events on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara have again highlighted the brutal nature of the Israeli administration. Once again, Israelis have murdered - in cold blood - innocent, defenseless people. Once again, in response to international condemnation, Israel does little but point fingers and blame everybody else, and contrive fictional excuses: insinuating that the humanitarian organizations had links to terrorist organizations, and that humanitarian aid-workers were sufficiently armed to assault Israeli defense force commandos. The rest of the world has quickly seen through this farce. The overtly heavy-handedness of the Israeli’s has once again demonstrated that they will stop at nothing to achieve the aims of Israel’s "final solution": the systematic destruction of the Palestinian people.
Rory E Morty
Giessen, Germany (Jun 9, '10)

All of last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on television to denounce any criticism of Israel's "self-defense" raid against the Gaza flotilla, and declared that it is all about Iran plotting to install rocket bases in the Mediterranean. Thus Israel (a nuclear power with overwhelming military superiority) is in peril of its existence unless it has a free hand to attack anyone anywhere, and tyrannize millions of defenseless Palestinians at will. Nobody else has a right to self-defense, or perhaps to follow their example of "attack anyone anywhere"?
As Noam Chomsky declared last month, Israel is now a de facto pariah state. There are ever so many examples of Israel, bastion of democracy, being on buddy terms with the world's tyrants such as the Somoza regime, the Shah of Iran, Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko and the apartheid regime of South Africa to the last minute. Israel's treatment of "friends and allies" is even better: from murdering a sauna attendant in Norway (Lillehammer 1972), to forging passports of their "friends" from the UK to New Zealand to conduct assassination (Dubai 2010), to hijacking Turkish vessels on the high seas and shooting its unarmed passengers by the dozens - in "self-defense" of course (May 2010). As for its "best friend" the United States, whose officials (Biden, Clinton) can't wait to debase themselves in their declarations of servility, we have even better: in 1967, the USS Liberty (200 US Navy casualties); in the 1980s, the "Lavi" affair and the Pollard affair; the routine mistreatment of US citizens of Arab origin who wish to visit, all the way to the murder of Rachel Corrie and beyond. One of the victims on the Mavi Marmara last week was a US citizen, aged 19, unarmed and shot six times at close quarters.
Israel's military forces have killed and injured hundreds of US citizens over the years. Their Arab victims of all nationalities are in the scores of thousands killed, millions made refugees. This is accompanied by their proclamations of higher morality. Their ambassador in Spain declared "you should pay more attention to deaths from traffic accidents". It shows Israel's contempt of everyone and its fundamental belief that it is above any law. Do you wonder why they are so disliked? Simply and brutally put, it's because they hate everyone else.
Kali Kadzaraki (Jun 9, '10)

[Re Fethullah Gulen's cave of wonders, Jun 8] The article claims that "There is every indication that the Turkish government dispatched the Gaza flotilla in order to stage a violent confrontation." However, the Erdogan government did not have a prior knowledge that these people were going for violent confrontation. The Turkish prime minister and foreign minister were both out of the country, in America. The Chief of General Staff Basbug was also out of the country. If they were thinking there would be a clash, would they still choose to go outside of the country. I do not think so. Secondly, the flotilla was not entirely Turkish. Among those on board there were Europeans, Christians, Jews and non-believers also. There were people from 32 nations.
Tuncay Kayaoglu (Jun 9, '10)

In regards to Kelvin Mok letter trying to clear North Korea of responsibility for the Cheonan sinking, my first thought is that North Korean agents have been taking over the identity of South Koreans to put forth their lies about the Cheonan, so is Mok really a North Korean agent. No matter, I will destroy his lies no matter who he is. First, the investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan was made up of 50 experts including 24 foreign experts from Sweden, the United States, UK, Canada and Australia most probably with PhD's in various subjects. Could Mok tell us when he earned his PhD in these various subjects including chemistry, naval architecture and hydrodynamics? But then Mok tell us one of his life credos "One does not have to be knowledgeable about torpedoes". Mr Mok, if you are going to study a ship sunk by torpedo, you need to be knowledgeable about them.
The links in his letter are a joke, they have almost no useful information. He tells us the crew had to bang on the captain's door to get his attention while the link he provides has the captain saying his crew had to break down his door with a hammer to free him. The investigation found the hull bent upward into the ship it would have been the exact opposite in an internal explosion. Also none of the South Korean dead had any burn injuries also inconsistent with an internal explosion.
I could go on and make several more points proving it was a North Korean torpedo but what is the point - leftist idiots are immune to the truth and they will believe a multitude of insane leftist theories rather then a single common sense explanation; that what makes make leftists.
Dennis O'Connell United States (Jun 9, '10)

[Re China re-engages Myanmar ally, Jun 7] Consider, say, the United States' pressure on China to goad Myanmar to reform. The Chinese might rightfully reply that Washington is being hypocritical. Beijing can easily turn the tables on the "land of the free, home of the brave" by pressing the US to strong-arm its ally Israel to repent and return to the laws and ways of a civilized nation. Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 8, '10)

[Re Cheonan credibility gap widens, Jun 4] Koreans must have seen many reports like these from the day the Choenan was sunk on 26 March: 1. Cheonan Captain 'Reported Attack'. Immediately after an explosion that caused the 1,200-ton corvette Cheonan to sink in waters near the de-facto maritime border with North Korea on March 26, the captain sent out a message to the Second Navy Fleet Command, saying, "We are being attacked by the enemy." A military source on Thursday said Captain Choi Won-il sent the message using his mobile phone, according to analysis of communications records. Choi sent the report after confirming that the stern had broken off following the explosion around 9:25 pm. It is not clear how much information he had at the time.
2. Cheonan captain describes incident CCTV . Choi’s TV press conference in which the key statement was that he felt a bang but did not give much thought to it until two crewmen used a hammer to bang on his cabin door to catch his attention to come on deck. Only then did he realize that the ship had lost its stern. A ship hit by a torpedo, contact or non contact, would have been lifted bodily out of water and everybody on board would be seriously injured if not killed. See (Torpedo underwater explosion). One does not have to be knowledgeable about torpedos to have a feeling that whatever sunk the Choenan could not have been a North Korean submarine torpedo attack. Now take a good look at South Korean Ship Raised, Sunk By 'Close Range External Non-Contact Explosion' with a good 360 degrees video of the Cheonan's front section and the funnel section. A video view of the rear section is on a separate barge. Then look at the photos from:
3. Funnel section. The most serious blast damage is above the portside turbine room that lifted and separated the funnel section from the hull. All it will take is for good photos of these three sections to enable anyone to put them together like jigsaw puzzle bits to get a good idea of the blast that broke the Cheonan apart.
My contention is that an internal port-side turbine room air-fuel explosion is the cause.
Kelvin Mok
Canada (Jun 8, '10)

[Re Washington feels heat over Iran fuel deal Jun 1, and Attack complicates new sanctions on Iran, Jun 2] Washington rightly deserves to "feel the heat" for what Brazil and Turkey were able to achieve. The concentration of stupidity in Washington foreign policy circles about Iran is breathtaking. Brazil and Turkey should be thanked for putting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "smart diplomacy" to work. The enormity of such a feat can only be understood by viewing it through the prism of the bitter history of the past 30 years between the United States and Iran. Diplomacy is the art of the possible and Brazil/Turkey, by their patient and relentless diplomacy, have proven that. It would be a tragic mistake for the United States if it did not seize the moment and build on that opening.
The question that needs an answer is why is the ghost of the Bush/Cheney administration policy towards Iran still rattling around? President Barack Obama, much to his credit, has said on numerous occasions (the most recent in March, on the occasion of the Iranian New Year) "Our offer of comprehensive contact and dialogue stands," Yet actions that only perpetuate mistrust and hatred and are designed to punish rather than to engage continue unabated. Whose interest does it serve? Certainly not America's. In 2003, Iran sent the United States a demarche outlining and asking for negotiations on all outstanding issues. The Bush/Cheney Administration ignored them. Seven years later, Brazil and Turkey have given America another opportunity to engage. It is in America's national security and economic interest to take advantage of that opportunity, notwithstanding the Israel can-do-no-wrong crowd and their apologists in the US Congress.
The United States and Iran have many interests in common in the region. Both want a stable Iraq and Afghanistan. And, with business people from America's European allies and the Russian and Chinese all over Iran, buying and selling everything, America's business people could profit from an opening of that market. Sanctions and attempts at isolating Iran have done nothing but to leave the US bereft of any knowledge about Iran. It is not in America's national security interest to be in permanent confrontation with Iran.
Independent analysts inside Iran and others with connection to the government are saying that the Iranian government is now confident enough internally to want to engage with the United States. Common sense and the urgency of now demand that the Obama administration must begin that promised dialogue based on mutual respect and bring an end to the hostility separating the United States and Iran. No more words, but real deeds.
Fariborz S Fatemi
United States (Jun 7, '10)

[Re Cheonan credibility gap widens, Jun 4] Curiouser and curiouser. Have we wandered through the looking glass in the sinking of the Cheonan? South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak is running out, it seems. His campaign to pin blame on North Korea in the sunken corvette media blitz is unraveling fast. Is it about time to weigh the evidence which Pyongyang has published? Surely it is worthy of examination in the light of the conspiracy theories which like fungus seem to be sprouting by the minute.
Nakamura Junzo Guam (Jun 7, '10)

[Re Wife-beating, sharia, and Western law, May 25] Judging by what Spengler wrote, he is ready to take his already simmering contempt for his readers to another level, thinking that, due to their (assumed) ignorance of (among other things) some details of Jewish law, they will not be able to spot his flat-out lies. I'll just refer to one of his claims; specifically his assertion that "It goes (or should go) without saying that wife-beating is repulsive in the extreme to Jews. The position of Israel's ultra-Orthodox rabbinate is that it is "strictly forbidden to beat a woman" and that the police should be called in such cases." The claim that wife-beating is repulsive to Jews has been demolished by Naomi Graetz in her article "Judaism Confronts Wife-Beating". The first few paragraphs are quite telling: "The myth of the kind gentle, Jewish husband has been broken down. The evidence that Jewish wife-beating exists is strong. Statistics and headlines assail us with facts. 'One out of six' or 'one out of seven' Israeli women is regularly beaten at home. The estimated minimum figure is 100,000 battered women in Israel (of whom 40,000 end up hospitalized); the maximum number is 200,000 (which includes the Arab population)''... The Jewish feminist, who may be alert to the existence of the problem in Israel, may not be aware that a similar problem exists on her own turf. Pick up the Denver newspaper, the Boston Jewish Advocate, The New York Times and you will hear about rabbis' wives who are beaten by their husbands, surgeons' wives who stay in abusive marriages for 12-16 years, Kosher shelters and kitchens for Jewish victims of domestic violence in New York City and Boston. The numbers being bandied about in the media vary from 19-25% The conspiracy of silence is breaking, but not fast enough."
So, 10% among violent Muslims, but between 19-25% among kind, gentle, violence-abhoring Jews? Spengler's slickness is also nicely exposed in the remainder of the paragraph: "The position of Israel's ultra-Orthodox rabbinate is that it is "strictly forbidden to beat a woman", where he tries to imply that Jewish law absolutely prohibits wife beating, which is, of course, false. According to Rambam (Maimonides) in Sefer Nashim, hilkhot ishut (21:10), "Any woman who refuses to do one of the jobs she is obligated to do is forced to do it even by the rod". And Moshe Isserlis, a 16th century Ashkenazi Rabbi from Poland, has these thoughts to share on the issue: "But if she curses him or denigrates his father and mother, and he rebukes her verbally but she pays no attention to him, there are those who say that it is permitted to hit her, and there are those who say that it is forbidden to hit even a wicked woman; and the first view is the principal one" ("...even a wicked woman" is a reference to a topic about the permissibility of hitting and innocent woman, which is, fortunately, forbidden).
If AsiaTimes Online allows a transparent Muslim-hater such as Spengler to spout his venom on a regular basis, I think it would be fair to invite a Muslim who would be capable of responding in a scholarly manner to do so.
Mustafa
Bosnia (Jun 7, '10)

Of all the dichotomies that litter the Wonderland Wonderscape, the most schizophrenic of all is American's conflicted contradictions about their "by, for and of the people" government. Polls, especially those conducted by neocon ideologues, would have us believe that most Americans are convinced that the federal government is wasteful, corrupt and profligate beyond belief. They are certain that congress is nothing but a den of thieves. Government is entirely too intrusive and regulatory and anti-free-market, so the conservatives shout from their radio and TV pulpits. But when confronted with the fact that it was under Reagan, that paragon of conservative virtue, that government grew larger than any other time in Wonder History, the silence from GOPville is deafening.
Nor will they mention the ugly fact that it was under Reagan that the US went from creditor to debtor nation, where it will stay under the Chinese turn the lights out in Wonderland. And though most citizens belief that all the other state representatives in congress are crooked, they will unfailingly return their own shining knights of honesty and altruism back to feed at the trough election after election. The common wisdom about Washington's incompetent mismanagement of the economy and its wasteful pork-stuffed agendas stops at one Washington institution's doors, however.
The Pentagon invariably gets a free ride on the pork machine, so convinced are Americans that their boys in uniform could never be serving under an agency as thoroughly corrupt and ineptly run as everything else in PorkLand. The fact that these soldiers have to rig their own body armor to stay alive in the imperialist Middle East wars seems to fly under the collective terrorist-hating, fear-mongered radar. That assumes, of course, these troops survive the electrocution showers the corner-shaving Army contractors seem to specialize in.
And how many Obama-bashing, stay-out-of-my-life conservatives are screaming for federal help now that their pristine beaches in Florida are drenched in oil? All of a sudden, the free market that allowed BP to stain the Gulf doesn't seem such a good deal, does it? Wonderlanders are contemptuous of their government because it is a stark reflection and reminder of their own greed, incompetence, avarice and pride.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Jun 7, '10)

[Re Russia takes a keen interest, Jun 3] It's about time, you would think? Stripped to its bones, Russia's desire to "bring positive influence to bear on regional stability" is nothing more than a remouthing of China's position.
Something interesting is happening in South Korea though. It further gives evidence that South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak to punish North Korea, may very well have run out steam. Riding high on optimism of increasing his party's hold on power, results of local election has taken the wind out of the Grand National Party sails. It narrowly won again the mayoralty in Seoul and over all won only 6 out of 16 key races for mayors and governors.
Will Lee learn a lesson? Will he modify his policies towards the North? Suddenly in Washington his star might very well be fading.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 4, '10)

[Re Russia takes a keen interest, Jun 3] I'd like to respond to the declarative title with a question: And who cares? Russia is not trusted either by supposed friend or by confirmed foe. For example, they just sold Iran down the river for whatever crumbs the Americans were willing to throw them - a decision that will surely not go unnoticed in the Third World.
This is the reason Russia is geopolitically where it is - nowhere or getting there fast. It's a mistake China should be wise not to make.
Jose R Pardinas
United States (Jun 4, '10)

[Re Pyongyang: Cheonan was false-flag sinking and Russia takes a keen interest, Jun 3] The two articles about North Korea by Yong Kwon and Kim Myong Chol are both deeply flawed. Yong Kwon has his facts completely wrong, he claims that Russia was a key player in the 1994 Agreed Framework, however the agreement was a bilateral agreement between the US and North Korea, Russia was not present. Yong Kwon also claims the US tried "starving North Korea into submission" in 1994 - this is a complete lie. I ask him to provide a single fact to back up his argument.
As for Kim Myong Chol he is a complete joke. He a Korean living in Japan who represents the most evil government in the history of the world. If he loves North Korea so much I suggest he go live there, I'm sure he would quickly fall out with the Kim family and then he could experience the joys of a North Korean gulag. Giving this man a forum to spout his lies is morally indefensible. I hope when the North Korean people gain their freedom, Japan will deport him to North Korea to face trial for crimes against humanity and treason to his fellow Koreans.
In an article yesterday Francesco Sisci claimed that there are only 1,000 North Korean refugees in the south - the true number is over 18,000. Also China will not allow North Koreans to go to the South and they forced to make their way to Thailand. I hope the day the Kim Family regime falls all the leftists that have defended North Korea are made to walk through the gulags they ignored and forced to confront the evil they defended. What I would do to them next would make the devil blush.
Dennis O'Connell
United States (Jun 4, '10)

[Re We are all Gazans now and No Israeli good deed goes unpunished, Jun 1] I wish to applaud Pepe Escobar for his objective analysis on Israel and its shameful atrocity in high seas. UN reports that compared to more than 400 food convoys necessary for Gaza Israel allows only 171 a week, in other words deliberately starving the population after destroying more than 15000 homes in its recent assault. The Zionist apologist Spengler has on the other hand once again proved that he does not belong to Asia Times Online and should stop smearing Asia Times Online with his naked apologia for Israel's crimes that are decried by the international community.
Farokh
United States (Jun 4, '10)

[Re Flaws in puling plug on North Korea, Jun 2] China has not shied away from supporting North Korea, much to the chagrin of the US. It has counseled patience, not threats nor posturing. Its standpoint has not won it brownie points in Washington or Seoul. China's attitude remains puzzling to China and North Korean watchers. They are ahistorical. For them, everything has to be looked at with a fresh eye, and the past counts for little or naught.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 3, '10)

Ho hum. Israel commits terrorist acts against Palestinians. The world then squawks and protests. There is talk of boycotts, much gnashing of teeth, and the Wonderland media ignores the anti-Israel sentiments, lest it be accused of anti-Semitism, Holocaust-denying or pro-terrorist sentiments. Then it's back to the usual rationalization of why Israel gets praised for abiding by the same rules that other, non-American-owning countries routinely get condemned for by the tail-wagged Wonderlanders. Everyone in the non-Wonderland world keeps tapping their fingers, waiting for the day Humpty Dumpty America falls off his wall and all the Jewish horses and all of Wall Street's men can't put Humpty Imperialist back together again. The answer to that question of When That Will Happen is; when Humpty's shattered, fractured carcass and spilled yolk is worth more to his "saviors" than his pompous pontificating platitudes atop that wall. I hear the price of broken shells is at an all-time high.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Jun 3, '10)

Re Israel founders in international waters, Jun 1] Leaving aside the PR blow in terms of world opinion, Israel's attack on a Turkish ship and the loss of Turkish lives is also likely to be a very significant diplomatic blow since it is an incident that obliges Turkey to respond in a robust and unequivocal way. The attack comes at a critical moment in Turkey's career as a regional power.
Turkey's first and overriding priority, and one which dominates its foreign policy, is to industrialize and modernize. The ignominious collapse of the Ottoman empire due to its failure to adapt to the modern world is etched deep into the nation's political culture and the political consciousness of all social classes. If Ataturkism means anything, it means that.
Rapid modernization means attaching oneself to one of the three blocks that dominant the world economy: the United States, the European Union or China. Three decades of pursuing a pro-American strategy - which meant a pro-Israeli line as well - did not deliver the modernization it hoped for because American tutelage during the Cold War meant maintaining in power a narrow, corrupt and parasitical oligarchy that was more interested in easy money than in modernization. Indeed, it became an obstacle to modernization.
The end of the Cold War undermined the basis of the ruling oligarchy. Under pressure from increasing contact with world market, the Turkish bourgeoisie dropped its support for the traditional oligarchy in favor of wider class participation that eventually saw the light of day as a restrained democracy. The desired developmental partner now became the EU.
Turkey was shocked and angered then at the European Union turning down its membership bid. The EU would not even commit itself to a long-term process for membership. In reality neither the EU nor Turkey are ready for Turkey's entry since it poses far more problems than advantages.
The EU's rejection taught Turkey a bitter but necessary lesson. It knows that entry - or even a privileged relationship with the EU - has to earned. There will be no easy ride for Turkey. As a consequence Turkey has totally revamped its foreign policy strategy towards gaining leverage by becoming the mayor regional power-broker at the crossroads between Europe, Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East. In the last three years Turkey has been very successful in this, arranging deals between almost all the major players in the region.
In this context Turkey must now respond forcefully and with determination otherwise its claim to be the regional power broker will be seriously undermined. A regional power must show the ability to crack heads as well as bringing friends together. Is Turkey really a real regional power with clout or just an officious go-between and provider of conferencing facilities?
Susil Gupta (Jun 2, '10)

[Re Israel founders in international waters, Jun 1] I strongly condemn this barbaric attack. All Muslims should stand together to protest strongly. They should also adopt a joint resolution at the United Nations and other regional and international forums. The international community needs to take cognizance of this inhuman act of Israel. Human-rights organizations, the media and civil society should also record their protests. Muslim countries should also ask for intervention by the US, United Kingdom and European Union in this matter. It is a testing moment for President Barack Obama's administration as Israel has a very strong lobby in United States and it would not be possible for him to take any punitive action against the brutal force which Israel displayed on the innocent people in international waters. There is every likelihood that the US and others in the West will protect Israeli interests. Our brothers and sisters in Palestine need our attention and support, which we should not hesitate to extend. As a Muslim Ummah ["community" or "nation"] we should stand together with the Palestinians at this important moment.
Waqas Ahmed Khan
Karachi, Pakistan (Jun 2, '10)

[Re We are all Gazans now, Jun 1] It was very refreshing news that Israel took on the rocket-transporting losers on that ship. It is about time that Israel showed some radical action and start repaying violence with violence and hatred with even greater hatred. If they take a house with a rocket transported by so called humanitarian groups, Israel should take on an entire town. It is about time that Israel begins a virulent propaganda campaign and started using the same techniques that Arabs and Muslims have been using against Israelis for centuries: demonization and dehumanization of the enemy. Hopefully the Israel leadership will get their heads out of their butts and realize that appeasement does not work and that the only language that terrorists understand is violence, death and destruction. Give them hell Israel, and if they are willing to do anything, show them that you are too! It is actually funny to read Pepe Escobar's orgiastic fantasy of a blockade to Israel by four failed states whose development will take several hundred years (obviously the Chinese elites are in paradise now, it's only the billion something people that are not elites that are suffering). I suggest that he leaves Sao Paulo for a day and look around what he wishes for the rest of the world. No Mr Escobar, we are not all Gazans now.
Ysais Martinez
United States (Jun 2, '10)

[Re No Israeli good dead goes unpunished, Jun 1] Does Spengler/Goldman not realize that there was live video/audio feed from the Mavi Mamaru during the act of piracy being beamed back to Cyprus and recorded. Israel has finally committed suicide in front of the whole world by attacking citizens from members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in international waters. The boats were headed to Gaza, not Israel. Shame on you Spengler.
Bob van den Broeck
Canada (Jun 2, '10)

[Re Deadly silence on the DMZ , May 28] The silence might be as deadly or it could just be silence. Events in the hot war of words and military posturing on both sides of the DMZ look less threatening. And it is South Korea's president Lee Myung-bak who has blinked first. His bark is louder than the bite of his policies. Consider his cutting all links to the North save the Kaesong Industrial Zone. Lee has bent his knee to the chaebols. And if that wasn't enough, neither he nor his Japanese counterpart could persuade Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to join in the waning chorus of condemning North Korea. Unanalyzed and un or under reported is documents issued by Pyongyang refuting the "partially published tell it all report" on the sinking of the Cheonan. The gaps of credibility remains as wide as ever, since the South has failed to make an unchallenged charge against the North.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Jun 2, '10)

[Re , May 25] Wife-beating, sharia and Western law ] I do not fault you for wanting diverse opinions; in fact I applaud that. I also recognize the fact that like many media outlets you need to generate clicks on your website in order to acquire the most revenues from your ads, therefore you understandably need some ''juicy" and provocative articles that stir up debate and at times even a bit of controversy. What I think is wrong is letting that desire lead you to publish articles like Spengler's ''Wife-beating, sharia and Western Law''. I can tolerate the typical pro-Israeli slant, but the ''Islam equals wife beating'' article is beneath even a tabloid paper, let alone a paper I used to read each and every morning for a number of years. I came to your site only today after a year-long absence to see if in fact there was a propagandist slant on the attack on the aid flotilla by Spengler and sure enough there was the wonderful piece No Israeli good dead goes unpunished, [Jun 1]
Going back to the "Wife-beating and sharia," may I point out a few facts about domestic violence in the US?:

Three to four million women in the United States are beaten in their homes each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, or male lovers. ("Women and Violence," Hearings before the US Senate Judiciary Committee, August 29 and December 11, 1990, Senate Hearing 101-939, pt. 1, p. 12.)

Police report that between 40% and 60% of the calls they receive, especially on the night shift, are domestic violence disputes. (Carrillo, Roxann "Violence Against Women: An Obstacle to Development," Human Development Report, 1990)

30% to 60% of perpetrators of intimate partner violence also abuse children in the household. (Edelson, J.L. (1999). "The Overlap Between Child Maltreatment and Woman Battering." Violence Against Women. 5:134-154)

The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services.
So what would be the point of a ''scholarly'' review of Islam sanctioning of wife-beating if it is so prevalent in a Christian Western country in which the law so firmly stands against that kind of violence? Has anyone linked Buddhism to the instances of wife-beating, daughter killing and general attitudes towards women in China?
Look, it is your paper, and I am no longer a reader who matters to you other than may be in another year returning to see if Spengler remains your "main juicy attraction". I have been sorely missing Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar's excellent articles but I can't be a patron to any news outlet that gives so a prominent voice to a gifted troll exploiting so shamelessly the unfortunate cultural, religious, political and ideological divides of our generation to generate clicks rather than respect for you.
Sam
Los Angeles (Jun 2, '10)

A counterpoint to Spengler's view was published in the same box. See Muslim-beating in the 'righteous' US, May 25. - ATol

[Re Obama shakes pillars of US security, May 28] There could be no greater condemnation of the deadly raid by Israeli commandos on aid ships bound for Gaza than the fact that this was a deliberate act of defiance carried out in anticipation of the scheduled meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama. The Israeli/US alliance is facing its gravest crisis in decades after Israel's controversial announcement in March of a settlement project in Arab East Jerusalem. This was soon followed by General David Petraeus, commander of US Central Command, dropping the diplomatic bombshell that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a "root cause of instability" and an "obstacle to peace" that played into the hands of al-Qaeda and Iran. Such remarks would have been anathema under the previous George W Bush administration, which was at pains to perpetuate the lie that Israeli security and the need to resolve Israel's dispute with the Palestinians are separate core US national interests. But after widespread international condemnation of this latest atrocity, the US will be more resolute than ever to force Israel into a negotiated settlement with an enemy it so readily dismisses as being among the most despised of all people on Earth.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra, Australia (Jun 1, '10)

[Re The American century is so over, May 28] This was a very carefully argued and well-thought out piece, but it misses one vital thing. US President Barack Obama is not weak, and he does not vacillate. Obama homes on like a laser beam on his main agenda, which is serving the wealthy money interests that selected him and that will make him a billionaire after his term as president ends. However, Obama is a total master of misdirection, perhaps the best there ever is at getting people to debate his words while his actions are completely different. This can give the appearance of weakness, but if you look closely I think you will see a different pattern.
Consider: There is broad public dissatisfaction over giving or promising trillions of dollars to Wall Street, and letting the same bankers that ran the economy and their companies into the ground profit with taxpayer-guaranteed bonuses larger than the GNP of some small countries. So Obama puts on a big show about how he is going to limit the pay of Wall Street CEOs, and the news media is full of debate over whether the government should interfere with setting corporate pay. Any yet, in reality, Obama was doing nothing at all to limit CEO pay, and was in fact continuing to use taxpayer funds to guarantee CEO salaries. Obama did not flip-flop, he misdirected the public.
Consider: many Americans are concerned about the massive trade deficit with China. However, this deficit is mostly due to American-based corporations having moved their manufacturing facilities to China, and they have no interest in trade restrictions or in allowing the Chinese currency to appreciate to any degree. So there is no way that corporate whore like Obama will do anything here, but he does occasionally make some strong public statement to appease the domestic audience: but he never, ever does anything real. Again, this is not weakness, it's just propaganda.
Why do we assume that Obama has any concern for the broader interests of the American nation as a whole? Why do people assume that Obama cares about American strength, or the reputation of America? Obama cares about Obama, and the money and influence that his wealthy patrons can give him for his loyal service. Obama talks a good game, but why do so many otherwise smart people keep making the same mistake that Obama means a word of it? Look carefully at the bottom line, and you will see that Obama does not use language to communicate his goals and intentions but simply to manipulate.
Timothy Gawne
Birmingham, Alabama, USA (Jun 1, '10)

[Re Tough love for an unstable neighbor, May 28, '10] Regarding the current situation in Korea. Several essays in Asia Times Online have appeared in the past few days, with opinions ranging from the puzzled to the ravings of a Pyongyang apparatchik. As anyone should see, and as everyone outside Asia already does, the latest Korea situation is not the fault of the United States. Rather it is Beijing's equivalent of Pakistan's North Waziristan or US president George W Bush's Hurricane Katrina. China is singularly responsible for the continued survival of North Korea, an inhuman, outrageous state that suppresses its own people and now threatens the rest of the world. Long ago, this should have and could have been resolved - by China. But probably with Beijing's concurrence in years past, the nation now has a nuclear capability. Is China afraid to take down this regime, or at least defang it behind the scenes? We are watching to see what China will do. And so far, it is nothing. Nada. Zip. Is this tough? Of course! Leadership is lonely.... If only we could see some. For a state that aspires to global or even regional leadership of some sort, China's irresponsible inaction should be perceived as a huge embarrassment. Instead, no one in Asia says much of anything, except to blame US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton!
Jamyang Norbu USA (Jun 1, '10)

May Letters

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