WRITE for ATolADVERTISEMEDIA KITGET ATol BY EMAILABOUT ATolCONTACT US
Asia Time Online - Daily News
             
Asia Times Chinese
AT Chinese




    Letters
    

Write to us at letters@atimes.com

Please provide your name or a pen name, and your country of residence. Lengthy letters run the risk of being cut.

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.


August 2006

Chan Akya responds to readers
  • I define terrorism much as the average person defines pornography. In other words, I know it when I see it. From my seat, there is no moral relativism involved that would justify the annihilation of a hospital on supposed anti-terror grounds while being disgusted with the killing of a bunch of middle-class train passengers during the rush hour.
  • In choosing to compare Islam with Chinese culture (Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists, Aug 26), I specifically avoided discussing events of the last 100 years or so, as my focus was on establishing the foundation of why cultures respond to external inputs. China has adapted to modernization a whole lot better than Islam, and I believe Buddhism played a major role in engineering the cultural confidence required to do so.
  • The other main point of the article is that Asian cultures like China and India do not have a history of attacking remote targets (or collateral damage, to use a disgusting euphemism). Thus the Boxer Rebellion did not cause Chinese in America to kill local Americans or Japanese citizens. Thus, even though both Muslims and Chinese claim a nationhood that transcends national boundaries, their behavior during stressful periods is vastly different.
  • While I did not dwell excessively on the point, leadership of the Sunni version of Islam harks back to the Mahayana-Hinayana debate that formed the basis of my earlier article. The vengeance of Islam against outside cultures is almost bearable compared with its treatment of its own mystics and agnostics. It has been rightly pointed out that if you give a gun with one bullet to a Sunni fundamentalist who is confronting a Jew and a Sufi, ineluctably his choice would be to kill the latter.
    Chan Akya (Aug 31, '06)


    Re Why Pyongyang is going nuclear  [Aug 31] by Kim Myong-chol: This article takes license with history to paint Kim Jong-il as a "supreme leader" in the fashion of Ulchi Mundok and Li Sung-sin. This is utter nonsense. Kim Jong-il is an incompetent and egotistical leader who would best serve the North Korean people by resigning.
    Dave Wagner (Aug 31, '06)


    While it is certainly reasonable that the centuries of both formal and actual vassalage of Korea to China, in addition to the more recent dominations of Japan, the former Soviet Union and the United States, would make any Korean patriot testy about the intentions of the big powers, Dr Kim Myong-chol in his article Why Pyongyang is going nuclear [Aug 31] unfortunately demonstrates an overly optimistic view of his country's capacity to resist foreign attack. Besides such wonders of logical coherence [as] "North Korea controlled ground warfare in the last Korean War with Korean pilots downing many US warplanes", does he really believe that the 100,000 soldiers sent from [China] by the Ming Dynasty to help defend Korea against Hideoyoshi Toyotomi's 200,000 invading samurai were unnecessary help? That the Soviet Red Army was not needed to drive the Japanese out? That Kim Il-sung (who in the early 50s was completely under the thumb of [Soviet leader Josef] Stalin) could have stalemated the United States without the hundreds of thousands of PLA [People's Liberation Army] soldiers sent to save his government? So the North Korean pilots were able to down many US planes during the Korean War - that must explain how the US bombed the North into rubble. If Dr Kim really is an "unofficial" spokesman of Pyongyang, then he should keep the following in mind: the KPA [Korean People's Army] cannot fight for long without adequate logistical support, most of all food, and if they want their food lifeline to continue, they will need to show more deference to their present benefactors. And finally, a US nuclear strike, whatever the retaliation, would still wipe North Korea from the face of the Earth with all the millions of Korean dead that that would involve. But Dr Kim writes that Pyongyang ought to "welcome" the utter destruction of his country for the sake of killing more Japanese. With such patriotic defenders, the North Koreans do not need enemies.
    Jonathan X (Aug 31, '06)


    [Re Why Pyongyang is going nuclear, Aug 31] I wonder if and why you would have published letters of Julius Streicher, [Joseph] Goebbels etc during the Nazi time. The same goes for the unofficial spokesman of Kim [Jong-il].
    Hans Suter (Aug 31, '06)


    The article Why Pyongyang is going nuclear [Aug 31] by Kim Myong-chol doesn't do justice to your firm; it's an amateurish and backward view, unless you don't have anything better to publish and need to fill the space. The notion of Korean people settling old scores with the US is laughable. No value whatsoever!
    Homin Paik (Aug 31, '06)


    Kim Myong-chol: I have read your article Why Pyongyang is going nuclear [Aug 31]. Quite frankly, it is difficult to believe that you have a PhD. That you have such a degree speaks very poorly about the academic acumen of your country. The United States is well over 1,000 times larger than your country. We have better weapons than your country does and a population which dwarfs that of your country. Moreover, at this time, both Russia and China now have seen the errors of their former communistic ways and have become capitalistic countries. Only the Muslim world and several small countries remain under the control of lunatic despots who are bent on destroying the world with their last dying breath. In this way, your leader is no better than Herod. Herod tried to kill our Messiah, Jesus. Herod engaged in many other atrocities against the people. Before he died, he had the Sanhedrin arrested and gave an order that all of the Sanhedrin was to be killed when he died. The reason he gave such an order was: "so that tears may be shed at my passing". [Adolf] Hitler, Mao Zedong, [Josef] Stalin, and all the other despots of history would like to have destroyed the world just before they died. Their philosophy was: "If I cannot control it, I will destroy it." The former emperor of Japan, Hirohito, tried to conquer the United States. He failed miserably. And the Japanese had a much stronger economy than does your country. Yet they went down in defeat before the Free World, which has no use for tyrants. So too, if you or your people launch a nuclear strike against the United States, rest assured you, nor anyone else in your government, will be alive to read about it the next day. So boast and talk loudly, if you like. But if your country attacks us, you will be wiped off the face of the globe. You are not Iraq. You are a very small country surrounded by capitalistic nations which would like to see your dictator dead. Let him give us half of an excuse to dispatch him, and he, along with your whole military establishment, will be quickly eliminated. By the way, you lost the Korean conflict. Your army had conquered almost all of South Korea. Then the US entered the conflict and we beat your proverbial "asses" back into North Korea. Give us an excuse, and we will beat your "asses" to perdition.
    Vincent A Ettari
    An American (Aug 31, '06)


    Let's strip it of its wooden language and cut to the chase in Kim Myong-chol's Speaking Freely piece Why Pyongyang is going nuclear [Aug 31] so that the reader will discover a rational explanation as to the nuclear standoff between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States. Attentive reading will also find the sting of recent events which accelerated the development of Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities, the true strength and capacity of which remain lost in a fog. As Mr Kim pointedly remarks, the threat of nuclear war by the Clinton administration brought North Korea to the bargaining table in the early 1990s, and that cracked frozen and hostile relations stemming from the days of the Korean War. There, in a tradeoff, Pyongyang would in return for light-water reactors, which would replace the decaying and inefficient Soviet infrastructure which provide North Korea with electricity, the DPRK promised to desist from pursuing military uses of its nuclear research and development. (Today the light-water reactors remain a promise on paper.) Suddenly access, albeit constrained and difficult, opened between Washington and Pyongyang, the high point being the visit of then secretary of state Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang and her exchange of views with Kim Jong-il. And it was also hoped that president [Bill] Clinton would visit there before the end of his second term in office. This hope was strongly discouraged by old Korea hands and the military and intelligence communities. Nonetheless, tensions had eased but suddenly hardened by Pyongyang's own admission that it had not lived up to the terms of the nuclear framework it had signed. It had been carrying out research in the military use of nuclear technology. With [George W] Bush in the White House, the United States' approach to the DPRK became arctic and turned to the highest color code of danger and hostility. The Bush administration's crusade took a more dire turn after [September 11, 2001] and sizzled by branding the DPRK an "axis of evil" [member]. Zoom till today: Mr Bush has ramped up his heated rhetoric and attacks on North Korea, despite an attempt to bend Pyongyang's will to his at the failed six-power talks in Beijing. America's preemptive war in Iraq, another "axis of evil" [member], sent shock waves of fear to Pyongyang; for North Korea feared that it, too, might become the theater of a hot war waged by a United States with its mighty nuclear arsenal and its troops stationed in the Republic of Korea. To some this confirmed the stereotype of paranoia which often characterizes Pyongyang in the Western press. But Mr Kim quotes former [US] president Jimmy Carter, who also has visited North Korea, who stresses the fierce love of native soil and ardent desire to defend the motherland, to make his point. Today as Pyongyang sees it, Mr Bush is waging hotly a cold war against it. It sees an encirclement as Washington has pressured China, the DPRK's neighbor and ally, to freeze its assets, and then "fraternal" Vietnam following suit, in order to court Washington's approval for Hanoi's entry into the World Trade Organization. Fear of war and invasion of its territory stirs memories of the Korean War when United Nations troops under American command bombed North Korea almost back to the Stone Age. As Dr Kim so cogently underscores, Mr Bush's heavy-handed and condescending policy towards North Korea has paved the way of Pyongyang's entry into the nuclear club, like it or not.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 31, '06)


    Professor Ismael Hossein-zadeh's Behind the plan to bomb Iran (Aug 31) is a powerful and convincing analysis of the fundamental driving force of American monopoly capitalism. I commend him for the scientific work he has provided to the readers of ATol and for the important facts he has brought about to verify his analysis. Such a view is really rare and usually neglected by the vested interests, the groups that defend monopoly capitalists. I am interested in complementing his analysis with a theoretical point that may make his argument more concrete. Thorstein Veblen calls American capitalism the higher-plane capitalism, arguing in part that the leisure conservative class controls and directs the American system in paths that generate more profits, power, and domination for further power and control. Two important institutions, Veblen argues, [that] represent the core of American monopoly capitalism are oil corporations and the military complex, which are controlled by American financiers. These institutions in turn control many politicians, governments, police, military, laws, and votes. For example, Veblen points out that the American Congress seldom votes against spending bills for militarism and wars, because a No vote means loss of profits for the military complex. Similarly, foreign and domestic policies favor oil corporations, and huge expenditures are allocated to support oil corporations domestically and globally. Therefore, American monopoly capitalism tends to serve these important corporations and will take as supporting evidence any case that will provide additional backing for these corporations. Joseph Schumpeter provides a similar analysis when he argues that competitive capitalism was replaced by monopoly capitalism, where the competitive capitalists and entrepreneurs are replaced by CEOs who seek government's support in terms of tariffs, patents, and demands in order to make profits. Schumpeter believes that monopoly capitalism will die, because it cannot compete without government support. Both Veblen and Schumpeter agree that important large corporations are directing the domestic economy and foreign policy. Hence it seems appropriate for Professor Hossein-zadeh to include such theoretical analysis as the backbone of his point of view in order to have more scientific legitimacy. In addition, I would add to this analysis [Ludwig] von Mises' view that spending for wars does generate profits for some corporations, but wars are usually associated with tremendous costs affecting negatively other social groups, including many capitalists. In short, although wars are helping the military and the oil complex, they are hurting other segments of the economy and society and, in the long run, the underlying population will lose, and even well-established empires will collapse. In modern economic jargon this is called the deadweight loss of wars. The implication of such analysis is very powerful in that the American monopoly capitalism is inconsistent with peace but is compatible with wars. It follows that wars can occur at any time for any reasons such as communist threat, Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, democracy, the Mighty God told me, national security, weapons of mass destruction, helping other nations and our allies, and the like. But as Professor Hossein-zadeh put it the fundamental reason is the profitability of wars for the vested interests (the military complex and I add the oil complex).
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 31, '06)


    Thank you for sharing with us another eye-opening article written by Ann Jones - Why it's not working in Afghanistan [Aug 30]. I don't know how many Americans will someday be awakened with the fact that their government [is] using their tax dollars to benefit not the needy but the already rich and the US multinationals. Worse than that, not all US companies are going to benefit from this scam, but rather the cronies of the Bush administration. Well, thanks, I finally learn what is meant by capitalism the American way.
    Charles Yen
    Hong Kong (Aug 31, '06)


    I find Spengler's American Idolatry [Aug 29] both condescending and rude to a culture that is continental in size. He denigrates the various forms of American music including Bing Crosby and even has the audacity to call all Americans "stupid". He goes on to praise the African-American musical contribution, [with] which I agree. But he never mentions the denigration of even African-American music as seen in rap music. Reading his article one is left believing that all that the white people produced in music is junk and all that the African-Americans produced is pure gold. As for his reference that "Americans are stupid", he fails to realize that it is not stupidity but living in a continental-sized nation [that] has made most Americans introverted to the outside world and seeing only American culture as the beginning and end. This is not stupidity but the weight and influence of an enormous culture upon its citizens. I do agree with Mr Spengler that American music is not the sole dominating style in the world. One only has to look at the popularity of music from the Indian subcontinent to realize that there is plenty of competition to what America produces in music.
    Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 31, '06)


    Spengler's American Idolatry [Aug 29] struck a nerve. Quote: "suffering peasants fighting for a traditional way of life, as in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Nothing could be further from the truth. American farmers were migratory entrepreneurs who did well during World War I, when agricultural exports surged, and very badly during the 1920s, when exports fell, and even worse during the 1930s. Country people were resentful because they were becoming poorer. That was unfortunate, but feeling sorry for oneself is no excuse to inflict the likes of Hank Williams on the world." I beg to differ with the above from personal experience. To dismiss the Great Depression of the 1930s in the US south with the snippet above shows a complete ignorance of its reality. My mother was a schoolteacher in the '20s and '30s who worked for years without pay (she received IOUs from the state of Louisiana). I remember following behind my dad as a boy watching him plow behind a mule barefooted and with clothes in tatters. We ate off of the farm and had no cash at all for a year at time. Jimmie Rodgers, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan were all balladeers inspired from this period of hardship. Hank Williams represented the evolution of ballads to "country" music after a small amount of affluence returned to the south, when people could again afford beer and have time to go to dances and socialize, instead of living in a state of exhaustion and overwork just to stay alive. Country people to this day still dance to the music of Hank Williams. While I admit the cultural level of country music is not "high", it is still a culture of the US south and was never meant to be fostered on the world.
    Ken Moreau
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 31, '06)


    Thanks for printing Spengler's American Idolatry [Aug 29]. When my Peking University students complain about how contemporary Chinese culture is such rubbish compared to the past, or compared to American contemporary culture, I try to show them how historically such views have been more likely to indicate the ignorance of the critic rather than the weakness of contemporary artists. To prove my point I give them Spengler, who kindly trots out the same hilariously silly criticisms of contemporary popular culture that elderly aunts with middle-brow good taste have been trotting out since at least the mid-19th century. And in case my students don't get it, he really brings home my point when even his idea of the better stuff of the past is so hopelessly middle-brow. What, no Duke Ellington or Charlie Parker to represent the glorious past? Is that stuff too daunting, dear auntie?
    Michael Pettis (Aug 31, '06)


    Re Open debate under threat in Japan by Sheila Smith and Brad Glosserman, August 26 (which also appeared in Glocom Platform [on] August 25): Of course many would agree that it is "critical that there be tolerance of free and open discussion of issues" in Japan, or elsewhere for that matter, and that one "must speak out against potential censorship". That is an ideal of intellectuals. However, surely this is not the first instance of intolerance, intimidation or censorship of intellectuals in modern Japan. Indeed, from my experience that is relatively common there. Moreover, in Japan's research environment, self-censorship is the rule. But I would suggest that before casting stones the authors scrutinize and critique their own intellectual environment, particularly think-tanks that receive significant US government support. Do they think such institutions have never used political criteria to set research agendas, cancel projects, decline to publish/insist on alteration of research products, or select participants for their managed conferences? Perhaps the authors are simply naive. Or perhaps they are too young to have experienced or witnessed US government intolerance, intimidation and censorship of critics in think-tanks and universities during the Vietnam War. Or perhaps their angst concerning the intellectual environment in Japan is just more American hypocrisy.
    A Cynical Victim of Censorship
    in Several So-called Democracies
    USA


    I thought the response my young Hindu friend [Gautam, letter, Aug 30] got from [the ATol editor] was childish, at best. What does democracy have to do with removal of poverty? Democracy is a form of government, not a magic elixir for the elimination of societal ills. But his mention of poverty gave me the perfect opening. A poor country is an easy target for a despot, democracy struggles to survive when the country is poor. China will not remain a communist country for long, as it grows richer, it will become a democracy. Democracy flourishes in rich countries, with India being an amazing exception. Why is that? The answer is clear as day, Hinduism! The faith that teaches that God can be reached in more than one way, to be tolerant of all ideas is clearly teaching democracy to its followers.
    Jayanti Patel (Aug 31, '06)

    Democracy is government by the people, FOR the people. If huge swaths of the people are not served by the government, if nothing is done, decade after decade, to ease their misery, it is at best a dysfunctional democracy, if a democracy at all, and certainly not an "amazing exception" to crow about. No one said democracy is or ought to be "magic" - on the contrary, democracy by definition takes hard work and broad cooperation across all classes to make it function in a way that is meaningful to the masses. Or is one of the "ideas" India's poverty-stricken millions must be "tolerant" of that they should be content with their squalor and not seek change? If so, perhaps Hinduism is not so different from the other religions after all. - ATol


    Re Maverick's letter of August 30: What's your problem with Frank of Seattle's moniker ? He is always a good read. Obviously you think highly of your own moniker - Maverick. It smacks of self-indulgence, trying to convey to the readers that you are smart and sharp versus Frank's moniker, which at least establishes some fact that he is a resident of Seattle and not some wishy-washy moniker that says nothing ... I am actually Steven of Toronto, but maybe I should sign off as "Rawhide".
    Rawhide aka Steven of Toronto
    Ontario, Canada (Aug 31, '06)


    In the entire piece Heatwave puts China's giant dam in the dock (Aug 30) by Poon Siu-tao, not a word is mentioned of the more culpable greenhouse effect, to which a large number of scientists attribute changes in world weather patterns. Unusual weather has occurred in many countries worldwide during the last two years, causing huge damage and human misery. His criticism of the Three Gorges Dam project is based on scant scientific speculation. China's north has been historically dry compared to the south. Rich mineral resources in the west are well known, just as the absence of such in the east. So what can be more appropriate to try to balance out the situation? The Three Gorges Dam is already starting power production, while the expected benefits in flood control, irrigation, river transportation etc are to be realized after project completion. Of course time will tell. As to the "failed" Sanmen Gorge project due to sedimentation, the writer is ignorant of the true situation. Granted it is true due to flawed engineering design, there is no reason to stop all others which address pressing national needs.
    S P Li (Aug 30, '06)

    Wrong. To quote from the article: "However, Wang's hypothesis is rejected by Zhang Qiang, chief of the Climate Impact Assessment Office under the China Meteorological Administration (CMA). Zhang insists that the heatwave lingering in Sichuan is caused by the global environment, and that there is insufficient scientific proof to verify the 'barrel effect' theory." - ATol 


    Ronan Thomas's Britain takes a misstep in Iraq (Aug 30) is a very interesting explanation of the British defeat in Kut, Iraq, in 1916. It is a very efficient way for reminding the British forces in Iraq about the uncertainty of an imperialist adventure and about not repeating the same humiliating defeat again. However, from the perspective of people of Kut (or Iraq), the author has overlooked a very important fact. A few people in Kut without sophisticated weapons and military technology whipped the superpower of that time so [well] that even their citizens, civilian and military, still remember that battle. A warrior once told me that ... the British did not seem to learn from their mistakes at that time. They continued looting Iraq's wealth, mainly oil, but the people of Iraq were fighting them and continuously building a momentum on the historic Kut battle. Then, as expected by the people, the knell sounded on July 14, 1958, when the Iraqi people under the leadership of General Abdul Karem Qassim whipped the British forces again, contributing significantly to the collapse of the British Empire. Hence they were defeated again, leaving Iraq with two marks. The first one was from the whipping and the second one was from running fast out of Iraq with their long, coiled tails between their legs. The author has unfortunately overlooked these historical and interesting facts whose implications are extremely important for the recent time. That is to say, the British forces and all other foreign forces in Iraq will face, sooner or later, the same [eventuality] of the Kut battle: humiliating defeat. That is to say, they will be whipped and expropriated by the Iraqi people whether or not the Mighty God was behind the imperialist occupation of Iraq. As Karl Marx clearly put in his Capital, I, p 715, "Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of the process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter ... Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 30, '06)


    It's hard to count the number of things Spengler is factually wrong [about in American Idolatry, Aug 29], but I will try: (1) Americans have rejected the "musical high culture" of Europe because they blended European melodies with African syncopation; no other music has this and it's why American rock 'n' roll dominates the world; it moves your soul like Handel but you can dance to it. (2) American Idol is a mere remake of the British invention Pop Idol. The Beatles were British. (3) Rock combines the dance beat and pacing of country/western with the spirituality and soulfulness of gospel and blues. Elvis loved all three and combined them in his early Sun Records and that made him qualitatively different than, say, [Frank] Sinatra. (4) American music is above all individual and expressive and a melding of various cultures and traditions in the highest musical achievement. Objectively, Louis Armstrong, Scott Joplin, Elvis Presley, Duke Ellington, Kurt Cobain, Billie Holliday, Joey Ramone, all stand equal or better than [George Frideric] Handel. Louis Armstrong said there [are] only two kinds of music: good and bad. American music is mostly good, to great.
    Floyd Wallace
    USA (Aug 30, '06)


    I usually look forward to Spengler's articles. However, this one [American Idolatry, Aug 29] was not well thought out. Spengler makes a crack at the fundamentalists who don't or can't read their Bible. I belong to a mainstream denomination and am critical of its churches for being more like country clubs than places that encourage a palpable belief in God that translates into the real world. We are afraid to engage the world to tell them about our beliefs - especially the unchurched. Based on my personal experience, the evangelicals as a whole spend much more time on reading their Bibles than do any of the Catholics or the mainstream Protestants I have met. They at least know what many of the verses are. Many mainline Protestants and many of the Catholics I have met have no such ability to even get that far. He may be right that Americans idolize mediocrity, but I think it is more that we idolize money and a good time. The suburban lifestyle so prevalent in the US has more in common with the French noblemen Richelieu created in France than with mediocrity. Instead of fawning after who got invited to the king's table, we fawn over what color the president's tie is, whether he looks "presidential", what did Britney Spears last wear, etc. As someone who has studied music (mostly classical) my entire 40-year life, I take exception to the idea that it does not take talent to make it in America's music industries. While it does not take a pure talent for music, it does take significant talent and a special personality. Any kid can dream of becoming an Elvis Presley, but few will ever put the combination of talent and hard work together to make it happen ... Our denomination recently came out with new hymnals and tried to bring back many of the old standards and have a wonderful diversity of hymns. You would think that our hymnals would attempt to accurately convey the original rhythms and texts, but most everything becomes a squared-off measure of 4, and we have stupid word changes to reflect the efforts to be "politically correct". It is a feeble attempt to reach the masses in one fell swoop. Costs less money that way ... As a thinking Christian, I am constantly dismayed by the appeal of the Christian rock concerts disguised as church services. The few lyrics I have seen are dreadfully short on theology or its application. Those songs are more easily reproduced, the audience can learn them quicker. In short, it takes less money to produce a profit on those songs ... All Americans really want is an easy life. The average American and many of [the country's] small businessmen have no real power, only choices thrust upon us that we have to wade through daily. We are like the serfs of medieval Europe, but we live much more comfortably and in much better health than even the greatest medieval king. It takes too much work to create great art, unless you are such a genius as [Johann Sebastian]Bach. Then you do it as a day's wage and get "discovered" a few centuries later. (I personally find it suspicious that one man wrote that much music and had 20 children.)
    Eric Hutton
    President/Owner
    Practical Programs, Inc (Aug 30, '06)


    In the letter dated August 25, Frank of Seattle says, "When Indians are angry, they always say that they are amused. And Indians normally do not want to be regarded as Indians." I find it amusing (not in a Frank of Seattle sort of way) that the aforementioned letter writer uses the moniker "Frank of Seattle" and yet his endless refrain is that Indians don't want to be regarded as Indians (whatever that means). Now if he wanted to be regarded as Chinese, might not "Chang of Shanghai" or similar monikers be a better choice? Frank needs to provide something more credible than strawman arguments, while nonchalantly and arrogantly dismissing anybody on the basis of their perceived nationality or origin. If Frank was an [alumnus] of a "re-education camp" run by Mao [Zedong], I can definitely empathize.
    Maverick
    USA (Aug 30, '06)


    Correct me if I am wrong but there seems to be slight anti-India or anti-Hindu tilt in your otherwise great news portal. A case in the point is your reaction to Jayanti Patel's perfectly valid points. First you don't actually refute her arguments, you just circle around and engage in an extended bout of hair-splitting. How is it an unfair comparison? You make the idiotic argument that there are many Muslim countries and only one major predominantly Hindu (and thank your lucky stars that India is not Muslim). So what is that supposed to mean? Tell me, which Muslim state is a secular democracy like India? (You might scream Turkey, but please do look up Turkey's treatment of its Greek/Armenian and other non-Muslim minorities.) Muslims in India constitute a substantial (and growing) minority and this after having carved out separate homelands in Pakistan and Bangladesh (and they now want Kashmir). And in both these countries Hindus have been reduced to a numerically insignificant minority by ethnic cleansing, massacres and other such "non-violent methods." And the less the said about the spread of Christianity the better. Where did the Parsees (Zoroastrians) go to escape persecution in their Islamized homeland Iran? Who gave shelter to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans after [letter writer] Frank's countrymen ruthlessly occupied their country and destroyed their culture? Why don't you ask some Jewish historian to name one country where they were allowed to practice their religion with complete respect and dignity? You make the assertion that "democracy has successfully taken root in Christian lands - and did so much earlier than in the Hindu/Buddhist world". It took root only after the Christian countries stopped meddling by the Church and turned secular. (European history between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance is an absolute horror.) And incidentally, I would like you to read about ancient city-states of India during the Buddhist and pre-Buddhist periods. The concept of democracy is definitely not new to this country. Why don't you try running your news portal from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Algeria instead of sitting in an easy-going and peaceful Buddhist nation like Thailand? I wouldn't be surprised if you end up in an al-Qaeda video on Al-Jazeera. In an earlier rejoinder to another reader you advise him to logically refute Frank's arguments. Can you have a logical argument with such a hate-filled loony? Do you see Indian or non-Chinese letter writers indulging in similar hate-filled polemics like Frank, letter after letter? (And now I suppose you will fall back on the eternal support of all India/Hindu baiters, the caste system.)
    Gautam
    Noida, India (Aug 30, '06)

    Well, now that you mention it ... in fact, there was nothing in our response to Jayanti Patel's letter to claim that democracy per se is a cure for mistreatment of minorities and other sorts of evils; as you rightly point out, such examples can easily be found in any democracy - including India, which has dismally failed to deal with its poverty problem. Nor did we intend an apology for Christianity, Islam or any particular religion. Our only point was that Patel's religious basis for lauding the success of democracy in India vs Pakistan seemed on shaky ground. But Jayanti Patel now offers a clarification of that stance; read on. - ATol


    I would like to respond to the ATol editor who answered my letter [of Aug 29]. There is a reason why the words "separation of church and state" came from the West. In countries that claim to live by the book (Islamic law), democracy is non-existent. Virulent, fundamentalist religions that claim they alone have the answer have no place for democracy. The few Islamic countries that are democracies (Indonesia, Turkey) have kept Islam out of government. Fundamentalism has grown in [the United States of] America and sure enough, democracy has suffered. Fundamentalist state Utah is a pariah state. Europe has grown more democratic and sure enough, the majority of Europeans are atheists, with Christianity near death in those countries.
    Jayanti Patel (Aug 30, '06)


    It is reassuring that the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, now in Beirut and on a Middle East tour aiming at easing the tensions in the region and securing a fragile but complete ceasefire and an end to the Israeli [blockade] of Lebanon, has expressed optimism about success in his mission. Kofi Annan is also planning to go to Tel Aviv to discuss the matter with the Israeli prime minister tightly cornered by domestic critics pressuring [him] to resign, and without Ariel Sharon, the architect of new relations with Palestine, on scene, [Ehud] Olmert might be in a weak position to convince the anti-Muslim clergy of the need to compromise with Lebanon. Besides, considering the tense situation prevailing in the entire region and the reluctant attitude of the USA to play a real proactive role to resolve the crisis following Israel's air strikes, there is very little that the secretary general, who otherwise does not play any constructive role in regional disputes other than engaging himself in shuttle diplomacy, owing to pressure from the USA, could achieve any real resolution under the existing stiff circumstances. When the UN has been effectively converted into a pro-USA forum to further the US national interest and the UNSC [United Nations Security Council] behaves like a tool to bring the world under US control, the poor secretary general can do very little to solve the Israel-Hezbollah crisis, unless, of course, the Pentagon begins to consider the world as comprising sovereign nations and not its puppet regimes. Will Annan return from the Middle East with flying colors?
    Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
    School of International Studies
    Jawaharlal Nehru University
    New Delhi, India (Aug 30, '06)


    I found Spengler's column American Idolatry [Aug 29] enlightening as he analyzed the dreadful deterioration of American culture. I hope he will continue with his revelations and, perhaps, write a book that covers an examination of our [presumably US; no address supplied - ATol] culture from colonial times to the present. Spengler's unstinting critique has inspired me to seek heavenly perfection in a recording of [Claudio] Monteverdi's "L'incoronazione di Poppea".
    Yvonne (Aug 29, '06)


    I am writing concerning your man Spengler, who seems, for the first time in my experience, to have stepped outside his area of expertise. His latest piece [American Idolatry, Aug 29] contains so many egregious blunders that it risks compromising his credibility entirely, which would be a pity. To go from describing Elvis Presley's voice as "more average than Sinatra" to referring to the virtually middle-aged Bill Haley as "acne-pitted" reveals an ignorance of 1950s culture which is quite shocking for a man so familiar with the St Bartholomew's Day massacre and other subjects which are mostly dark to contemporary readers. Get a grip, Spengler, old man - you may not like rock 'n' roll, but that is no excuse for being ignorant about it.
    Martin Church (Aug 29, '06)


    Re Spengler's American Idolatry (Aug 29): I know it is very tempting to utilize one of the tools of propaganda, generalization, and label Americans as worshippers of mediocrity. I understand, for I rebuke Americans for electing a mediocre president who revels in his own mediocrity. But I do not label all Americans mediocre for the actions of a minority of Americans (some 50% vote). And it was the same propaganda techniques that Spengler employs that prompted that minority of Americans to vote for [President George W] Bush. And as for the cultural denigration Spengler engages in, what he criticizes is not the choice of a majority of Americans but is perhaps a reflection of our great diversity, which I myself celebrate. It sounds as though Spengler has formed a hypothesis to explain some symptoms of American culture he identified and, to make his point, seeks data to support it, however meager it might be.
    Jim of Huntington Beach
    California, USA (Aug 29, '06)


    Re American Idolatry [Aug 29]: I would argue that rap music is the direct descendant of original African-American spiritual music combined with rock 'n' roll, and only as such does the argument manifest the point that Spengler was trying to make. Spengler feels that American youth (who are the largest producers and consumers of rap music) epitomize the statement "Young people are as resentful as they are narcissistic, and the easily reproduced, droning complaint of country music satisfied both criteria." However, instead of taking the argument to its logical conclusion, he halts, choosing to castigate country music alone. I challenge him that rap music is in fact the epitome of American self-indulgence, and that the society it represents is the logical conclusion of a narcissistic and self-absorbed generation of undereducated and systematically re-segregated youth. Compared to Depression-era farmers, urban African-American youth are in a far worse place insofar as available opportunities. Rather than lifting the listener from the depths of the ghetto by painting a route to escape, thereby presenting a brighter future to which they may aspire, today's rap music lauds the characters who populate the social problems facing America's urban environment, praising pimps and gangsters, celebrating drug dealers and whores ... Please, Spengler, do yourself the justice by following your though-path to the logical conclusion by discovering what truly is the closest example of classical culture now evident in American society, and address the question rap music puts to your arguments.
    Patrick Kennedy
    Ottawa, Ontario (Aug 29, '06)


    Re American Idolatry [Aug 29]: If that diatribe would be set to music and consolidated into a song of less than four minutes, someone might listen.
    John Alexander
    San Pancho, Nayarit, Mexico (Aug 29, '06)


    Re A death Pakistan can ill afford [Aug 29]: The death of Nawab Akbar Bugti is as tragic as it can get. He may have been the reason for some unenviable law-and-order situation in Balochistan province, but that does not provide full justification for his undignified killing in a cave hideout. He was not only an eminent tribal leader but also on occasions a very important component of the Pakistani government ... The sad incident may be linked in some way to the activities of FBI [the US Federal Bureau of Investigation] in the sovereign country of Pakistan and I totally condemn the ill-advised activities of the FBI, which are only going to deteriorate the situation in Balochistan and fuel the concerns floated by the Baloch freedom fighters that Pakistani military is enhancing its control of Balochistan in order to facilitate American invasion and/or interference into Iran via Balochistan. There can be nothing more foolish than allowing the security services of the US (FBI) to operate freely on the territory of the sovereign state of Pakistan. Such foolishness will only help shrink local support and goodwill for the law-and-order authorities of both countries ... Simply for disciplinary reasons I do not condone or foresee a mutiny or rebellion in barracks against the leadership of General [Pervez] Musharraf. One would totally agree with the continuation and consolidation of electoral process but a genuine electoral process does not necessarily have to be linked with the stepping down of General Musharraf. He hasn't done too bad and weakening him by way of agitation or barracks rebellion will only bring chaos and a regime that will be more dictatorial towards its own people and extra-compliant with the increasingly over-demanding and interfering United States. I suspect time might be right for a broad-based, frank national dialogue for an amendment to the 1973 constitution for direct election for the presidency and Senate with a view to broaden and stabilize the foundations of democracy and can't foresee how this is going to undermine or significantly interfere with the parliamentary system. An independently elected president and Senate that are elected directly and independent of parliament might well work wonders for Pakistan. But whatever needs to be done must be done by way of national dialogue.
    Rashid Hassan (Aug 29, '06)


    Michael Vatikiotis makes a good point in Terrorism and the problem of binary vision [Aug 29]. Nonetheless, still finer distinctions, it seems to me, must needs be drawn. It is true that the Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand arises out of long-standing grievances; still, the young Turks who return from the madaris are indoctrinated in their faith in the most provincial and orthodox schools of Islamic law: wahhabi. They are tempered in a faith which looks to the past in the resurrection of a 7th-century dream of the Caliphate. On the other hand, they are armed with the latest technology, and some have cut their teeth in the training camps of Afghanistan or Iraq or Palestine. They return fired in a faith fueled by Saudi largess and a vision of a Islamic society which no longer exists. To put it in a modern setting, let's look at Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was a trained revolutionist in Europe. He returned to Vietnam to wage a long struggle against the French colonial occupier and then the United States expeditionary forces. Ho used Vietnamese conditions to fight his enemies, but had funding from a worldwide movement. Such a parallel is not unreasonable to see in the guerrilla warfare in the south of Thailand. So are we talking of a local movement without outside strings attached? Or an international movement maneuvered from abroad? Or a phenomenon which is somewhere between the two?
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 29, '06)


    I commend Chan Akya on his article Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists (Aug 26). A striking example is the difference between India and Pakistan. Both countries' peoples were part of one country for thousands of years. In fact Muslims, being the rulers during that period, enjoyed greater freedoms. Since independence we seem to have gone our separate ways. While Pakistan is close to being a failed state, lurching from [one] despot to another, India is a shining democracy, ready to take its place amongst the elite of the world. The difference? India is Hindu, whereas Pakistan is Muslim. This is the only glaring difference between the two nations. Whereas Hinduism, like Buddhism, preaches tolerance and the idea that there could be more than one way to reach God, Islam teaches that there is only one way, their way or else! You are going to hell if you don't believe in their version of God. How can such teachings be compatible with democracy? They showed a young Muslim the other day on TV, talking about how seeing the blood of non-Muslims being spilled makes "God" happy. They kill their own, including children, just because they belong to another sect. That's how democracy dies.
    Jayanti Patel (Aug 29, '06)

    Hardly a fair comparison; there is only one major predominantly Hindu state, while there are many Muslim nations, and they run the gamut from theocracies to absolute monarchies to dictatorships to democracies. Besides, Christianity embraces monotheism and exclusivism as well as Islam, and democracy has successfully taken root in Christian lands - and did so much earlier than in the Hindu/Buddhist world. - ATol


    Regarding Chan Akya's article on the lack of Chinese "terrorists", the author did display a good understanding of the Indian origin of Buddhism [Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists, Aug 26]. However, the author has a very poor knowledge of the Chinese history and a severe lack of understanding of Chinese people. In fact, the Chinese resistance movement against foreign [exploitation] in the early 1900s was somewhat similar to what is happening to the Muslims now, albeit more primitive technologically. The Boxer uprising in 1900 was one of the major outpourings of that movement. To this day, the Western media portray this event as a violent and brutal attack on Westerners and Chinese Christians by Chinese thugs. To the contrary, it was a direct response to the unbearable tax burdens which had been put on the backs of common Chinese due to the payments of huge reparations of wars China lost in its fight against opium trade and defense of Western/Japanese invasions. Overall, the theme of the article lacks any credible support. A more in-depth study of Chinese history and culture would be beneficial if Chen Akya is interested in exploring China-related topics in the future.
    GongShi
    USA (Aug 29, '06)


    Re Lester Ness's letter [Aug 28] referencing Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists [Aug 26], my two sentences worth: Mr Ness, you're de man. Bravissimo.
    Armand DeLaurell (Aug 29, '06)


    I refer to the article Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists by Chan Akya of August 26. I got the impression that he is as ignorant of Islam as would be a donkey to the classical music (thumri) or playing flute to an Indian cow ... Many in the West [who] have the misconception that the Muslim terrorists kill because they [wish to] become martyrs and enter "paradise" are forgetting that the Tamil Tigers have been responsible for many suicide bombings but they are not called Hindu terrorists; IRA [Irish Republican Army] terrorists are never called Catholic terrorists and the kamikaze pilots were never called Buddhist suicide bombers. It is lunatic rage rather than religion that makes ghazis (warriors) in the Indian-occupied Kashmir and occupied Palestine to take law into their own hands because the world has ignored them far too long. All they want is to live in peace and dignity and not in fear that their homes will be bombed and their entire families wiped out by their oppressors. We must never lose sight of the fact that, in its indiscriminate reach, terrorism often destroys the best and the brightest in a man and often good, intelligent men are blinded and follow in step with monsters like [Adolf] Hitler, [Josef] Stalin and G W Bush. Freedom fighters who become terrorists are always motivated by the rage of injustice; suffering of their people and cruelty inflicted upon them, loss of dignity, daily humiliation, and being deprived of their nationhood and land which rightly belonged to them. I find the implication that Islam encourages terrorism is G W Bush, Tony Blair and Zionist (terrorist) Jews and Zionist Christians (terrorist) way of thinking. Throughout history, political extremists of all faiths and colors have willingly given up their lives simply in the belief that by doing so, whether in bombing or in other forms of terror, they would change the course of history or at least win an advantage for their people or cause. Kamikaze pilots, IRA terrorists, Basque separatists and the Tami Tigers are not Muslims but some still blow themselves up and have committed horrendous acts of terror against those whom they consider oppressors. The attacks of [September 11, 2001, July 7, 2005], in Bali and in Madrid are not compatible with orthodox Muslim theology, which cautions soldiers "in the way of Allah" to fight their enemies face to face without harming non-combatants, women [or] children and also forbids [them] to harm their homes, farms, [orchards] or livestock. And, if they willingly surrender, escort them to a such a place of safety at the peril of your lives so that no harm should come to them. [This is] unlike the Israelis and the Americans who deliberately and systematically bomb to kill and destroy anyone walking on two legs or anything standing on a brick presumed a threat to their imperial designs and imperialistic policies. These ghazis, freedom fighters or terrorists to some, are modern-day, Westernized, highly sophisticated technocrats who relish every challenge to outwit their oppressors the USA, Britain and the Zionist State of Israel or their cronies.
    Saqib Khan
    UK (Aug 29, '06)


    I am not a Muslim. One of my friends, who himself is a devoted follower of the holy Koran, has forwarded the following verses to me. It would be extremely pleasing if the Muslim readers of ATimes can explain further what exactly are the meanings of the verses from the Koran which apparently glorify terrorism in the name of Allah: 3:151 - "We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve, because they set up with Allah that for which He has sent down no authority, and their abode is the fire, and evil is the abode of the unjust"; 8:60 -"And prepare against them what force you can and horses tied at the frontier, to terrorize thereby the enemy of Allah ..."; 8:12 - I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them ..." About unbelievers (kafirs/kufrs): 2:191 - "And slay them wherever ye catch them"; 2:193 - "And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression."
    Hindu Indian
    Mumbai, India (Aug 29, '06)


    Re US benefits from Indian migration [Aug 25]: The New York Times carried an article on August 28 titled "Real wages fail to match a rise in productivity", wherein it was noted in pertinent part, "The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2% since 2003," and "As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960s." [Sandeep] Khurana correctly pointed out in his letter [Aug 28] in response to mine [Aug 25] that globalization has harmed many Indians and benefited a minority. One can say the same for the US. In India, it is the reason for the spread of the Maoists, the farmers' suicides and the mass migration to the cities - the many symptoms of a common cause. I will also add here that William Greider noted the following about the New York Times article in his article in The Nation: "The facts have been quite stark for years, but to recognize what was happening to wages would open a taboo subject - globalization's devastating impact on America's broad middle class. If elites acknowledged that connection, not to mention harsh disloyalties to workers practiced by the leading US corporations, the policy thinkers and politicians might have to address the larger political question: What, if anything, does the government intend to do to reverse this long-running trend of deterioration?" He went [on] to say: "This season, reporters and editors could observe that several heavyweight influentials are beginning to acknowledge the wage reality, albeit in a cautious, euphemistic manner. Former treasury secretary Robert Rubin of Citigroup, leading correct thinker for Democrats, launched the Hamilton Project to examine swelling inequality and related questions. Early this month, [US President George W] Bush's new treasury secretary, Henry Paulsen, startled the press by also acknowledging the seriousness of the wage deterioration. Even the new Fed [US Federal Reserve] chairman Ben Bernanke took a swing at the problem last week." As Greider noted, "Last year for the first time since 1933, the family balance sheet went negative, that is, negative savings." The backlash in the US is already taking many forms. Perhaps the realization of that is the acceptance of a reality that has been in existence for many years, one Greider himself said he's been publishing articles about for many years. Greider isn't the only one; but the interesting thing is how the mainstream is now looking at this situation. I am not against globalization per se; but it seems to me the main issue here is how it is implemented. I should mention that … in The Guardian (UK) there is an article in the Comment section about the depression in Eastern Europe caused by the same policies. It seems that whether one looks at India, the US, Eastern Europe or Latin America, a minority has benefited while others have lost ground. There's therefore a backlash in all countries; but in some countries (like India and the countries of Latin America) the backlash is in more advanced stages than in others ([for] example the US). I think the momentum will only grow until there's a correction of some sort that sufficiently inhibits the root causes of the backlash.
    May Sage
    USA (Aug 29, '06)


    Why Muslim terrorists but no Chinese terrorists? It's not because of Buddhism, Chan Akya [Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists, Aug 26] to the contrary. There are several more cogent reasons. First, definition. If I deliver a bomb in my pocket and kill 10 people, I am labeled a "terrorist", while if I deliver a dozen bombs from an airplane and kill 1,000 people, for some reason I am not labeled a terrorist. (I'm sure the shrapnel feels the same in either case.) Moreover, aren't the "terrorists" always on the opposing side? Second, current politics. The US, under the control of secularist messianic fanatics (the neo-cons) and Protestant millennialist fanatics (the Dispensationalists, the Christian Zionists, etc) is slaughtering large numbers of Muslims. Those who resist (of course) are labeled "terrorist". But if the neo-cons and the Dispensationalists get what some are having wet dreams about, and are able to invade China, presto, change-o! Large numbers of Chinese "terrorists" will emerge, trying to prevent their countrymen from being "liberated" from their lives, their limbs, their "uncivilized" way of life, etc. Meanwhile, anyone in the US who's ever been to a Chinese restaurant will become a "terrorist sympathizer". Heaven help the Chinese-Americans!
    Lester Ness
    Kunming, China (Aug 28, '06)


    Re Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists (Aug 26): An interesting read, but why not "Judaism and the absence of Chinese terrorists"? Presumably the bombing of civilians and their infrastructure constitutes terrorism, and it's a safe guess that a higher proportion of Jews actively back the Israeli government's actions in Lebanon and Gaza than Muslims back al-Qaeda et al.
    Recalcitrant
    Thailand (Aug 28, '06)


    To further reinforce Chan Akya's viewpoint [Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists, Aug 26], when the Chinese were victimized in Indonesia (1997) or the Solomon Islands (2005) we did not hear of Chinese in Britain or Canada holding street demonstrations or forming terrorist cells. It appears that the Chinese can and do assimilate into their home countries, something which Muslims seem to refuse to do. Perhaps this is the battleground between the idea of the nation-state (which can accommodate diversity) versus the monoreligion caliphate. Only history will tell which is the superior system. Unfortunately for the loser, it will be (continued) economic and social stagnation for Islam if it loses, or a complete change of way of life for the rest of the world if Islam wins.
    Vigilant Reason
    Malaysia (Aug 28, '06)


    As if one Spengler was not enough, ATol added another one recently, albeit an Asian one for a change - Chan Akya. The content of his piece Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists [Aug 26] is as meaningless, to put it nicely, as its title. He keeps talking about this thing he calls "terrorism" without bothering to give us a definition of it. Is what the American government doing in Iraq terrorism? And does it have anything to do with Christianity? Should the billions of Christians around the world feel guilty for the war crimes it is committing there? Was what the Israeli government did to Lebanon recently terrorism? And does it have anything to do with Judaism? Should all the Jews of the world feel guilty for those war crimes? For Buddha's and Allah's sake, how could someone compare 1.5 billion Muslims scattered around the world, living in countries as ethnically and culturally diverse as Morocco and Pakistan, Chechnya and Indonesia, the United States and India, with the people living in 1930s Germany, one of the most ethnically, religiously, culturally and socially homogeneous countries on the planet? (And as far as I know, the German people elected Adolf Hitler to power.) Why would 1.5 billion Muslims who practice their religion peacefully and struggle to make a living like everyone else in the world, feel guilty for the actions of the followers of an American Frankenstein [monster] called [Osama] bin Laden? Speaking of the Chinese and their history, didn't the Japanese occupiers call Maoist soldiers who were fighting them "terrorists"? Weren't the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution called "terrorists" by the whole world? In the end, what does Chan Akya mean by the word 'terrorist'? Do the editors of ATol who accepted to publish his rubbish know the answer?
    Daniel Mazir
    Perth, Australia (Aug 28, '06)

    It is arguable whether "the German people elected Adolf Hitler to power", although the same argument - that he never enjoyed strong popular support while Germany was a democracy, and came to power through intrigue and backroom deals - could possibly also be made against certain sitting "democratically elected leaders" today. We won't mention any names. - ATol


    Tom Barry has left out an interesting fact about Elliott Abrams [Hunting monsters in Jerusalem, Aug 26]. Mr Abrams is the son-in-law of the neo-conservative Midge Decter. Ms Decter is the wife of the sage of Jewish neo-conservatives and bulwark of Commentary, a Jewish monthly magazine. As Mr Barry points out, the ties which bind Elliott Abrams to the Middle East are strong Zionist sentiments wrapped in Old Glory. As Mr Abrams' role in the infamous Iran-Contra affair shows, he is willing to do anything without and within the law to further an ideological agenda. Permit me to make two other observations. Chan Akya [Islam and the absence of Chinese terrorists, Aug 26] myopically forgets that Muslims who oppose Chinese internal immigration and Chinese policies come from the borderlands. They are not ethnic Han but belong to China's Turkic minorities. So the right of cultural and ethnic survival as a group becomes subsumed under the green banner of Islam as an expression of nationalism. Kalinga Seneviratne says it all [Singapore: Make love, not work, Aug 26]. Lee Kwang Yew's dream of a strong, modern Singapore has put a damper on the city-state's birth rate. This is not a new issue. The Senior Mentor (Mr Lee's new title) has long argued for more breeding among Singapore's Chinese citizenry, but to no avail. Luckily, emigration from China buoys up the statistics for the majority Chinese population. A wag might also say that the stern, one-party rule of the People's Action Party (PAP) may have spawned an unconscious reflex among Singaporeans, and so they abstain from having larger families.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 28, '06)


    US President George W Bush's top Middle East adviser, Elliott Abrams, is a man [who] embodies a most glaring contradiction that lies at the heart of the neo-conservative project that has largely driven US foreign-policy decisions in the war on terror. This contradiction is borne out in Tom Barry's assessment of Abrams (Hunting monsters in Jerusalem, Aug 26), whom he himself brands as someone [who] "embodies the [Bush] administration's zealous, ideological and dangerously delusional vision of US foreign policy in the Middle East". On the one hand, as chief of the president's "Global Democracy Strategy", we would expect from Abrams a thorough and principled understanding of the fundamentals of democratic governance and how this plays out in ensuring that the rights of ethnic and/or religious minorities are duly protected. Even Richard John Neuhaus, Abrams' longtime associate, is quoted by Barry as stating that "what runs through Abrams' thinking is a deep, almost quasi-religious devotion to democracy". But on the other hand, there is something else that runs through Abrams' thinking that is just as steeped in religious devotion, and that is his insistence that Jews must be loyal to Israel because they "are in a permanent covenant with God and with the land of Israel and its people". In the light of this most fundamental of all neo-con dogmas, the question needed to be put to Abrams is this: What has a Jewish "permanent covenant with God" got to do with the first principle of democracy, which is the principle of non-discrimination? And what about the permanent covenant between God and Muslims, who are the Jews' Semitic cousins and are considered to be the children of Abraham's first son, Ishmael? Clearly then, democracy is fine for Abrams, but when it comes to the Jewish people we are to make an unquestioned exception. This amounts to what is effectively a totally non-democratic form of discrimination-in-reverse to what happened in the Holocaust. And it is this highly destructive stance, held by all so-called Christian Zionists such as Abrams, that is responsible for creating the most densely populated ghetto on the face of the Earth: Palestine. The time has come for the world community to address such fundamental divisions caused by disputes over the order of succession within religious faiths - whether it be the division between Jews and Muslims, or between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Until this is done, democracy and religion in the Middle East will continue to be on opposite ends of a contradiction that the neo-cons refuse point-blank to acknowledge as being a demon of their own making.
    Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
    Canberra, Australia (Aug 28, '06)


    Syria draws a line at the border [Aug 26] is a well-written article. The only correction I would make is that the article refers to Hezbollah at most as an "organization". Call Hezbollah what it is, a terrorist organization whose ambitions, as shortsighted as the Lebanese are, doesn't just include the defense of Lebanon and the destruction of Israel. Their plans are global, and any nation can be their target if arms continue to be supplied to them. The stronger Hezbollah becomes the less power the Lebanese government will have [over] them, and after the methods used by Hezbollah during the recent war with Israel, Hezbollah has [proved that it] will break any human-rights laws to achieve its objectives. In no way can Hezbollah be considered an army. It does not follow any standard army procedures. It fires behind innocent civilians at innocent civilians. These are the acts of a vicious terrorist organization, and they have to be stopped now or the Middle East and the world will have to pay a heavier price to do the same job later.
    Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 28, '06)


    The article Open debate under threat in Japan [Aug 26] by Sheila Smith and Brad Glosserman was a welcome read. The question of freedom of speech and academic inquiry in Japan is an important one that doesn't get enough attention either domestically or abroad. I wanted to correct one error in the article. The piece says that Japan Echo magazine is published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; this is not true. Japan Echo Inc is an independent publisher in Tokyo, and has published the magazine since 1974 with no editorial input from the Japanese government ...
    Peter Durfee
    Editorial Department
    Japan Echo Inc (Aug 28, '06)


    The Deadly double game [Aug 26] is the aftermath and natural consequence of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and then the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the West's policy in Palestine. Pakistan was the frontline state of struggle against Soviet intervention in neighboring Afghanistan and a refuge for those fleeing death and destruction there. People came in the millions and had to stay in Pakistan for a decade to expel the USSR. Expelling the USSR was the point of common interest between the West and Islam. In order to sustain support in the general population of Pakistan for the Afghan jihad, an entire population had to be mobilized. In the aftermath of the socio-political change imported by the Soviet invasion and departure, death and destruction continued in Afghanistan, providing a plausible reason for the continued stay of refugees and their children in Pakistan. Massive social change that came about as a consequence of 20 years of death and destruction and wars (that have in fact continued) has changed the landscape. Then came the US invasion of Afghanistan, pushing a further flood of change from Afghanistan back into Pakistan. The US and its allies invaded Afghanistan because neo-conservatives and the West were skeptical of the winds of change and the Islamic state of Afghanistan. Pakistani society has tribal and socio-political ties with the people of Afghanistan. Pakistani army and security agencies come from this deeply tied society. What else is the Pakistani government or Pakistani society expected to do? Amir Mir [author of The True Face of Jehadis: Inside Pakistan's Network of Terror] cannot be oblivious of what Washington is doing in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.
    Rashid Hassan (Aug 28, '06)


    I wish to comment on the article The new axis of intervention (Aug 25) by John Feffer. The warlords in the White House and Whitehall want their world order at the cost of others' justice, discipline at the cost of others' dignity and imperialism at any price and at the cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent human lives and bombing victim countries into wastelands of rubble. It is purely and simply the law of the jungle where nothing functions but dominance of rogue states headed by an axis of evil men, G W Bush, Tony Blair and now Ehud Olmert (once deputy of Ariel Sharon) who demand obedience and submission to enforce their authority by violent intervention and methods. In any case, new imperialism is already upon us. It's a redefined and remodeled version is in the disguise of democracy, freedom [and] liberty, nothing but horrendous lies as we know - greedy, ugly and perverse. For the first time in history, a single power with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an afternoon has complete, economic and military hegemony, and under G W Bush it has become a frightening reality. It uses different weapons to break nations to open trade markets. There isn't a country on this Earth that is not caught in the crossfire of the American cruise missile and its checkbook diplomacy. The countries are razed to ground for greedy contractors-in-waiting to battle for contracts to reconstruct what their governments [destroyed] in the first place. Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value to empire, or have a "market" of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or natural resources of value - oil, gas, gold, diamonds, cobalt, copper - must do as they're told or become military targets. Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the American and European corporate machine, civil unrest is plotted or war is waged to occupy [them]. Is there any choice left? This brutal blueprint has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan and the next target in sight is Iran. The odious smell of ... conspiracy is being repeated loudly, and momentum is building up against Iran. It goes without saying that every war that new imperial powers are waging becomes a just war. It is a disgusting, vulgar and abominable desire to subdue the world at the expense of the poor and weak so that the superpower get richer.
    Saqib Khan
    UK (Aug 28, '06)


    This is in response to article US benefits from Indian migration and the letter by May Sage [both Aug 25]. I do not want to go into the arguments about the advantage of immigrants or legal guest workers to the US economy. As ATimes correctly pointed about the paradox of American democracy, many US citizens do not want guest workers or immigrants to enter the US but they are helpless as their politicians think otherwise. What a pathetic condition of such citizens of the country that claims to [be] spreading democracy in other countries by hook or crook. But wait, such people might have some other ways of doing things, such as harassing, practicing indirect racism etc etc, as has happened in some (or many?) cases. I am really excited about and waiting for "the backlash" thing to start in the US. As [Isaac] Newton pointed out, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I will eagerly wait for such reactions by 1 billion people (who are tasting the power of having disposable money in their hands and fast learning the art of generating wealth) against American companies. Many Indian companies I had grown up with for so many years have either gone out of business from competition by non-Indian MNCs [multinational corporations] or have been taken over by them. These foreign companies sell in the Indian market and send the profit to their own countries. Such Americans (there are plenty of them) are good at preaching free-market policies (heard and read lots of such preachings from US in pre-1992 India) when it suits them but when things start going against them they start talking about "backlash". Latest example of US hypocrisy is the WTO [World Trade Organization] talks' collapse. For these backlash-talking US people's information, wherever people are doing work for US companies by sitting in India, things have become worse. The cost of living has shot up, apartment rents, hotel rents, restaurant bills, food and fruits prices and everything else has become expensive. The average local population is suffering a lot as they cannot afford many things anymore. So in a way globalization is benefiting a very small population in India. Indian companies like Reliance, Bharti (offers cheapest cell-phone services in the world that even the poor in India can afford), ICICI and HDFC banks (their services and IT [information technology] use for customers is comparable [to] or maybe better than many good US banks), Jet Airways and Deccan Airways (whose cheapest airfares have [allowed] many lower- [and] middle-class Indians to go for air travel) and Tata and many more are much better than Westward-looking IT companies as they are offering Indian consumers better and cheap choices and generate wealth and employment in own country. (Wish we Indians had patented "0", yoga and ayurveda etc - it would be fun to charge [royalties] from Americans to use these.) This makes me think about the need of US companies in India. Liberalization is the way to go for us in India. [I am] waiting to see the only superpower and self-acclaimed world savior indulge in its first business war when it is already involved in military wars by invading and crushing other countries with its military force.
    Sandeep Khurana
    Bangalore, India (Aug 28, '06)


    Spengler is again (for the umpteenth time) frothing about birth rates in an effort to explain world politics [The peacekeepers of Penzance, Aug 22]. Does it occur to this Neanderthal that Europe might not want to send "peacekeepers" (sic) to Lebanon because it doesn't trust Israel and dreads having to deal with the (probable) violence to come? No, for this reactionary it's all about birth rates. Europe is understandably hesitant to take part in anything that is underwritten by the imperialist US government, period. How many Europeans are alive in 2080 is - and this should be obvious - hardly relevant to the Middle East crisis today. Implicit in Spengler's nonsense is the demonizing of Iran (what nuke program, Spengler?) and of Muslims in general - and an apology (nay, hallucination) for and about the US. Where does Spengler get this notion that Iran wants a Greater Persian Empire? The only empire builders in this fight are the US and its Rottweiler Israel. The attack on Lebanon is labeled "disproportionate" in the quisling Western press - when what it really amounts to is the stuff of war crimes. Orientalists like Spengler may try, desperately it seems to me, to find refuge in reproductive charts and predictions - while making sure to avoid any real analysis of US and Israeli aggression. The only threat in the region is the US war machine and Israeli militarism. Compare the comments of [US Vice President Richard] Cheney and [Israel Defense Forces chief of staff General Dan] Halutz, of [US Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice and [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert, of [Israeli Defense Minister Amir] Peretz and [US President George W] Bush with the rhetoric from Tehran, and then decide who is off the leash.
    John Steppling
    Lodz, Poland (Aug 28, '06)


    I say, Frank old chap, would you rather mind not calling me an Indian [letter, Aug 25]? Gave me a bit of a turn, like waking up after a night of lager and Vindaloo, if you know what I mean. Frank(ly), I don't care who Chan is, but was certainly curious after the amusing but curt reply that the editors gave Nadine Goldberg. If the cost of that curiosity is to be called names, ah well, you just proved my point about Chinese media. As an aside, though, are you Chinese laboring under the notion that everyone who criticizes you people has to be Indian?
    Salt of Earth (Aug 28, '06)


    I have come to suspect that [letter writer] Frank of Seattle and you [ATol editor] are related, since you publish his nonsensical insults to Indians and India over and over again. We have a saying in Hindi which translated in English [is]: Those idiots who do not understand the language of words will understand the language of kicks. I would like to get my hands on this Frank and wring his Spicy Sichuan Chicken neck.
    Tarun
    Dallas, Texas (Aug 28, '06)

    Alternatively, if you feel you can match wits with him in a logical argument rather than through culinary violence, take him on in The Edge forum. - ATol


    The reported suicide committed by a young British soldier by the name of Jason Chelsea on August 14 in London, fearing that he would be sent to Iraq and asked to kill the children over there, throws enough light over the mass killings taking place both in Iraq and Afghanistan occupied by the USA, not sparing even women and children in these countries, as well as in Palestine and Lebanon, where Israel is waging a deadly war with the help of the superpower. His previous horrid experience in other countries where he served in the so-called peacekeeping force compelled him to take this disastrous step of killing [himself] in order to escape the ordeal of war crimes. If one reads this along with other earlier reports about UN peace forces killing innocent people and raping women in countries where they were serving as "dutiful soldiers" to protect the lives and property of the citizens, [it] puts in question the credibility of peace forces per se. Once again, the legitimacy for the existence of world bodies like the UN and UNSC [United Nations Security Council] under these circumstances should be challenged. Moreover when more and more people are killed day by day in the present Arab world (and they themselves are shedding a lot more of one another's blood in fights instigated by the occupying forces), the world leaders must rise to the occasion to stop this bloodbath, instead of witnessing silently the erosion of one civilization by endless wars envisaged by the Western powers supported by their "profitable" allies.
    Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
    School of International Studies
    Jawaharlal Nehru University
    New Delhi, India (Aug 28, '06)

    And how are they to do that without United Nations peacekeepers, or something very similar? As for the late Private Jason Chelsea, he was apparently distressed by the likelihood of being sent to Iraq as part of Britain's occupation forces there, not as a UN peacekeeper. - ATol


    Just browsing through the American press online, I am dumbfounded to discover a very odd American mood with respect to Iraq. It seems that their feelings are hurt that the Iraqi people do not appreciate all that America has done for them. These people live in some kind of a bubble. They must be totally immune to reality and completely removed from the rest of the world.
    Cha-am Jamal
    Thailand (Aug 28, '06)


    Re US benefits from Indian migration [Aug 25]: Siddharth Srivastava sounds like a used-car salesman. [US] Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures show that foreign immigration harms the US rather than helps. Outsourcing (the reason for [the] boom) and the immigrants (legal and illegal) are two prongs of the same strategy. The ramifications for the US [are that] there's going to be a huge backlash - maybe sooner than later. And yes, the Indians will get it both ways. Better think of a new strategy, if interested in not being caught flatfooted - the most likely result in my opinion. If you [look at] BLS and immigration figures, a picture quite contrary to the one posited in the article emerges. BLS showed job growth between 2001 and '06 had the US economy come up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth ... Those who can read the ramifications have realized what this means: an economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration. Meanwhile state and local governments have [US]$700 billion worth of unfunded pension liabilities and $1 trillion worth of unfunded health-care liabilities of their own employees - which means a need to tax taxpayers who are facing a job-reduced future. Does this illustrate why the author sounds like a used-car salesman, and why I say a big backlash is coming?
    May Sage
    USA (Aug 25, '06)

    Perhaps, but you don't explain what you mean by "backlash". As long as the US has only two active political parties, both of which embrace neo-liberal economics, your options are severely limited, are they not? - ATol


    Re Moscow making Central Asia its own [Aug 25]: As water seeks its own level, so Russia is rising to recover its influence in ways subtle and easily understood in Central Asia. The former USSR Central Asian republics have a long, shared history with Moscow. Russia, however, will never achieve the mastery of the region it once had, but the flush of petro-rubles and older habits will ease it into a better and more privileged role. This is not unusual for old colonial or multi-ethnic empires. Look at Austria - it has slipped comfortably into financial influence in the Balkans, in which as the capital of the former Austro-Hungarian empire it held sway. Russia may bristle at the United States horning in on its old stomping grounds, but owing to the precarious and vital geopolitical interests in the limitrophe to the vital frontiers of the countries bordering on the "roof of the world", there is space for others in what was once and in certain respects remains a Russian sphere of influence.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 25, '06)


    Re The new axis of intervention [Aug 25] by John Feffer: When you publish a piece of pure propaganda you ought to label it as such. Otherwise it is deliberately misleading your readers into thinking Mr Feffer is reporting facts.
    Washi Bana (Aug 25, '06)

    Feel free to point out any factual errors you have found in this or any other article posted on Asia Times Online. As you have not done so, we are left to assume that your definition of "propaganda" is information or analysis with which you are not personally comfortable. - ATol


    Writers of different races have their distinctive marks in [their] writings. If you are paying attentions, you can tell if the writer is an Indian, Chinese, or white man. Chan Akya's limited knowledge of Chinese culture and history and his comprehensive understandings of India clearly indicate that he is an Indian writer. I can tell that Salt of Earth is also an Indian. When Indians are angry, they always say that they are amused. And Indians normally do not want to be regarded as Indians. The best compliment to Indians is to mistake them for English masters or white Americans. However, the real English would understand that "transforming" means a temporary stage [in which] nothing is in its [ultimately] desirable shape. I agree that China will be backward politically for a very long time. However, China has a continued history of 5,000 years. A dozen is nothing compared to a thousand. [What is] most important is that China is transforming towards a free, wealthy, democratic society every day. If Apurva Shah [letter, Aug 24] were to say that European culture is superior, he would be castigated as an English-speaking Indian [elitist], not a xenophobe. And a country's culture decides that country's destination. Please read David Gosset's A symphony of civilizations [Aug 12]. This is a great article that may be hard to understand for those who do not have civilized cultures.
    Frank of Seattle
    Washington, USA (Aug 25, '06)


    It is reported that some time in the last few days, members of [an Islamic separatist group] traveled from Thailand overland into Malaysia and met with certain individuals at a petrol station near the Thai border. It is further [alleged] that these individuals provided the travelers with funds and instructions for carrying out acts of terrorism in Thailand. [The group] is known to be a separatist organization in Thailand, to be politically active in Malaysia, and to be an enemy combatant in Thailand's southern insurgency. Thai authorities will apparently now wait for these planned terrorist acts to be carried out and only then investigate each act in isolation and arrest some suspects as a way of fighting terrorism. Our purely reactive method of fighting terrorism in the south and our use of the criminal-justice system as a model for an anti-terrorism strategy have not achieved any significant results even under martial law. Acts of mayhem have become part of daily life in the south. This state of affairs is likely to become a permanent feature of Thailand unless we develop proactive and preemptive methods to go after known terrorist organizations, their sources of funds, and their international co-conspirators and unless we can get the full and sincere cooperation of Malaysia.
    Cha-am Jamal
    Thailand (Aug 25, '06)


    Sung-Yoon Lee's A Korean meeting of the minds [Aug 24] reminds one of a saying from [the Gospel of] Matthew: "You blind guides! You strain for a gnat and swallow a camel." Surely had [Lee] scratched the surface a little, it would not [have been] that difficult to discover differences in standpoint between [South Korean President] Roh Moo-hyun and [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-il, beginning with who crossed the 38th Parallel, thereby kicking off war in Korea. Koreans view the division of their country as a tragedy. Yet few recall that at the Cairo Conference in November 1943, [US president Franklin] Roosevelt and [British prime minister Winston] Churchill put off for another day the future of Korea, for the simple reason that not one voice but three spoke for Korea. One, I Sung-man or Sygman Rhee in Hawaii; Kim Il-sung and his guerrilla forces in North Korea and China; and the Korean government-in-exile in Shanghai. The two [Western] wartime leaders saw resolution of the matter in the unconditional surrender of Japan. At the time of Korea's liberation, agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union had divided the peninsula at the 38th Parallel, and what's more, the number of political parties claiming the right to represent and rule in the name of the Korean people had mushroomed into hundreds of parties. Added to that, the Soviet Union sought to install its man in the north, and the United States its man in the south. Bruce Cumings' award-winning two-volume account on The Origins of the Korean War cast in a dim light the American hand in the peninsula's partition and its role in the Korean War. Nonetheless, Pyongyang's invasion into the south proved a costly miscalculation, and were it not for the Chinese volunteers, well documented by [Allen] Whiting in his China Crosses the Yalu, North Korea's chestnuts might not have been pulled from the fire, and the fratricidal division of Korea would have ended in the South's victory by 1953. [Lee] presumes much through the lens of historical hindsight that Mr Roh and Mr Kim may on some issues be drawing closer together, but enough keeps them at arm's length nonetheless. President [George W] Bush's maladresse in foreign policy and his riding roughshod [over] South Korea's sensibilities have contributed much to this, as has Washington's sanctioning of [former South Korean president] Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy. As it looks today, the daughter of the dictator Park Chung-hee will more likely than not be the next occupant of the Blue House, for the simple reason that Mr Roh's Uri Party has not lived up to its promises. And this has nothing to do with identity of views nor the collective Korean soul's desire to seek reunification. The bet on the end of Mr Roh's career in politics is found in the nitty-gritty of South Korean politics.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 24, '06)

    Because of an editing error, Sung-Yoon Lee's name was misspelled in the article. It has been corrected. - ATol


    If I were to say that European culture is [superior to those of] the rest of the world, I would quickly be castigated as being xenophobic. So why is it acceptable for [Chan] Akya to say that "corruption is more firmly rooted in Asian culture than is commonly acknowledged" [The wages of corruption, Aug 19]? It is like saying Asians are inherently corrupt and Europeans are inherently more moral. Culture has nothing to do with the level of corruption in a country. Its political, economic and judicial system has everything to do with it.
    Apurva Shah
    Mumbai, India (Aug 24, '06)

    A country's political, economic and judicial systems don't come out of a vacuum - they are surely at least in part products of that country's culture, and likely of the influences of previous colonial regimes (and their cultures) where such applies. - ATol


    I am always amused by Frank of Seattle, and his letter published on August 23 is probably the best of all. One phrase in particular made me laugh very hard indeed: "Today, China is transforming from a single-party-supervised society to a democratic, free society." This would be the same country that destroyed Hong Kong's free media effectively, routinely beating up the territory's media commentators? The same place that has the highest number of uncontested executions in the world? Where people are killed for their body parts, like Americans strip cars for spare parts? It's not about the free media not catching up with government "reforms", it is that the single-party state is too afraid of losing control to allow a free media. China will be backward, politically, for a very long time. If Frank wants to do something about it, he should move to China right away. No, scratch that, they will simply execute him for being outspoken. Stay in Seattle, Frank, and continue entertaining all of us. And he is wrong about Chan [Akya] - I found the article on Chinese reforms [Chinese reforms: The dog didn't bark, Aug 5] that preceded the one on Indian reforms [Indian reform: All bark and no bite, Aug 16] even more informative. Hence my view that Chan is either more than one person or a high-ranking government official in a "neutral" country like Singapore.
    Salt of Earth (Aug 24, '06)


    While amusing, I am not sure that the photo accompanying the article Resurgent Russia aims for the summit [Jun 15] contributes to the point of the article. In fact, it looks like a cyber-prank. (The photo is of [US President George W] Bush and Dobbie from Harry Potter, but supposedly of Bush and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.)
    Nathan Light (Aug 24, '06)

    It's not a photo as such, but an illustration for the article. In Russia, Putin is popularly associated with his look-alike, Dobbie. - ATol


    Yen Chu Chie's letter (Aug 23) mentions that China "fiddles with rockets" as if perfection of SUV [sport-utility vehicle] manufacture has to come first. His "service once on a large US air base" seems to have rendered him prostrate before American technology, completely blind to China's various engineering achievements, including rocketry. The Landwind is [a product of] but one company making its first-ever venture. One should not be so stupid to ignore that the Japanese did not put out good-quality cars initially but have now captured a lion's share of the world's market. A well-known statement originated in the last century applies to people who absolutely adore [the United States of] America and belittle other countries: America's moon is bigger.
    S P Li (Aug 24, '06)


    Re Spengler's Forum: You are advised to eliminate this feature from Asia Times [Online]. It detracts from otherwise thoughtful work.
    Richard Kincaid (Aug 24, '06)

    You don't have to look at it if you don't like it; it is very popular with others.  - ATol


    By following the essence of foreign policy pursued by the United States of invading one nation in order to shift the world's attention from the awful crises in one country after that was captured, [Israel] has has cleverly switched back to Palestine now. Annoyed by the domestic criticism of [Israel]'s war in Lebanon killing both a few Israelis and nearly 1,900 Lebanese, Israeli forces have reverted back to Gaza for the resumption of fighting the Palestinians for allegedly kidnapping two Israelis. It looks funny, but brutally killing the innocent people in a neighboring country for keeping domestic criticism under check, or for any other domestic political reason, has become order of the day internationally. This highly dangerous trend has to be checked immediately, otherwise many nations stronger than their neighbors could invade at will and send the forces in the direction the military or political leadership feels fit. However, unfortunately no power could do that job efficiently, including the United Nations, and the UN Security Council, having ulterior motives in regional conflicts, cannot be expected to do any worthwhile exercise in this regard so that weak countries could also co-exist peacefully alongside the powerful ones.
    Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
    School of International Studies
    Jawaharlal Nehru University
    New Delhi, India (Aug 24, '06)


    Stephen Zunes' The logic of war [Aug 23] is [one] of the better articles I've seen on certain aspects (the US connection) of Israel's war on Lebanon. What, alas, Mr Zunes doesn't take up is what, aside from photo ops with King George and more money with which to purchase US-made war materiel, the representatives of the Israeli state thought they had to gain by slaughtering their neighbors with such glee. Unfortunately, articles on the war on Lebanon which don't address the Israeli state's expansionist agenda are ignoring a gorilla who tips the scales at at least 250 kilograms.
    M Henri Day, PhD, MD
    Stockholm, Sweden (Aug 23, '06)


    Kaveh L Afrasiabi's Iran running out of options (Aug 23) is partly an article that is not grounded in historical understanding of facts. The article states, "The US is formidable, having knocked out in a couple of weeks an Iraqi nemesis that Iran could not dislodge after eight years of fighting." Therefore, one can conclude, it is so easy for the US to knock out or occupy Iran. This is indeed a false and a misleading statement. When Iraq started the war with Iran, Iraq had outstanding military forces and was not under the UN embargo. The Iraqi military was able to take down any military force in the Middle East, including the Israeli forces, in a short period of time. Iraq was also supported by many countries to continue the war with Iran, a country that had neither an army nor a reasonable amount of weapons. In addition, the Iranian mullahs were busy killing each other, creating internal chaos. Iraq's invasion of Iran, which was supported by the United States of America and other Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, had made Iran as it is now: the most powerful and cohesive country in the Middle East. It is also true that many political pundits and scholars have contended that president George [H W] Bush was wise in deciding against the invasion of Iraq in 1991, because he had predicted accurately the consequences of the possible invasion, as we have been witnessing them since the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. But this argument is totally false, because [the first] president George Bush decided not to invade Iraq in 1991 because he had known very well that Iraq at that time had strong military forces and weapons, including weapons of mass destruction. [Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein was willing and able to use these weapons for his survival. In 2003, the [George W] Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, because Iraq was under UN sanctions for 12 years and did not have fighting military forces and weapons. Stated differently, the current Bush administration knew that Iraq was totally ... defenseless. Parenthetically, this explains why Iran and other nations will not disarm in the future when President George Bush demands, because these countries know that they will be occupied by imperialist nations and Israel if they are disarmed. At any rate, in contrast to Iraq, the [US] administration knows that Iranian mullahs are full of arms and weapons and can defend their country. It is easy to predict that the US will not invade Iran for another reason. If Israel had 30,000 soldiers and could not eliminate 5,000 Hezbollah fighters, then, using the same proportionality (6 Israeli soldiers to 1 Hezbollah fighter), the US would require 6 million soldiers at least to eliminate 1 million Iranian fighters. I do not think US has that number of soldiers. My conclusion is that the author tries either to mislead readers about that comparison or had no knowledge of some of the most important historical facts. It is very fruitful scientifically to ground our opinions in history in order to derive accurate generalizations.
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 23, '06)


    US, Philippines weigh new military marriage by Fabio Scarpello in the August 23 issue of ATol speaks of the US "angling" for a base on Mindanao for the purpose of "fighting terrorism in Southeast Asia". I have to smile at this - and shake my head. Anyone who has been making any sort of an effort to follow world affairs since (as late as) the debacle in Yugoslavia must know that this Philippine thing is simply an extension of American neo-conservatism's geopolitical ambition of global hegemony and, thereby, control of the world's hydrocarbon energy sources. "Terrorism" is the "ploy".
    KEL (Aug 23, '06)


    China's young automotive industry is straining at the bit. It has now taken a great leap in launching [Jiangling Landwind], a sports-utility vehicle at the low end of the price scale. This indeed is a bold move. It exemplifies that China is rapidly trying to emerge as a First World economy. But as Benjamin A Shobert cogently points out, Low cost isn't everything [Aug 23]. Perhaps the Chinese have not heard of the DAF or the Yugo. These two brands, one from the Netherlands, the other from the former Yugoslavia, came off the assembly [line] with high hopes of offering a bargain of an automobile at a very affordable price. The price was indeed right, but the products were not up to their promises, and so the DAF and the Yugo are but fleeting memories and examples of high hopes and poor engineering and workmanship.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 23, '06)

    In fact, the DAF was ahead of its time, offering the first successful continuously variable automatic transmission for the mass market way back in 1958. A similar device is now found on such state-of-the-art economy cars as the BMW-built MINI, some Hondas, Audis and others. DAF's car division was sold to Volvo in 1975, but the Dutch firm is still a successful manufacturer of trucks. As for the Yugo, as the Fiat-based Zastava Koral was known outside the Yugoslav market, debate continues among automotive historians on the deservedness of its reputation for poor quality, especially in the anti-communist US, and a version of the car is still being produced. - ATol


    Spengler is as good as ever in his article The Peacekeepers of Penzance [Aug 22]. I fail to fathom Iranian leaders' stupidity in provoking the sole superpower. Having served once on a large US air base, I can attest to the immense size and invincibility of the US armed forces. When no country in the world has a navy as large as even one of the US fleets (the US has seven or eight fleets), it is almost suicidal to take on the US and think you can win. I think it is irresponsible, for it can only bring death and destruction to the Iranian people. Chinese racist Frank of Seattle (CRFOS [letter, Aug 22]) has been rattled by the facts published in David Pan's article about his beloved communist China [Damn lies and Chinese statistics, Aug 19]. It is a well-known fact that China fudges facts and statistics and Pan only reiterated the well-known traits of the Chinese autocracy. I am sure it would have been even more galling to read [Benjamin A] Shobert's article on the substandard SUV [sport-utility vehicle] Landwind made in China by Jiangling [Low cost isn't everything, Aug 23]. A crash test done in Germany showed the vehicle to be unroadworthy and the dummy had to be amputated to extricate it from the vehicle. If I were to write in the same way as CRFOS, I would have to say that China should stop talking about sending a man to the moon and should try to make better cars before it fiddles with rockets. As for India and the US, they make better SUVs than Jiangling's deathtrap of an SUV. I would be quite happy to buy CRFOS a Jiangling Landwind or two.
    Yen Chu Chie
    USA (Aug 23, '06)

    The word "fleet" has different purposes in US Navy parlance. The navy has nine components, two of which are termed "Atlantic Fleet" and "Pacific Fleet". There are five numerically designated fleets (eg 2nd Fleet etc), and these operate as parts of the main two fleets. - ATol


    Ah, Spengler and his peacekeepers of Penzance (Aug 22). Could it be that the multilingual European political and economic elites are just a bit more sophisticated, a bit more knowledgeable, a bit more experienced and a bit more wary of unintended consequences than George W? Just a bit less intimidated by the president's clever, erudite and arrogant advisers? Sadly, the pro-Israeli neo-cons in Washington have been busy digging a deep hole for Israel with American taxpayers' money. One would be tempted to call them Islam's useful idiots. There is no wisdom in sending UN peacekeepers into Lebanon, until the UN insists on a level playing field in the Middle East. What's good for Judaism is good for Islam. Israel is an Asian country and simply must assimilate for its own good or be spat out like a hairball. It's their [Israelis'] choice.
    AL
    Canada (Aug 23, '06)


    Until quite recently in Europe, there was the choice of "to breed or to die", where most women chose the latter. In essence, there was not much difference between the women in burqa and women in Europe who suffered under the constraints set by "society" that didn't permit women to work and to study due to legal, institutional, religious, and other cultural constraints. Now the choice is extended to breeding/procreation, living with a partner without offspring, living alone, or [dying]. And what appears? Having more choices, [fewer] women choose to become mothers, be it as full-time housewife or with a part-time job "for therapeutical reasons" (that is, the men's argumentation goes that it is good for the wife to spend a bit of her time outside the house for some variety, such that the wife is happier/less unhappy - ie, his self-interest, not that of his wife). Dwindling birth rates bear no relation to some obscure collective psyche of Europeans to have a desire to all die out as Spengler claims (The peacekeepers of Penzance, Aug 22). In fact, "dying out" will happen sooner rather than later if the birth rate increases dramatically in Europe, in no small part due to the ecological and socially unsustainable living conditions at present. In the 20th century, European countries gradually moved to democratic systems where all adult citizens are finally considered to be humans too and have a right to choose and vote, regardless one's gender, religion, color and so forth. Like men, women are boss of their own body and increasingly have the right to choose what they want with their life. As it looks like, the choices women make do not turn out to be the same as the "wish" by some middle-aged white men who want to have their pension payments guaranteed. And why should they be the same? Regardless [of whether] the twenty- and thirtysomethings start breeding and raising their offspring, they will not see much of any pension scheme anyway (at least partially due to those baby-boomers in power who do not dare change the current unsustainable pension system). In the individualist society, it is a safer bet to keep working and maybe save some money for the old age than going into the risky business of starting a family. After all, who says your children will take care of you when you're old? In addition, starting a family costs a lot of money, and requires stability and continuity. But with the neo-liberal wave of "job flexibility" and lower wages, the ability to create a nest has become more like a luxury. Then there is of course the realization that the current resource usage of people in the West is not sustainable on the world scale. There are a lot of people in Europe, and it is only the illusion of capitalism that requires growth of everything in order to sustain it. Population growth is undesirable from any other perspective than that of the capitalist one. Some would add another reason for population growth, which is the militaristic perspective: breed your own army! This fascist notion is repulsive. A sane person would want children who will live, and not to put offspring on Earth in order to fill the army ranks and then die. Such a fascist idea degrades and dehumanizes women to mere breeding machines for some so-called "greater good" of "creative destruction". Democracy and fascism don't go well together; maybe Europeans prefer a peaceful democracy, not fascism. World War II was a hard lesson, and with some 50 million people who died because of it, it most certainly has not been forgotten. Messy as Europe is with its grand social experiment that is called the European Union, there is no intention to go forth and breed an army to conquer the world. Putting women back on a leash and imprisoning them to get them to breed under conditions set by some men and meet some statistical average is not a realistic option because it would have to be imposed by severe physical, psychological, and institutional violence. If you think women voluntarily will buy into this, you are mistaken.
    Marijke
    Italy (Aug 23, '06)


    There should be no doubt that Chan Akya is a shameless Indian writer. His knowledge of India can be reflected by the article Indian reform: All bark and no bite [Aug 16]. And he does not have a clue about China's history and culture (The wages of corruption [Aug 19]). Everybody in China understands that China's corruption is a result of [a lack] of free media supervisions. [From] the 1950s through the 1970s, China was a corruption-free society. So are the Chinese societies of Hong Kong and Singapore today. In the last 5,000 years, there were many hundreds of years [during which] China was corruption-free. Today, China is transforming from a single-party-supervised society to a democratic, free society. However, during this transformation, the old single-party supervision system diminished a lot faster than media supervision [was established]. Without the supervisions of the free media, [what is] called democracy is nothing but a corrupted hell. The only difference between these three countries is that China is changing every day. All Chinese know that China is a backward Third World country [that] needs first economical and then political reforms. Indians are just boasting their pitiful realities as the world's largest democracy. If so, why do Indians want to change?
    Frank of Seattle
    Washington, USA (Aug 23, '06)


    By failing to answer my previous question [letter, Aug 22] on whether Chan [Akya] is one person or two, you may have turned the innocent question into an intense debate of self-introspection. Or not. Here is another theory - if Chan is one person as you suggest, does he work for a government like Singapore's? Is that why you have kept his ID secret?
    Salt of Earth (Aug 23, '06)

    Various writers (Chan Akya is not the only pseudonymous writer at Asia Times Online) conceal their identities for various reasons. Those reasons, like the identities themselves, are obviously not for public consumption. By the way, we're curious about your own name, "Salt of the Earth" - is that Irish? - ATol


    In light of the recent media reports on Gwadar Port, including your article published on August 9 [Pakistan's port in troubled waters], we would like to clarify our position: Hutchison Port Holdings is not in the running to bid for the Gwadar Port concession and has never submitted any proposals to the government. We would appreciate it if you could reflect our comments in your future stories.
    Anthony Tam
    Group Corporate Affairs Manager
    Hutchison Port Holdings
    Hong Kong (Aug 23, '06)


    I read with great interest the article by Henry C K Liu about urbanization through Chinese history [Development financing and urbanization, Jul 22]. You announce the part to come, [on] land reform in the People's Republic, but I can't find it anywhere. Will it be published soon? Thanks and congratulations for your website.
    Ruben Dao (Aug 23, '06)

    These articles are part of an ongoing series by Henry C K Liu titled The Wages of Neo-Liberalism. Liu also has another series on the go, China and the US (see Part 3: Dynamics of the Korea crisis, Aug 17), and he has advised us that the next installments of both series will be filed soon. - ATol


    Verghese Mathews in Calling on Cambodia's Sihanouk (Aug 22) ponders the question of why the remaining former Khmer Rouge leadership are allowed to die in their beds. I wonder why [US president] Lyndon Baines Johnson was allowed to die in his bed. So will Henry A Kissinger, who, while part of the [Richard] Nixon government, advised the carpet-bombing of Cambodia. Then there [are] General William Westmoreland, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara and General Earl Wheeler, who have never been brought to trial for war crimes in Southeast Asia. I don't know how many died during Khmer Rouge rule but all new nations are born through turmoil. It is not a question of morality but of historical circumstances. The American Civil War from 1861-65, which brought about the birth of that nation, saw 970,000 die - 3% of the population. Why do countries who freed themselves from colonialism and imperialism have to explain and apologize for their actions to their former colonial masters? I suppose it is easier to comment on an injured nation like Cambodia than to ask the US and Western European nations how many tens of millions they have killed in the last 150 years. The former king Sihanouk of Cambodia, in his silence about the Khmer Rouge period, must be aware of the Western blame game in which they cover up their own crimes.
    Wilson John Haire
    London, England (Aug 22, '06)

    The Khmer Rouge is believed to have been directly responsible for the deaths of 750,000 of its own citizens, or about 10.5% of the population at the time. Including indirect deaths due to the regime's failed policies, mainly through starvation and displacement, the estimated toll is conservatively put at 1.7 million. Though hardly a "new nation" - advanced civilizations have existed in what is now Cambodia for two millennia - it gained independence from France in 1953. After spillover, including the US bombings you mention, from the Vietnam War destabilized the resultant constitutional monarchy, the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh in 1975. - ATol


    Re Calling on Cambodia's Sihanouk [Aug 22]: [Former] ambassador Verghese Mathews has a point. Father [King] Norodom Sihanouk's testimony at the Khmer Rouge war-crimes trial would add color and drama to a tale of genocide of the Cambodian people committed by the Angkar, which seized power on April 17, 1975, and lasted until Vietnamese troops toppled it in December 1979. Jean Lacouture, a French journalist, once called Norodom Sihanouk a "demigod". Father Sihanouk still has in his ninth decade of life charisma, and although in retirement from public life and in declining health, he exercises it indirectly along with leadership and authority. It is these very sterling characteristics that Mathews, it seems to me, is seeing in the father of modern Cambodia's independence, should he so testify before an international tribunal. As Mr Mathews guardedly suggests, Father Sihanouk has along with his fellow countrymen and women suffered personally at the hands of Pol Pot and company's hands, losing children and grandchildren. He, too, shared his countrymen's and women's martyrdom during the dark years of the Angkar rule. Above all, as prince and then king, Norodom Sihanouk put his country ahead of his own personal interests. A free and independent Cambodia remained forever in his vision, from his appearance at the Bandung Conference in 1956 until the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese, and his opposition to Vietnamese rule until Hanoi was forced to withdraw in 1989. For love of his people and his country, for his independent and non-aligned spirit, Father Norodom has earned the eternal enmity of the United States, and has not fared well at the hands of Western scholars who tend to denigrate his motives and his love of his people and land. Yet had Mathews read Norodom Sihanouk's latest words, he might be disappointed. The [onetime] "demigod" is calling for the cremation of the bones on display for all to see of the Khmer Rouge's systematic annihilation of their own people, in the pursuit of a Parisian left-bank idea of a heaven on Earth. The father of his country wants a Buddhist burial for the victims whose souls will never rest until the incinerated bones will transmute into other newly born souls. Of course this is Father Sihanouk's [fervent] wish, but the demands of history and outward signs of man's folly dictate that the bones remain on view for the world to see and, it is hoped, not forget Cambodia's Calvary and martyrdom.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 22, '06)

    The word Angkar ("the Organization") was used by the Khmer Rouge to refer to its own leadership. The group was officially known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea; the term "Khmer Rouge", French for "Red Khmer" (referring to the predominant ethnic group of Cambodia), was coined by Sihanouk. As for the display of human skulls at the "Killing Fields" memorial at Cheung Ek, Sihanouk is not the only one to wonder whether this rather bizarre combination of ghoulishness and reverence is appropriate. See 'Atrocity tourism' overkill? Oct 10, '02. - ATol


    Spengler gets it backwards [The peacekeepers of Penzance, Aug 22]. He means to say, "Who can tell if Washington's execution is as potent as the threats?" He overlooks the fiasco in Iraq and the sponsored failure in Lebanon. As to demographics, Spengler overlooks Israel's bleak future, considering that its neighbors are outbreeding Israelis. What's worse for Spengler is that American demographics are hardly going Israel's way. American blacks, Hispanics and Asians lack the zeal to help Israel that their white compatriots have. Even the whites, as taxpayers, are starting to see that the outright grants and the unending series of continually forgiven loans that Congress keeps authorizing for Israel are going to a doubtful cause.
    Harald Hardrada
    Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Aug 22, '06)


    Spengler is constantly harping about the coming extinctions of various populations in the Middle East and in Europe, both of which are rooted in fact [The peacekeepers of Penzance, Aug 22]. However, he always talks as if none of this will affect the United States. It will affect the US, although in a different way. The US population is expanding, but not in the way that he wants us to think. This expansion is not due to the jingoistic Anglo-Saxon population. It is being done by immigrants with a different outlook on life other than [to] conquer, subdue and exploit. These immigrants have had it done to them in recent memory, so they will think hard before following that path. White American populations will subside as surely as European populations. As a man who knows religion, as he claims to, surely he is aware that "the meek shall inherit the Earth".
    Edward
    USA (Aug 22, '06)


    Why isn't David Pan in jail [see Damn lies and Chinese statistics, Aug 19, and the letter from Jakob Cambria of Aug 21]? I think the ATol editor and Mr Pan owe your American readers an explanation. American readers normally regard China as a backward country. However, they do not understand why a backward Third World country cannot be judged the same way as the world superpower USA. Most Americans only appreciate immediate returns. They cannot understand why China could not finish America's 200-year-long journey of democracy in 200 days. If they could take a look at India's poor in the slums, they would understand why China cannot become another USA overnight. However, Americans are not interested in other peoples, especially if they are irrelevant losers.
    Frank of Seattle
    Washington, USA (Aug 22, '06)


    In response to my letter [of Aug 17], Henry C K Liu (Dynamics of the Korea crisis, Aug 17) claims that US actions [in the Korean War] lacked "legality and legitimacy" because we acted without the Soviet Union present in the UN Security Council. I guess I am to assume any action that displeased the murderous [Josef] Stalin was both illegal and immoral. To read Mr Liu's articles one is struck with his love and reverence of communist [totalitarians]. He seems to deeply regret the fact the the United States stopped Kim Il-sung from conquering South Korea. Now I wish Mr Liu would explain how the world and the Korean people would be better off if the communists had won.
    Dennis O'Connell
    USA (Aug 22, '06)

    We believe Henry C K Liu's point about the Soviet Union in his letter of August 21 was that while the Western-led war against the North Koreans was termed by the US administration as a "police action" under the aegis of the United Nations, it was not approved by the USSR, which was then a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto powers that it did not get the opportunity to wield in this case. - ATol


    After reading a few posts by Chan Akya, whose ID you have kept secret, I feel that he is not one person but at least two people. Am I right?
    Salt of Earth (Aug 22, '06)

    Is any of us truly only one person in his or her heart and soul? - ATol


    What could come out of the Iraq tragedy is very well forecast by Sami Moubayed in his 'Misunderestimating' Bush's Iraq [Aug 19]. Dare we now admit that Saddam Hussein was correct in his secular handling of the Iraqi masses? After the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s Iraq emerged as a powerful military nation in the Middle East and therefore had to be destroyed by the British/US axis. They succeeded; Iraq - once a truly developing country through its Arab socialism - has had its representative government removed to prison and the entire infrastructure of the nation destroyed. Now the powers that colluded in Iraq's destruction throw their hands up in mock anguish at the sectarian nature of the violence. An unrepresentative, ineffective puppet government reigns in Baghdad. Saddam fought to keep the genie of destruction in the bottle. Now it is out. The US with its British and other collaborators make good fire-raisers but very poor firemen. They may not be able to even put the fires out in their own countries should they continue to attack their own Muslim populations who dare to be critical of their foreign policy. How stupid can you get?
    Wilson John Haire
    London, England (Aug 21, '06)


    Sami Moubayed rightly points out in his article 'Misunderestimating' Bush's Iraq (Aug 19) that Iraq stands in grave danger of becoming a battleground for the entire Persian and Arab neighborhood, with the United States precariously trapped in the middle. But there is much more to the story than President [George W] Bush simply "misunderestimating" the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite before the invasion. The CIA [US Central Intelligence Agency] coup that orchestrated the secular Ba'ath Party's coming to power in 1961 is what initiated a long, complex and at times paradoxical association between Washington and Baghdad, culminating in Donald Rumsfeld negotiating with Saddam Hussein back in 1979-80 for Iraq to attack Iran as a Cold War proxy for the US. The Iranian revolution and the American hostage crisis had provided the Soviet Union with the perfect inroad to side with America's bold new enemy, and Saddam was equally up to the challenge to act as a counterweight. The US went on to provide Iraq with military assistance by directly attacking Iranian ships and oil platforms; it arranged massive loans to Iraq from US client states such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; it supported Iraq's chemical attacks on Iranians and Kurds by providing "crop spraying" helicopters and blocking condemnation of those attacks in the UN Security Council; and it provided satellite data and information about Iranian military units together with detailed battle planning for Iraqi military forces. But following Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, coupled with a dramatic easing in Cold War tensions, the Iraqi government suddenly found itself in the crosshairs of becoming America's No 1 target for regime change. The problem in Iraq now is that the Sunni-Shi'ite divide that largely defined the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War has come back to haunt the US with a bloody vengeance, leaving the US stripped of practically all credibility - especially among the former Sunni-dominated Ba'athists. This all leaves the US trapped in the middle of a growing sectarian conflict that it had once so cruelly and naively exploited for its own political ends. And the only way the US can ever hope to work its way out of such a quagmire is to directly act as a mediator for the sake of bringing peace - and yes, democracy - to the entire Middle East region.
    Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
    Canberra, Australia (Aug 21, '06)


    Re 'Misunderestimating' Bush's Iraq [Aug 19]: There is one thing definitively common between Iraq's al-Qaeda Islamist-led Sunni insurgency, Hezbollah and Iran, and that's that they all do not want [the United States of] America to succeed in Iraq. Building on this common objective, if they can manage to work out how they propose to proceed to achieve that common goal in a more practical and coherent way, then the plight of Iraq and Iraqis can be lessened at an [early date]. Muqtada [al-Sadr] would most probably be part of such a solution, but it also depends whether he can manage to redirect the reinless factions of the Mehdi Army and provide some surety of security and an acceptable stake to [Abd al-Aziz al-]Hakim of SCIRI [the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq].
    Rashid Hassan (Aug 21, '06)


    Re Sami Moubayed's 'Misunderestimating' Bush's Iraq [Aug 19]: Some years back an American television network regularly aired a comedian whose one-liner "what you see is what you get" became somewhat of a standard. Mr Moubayed's take on whether [US President George W] Bush knew the existence of Sunnis and Shi'ites as separate Muslim beliefs exemplifies what the comedian's one-liner suggests. Mr Bush "saw" a vision partially envisaged by [Israel's first prime minister] David Ben-Gurion in the late 1940s of his place in history along the same lines that GWB is [envisaging]. According to excerpts, Mr Ben-Gurion stated, "We should prepare to go on the offensive to accomplish our aim of 'smashing' first Lebanon, then Jordan and finally Syria. Our aim in Lebanon is to create a Christian [democratic?] state. After demolishing the Arab Legion [Jordan's military] Syria will fall into our lap." Mr Ben-Gurion's fantasies included the "smashing" of the cities of Port Said and Alexandria. Mr Bush, an admitted believer in the eventual occurrence of the Rapture (several of his advisers and admirers hold to the expressed belief that Charles Darwin is to blame for [Adolf] Hitler coming to power), one would think could not give a tinker's damn to distinctions of Sunnis from Shi'ites (before the war of Operation Iraqi Freedom). Iraq had oil and the American fundamentalists and their neo-con friends were all for bringing "a new vision of democracy and alliances" that will guarantee Israeli and American interests. Sunnis versus Shi'ites and the prospect of a full-blown civil war in Iraq [are] indicative of the eventuality of the much-anticipated Rapture and [provide] for the continued control of Iraq. Who is to know for certain that the anticipated civil war in Iraq is not one where the US and Saudi Arabia are on one side and the Iranians and their friends are ... on the other side? So it's fair to ask Mr Moubayed, are we "getting what we are seeing"?
    Armand DeLaurell (Aug 21, '06)


    Re Damn lies and Chinese statistics [Aug 19]: I think [David] Pan should consider another explanation for the gap between the NBS [Chinese National Bureau of Statistics] and the provincial GDP [gross domestic product] figures. And that explanation is that the provincial figures might be more accurate. The fact is the NBS GDP figures have traditionally been lower than the sum of the provincial figures throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Only starting in 1995 did the provincial GDP figures exceed the NBS GDP figures. If we do a [sectoral] breakdown of the gap between the two figures since 1995, we find that the NBS GDP figures [match those] of the provincial figures in the primary and secondary sectors. It was only in the services sector that a large gap existed between the two figures, with the provincial figures 28.3% higher than the NBS value in 2001, for example. But it was the same NBS that in late 2005 recalculated the PRC [People's Republic of China] GDP figures and admitted that it had undercounted the [national] GDP by a significant margin. And [in] which sector was this NBS miscalculation made? Services, of course. The new NBS data produced in late 2005 moved up its calculated GDP figures in the services sector by a significant margin. So if the NBS figures in 1995-2005 was wrong and the provincial figures more accurate, we should consider the fact that any differences between the two figures in the future might imply that the provincial figures are more accurate. Most experts seem to indicate that the current rate of GDP growth in recent years as reported by NBS (910%) undercount the rate of growth. Taking an analysis by expenditure GDP would indicate that the recent GDP growth for the PRC should be in the range of 11-14% over the last few years, which matches that of the provincial GDP growth figures. Of course one could always make the argument that "garbage in, garbage out" implies that the expenditure figures may be inaccurate as well. But we should not jump to conclusions that any differences between the NBS and the provincial data must imply that the NBS is more accurate.
    Wen-Kai Tang
    Brooklyn, New York (Aug 21, '06)


    Readers of ATol owe [David Pan] a round of applause [Damn lies and Chinese statistics, Aug 19]. At a time the Chinese government is cracking down on what it perceives to be the splashing of state secrets in the press, he repeats what everyone knows: Chinese bureaucrats fudge statistics, in order to make a roaring engine of spectacular economic growth look brighter ... Whistleblowers inside and out of power hit a raw nerve, and so Beijing's reflex is to take the velvet glove off the iron fist and come back with a powerful wallop. So we find journalists are accused of bruiting state secrets; lawyers thrown in jail without trial; civil servants and dissidents forcefully committed to "mental institutions" with questionable practices. Additionally, in a world of globalization, the infusion of billions of dollars or euros in foreign investment and private banking [houses] looking to snap up control of what [are] really government companies, Beijing is striking back by tightening laws which would have allow litigation of a kind that would tie these very banks in long, draw-out court cases. Let us hope that Mr Pan is not himself the object of Beijing's oversensitive antennae.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 21, '06)


    I am curious, why is the identity of Chan Akya [The wages of corruption, Aug 19] being kept secret?
    Nadine Goldberg (Aug 21, '06)

    If we answered that, it wouldn't be a secret. - ATol


    Like many citizens of the United States of Amnesia (Gore Vidal), Richard Bennett (Missiles and madness, Aug 18) can't seem to retrieve from his memory hole one most relevant fact that explains why North Korea is armed to its teeth. It was threatened [with] the thinly veiled "regime change" by the lone superpower, the United States, the country that actually used nuclear bombs (against Japan) and weapons of mass destruction (against defenseless countries like Vietnam and more recently Iraq). If North Korea's massive missile arsenal, a considerable and successful nuclear-weapons program, and one of the largest armed forces in the world are not to both suppress its own civilian population and to protect against a US-South Korean invasion, but are for offensive purposes, then the US, with the most powerful military might history has ever known, no need for an apparatus for internal suppression and no serious external challenge, is a grave threat to world peace, according to Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela and much of the world outside the US. If the US could be worried about the prospect of the Sandinistas marching to Texas in a day, then why shouldn't North Korea be worried about US troops marching to Pyongyang in half a day? Israel's failure to defeat Hezbollah in a month and a hugely costly occupation of Iraq increase the attractiveness of the other, cost-effective military option for the warmongers: nuclear war. This time around, we may not be as lucky as we were in the Cuba missile crisis. We were literally one word away from a nuclear disaster.
    Paul Law
    Berlin, Germany (Aug 21, '06)


    Ruth Rosen: In your article Great movie, pity about the Big Lie [Aug 18], you wrote the following: "That evening, I wrote the words that should have appeared in the postscript: 'Government officials later confirmed that the organization that plotted the destruction of the World Trade Center was al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian. Nineteen men executed the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Fifteen of them came from Saudi Arabia; the remaining four from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon.'" Those are the words of the same government officials who falsely tie Iraq and Saddam [Hussein] to [the attacks of September 11, 2001]. Could it be the truth lies elsewhere - an elsewhere no one truly wants to explore?
    Cyclone Jim
    USA (Aug 21, '06)


    A reader (Dennis O'Connell, letter, Aug 17) characterized my article Dynamics of the Korea crisis (Aug 17) as "riddled with many misleading facts and conclusions" and demanded an explanation on the phrase "apart from the controversial legality and legitimacy of the US role in the Korean War". Such explanation can be found in my 10-part series US-China: The Quest for Peace. In Part 3 of the series (Korea: Wrong war, wrong place, wrong enemy, Jan 8, '04), I recounted US secretary of state Dean Acheson's recollection ... The most glaring aspect of the UN/Korea legitimacy controversy centers on the way the US rammed through the UN Security Council a resolution on the "Police Action" by taking advantage of a procedural technicality presented by the absence of the USSR from the Security Council, as the USSR otherwise would have surely vetoed the resolution. As for the discrepancies of US casualties in the Korean War raised by the reader, there are different estimates from different sources but they are not of an order of magnitude to alter my conclusion on the casualty disparity between the warring parties. The reader accused me of being "extremely anti-American and anti-capitalist". Such accusations echo charges on anti-Semitism whenever anyone presents an objective analysis on Israeli policy in the Middle East. To point out the inconsistency of US policy with professed US national values is not anti-American; it is rather to save the US from itself. To focus on the inherent link between capitalism and imperialism is merely to state the obvious. There is nothing "odd" about recognizing such an obvious fact while "working as a capitalist in [the United States of] America". Capitalism is currently in its pervasive phase in all corners of the modern world so that the location through which one participates in the global economic system is irrelevant to one's perspective. Everyone on Earth unavoidably participates in capitalism at this time in history. Many have astutely observed that there are in fact large numbers of socialists, both witting and unwitting, working on Wall Street. It is a real-life example of Hegelian dialectics. As for whether Harry Truman won by a landslide over Thomas Dewey in 1948, Truman won 303 electoral votes against Republican Dewey's 189 even when southern Democrat Strom Thurman took 39 electoral votes in opposition to Truman's civil-rights platform. A look at the 1948 electoral-vote map certainly appears to be a landslide. Still, the characterization "landslide" is not germane to my conclusions. Finally the reader did score a point that the Taliban are Sunnis, not Shi'ites. It was a late-night error on my part. For the past several years in many articles in ATol, I have correctly referred to the Taliban as Sunnis. Still, the error did not affect the argument presented in my article that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's Iraq are ideologically not identical.
    Henry C K Liu (Aug 21, '06)

    The Sunni-Shi'ite error in the article has been corrected and the word "landslide" removed from the reference to the 1948 US presidential election. - ATol


    Instead of answering the questions raised in my letter [Aug 17] regarding his blunt suggestion that the Chinese and the North Koreans should subscribe to [Mahatma] Gandhi's teachings and launching a clear rebuttal, M Murata [Aug 18] asked two "basic questions" in his alleged effort to clarify his intention: "Which Asian country is trying to develop its nuclear capability, and launched some missiles recently? Worse, which [Asian] country has already got many nuclear weapons and increases year by year its military expenses?" The answer to the first question is crystal-clear: North Korea. For the second question, the answer could be anybody: The PRC [People's Republic of China], India or Pakistan. What is M Murata trying to say? That Japan, being the benevolent and pacifist country that Murata alleged it is, refuses to go nuclear amid threats from the PRC and North Korea, because Japan embraces the essence of Gandhi's teachings? I don't know about North Korea's stance on the use of its nuclear weapons, but the PRC has long pledged that it would never use nuclear weapons first (before it is attacked by nuclear weapons) and it would never attack a non-nuclear country with its nukes. Also, given Japan's terrible track record of invading China and Korea in the past 500 years, it is not a bad idea for the Chinese and the Koreans to develop some sort of deterrence against it. So I really don't see what the fuss is about. Again, it is not that Japan does not want to go nuclear because of its alleged pacifist nature (many Japanese politicians have pondered the idea over the years), it is because the US has not given the green light yet. Once again, I would like to have M Murata identify the specific chapter in Sun Tzu's Art of War that teaches the importance of "tit for tat", and the reason why he considers this book nonsense. In an effort to avoid taking up the precious space here in the Letters section, I have started a thread on The Edge forum - please direct all your future comments to that thread.
    Juchechosunmanse
    Beijing, China (Aug 21, '06)


    The US State Department is scrambling to put together a plan to help rebuild southern Lebanon. According to the Los Angeles Times, the reasoning is that if Hezbollah beats the US to aiding the Lebanese, the US will lose "brownie points" (goodwill of the Lebanese). After you have destroyed my life and killed my brother, do you think that I will forgive you if you offer me money? What kind of imbeciles are running the US Department of State? They need to find some diplomat who has been bombed, wounded, displaced, and gone hungry and dirty for days with crying women and sick children, and put him in charge of that group of crazies.
    Ken Moreau
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 21, '06)


    It is dispiriting in the extreme to hear George Bush, the blustering cowboy in the White House, utter his singularly deceitful and bankrupt refrains on the Middle East ad nauseam. His August 13 press conference at the State Department once again showed that this most inept president in US history has not learned a single piece of wisdom from his delusional foreign policy since [September 11, 2001]. He condemned Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Iran, the insurgents in Iraq, and al-Qaeda as all being parts of a single, Hydra-headed monster called "terror", and went on to give a by now sickeningly familiar defense of his own policies of war, slaughter and destruction as a noble fight for "liberty", "freedom" and "democracy". His unalloyed partisanship of Israel's misguided government showed Bush as additionally clueless about how to approach the discrete grievances and needs of the various forces trapped in the region's never-ending tragedy. It is now time for all eminent voices for justice and peace in the Middle East to come together and demand a stop to the inflammatory name-calling that George Bush keeps hurling at his opponents in the area. These voices should call for the organization of a Geneva-type conference, where all parties to the many different but interlinked conflicts, except the patently murderous al-Qaeda, can sit together without any preconditions and work toward a comprehensive settlement. Such parleys should be held for as long as necessary - years, if need be - in order to reach a final agreement incorporating the legitimate needs of the Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, and Iranians. I see no peace in the Middle East ever until we arrive at that destination.
    Vipan Chandra
    Professor of History, Wheaton College
    Norton, Massachusetts (Aug 21, '06)


    Your story Be skeptical ... be very skeptical [Aug 18] got me to thinking (again) that the disarray and political mess in Iraq [are] the real goal of the US, UK and Israel in this so-called "war". Israel felt threatened by Saddam [Hussein] and pushed the US and UK to take him out, but there never was any interest or serious planning as to what to do with Iraq after the military conquest. Iraq without a strong leader is not a coherent threat to anyone except itself. The US gets another war to train its troops and to consume millions of tons of military paraphernalia, thereby keeping the munitions industries happy; it also gets to fund the so-called intelligence community with big budgets. So everyone is a winner except for the Iraqis. The big three [are] hoping to do the same to Lebanon, Syria and Iran, thereby freeing up Israel from ever having to settle equitably with the Palestinians.
    John Sanguinetti
    California, USA (Aug 18, '06)


    Contrary to Ruth Rosen's analysis (Great movie, pity about the Big Lie, Aug 18), I found World Trade Center to be carefully and respectfully detached from politics. While misperceptions about the war on terror are important to address in public debate, I don't see why it should be Oliver Stone's job to tell America how related or unrelated Iraq is to September 11 [2001]. The movie is not a documentary on global politics. It consciously stays above the fray of war spin from Republicans and Democrats. The movie's short portrayals of [US President George W] Bush and [former New York mayor Rudolph] Giuliani could have glorified them or criticized them, but does neither. This movie is politically neutral. While keeping more or less true to the facts of that horrible day, it focuses on terribly trying personal experiences, purposely steering clear of controversial historical and political context. Why? Because the film aims to capture the events of just one single day, a day that will remain seared into the psyche of Americans for a long long time. The message of the movie is not a political one but a human one: people are capable of horrible things, but they are also capable of compassion, sacrifice and unity of purpose. On September 11, that compassion, sacrifice and unity [were] not for any political end but for the sake of what is right, and ultimately, what's worth living for: the good of humanity.
    Leif-Eric Easley
    USA (Aug 18, '06)


    [Re Sons and heirs, Aug 18] It is always interesting to read Bertil Lintner on ATol. He does his homework well. His brief account of Kim Jong-il's progeny, however, has a tabloid air to it. Take for example the fact that Kim Jong-chul, the heir presumptive according to Mr Lintner, is a fan of Eric Clapton, and what is more, he studied at a private boarding school in Switzerland ... This observation clouds ordinary judgment of [how] North Korea is perceived from afar, as Mr Lintner plumbs the minor details of the Kim family. Kim Jong-chul is being groomed for leadership. It stands to reason that as the future leader of North Korea, it is in his and his country's best interests to know other languages, as well as the ways [sic] and wherefores of other peoples and countries. To suggest that although he is to the purple born, once he has tasted bourgeois luxury he is on the slippery path to revisionism, is misleading. Lest Mr Lintner forget, Karl Marx had a deep love for literature, poetry, and music, but that in no way stayed his hand from revolutionary action nor elaborating revolutionary theory. And the same could be said of Vladimir Lenin, but his deep appreciation, say, of [Leo] Tolstoy did not deter him from his goal of pursuing the undermining and overthrow of the bourgeois world order of his time, and to the extent that he could. Kim Jong-nam's listening to the twang of Eric Clapton in no way means that he is and will in the future stray from the path of juche that his grandfather and father have traced.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 18, '06)


    [Missiles and madness, Aug 18] is an excellent review of [North Korea's] military capability, and it is unusually comprehensive. However, I have never seen any factual agreement on the number of nuclear warheads that North Korea may possess. [Richard M] Bennett's statement about Pyongyang having 120 warheads seems very high. It would be helpful if we could find out where this number came from.
    Dr Thomas Snitch
    Bethesda, Maryland (Aug 18, '06)


    I would suggest to Ian Williams, in his Exploding the 'terrorist' neuron bomb (Aug 17), that a definition of terrorism is really very simple: terrorism is war, and war is terrorism by another name. This is borne out by the definition quoted by Williams that was formulated last year at the UN. It states that an act is terrorism "if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act". In the lead-up to Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential election, one of the central tenets of his campaign was a first-strike nuclear policy against the Soviet Union. The policy had an in-built calculation that allowed for a civilian death toll of 80 million American people, and its chief architects were none other than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Almost 20 years later, these same protagonists were responsible for delivering the much-lauded "shock and awe" campaign that would literally turn Iraq overnight into a massive graveyard of human remains - all in the politically correct name of "regime change". Not to be outdone, the Israeli military's recent launching of its own shock-and-awe campaign in Lebanon was similarly directed against the civilian population. Israeli warplanes initially fired surprise rocket attacks on roads, airports and power supplies, which all had absolutely nothing to do with crushing Hezbollah. So who are the terrorists? And who are the ones that intentionally set out to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians for the sole purpose of intimidation? We should all get this one thing clear: the "war on terror" is a war where terror is itself being used as the main instrument in the fight against terror. By definition, it cannot be any other way. And the sooner both sides stop using the lives of innocent civilians as pawns in their game of religious roulette, then the sooner will our civilized world be free of such horror and bloodshed.
    Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
    Canberra, Australia (Aug 18, '06)


    I wish to comment on the article Exploding the 'terrorist' neuron bomb [Aug 17] by Ian Williams. What is happening in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon points to the US politics of double standards, triumph of the devil and arrogance of blatant injustice expressed in favor of Israel, which is the root cause of all evils breeding rage of resentful groups, or call them by any name that suits your vocabulary, like al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah. [With] the violence in the Middle East and, in particular, the recent death and destruction caused mostly by the brutal aerial bombardment for 35 days on the civilians in Lebanon, Israel has violated many international laws, UN resolutions and treaties. Israel is violating every day the [US] Arms Export Control Act (Public Law 90-829) which limits the use of US weapons given or sold to a foreign country for "internal security" and "legitimate self-defense", and further, US weapons may not be used against civilians. The indiscriminate, barbaric and random bombing of Beirut and other Lebanese towns [and] villages and the killing of civilians were not legitimate acts of self-defense. This conflict began with the capture of two Israeli soldiers in an effort by Hezbollah to negotiate the release of Lebanese civilians seized on Lebanese soil and held by Israel as bargaining chips for several years. [Second], Israel has violated international law by its collective punishment of civilians in Lebanon and Gaza. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states, "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism and pillage are prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited." Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime, but Israel is committing war crimes with weapons provided the US, making it an accomplice in crime ... The south of Lebanon is an Israel- and USA-made wasteland, and if any anyone should ask me, I would say it was the ugliest form of state terrorism committed by two rogue states.
    Saqib Khan
    UK (Aug 18, '06)


    [This] is in response to India running out of patience and the letter by Mirza Ali [both Aug 17]. I am totally influenced by RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] philosophy and have no problem with Muslims in India. The so-called communal organizations (RSS and VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad]; the letter writer easily forgets SIMI [Students Islamic Movement in India], Muslim League and many other anti-national terrorist Muslim organizations) get huge support from the population when there is a terrorist attack by Islamic terrorists. Continuous ethnic cleansing by Islamic terrorists in Kashmir [over] 20 years is adding anger to the Hindu community. (Not sure why so-called Muslim victims like Mirza Ali and Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal of terrorist nest JNU [Jawaharlal Nehru University] forget to mention this.) Add to this the fact that the current [Indian] government, which is run by an honest, weak, helpless prime minister and remote-controlled by an imported foreign lady (how can we expect such an imported lady to understand the problems the community which makes [up] 85% of India population when she herself took Indian citizenship reluctantly?), is appeasing Muslims by going to extreme [extents]. Currently [it] is busy planning for donation of funds for madrassas in India. Such inaction by the government and cruelties by Islamic terrorists make people feel highly insecure and force them to look elsewhere like to RSS and VHP, which by the way have the interests of India at their hearts. When people like Mirza Ali and Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal start criticizing terrorism openly instead of pretending to be victims, RSS and VHP will start losing strength.
    Sandeep Khurana
    Stuttgart, Germany (Aug 18, '06)


    Why Japan will never go nuclear by Todd Crowell (Aug 16) points out Japan's vulnerability … due to its small size in comparison to that of China. I would like to point out that, in addition, as North Korea's missile testing stirred up a diplomatic storm mostly because the missiles were not safely confined within North Korea's national boundary, Japan's small size will analogously make its testing of long-range missiles diplomatically difficult ... beyond its national boundary after identical accusations upon North Korea. In the development of long-range missiles, physically large countries such as the USA, China, and Russia have the distinct diplomatic advantage. Moreover, I think that the USA is not so naive as to abet Japan to become a nuclear power or even to play the military role of a policeman in East Asia. Japan simply has too much historical baggage, which the other major East Asian American ally, South Korea, has amply advertised to the world. South Korea's allusion, last month during North Korean missile crisis, to Japan's propensity to invade other countries, and accusation of Japan's lack of remorse for war crimes, more recently as a result of the Yusukuni Shrine visit by [Prime Minister Junichiro] Koizumi, are quite indicative of Japanese baggage. As an American ally, South Korea is in a credible role in ably advertising Japan's historical baggage.
    Jeff Church
    USA (Aug 18, '06)


    It seems that Juchechosunmanse (letter, Aug 17) did not understand the idea of "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless." So let's clarify it with some basic questions: Which Asian country is trying to develop its nuclear capability, and launched some missiles recently? Worse, which country has already got many nuclear weapons and increases year by year its military expenses? Easy questions, aren't they? Definitely, it's not Japan that threats the world peace.
    M Murata (Aug 18, '06)


    Instead of defining who are the terrorists, it would be more fruitful to define terrorism, as Ian Williams has done in his article [Exploding the 'terrorist' neuron bomb, Aug 17]. A terrorist is someone or an organization who commits terrorism. Is a person exempted from being considered a terrorist simply because he is an elected representative of the people? The view on Hezbollah seems to confirm the negative. If a committee elected by one-quarter of the population authorized the bombing of another country, consequently killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians who had nothing to do with their leader's action, what are we to make of it? If the Iraqi people who did not elect Saddam Hussein (not withstanding the sham election) can be punished for his misdeeds, then any US, UK and Israeli citizens are fair game; after all, they elected their own respective governments. Anyone who did not vote for the present governments are just unfortunate "collateral damage". What goes around comes around. Both sides think they can achieve their objectives by killing, maiming and bombing. The only difference is, one has a better spin doctor and bigger bullhorn.
    S K Wong
    Singapore (Aug 17, '06)


    Sami Moubayed's Hezbollah's arms still a reason to fight (Aug 17) is indeed informative analysis but problematic in some parts. It is my understanding that the Lebanese people have not demanded that Hezbollah disarm, and the United Nations is not responsible for the disarming process either. If the UN could do it in Lebanon, then it must disarm the Arab and Kurdish militias (peshmerga) in Iraq. Israel and the US have fundamental interests in disarming the Party of God for economic and political reasons manifested in hegemony, control of oil, and security of Israel. Both had the opportunity to achieve that goal but failed. If the two powerful houses in the world were not able to disarm Hezbollah, it is ridiculous to ask the Lebanese government to accomplish that task. This is in deed lousy outsourcing. Most important, the article made a bad comparison between [Gamal] Abdul Nasser's and [Hassan] Nasrallah's speeches. I think the comparison is misleading and outrageous. It is misleading because Abdul Nasser represented a failed government reaction for defending Egypt from Israel, whereas Hezbollah demonstrated popular resistance aiming at defending its country from the same invading nation by employing a group of fighters that has neither air force, sophisticated technology and bombs, nor tanks. These fighters may even receive no salaries. It is outrageous because Hezbollah fighters were waiting to fight the Israeli invading forces, and several American retired generals showed respect and recognized Hezbollah fighters as well-trained and resilient fighters, whereas Abdul Nasser's pilots and top military generals were having a wild party of drink and dance, showing no sign for fighting invaders. And when these paid pilots woke up, they could not find their airplanes, because the Israeli air force destroyed them. That was really embarrassment not to Abdul Nasser (who had died later on because of the humiliation) only but to all Arabs, dead and alive. In fact, it was a calamity and a breakdown point for all Arabs at that time. Mr Moubayed has to leave that war behind him and move on for better future.
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 17, '06)


    Thalif Deen is right [Frantic search for peacekeepers, Aug 17]. It is a thankless exercise being peacekeepers in the proposed cordon sanitaire in southern Lebanon. The scramble is on for United Nations members who are willing to commit troops for that task. Israel, however, has never shied away from attacking the casques bleus [blue helmets] of UNIFIL [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon], which Hezbollah has never [done]. The urgency for peacekeepers has the air of panic to it, in order to meet the shaky terms of Resolution 1711. Ultimately, the United Nations will find the soldiers, and the peace will hold by a thread as long as Hassan Nasrullah and Hezbollah keep a lower profile. And they shall, for the times demand of them a religious duty to reconstruct the lunar landscape which Israeli bombs made of southern Lebanon, as well as bringing aid and succor to the refugees who are returning there, be they Shi'ite or Christian or Sunni. Good works will strengthen Hezbollah's presence and allegiance in all of Lebanon, much to the dismay and silent horror of Israel and the United States. Israel's invasion and indiscriminate destruction of Lebanon [have] caused divisions among its [Israel's] rulers, and so the scandals and the finger-pointing will keep the Israelis at bay [at present]. Israel's jolly little war has shown its Achilles' heel as the strongest army in the region. Although heavily armed, it is a power to be no longer feared as before.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 17, '06)


    Re India: What's your poison? [Aug 17]: The question Sudha Ramachandran should ask and doesn't is: Does this mean the farmers (whose health problems also help them to fall into a debt bind that leads to suicides - a topic covered in many articles by P Sainath of The Hindu - are poisoning themselves from pesticides in their drinking water? Seems very likely, as a major complaint about these bottling plants is that they're also leading to falling water tables in villages. It seems strange to me that this issue is not raised. It should be highlighted. Uh oh, another major example of government negligence leading to citizens' demise!
    May Sage
    USA (Aug 17, '06)


    Re Siddharth Srivastava's India running out of patience [Aug 17]: In my opinion India also has to do more than just asking others to help stop terrorism in India. India has to look at the root cause for the people joining these extremist organizations. The whole episode of [the] Gujarat riots, the way the Gujarat state government [is] still handling the cases of riots and the way Hindu fundamentalist organizations like RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh], BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] and VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad] talk about minorities are really helping extremist groups to get recruits.
    Mirza Ali
    USA (Aug 17, '06)


    The article by Henry C K Liu Dynamics of the Korea crisis [Aug 17] is riddled with many misleading facts and conclusions. He starts his section on the Korean War with "apart from the controversial legality and legitimacy of the US role in the Korean War". But he never explains what he means by this - I would love to hear an explanation. In the discussion of the Korean War nowhere does he mention the United Nations, under whose authority the US and 16 other countries fought against North Korea, China and the Soviet Union. He tries to make the war out to be an American plot to suppress freedom. Considering the murderous nature of the Kim regime, this I believe is a cruel joke except to the millions of dead North Koreans. He cites two sets of figures on American casualties in the Korean War; one adds up to 31,215 and the other figure is 33,651. My sources and sources from the Internet have the US deaths at 54,246. I believe Mr Liu is quoting official Chinese sources, not exactly a fair or accurate source. He also fails to mention that of the 21,000 Chinese POWs [prisoners of war], 14,000 sought asylum in Taiwan rather then return to the paradise of communist China. Also Chinese deaths were 500,000 to 1 million. Mr Liu appears to be extremely anti-American and anti-capitalist, which seems a little odd when he is working as a capitalist in [the United States of] America. Just two more quick corrections: [US president Harry] Truman did not win by a landslide in 1948 but won the election by 24 million to [Thomas] Dewey's 22 million votes. Most will recall the famous photo of Truman holding up a newspaper that says "Dewey wins". Also the Taliban are Sunnis, not Shi'ites.
    Dennis O'Connell
    USA (Aug 17, '06)

    The article has been amended to correct the two inaccuracies you point out at the end of your letter - our thanks. The most famous photo of a premature newspaper article on the 1948 US presidential election is one of the Chicago Tribune, and the headline actually says "Dewey defeats Truman". - ATol


    Todd Crowell (Why Japan will never go nuclear, Aug 16) opined that Japan will never acquire nuclear armaments because to do so makes Japan less safe, and that Japan is much better off continuing to rely on the US and to strengthen its alliance with the US so that it can depend on the United States' nuclear weapons for protection. There are good reasons to believe that the contrary is true. No nuclear power has even been attacked, let alone by nuclear weapons. The only country nuked by a nuclear power was Japan, and it had no nuclear weapons. US president John F Kennedy had to back down during the Cuban missile crisis precisely because of the nuclear warheads stationed there. If five thermonuclear bombs [are] all that is required to spell the end of Japan, then it will definitely get them, as long as it allies itself with the US. There is no reason to believe that Japan is any safer under the US nuclear umbrella. What is the strategic depth that the US provides and Japan simply does not have anyway? The only way out of this apocalyptic scenario is for Japan to work out a framework of peaceful co-existence with its neighbors. [Prime Minister Junichiro] Koizumi came close to a deal with North Korea in 2002, then came the Bush administration. The crisis went from bad to worse.
    V N Giap
    Hanoi, Vietnam (Aug 17, '06)


    Regarding the [article] Koizumi's last defiant gesture (Aug 16), I have a feeling that [Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro] Koizumi shares the lingering frustration and humiliation of his right-wing supporters at Japan's unconditional surrender in World War II. China and Korea, to the remnants of Japanese military imperialists, should be easy prey and should have become part of Greater Japan. Now this "dream" is totally shattered, the right-wing faction decides to draw ever closer to big brother America to counter rising neighbors. What is better to do than to provoke them and thus rally the Japanese populace behind the excuse of defying "external interference"? Of course it would be simple to remove the 14 convicted Class A war criminals from the Yasukuni Shrine, and thus to purify it for Japan and the world. Even more than 30 years ago Japanese Emperor Hirohito already had the wisdom and conscience to end his own visits. The defiant gesture adopted by Koizumi and probably his immediate successor is in fact generating hatred and indignation among neighbors, to the detriment of Japan.
    S P Li (Aug 17, '06)


    [Dr Abdul Ruff] Colochal has a bleeding heart for all enemies of India. In his letter [Aug 16] he pines for the ISI [Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence] agent in Sri Lanka who caused many thousands of deaths through ISI-inspired terrorism inside India. Mr Colochal also suffers from amnesia when it comes to Hindu lives lost due to Islamic terrorism inspired by Pakistan and attacks on Hindu places of worship ranging from the Raghunath Temple in Kashmir to the Aksharadharmam Temple in Gujarat to the Varanasi Temple to the Vaishno Devi Temple, all of them being sacred spots to the Hindu majority in India. The entire world is witnessing Islamic jihadism where no one is spared and many numbers have been killed in Kashmir, India, Russia, Israel, the United States, Spain [and the] UK in the name of Islam and revenge. It is laughable reading Mr Colochal's puerile case of Muslims being victims of violence when he conveniently forgets that they are the perpetrators of it in the name of their religion. Mr Colochal should seriously think of relocating to an Islamic country where he may feel more comfortable with the true believers.
    Dirty Dog
    San Francisco, California (Aug 17, '06)


    Reading M Murata's suggestion that "Chinese and North Korean leaders should read more about Gandhi and Confucius, and less nonsense like Sun Tzu, and his Art of War" [letter, Aug 16], I am wondering if Mr Murata knows of any particular Chinese or North Korean plans to avenge the deaths and destruction suffered at the hands of Imperial Japan before and during World War II. Otherwise, why would he suggest that Chinese and North Korean leaders should subscribe to what [Mahatma] Gandhi taught? And where, where in Sun Tzu's Art of War [does it teach] us the importance of "tit for tat"? Finally, the reason Japan has not gone nuclear so far is not because [it is] the benevolent and pacifist nation that M Murata [alleges], but because Japan's No 1 ally and protector, the United States, has not allowed it to go nuclear, fearing the geopolitical and strategic ramifications that might trigger in the region.
    Juchechosunmanse
    Beijing, China (Aug 17, '06)


    One of the US under secretaries of state has just announced that the US would be willing to help disarm Hezbollah and that the US is committed to ridding the world of groups who operate "outside the rules". That's the most hilarious bunch of nonsense that I've read in some time. After being an active participant in this Israeli/Lebanese conflict, to expect the Hezbollah fighters to acquiesce to disarmament by the greatest "breaker of rules" of all time is as funny as a play. Goes to show how out of touch with reality that they really are.
    Ken Moreau
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 17, '06)


    The near-collapse of democracy in Thailand is likely due more to the failure of institutional integrity than to the morality of individuals. For one thing, the sweeping powers vested in the Prime Minister's Office with little accountability would corrupt any mortal. As an example of sweeping powers, consider the ability of a prime minister, and a caretaker one at that, to micro-manage appointments and promotions within the military and the national police without accountability or oversight. Swapping mortals [who] are given the very same powers in government is unlikely to achieve the desired results. The charge that certain individuals are morally unfit to lead exposes institutional weaknesses. Government institutions should be designed so that even crooks can govern. No human will ever measure up if they [institutions] are designed for angels. There are no angels in politics. Thailand's Thaksinocracy Syndrome is acquired due to systemic weaknesses and not imposed by the alleged moral weakness of an individual.
    Cha-am Jamal
    Thailand (Aug 17, '06)


    With regard to Elizabeth Mills' Pakistan port in troubled waters [Aug 9]. Was this article an attempt to dissuade investors from investing in the deep-sea port in Gwadar? Regardless of the motives of Mills, her article completely lacks the substance with regards to Gwadar and the current situation in the province of Balochistan. I was quite incensed to read such a pack of lies, having come from Pakistan myself and as an active investor in the region I keep a constant eye on the ground situation in Gwadar - for obvious reasons. (I would pull my money out if anything in Mills' article had any weight.) The fact that the world's three biggest port operators are vying for the rights to operate this port is reason enough. Do you think they would risk their investment if what Mills wrote was true?
    Naser Nawaz (Aug 16, '06)


    The terrorist attack on the Pakistan high commissioner in Colombo Tigers turn on Pakistan [Aug 16] once again reveals the real nature of international terrorism targeting Islam and Muslims the world over, making them vulnerable to the crimes perpetuated against them as "suspected terrorists". Now, even the diplomatic missions of Muslim nations are not spared. The global agenda of the West, led by the US, to convert Muslims into terrorists is an established fact with their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon and torturing Muslims everywhere, thereby forcing them to react violently. The US, like many other powers, including India, employs terrorism as an effective domestic as well as foreign policy tool to torture Muslims. India, quick to hold Pakistan responsible for the terrorist crimes indoors, private or state-sponsored (like in Bhakra Nangal), and which targets Muslims for domestic political reasons, should make its position clear about its role or otherwise in the terrorist attack on Pakistan's envoy in Colombo - a country already in turmoil.
    Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
    New Delhi (Aug 16, '06)


    Japan's out-going prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, is a class act. Koizumi's last defiant gesture [Aug 16] In top hat and morning coat, he went to pay his respects to the 2.5 million souls who had fallen in wars Japan fought since the Meiji Restoration, at the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, the 61st anniversary of Imperial Japan's unconditional surrender, thereby ending World War II. Koizumi proved to be a man of his word. He said that he would bow to those who are enshrined at Yasukuni, even though the ashes of 14 tried and convicted and punished Class A war criminal repose there. In doing this, he has gained the approval of his conservative supporters and though he might feel uncomfortable by the fact, he too had the backing of the extreme right-wing. On the regional scene, his visit aroused the stern disapproval of China and South Korea. China has a long list of grievances against Imperial Japan for the war it waged on China's soil, and for the pillage and rapine its armies committed from 1931 to 1945. South Korea smarts from the long night of colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945. Their expressions of distress at Koizumi's visit come from the fact that he is honoring the memories and the spirit of Class A war criminals. All this is very much understood by Koizumi, yet by his very act, he has stuck his eye in the puffery of the Chinese, who launched a series of violent protests against Japan last year. It is Koizumi's way of saying what Beijing is always saying to those from afar who criticize China: do not interfere in the internal affairs of my country. And, that is precisely the importance of his going to Yasukuni. In his own way, Koizumi is setting the stage for his successors to reassert proudly Japan's place in the sun.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 16, '06)


    Todd Crowell's article Why Japan will never go nuclear [Aug 16] was both interesting and widely referenced (it made it to Google news front page), but his analysis is somewhat faulty. His states a nuclear deterrence is useless to Japan because the country lacks "strategic depth", and while it may be true that "... It would only take about five thermonuclear bombs ... to end Japan" it would probably take many, many more to eliminate a Japanese nuclear counterstrike arsenal of several hundred warheads. It is not the survival of the state per se that establishes a deterrence, but the survival of its nuclear counterstrike capability. Otherwise, Israel, with even less strategic depth than Japan, would not have expended so much effort to create its nuclear arsenal.
    Francis
    Quebec, Canada (Aug 16, '06)


    Todd Crowell's analysis in Why Japan will never go nuclear [Aug 16] is very optimistic about Japanese capabilities. The main reason that Japan doesn't have nuclear weapons is based in what Mahatma Gandhi taught: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless". Chinese and North Korean leaders should read more about Gandhi and Confucius, and less nonsense like Sun Tzu, and his Art of War.
    M Murata (Aug 16, '06)


    Ehsan Ahrari’s A dummy run against Hezbollah [Aug 15] is a fair and expected analysis, but it is not new for AToL’s readers. First, AToL had several letters by readers emphasizing the idea that the Bush administration was behind the Israeli destruction of Lebanon. Seymour Hersh may represent a group of journalists who sometimes understand reality fully by using inputs from many readers. This is an honorable and a decent approach because out of many ideas a journalist can derive a solid conclusion. Second, I still believe that the basic goal behind the war in Lebanon is something else. The goal is about Israeli security in a situation when the US decides to leave Iraq. If the US leaves Iraq and the Israeli situation remains as it is, that state will be insecure, given its strong army and nuclear bombs. I think that Israel can fight neither Hezbollah nor Syria nor Iran. Simply, Israel cannot fight a cohesive people. Israel is able to bomb bridges, buildings and roads but cannot win a long war. Israel and the US thought the security of Israel could be achieved if Hezbollah was defeated and Lebanon signed a peace treaty with Israel. That project has failed, but demand for weapons has increased, and the military complex will make reasonable profits. Similarly, many political groups, including Iran and Iraq's Muqtada al-Sadr, who have been resisting the US and Israel, have also won. The reactionary Arab states, Ahrari has enumerated, have as usual lost. They thought they could destroy the evolving Fatimid dynasty II, but the goal has not been accomplished. Third, Ahrari contends that Lebanon democracy has lost. I totally and respectfully disagree with his conclusion. I think Hezbollah fought the Israeli invading forces with the support of the Lebanese people, and was able to prevent Israel from penetrating deeper into Lebanon. Under this condition, it is ridiculous to state that democracy has lost. Rather, the popular resistance and democracy in Lebanon has indeed won. Fourth, this is the second defeat for the Israelis in Lebanon, a defeat that provides one important implication regarding the occupation of Iraq. I expect many pro-Iranian groups, along with the existing insurgency, will rise to fight US forces in Iraq. This miscalculated Lebanon war will make it harder for the US to manage the occupation of Iraq. Fifth, any person who serves in an army will tell you that an air force is able to drop bombs but it cannot win a war, assuming the bombs hit all intended targets accurately. Air forces do not capture land, nor do they maintain law and order in an occupied land. If the Bush administration relies on air force to win wars, the US is heading in the wrong direction.
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 16, '06)


    Richard M Bennett in his The lurking threat of war [Aug 15] advocates the disarming of Hezbollah. Who will defend Lebanon if that happens? Yes, Israel would like the Lebanese army on its border. That way Lebanon would be a pushover. Does Richard M Bennett work for the Israel Defense Forces as the public relations officer?
    Wilson John Haire
    London, England (Aug 15, '06)


    Re Richard M Bennett's The lurking threat of war [Aug 15]: It is interesting to see how the supporters of Israel [are] claiming victory but they are not exactly showing what were their aims and how they are achieved. I agree with them if Israel's major aim was to terrorize tens of thousands of civilians and kill hundreds of innocent civilians. This conflict seems to [have] started with the capture of two soldiers. [But] Israel was planning this for long time, [and] this was just an excuse. It was looking like the obvious aims of Israel were to get back captured soldiers and destroy Hezbollah. As everyone knows, Israel didn't get release of the captured soldiers and Hezbollah [fired] a record 250 rockets into northern Israel on the last day of fighting. It is difficult to understand what are the major aims Israel managed to achieve. Actually this war showed the weakness of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]. On the other hand, Hezbollah showed that they were still standing strong and fighting for 34 days. It appeared to me that Israel's aim was to destroy Hezbollah and clear the way for the US to attack Iran. Since this [was] not achieved, people like this author changed their tune and now they are saying that the only possible effective answer to Hezbollah's threat is to attack Iran and Syria. It seems [that Israel] got frustrated with the war situation being not in control. They destroyed Lebanon, killed hundreds of innocent civilians, but were not able to destroy Hezbollah; in addition to that, Hezbollah was killing more of Israel's soldiers every day. It seems Israel thought [it would] destroy Hezbollah in a few days with minimum casualties. The fact is Israel understood that it will take a long time to destroy Hezbollah and also they have to pay a price for that with rockets raining on their cities and their soldiers getting killed every day. Israel had to accept a ceasefire.
    Mirza Ali
    USA (Aug 15, '06)


    [Kaveh] L Afrasiabi's Ceasefire, or quagmire by another name [Aug 15] is a good summing-up of the chances of success of United Nations Resolution 1701. And the document's prospects do indeed look dim. It is a makeshift document and hammered out under the heat of battle, reflecting a compromise of disparate special interests. Today's ceasefire in Lebanon may hold nonetheless. Yet Israeli intelligence has proved wide of the mark, and its war planning deficient. Israel has not had a Blitzsieg or lightning victory against its nemesis Hezbollah. If anything, the Zionist state has had to go back and hold ground in southern Lebanon until such time it feels that Lebanese and United Nations troops will secure a cordon sanitaire protecting its borders - which means Israeli troops are there for a long stay, and they will have an itchy trigger finger, fearing a resurgent Hezbollah. Irony of ironies, Hezbollah will become an integral member of any Lebanese army. So the seeds are sown for renewed fighting unless the Israeli government sits down and negotiates with Hezbollah, on one hand, and [applies] a United Nations resolution which [Israel] has rigorously ignored, by pulling back its forces to the 1967 borders, if it truly wants peace.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 15, '06)


    Ehsan Ahrari's Attacking terrorism at its roots (Aug 12) is really a multivariate analysis [of] terrorism - the phenomenon is being analyzed by several fundamental causes. I think this is a better investigation than what has been called the disturbance cause used for a phenomenon that cannot be explained by the proposed theoretical cause. Still, I would like to present a view of the issue of terrorism. If there were no Muslims on Earth, many individuals would contend that terrorism would be eliminated. But ... for many centuries the Irish fought the English people, because the latter persistently exploited and subdued them, and both were Christians. Similarly, in Iraq Muslims are killing each other by resorting to terrorist activities, including suicide bombing. Therefore, there is no ground to establish a generalization suggesting that Islam is the fundamental cause explaining terrorism. Indeed, there are many explanations, and Mr Ahrari has provided an eloquent analysis [of] some of them. In my opinion, however, terrorism has to be explained by the existence of the dominating wealthy people. Usually, the dominating people are the wealthy leisure class that tries to impose hegemony on every living and dead element on the planet. This class has the military, the intellectuals, the laws, the police, the ideology, and the jails ... The excluded people, whether they are Jewish, Muslims, Christians or whatever, will fight back to win respect. The reaction of the excluded may be deadly or peaceful depending on the underdogs' decision-making as well as the top dogs' behavior. In several cases, the underdogs may resort to extreme violence manifested in suicide bombings in order to immediately assert their opinions, and in other cases they react slowly with less violence: different conditions generate different reactions ... Essentially, under a system of social ownership, cooperation, rather than competition, will dominate; hence every individual and every country will be treated equally and cooperatively. Therefore, terrorism will be dominated by the cooperative peaceful relationships. This suggests that our world will have to live with terrorism as long as monopoly capitalism exists ...
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 15, '06)


    I refer to the article Attacking terrorism at its roots of August 12 by Ehsan Ahrari. I can understand the insane motivation of this new angry breed of radicals and their desire for re-recognition of glorious Islamic civilization that ruled the world for over 11 centuries and civilized the world from darkness. It is the decline and the gap in the prestigious ancient Islam and the fragmented Islam of today, and what caused its splendor to decline. The wound is much deeper than thought and it is the sheer humiliation felt not only by these angry men but also by a substantial numbers of Muslims around the globe for being constantly depicted as outcasts and labeled [with] notorious names by Western leaders, politicians and pro-Zionist media ... These angry radicals are the product of Western technology, IT [information technology] mastery and skills and many are highly educated individuals, in many respects photocopies of technocratic civilization. They use their skills against an imperialistic power that they considered is colonizing the Muslim world, inflicting humiliating defeat on them in a bid to rule them through corrupt puppet regimes as seen with the illegal invasion of Iraq, its occupation and subsequent killing of over 200,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children by the American and coalition forces. The Muslim young and the new breed of radicals want equality with the Western counterparts and no less; they cannot grasp the fact that the Muslim world, once a leader over its centuries-old adversary (racist West), should submit to its immoral dominance and political hegemony. The aristocracy of the Muslim world is happy accepting this dominance of the infidels, but these new liberators, or freedom fighters as they call themselves, have the misconceived notion that they can liberate their brethren from humiliation by violent means. It is an audacious struggle but bound to fail because terrorism will result in nothing but more bloodshed of innocent Muslims all over the world. This resentment will linger on and violence is not [the way] to achieve the objectives. First, it is essential that Muslims detach themselves from this stereotype notion and a kind of entropy of mind that my faith is my savior when it is a victim of internal strife and sectarian hatred often instigated for political exploitation and advantage by the Americans and its proxy in the Middle East, Israel.
    Saqib Khan
    UK (Aug 15, '06)


    Re Iraq's downward spiral toward partition [Aug 11]: Partition would not be a disaster for Iraq but rather an exit strategy. The nation called Iraq is a British invention that makes sense only in that historical context. In its current state, nationhood for Iraq is the problem, not the solution. Let us end the bloodshed. Let us abandon the imaginary nation-state that consists of three warring factions and let us come to terms with reality.
    Cha-am Jamal
    Thailand (Aug 15, '06)


    Spengler: You seem to have nothing much to say about the roles of the Chinese and the Hindu people in the struggle against Muslim terrorists. Why is that? Is it because you see it merely as a confrontation between the "West" and the "Muslim world" where half of the population of the world has no role to play (my numbers may be a bit off, but you get the drift)?
    Bhagya Konwar
    Munich, Germany (Aug 15, '06)


    Re Attacking terrorism at its roots [Aug 12]: So long as that big-budget terrorism which comes mainly from the sky, borne aloft by thousands of millions of dollars in annual military appropriations and raining its bombs on a defenseless population below, is permitted, that low-budget terrorism which mainly comes from the ground will also continue. And no one should be surprised if, from time to time, it also succeeds in hitching a ride on the planes of the big-budget terrorists.
    M Henri Day, PhD, MD
    Stockholm, Sweden (Aug 14, '06)


    [After] the foiled al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism plot that involved a number of British-born Muslims, Ehsan Ahrari defies his own logic in his Attacking terrorism at its roots (Aug 12). He claims that the reality for the young generation of these Muslims is that they are as British as fish and chips or the game of cricket. Yet in the same sentence he argues that they should be economically, politically and culturally integrated into British society. His flawed reasoning echoes the inflammatory remarks made recently by the ex-London police chief, Lord Stevens, who asks: "When will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is their problem?" The truth is that the entire Muslim world is at odds with the Judeo-Christian West and that no amount of finger-pointing at the communities of these supposedly disfranchised and alienated young British Muslims can hope to bridge the most enduring and the most deeply complex religious divide in the history of human civilization. We need look no further than the day of September 30, 2002, when US President George W Bush signed congressional legislation that required his own administration to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's "undivided and eternal capital". Mr Bush had effectively joined with America's 80-million-strong evangelical Christians who believe that the surest way Jesus Christ is going to return to Jerusalem is to keep it "eternally" in Jewish hands. Moreover, the US legislation concurred with an Israeli parliamentary decision made in 1980 in which Jerusalem was declared to be the "eternal capital" of Israel. Six days later, on October 6, 2002, the Palestinian Authority countered the Bush administrations's legislature with its own declaration proclaiming that Jerusalem is the "eternal capital" of Palestine. In using such religious language as the word "eternal" for a city that is held to be sacred by all three [Abrahamic] faiths, we are left in no doubt that the stakes on both sides of the Judeo-Christian/Muslim divide are being raised to the highest level of all - the level of the apocalyptic. It is time we all recognized that the only alternative to this spiraling madness that goes under the delusory and self-justifying title of the "war on terror" is to foster religious reconciliation on a global scale. Otherwise, we are going to find ourselves embroiled in a most unholy war in which countless numbers of young Muslims, Christians and Jews are all made to believe that to kill innocent civilians is an act of God.
    Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
    Canberra, Australia (Aug 14, '06)


    Ehsan Ahrari, re Attacking terrorism at its roots [Aug 12]: Radicalism or terrorism, whatever you call it, in Britain or anywhere in Europe is essentially a manifestation of an underlying disease. The underlying disease that is eating away peace and harmony in Europe and turning the largest minority (Muslims) against the host communities is the widely prevalent enduring social injustice against the largest minority. The largest minority has inherently come to the silent conclusion that they cannot get justice by peaceful means in these societies. The energetic second/third-generation immigrant youths of the largest minority have turned to violence to vent anger because in light of experiences of their first/second-generation parents, they have come to the conclusion that turning to the authorities or courts to beg for justice is not how social justice is going to be achieved. Other non-Muslim minorities in Europe may also have come to the similar conclusions, but the fact that their youths have not taken the same course as Muslim youth have is all about the difference of philosophy. Put it this way: if a Muslim youth expressed or vented anger and resentment against [a] white majority and a group of non-Muslim minority members happened to to be there, they would either join and share the resentful expressions so long as it was safer to do so, and it is far less likely that they would alert the authorities about it. Christian youths in particular have a different problem: they have resigned to a biblical concept (which is of course open to interpretations) which implies that white [races] have the divine right to dominance and superiority and that in accepting Christianity as the faith they submit themselves to that concept, totally or partially. Muslims and Islam are totally unfamiliar with any such concept. The youths of non-Muslim minorities (particularly Christians) do vent their anger against the injustices of "dominant" and "superior" [races] but the methods (petty crimes and robberies) they use are consciously or unconsciously designed not to challenge the veracity of the aforesaid biblical concept. A black Christian youth called Lindsay who was one of the four suicide bombers involved in the subway bombing in London on July 7, 2005, had converted to Islam in order to get rid of the biblical concept of white superiority before expressing his anger against social injustice in [a] Muslim manner. The cult of radicalism and suicide bombings has thrived on a vast crop of alienated youths generated by the enduring social injustice in the Western societies. It is this crop of alienated youths that provides fertile recruiting ground for [Osama] bin Laden and company. Pakistan or Islam or indeed Saudi Arabia [is] not responsible for the social injustice in Europe and it is indeed a matter for the social scientists and Western intellectuals to address the problem, which is only going to get worse, unfortunately. What is happening today is not due to the difference in way of life, it is indeed the product of enduring social injustice. In order to defeat and expel terrorism and radicalism from Europe and Western societies, social [injustice] must be defeated first.
    Rashid Hassan (Aug 14, '06)

    I am sorry, but I think your analysis is very lopsided and, to put it politely, equally strange. There is absolutely no justification for violence, no matter how just the cause. I think Muslims should stop this dead-end blame game and start finding avenues - legal and conventional ones - to win justice. They cannot live in a society and attempt to blow it up and kill its citizens and hope to correct whatever injustice they are trying to correct. That is a sick frame of reference for anyone to follow, especially in the name of Islam. - Ehsan Ahrari


    I write to express my outrage over the letter which has been sent by the British Muslim groups, which comprise three Muslim MPs [members of parliament], three peers and 38 Muslim groups in the UK. If their view is that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk, then I find them being apologists for terror and supporting murderers. I would have thought that they would stand up and say clearly, whatever be your difference with British government policy, the way to deal with that is the political process. I personally think that the [wars] in Iraq and Afghanistan [were] a bad mistake, both conceptually and in delivery. That does not mean that I go about expressing my opinion by blowing up people who are traveling by tube [subway] or plane. That simply makes me into a murderer. If I carry this argument forward, I presume these Muslim leaders would have no objection or will give a pass to Thai people blowing up a bus in Manchester because the United Kingdom is not supporting Thailand enough in its insurgency in southern Thailand? Or would they also say that Sierra Leonese in England have sufficient reason to poison our water supply because UK troops are in Sierra Leone? It is extremely regrettable that these Muslim leaders do not understand simple politics. Why are they allowed to write such drivel and, more importantly, allowed air time? Yes, protest against British policy, but write letters to editors, demonstrate in the streets, support anti-war candidates in elections and campaign in various forums. I find their supine behavior and willingness to pander to medieval feudal and autocratic thought processes totally unacceptable. This letter of their does mention that terror has to be fought, but this comment about foreign policy means that they condone it. No, sirs, there is no ammunition. You of all people should be standing up and saying, disagreement over foreign policy is not a reason to blow up people, and for them not to say this means that they are as contemptible as the murderers and terrorists themselves. Shame on them. By their pandering, they have not made the world safer, but will give these terrorists more reason to embark on such nefarious and murderous activities. If this is their level of political maturity, no wonder these leaders are so disconnected from either the general public or the terrorists.
    Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta
    North Harrow, England (Aug 14, '06)

    The text of the British Muslims' open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair appears below. - ATol
    Prime Minister: As British Muslims we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens. It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad. To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy. The debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all. Attacking civilians is never justified. This message is a global one. We urge the prime minister to redouble his efforts to tackle terror and extremism and change our foreign policy to show the world that we value the lives of civilians wherever they live and whatever their religion. Such a move would make us all safer.

    Sami Moubayed's Tehran holds the key to a ceasefire (Aug 11) provides a very fair analysis [of] the war in Lebanon. I think, however, that he has overlooked one essential scenario. His analysis boils down to the central issue that Iran is the only country that Hezbollah can listen to. Let us assume that this is true. During the Iraq-Iran War, when the Iraqi army penetrated into the Iranian territory, which is similar to the condition of the Israeli army now, the Iraqi government and some other Arab countries were trying to call for a ceasefire to end the war and to stop exporting the Iranian Islamic Revolution to other ... countries. That ceasefire [did not materialize] and the war continued. The Iraqi government then announced that it had a cash reserve that could allow the country to fight the Iranian mullahs for a year. The year went by and the war became very intensive and destructive. This is because the Iranian mullahs had another opinion, which included rejecting all ceasefire initiatives, and continued fighting for eight years, given most of the world community was against them. Accordingly, if the Iranian mullahs are the ones who make the decision for Hezbollah to fight or not to fight the Israeli invading forces (IIF), then we should conclude that the war in Lebanon will not be over soon, given [that] the country has already been destroyed by the Israeli bombing. Therefore, Israel may be in a long-run war, and the initiative for a ceasefire for the Israeli benefits is in fact becoming reminiscent of the Iraq-Iran War situation. This is a very likely scenario for the Iranian mullahs to advocate, because it will make the United States of America busy in three wars - in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon - and these wars will be extremely costly. Please keep in mind that Israel will be busy in two wars - in Palestine and Lebanon - and the Iranian mullahs will take notes to find more destructive alternatives. Most important, these wars are creating more hatred towards the United States of America and its allies.
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 14, '06)


    I was very surprised to read Sudha Ramachandran's India's foray into Central Asia [Aug 12] and find out that it was Russian arm-twisting that has secured a joint Russo-Indian efforts at Ayni Air Base. The writer doesn't offer anything to support [her] assumptions and assertions. [She] is apparently unaware that Russia has occupied this air base for years - why would it need to twist anybody's arms over this base? It is already there. On the latter point, it is unlikely that India will open its own base in Central Asia and instead might share a base with Russia, if at least some of the noise and speculation over this allegedly imminent move are true. The author doesn't seem to consider or notice that the short period of base openings in Central Asia is over. Notwithstanding [her] statements, Germany doesn't have a base in Tajikistan, but is only allowed to use the latter's airfields on a temporary basis - that is not a base. Only Russia (two in Tajikistan and one in Kyrgyzstan) and the US (one) have military bases in Central Asia, while Russia also has an early-warning radar base in Kazakhstan. When Russia transformed its military presence in Tajikistan into its two current bases, it did it with large-scale projects, contracts worth over [US]$1 billion and permission for Tajik illegal workers to reside in Russia, resulting in an estimated $250 million to $300 million in yearly remittances to Tajikistan; it is not at all clear why Russia should or will share its base with India or if Tajikistan will make this type of decision on its own.
    Leon Rozmarin
    Hopedale, Massachusetts (Aug 14, '06)


    I don't know what one is supposed to think in reading John Feffer's Roaring mouse vs squeaking lion [Aug 12]. Early on he tells us "North Korea is militarily weak" and four paragraphs later he writes that North Korea "can defend against a ground attack and survive aerial bombardment. And it can visit great destruction on US forces in South Korea and Japan, not to mention civilians and infrastructure." A pretty good trick for a militarily weak country. Mr Feffer attacks the policies of the Bush administration, but nowhere does he offer an outline of a possible peace deal with North Korea. Is North Korea willing to give up its nuclear weapons? Probably not. Would North Korea allow intrusive inspections to prove it has given up its weapons? Absolutely not. The best North Korea will offer [the US] is another freeze at the cost of billions of dollars in aid. That deal would not be able to win congressional support. It is a sad reflection on the state of world politics that the most vile regime in the history of the world, [which] revels in the murder, torture and starvation of millions of its own citizens, is seen as a naughty schoolboy by millions of leftists. The problem with North Korea will never be solved with the pervasive apathy of so much of the world community including the European Union, and when China and South Korea spend more than [US]$3 billion maintaining the murderous Kim regime. I don't like being in the position of defending the Bush administration, but the answer does not lie in reaching a "principled agreement" with a murderous regime that follows no principles. And contrary to Mr Feffer's beliefs, North Korea does want to conquer South Korea, and with Roh Moo-hyun's government's foolish headlong rush to appease North Korea, [it] might just get the chance. The US-South Korea alliance is on shaky ground and the tide's coming in.
    Dennis O'Connell
    USA (Aug 14, '06)


    Re China's olive branch, with thorns [Aug 12]: China's concession to Japan about raising the issue of the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Koreans, at the next round of the six-party talks in Beijing, has less substance than meets the eye. Pyongyang has vowed not to return to the green carpet of the conference table until the United States has stopped its campaign of calumny, white and black propaganda, freezing bank accounts, so on and on. Since the Bush White House seems unlikely to change horses in mid-stream, it looks highly unlikely that the six-power talks will soon reconvene. And in this light, China's rose has a blunted thorn. Nonetheless, China's gesture has slightly eased taut relations between the two Asian giants ... Pyongyang's testing of long-range missiles has far-reaching destabilizing effects which transcend regional boundaries, on one hand, and on the other, potentially threatens the steamroller that is China's economy. So Beijing looks to make harmony with its neighbor with which it has a thick notebook of past grievances.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 14, '06)


    Is Peter Morici [Blame the China deficit, Aug 12] capable of doing anything, anything, other than blame the PRC [People's Republic of China] for America's trade deficit and economic woes? I guess not. It's getting really boring.
    Juchechosunmanse
    Beijing, China (Aug 14, '06)

    Well, yes, in fact Morici's Eye on America feature often makes no mention of China. Besides, boring or not, China's alleged interference in the currency market is an important issue. - ATol


    Syed Saleem Shahzad: Thanks for your in-the-field reports, such as the recent one from the Bekaa Valley [Running from commandos - and mosquitoes, Aug 11]. Such news is all we have over here in the way of escaping the dull, anesthetizing propaganda on world affairs that comes from North American media. (I have long been a regular reader of ATol.) By the way, when we lived in Iran, 1977 and '78, I knew a little girl named Shahzad. What is the explanation for this gender conflict?
    Keith Leal
    Pincher Creek, Alberta (Aug 14, '06)

    Shahzad is a Persian word meaning "king's descendant". I think it is used for both genders in Iran and Kurdistan. - Syed Saleem Shahzad


    For the sake of argument let us say Hezbollah people are terrorists for attacking Israelis. May I humbly ask what the USA government then is? Vietnamese observe "Dioxin Victim Day" on August 10 because the US Army spread these cancer-causing chemicals [through] Vietnamese forests and water bodies. Still people are suffering from the effect of that chemical ... Sanctions on Iraq led to the death of 500,000 children, and killing innocent people by cluster bombs [was] done by the US government largely by the influence of Israel. So if Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists, may I ask what adjective is suitable for the US government?
    Dr Mahboob Hossain
    Associate Professor
    The University of Asia Pacific
    Dhaka, Bangladesh (Aug 14, '06)


    [In] the article Day of reckoning for US warmongers [Aug 11], Jim Lobe seem to have forgotten US history. The US regardless of what party was in power has traditionally been an isolationist nation. During World War II Britain had to fight the Nazis until the Empire of Japan brought the US into the war when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. In the current situation Israel, like Britain in the '40s, is fighting the Hezbollah threat largely by itself. Yes, the US is supplying Israel with arms. But ultimately the US and its allies may not have a choice but join in the increasingly unstable Middle East. It is not the "warmongers" of the US [who] will decide the fate of the Middle East; instead it will be the warmongers of the Middle East, nations like Iran [and] Syria, and the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah will draw in outside powers depending on the fate of Israel and the spiraling chaos in the Middle East fed by Iran and Hezbollah. No matter what party comes into power in the US, the Middle East "problem" will have to be dealt [with] by that party. If the Middle East crisis spirals out of control, thereby threatening the world's economies, the world will be forced to intervene, and to date that scenario is escalating in the Middle East.
    Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 11, '06)


    I am an avid reader and supporter of your publication, but no more. Jim Lobe's article [Day of reckoning for US warmongers, Aug 11] was disgraceful to me. "US warmongers"? Did Jim lose a loved one in the World Trade Center attack? Did you have to publish his story the day of the international attempt to blow up several airlines - which you did not even report? Whether the world chooses to turn a blind eye to all of this, or blame it all on Bush, the world is in jeopardy from Muslim extremists. Next time your country suffers a massive attack or disaster, you won't find any sympathy from me. Shame on you.
    Pete Lytle (Aug 11, '06)

    The article did not "turn a blind eye" to the fact that terrorists - the most murderous of whom currently are, or claim to be, Muslims - are a danger to everyone. The debate is and always has been whether US policies are an effective way to deal with the threat. This week's events in Britain suggest that effective intelligence and law enforcement, not invading defenseless but resource-rich countries like Iraq, continue to be the more appropriate policy against terrorism. - ATol


    Jim Lobe's Day of reckoning for US warmongers (Aug 10) must become the new trend for all American voters; otherwise, worldwide destruction will be cumulatively augmenting. Many media reports have indicated how nice and lovely Senator Joe Lieberman is, but for me his tendency for supporting wars in the Middle East is above imagination. It has become always easy for him to support any American administration and Israel for any planning for wars in that region. Some other US senators such as the senator from Arizona John McCain have the same mentality, arguing consistently for increasing US troops in Iraq, an opinion that has not only destabilized Iraq but will also generate more death and destruction, leading to no possibility for a peaceful compromise: it creates hatred. This war mentality, given my respect to this opinion, has situated the United States of America in a direction that will be very costly and bloody and will make America unsafe. More than 1 million people have already died in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, and America due to the policy of war mentality and hence actual wars. These wars are supposedly designed to root out terrorism and to establish democracy and freedom. Reality shows otherwise. Terrorism has been on the rise, and al-Qaeda has most likely been recruiting more fanatic individuals than ever before. Other al-Qaeda-like organizations will be on the rise. Even the Egyptian president, whose survival is tied to US monopoly capitalism, once indicated that the occupation of Iraq would create 100 bin Ladens, because he knows that world cooperation, not force, is the only optimal solution for eliminating terrorism. Democracy has been distorted and many people in the Middle East, I believe, are rejecting such "democracy" and changes. The US economy is tending toward stagnation, as inflation and interest rates are on the rise, so will oil prices and unemployment. Stagflation is evolving and will be diffused soon to other nations. In short, millions of people are at a great disadvantage because of war mentality and wars, and warmongering senators and important politicians need to be voted out of office everywhere in the world, including the United States of America. Hopefully, Mr Lobe's prediction is accurate, because such a prediction is indeed patriotic and should serve the world community, including Americans' interests, although it will not significantly serve the financiers [and] the oil and military corporations whose wealth has been tremendously accumulating at the expense of the underlying world population.
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 11, '06)

    A new book by Charles Pena, Winning the Un-War, speaks to several of your points. See our review, 'Long war' a tragic misstep. - ATol


    In reference to Running from commandos - and mosquitoes [Aug 11] by Syed Saleem Shahzad: Great reporting - I could almost feel the tension while reading the article. I'm sure the Israeli military could eventually again occupy southern Lebanon, only to again discover that occupation does not spell victory. Ask the US about Iraq if you doubt this. Hezbollah and the resistance in Iraq have shattered the supposed invincibility of the US/Israeli war machine, and it may be the beginning of a new Arab awakening for the Middle East. Truth has an undeniable edge that cuts through all the fog that's being reported in the US press. Thank you, Syed Saleem Shahzad. Also thanks to Dr Jose R Pardinas: his letters are brave and insightful commentary. I keep searching, but I cannot find a better news source than ATol. Keep up the great work.
    Ken Moreau
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 11, '06)


    The problem with It's about annexation, stupid! [Aug 5] is that Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years and left it.
    Tom Farrelly (Aug 11, '06)


    It has almost become obvious that the UNSC-5 [five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council] has hatched the plan for the Lebanon air strikes, with the USA playing a key role. Israel's air strikes were okayed by the Pentagon and therefore the USA actively supported the [Israeli] plan to go for the kill of innocent people in Lebanon with the supply of extra weapons to invade Lebanon. The fact that all the other members of the UNSC-5, viz the UK and France, Russia and China, have maintained a discreet silence over the Israeli attacks on Lebanon duly helped and guided by the USA attests [to] the hidden plan of the UNSC-5. That Russia and China have deferred [to] the rest of the UNSC-5 members over very regional issues, opposed similar [issues such as] the USA's invasion of Iraq and plan to attack Iran, and have always questioned the democracy plank of the West, testifies to the fact that the war in Lebanon [was] preplanned with the consent of all UNSC-5 members, perhaps with minor reservations on the part of China ...
    Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
    Jawaharlal Nehru University
    New Delhi, India (Aug 11, '06)


    Though Richard Greene (letter, Aug 10) makes some good points, I think the ATol editors' point about the Abrahamic religions' mindset still stands in its entirety. A look at his "Seven Noahide Laws" that qualify one as among "the righteous among the Gentiles" is enough. They are policeman-like, pretty much injunctions to people of other cultures on how to behave. Each is a commandment-style "do not" this and "do not" that. While they may be perfectly fine and appropriate inside the Judaic/Abrahamic culture, there is a strong presumption of universality, and more to the point, universalizability. The presumption is, "We know what good is, we define it, not only for ourselves, but for others (who don't know any better)." All the ingredients are now there. There just remains that crucial but easy jump into action, ie, going around imposing the "word of God", while full of righteous fervor. This is where the "daughter faiths Christianity and Islam" come in to remedy the fact that "Judaism ... was never a universalist religion". One definitely recognizes the fact that the Jewish culture (so far?) has had enough wisdom not to be like the "daughters", and kept this warlike Abrahamic mindset in check. Also, he is mostly right about his views on "Islamic science" being simply the product of local cultures where Arabs held sway at that time. But this is not very different from the idea of "Western science", is it? And to give credit where due, Arab culture was quite intellectually active, definitely in the pre-Islamic days. It also comes out way ahead of the "modern West" in one respect. Unlike the "IP-conscious, modern West", Arabs have attributed in their writings the origins of things and concepts Indian (and probably other cultures too). So pre-Islamic Arabs didn't really "steal" mathematics from India, but took it respectfully and gave credit. In fact, the Arab name for numbers used to be hindsa (from hind, ie, "India") for a long time, as an example.
    Karigar
    USA (Aug 11, '06)


    I wish to comment on the letter of Richard Greene of August 10 and refer to "The Muslims themselves never 'led the world in scientific advances'" ... It reflected his ignorance, reading and relying upon "this monograph", and then trying to convince ATol readers. It is a historical fact that the Muslim scientists made unsurpassable and remarkable achievements in the scientific field, and I mention just a few in which they led the world: anatomy, physiology, zoology, botany, astronomy, mineralogy, physics and chemistry. The Kitab al-Nabat (Encyclopedia Botanica) of Abu Hanifah al-Dinawari (died AD 895), the first of its kind, in six thick volumes remarkably surpasses similar works in erudition and extensiveness. Medicine also made extraordinary progress under the Muslims in the branches of anatomy, pharmacology, physiology, organization of hospitals and training of doctors, who were to pass examinations before being allowed to practice. The works of Razi (Rhazes), Ibn-Sina (Avicenna), Abu'l-Qasim (Abucasis) and many others remained until recently as the basis of all medical study even in the West ... Under the influence of great Muslim scientists like Khalid ibn Yazid, Jafa al-Sadiq and Jabir ibn Hayyan, ancient alchemy (from Arabic al-kimiya) was transformed into an exact science based on facts and capable of demonstration. Jabir also knew chemical operations of calcinations and reduction; it is he who developed also the methods of evaporation, sublimation, crystallization, etc. In mathematics, Muslims are well renowned for algebra, zero and cipher and the names of al-Khwarizmi, al-Biruni and others remain as famous as [that] of Euclid. The Greeks knew trigonometry but credit goes to the Muslims for its discovery and advancement as in logarithms. Muslims continued with their work in advancing science until the Mongol barbarians' invasion of Baghdad in one day burned and destroyed all libraries, housing hundreds of thousands of books of knowledge gained and constructed over the centuries by the Muslim scholars and scientists ... I should mention the fact that the great Muslim scientists were devout and received their inspiration from the Koran. It was because of their contributions to science that the West became civilized and saw the light of knowledge when from time immemorial they had lived in dark ages and ate raw meat ...
    Saqib Khan
    UK (Aug 11, '06)


    [Gareth] Porter's discussion of the implications of Israel's war on Hezbollah and Lebanon for potential US war on Iran was quite interesting [Clearing the path for US war on Iran, Aug 10]. If the Iranian government has the same interpretation of events as Mr Porter, then I would expect to see immediate consequences in Iraq. For instance, the insurgency might start to be equipped with hand-held anti-aircraft missiles capable of taking down an Apache, or the leading Shi'ite imams will start to call on their followers to overtly oppose the occupation by armed force.
    John R Yates
    Los Angeles, California (Aug 10, '06)


    Gareth Porter (Clearing the path for US war on Iran, Aug 10) tries to link the disproportionate Israeli bombing of Lebanon to the possible US attack of Iran. Although the analysis and the various views from knowledgeable specialists are impressive, I doubt very much that the goal of the ongoing war is about bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities. If this analysis is correct, the implication is very simple: Israel will bomb Syria as well, because the latter does have a strong relationship with Iran. Hence the analysis is not convincing with a high probability. I think that the fundamental cause of the current wars, including the Israeli war with Hezbollah, can be found in the nature of US monopoly capitalism. The deriving force of this system is profitability and hegemony with three basic contributory institutions: oil corporations, [the] military complex, and religion. Of course the entire system has been controlled by the financiers who set the direction of US foreign policy. In fact, this is not a new explanation, because Thorstein Veblen analyzed the same US system more than 100 years ago and called it high-plane capitalism controlled by the leisure conservative class which in turn controls technology, a class that always uses militarism and patriotism for imperialist adventures at the expense of the underlying population. It follows that US monopoly capitalism has been capitalizing on its comparative advantage and trying to control oil, and the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan (the oil pipeline) is a clear case in that direction. Controlling world oil for huge profits for the oil corporations requires militarism, patriotism, very sophisticated technology, and the availability of strong allies that can implement this strategy. Currently, Israel is indeed a strong partner in the Middle East for achieving that objective. Militarism, which is needed to support the oil corporations, needs weapons and armies; hence demand for military hardware will increase. Consequently, huge profits will be generated for the military complex as well as for the oil corporations, because dropping bombs in [an] oil region raises oil prices. Profitability and religion are connected, as Max Weber considered Protestant ethics as the most important part of the social superstructure for the development of modern capitalism. Unsurprisingly, the mighty God becomes the cause for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and may become the reason for attacking Iran and other oil countries. In either case, whether there is an attack or no attack on Iran, huge profits and hegemony will be realized, and the financiers, the oil corporations, and the military complex will be the dominant forces. Religion and patriotism will bond people and create social cohesiveness. In short, the war between Israel and Hezbollah should be analyzed in the same way Iraq fought Iran for eight years, wars whose outcomes are more profits and hegemony for the leisure class.
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 10, '06)


    If Gareth Porter [Clearing the path for US war on Iran, Aug 10] is going to quote from my articles in the San Francisco Chronicle, he should read the original and quote accurately. I was not reporting "from Tel Aviv" but from Jerusalem.
    Matthew Kalman (Aug 10, '06)

    Apologies. The article has been amended. - ATol


    Re 'We are just hit-and-run guerrillas' [Aug 10]: This Wednesday Hezbollah killed at least 15 Israeli soldiers - a fact that has gone practically unreported here in the US. I found the statistic buried (probably deliberately) deep inside an article in the New York Times. I've seen no report on these casualties at the BBC. The outcome of the Israeli-Hezbollah war seems already clearly decided. Jewish commanders and politicians will soon find themselves in the unenviable position of that ancient Greek general who once exclaimed: "One more victory like this and we're finished." The latter will be a very bitter pill for a country and an army that have grown accustomed to having their brutal way with defenseless Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, a Pyrrhic victory, or worse, is all that awaits Israel in Lebanon or the US in Iraq. I am almost tempted to say that there is some justice in the world - but I know better.
    Jose R Pardinas, PhD
    San Diego, California (Aug 10, '06)


    M K Bhadrakumar's August 10 article Ukraine's shadow across Eurasia was one of the best articles I've read on Ukraine in a long time. I very much enjoyed an analysis of the current Ukrainian cabinet make-up without US jingoism. This is the first time I've read anything in Asia Times [Online], but it will definitely not be the last. Keep up the good work!
    J M Janicke
    Dallas, Texas (Aug 10, '06)


    Re The rising sun rising again [Aug 10]: Reading John Feffer is as though we are in a "twilight zone". Get real, guy. On August 15, Japan will have unconditionally surrendered 61 years ago. Mr Feffer is living in a time warp and has suckled on the sour milk of history. The Japan of then is not the Japan of today. He has imbibed the prejudices and the weights and chains of a Christmas Past. Should Japan find it of necessity to abrogate the American-imposed Peace Constitution, please, sir, lay the blame at the door of China, whose mock tears are as theatrical as they are false, or North Korea, whose rockets have provoked a hostile and rightfully defensive response from a Japan that thinks its territory may very well be under attack. If [Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro] Koizumi or his successor, who in all likelihood will be [Shinzo] Abe, seeks to rearm Japan, prejudices like those harbored by Mr Feffer might bring aid and comfort to those who see the world through the lenses of 60 and 70 or even 80 years past, and to whom the past is more palpable and realistic then the present. There is no cure for these rank sentimentalists of time stood still. It is more important to look the present in the eye and take stock of today's reality. That is something Mr Feffer in his abject, pious article regrettably does not do.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 10, '06)


    This is a comment on your article Landmark deal for Huawei (Aug 10). I have been watching the telecom industry for quite a long time. Two Chinese vendors (Huawei and ZTE) have been posing threats to major European and American vendors. However, growth of these two vendors can be attributed more to domestic protection than to innovation and their product or services. They have been desperately looking for such deals from major global vendors to validate their status. I am not sure at what cost this deal has come. As the article tells, no financial details were given. I won't be surprised if such deals are won [on a] negative transaction basis, where vendors even pay operators to "buy" their equipment. Huawei's ownership structure is not very clear (rumors are that it is flush with money coming from [a] "certain army"). Lack of accountability to public shareholders and murky ownership make such companies always doubtful in the long run.
    Ayush
    Orlando, Florida (Aug 10, '06)


    "The Abrahamic religions posit that their way to enlightenment and paradise is the only way, and that all other religions are a waste of time. This is the core, if not the definition, of religious intolerance, and it is found - usually without apology - in fundamentalist Christianity and Judaism just as much as in fundamentalist Islam" [ATol note under Chrysantha Wijeyasingha's letter, Aug 9]. Judaism, unlike her daughter faiths Christianity and Islam, was never a universalist religion. It is a fundamental error to conflate the intolerance of the war-lusting sons of the Inquisition and the bloodlust of the sons of jihad with the ever-tolerant and peace-promoting edicts of the Jewish sages. The rabbis of the Talmud repeatedly declared that the righteous of all the nations have a share in the world-to-come (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 105a). Moreover, any non-Jew who lives according to the Seven Noahide Laws is regarded as one of "the righteous among the gentiles" (Id, Sanhedrin 56a-b). The seven laws are: (1) Do not worship false gods. (2) Do no murder. (3) Do not steal or kidnap. (4) Do not commit acts of sexual immorality, such as incest, sodomy, and adultery. (5) Do not commit blasphemy. (6) Do not eat flesh that was torn from the body of a living animal (traditionally interpreted as a prohibition of cruelty to animals). (7) Set up a system of honest, effective law courts, criminal police and laws. "There was also a substantial period during which Muslims led the world in scientific advances, while Christians were busy burning 'heretics' - ie, people who wanted to think for themselves - at the stake" [same ATol note]. The Muslims themselves never "led the world in scientific advances". Their "Golden Age " is a myth growing out of Islamic military conquest, ruthless cultural imperialism, and far-ranging colonialism, as outlined in this monograph by Islamic myth-buster extraordinaire Serge Trifcovic. The alleged scientific and liberal-arts "advances" of the so-called Islamic Golden Age almost always came from non-Arab peoples, ie, Jews, Persians, Hindus, and the Christian cultures and peoples conquered by the desert Arabs in North Africa and Egypt, the Levant, and Asia Minor. Even "Arabic" numerals were stolen from the Hindus, who actually invented them. The Arabo-Muslims were not inventor-creators of knowledge - they were mere transmitters. Excuse the trope, but if the obscurantist Christian Science sect took over Oxford University's publishing house tomorrow, and books were printed solely under its imprimatur, would readers a century hence conclude that Christian Science deserved all the credit for the literary output published under its name? I was told during my undergrad days that one of the purposes of a university education was to go beyond cherished national self-aggrandizing story-myths we were all unsuspectingly spoon-fed in high school. Unfortunately, starting on September 12, 2001, when Americans collectively and reflexively turned to the usual-suspect academics and expert-popularizers on Islam in our attempts to understand what happened the day before, we were treated to hoary Arabo-Islamic story-myths that were soon enough exploded by groundbreaking scholarship, such as that of Andrew Bostom (The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, 2005), Robert Spencer (The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims, 2005 [see ATol review, Addressing Muslim rage, Aug 27, '05]) and Serge Trifkovic (The Sword of the Prophet: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, 2002).
    Richard Greene
    USA (Aug 10, '06)


    In Henry C K Liu's article The coming trade war and global depression [Jun 16, '05], he states that the Chinese military budget is no match for that of the US, which is 10 times higher. In the "bleeding edge" effort of military budgets, however, Chinese wages for engineers and scientists are 10 times less, and it is only this portion of the military budget that poses any real threat to the US.
    Jacques Farges (Aug 10, '06)


    Taking Kalyan's comments [letter, Aug 9] one step further: it seems not to have dawned on India that tough love may be in order. Daniel Levy, who has a better understanding of what's at stake, has finally woken up to the prospect of the backfiring of the "creative destruction" philosophy. [He writes in Haaretz] (Ending the neoconservative nightmare): "So far, US foreign policy seems to be plagued with one consistent feature: the brown thumb syndrome. The trend seems to be infinite in its capacity. India's leadership seems to be operating from a very simplistic mindset. This characteristic seems to be a common theme no matter which major party is in power: BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] or Congress. All the poor people get is the chance to throw out one set of rascals, so the next can come to power; with the process continuing at the next election. Democracy is supposed to lead to improved quality of leadership: not a fresh drink from same stagnant pool of unimproved quality in leadership. Time for some fresh blood is overdue."
    May Sage (Aug 10, '06)


    Re India hamstrung on Israel [Aug 9] by Praful Bidwai: Every country tries to follow its national interest when it comes to foreign policy. So it is with India. In the past 50 years of India's problems with Pakistan, not a single Arab country (barring Saddam [Hussein]'s Iraq) supported India, or for that matter adopted a neutral stance, on the issue of Kashmir. On the [other] hand India has been consistently supporting Palestine against Israel without getting anything in return for its support. How long can a nation adopt a one-way street in international relations? The likes of Praful Bidwai are better suited to pontificate from their ivory-tower pedestals to the seemingly lesser mortals who throng the real world. Mr Bidwai, who is an Indian citizen, must not forget the support and help received from the Israel Defense Forces right from the 1965 war with Pakistan down to last one fought in Kargil. India is doing what it needs to do to survive amidst the chaos surrounding it - just like Israel. India doesn't need advice on what to do and what not to do from the likes of Praful Bidwai.
    Kalyan (Aug 9, '06)


    The article India hamstrung on Israel [Aug 9] by Praful Bidwai is a masterpiece of how to twist the truth. First and foremost, the Hezbollah terrorist organization is fighting Israel within the Lebanese population and not in open-ground warfare. That means innocent [casualties]. The fact that Mr Bidwai takes great pains in avoiding this obvious fact shows his bias against Israel. Second, Mr Bidwai avoids mentioning the religious nature of what he terms "certain segments of the Indian population"; simply translated, the majority of them are Muslims with far-left-wing support within India. This story is repeated in Europe and in the US. So let's call a spade a spade. These are Muslims by [and] large and not the majority Hindus. Finally, Mr Bidwai avoids mentioning the fact that the Israeli military warns the Lebanese population by dropping leaflets, television notices etc that their area will be bombed. In contrast, Hezbollah is willfully targeting Israeli civilians [with] no warning whatsoever. I can congratulate Mr Bidwai on showing us how far truth can be twisted. I must disagree with your comment [under Wijeyasingha's letter of Aug 8]. "That is more or less the definition of an Abrahamic religion" does not apply to the history of Christianity, where during the Renaissance Christianity split between religion and science, which allowed debate on issues not found in either the Bible or the Torah. A classic example is (Jewish) [Albert] Einstein's Theory of Relativity [which] has nothing to do with the Torah, nor [does Isaac] Newton's theory of gravity [have anything] to do with the Bible.
    Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 9, '06)

    There was also a substantial period during which Muslims led the world in scientific advances, while Christians were busy burning "heretics" - ie, people who wanted to think for themselves - at the stake. But that seems irrelevant to our point, which was that by definition, the Abrahamic religions posit that their way to enlightenment and paradise is the only way, and that all other religions are a waste of time. This is the core, if not the definition, of religious intolerance, and it is found - usually without apology - in fundamentalist Christianity and Judaism just as much as in fundamentalist Islam. - ATol


    Richard M Bennett's and David McKenzie's Hezbollah - a clever and determined enemy (Aug 9) provides a crucial military analysis for the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. Yet it can be considered clever propaganda for the Israeli forces. The analysis indicates that in a variety of places skillful Hezbollah fighters hide their weapons and military equipment: "Missiles and other arms have been stored on farms and in garages, workshops and office blocks as well as in the cellars and roof spaces of private homes," and "Indeed, it is more than likely that many of the civilian casualties being repeatedly mentioned in the media are in fact Hezbollah fighters killed while hiding in civilian clothes." My basic conclusion of this sound military analysis is that it is a clear justification for killing innocent people and for destroying the infrastructure of Lebanon. The same tactic (or justification for destruction) has been used in Iraq when many civilians have been killed and all the Iraqi social capital has been destroyed under the pretext that insurgents are using these places to launch attacks on US military forces. The British internal forces used the same tactic when they killed one innocent Brazilian civilian in London (because he looked like an Arab) and explained his killing by contending that he was a terrorist carrying bombs, or a suicide bomber. If the "scientific" analysis of this article is generalized, Israel will have the right to kill all Lebanese and to destroy the entire social capital of the country by using the justification that the Israeli forces are destroying Hezbollah fighters and their supporting infrastructure. Frankly, the world has realized the basic goal behind these lies, which is the justification for the complete destruction of Arabs; hence they have become totally ineffective. In other words, these rationales, which are similar to the justifications of unintended consequences and collateral damage, are used to justify war crimes by some imperialist nations and their puppets. International laws based on liberty and democracy should disallow such justifications, and military and security forces equipped with advanced technology and information should hunt and destroy terrorists and criminals rather than innocent civilians and social capital.
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 9, '06)


    The example of Vietnam rings false [How not to Vietnamize Iraq , Aug 9]. The United States is balkanizing Iraq. George W Bush has taken a path which his father George H W Bush rejected after the Gulf War. The 41st [US] president had wise counsel in, say, [national security adviser] Brent Scowcroft, who saw in the toppling of Saddam Hussein the collapse of the Iraqi state into three weak entities, one grouping the Shi'a, another the Sunni, and still another the Kurds. This would have created a vacuum which would [have been] filled by the Islamic Republic of Iran as the region's dominant power. A decade or so later, Mr Bush fils has done just that. His policies have engendered religious division between Shi'a and Sunni, and fanned the flame of tribal hatred. Secretary of State [Condoleezza] Rice may say that this is but the birth pangs of democracy, but that is eyewash. In reality, the Bush's war in Iraq has sown the dragon teeth of division and collapse of Iraq. Former ambassador Peter Galbraith, son of the late economist and public intellectual John Kenneth Galbraith, has come out in book and articles calling for the carving up of Iraq into three separate states. Mr Bush fils has again proved a bad player on the world stage. He has set it so that his "enemies", the axis of evil that is Iran and Tehran's handmaiden Syria, are taking advantage of a shift of power relations in the Middle East: one away from the United States and Israel and to an extent Saudi Arabia.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 9, '06)


    The article The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance [Aug 8] by Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry makes some very good points. Regarding the latest Levantine war, the United States has adopted a morally obtuse and strategically ludicrous position. I usually don't like to nitpick operational plans from thousands of miles away, but while it is both patriotic and reasonable for Israeli leaders to wish to minimize their own military losses through greater reliance on air power, it is both arrogant and cowardly for them to do so at such terrible cost to the non-combatant population of Lebanon. The American government wishes to help Jerusalem avoid the costs of its campaign while still destroying Hezbollah by deploying European forces willy-nilly into a mopping-up role. At the same time, since the Iraq war is likely stalemated, Washington likely also believes (correctly) that those countries would then in effect be joining and possibly reinvigorate the American-led offensive in the Middle East. But this strategy promises only an unpredictable and sanguinary military confrontation with the entire region, enacting on a larger scale the present Lebanese imbroglio, where all the Arabs who have not yet joined the Islamist side are bombed into at least sympathizing with it. Instead, Europe's issues with Islamic fundamentalism call for a solid defense: the shield being negotiations with representative Islamic organizations (fundamentalist or otherwise) on the future of European Islam to avoid both racist hysteria and a surrender to any would-be neo-Ottomans, coupled with demographic, cultural revival among native Europeans (to give populist Islamists incentive to negotiate by denting their self-aggrandizing historical optimism), and economic growth (so that there are fewer young men with too much time on their hands). The sword would be aggressive counter-terrorism and police work combined with the military wherewithal to deter hostile outside meddling in this European problem. For the Europeans to avoid participation in an open-ended war in Lebanon is not kowtowing to lobby groups (something that cannot be said for America's stance in this matter); it would be enlightened patriotism.
    Jonathan X
    Canada (Aug 9, '06)


    Syed Saleem Shahzad: Your reporting has been outstanding [Dodging drones on the road from hell , Aug 8]. I fear that the Western media and political elite have little recognition that a prolonged insurgency is developing. Keep up your fine work. Stay safe!
    Chris (Aug 9, '06)


    Syed Saleem Shahzad: Just wanted to say that I and many other UK readers I know find your reports very informative yet extremely entertaining. Just be careful, though, for there seems to be a drone parked behind every cloud. Good luck and God keep you.
    Jabir (Aug 9, '06)

    The latest of Saleem's reports from Lebanon, 'We are just hit-and-run guerrillas' , is now online. - ATol


    A bellicocracy is a system of government where the people are ruled by a war machine. I have never seen this word before, but it does describe life in the 21st century. It might or might not be original to me, but if you find it suitable, please feel free to use it.
    Daniel Fey (Aug 9, '06)


    Spengler's Weep, drink and be Melly [Aug 8], an embarrassing and definitely un-entertaining takeoff on trite journalism exemplified by the columns once-gullible Americans read on a daily basis ("Ask Ann Landers") in major dailies, bespeaks hints of potential nervous breakdowns due to "latent paranoid schizophrenia". Those specific three words are a favorite of Spengler's, having been used a number of times to silence a number of participants on his forum in ATol's original Edge. One is left wondering why he did not ask himself this question: "Dear Spengler, I am contractually obligated to the Disney people to do a miniseries on the Holocaust. And to be honest I believe that with more and more movies, miniseries and references, audiences all over the world, and especially in America, will forget the impending arrival of the Rapture. I think I can get out of it by speeding and getting stopped by the police. And acting drunk and mumbling something about the Jews will do the trick. Que pensez-vous, cher Spengler? Signed, Melly."
    Armand De Laurell (Aug 8, '06)


    In reference to The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance [Aug 8], it may be the beginning of a stronger and better alliance of European nations. Who would miss John Bolton and the US secretary of state from any serious negotiations trying to solve international problems? Trying to solve problems of violence with more violence resulting in more violence is like the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. The French, since the time of Charles de Gaulle, have positioned themselves to be independent of the US. Thank goodness for that foresight, or else the US would roll over everyone in Europe at any international conference. There is a huge groundswell of anti-US involvement in anything international which is slowly rising. Maybe it will be strong enough to buck the tide of US money and coercion. Remember back in the year 2000 when Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs were the world's biggest problem? Monica, oh how I miss you!
    Ken Moreau
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 8, '06)


    Your writers on the Middle East conflict are probably the best I've seen. It is great to have the seemingly unbiased analytical and historical perspective that is provided. I have a question that I would love some of your writers to address. If Lebanon has a 75,000-man military and their country is being devastated by Israeli bombs, why don't they even defend their own country? What is the purpose of the military? Is it in name only? Thank you for your great work.
    John Hawley
    Lake Forest Park, Washington (Aug 8, '06)


    Peter Morici has hit the nail on the head in assessing the character and intentions of Henry "Hank" Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and now [US] secretary of the treasury [Henry Paulson: Defender of the yuan? Jul 8]. Mr Paulson is out to change China. He has visited the People's Republic of China 70 times at least, according to his own reckoning. He has helped funnel billions of private investment dollars there. Goldman Sachs has profited from his handiwork. It has bought a share in the Industrial Commercial Bank of China. Currently, it will profit from a handsome fee ushering in the IPO [initial public offering] of the Bank of China. It has advised Beijing on bringing other state enterprises on the world markets. So, steeped in his moneyed prejudices, he sees it in America's interests to pamper China, and mollycoddle the Chinese to buy more American debt. Secretary Paulson won't [rock] the boat. He will continue doing business as usual but this time as a high-ranking bureaucrat. He is an admirer of China in the same way former [US] secretary of state [Henry] Kissinger is. Beijing plays mightily to use them as shills for its own interests. It would be worth the candle had read Jonathan Spence's To Change China, a cautionary tale of those Americans who set out to influence and alter China's comportment and, in the end, have China change them, by putting China's interest ahead of their own and their country's.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 8, '06)


    The article by Chan Akya [China and India in World War III, Jul 26] is immature and incorrect. Here are the flaws in his or her way of thinking. If there is a World War III, China will be in a position of strength due to its friendship with OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] countries and its ability to find energy resources from other places in the world like Iran. India is not in the same position; it does [sic] have friendly relationships with the OPEC countries and has jeopardized its relationship with Iran for nil gain from the USA. Also Chinese interests and Western, [especially] American, interests and economy are too intertwined for them to be at war. India is the country which will be affected most as it will be not only be surrounded by hostile Islamic countries but it has a large hostile fifth column inside its borders which would see it as an opportunity to achieve [its] aim of [turning] India from dar ul-harb [non-Islamic state] to dar ul-Islam. And please don't use the name [Chanakya], he was a realistic thinker and did not indulge in wishful thinking which we Indians are so fond of doing.
    Damini (Aug 8, '06)


    "It should also be noted that much of the [Israel-Lebanon] border in that area [where Hezbollah captured to Israeli soldiers] is nothing like the well-marked borders in the Western world - it is ill-defined and porous ..." [ATol note under Fred Johnson's letter, Aug 7]. Au contraire, mon frere. The Lebanese-Israeli border to which Israel withdrew behind in 2000 was not in any way, shape or form "ill-defined", porous though it may have been, thanks to UNIFIL [United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon] failing to carry out its original 1978 mandate to expedite the securing of the border for the benefit of both Israel and Lebanon (not to mention Israel's six-year forbearance of Hezbollah's blatant ongoing violation of UN resolutions mandating that the Lebanese army exercise sovereignty over Hezbollahstan). Israel's 2000 withdrawal was UN-certified, painstakingly mapped out to the centimeter. Here is the official statement from the president of the UN Security Council verifying the full compliance of Israel with regard to its withdrawal behind the UN-demarcated international borderline between Lebanon and Israel.
    Richard Greene
    USA (Aug 8, '06)

    Thanks for the clarification. But the point is that it's not always easy to tell in areas like that exactly which country one is in, or, as is more likely in this case, it's easy to claim (and difficult to disprove later) that something took place in one country when it actually happened in another. - ATol


    I take strong objection to some letter writer using some name from somewhere, to try to generalize all the "Indians" and try to paint their picture as if they are less dignified. This person shows his poor mentality and [inferiority] complex by trying to paint and portray his race better than others. I can see and hope some others agree or smell such remarks and its hidden agenda. His views are no better than that of a frog in a well. I hope you will not let your esteemed online journal [turn] into a cheap propaganda website of [a] certain totalitarian government in disguise. If you are such, I doubt my letter will be published as my previous letter ran into the same fate as being "dumb". There are enough ways to amuse your readers than to let loose a particular letter writer to paint a particular race or nationality in such poor light. Such racist remarks need the treatment, trash can, which unfortunately is reserved for letter writers which may not amuse you enough.
    Ayush
    Orlando, Florida (Aug 8, '06)


    Since the ATol editors are spreading erroneous messages about my canine analogies [see note under Frank's letter of Aug 7], I am entitled to clarify my position. The usage of animal analogies is an East Asian tradition. In today's Mongol and Tibetan cultures, animal analogies are used in their daily conversations. East Asians usually describe certain human behaviors or mentalities as I described in my previous letters as dog behaviors or mentalities. That analogy is not targeted to [a] certain race. Any race has certain people [who] behave like dogs. Black Americans regard them as Uncle Tom. East Asians are more frank in that area. There are a large number of Chinese people [who] behave like dogs. When a Chinese writer at ATol exhibited any dog mentalities, I did not hesitate to let other people know either. My letters are for the purpose of promoting awareness to those dog mentalities among ATol writers. I did not target the Indian race exclusively. Indians are no different than us. There are good ones, there are bad ones. Please read my previous letters in the [Letters] Archives and make a judgment yourself. In the meantime, I hope ATol editors should grant their readers full freedom of expression. That is the important factor in a democratic society.
    Frank of Seattle
    Washington, USA (Aug 8, '06)

    And that's why we have The Edge forum. This page is primarily for intelligent comment on ATol articles, not for slanging matches between readers. - ATol


    I would like to comment on the comments made in the Letters to the Editor. It is interesting to note that almost every [commentator] with a Muslim name ... has an excuse or praise for the actions of Islamic terrorists. Hardly one even dares find any critical thought of their radical Muslim brotherhood. If a radical Islamic terrorist causes mayhem and destruction there is always a "good reason" for their actions, but if a non-Muslim comes even close to the actions of radical Islamic terrorist they are damned, dishonored and criticized ad nauseam. Obviously many Muslim [commentators] don't understand the principles of balanced comments. In their eyes Muslims cannot do wrong and non-Muslims are constantly the "evil ones".
    Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 8, '06)

    Well, isn't that more or less the definition of an Abrahamic religion? See The West in an Afghan mirror (Mar 28). - ATol


    Listen, I love the fact that you guys are getting bigger - every chance I get I'm always turning people on to ATimes ... I've been with you guys after I saw a related link from a Yahoo story ... but please don't get too big. If you get bought out I'm gone, if you get hubris I'm gone. I love your reporters, they are raw ... I need you guys to stay independent and global - you can stay legitimate and still make a lot of money. Don't sell out!
    JA
    Los Angeles, California (Aug 8, '06)


    Re 'The US is the kiss of death' in the Arab world [Aug 5]: As excellent a writer as he is, Jim Lobe fails to mention one salient fact: the US does not care how unpopular it might become with the masses in the Arab world. American foreign policy has always rested on establishing tight control over key strongmen and dictators wherever it may have significant economic or geopolitical interests. In the so-called Arab world, this is eminently the case. Even the chronically unobservant must have sensed by now how suspiciously quiet both the "elected" and hereditary Arab leaders are when it comes to the ongoing massacre of the civilian population of Lebanon. Truth be told, Arab leaders, from [President Hosni] Mubarak in Egypt to the whore-masters of the Gulf states, are quite happy to wear the golden collar and leash of American suzerainty. It's an old Roman trick that the Americans have merely perfected.
    Jose R Pardinas, PhD
    San Diego, California (Aug 7, '06)


    Jim Lobe's 'The US is the kiss of death' in the Arab world (Aug 5) is an excellent analysis for the expected global collapse of the Bush administration's foreign policy, particularly in the Arab world. I am interested in complementing his analysis by emphasizing some essential issues that were overlooked. First, the Bush administration is intentionally downgrading its allies (or puppets) in the Arab world. It empowers them with nothing but persistent humiliation. In fact, it gives them the well-known signal that you are either with us or against us. Even ignorant individuals on the Arab streets know that the Bush administration depends on the unlimited use of military power, not diplomacy or political power, to [subdue] nations. Given this realization, I predict that some of the Arab regimes, including Jordan, will have to maneuver by establishing an alliance with Syria and Iran. When this alliance occurs, it will put the project of the Bush administration and Israel on the verge of collapse, because the Iranian and the Lebanese mullahs, along with the Iraqis and the rest, will be united against their sole enemies, triggering very costly fights that may destroy the entire region, including US friends. The Bush administration thinks it has the military power to [subdue] people and break their will permanently, but the administration does not realize the fact that millions of Iraqis will be willing to die if Muqtada al-Sadr (or [Ali al-]Sistani) gives his fatwa. If a fatwa is issued, it will be clear for who is in charge of Iraq. Millions of people will die for that fatwa, and all the sectarian division, which the US strategy depends on in Iraq, will end ... Second, the "New Middle East" means the subjection of Arabs to the US and the Israeli occupation. This lousy concept of a colonized Arab world does not help the US in the region, nor does it provide a comfort for US puppets. The Bush administration has been ridiculed in the Arab world by using concepts such as liberation, democratization, and the "New Middle East". This is because all of these concepts, which may find market in the US, converge into one line: humiliation of the Arab people. Third, it is not the Israeli policy that has generated extremism into the world; it is the Bush administration's foreign policy ... Fourth, people do understand that the Bush administration's foreign policy is tough on the weak and weak on the tough such as North Korea, whose case has been forgotten by the media. Rationally, the weak people will be united against such a policy ...
    Adil Mouhammed
    Illinois, USA (Aug 7, '06)


    Jim Lobe's assessment of the effect the current crisis in Lebanon is having on the United States' image in the world is misleading in a number of ways ['The US is the kiss of death' in the Arab world, Aug 5]. First, almost every outburst of violence brings a wave of anti-American protests and demonstrations. Second, Lobe does not speak with the pro-American forces in the area, including besides Israel a host of minorities even in Lebanon. Third, Lobe speaks with none of those scholars strongly critical of radical Islam who feel that Israel is acting against a danger not only to itself but to the West and the world as a whole. I do not doubt that there is great anti-American feeling in the region, but there is also much pro-American feeling which is not fairly given its place.
    Shalom Freedman (Aug 7, '06)


    [Re] 'The US is the kiss of death' in the Arab world [Aug 5] by Jim Lobe: This article is totally anti-American. Your [medium] doesn't recognize that Israel has constantly given in to Arab demands on the West Bank and in Gaza and every time they give, they get bombed, or terrorized. Radical terrorist Arab Islamists are the cause of this trouble, not Israel. America will stand for freedom of any law-abiding civilized country, but we won't kowtow to terrorists. They must be stopped. If they want to have freedom they have to become men, civilized, not savages such as they currently are behaving. I am amazed at the restraint Israel has shown in the current crisis. Israel has [very] strong measures they could have used by now.
    BLD (Aug 7, '06)


    Syed Saleem Shahzad: Good to have brave people like you to cover the Lebanon crisis [Israel takes aim at Lebanon's soft underbelly, Aug 5], and also good to know that you're a Pakistani. At least you can openly express your opinion of what you see. I am a regular reader of your columns as well as I am following your daily coverage of the crisis. I would suggest you also write about the Israeli casualties and take the Lebanese view about the indifference of the international community towards the ceasefire.
    Nadia (Aug 7, '06)


    Syed Saleem Shahzad: I read your column from Los Angeles in the US; I've been reading ATimes for years. I really enjoy and count on your writing and work. It's very informative, I feel objective, and your analysis right on. Good luck in all your travels. Thank you and be well.
    Jubin Ajdari (Aug 7, '06)


    [Kaveh L] Afrasiabi jumps the gun [It's about annexation, stupid! Aug 5] Annexation, says he. Israel has little stomach to "rule" again in southern Lebanon. Looking at the way General Dan Halutz has been carrying out the war, Premier [Ehud] Olmert has put his money on bombing into submission Hezbollah, so that Israeli troops need not occupy Lebanese territory. Had General Halutz read his history manuals, bombs kill and maim; they destroy infrastructure; they create flight of people for safety elsewhere, but never do they hold the ground. For that soldiers are needed. And the more Israeli soldiers and reservists that invade neighboring Lebanon, the greater the casualties for the Israelis, the more especially since Hezbollah is fighting a war of partisans. Israel looks to its protector the United States to pull its chestnuts out of the fire at the United Nations. And it looks as though Washington may very well be able to deliver the goods. UN troops will set up a cordon sanitaire, which will keep Hezbollah on a leash, and allow Israel to withdraw to its borders which will remain heavy armed. Still, Israel has not stayed the hand of its air force nor its ground troops. In consequence the reign of terror launched from the sky or from American-supplied tanks and materiel has so weakened Lebanon that Israel and America hope that the "terrorists" will gird loins and lick the wounds of defeat. Of course this is a pipe dream of sorts. Mr Olmert has picked a fight out of ignorant condescension. He and his military thought that they could dispose of a pesky Hezbollah quick, which has [proved] them wrong on all accounts, for Hezbollah has brought from the skies death and destruction in Israel itself. It looks as though the patchwork quilt of diplomacy at the United Nations will again put a Band-Aid on a festering wound that cries out for a good, carefully crafted treaty involving return of prisoners on both sides, a peace treaty guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Lebanon. Israel has to wake up to the fact that, militarily overarmed, it has to sue for peace with its neighbors.
    Jakob Cambria
    USA (Aug 7, '06)


    The [August 5] article by Kaveh Afrasiabi [It's about annexation, stupid! Aug 5] continues to maintain that the July 11 capture of Israel's soldiers happened on the Israeli side of the border, a claim disputed by many sources, including Asia Times [Online] in a July 15 article. I wish you would either get your writers to get their facts straight or come to some accurate conclusion as to exactly what happened when and have your writers stick to it. There is too much misinformation going around about this event and to have one news outlet with differing reporting of the same event is misleading, to say the least. Please get your facts straight and keep the reporting consistent.
    Fred Johnson (Aug 7, '06)

    Our early articles on the current Middle East crisis reflected media reports at the time that the Israeli soldiers had been captured on the Lebanese side of the border. Those early reports were soon put in doubt, but some media continue to insist that the capture took place on the Lebanese side. It now appears that to those with an ax to grind on either side of the Israel-Hezbollah dispute (ie, who "started" it), the actual location of the event matters far less than the political points to be scored from one point of view of the other. It should also be noted that much of the border in that area is nothing like the well-marked borders in the Western world - it is ill-defined and porous. Asia Times Online has excellent contacts in the region, and we accept their evaluation of the situation. - ATol


    Chan Akya's analogy of dogs in his article Chinese reforms: The dog didn't bark [Aug 5] is a very interesting one. Akya is right. Dogs only bark at the people who do not follow their master's rules. Dogs were viewed by Indians as white men's best friends. However, East Asians' view of dogs are completely different than Indians'. Dogs are just animals to many East Asians. Dogs fight other people's wars. Dogs do not care about their siblings. In many cases, dogs attack their own kind. Dogs wiggle their tails for a piece of bone. Dogs are proud of to be with their masters. That is why white people love their dogs. They feed them, dress them and introduce them to modern civilizations. However, those white masters never regard their dogs as equal. They never hesitate to kick the dogs out of their own seats. Please visit ATol Letter Archives for detailed discussions of doggie behaviors. I am sure you will find many comic [relief] readings there.
    Frank of Seattle
    Washington, USA (Aug 7, '06)

    Newcomers to Asia Times Online may not know that Frank was banned some time ago from using canine analogies on this page to insult certain races. - ATol


    I am horrified at the mass slaughter of dogs in China currently taking place. It is very irresponsible of the Chinese government to not provide opportunity for owners to have rabies shots for their pets. Killing thousands of animals in front of their owners is barbaric and [sheds] an extremely poor light on the Chinese government.
    Judy Landkamer (Aug 7, '06)


    I read in the news that the US plans to train and equip the Lebanese military if and when this war will be allowed to end. Reminds me of one of Mark Twain's sarcastic prophecies: "By and by, when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5 million soldiers, we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed." Also, I concur completely with the analysis of Pepe Escobar (Lost paraguayos: The Yankees are coming [Aug 4]). Many of the US operations are created, fostered and promoted by people who see an opportunity for making a name for themselves in the impenetrable bureaucracy of the CIA [US Central Intelligence Agency] and the Pentagon. What amazes me is that the US government can get so many people all around the world doing all of these illegal and immoral activities with no thought about what they are doing. Any desired situation can be created with enough money. The saying "money talks and bullshit walks" almost sums up US foreign policy. Thanks for a great online news source.
    Ken Moreau
    New Orleans, Louisiana (Aug 7, '06)


    Ioannis Gatsiounis writes some great stuff on Malaysia (In Malaysia, too sensitive for debate [Aug 4]). As a former non-Malay citizen, many of his articles certainly hit home with me. The sentiments and distrust among races are very real despite the false images prime ministers (current and former) portray to the West - a blatant disregard for the truth and sensitivities of the non-Malays there and attempts to continue to bring more wealth to the elite Malays, I suspect. Your facts are right on. Keep up the good work, Ioannis ...
    S K Raghavan (Aug 7, '06)


    Ioannis Gatsiounis is correct in dispelling the myth of Malaysia as a country of religious tolerance [In Malaysia, too sensitive for debate, Aug 4]. In fact the opposite is true. In recent decades the country has institu