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Please note: This Letters page is intended primarily for
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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.
October 2010
[Re Japan spins anti-China
merry-go-round, Oct 28] Another excellent and comprehensive article by
Peter Lee, clarifying and confirming for others, the shenanigans of the
ultranationalists in Japanese politics who yearn for a resumption of a
militaristic Japan as sole hegemon over the Asia-Pacific. Mr Lee, you fail to
disappoint once again, well done on your enlightening article sir!
May the moderates and cooler heads on both sides of the Sea of Japan prevail in
that both China and Japan-and indeed the entire Asia-pacific-may prosper in
peace and cooperation. Anything else, of course, plays to the benefit of the
Imperialists in Tokyo and Washington, the latter of whom are masters of the
British art of dividing and ruling.
Hank Australia (Oct 29, '10)
[Re Japan spins anti-China
merry-go-round, Oct 28] Peter Lee's article could easily be called
"China spins anti-Japan carousel". It depends from which height you view the
Sino Japanese dispute.
The Chinese leadership escalated the trawler incident into an affair of state.
As such, it gave Beijing a golden opportunity to humiliate Japan.
By using the rare earth issue, China is resorting, as it traditionally does, to
righting history's wrong done to China. It thinks that it is in the driver's
seat thanks to its quasi monopoly and energetic economy. Nonetheless, it should
not forget even Japan which relies on these rare earths for economic growth,
has weapons of its own to thwart China's designs.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Oct 29, '10)
[Re Handicapping the
global field, Oct 28] Not for the first time have I wished I was such a
wordsmith as our Tom Engelhardt. Personally I was overjoyed with Tom's most
excellent article until I reached his very sober dose of reality.
"Drone makers". What a sick, evil and malevolent world in which we live. A
world in which many ordinary decent human beings are led to erroneously believe
we a doing "God's just work" with these surgical methods.
A world where, rightly, I regard some people are nothing more than just "pimply
children", who by remote control, are raining down real death in a perverted,
yet totally disconnected, live video arcade game.
I utterly despair, I weep for all of us, I weep for these kids, one day they
will wake and realize their monstrous crime, crimes against humanity and their
corrupt government will offer neither solace nor tangible support in their
tormented old age.
As my mum used to say, "Jesus wept".
Ian C Purdie
Sydney, Australia (Oct 29, '10)
[Re China's heir
apparent tied to Taiwan, Oct 27] Thanks to Jens Kastner, we now know
that the official function of "Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council" is not
"handling Taiwan's relations with" the mainland but with "China". Jens Kastner
should tell the council to change its name to "China Relations Council" even
though the council will never dare to obey Jens Kastner's or any other
China-hater's order. The title of Kastner's article is also intentionally
misleading; it suggests that China and Taiwan are two countries. However, he
lifted a stone only to drop on his own foot, for his information about Xi's
ties to Taiwan turns out to demonstrate that the mainland and Taiwan are but
two inseperable parts of China.
JMJ
United States (Oct 28, '10)
[Re North Korea:
Embracing the dragon, Oct 28] History is conveniently left to languish
in the shadows in this article. Relations between North Korea and China go back
at least 80 years. At that time, Korean revolutionists in the north of China
fighting colonial and expansionist Japan made up the majority of China's
Communist party there. They preserved the party's hold in that region while the
party "Soviets" in southern China were under fierce attack by the Kuomingtong
before the Long March to Yennan. As a consequence, the Chinese leadership owed
Koreans under the leadership of Kim Il-sung a debt of honor.
This "marker" they repaid in turning the Korean War into a stalemate, and some
say a defeat, for the US. US designs on North Korea have never ceased worrying
Beijing of a hostile presence on their borders were Washington capable of
toppling the Kim regimes. Of late, beefed up joint US South Korean military
exercises, particularly those in the Yellow Sea, have provoked China to hold
its own live fire naval manuevers and air drills as a warning to Washington and
Seoul to tone down the saber rattling in Beijing's backyard.
As a result, Washington and Seoul have cancelled the latest round of military
posturing. China has purchase on "preserving" the territorial integrity of
North Korea for its own defense and geopolitical reasons. North Korea is not a
"satellite" in the sense that Great Britain is an American preserve.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Oct 28, '10)
[Re Covert ops
sabotage US-Iran ties, Oct 26] I wish to write in support of the views
expressed by Ian Purdie in his letter on the article by Rob Grace.
It utterly astounds me that the United States and Israel have not by now
learned from past mistakes but instead seek to make a bad situation worse by
covert programs of destabilization and sabotage directed at the Iranian
government - giving the Iranians a list of further scores to settle. Even more
astonishing is the way smaller allies like Britain and Australia are complicit
(if only by remaining silent) about these counterproductive machinations. Do
not the political leadership of such valuable (?) allies of the United States
have the balls to tell America the diplomatic equivalent of "look buddy, we
still love you but believe in this case you are dead wrong. What about a
re-think in policy position?".
From my understanding of Iranian society and how it functions, Iran is a
natural ally, not enemy, of the West. Its emenity has been entirely
manufactured by misguided Western policy, commencing (as Ian Purdie points out)
with the disgraceful 1953 overthrow prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq by the
CIA.
Monsoonwind
Australia (Oct 28, '10)
Mel Cooper in his letter of October 27 said ''It is foolish to muse that the
Chinese party will ever permit Western-style democracy to come to China."
Under Western-style democracy, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans have
died from illegal invasions, and the world is in big economic mess from Western
banks doing funny businesses. China doesn’t need any of this kind of democracy.
Yun Tang (Oct 28, '10)
[Re Covert ops
sabotage US-Iran ties, Oct 26] Rob Grace informs us with his article
that "For years, the United States and Israel have engaged in a covert effort
to destabilize Iran's government and sabotage its nuclear program. But these
operations frequently escape mention in public discussions".
Well, no one could ever accuse the United States of learning from repeated past
and all too often disastrous mistakes. How many countries since the end of
World War II has the United States meddled and interfered with? With what
results? Of benefit to whom if anyone at all? In 1953, Prime Minister Mohammed
Mossadeq was overthrown by a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-organized coup,
in what some have called "a crucial turning point both in Iran's modern history
and in US-Iran relations". This was followed by 26 years of resentment and
anti-US feeling which culminated with the 1979 revolution. Further, matters
went from bad to worse with the rise of the anti-American Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Khomeini. Then for the unfortunate president Jimmy Carter, this was
followed by the prolonged 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
Since then, the United States resentment has become palpable. Iran continues
under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to thumb its nose at the United States and
with good reason. Iran, I believe, simply wants to be treated as an equal and
sit down and discuss differences with "honest brokers". I have watched
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak on a number of occasions and find little to
disagree with.
The position Iran takes suits neither Israel nor the United States. Then again,
neither of them are particularly noted for learning from the vast catalogue of
past mistakes. The same can be said of their steadfast allies, including my
country, Australia. Honest brokers seeking to resolve differences simply don't,
as Rob Grace informs us, conduct "Covert ops [that] sabotage US-Iran ties". As
he astutely adds "it actually stands as a barrier to a long-term resolution".
Ian C Purdie
Sydney, Australia (Oct 27, '10)
[Re Xi's rise shows
democracy off the menu, Oct 26] China's Deng Xiaoping opted for
economic "democracy" of the Milton Friedman kind. Those who came after him
simply followed suit. It is foolish to muse that the Chinese party will ever
permit Western-style democracy to come to China. Before the party's eyes is the
Gorbachev example. China is a "democracy" as Lenin and Mao Zedong have defined
it.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Oct 27, '10)
[Re G-20 declares truce of
sorts, Rebalancing
the world, US
heads for the cliff, and Looney
tune, Oct 25] With the greenback being the world reserve currency, all
the talk of and possible schemes aimed at rebalancing the global economy will
prove nugatory until and unless the United States commits to greater monetary
and fiscal discipline; otherwise, the present economic mess will be replayed
somewhere down the road, only to be attended by direr implications.
Despite all its current problems, America is still by far the most powerful
country on the planet. To remain so, however, will require that the nation
summon the courage and willpower to wean itself off its deadly addiction to
financial opium and also learn to demonstrate true leadership on the world
stage instead of perching atop the global pyramid and ruthlessly skimming
wealth from everybody below.
John Chen
United States (Oct 26, '10)
[Re G-20 declares truce of
sorts, Oct 25] The sins of the George W Bush administration has passed
on to the Barack Obama presidency. No clearer example of this is US Treasury
Secretary Tim Geithner's inability to impose America's will on the G-20 in
Seoul. The US has opted to go mellow on China. It cannot do otherwise: former
president Bush "graciously" handed northeast Asia to China. And Beijing is
making the best of it. China is bashing Japan. It is setting limits on
Washington's pressure on North Korea. And demanding a bigger say in global
affairs thanks to its strong currency. Washington obviously is swallowing the
bitter pill of its own lack of foresight.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Oct 26, '10)
I wish to express my gratitude for Asia Times Online's excellent coverage of
global affairs. The insightful analyses of Bhadramkumar, Afrasiabi, Escobar and
other contributors make ATol mandatory reading for everyone following world
affairs. The quality of their analyses is superior than those analyses found
on, say, Council on Foreign Relations. What amazes me is their ability to
maintain their highest level of analysis over a long period. Simply remarkable.
Tim Bowen
Toronto (Oct 26, '10)
[Re Letter from
Islamophobistan, Oct 21] The letter by Ysais Martinez (Oct 22) in
response to Pepe Escobar's article is itself an outstanding attempt to sanitize
Islamophobia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have declared multiculturism
to be dead, but this is a political reality that reflects a reality that is far
more deeper and sinister.
Martinez puts it down to a European godlessness that has existed since the dawn
of the Enlightenment. But this is not what gave us the Holocaust. The Holocaust
was fueled by a resurgence of one of the most ancient forms of religious
discrimination known to human civilization: Christian anti-semitism. And just
as the Roman Catholic Church shamefully acquiesced in the face of this
monstrous act of genocide, it acquiesces today in the face of an anti-semitism
directed not at Jews, but at Muslims.
On October 13, Pope Benedict XVI created a new Vatican office called the
Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, to counter secularism
and the alarming rise of Islamic immigrants in Europe. The Pope's vision of a
"rebirth" of Christian Europe is clearly and substantively linked to what Pepe
Escobar refers to as a "turbocharging of racism and xenophobia".
Let us now hope and pray that Europe's bloodied religious history will not be
so foolishly repeated as it was against the Muslim minority in Bosnia. Reverend
Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra, Australia (Oct 25, '10)
Futureman called last night as I was watching a TeaBagger on TV proclaim his
fervent opposition to gay fetuses, so I welcomed the interruption. He said,
"Hey dude, our records on this Clinton president and this Bush president just
have to be wrong, so you need to set the record straight." "Yeah, sure, that
was all pretty recent here, so ask away."
"Thanks. This claim that Clinton was impeached for lying about sex with a young
girl, that's totally bogus, right?" "Uh, no, that's actually correct." "You're
kidding. Really? You would throw a man out of the highest office on the planet
for doing what every man would do when caught committing adultery?"
"Well,'' I said, ''you have to understand, he was a liberal and the neo-cons
were out to get him on anything, no matter how trivial or contrived. Not one of
our finest moments as a nation."
"OK, well, so our records were right on that one. But this Bush guy, I know our
records are faulty there." "Oh, yeah? Why?" "Well, our records show he stole
the elections of 2000 and 2004, trashed the US constitution, lied about 9-11,
lied about torture, lied about WMDs in Iraq, lied about Iraq's ties with
al-Qaeda, presided over the worst economic crisis since the Depression, bailed
out thieving bankers and incompetent managers on Wall Street and in Detroit,
got bogged down in Afghanistan, diverted billions of tax dollars to defense
contractors, oil companies and private mercenaries, made the obscenely wealthy
even more obscenely wealthy with huge tax cuts, and smirked throughout his
eight years in office like a Cheshire cat swallowing a cage full of fat liberal
canaries.
''But the records fail to mention a single word about his impeachment. After
what happened to Clinton, we know that can't be right. So what happened when he
was tried before the Senate and his crimes exposed to the American people?
Betcha they threw the book at him, didn't they? Our office pool is 5:1 that he
was hanged from the highest tree in Washington."
I gulped deeply, and thought how listening to a neo-con loon toon seemed a more
comfortable alternative to facing ugly, truthful history. "No, Futureman. Your
files are right. Bush Junior was never impeached, even when the Democrats took
control of Congress." Futureman's silence was damning enough, but welcome in
lieu of what I knew he must be thinking. "Well, that would explain one thing,"
he finally said. "What's that? " I asked cautiously. "The title this
information is listed under: Wonderland."
Hardy Campbell
United States (Oct 25, '10)
[Re Letter from
Islamophobistan, Oct 21] This is an outstanding attempt to sanitize
Islamic terrorism. How dare Escobar criticize like this the land that has been
so generous to so many people from the Muslim faith. The problem is that many
of these people despise to their deepest core the land that gave them asylum
from the rat's hole that they came from.
Merkel's words were soft in tone. She should have taken a more direct approach
like Islamic terrorists do when they are preaching that we should be killed,
our wives and daughters raped, and our boys beheaded. Another problem is that
these folks are incompatible with reason. Europe - and the West in general - is
the place for irreverence. Nothing is sacred in our lands. We mock Jesus,
Mohammad, Moses, and whatever god. Our shores are godless since the
Enlightenment. So stop shoveling your sacred nonsense down the throats of
Europeans, Americans, and other peoples' victims of the disease called
political correctness.
I am a very religious man, but I respect other people's rights to mock,
ridicule, question and scrutinize my religious belief and my God Jesus. Draw
Him. Mock Him. I don't give two rat's asses. In our lands anything can be
mocked, anything can be made fun of, and in a democracy offensive speech must
be protected because everyone engages in polite, weasel speech.
Let me ask you a few questions Mr Escobar, and please do not give me your
politically correct rubbish. How do you explain some ghettos in Sweden where
immigrants who refuse to integrate live like animals? That country is known for
its softness and bending over to extremists. Its immigration and social laws
are extremely friendly to bums and lazy, uneducated, people who opt to suck the
system dry.
If you want to live in Germany and be a German citizen, learn the German
language and swear loyalty to the German country. If you don't want to do that,
go back where you came from. If people want to come to our lands and dictate
what we can mock or ridicule then get out. How do you explain that in Spain
some groups must be constantly watched so they don't break local laws and
replace them with ultra-fanatic laws from some political manifesto from the 7th
century?
Thank God that the Western hemisphere is a product of the Enlightenment,
otherwise we'd be slaves afraid to speak about, ridicule, or mock whatever the
hell we want. Do you get it?
Ysais Martinez
United States (Oct 22, '10)
[Re For the Kims, the
weakest link is family, Oct 21] While Aidan Foster-Carter seems to add
a correctif to the Kim family's inner dynamics, his analysis is besides the
point. If he has to go back to Lev Bronstin (aka Leon Trotsky) to prove his
thesis through the gymnastics of sociology, it simply proves the weakness of
his case.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Oct 22, '10)
[Re Steady as she goes on
North Korea, Oct 20] This belies reality. The United States and South
Korean ships of state have of late met head on in stormy weather. The sunken
corvette, the Cheonan, revealed the two countries' failure to "humble"
Pyongyang. It provoked a propaganda war against the North that revealed the
bankruptcy of their policies.
Bruce Klinger has given us a thumbnail sketch of the United States, South
Korean and North Korean positions. It tells us nothing that we already didn't
know; namely, the fly in the ointment is Washington's and to a lesser degree
Seoul's unwillingness to talk to Pyongyang. US policymakers are betting that
with an untried Kim Jong-eun as heir to the Kim dynasty, North Korea will
collapse. Nothing is further from the truth. If anything, the global economic
crisis it turns out has diminished US power. It is time that it and its South
Korean ally sit down at the negotiation table and take steps to clear an agenda
sagging under 60 years of unresolved matters.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Oct 21, '10)
[Re Arab Israelis in
no man's land, Oct 19] Arab Israelis are indeed in a hard place. The
right wing Likud government's push to enact a law on nationality put more
pressure on them even though they are legally full citizens of Israel. There is
nothing that would please the Avigdor Liebermans more than to eject all Arabs
from Israel.
Abraham Bin Yiju
Italy (Oct 20, '10)
Wonderlanders universally nod in communal agreement about the importance of
education for their children. Curiously, though, for a nation where teaching
its youth is supposedly such a high priority, in a country that prides itself
on its technological superiority, its students routinely perform poorly in
standardized testing compared to other countries.
In its Sisyphean efforts to correct this anomaly, Americans have resorted to
their universal elixir for everything that ails them, money. Tons of money have
been thrown at the educational system for decades now, for building new schools
and hiking teacher's salaries. In the skewed mathematics of Wonderland,
prettier schools and well paid teachers equals smarter kids. To that end,
states have even created lotteries to ostensibly provide even more alternative
tax funds, combining greed with a loftier goal. All to no avail. Kids continue
to drop out, get pregnant, commit crimes, join gangs, smoke dope, cheat on
exams, skip school and, for those, who stay awake and out of jail, continue to
slide down the rankings of national test performances.
Curiously, the same kids who score so poorly, when asked how they would
evaluate their performance on such tests, rank themselves way ahead of the
foreign children that consistently outscore them. Confidence, Wonderlander kids
are told from the crib, is what really counts in life, not competence, hard
work or diligence. This phenomenon of delusion says volumes about all
Wonderlanders, who grow up in a course called Myth-Making 101, a class outside
of the conventional school system but one which daily drums into every
American's head how exceptional, smart and special they are compared to all the
poor, unlucky non-Americans on Earth.
This insidious message of racial, cultural and national superiority infiltrates
all aspects of US society, and makes our kids future warmongers, death peddlers
and Ponzi schemers, imbued with the certainty they are doing God's Christian,
democratic work. When you have such divinely ordained selection, who needs to
be better than the Maldive Islanders?
Hardy Campbell
United States (Oct 20, '10)
I am constantly amazed at how Americans insist on seeing the world through the
prism of our own values, culture and history. An unending procession on TV of
talking head "experts" on (take your pick) the Middle East, Muslims, Russians,
Chinese, etc, blather and salivate continuously and pointlessly but prove an
irrefutable fact; Americans are convinced that everyone else in the universe
has an American hiding beneath their brown/black/red/yellow skin, just yearning
and waiting to be freed by America's virtuous leadership.
Perhaps the best example of this deluded arrogance is demonstrated about the
popular wisdom concerning the root causes of terrorism, that it's a question of
poverty, lack of employment opportunity and basic enraged helplessness. This
mantra of informed sagacity has become engraved in the American zeitgeist,
simply because the principal source of all Wonderlander anxiety, fear and anger
concerns money. Money makes Americans happy. It fulfills them, defines them,
identifies their existence and worthiness to existence. Without it,
Wonderlanders become sullen, irritable, angry, not to mention divorced,
unemployed and homicidal.
So when we see poor people in other countries taking up arms and resorting to
violence, we automatically assume it's because the frustrated, submerged
American is reacting to their inability to make enough money to lead a
prosperous, consumerist, materialist lifestyle. So when we invade their
countries, bomb them into oblivion, massacre their families and destroy their
heritage, we subsequently throw money at the survivors, assuming that all their
problems, hatreds and resentments will magically go away with the elixir of
cash, They will then not only wholeheartedly embrace an America that shows such
benevolent generosity to its Third World victims but want desperately to
emulate us.
Imagine our chagrin when the natives show their ingratitude by continuing to
fight the US occupying troops who, more often than not, are simply rapists,
murderers and thieves. When that happens, American reflexive racism kicks in,
saying "I knew it; nothing but savage, uncivilized, ungrateful, ignorant,
heathen colored people." And so more bombs fall until the lucky neo-Americans
wake up in paradise, or dead. But the billions in bribery required for this
illusory acquiescence of our barbarities drains our national treasury at a
dizzying rate, jeopardizing the financial well-being Americans expect as their
birthright.
Before long, expect to see hordes of disaffected, homeless, bankrupt
TeaBaggers, whose elected politicians turn out to be even more corrupt and
inept than the neo-con losers they replace, taking up arms just like the
founding fathers they allegedly emulate. They'll resort to guerilla war, waging
an insurgency against tax-happy, non-white, socialist and godless government
liberals and wait for their white blue-eyed messiah's return.
In some distant bizarro world future, maybe it'll be Afghans that send
occupying troops to "liberate" the inner Muslim buried in the hollow shell of
those angry Americans. If so, Irony Man will smile beneath his metal mask.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Oct 19, '10)
[Re Young Kim checks his toy
chest, Oct 15] In all fairness, North Korea's military exercises are a
response to the many months joint military show of bravado by the US and South
Korea. Washington and Seoul are "fighting mad" because their campaign to blame
the North for the sinking of the Cheonan has failed to garner support in
world public opinion. If anything, Pyongyang is saying that it is not impressed
by such displays. Moreover, the South and the US have themselves to shame for
giving the "young general" Kim the opportunity to "forge" a martial figure in a
display of North Korea's military strength.
Nakamura Junzo Guam (Oct 18, '10)
Hubris and irony are, more often than not, the kissing cousins of history.
Imperial Rome threw Christians to the lions, only to later become the very
nexus of that faith. An utterly defeated and atom-bombed imperial Japan wound
up figuratively nuking its conqueror's automotive industry.
Imperial Spain, its American mines churning out gold and silver by the ton, was
bankrupt and indebted to the very Jews whose ancestors had been forced to
emigrate by the Spanish Inquisition. Imperial, decaying America, perhaps the
best analogue to decadent 17th century Spain's decline and fall, is itself
flush with ironies and hubris. In the wake of its perceived "victory" in the
Cold War, America loudly trumpeted the triumph of its exemplary model of
industry, finance, military prowess and democracy. American experts, captains
of industry and technocrats toured an awe-struck world, wagging fingers,
cajoling and reminding everyone who had saved the world from the socialist
dragon. History was ending in a blizzard of democratic, capitalist policies
that would forever preserve American ideology as the guiding light for a
freedom-loving world.
But within 20 years, the US economy was in free fall, its primary industries
were either shuttered or displaced overseas, its techno-army was bogged down in
fruitless wars against Fifth World insurgencies and its principal
soon-to-surpass rival was a paragon of authoritarian, one-party communist rule.
The irony that the capitalist state's survival was now wholly dependent on the
ideology it allegedly "defeated" surely warms the proletarian cockles of Karl
Marx's non-beating heart, while socialists everywhere collectively say, "Told
you so."
Humble pie, indeed. Not a single American virtue flouted by the Cold War
triumphalists remains intact today. All of America's justifications for its
exceptionalist existence now lay in tatters, whereas Russia, the supposed loser
of that ideological struggle, now sits poised to return to the substance and
style of the Soviet Union in all but name, in as complete a repudiation of
illusory "victory" as one could imagine. The humiliation continues apace, even
in the once exclusionary zone of the Monroe Doctrine. Where the existence of
one marginalized Cuban leftist leader was considered barely tolerable for
decades, now, left and right, you have progressive Latins thumbing their nose
at a discredited and creditless Yanqui Tio Sam and his failed schemes, at the
same time as they court wealthy Russian and Chinese suitors.
Perhaps most delicious of ironies is that American routinely claim that they
wage criminal wars to defend their freedoms, yet those freedoms are being
dismantled in the name of the national security police state created to defend
those freedoms. But clearly irony is lost on a country whose founding
constitution promised the lie of universal equality when all along it never
meant a word of it. The lie had to end one day, of course, and when it did,
instead of slavery being abolished peacefully as it had in the rest of the
civilized world, Americans resorted to the only expedient for solution they
understand, war, bloodshed and death.
Is it irony that the TeaBagger movement promises the restoration of American
greatness by returning to all the old evil, corrosive bad habits that brought
America to its knees in the first place? Time will tell, but I'll bet Irony Man
is donning his history-wrapped suit right now.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Oct 18, '10)
Re Heroes and villains
in Lebanon [Oct 15] Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's visit to
Lebanon should make the US and Israel think. Today [Thursday] he is visiting
Lebanon's south where Israel and its Phalangist allies once held sway. Israel
though its spokesman Marc Regov uses Ahmadinejad's presence in Lebanon as a
warning that the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government may pull out of peace talks.
Any excuse is good for Israel to cry wolf and put off a peace settlement with
the Palestinians and its neighbors.
The Iranian president's warm welcome in Lebanon has the caution of even the
pro-Western elite. It is a signal to the region and the world of the extent
that Israeli policies have failed. Defeat in the last war in Lebanon ties
Israel's hands. It has nowhere to go but to sue for peace. It is more than
telling that its strategic weakness is more than underscored than the rise of
Turkish and Iranian influence in the Middle East.
Abraham Bin Yiju
Palermo (Oct 15, '10)
Re: [Oct 14]
Disappearing stores of value and
Bernanke sets the world on fire [Oct 13]. The United States has the
most to lose from bastardization of the dollar through continual quantitative
easing; that's a concept no doubt easily within Ben Bernanke's intellectual
grasp. And though much flak has been piled on his glabrous pate from all sides,
it would be foolish to remotely associate the Fed chief with mental hebetude;
his obstinacy in a loose-monetary policy, therefore, is highly curious. Yes,
history provides ample examples of smart people making less than intelligent
decisions, but still, something just doesn't seem to compute.
John Chen
USA (Oct 14, '10)
Re Jews increasingly
hawkish on Iran by Jim Lobe [Oct 14]. According to the latest polls,
support of US President Barack Obama among Jewish American voters is down to
51%. American Jews voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008, so the drop of his
popularity in this strongly Democratic group is worrisome.
At the heart of Jewish voters' concerns is Israel's survival. They have bought
into the Israeli lobby's fearmongering that Iran which has no nuclear weapon
can and will destroy Israel. Another issue which disturbs America's Jewry is
Obama's willingness to say with rhetorical flourish nice things about Arab
states. His willingness to defuse the Palestine Israel long ticking time bomb
at Israel's expense is the way most Jewish American view the president's Middle
East policy. Nothing is further from the truth.
The Republicans see a breach in Jewish support for Democrats, which they are
willing to exploit. And they do. They are willing to feed with rumors that
Obama is a "closet Muslim". Into this maelstrom of innuendo and inflated
"truths", the Israeli lobby is willing to encourage defeat of Democrats in the
upcoming mid term elections. They have a chance of succeeding, but it will not
make Israel one iota safer since it is Israeli policy itself which is poisoning
the wells of peace.
Abraham Bin Yiju
Palermo (Oct 14, '10)
Re Ahmadinejad bears a
message for Israel by Kaveh L Afrasiabi [Oct 14]. This article is very
misleading since the reader still wonders what message Mahmud Ahmadinejad bears
for Israel. What is the message? Is the message the fact that Ahmadinejad and
his Arab phonies would love to murder every Israeli man, woman and child? Hamas
and Hezbollah want to turn the prosperous, developed, highly educated,
democratic and wealthy Jewish state into a Third World gutter, plagued with
diseases, suicide bombers, beaten women, filthy streets and religious fanatics.
If that is the case, then the message remains the same. In the new world of
diplomacy, democracies are crippled and bounded by international laws and
human-rights hacks. However, every single dictatorship or failed state has a
license to kill, extort, torture, rape, beat women, develop nuclear weapons,
oppress and enslave. The bad news for Iran, its neighbors and the anti-Semitic,
anti-democracy, anti-prosperity press is that Jews will no longer be led to
death like lambs. They will fight back. Their friends will fight with them.
Ysais Martinez
United States of America (Oct 14, '10)
Re The foreplay of
an Afghan settlement by M K Bhadrakumar [Oct 9]. Perhaps all diplomats
are professional solipsists ("solipsism" means "self alone", the belief that
there is no objective existence outside the person's ego or imagination). There
are only perceptions. There are no consequences. There is no "there" there:
there is only what one guy says and what another guy says. At least diplomats,
as I describe them, believe that we other guys exist.
Bhadrakumar says Karzai is the basis of any eventual peace settlement. He calls
US support for Karzai "maturity". Does Bhadrakumar's peace deal itself consist
of this pure-perception/no-consequences nature? Perhaps NATO, perhaps even the
US, will buy the deal Karzai will reach on schedule, so that security is handed
off in 2014, all foreign troops leaving shortly thereafter.
It will not matter if the Taliban or the "Haqqani network" or Pakistan or
anybody in the area, including Karzai himself, thinks the arrangement is
stable. They are only singing birds. The withdrawal of the USSR forces from
Afghanistan was not a pure success - the mujahideen did not stop fighting nor
miraculously come together to form a government. It was merely obvious that the
Soviets did not belong there. So [Michael] Scheuer's theory has some merit to
it, not from his prognostications about what the US public will tolerate, but
from the stock-in-trade assessment of a CIA agent: the one thing that is
obvious in Afghanistan is that the US and NATO ("North Afghanistan Treaty
Organization"?) do not belong there.
Let us start from that premise and see what schedule suggests itself. The
US/NATO priority would be gracefully departing, regardless of what's happening
around them. Let us designate Karzai and the Taliban as the twin-headed
representative of the Pashtuns.
So he and they have to do a deal with the Pakistani government since so many
Pashtuns live in Pakistan. Karzai will have to (continue to) "re-brand" himself
as a local power. Let us term as "other actors" the Haqqani group and whoever
else is in the field actively competing with Karzai's regime. The most
reasonable course would be for them and the Taliban to "lay low" once a
departure date is set.
At the moment there is a problem here. [US President Barack] Obama says July
2011 is the beginning of the end, so to speak, but this 2014 security handover
is an entirely different beginning of the end. Both dates seem entirely
arbitrary - moveable imagery, as opposed to empirically derived.
Let us then bracket those two dates as Obama's offer, speaking for NATO, on how
fast a graceful departure would be. On the one hand, having that timeframe in
the air may persuade competitors to think beyond it and begin to "lay low" now
in that expectation. On the other, as events continue at their low ebb, the US
and NATO may steadily contract their notions of gracefulness in favor of
hastiness.
Pakistan's handling of supply convoys and cross-border attacks, and
congressional reports, etc, would revolve around its satisfaction that
gracefulness is not tardiness. I speculate that it is not finished with
cooperating with the Pashtun community - such might be a "Punjabi priority" but
it doesn't seem expedient.
The larger strategic considerations, those seeming to be facing the US and NATO
(as I am inspired by Bhadrakumar's analysis of India's and China's to conceive
of them), would be that, as was the case in Iraq, so will it be in Afghanistan,
"the sooner the better". You can guess what I mean by that, as did the US
Senate staff person I said it to in 2005 after returning from an eventful
nine-month sojourn in northern Iraq. It took, is taking, six years for that
lesson to fully come home to the US elite. Will that "benefit of hindsight"
speed the "learning process" of the US and NATO in Afghanistan? I would expect
it to.
Christopher C Rushlau
Portland ME USA (Oct 12, '10)
Re Losing the
propaganda war by Jim Lobe [Oct 9]. How many reports and agencies does
it take to figure out Afghans don't like to be invaded, occupied and killed?
Seriously. How much money and resources are spent on such ridiculous pursuits?
Who in the their right mind would think Afghans want us blowing up their
country, terrorizing families, spreading fear and hatred in equal measure?
We need experts to tell us the obvious? Good grief, the authors of these genius
revelations would be better employed writing Monty Python scripts. If the
military and Washington need a panel to tell them that the peoples we invade
and abuse don't find it amusing, then America has become either so stupid or so
filled with hubris that pretty soon we'll have to hire a phalanx of
think-tankers to determine why the sun doesn't shine at night. Or maybe we
already have. Lawrence Fitton (Oct 12, '10)
Middle
East squeeze on Obama, Oct 8] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's latest move puts another nail in the peace process' coffin. By
adopting his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's proposal that anyone who
wants to become a citizen of Israel has to swear allegiance to the "nation
state of the Jewish people", Netanyahu has buried US President Obama's peace
initiative unceremoniously.
Since Jews who emigrate automatically become citizens thanks to the Law of
Return, who does this proposed legislation target? Arabs. It is no secret that
more aggressive Israeli right wing in the Likud government aims to make Israel
"Arab rein", free of Arabs including Israeli Arab citizens. Netanyahu has
tipped his hand again. He wants a Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the
Jordan. Should that happen, Israel will call itself a "Jewish nation" with a
captive subject Arab population. In that case Netanyahu's Israel has borrowed a
leaf from apartheid-era South Africa.
Abraham Bin Yiju
Italy (Oct 8, '10)
Being brave is an outstanding virtue of American soldiers. Brave to defend
"freedom". Brave to defend their homeland. At least, that's what the
propagandists for Wonderland imperialism will have you believe. On the other
hand, our enemies, the "terrorists" are cowards, craven evil doers. Again,
don't believe me, just listen to the neo-con hacks at Faux News. But I just
have to wonder if, like virtually everything else in the land that makes Wall
Street theft punishable by giving more money to the thieves, that that line of
reasoning is flawed and misleading. A Talibani who blows himself up as well as
invading troops has paid the ultimate price for his beliefs, so how is that
cowardice? Seems to me that's the best definition of bravery. On the other
hand, how is an American drone attack on women and children an example of
bravery?
A corn-fed boy from Iowa playing with a joystick in California and detonating a
remote operated machine 10,000 miles away seems the very definition of
cowardice, doesn't it? Mano a mano combat is the method used for
thousands of years to settle wars, good old fashioned face-to-mangled face
confrontation. The brave stand their ground and kill or are killed, the coward
turns tail and runs away. So if one party in a war makes themselves available
for such hazard and the other doesn't, isn't the no-show who has to send a mass
of metal to fight his battles for him the real coward? Not that American troops
in the Middle East aren't involved in killing personally. The casual torture,
rape and murder of Iraqi and Afghan civilians is a commonplace occurrence these
days, yet another demonstration of our junkie soldier's "bravery". But
executing innocent men, women and children seems stretching the neo-con
definition of home-grown bravery just a tad. But you won't hear those
myth-deflating things on any major news program in Wonderland, no sirree. All
you'll hear about is our boys' "bravery". Like everything else in Wonderland,
up is down, wrong is right and all our heroes are painted canary yellow.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Oct 8, '10)
[Re Funeral
postings in Singapore, Oct 6] The death of Kwa Geok Choo after a long
illness marks the beginning of the end of the age of Singapore's founders. It
is sad that her passing has given short reign to regrettable comments in the
blogsphere. She deserves better.
On the other hand, these commentaries have more to do with a deep-seated
dislike for her husband Lee Kwan Yew. They are indicative of the explosion of
invective that his death will occasion.
Mel Cooper
Singapore (Oct 7, '10)
[Re US scrambles to
save peace talks, Oct 5] The proverbial chickens are coming home to
rest for the Obama administration's to work out a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What profit is there for the Palestinian
Authority to continue negotiations? Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netenyahu
is more concerned with retaining power than coming to an arrangement with Abu
Mazen. More broadly speaking, as a Revisionist Zionist, he is fundamentally
"wired" for continuous Jewish settlement in the West Bank which he calls "Judea
Samaria".
US policy is pro-Israel any way you slice the diplomatic pie. It has allowed
Israel to flout international law, vetoed or voted against any resolution or
sanction critical of Israel, and modified its own policy which would force
Israel to live up to its obligations in the comity of nations. Even if the US
manages to breathe some life into moribund discussions, time and its past
blunders will provide the tinder for an explosion of Palestinian resistance
unless Palestinian rights and land are respected.
Abraham Bin Yiju
Italy (Oct 6, '10)
[Re Dennis O'Connell letter, Oct 4] Dennis O'Connell’s paranoia shines brightly
regarding leftists and the Khobar Tower bombing in 1996. First of all, if there
is a left in the United States then I have never witnessed it. There are two
right of center parties in the US who's only difference is old money and new
money. He wouldn't know a leftist if he fell over him... Secondly, I'm glad he
brought up the Khobar towers. Had the FBI been permitted to investigate instead
of interference from above they would have found a tailor-made Osama bin Laden
operation. Saudi deception protected Osama. His number one concern was to
attack the US military presence in Saudi Arabia. He had been calling attacks
since 1992, and claimed responsibility for the Khobar bombing.
The FBI Investigation was controlled by the Saudi's... no independent
investigation, just six individuals presented by the Saudi Secret police as the
perpetrators. The FBI's I-49 unit, which was building a legal case against
Osama over previous terrorist actions, asked the Washington Field Office (WFO),
to allow such I-49 participation, only to be told to fly a kite. O'Connell
would rather believe the article by FBI head Louis Freeh, which was so full of
holes it was embarrassment to those very sharp FBI agents who fingered Osama on
this event. Yet Iran had to be the culprit, even though Khobar towers was
patrolling the no-fly zone of Iraq, which was a policy that was more helpful to
Iran than harmful. Yet what do we expect? Freeh had dropped the investigation
and accepted the Saudi presentation. In the same article Freeh said, "Yesterday
[May 19] the White House reiterated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent
statement that al-Qaeda leaders are now conducting their operations from Iran."
This was an Osama operation, and had the US made demands of the Saudis then the
Twin Towers might never have happened, but, like O'Connell, they are in a state
of denial because it doesn't fit the neo-con foreign policy.
Miles Tompkins Canada (Oct 5, '10)
Croesus fever has gripped banks too big too fail. JPMorgan, reports today's
Financial Times, has reopened its gold vault in New York "mothballed in the
1990s''. Now bullion bulimia is filling it fast as investors are turning
currency into gold. Other banks will dust off the cobwebs on their vaults long
in deep storage. For the charge on gold stored in them is becoming a highly
lucrative source of business. This hoarding of gold is symptomatic of the
hoarding of assets where they would be better served in prime pumping an ailing
economy in questionable recovery. Freud's Hungarian disciple Sandor Ferenczi
may have made the right diagnosis of the anal retentiveness of gold.
Abraham Bin Yiju
Italy (Oct 5, '10)
[Re Japan poured oil on
troubled waters, Oct 2] Peter Lee is to be congratulated on his
detailed analysis of the players, the directors, and the screenplays behind the
drama recently played out in the East China Sea. It should be noted that, given
the conflicting territorial claims of the two states, the Joint Communique of
29 September 1972 stipulated in point 6 that ''Japan and China shall in their
mutual relations settle all disputes by peaceful means and shall refrain from
the use or threat of force". ' This was hardly the first altercation between
Chinese fishing boats and Japanese Coast Guard vessels and such have always
previously been susceptible to speedy resolution by peaceful means.
As Lee makes clear, it was Maehara Seiji who chose to escalate it to an
international incident, for reasons having more to do with domestic Japanese
politics and US-Japan relations than with the collision itself. Cui bono?
Again, as Lee points out, the only power that benefits from this process of
escalation is the United States. Both Chinese and Japanese will recall what
happens when the snipe and the clam quarrel...
Henri Day
Sweden (Oct 4, '10)
[Re Japan poured oil on
troubled waters, Oct 2] Foreign policy objectives of the elite often
contradict with domestic nationalistic sentiment. Peter Lee gives a vivid
description of the latter, along with myriad fine observations. The long-term
thrust, however, is that China, with more than 10 times Japan's population and
an economy growing at 10% a year, will have definite superiority over Japan in
all fields in due course, perhaps in just 20 years. Simultaneously, such
superiority will have to be assessed in a US-China bipolar world with many
significant powers including Japan. This will translate to superior bargaining
power for China, but negotiation will always be necessary.
On one hand, there is ''by distance, geography, and history Taiwan has the best
claim on what it calls the Tiaoyutai Islands, which Japan acquired during the
course of some imperial skullduggery during the 1870s, and it responded to the
incident by vociferously advancing its interest.'' On the other, Japan has had
administration over the islands for decades and will be extremely reluctant to
get nothing from them. Both governments know that there is an economic price to
pay for continual friction with the most major trading partner.
The longer China waits, the greater bargaining power it will have over Japan.
However, to prevent Japanese administration from becoming Japanese ownership
with the passage of time, China will have to assert its claim to an appropriate
degree as situations arise, as time passes and China grows. The Japanese
government knows that it is only the administrator of the islands, whose final
fate will be a matter of negotiation with a more and more powerful China,
irrespective of any proclamation now.
If nationalism does not derail the long-term foreign policy objectives of both
countries, the issue will be resolved after a few decades by compromise on the
ambit of fishing and mineral exploration and extraction rights around the
islands; the extent of deviation from a 50-50 split is the whole issue, and
will depend on the relative power and perceived collateral economic costs of
assertiveness.
In this episode, Japan was not as wise as China. Japan will face an enormously
powerful China that was once its target of brutal aggression and now is its
most important trade partner. Military confrontation with China will not be the
solution, as what could sustain Japanese militarism is trade with China to a
great extent. An Alliance with the United States is not the predominant answer
either; the US is in decline and has much too diverse foreign policy objectives
to benefit Japan sufficiently. It is quite counterproductive to cite history
reflective of aggression against China circa 1890 to justify a territorial
claim in 2010, as doing so just negates expressions of remorse. (The irony is
that, incidentally or not, one Japanese worker is still detained in China for
alleged illegal activities during a project to remove World War II Japanese
chemical weapons in China.) The US role in this dispute will be minimal unless
nationalism completely prevails over rational long term national interests.
Finally, ASEAN countries' assessment of their relation with China is not
altered significantly by this episode, since this territorial dispute has been
brewing for decades and so has long been expected and weighted; China's
restraint might even have surprised some national leaders in the region. The
fundamental thrust of a declining US with quite diverse foreign policy
objectives (even with much circumspection) and a rapidly growing Chinese
economy with a huge population, focused on trade, will still be prevalent.
Japan needs to find a solution to prosper with a powerful China in the decades
to come; pettiness is not a part of it.
Jeff Church United States (Oct 4, '10)
[Re My father, my son
and All power to the
little general, Oct 2] Everyone agrees, it seems, that he knows next to
nothing about Kim Jong-eun. That admission, however, has never stopped the
chattering class of North Korean watchers from engaging in idle speculation.
The publication of the younger Kim's photograph has given license to a portrait
of the worst pop psychology or a "scholastic" examination of his uniform or his
posture. Some commentators have commented on the "young general's" inability to
smile. Others fall back on geomancery. A more extreme example is the editor of
the Council on Foreign Relations' prestigious quarterly Foreign Affairs blaming
Kim Jong-eun for being the brains behind the currency debacle. Still others
rely on the musings of experts in South Korea who are artless in their
pronunciations and know as little as others.
Scrambling to get a word in, some "scholars" find North Korea a paragon of
hoary Confucianism. Obviously, we have left planet rationality and ascended
into a galaxy of caricature and utter exaggeration. It is about time that we
establish relations with North Korea and speak to North Koreans and put away
the toys of shoddy analysis and silly projections.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam (Oct 4, '10)
[Re Ominous signs in
Iran under siege, Oct 1] Kaveh Afrasiabi makes a subtle reference to
Iranian retaliation in response to all the pressure applied on them. One hopes
that Europeans and others would "wake up" to the threats of another war and
stop sheepishly following Washington's lead, aptly described by Afrasiabi as a
"slow-motion Iraq war". Sad to say history does repeat itself.
Tim Bowen
Canada (Oct 4, '10)
[Re Ominous signs in
Iran under siege, Oct 2] The article says, ''A familiar story since the
onset of the anti-Western Islamist regime in Iran however, the new level of
hostilities between the two countries''. There is no hostility between the
countries ... there is hostility to Iran by the United States and
Israel, and that reflects Israel's control of US Middle East policy by way of
the Zionist lobby. The lobby has ensured that the realists in the State
Department have vanished and ben replaced by servants of Israeli interests.
The article also states, ''This in addition to the new 'human rights sanctions'
imposed by the US government on a number of Iranian officials, as well as the
new drumbeats of war by various US pundits.' The irony here is the US political
parties - the government and opposition - sanctioned the invasion of two
countries and decimated them and their peoples, yet has the gall to talk about
'human rights' ... and it can do so because the EU governments and others are
subservient to the US. The attack on Iran is of no advantage to the US. But it
is to an Israel that controls the US by way of the lobby. Brian Souter Australia
(Oct 4, '10)
[Re Why the US doesn't
talk to IranSep 29] We are treated to two leftists one-sided views of
United States-Iranian relations over the past 30 years. To begin with the
Islamic government started off its relationship by committing an act of war in
the seizure of the US embassy. This was followed by many more acts of war
including the bombing of the US embassy in Lebanon along with the Marine
barracks in 1983 killing hundreds of US citizens. They wonder why the US did
not try to improve relations with Iran after Khatami came to power in 1997.
Well first off the real power in Iran is Ayatollah Khamenei and the
revolutionary guards who they don't even mention. They should look up the
Khobar tower bombing where Iranian agents blew up an American military barracks
in Saudi Arabia killing 19 and wounding 372 which happened in June of 1996. Add
to this the hundreds of US service killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian
supplied IED's and weapons.
I have often tried to understand the thinking of the left and I have no idea
how they think (if they do). Does the left have any core beliefs other than
hatred of the United States. They don't seem to believe in freedom of speech
except for themselves. They don't believe in any basic human freedoms, yet they
believe they represent the people. However they support a government like North
Korea where more than 90% of the people are repressed to benefit a select few.
Perhaps the angels in heaven have the answer to my question but I would more
likely find the truth in asking the other side whom they are playing for. Also,
if Ismael Hossein-zadeh hates the US so much why not return to the Islamic
paradise of Iran there are no chains on his feet.
Dennis O'Connell
United States (Oct 4, '10)
With the revelation that four more Army veterans of Bush's imperialist wars had
committed suicide at Fort Hood, Texas, last week, the tragic toll of America's
bloodlust mounts ever higher. But to the heaps of American troop-corpses that
have been driven to take their own lives by their hideous experiences in the
Middle East must be added the murders of innocent American civilians committed
by these mentally unstable timebombs when they return home to an apathetic,
indifferent and eager-to-get-out America. At last count the number of these
domestic killings is around 160, while the precise number of soldier suicides
is another embarrassing Pentagon "national security" secret. The murders are
merely a continuation of the ruthless military mindset that gave us the Abu
Graib tortures, the recently exposed brutal executions of innocent Arabs and
the casual drone bombings of entire Pakistani villages.
These sort of Vietnam-redux atrocities are routinely perpetrated by the racist
white, neo-colonial "liberators", a majority of whom are doped up on locally
obtained heroin and pot, as well as military-supplied tranquilizers or pain
killers. Indeed, many of the returning veterans, upon discharge from the
military service that so ruthlessly exploited their naive and misguided concept
of patriotism, become junkies and drug dealers, and suffer severe bouts of
depression, commit petty crimes, have nervous breakdowns, go though bouts of
mental instability, divorce, spousal and child abuse, chronic unemployment and
the logical end-game consequences of such psychological stress, murder and
suicide.
That these are the legacies of that murderous beast Bush and his neo-con SS,
whose slug-like thugs still hide beneath damp rocks ready to inflict ever more
misery and pain, does not diminish the continuously compounding tragedy of two
wars that will fit nicely on the Empire's final tombstone. If it's big enough,
maybe we can squeeze in another saying: "The wages of imperialism are Death."
Hardy Campbell
United States (Oct 4, '10)
September Letters
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