Asia Times Online

Letters

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.

June 2007

Re Pakistan to help as the US's jailer (Jun 29) by Syed Saleem Shahzad: Imagine if the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was not so much a place to interrogate what the US government labels "enemy combatants", but that it was a place where a dialogue could be held between inmates and key representatives of the Western world. Moderate Muslims, Orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians and even secular humanists would all be given the prime opportunity to help close the gap in what has so far proved to be the most intractable religious divide in human history. Indeed, ever since US President George W Bush declared a "war on terror" in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, the enemy was - from that very precise moment - designated as being of no more value than filthy swine, who all deserved to be eradicated on a global scale. Never once was it ever contemplated that instead of making a declaration of war, it would be far better to enter into a concerted engagement with the ideological (and theological) underpinnings of a movement that is impossible to eradicate by the use of force alone. Hence for both US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to suggest that President Bush should transfer Guantanamo's detainees to the US, saying the facility undercuts US foreign-policy efforts, is a gross understatement and entirely misses the point. Likewise, by returning inmates to special facilities in their countries of origin, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and even Egypt, as a means of circumventing prisoner protection from what is internationally deemed as "torture", will only ensure that the "war on terror" tragically lasts for many generations to come.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra, Australia (Jun 29, '07)

"Gaza is a gulag. The West Bank is a series of unconnected ghettoes. Baghdad is now a gulag. Iraq has been reduced to a series of unconnectable ghettoes." Surely Pepe Escobar [Hamastan and Red Zoneistan, Jun 29], perceptive as he generally is, misses the point here: these are not "ghettoes" and "gulags", merely "gated communities", specially designed for the convenience of the poor - examples of the benefits brought by "trickle down theory", when applied to the field of politics as well as economics.
M Henri Day, PhD, MD
Stockholm, Sweden (Jun 29, '07)

Like the weights and chains of [Charles] Dickens' Jacob Marley, Malaysia's race-based affirmative-action policy has come back to haunt Kuala Lumpur. As Anil Netto reports [Malaysia's race-based policy spoils EU ties, Jun 29], European multinationals have cast an eye on the Malaysian market but the existence of [a policy] favoring bumiputeras in business share, ownership, employment, and educational opportunities, to the European Union top officials, has a bad odor of protectionism and discrimination which runs afoul of the European Union's practices. Originally decreed to lift the majority Malays out of backwardness, the bumiputera policy has become not a right but a privilege. The Chinese and the Indians are denied equal opportunity in housing [and] land ownership, and to the liberal hand which favors Malays, and they tend either to emigrate or study abroad. There is no denying that this form of positive discrimination has created a relatively broader Malay middle class, yet it is likewise an open secret that in business ventures, the Malay partner fronts for, say, Chinese monies and entrepreneurial skills. Anwar Ibrahim, in his bid to return to public life after his time in prison, has called for an end to bumiputera-ism, to rally Chinese and Indians to gather under his party's banners. His call may remain unheeded, though. Discrimination against the Chinese and Indians has resulted in a brain drain. New York's Chinatown in fact has a large pool of undocumented Malaysian-Chinese. They fare better than Chinese from mainland China, for they are better educated, speak English, and are fluent not only in Mandarin but in many Chinese dialects. The European Union has called Kuala Lumpur's hand. Despite good economic growth, the country has remained insular, yet hardly confident. This said, inertia, sadly and ridiculously enough, will keep things as they [currently] are in place, and European multinationals will find safer and more productive havens elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 29, '07)

Thank you very much for your series of articles by Roger Morris on [The Gates Inheritance, beginning with] The tortured world of US intelligence [Jun 23]. This series now consumes a lot of space on my hard disk. And printed out in full, [it] would take a lot of pages. Well worthwhile. I'm at a total loss as to why there has been no feedback to date via ATimes Letters to the Editor on this article. Not a jot. I had fully expected many letters refuting Roger Morris's facts. I've read and reread Roger Morris's contribution several times over and all I feel is an overwhelming sense of disgust and horror. This has been done in "our" name? Let's not single out the USA. Australia, Britain and a great many other countries are equally compliant, while we the "sheeple" continue to remain ignorant. No wonder we live in the world in which we live, and so we serially condemn our young. How many Americans and British kids have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq? Moreover, how many Afghans and Iraqis have been killed? No wonder we had 9/11, no wonder we had Bali 10/12, no wonder we had 3/11 Madrid, no wonder we had 7/7 Britain. We will never learn until people shed their prejudices, throw these fools out of power, make our governments accountable, make the mass media report the facts instead of parroting government handouts, unite for social justice for all and go forward together. Oh, I forgot - there's not a great deal of profit in that.
Ian C Purdie
Budgewoi, Australia (Jun 29, '07)

We did get one letter on the concluding article of the three-part series (The world that Bob made, Jun 27), from Armand De Laurell (Jun 27), but like yours, it did not refute any of Roger Morris's facts. Part 2 in the series was Great games and famous victories (Jun 26). - ATol

The truce made a couple of months ago between Hamas and Fatah in forming a unity government [in Palestine], brokered by Saudi King Abdullah, has not yielded the desired results in terms of peace in the region. It is not clear whether the Arab nations [will] finally achieve the objective of a Palestine state in the near future. On the contrary, the situation has become even more explosive. It once appeared that the USA and Israel intended to create two separate nations out of the tiny parts of Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank, and the latest developments in the region point to that possibility more clearly. Perhaps they think that the establishment of two Palestinian states, one each for Hamas and Fatah, according to the strategists of the USA and Israel, would stop wars between Israel and Arabs, though the wars are being waged by Israel on Palestine and Lebanon, [causing] provocative responses from the Palestinians and Lebanese. It is not certain if [Mahmoud] Abbas behaves in good faith and the US and Israel have changed heart in favor of the Palestinians. But they could have given the revenues without letting the people starve and fight themselves. The signs of enthusiasm displayed by both the USA and Israel after the Hamas government was sacked by Abbas indicates their hidden agenda. In case the changes being carried out by Abbas at the instance of the USA and Israel are not to resolve the crisis or establish a Palestine cause, then the crisis could remain as explosive as ever. The winner would remain Israel. The possible two nations, if created by the long-charted plan of the Israel-USA strategists, would probably help Israel to be free from war with the Palestinians directly, and Hamas and Fatah would fight another never-ending war, with Israel supplying arms for Fatah and perhaps the Arab nations for Hamas. The result would be a disaster for the Palestinians themselves. The dreams of PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] founder Yasser Arafat, who died an unhappy man after struggling … for an independent Palestine, would remain unfulfilled and the rivalry of the Palestinians as well as rampant corruption and hatred politics only betray the objectives set by him. [One] doubts if [agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency] have infiltrated the ranks of Hamas and Fatah. But the Arab cause has not completely lost as yet. The Arab leaders could form a strong bloc to be known as the Islamic Security Organization (or Arab Security Organization) that, unlike the notorious NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] or the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], serves as a purely defensive front by pooling the resources of all Islamic countries. The prime objective should be to safeguard the legitimate interests of Islamic nations, Islam and world Muslims with special focus on Palestine. [One would hope that] not only the Palestinian but all other important issues facing the Muslim nations as well as scattered Muslim nations would find reliable resolutions in due course. Saudi King Abdullah, the only person who perhaps Hamas and Fatah trust, could take the lead right away, and not to retreat by the latest setback.
Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
New Delhi, India (Jun 29, '07)

Re Earth, wind, solar fire fuel India future [Jun 28]: Siddharth Srivastava's article on non-fossil-fuel energy sources isn't very comforting. Why? What is the chance they will be able to fill the gap in eight years? Guess what, we find out from a Guardian article that, yes, Iraq was about oil, but about peak oil - which is too close for comfort for those who didn't plan for it. Of course, when you are suffering from fossilized thinking, you just press the accelerator in reverse ...
May Sage
USA (Jun 28, '07)

Re Nuclear disarmament: Over to you, Pyongyang [Jun 28]: Ralph Cossa tells us the poop. It's a moment when the old Cold War reflexes begin to kick in again. Cossa may lift his hat off to US assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill, but he forgets the salient point of the exercise. Were it not for Pyongyang's agreement to go forward on the denuclearization process, Hill would have returned to Washington with his tail between his legs. Cossa has gotten it wrong. [The North Koreans weren't] bribed. They simply pocketed the US$25 million from Banco Delta Asia in Macau, which is rightfully theirs, and [over] which the United States brought its full weight not only to freeze Pyongyang's account in that bank, but also to tar that very bank's reputation, thereby denying it business. Had [US President George W] Bush and Co played a cool hand in the diplomatic game with North Korea, Pyongyang wouldn't have gone to the extremes of detonating an atomic device, which sent the five powers scrambling for a way of containing North Korea. The Bush White House is not good at grandstanding in foreign affairs. During President Bush's seven years in office, he has gone from one ill-conceived failure to another. Strutting around like the cock of the walk impresses no one. It is not difficult to draw up a list of his failings: the lamentable war in Iraq, the intractable face-off with Iran, daring [Russian President] Vladimir Putin to knock the chip of Washington's shoulder. And these are the obvious examples. It is, rather, to North Korea's credit that it respects the commitments that it made in the February agreement at the six-power conference in Beijing. A postscript: R Ahmed [letter, Jun 27] has hastily reacted to my letter to the editor [Jun 26] about Pakistan. He has drawn, sadly, the wrong conclusions: it was hardly an attack against Pakistan nor against Muslims. It is on the other hand a way of distinguishing a white thread of truth from the black one of jumbled confusion at the hour of dawn.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 28, '07)

Re A deadly blow for Iraqi reconciliation (Jun 28): The excellent analysis given by Sami Moubayed of the political fallout following the deaths of six notable US-allied sheikhs in the Mansour Hotel bombing in Baghdad points to what no Western analyst will acknowledge: there can never be any progress in the "war on terror" until the West is willing to negotiate - and yes, to do even the unthinkable, to reconcile with al-Qaeda. As Moubayed so succinctly puts it, "The attack seems a serious warning to senior Sunni leaders not even to think of working against al-Qaeda in Iraq, or with the US-backed government." Moreover, what do we make of the Republican Party's most respected elder statesman on national-security matters, Senator Richard Lugar, calling not only for a "tactical drawdown" of US forces in Iraq, but that it be coupled with a greater focus on efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (see Jim Lobe's A Republican 'surge' against Bush, Jun 28)? Is not Senator Lugar here intimating there is a link between this conflict and the situation in Iraq by virtue of the fact that the US is also seen as a partner in the crimes committed against the Palestinians? And does it not necessarily follow that if a resolution to the conflict can be found, then this will help neutralize al-Qaeda's influence in the region - to the point where a reconciliation with the West may even be considered possible?
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra, Australia (Jun 28, '07)

Khody Akhavi's article Neo-cons take spin to US-backed airwaves [Jun 26] forgets to mention the other US government implicitly sanctioned media propaganda outlets, such as Fox and CNN News. Both of these so-called "news" channels are nothing more than an echo chamber for White House talking points. That is, when they aren't covering some real news, like whatever craziness the blond bimbo of the moment is up to here in the States. The American mainstream media outlets only cover one side of the many stories in the turbulent Middle East. That side is the one that shows Israel in a very soft light, while neglecting to tell or using agitprop to spin their message about Palestine, Iraq and Iran. That message is that "war is good" and "if in doubt, use force". If that doesn't work, use more force. My guess is that the majority of the people in the Middle East are much more savvy, intelligent and knowing when it comes to seeing and experiencing first hand actions of the American Empire. These folks won't be swayed by AEI [American Enterprise Institute] propaganda. Meanwhile, back here in the States, we have much meatier fare to digest, like the June 26 front-page article - with photo - of what the New York Times determined to be "newsworthy". Was it a story about war? Famine? More "collateral damage"? No. It was a story about Paris Hilton getting out of jail. And that is the type of slop the "newspaper of record" decided to showcase on its front page. Now excuse me while I go puke.
Greg Bacon
Ava, Missouri (Jun 28, '07)

Spengler's recent article on Palestinian affairs [I told you so, essentially, Jun 19] is yet another example of the-end-justifies-the-means logic (illogic). Take that most incompetent NGO [non-governmental organization] of all, the UN, or League of Nations as it was then, throw in some bumbling nations like the UK and USA, and you have the Palestine/Israel "problem" - the most stupid, outrageous, criminal concept called "Israel", a "nation" that cannot support itself that must be protected and propped up in order to survive. Oh, what a brilliant idea! Forget about the indigenous people, they don't matter, they're just like the native [Americans], the Tibetans, expendable and forgotten. What is important is that the end justifies the means, right?
Richard Shanks (Jun 28, '07)

The US government for whatever reason - possibly due to its economic desires throughout Asia - has now decided to formally back those who complain about the "comfort women" ordeal and other atrocities committed by Japanese troops during World War II. While I don't disagree that such evils occurred, I don't think it is wise for America, or any other third-party nation, to jump on the bandwagon and choose sides on the matter. Especially for the United States, this strategy is ill-advisable, specifically due to our [US] current security treaty and long-standing economic/political partnership with Japan. Having officially chosen a side basically amounts to the United States turning its back to an important ally. Likewise, since the US and many other Western states didn't officially protest during or immediately after the atrocities transpired, to do so now is unfair to modern Japanese who, like the victims, must also live with the memory of their military's regrettable wartime policies. By choosing sides, we are in effect holding an entire generation accountable for war-crime debts that have already been paid during the 1946 Tokyo Tribunals. Sure, to many people the Japanese government hasn't sufficiently apologized for its inability to control the military. However, to demand a firm apology and compensation only opens the door for other victims to demand the same closure. This would mean that the United States should apologize to the native Americans for stealing their land, the Latin Americans for intervening in the Western Hemisphere, the Philippines for colonizing our "little brown brothers", possibly even the innocent victims of America's aerial bombing campaigns during the Tokyo raids of World War II or the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings that ended the war. Last but not least, there is the issue that hits closer to home for me - slavery. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush both went on the record as saying slavery was bad, but neither has come right out to apologize to African-Americans for its legacy. Since the world is now poised to hear a sincere apology, perhaps the House [of Representatives] should reconvene and vote on the slavery matter too, thereby laying it to rest. I'm ready to receive my 40 acres and a mule on behalf of my ancestors - scratch that, I'll take the land and a convertible Mustang instead!
Maurice Dudley
Okinawa, Japan (Jun 28, '07)

I would like to express my profound pleasure at seeing the most horrendous liar [about] Iraq's WMD [weapons of mass destruction], Tony Blair, finally leave 10 Downing Street - or, should I express myself more adequately, kicked out by his own Labour Party to save it from a disastrous humiliation at the next [British] general election. If the American electorate have the slightest wisdom of a snail, they should learn a lesson from Mr Blair's humiliated exit and throw out another horrendous liar with pea-size brain, G W Bush, from office.
Saqib Khan
UK (Jun 28, '07)

The article Finding lessons in Gaza's bloodshed [Jun 27] by Ramzy Baroud was an eye-opener and highlighted how the Palestinian situation has graphically illustrated the hypocrisy of the Western world (which is were I happen to reside) on the topic of democracy. The West invades countries in the name of "democracy", while ostracizing winners of legitimate democratic elections because they are not pliable and willing to be enslaved by the West. Moreover, other non-democratic, even anti-democratic, countries (read China) are granted MFN [most favored nation] status because this happens to be in line with the West's economic interests. We look forward to more insightful articles such as this one by Ramzy Baroud.
Jasmine
Texas, USA (Jun 27, '07)

Re Finding lessons in Gaza's bloodshed [Jun 27]: The leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority have concluded a meeting at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh. They gathered to inflate the sagging authority of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazam, of Fatah after being chased from Gaza by the Hamas-led government. It may surprise Ramzy Baroud that Egypt's Hosni Mubarak supported his call for dialogue between Hamas and Fatah, in order to heal the rent in the Palestinian cause, and strive for the creation of a Palestinian state. The call for reconciliation is at odds [with] the meeting's agenda to crown Abu Mazam as the undisputed voice of Palestinians. Expressing this wish won't make it so. Israeli Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert played his usual game of promises without much hope of fully assuring the release of Palestinians [from] Israeli jails, albeit only Fatah members, or releasing the hostage monies that Israel has steadfastly refused to turn over to the duly elected Hamas government. We can expect Olmert to use an eye-dropper to deliver on his promises, thereby making Palestinians drink a bowl of bitter tea. Mr Abbas has said the right things: he condemned Hamas, which pleased no end Israel and Jordan, and read the script that the United States, Great Britain, and the European Union wrote. There are many lessons to be learned from the blood that flowed in Gaza, but they have little chance of seeing the [light of] day given the overwhelming odds that face a divided Palestinian people.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 27, '07)

Re Roger Morris's The world that Bob made [Jun 27]: ATol again publishes an epic and classic expose as a definitive response to the much-publicized and most lame statement ever made, "Why do they hate us?" Mr Morris's daring encapsulation of the preludes to why we are where we are suggests guidelines to the future. Will future leaders learn from these, or will they learn nothing and forget nothing? An excellent read.
Armand De Laurell (Jun 27, '07)

Jakob Cambria [letter, Jun 26]: Once in a while I enjoyed some real insightful stuff from you, but now it seems, like your [brother] Spengler, your hatred of Muslims and Pakistanis in particular has taken over your better brain cells. M K Bhadrakumar knows his stuff and is a real expert in the field of diplomacy and politics. The fact that he is an Indian national has not clouded his thinking when he is writing, unlike some others who wear their religion and ethnicity on their forehead. Pakistan has cooperated with the Western powers in the past and it has not gotten anywhere, I agree with you. At present Pakistan has a democratic movement; if it succeeds, then we are hopeful that it should leave an independent path that brings a better future for its people instead of being a pawn of the powers. Pakistan is a beautiful country with a rich history and a lot of potential. Even when it is misgoverned it has [an economic] growth rate of well above 7.5%. For a while when you were talking about Pakistan I thought you were describing your home country [US], where fanatical pagans take over the airwaves and talk nonsense which is real funny to others. This is what others have said about you: "the poor, misguided folk in the 'Land of the Free and the Brave'" [Keith E Leal, letter, Jun 25]. Pakistanis know real Pakistan it is not like what you see on the Western propaganda networks. Pakistan is not what some dictators have attempted to have it painted to grab a few more cheap dollars from the West to better their offspring. As far as A Q Khan is concerned, he learned it from his masters. So what is different? He tried to grab a few dollars for himself like all the Western countries are doing, selling destructive weapons, nuclear and otherwise, [to] whoever can afford them. You are offended because he didn't involve the Western salesmen. Are you saying Israel, the USA and Britain and others are earning billions selling rose petals?
R Ahmed (Jun 27, '07)

How do you account for that goofy fellow Badakumar? I am sure he knows not the difference between the Durand Line and the Maginot Line. You play third-rate India with your hilarous comparison with China presumably because of your load of Indian staff. Remember the old adage, "Never trust or ague wih a Jesuit, a Jew or a Hindu."
Anam Mir (Jun 27, '07)

Clearly, and contrary to the views of R Ahmed (previous letter) and Kamath (next letter), we must revise our editorial policy. Shame on us for valuing the writings of M K Bhadrakumar, a three-decades veteran of the Indian Foreign Service, rather than, for instance, someone who cannot spell "hilarious", "argue", "with", or even the name of the person he wishes to criticize for no apparent reason than his nationality or, possibly, religion. - ATol

I congratulate you for your admirable editorial policy of giving space in ATimes to writers of diverse ideological philosophical and political persuasions and hues. I certainly admire [their] writings - from Spengler to letter writers from Londonistan who seem to be squatting all night outside your office to spit out scorn after scorn the very moment ATimes releases its first morning issue! Anyway as a non-newspaper man, I am amazed how pro you have become in this balancing act. So let me conclude by saying, "Let Allah's blessing be upon you for practicing a courageous newspaper policy, and also be blessed with increasing volunteer financial contributions."
Kamath
Ottawa, Ontario (Jun 27, '07)

Re Russia's tango with Tehran [Jun 26]: M K Bhadrakumar serves up an interesting [summary of the] dance that the Kremlin and Tehran are stepping to. He reports well on the Russian [Iran] specialists who thumb worry beads that President Vladimir Putin is missing a good opportunity to make his claim to an influence with Iran, "the regional power of growing consequence" in the Persian Gulf region. They are urging him to pick up the dropped stitches of diplomacy in completing a nuclear project in Bushehr, [on] which Russia had suspended funding. Bhadrakumar infers that Moscow is behind the curve, the more especially since even Washington and the European Union have quickened steps to engage Iran with an urgency and a [seriousness] which is changing the ground rules in the standoff [with] the mullahs in Tehran ... The Kremlin has always kept a close eye on a country that it once occupied and a country which historically falls into its "zone of influence" ... It is perhaps too much to say that Moscow is playing Washington's game in Iran. Let's think of Russia's game in this way: President Putin is waging a war in Chechnya in a pattern similar to President [George W] Bush's war in Iran, but with at times better results. And he may see in that drawn-out struggle Iran's support for [its] Muslim brothers, albeit not Shi'a. In consequence, Tehran has not come up with bargaining chips which would bring Russia to return to the bargaining table, and to finish the nuclear [center] in Bushehr. Thus we see an identity of view between Washington and the European Union, and the Kremlin's foot-dragging until [there is] an opening which it considers highly favorable that will induce [it] to resume serious discussions with Iran.
Jakob Cambria (Jun 26, '07)

Oh, no, he didn't! Neil Craig [letter, Jun 25] did not just supply a reason for 200 years of inhuman British rule of India (and other places)! Who, may I ask, was India attacking? Or who were the Indian kingdoms attacking? From my knowledge (though lacking) of history, Indian kingdoms never had a severe history of ruthlessly attacking anyone - the battles were mostly localized. And do pray tell, if the "Empire" had the good of the world (we ruled to stop people attacking other countries) within its heart, why did the British loot India until it had nothing to give anymore?
Gaurav Savant
Vicksburg, Mississippi (Jun 26, '07)

Re Act II for Tony Blair [Jun 23] by Ronan Thomas: Mr Thomas states that Blair "brought the Labour Party back to political prominence". I suggest that "infamous" should have been inserted between the last two words. The truth is that fawning-Tony made the British Labour Party disappear. It is now (and has long been) a party that has likely given Maggie Thatcher a twinge of jealousy. As for his popularity in the Roman Homeland (USA), I can believe that. It disgusts me that the people of England have been so unaware of the world around them that they have made the same disastrous choice of leadership - and taken so long to realize it - as have the poor, misguided folk in the "Land of the Free and the Brave".
Keith E Leal
Pincher Creek, Alberta (Jun 25, '07)

Ronan Thomas [Act II for Tony Blair, Jun 23] says Tony Blair is "deeply appreciated in the US" - but by whom? Most Americans don't know who he is unless it's to confuse him with Princess Diana's erstwhile butler.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Jun 25, '07)

Re All roads leading to Pakistan [Jun 23]: Pakistan has been a frontline state longer than M K Bhadrakumar would have us believe. It was a cog in the now-defunct Southeast Asian Security Organization (SEATO). In the "old Cold War", it served as a foil to [prime minister Jawaharlal] Nehru's India, which took a neutralist path in the tug-of-war between Washington and Moscow. Pakistan is a country with a schizophrenic nationalism (vide, the beheading of the Wall Street [Journal reporter] and the threats of revenge for the ennobling of Salman Rushdie to a knighthood in this year's Queen Elizabeth's birthday honors; and the honor killings and the raping of a woman because her younger brother was seen with a girl from another tribe. [There was also] the case of Abdul Qadeer Khan, who frivolously sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and perhaps many more other rogue states. The list is long and full of sorry lessons). Its "centrality" has taken on a new glow since the days of General Zia ul-Haq, Bhadrakumar reports. The war on terrorism and the overthrow of the Taliban [in Afghanistan] arguably [have] bumped up its importance in the geopolitical space to contain and stem the tide of Islamic extremism in the Anglo-American scheme of things. Nonetheless, Pakistan is beset with economic underdevelopment, in spite of its possession of nuclear weapons, authoritarian politics, armed conflict, and simmering territorial disputes with India and Afghanistan. Internally, it is rife with religious violence and brutality. Washington and London see it as a keystone in the new Big Game or, as Bhadrakumar says, the "new cold war". That choice is a gamble, for Islamabad is a breeding ground for terrorists. Its madrassas indoctrinate future jihadists; it is a middle passage for the bored, wealthy scions of Arab families, the disaffected sons of Anglo-Pakistanis to the killing fields of Afghanistan, and for carrying the virus of militant Islam to the shores of Britain and the United States. Washington and London have made a Faustian bargain, and they have to live with it, even though it may bring the very terror it seeks to eradicate, to the very heart of their own countries. They have made a bad deal, one that they will have to live with.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 25, '07)

I appreciated reading the excellent article by Julian Delasantellis titled Careful what you wish for, China may grant it [Jun 22]. Recently I have been publishing a series of articles on monetary reform on Global Research and other websites. In one of these, "An emergency program of monetary reform for the United States", I explain how the Social Credit ideas of British monetary reformer C H Douglas (1879-1952) are pertinent to the growing worldwide monetary crisis. Douglas explained that the dynamics of modern industrial production create a constant gap between the prices of goods and services and the money paid out for their production through wages, salaries, and dividends. That is, prices - the money paid by consumers to business firms - outstrip purchasing power. How a nation chooses to fill this "gap" is crucially important. Under Keynesian economics the method of choice was government debt and trying to maintain a positive trade balance. The latter became such an urgent priority it drove nations to war. In fact, Douglas says this was the underlying economic cause of World Wars I and II. He also explains how his idea of a National Dividend paid to consumers to bridge the prices vs purchasing power gap could bring relief. In more recent decades, under the monetarist philosophy, the gap has been filled by increasing business and consumer debt, which has helped create the current debt tsunami that threatens the entire world economy. The article by Mr Delasantellis indicates that the problem is becoming much worse. He writes: "As economists Lawrence Mishel and Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute put it, 'Over prior business cycles, profits (including interest income) have accounted for 23% of the growth in corporate-sector income, on average, with total compensation accounting for the remaining 77%. In the current business cycle, the distribution is almost reversed: profits have claimed nearly 70% of total growth in the corporate sector, while increases in compensation (from increased employment and higher hourly compensation) have received just over 30% of total income growth.'" This demonstrates that the gap in purchasing power is on its way to becoming catastrophic. Of course it is necessary to ask where all these profits are going, because ... they are not going to shareholders in the form of dividends. Surely a large quantity must be going to the financial industry due to the large debt "overhang" on the world economy described by Dr Michael Hudson and others. Much of it also is likely going into the reserve currency holdings of Communist China and other central banks, because with all of the growth in production, the ... Chinese workers are certainly not getting their share. One thing is certain: the numbers are going in the wrong direction for economic health and recovery of the world economy. I will be discussing these matters further in my new book We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, which should be available within the next few weeks.
Richard C Cook (Jun 25, '07)

I just wanted to commend you all for a great website. I thought the article by Beverly Darling … Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14] was really hard-hitting. It was understandable and made a lot of sense.
Adam (Jun 25, '07)

Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14] was an excellent article. I want to thank you or your courage and boldness in informing the world about Korea.
Helen Leflar (Jun 25, '07)

I am a regular reader of Asia Times [Online] and like the articles published here. The one thing that I [disagree] with you about is publishing Spengler's articles on your website. You do yourself a disservice by doing that. He comes across as a mad dog frothing at the mouth with his hatred for Islam. He doesn't even have anything intelligent to say either. Some of what he said in his article The Koranic quotations trap [May 15] would be ridiculed by the Orientalists themselves, such as saying that Mohammed (SAW) did not exist. Whether anyone likes Islam or not, agrees or disagrees with it, Islam is here to stay.
Husnain Awan
USA (Jun 25, '07)

Spengler did not say that Mohammed did not exist but referred to a book, Crossroads to Islam by Yehuda D Nevo and Judith Koren, that offered "a persuasive case" to that effect. - ATol

Rashid Hassan [letter, Jun 22] says "the British understand and respect only one language - outright defeat or victory in the conflict field. In relation to Afghanistan there is a special problem. The Brits are there with the very specific motivation of avenging the century-old defeats at the hands of Afghans." As a Brit may I say that I think we understand a few other things. The only avenging we went there for was [September 11, 2001]. If we were willing to give up running India 59 years ago it is improbable that we, or anybody else, would seek the very unprofitable task of running Afghanistan for any reason other than to stop the locals attacking other countries. Which [was] also the reason back when we had an empire.
Neil Craig (Jun 25, '07)

The posting of Melissa Tuckey's interview of Iranian poet Farideh Hassanzadeh, Of war, loss and the politics of poetry [Jun 22], is one of the reasons why I rank Asia Times Online among the very best political websites. While tons and tons of articles are written on a daily basis on Muslim countries, it is extremely rare to read even a tiny little thing on the real life and culture of those inhabiting that part of the world. It is widely accepted these days in Western countries, thanks to their media, that a Muslim is a religious animal, more often than not a male one, who spends 24 hours a day, seven days a week, reading the Koran, growing a bushy beard and planning the destruction of Western civilization. He doesn't laugh or smile, he doesn't fall in love, he doesn't sing or listen to music, he doesn't dance, he hates women, flowers, butterflies, birds and about everything that is beautiful. The only thing he really loves is killing Jews and Christians. Through the words of people like Farideh Hassanzadeh, we learn that Iran, a country governed by a theocratic regime, is full of women poets, writers and film directors, not prostitutes as one reads - unfortunately - on the hateful pages of Asia Times Online (those pages are there to illustrate the philosophy of its editors that seems to be "after all, as well as a face, we all have a bottom").
Daniel Mazir
Perth, Australia (Jun 22, '07)

In two months Malaysia is going to celebrate its half-century as an independent country. Andrew Symon offers ATol's readers a glimpse of the neglected history of its independence and anti-colonial struggle in Malaysia's homesick revolutionary [Jun 22]. This homesick revolutionary is Chin Peng, who as leader of the Malayan Communist Party and health of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) waged a 44-month war during the Japanese occupation during World War II. The defeated British welcomed him as a brother in arms, but immediately after Japan's complete surrender, they turned on Peng and his MPAJA to reimpose their hold on the Malay states in the same manner as the French did to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Uncle Ho attained partial victory after Dien Bien Phu, but Chin Peng met with defeat during what is known as the "Emergency" by the British colonial policy of playing one ethnic group against another, and sharpening tensions and particularities among Malay, Chinese and Indian. (The Johnson White House invited Robert Thompson, the British overseer who used divide-and-conquer warfare to defeat Chin Peng's forces, to adopt his strategy in Vietnam. It failed miserably, for what met conditions in one country did not necessarily adapt to the conditions of another.) The war officially ended, as Symon reports, in 1989 with a peace treaty between the Mahathir government and the exiled Chin Peng. The remnants of the MCP's forces, if Malaysian citizens, had the right to return. But Kuala Lumpur broke its word by denying Chin Peng [permission] to return to the land of his birth. He has seized the courts for that right. Now he awaits the judgment of the high judicial instance of the land on his fate. It is not unreasonable to think that the Badawi government will twist the court's arm to deny Chin's request to return home. Chin Peng's presence on Malaysian soil [would] challenge the official, hagiographic history which has been [the] staple for national fare for the past 50 years. And this would not [only] open seemingly healed wounds, but also heighten communal discontent and jealousies. Meanwhile, Peng has published My Side of the Story, which is passed around in Malaysia as though it were a Soviet samizdat publication, to escape the ban of Malaysian censors. (Singapore, to sting its neighbor, has allowed the sale of the book.) Peng's book has sold well. It is available on Amazon.com, for those who are interested in those times. Han Suyin's And the Rain My Drink gives the reader a feel for the Emergency, and is in print still. A left-leaning, longtime prisoner in Singapore's Changi Prison, Said Zahari has published two volumes of memoirs of the days leading up to independence of the Malay states and of Singapore.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 22, '07)

Re Taliban losing the will to talk [Jun 22]: If history is a reliable witness, then the British are totally unreliable in situations of conflicts and they typically overwhelmed the host of nations through a cat-and-mouse game of negotiations-treaties-breach of treaties-negotiations so on and so forth. In conflicts the British understand and respect only one language - outright defeat or victory in the conflict field. In relation to Afghanistan there is a special problem. The Brits are there with the very specific motivation of avenging the century-old defeats at the hands of Afghans. The wounds of these defeats still fester. Therefore [if] any legendary commanders and/or their mentors think the Brits can be placated through back-channel negotiations or treaties in the name of facade developmental/reconstruction work, then they have not understood the conflict at all and are living in the fool's paradise. There is only one solution to this conflict, ie, outright defeat of one side or the other in the battlefield.
Rashid Hassan (Jun 22, '07)

Syed Saleem Shahzad: I have been reading your work for over a year, and it's head and shoulders above your peers. Your analysis and insights are simply amazing ... Keep up the good work and be safe.
Josh Sparrow
Kabul, Afghanistan (Jun 22, '07)

The comments of Anthony J Van Patten [letter, Jun 21] on 'Unfounded, exaggerated, and ill-intentioned' (Jun 21) are to the point. Though the status quo across the Taiwan Strait has been maintained by America's military might, China has been able to suppress Taiwan's declaration of independence also by its own military power. Simply put, neither side can afford the cost of conflict. While most countries on planet Earth continue to strengthen their own armed forces, it is absurd to expect China to take a break or to announce exactly what it is doing. For China, the final solution to unification is to attempt some other means, namely, the power of economics. Helping in the process are the long-standing similarities of language and culture. Recently the Taiwan government has been trying to "de-China-ize" everything possible, changing the names of airports, post offices, roads, companies, etc, and the minister of education even recommended not studying classical Chinese texts or using well-established idioms. It is comical that just days ago President Chen Shui-bian, in welcoming the president of Guatemala to Taipei, used a beautiful Chinese poetic phrase which means an "old friend has come amid wind and rain", indicating a visit in a trying time.
S P Li (Jun 22, '07)

Your article Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14] was outstanding. This is the kind of reporting and writing that we need not only in the world, but here in the United States. Thanks again for a great article. I plan on e-mailing it to my friends.
Dean
USA (Jun 22, '07)

I wanted to express how interesting the article by Beverly Darling was. Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14] was great. I am new to the peace movement in America and these are the kinds of articles that we need to inform us.
Jasmine (Jun 22, '07)

Re Myanmar best bad buddies with Beijing [Jun 13]: By ostracizing Burma, the world has thrown that country into the willing arms of China and these nations have become intertwined in more ways than one. The Chinese government in Beijing needs Burma as a source of natural gas and as a way of giving China a direct access to the Bay of Bengal, but the consummation of this marriage goes further and is more intimate than that. Informal migration of Han Chinese by the millions into Burma is bringing about dramatic changes in terms of demography, language, and sociology. Mandalay, like most of northern Burma, already looks more like China than Burma. Simultaneously, there is a great deal of Chinese capital flowing into Burma proper as well as into the Shan state, and a new Burmese economy of factories, hotels, casinos, power plants, shopping centers, and so on is taking shape entirely in Chinese hands. The aging and possibly senile Burmese generals are sitting like smug frogs on a gently warming frying pan of their own design and may soon become irrelevant. To negotiate political reform in Burma, we will have to talk with the Chinese sooner or later. We may as well get started.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Jun 22, '07)

[Jing-dong] Yuan's article ['Unfounded, exaggerated and ill-intentioned', Jun 21] was excellent. It is unfortunate, however, that China cannot adopt a more constructive attitude toward the hidebound, and not very bright, initiatives of US foreign policy. Given the rather lengthy period during which the pretenders to the [US] presidency have to debate the issues, this is an excellent time to float some proposals that might divert US policy attention from tired and worn-out tracks into new directions of benefit to all sides. The Chinese leaders have the history and intellect to do this; with rare exceptions, those of the US do not. It is to the interest of all sides to divert resources from military adventures to national development. The genuine interests of both sides, however, must be guaranteed. If China could float a policy that would be addressed to these ends, it might divert the US (and European) discussions into more constructive channels. Such a policy would have to protect the ability of both sides to protect their own genuine interests, including the right of China to preclude Taiwan's assertion of independence or mutual defense agreements with foreign powers, while realistically protecting their right to continue developing local customs and practices. This would also serve as a valuable laboratory to test practices to show what might and might not be appropriate to the Chinese environment, as Hong Kong does today. It might also involve an undertaking of both sides to moderate or diminish the development of space weaponry, and the expansion of naval tonnage ... It is difficult for American politicians to commence such a discussion because of their dependence on financing from the military-industrial complex, and concerns about the influence of the jingoistic media. The world would be grateful to the Chinese to commence such a discussion before they become more a part of the problem. This is the time for such discussion because of the coming US elections and because it now appears that the US military has fallen into the hands of somewhat more intelligent and courageous leaders than we have had for the past six or so years. Fearful people are dangerous. Those of us who have been around for 60 or more years have seldom seen the American people more frightened, or for less reason. Rational proposals by China, not knee-jerk responses to cowards, would go a long way toward assuaging those fears.
Anthony J Van Patten
Glendale, California (Jun 21, '07)

Boiled down to its essence, Jing-dong Yuan's 'Unfounded, exaggerated, and ill-intentioned' [Jun 21] illustrates the old saying, "If the shoe pinches, it hurts." Dr Yuan has drawn up a list of grievances about "official statements in the West that highlight major advances in Chinese military capabilities". And he, distilling China's refutation of the charges, shows [that the arguments of the West] - and by that he means the United States - are false or erroneous. But are they in substance? Beijing does not deny that China is retooling and modernizing its military on land, on sea, and in the stratosphere. It makes no bones about that ... Nor has it denied that it has threatened to invade Taiwan were it to declare itself independent. Dr Yuan belongs to a generation that believes in the retrocession or return of Taiwan to the motherland, regardless of what the Taiwanese want. So it is not surprising that his piece in ATol is nothing more than a case of special pleading. China pays lip service to the right of self-determination. In truth, it would not hesitate to use brute force to bring Taiwan back into its orbit, were it not for America's 6th Fleet, which has thwarted China's plans for almost 60 years.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 21, '07)

Re Taliban put up a new fight [Jun 21]: I have a feeling that Americans are developing low-yield nuclear weapons (devices) to be used against, inter alia, leadership hunkered down in the mountains and difficult terrain and/or in the places that are most frequented or likely to be sheltering, or believed to be doing so, the hardened segments of resistance. The weapons are low-yield, I suspect, to reduce collateral damage, to minimize environmental damage and to dampen international condemnation. The possibility is that these weapons may be used some time between spring and autumn next year. Considering such an eventuality as a real possibility, jihadists, in addition to other deterrent measures, will probably have to consider expediting definitive coalition defeat in every conflict zone, particularly the Afghan one. [The] Americans would want to use such weapons later next year, perhaps to coincide with the pre-presidential election period in the US, with a view to maximizing the chances of Republican success. To achieve their objectives, the Americans would probably need real-time intelligence, a possibility that does not seem too remote considering the arrests of some 700 jihadists from inside Pakistan and the killing of Dadullah along with a number of top commanders inside Afghanistan.
RH (Jun 21, '07)

Anything is possible in this conflict. - Syed Saleem Shahzad

I suppose the day will come when Islam matures as a religion and the faithful have sufficient strength of faith to embrace scholarship instead of fearing it. Until then, they will persecute great thinkers and writers among them, as they have persecuted Naguib Mahfouz and as they now persecute Sir Salman Rushdie. No philosophical dialogue is possible if murder is made part of the process.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Jun 21, '07)

Dr Kaveh Afrasiabi has written a thoughtful and measured article on The death of the two-state solution [Jun 20]. Although at this moment the people of Palestine are going through the darkest night of their collective soul, I beg to disagree that a two-state solution is dead. It is useful to the United States and the European Union who, as Afrasiabi rightly puts it, dance to the Israeli tune. The outline of a two-state solution is a truncated Palestinian state which would resemble Father [Jozef] Tiso's Independent Slovak [Republic], which was closely identified with and allied with [Adolf] Hitler's Germany. This truncated Palestinian state will remain independent in a largely illusory sense. In other words, it will be a puppet state with Israel [pulling] the strings. This state will recognize the Jewish settlements in the biblical Samaria and Judea. The fly in this ointment is Hamas. As Afrasiabi reports, Israel's new defense minister and newly elected head of the Labor Party, according to articles in the pro-Israel New York Sun, is preparing to invade Gaza in order to crush and destroy Hamas once and for all. Israel then will occupy it until such time that it will hand this strip of land to its Palestinians. And thus the circle will be squared and the Palestinians will be forever under the heel of Israel. So in brief, the two-state solution as I limned it serves the purposes of everyone - Israel, the United States, and the European Union - but the Palestinian people.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 20, '07)

Syed Saleem Shahzad: I was wondering if you could tell me how accurate are these reports about the civilian casualties and Taliban deaths, because so many of the civilians and Taliban look alike. Once again I and many others really appreciate the great reporting you are doing for Afghanistan [see A political revival in Afghanistan, Jun 20].
Ajmal Ahmadzai (Jun 20, '07)

The United Nations has repeatedly shown concern on the civilian casualties Afghanistan. The International Committee of the Red Cross and even Taliban leader Mullah Omar have spoken on the growing number of civilian casualties. The Afghan government has demanded that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization avoid civilian casualties. This is happening because the Taliban are not living in the mountains but among the general population. The masses support them and in return become victims of NATO bombardment. - Syed Saleem Shahzad

Re A clean sweep [Jun 20]: Interesting that the "clean sweep" hasn't changed the accommodations the Iraqi Parliament must make to gain acceptance by the benefactor US (among others), to wit:

The Bearing Point-authored "oil profit sharing" agreement, which delivers most current and future profits to foreign oil companies; the fact that 84% of members of the Iraqi Parliament are against it demonstrates they need to be directed to the correct democratic decision.

The biggest US Embassy in the world, obviously to be fully staffed only until Iraq can "stand on its own". Only a cynic would wonder about the "need for Middle East regime changes" being facilitated by short com links to, eg, Jundullah.

The permanent military bases already in place just in time for the "clean sweep" people to talk of [US] troop presence for decades. Not that they'd ever be used for regional regime changes.
Jeb
Norway (Jun 20, '07)

Mark Perry's two-part article [Gates' Way Forward: Part 1, After Rumsfeld, a new dawn? Jun 19, and Part 2, A clean sweep, Jun 20] typifies how Washington's so-called experts think: what matters is the political and military infighting. American political and military leaders will be the last ones to see that their problem is how to get the troops out of Iraq before it's too late. Instead, the general running things in Iraq is talking about needing to stay there for 10 years. Maybe he thinks the Chinese are willing to keep footing the bill as the US prints more and more dollars in order to finance its warmongering binge. That arrangement has worked so far because the resulting slide in purchasing power of the world's fiat currencies has sheltered behind an accompanying series of bubbles in asset values as measured in those same depreciating currencies. But that combination always comes to a sad end.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Jun 20, '07)

Spengler: Very interesting stuff (I told you so, essentially, Jun 19) as always, even if one doesn't fully buy the analysis. However, the old Soviet term is "correlation of forces", not "constellation of forces".
Jonas Bernstein (Jun 20, '07)

As one of the first, if memory serves one right at least, many moons ago to charge Spengler as a diehard and pedantic Zionist (recollect too that a certain John Steppling and Lester Ness did join the critiquing), the recent letters to the editor referencing Spengler's latest [I told you so, essentially, Jun 19] and previous offerings by ATol attest to a pioneering and increasing realization that Spengler may be tagged as a 78 rpm record in a world of DVDs. I cannot speak for Lester or John, but I revel whenever I read readers' reviews of Salt's idol.
Armand De Laurell (Jun 20, '07)

I thought the article by [Beverly] Darling Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14] was outstanding. It really filled in a lot of blanks about what happens to countries after the US stations troops in them. It also solidifies my response that militarism is no solution to political and social problems. Once again, thanks!
Mark Wetzel (Jun 20, '07)

Re Spengler's I told you so, essentially (Jun 19): I have heard it all before - over and over again - by the usual cadre of American Christian Zionists, such as Chuck Missler, Mike Evans et al, that the "Palestinian problem" is essentially the sole creation of the Muslim/Arab world. In other words, it has nothing to do with Israel. Rather, it is a total political fabrication - a thorn placed in Israel's side made to elicit international sympathy for the Muslim cause to wipe Israel off the map. This actually springs from a very dark and sinister view of Islam, a religion that Christian Zionists believe to be demonic, and that will be their principal adversary in the blood-curdling showdown of Armageddon. In such Christian eschatological thinking, the definition of "essentialism" comes down to this one thing: whatever is predestined by God will essentially remain in place for all eternity - or until God deems it otherwise. Thus the Jews will essentially reject Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but God will use their rejection as a means to further his plan of salvation for the Gentiles. Similarly, Christian Zionists now argue that God has essentially predetermined the advent of the religion of Islam, whereby its adherents would also reject the very Son of God, and will, at the End of Time, be slaughtered (along with unbelieving Jews) at the glorious second coming of Jesus Christ to Earth. Spengler can therefore argue ad infinitum that "a people or country displays 'essential' characteristics that it can change no more than a leopard can change its spots". But the essential truth is that this is no more than a racist view of humanity that makes a mockery of the divine and indivisible dignity bestowed by the Creator upon each and every single human being - including the Palestinian people.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra, Australia (Jun 19, '07)

Spengler's theory (I told you so, essentially [Jun 19]) can be turned on its head if you apply the same logic to Israel instead of Palestine. Spengler would like us [to] believe that the Palestinians are refugees today because of mechanized methods of agriculture. After occupation of their land, he wants the Palestinian population to peacefully disperse and resettle somewhere else. This is the craziest thing I've heard so far. He says real nations "show up on time, pay dues to a respectable political party". Isn't that what the Palestinians did when they voted Hamas into power?
PSW
Australia (Jun 19, '07)

Spengler (I told you so, essentially, Jun 19), ironically, hits the nail on the head when he sermonizes: "Speaking of Gaza, it is a general rule that countries that have no business being there eventually find ways to disappear." This general rule applies to Israel and the Jews, first and foremost ... It is a tragedy but Israel has no business being there and is rapidly finding ways to disappear. I'm telling you so, Herr Spengler, essentially.
AAL
Canada (Jun 19, '07)

Spengler's thrilled to say he got it right [I told you so, essentially, Jun 19], but he's only looking at things from Israel's standpoint, which he hides by bringing up other places and times. Who's the dog? In invading Iraq, the US was Israel's dog - that's what Philip Zelikow, then a member of George W Bush's administration, said in public. Then last year, when Israel invaded Lebanon, the roles switched and Israel was the dog that lost. If one steps back and takes in the whole world, China's the master and the US is the dog, since China gains by tying up American military might in the Middle East. For instance, the two [aircraft] carrier battle groups that the US has deployed in the [Persian] Gulf constitute a big change from the first Gulf War, during which the US had no carrier battle groups in the Gulf and thus had more naval firepower free to thwart China's possible designs on Taiwan. As to Spengler's essentialism, it favors the Palestinians, considering their greater success in growing their population despite the hardships they face.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Jun 19, '07)

I'm now convinced that Spengler is a zealous warmonger whose inner trait to see the [Middle East] ablaze in the unleashed flames of war is a natural instinct rather than a sincere political position (I told you so, essentially [Jun 19]). The essential thing he does is to have the poor reader drink in the idea that the whole region will be built by the green hands the long-cultured, civilized Westerners after being purged from the agrarian pesky Muslims, and in this, no matter if you're a Persian or an Arab, you're doomed to be screwed up by the wounded West and its Jewish heroes. But I wonder why he with his seemingly displaced Jewish background within a German context has chosen to play the role of a "justifier" who even overspeeds his "Lords of War".
Amin (Jun 19, '07)

Levitate the Pentagon [Jun 19] by Pepe Escobar is a delightful piece and a hymn to the spirit of rebellion. It sounds too pessimistic, though. While it is true that there is nothing much to expect from the iPod kids of London and California, there is an awful lot that is being achieved by the children of urban slums and those of indigenous communities in Caracas, Cochabamba, Quito, Chiapas, Baghdad, Gaza, Soweto, Narmada and many other places around the world. I believe the Internet holds a great responsibility in the current state of affairs in the West. It is a very powerful tool for sharing information but an extremely poor agent of change: people tend to think that they are revolutionary because they spend hour upon hour in front of their computer screens, reading "alternative" news and Noam Chomsky interviews. The Internet isolates its users from each other while giving them the illusion of togetherness and burdens their brains with so much information - especially of the despairing and hopeless kind that so many leftist writers excel at - that they can't even think they are actually able to influence the events around them in any way. As for the US public, there is another, a more crucial difference between the Vietnam and Iraq wars that was overlooked by Pepe: the military draft. Without the draft, it is very hard to imagine that Muhammad Ali and thousands of other Americans would have had anything to do with the Vietnam War. They didn't want to go kill some innocent Asian peasants because they were personally asked to do so in the first place, not because they read Allen Ginsberg or listened to Bob Dylan. Very few iPod kids in California care about the more than 600,000 Iraqi dead and the 4 million displaced by the action of their government simply because they think this fact has nothing to do with them (I wonder what's the proportion that is even aware of that fact). Capitalism proved again and again that it is a great survivor that never tires from perverting the most radical ideas. A very potent drug that it uses today to numb the mind of rebelliousness is sex. In the '60s, the idea of sexual freedom was anathema to mainstream society and "make love not war" was a subversive motto. Today, almost every ad tells you: "Have sex and don't give a damn about the world."
Daniel Mazir
Perth, Australia (Jun 19, '07)

Pepe [Escobar (Levitate the Pentagon, Jun 19)]: The USA began military involvement with Vietnam as early as 1950 and the actual "war" went on for over 15 years. Do you think anything you have spoken about in your article really affected the outcome of the war? ... But here is an idea that might catch on: "Drop out, and look in" - for there is nowhere left to turn but inward. More to my point: "Grow up!"
Krischer (Jun 19, '07)

There is something almost of black comedy and humor in the attempt by Sami Moubayed to separate and distinguish the jihadist elements of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas [The perils of 'one size fits all', Jun 19]. First, all these groups seem to believe they have a direct line to God, the same god worshipped by the Jews and Christians, and that this god has told them that it is not just acceptable but actually desirable for them to kill other subjects of that same god in order for their religious/nationalist view to prevail. In most places in the world, this would be taken as a bizarre and obscene license to murder complete strangers to impose a religious/political view, worthy of complete abhorrence and dismissal. For Muslims, it appears to be somehow acceptable, and somehow the West is supposed to accept it as a natural consequence of actions by the West ... These poor deluded fools are simply tools in the hands of the powerful, of course, used to further the nationalist/political policies of various state leaders. The imams and mullahs who spout such nonsense could be easily enough rounded up, were that desired by national leaders, and these childish fools who follow them retrained for some perhaps useful purpose. But instead the (so-called) governments in the Arab world (more like family enterprises akin to organized crime, really) maintain these groups as the equivalent of attack dogs, for their own purposes ... What has been exposed in the Hamas attack and the perverse so-called victory in Gaza is that the West welcomes the clarity of a government run by these Muslim fanatics, for one reason the better to more precisely aim retaliation. Gaza has a new reality, as does Hamas. Let Hamas now try to act as if Israel does not exist, and at the same time beg for gasoline and food ... What the Islamists may soon come to realize is that the military victory they crave is hollow at best, just as was the initial victory by the US in Iraq. The threat of military action is cheaper and more effective than actual military victory ...
Richard Stone (Jun 19, '07)

Dr Kaveh Afrasiabi's comment A little bending can greatly benefit Iran [Jun 16] brings to mind the opening lines of a Johnny Mercer song:
When an irresistible force ...
Meets an old immovable object ...
You can bet ...
Something's gotta give.
Iran is sticking to its guns, and Washington is thinking of brinkmanship, despite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's opening gambit to "engage" Tehran on the nuclear issue. In the inner sancta of power in the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran's government, a sharp, tense debate is taking place, pitting inflexible hardliners against more pragmatic hardliners in order to come to a cold resolution of the differences between Washington (and the European Union) and Tehran on the uses of nuclear power in Iran. Afrasiabi comes in a suppliant cloak pleading with Tehran to make a minimal step forward on the matter, to engage on the long road of negotiations to defuse a situation which might lead to military confrontation. Hold up as he may a mirror to the Iranians so that they might better see themselves as others see them, the object of a judgment by a larger comity of nations, [and] Afrasiabi's chances of being listened to are minimal at the best. Both Washington and Iran for the moment see in that mirror but a reflection of the unique self they imagine themselves to be. And so one way or the other, unless cooler heads prevail, which Afrasiabi fervently prays for, something's gotta give as the [saying goes], with all its might in a fight, fight, fight.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 19, '07)

Several days ago I read one of your articles, I think it was called Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14] or something like that. I thought this was a great article. I am new to the peace movement in America and I have a lot of catching up to do. I really liked this article because of the history it gave about the US and Korea. We don't often hear about the other side in the American press, so thanks.
Steve (Jun 19, '07)

Readers who wish to refresh their memory about a recent article, or who wish to reread it, should go to the relevant index page (in this case either Korea or Middle East). We go to a lot of trouble every day to maintain these "inside pages", which retain article links longer than the Front Page does and also have special features not found on the front, yet few readers take advantage of them. - ATol

In response to John Helmer's reaction (letter, Jun 15) to my article A grand bargain Russia might just refuse (Jun 14), I have taken Joseph Nye's writing seriously because, in fact, I do take him seriously and have learned a great deal from his innovative writings on the modalities of power in the contemporary world, as well as his singular emphasis on the need for the US to refrain from military solutions for problems requiring the delicate art of diplomacy, a prime example of soft power. Nye's theoretical contributions have alerted us to the complexities of power, and the criticisms of Nye's shortcomings, some valid, have a tendency to forget that the ambiguities and even inconsistencies observed, eg with respect to the exact form and composition of soft power, reflect back on those complexities, defying straightforward, neat classifications. At any rate, I do not subscribe to any personal attack on Nye because I may disagree with him.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Jun 19, '07)

Re The Third way to win big - or lose [Jun 16] by John Helmer: Given the implications of what just had happened in Palestine, it was somewhat surprising to see this issue headlined by this article. But I suppose writing a deliberative analysis takes more time than making up the usual Israel-centric drivel manufactured by news agencies. In any case, John Helmer illustrated pretty well the sickening scale of Western corruption and the perverse audacity of its self-righteous hypocrisy, along with explanations as to why Vladimir Putin is continuing to shatter world records of popularity for a democratically elected leader, and why Saudi royals will be chased to the end of the Earth and back, once their bizarre reign is over.
Oleg Beliakovich
Seattle, Washington (Jun 18, '07)

John Helmer's article explaining the Third is priceless [The Third way to win big - or lose, Jun 16]. It's the first time one grasps what's going on in Russia. As to the Bandar Bang, one can't quite follow his figures. In adding together Bandar's 2.8% and the initial 600 million pounds BAE paid, one gets at most 4.2% vigorish so far, which is nowhere near the Third unless Helmer is implying that Bandar's Bang isn't the only item that BAE has been paying out of the 32% markup. Otherwise BAE must have made extra profits of 27.8% on the gross so far, if the markup was gross (original price of planes divided by 0.68) and if the extra profit margin has held true for 10 years. If the markup was net (original price times 1.32), then the extra margin for paying vigorish is barely 24% of the gross, or much less than the Third. It's a tribute to Helmer that such questions come to mind: the problem in writing an article like his is in deciding which facts to use in order to strike a balance between a dry disquisition on accounting and the fascinating tale he has to tell.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Jun 18, '07)

Re China wants food first, not fuel [Jun 16] by Antoaneta Bezlova: I simply cannot understand why any country would want to produce ethanol from agriculture for fuel, as far more energy must be put into the process than comes back out (about 70% more in the case of ethanol from corn). We are only doing it in North America as a disguised payout to corn farmers (not the magic Third but the magic two-thirds), ultimately paid for by consumers via higher taxes and higher food prices. China must stop copying the West, particularly when we do something as transparently foolish as making ethanol fuel from corn.
Francis
Quebec, Canada (Jun 18, '07)

Re The wars that oil the Pentagon's engine [Jun 16]: Good thing the Empire's gallons are not Imperial gallons; in that event the consumption would be more than 70 liters per soldier per day, rather than 60! But [Michael T] Klare's [figures on] annual petroleum consumption in the war theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan grossly underestimate the amount of fuel being consumed by the US there - it must be remembered that in addition to its own troops (and those of its satellites, whose fuel consumption has not been included in the estimate), the US also employs over 100,000 mercenaries in its privatized wars in the region, and nothing we have seen indicates that these troops save fuel by bicycling to work. But people in the United States, of course, are told that it is those evil Chinese who are responsible for the increase in petrol prices they experience, and as we all know, what I tell you three times is true. Still, despite the corporate media's success in attributing the rising price of petroleum products in the United States to the Chinese, the question posed by Professor Klare still demands an answer: what happens when the Legions that once fed the Empire can no longer even feed themselves? Will they, as old soldiers are said to do, just fade away?
M Henri Day, PhD, MD
Stockholm, Sweden (Jun 18, '07)

Concerning The adaptive power [Jun 16] of the Japanese, I would like the writer to tell me one country in the world that is not already in step with the Anglo-Saxon concepts of a "free world" - except the Muslims. There can be no real discussion here: the world is conquered - except for those pesky Muslims. And when one realizes that America (North) is not a country but a state of mind, we can, in one sense, say that Japan is the youngest country on Earth (in the sense that it contains within itself a real culture), just as Islam is the youngest religion on Earth (they were both "born" about the same time). Within a few hundred more years, the Muslims will, like everyone else, succumb to the "reign of quantity and the sign of the times", if the whole globe does not first succumb to the weight of our depravity and simply fall off its axis.
Krischer (Jun 18, '07)

Syed Saleem Shahzad: Thank you for your article [A voice for the Afghan insurgency, Jun 15]. There certainly seems to be a concerted effort by some of Afghanistan's neighbors to provide the insurgency with as much publicity as practically possible. The much-trumpeted "spring offensive" has resulted in little more than Dadullah's one-legged body with half a dozen bullets inside. The Afghan Intelligence Service did an excellent job, although ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] was quick to take credit for its operational success. These are minor discrepancies we can live with. The point is we are at crossroads: should we - the people of Afghanistan - choose to rebuild our nation from scratch or, once again, be dragged into a senseless bloody war against foreigners, other ethnic groups, Shi'as and Sunnis, just about anything imaginable so long as this murderous air provides our neighbors with sufficient strategic depth? The last three decades provides us with sufficient insight to conclude that neither ayatollahs nor the dictatorship in Pakistan is willing to cooperate in a meaningful way. Moreover, the events of the last couple of months (the deportations of 100,000 refugees from Iran) are alarmingly pointing at an Iran-Pakistan consensus on how to increase tensions and threaten relative peace and stability in Afghanistan. Pakistan, like a broken tape recorder, is stuttering [about] the border-settlement issue through all available means, including the bribing of some US congressmen and other well-known international figures, to pressure [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai "in the right direction". On the media front, Pakistan is resorting to scaremongering of the West with the threat of pan-Talibanism (backed by military events on the ground) ... In these circumstances, Afghanistan has no choice but to build a strong and lasting alliance with an external force, to ensure its security and territorial integrity as a sovereign nation. And here, NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] emerges as a natural ally, given the circumstances. A durable alliance would require having permanent NATO bases in Afghanistan. This is a possibility that secularist circles within the Afghan establishment are considering. The pace of these efforts (and increased cooperation with our regional allies such as India) will be proportional to the anti-NATO, anti-Afghan rhetoric by Pakistan and its turban-clutching allies in Tehran. There's no doubt that al-Haaj Farooq Hussaini is not good news for peace. His formidable figure sitting cross-legged on the floor of his office along with some followers might give every indication that he is strong enough to achieve his goals, particularly if one is inclined to believe so. Let us hope he will not [be] allowed to stir up hatred and violence. There are no foreign occupiers in Afghanistan today. There are peacekeeping forces of NATO who have a mandate from upwards [of] 70% of the Afghan population and its democratically elected government.
Aryan Arghandewal (Jun 18, '07)

Syed Saleem Shahzad: Thank you for your reporting on Afghanistan - it is the best anywhere. I was just wondering if you could tell me how the people on the ground are acting and feeling. Are they hopeful or fed up with all the fighting and problems? Have the living conditions gotten better for the people? Please, if you could, respond, because I don't care about the politics but I really want to know about the poor people.
Jazakullah Khair (Jun 18, '07)

It depends whom you are talking with. If you talk to a class living in Wazir Akber Khan neighborhood, they are very happy with the present situation. The rest would complaint about inflation, lawlessness, foreign occupation et al. - Syed Saleem Shahzad

I thought the article by Beverly Darling, Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14], was very good. I am a part of the anti-war movement, and one of the things I have noticed here in America is that activists often do not know their history. Therefore, they are unable to reasonably debate with the neo-conservatives. I hope you print more articles informing us about our own history which we seem to have forgotten. Thanks again for a beautiful and challenging article.
Karla
USA (Jun 18, '07)

With Hamas militants seizing control of the Gaza Strip, the US-led international roadmap to peace, which advocates a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has now fast become a roadmap to nowhere. The fact is that it was impossible for a political solution to be reached between President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the ostensibly more secular Fatah faction, and the hardline Islamic jihadists under Hamas. In a talk to students at Tehran University recently, Ismail Haniyah, the Hamas prime minister fired last week by President Abbas, cautioned against "the trap of nationalism", which he described as a "Zionist-Crusader conspiracy" to divide Muslims across national lines. For his part, President Abbas is a member of the Baha'i religion, which, contrary to the Hamas dream of a single global Islamic state, advocates an all-inclusive faith where all religions are equally respected. Given their differences, it was inevitable that Hamas would eventually seize the opportunity to take over Gaza in order to further its long-term objective to one day bring Israel exclusively under Muslim control. This leaves us now with what is effectively a three-state scenario: a Jewish one in Israel, a secular Arab nationalist one in the West Bank, and an Islamist one in Gaza. The most important conclusion to be drawn is that despite every international effort to bring about a political solution, the fundamental religious differences that separate all of the three major parties involved in this crisis have yet to be addressed. Moreover, in a world that on September 11, 2001, was awakened to the explosive forces of religious fundamentalism, it is time we commenced a dialogue that will finally help put to rest the intolerable weight of human injustice, suffering and abject misery tragically borne by all sides in the name of God.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra, Australia (Jun 18, '07)

Mahmoud Abbas denies he is a Baha'i, claiming in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz that this was a rumor started by former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit. - ATol

I would like to congratulate Asia Times Online for publishing North Korea's Dear Film Buff [Jun 15] by John Feffer. It is a very well-written and very informative piece of journalism. It blends culture and politics without falling into the sensationalist or pomposity trap. I hope ATol will gratify its readers with more articles on cultural issues of the same caliber (by the same author maybe?). A single good article on Iranian cinema (one of the best and most innovative in the world in the last decade or so) would be enough to demolish everything that all the members of the Spengleroid species have ever pontificated about that country's people and culture.
Daniel Mazir
Perth, Australia (Jun 15, '07)

Reading Sunny Lee's Kim Jong-il's vanishing act [Jun 15] made me think of the film Desperately Seeking Susan. Pyongyangologists have hardly perfected the skills of shamans of yore in reading the scales and innards of fish to read the signs of the times. The Daily Telegraph article floated a rumor. It brings readers back to the days of Krelimologists who disseminated an opinion on the flimsiest, barely discernible source. It may be true that for a man in his early 60s, Kim Jong-il does suffer from heart trouble, barely defined, and has diabetes and has given up the tobacco weed, yet saying this, it brings us no closer to the British newspaper's petard that the Dear Leader might have undergone heart surgery. Let's face it, the foreign intelligence finger on the pulse of life in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea, hardly finds a palpable heartbeat. Which simply goes to underscore its inability to tell a white thread from a black thread at early dawn. Authoritarian leaders appear in public according to their [pleasure]. And so it is with Kim Jong-il. Look at the example of Cuba's Fidel Castro, who has taken a long medical leave. This was followed by an avalanche of obituaries and conflated scenarios as to whither Cuba after Fidel. Today everyone well knows that the Cuban leader is alive and in improving health. The release of the DPRK's US$25 million from the Banco Delta Asia should bring the Dear Leader back into public view. And then again, [if] he does not show himself, it brings light to his whereabouts. Sensational breaking stories may sell more newspapers, but they hardly add a whit more of knowledge about North Korea.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 15, '07)

Re Caste-away [Jun 15]: I don't know if one can say urban India is casteless. Is not who gets hired and rises in the jobs, even when they have the requisite education, already an issue? Is there not a demand for reservation in private-sector jobs? Are these not urban jobs? And is there not some segregation of housing? I remember reading a book about the outbreak of plague in Surat, the second-largest city of Gujarat. The author spent some time explaining [that] urban residence was not a melting pot but rather a pot with congealed spots. It is a book the author of this article should read. See Public Health and Urban Development: The Plague in Surat by Ghanshyam Shah.
May Sage
USA (Jun 15, '07)

Thanks [for] the article A general in God's patriotic army [Jun 15]. I've long thought that speeding up the Second Coming of Jesus was one of [US President George W] Bush's major goals in Iraq, at least as much as stealing the oil, enjoying the war profits and excusing a grab for autocracy ("unitary executive").
Lester Ness
Kunming, China (Jun 15, '07)

On the question of whether Islam or Christianity will win the war, my guess is that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism will all win. It is we the people [who] will lose, as we have lost for centuries, caught in the crossfire of a few madmen. Organized religion is a curse upon humankind.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Jun 15, '07)

In a recent commentary on Iranian political thinking [A grand bargain Russia might just refuse, Jun 14] Kaveh L Afrasiabi takes seriously this proposal from the US academic Joseph Nye: "We should offer Russia a grand bargain: we delay our plans for missile defense in Eastern Europe, while the Russians agree to back stronger sanctions against Iran." Nye was a colleague of mine, years ago, at Harvard. As Harvard professors go, his career has been less than successful. He never rose out of the junior ranks of government; he bombed nobody, but saved no one from being bombed. He committed no war crimes; he earned no peace prizes. From such a record Nye has made ineffectuality his calling card. Thus an undergraduate-level theory has come into being, with Nye's name on it as author, called "soft power". Apparently, it helps to know what this is, if you want to be hired as an assistant professor in some places. However, for Nye to step off the lecture podium, into the real world, and propose a "grand bargain" to the Russian leadership is nonsense. And the reason is obvious to everyone but Nye and the US foreign-policy establishment - the US cannot offer any bargains to anyone, because two terms of the Bush administration demonstrate that the US doesn't honor its word - on anything, to anybody, anywhere. The implication of Nye's proposal is a cynical choice between less US war against Russia in Europe in return for Russian backing for more US war against Iran and its allies in the Middle East. This isn't a case of soft power, so much as a case of soft in the head.
John Helmer
Moscow, Russia (Jun 15, '07)

As a lover of history I was spellbound with Beverly Darling's Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14]. I always wondered why US history books ended with US troops stationed in Korea in 1953 and then jumped to 2000 proclaiming that South Korea was a capitalistic democracy. My father is a Korean [War] veteran and his feet were frostbitten during the Korean War. Now the [Veterans Administration] is refusing to take care of him. He may lose his feet. There are many hidden costs to US militarism. Get used to it!
Karen Critchfield
USA (Jun 15, '07)

Your article Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14] is the type of news and information that is needed. For too long the US and other countries have tried to simplify complex problems and associate democracy with militarism. Oversimplification and trying to establish a democracy with the ideology of militarism seldom works - just look at Iraq.
Margaret Smith
USA (Jun 14, '07)

In Beverly Darling's Spinning the Korean model [Jun 14] we are treated to the extreme leftist and anti-American view of the history of Korea and its implications for Iraq. Darling paints the United States as the cause of the political oppression in South Korea for the last 40 years. Just for the record, the US does not run the world; even in countries where the US has troops we do not control all the actions of those governments. Many times the US has to look to wider strategic aims and deal with governments as they exist not as we would like them to be. In the Cold War the US aim was to stop the Soviet Union and the spread of communism, and this aim was put before other goals. Darling paints the governments of postwar South Korea as evil incarnate, but nowhere does she mention the government of North Korea. South Korea was under constant threat of a North Korean attack and in fact was attacked many times, including an attack in 1968 where 28 North Korean commandos attacked the South Korean Presidential Palace and got to within 500 meters of the Blue House before they were killed. Also [there was] the 1974 assassination attempt on president Park [Chung-hee] that killed his wife. On their worst day the military governments of South Korea where thousands of times less evil then the government of North Korea, where the Kim family regime has killed, starved, and tortured millions of North Koreans. The Sixth Republic of South Korea began in 1987, not 1997, with the free election of Roh Tae-woo. Also the Soviets never stationed thousands of troops on the northern side of the DMZ [Demilitarized Zone]. The expansion of Camp Humpheys is being done legally through eminent domain so the US can leave a base in the heart of Seoul. As for the free-trade agreement last year, the US sold 5,000 cars in Korea while South Korea sold 700,000 cars in the US. It doesn't look to me that the US is exploiting South Korea; if anything, it is the other way around. South Korea does not let in US rice or beef; in fact South Korea forced the return of 9 tons of US beef because of a single 3-millimeter piece of bone. As for Iraq, the next [US] president will make all haste in removing the US ground troops in Iraq - there is no way the US can stop the coming Iraqi civil in many ways caused by the insane policies of the present administration. If I live to 1,000 I don't believe I will understand the warped mindset of the left. Darling's article includes the line "forced production methods brought about by the capitalist system" - I believe that is what is called work where people get paid for their labor, unlike North Korea where over 200,000 people are being worked to death for no pay. I guess that's what the left calls a workers' paradise.
Dennis O'Connell
USA (Jun 14, '07)

Hong Kong 10 years on by Augustine Tan (Jun 14) is mostly an accurate description of present-day Hong Kong. But there is some troubling wording. Hong Kong is now a "more docile, less assertive" society. I recall that under British rule in the years prior to 1997, no protests or demonstrations were allowed. Those democratic advocates who are now quite vocal and lead street protests were nowhere to be seen or heard during that period. For many decades, a majority of Hongkongers have lost their identity with the motherland and it is no easy task to win them back. Airing of the national anthem, exhibits of national treasures, summer camps, college admissions for Hong Kong students are just some of the ways for gradual correction. Also a number of strategies of financial help given by Beijing have been necessary to sustain economic survival. These amount to problem-solving methods, not means of "temptation", a word used by Mr Tan, that carries a sense of improper intent. The most important point in Tan's article is that the young begin to identify themselves with being Chinese.
S P Li (Jun 14, '07)

Re Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran [Jun 14]: To President [George W] Bush's right, a group of vocal critics are fighting a rearguard action, so that he will not change horses in midstream on Iran and North Korea. [Trita] Parsi has turned the spotlight on US Senator Joseph Lieberman's calling for bombing Iraq. And [he is receiving support] from the Israeli lobby and the arch-neo-conservative poobah Norman Podhoretz. Their Spartan-lad attitude surprises no one. They bring nothing new to the table but bluster and a bad temper. As for coming to terms with Pyongyang, US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee ... will try her best to challenge the release of North Korea's US$25 million in the Banco Delta Asia in Macau, thereby giving the former US ambassador to the United Nations yet another opportunity to denounce Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Christopher Hill for selling the shop to Kim Jong-il for a mess of potage. These usual suspects representing the dyed-in-the-wool extreme right in America's political spectrum coalesce into a coalition of the willing to go to war at any price. They represent the gung-ho supporters of Israel, the Cuban exiles in Miami, and most hawkish members in and out of Congress. The Bush administration is trying to extricate itself from the mess that it so consciously created, especially after September 11 [2001]. On Iran and North Korea it slowly came to the realization that talking might defuse the unilateral brinksmanship that it unwisely practiced ... Mr Bush's once-loyal supporters will fume and stomp like Rumpelstiltskins. They've yet to accept that the die is cast, and their lame-duck hero of yore is treading water to survive with some dignity the last 18 months of his second term as president of the United States.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 14, '07)

The US says it is alarmed by evidence that Iran has supplied arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan and to the Shi'a in Iraq. Yet it was they who supplied arms and money to Afghans to topple the Taliban government there and engulf that country in civil war in the first place. Also, there is plenty of evidence that the US supplied cluster bombs to Israel to kill Lebanese and to both Sunni insurgents and Shi'a militia in Iraq, where they have created yet another civil war. The rest of the world is supposed to do as the Americans say and not as they do, and Iran's crime is that it has chosen to do as they do and not as they say.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Jun 14, '07)

Syed Saleem Shahzad: I regularly read your reports and articles. They are factual and down to earth. You perform a great service to the public by your on-site reporting. You have your feet on the ground, as opposed to most Western media reporters who sit in air-conditioned rooms in Kabul or, worse, in Washington and concoct stuff. There is, however, an important point you neglected to mention in your [Jan 14] report NATO fights on all fronts in Afghanistan, and that is that everywhere, without exception, the US has intervened and set up a puppet regime has been unstable. The entire structure that it built will sooner or later crumble - Philippines, Vietnam, Iran, Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Korea. Next in line: Iraq (perhaps already), Afghanistan (also, perhaps already), Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, and Nigeria, to name a few. What baffles me is that [the] arrogant ignorant bunch in US administrations - Republican, Democrat, past and present - have never learned, and never will, that imperial wars of aggression are doomed to fail and will leave misery and devastation in their wake.
Aris (Jun 14, '07)

Superpowers, NATOs, defense organizations, G8s come and go. But the will to live free, free from every bondage, is indomitable and [the] prime genetic trait of every human being ... especially Afghans. The earlier the USA, the UK [and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization] leaves - the lesson learned late by the Soviet Union ... - the better. If the West has survived, it is because of [a] few toadies in Pakistan [and] the likes of [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, whose selfish goals of perpetuating their powers cannot sustain the test of history. The sooner NATO/the West leaves, the wiser for those directly entangled and the world at large.
Miss Noorre-e-Zaman
Peshawar, Pakistan (Jun 14, '07)

Re Spengler's rant The faith that dare not speak its name [Jun 12]: It seems that some people can freely give vent to their hatred as long as they do it in the name of religion ... Where Spengler and his ilk are wrong is to blame the faith for the faults of its followers. It is important to separate the people from their religion. The Islam that is practiced by the Taliban is much different from the Islam in countries like Turkey and Indonesia. It's the same book, but the people are different. It's important to realize that people change, the books stay the same. Muslims were once a very tolerant people; arts, music and other faiths flourished within their countries. Today in some Muslim countries you could be jailed for carrying a book of another faith. There are erotic images on many Hindu temples but Hindus of today are a conservative lot. Most Christians today abhor slavery, but maybe Spengler can tell us what the Bible and his god say about slavery. This god has some views on this subject that may make your skin crawl. I agree that Islam is "totalitarian" in nature, but Spengler "forgets" to include Christianity in this category. A god who throws you into hell if you don't belong to his faith could hardly be called a liberal. Oh yeah, but he loves you! He is torturing you because he loves you, the same method employed by the pedophile "fathers".
Jayant Patel (Jun 14, '07)

In The faith that dare not speak its name (Jun 12), Spengler offers us a slice of history as slipshod and hysterical as those of his namesake (inspiration?). While Islam, to paraphrase Spengler, is a totalitarian religion allowing no room for doubt, Christianity and Judaism are free from such pagan vestiges and able to celebrate God's love. Are Judaism and Christianity really such monolithic religions? Might we not find a diversity of belief among, say, Christians in Haiti, Nigeria, the southern USA, and the anemic Church of England? Of course we would. Whatever doctrinal differences exist between major world religions, their practice owes far more to the historical circumstances in which they are practiced than in their founding texts. Any attempt to attribute certain characteristics to Islam, Christianity or Judaism will founder on the rocks of historical evidence.
Al Qalam
USA (Jun 14, '07)

I come a bit late to this debate. But let me just add another voice in the chorus that is proclaiming the madness of Spengler [The faith that dare not speak its name, Jun 12]. The most recent eccentricities (and I'm being generous) include factually wrong statements about Islam. Now, I again ask the editors to put this guy on a leash, because his endless and desperate attacks on one of the world's largest religions is tantamount to hate speech. It is both dishonest and incendiary.
John Steppling
Lodz, Poland (Jun 14, '07)

Spengler (letter, Jun 13): Where is the capacity to doubt when the Christian leader of the "free world" declares, "You are either with us or with the terrorists"? Where is the capacity to doubt when Britons were told that Saddam Hussein [had] an arsenal of ballistic missiles loaded with chemical, biological (and possibly nuclear) warheads able to reach them "in just 45 minutes"? And where is the capacity to doubt after being reassured that the carnage visited upon innocent Lebanese civilians last year by the Israeli military was "the birth pangs of a new Middle East"? Can you really blame all of this loss of Faith and Reason on "the residual pagan character of Christianized peoples"? Nor can the distinction between Soren Kierkegaard's (subjective, existentialist) "Christianity" and (objective, historical) "Christendom" be considered pertinent here. All religions - whether from a subjectivist or objectivist viewpoint - are prone to the corrupting and destructive influences of totalitarianism. Evidently, this is something that Spengler still finds very difficult to acknowledge. He avowedly persists in framing his comparative analysis of Christianity and Islam into a two-cornered contest - one where "Christianity" will always win and one where Islam will always lose.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra, Australia (Jun 14, '07)

In your response to my earlier letter [Jun 12] referring to Spengler's rabid Islamophobia, you stated: "Ah, but Spengler is the balance for all our anti-US, anti-Zionist (see letter from Matthew Lanier below), anti-Christian, anti-Spengler coverage." Your reply would have been funny, had it not been for the seriousness of the topic being discussed. Pray, could you kindly enlighten me as to which of your columnists engage in the same sort of vitriolic "anti-Zionist, anti-Christian, anti-Spengler" rhetoric that Spengler employs against Islam? To the best of my knowledge, Matthew Lanier [letter, Jun 12] is a reader writing in to express his views, not someone who writes for ATol - hope you understand the difference - so please, don't put a spin on issues. Duplicity is not a good advert for any news organization.
Molten Gold
Dallas, Texas (Jun 14, '07)

ATol is regularly accused of being anti whatever it is that the reader is pro, and the comment was a dig at the accusers. - ATol

On June 6, Mathaba News Agency reported on Russian President Vladimir Putin's press conference with [journalists covering the Group of Eight summit]. What Putin said in this interview by journalists from Der Spiegel (Germany) to the Wall Street Journal (US) and more was extremely frank and honest. I do not recall in recent history any international statesman world leader from any country in the so-called "West" being so candid in his/her answers regarding world geopolitical issues. Why hasn't any other newspaper reported on such a remarkable press conference? I'm extremely surprised that Asia Times Online hasn't done so, especially in light of the full contents of Putin's answers, not just merely one or two points he mentioned, but the overall press conference - which includes much about Asia. The fact [is] that there's been a mass-media lockout of this press conference, or a distortion of the press conference itself through misreporting of one or two points Putin mentioned, or omission of the press conference altogether (which unfortunately is the norm). The full interview can be found here. Asia Times Online, please have at least some respect for the intelligence of your readers. I used to regard you with some positivity, if only for M K Bhadrakumar's reports. As for Spengler, well, he's merely fishing for bites on an anti-Islam or anti-Muslim tip, hoping someone will bother to reply to his incendiary articles. One only need to replace "Muslim" or "Islam" in his articles with any chosen so-called "demon" from history such as "Gypsies", "Jews" and "Slavs" from the 1930s and '40s, to "Commies" and "Socialists" in the '50s and '60s, and one would realize that the man has little in the credibility department, and has merely resorted to the base human behavior of demonizing a particular group, any group or label or euphemism of a group, in order to get some response, any response from readers. It's laughable, really. Get real, dudes, and start reporting [what] is out there. This particular reader doesn't think as highly as I used to about your news site, apart from maybe two or three reporters. You used to be so much better, what's going on? I'm sure I'm not the only one to think this way, either.
JL (Jun 14, '07)

While we value criticism as it keeps us on our toes, your example is not very helpful. We are not in the business of regurgitating news conferences verbatim; in fact, we do not concentrate on "reporting" at all in the same way a daily newspaper or television news program does, but expect our contributors to analyze news events. - ATol

Spengler responds to readers
The Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin (letter, Jun 12) decries "Christendom's shameful history", and I concur, but with this proviso: European Christendom, as I have argued on many occasions past, consisted of a fatal compromise between Christian doctrine and the residual pagan character of Christianized peoples. As Franz Rosenzweig put it, the Europeans confused Christ and Siegfried. Soren Kierkegaard's distinction between "Christianity" and "Christendom" is pertinent. Regarding my characterization of Tariq Ramadan's views, the reader may compare Rosenzweig's description of paganism with Ramadan's exposition of Islam and decide whether they differ in any substantive point. As I read the texts, Rosenzweig and Ramadan analyze matters quite the same way; they only differ in whether they abhor or approve the result. Others may read the texts differently, and I would welcome an alternative view. Does Dr Zankin believe that either Faith or Reason is possible after the complete exclusion of the capacity to doubt? Yet that is just what Ramadan's Islam demands. Letter writer Molten Gold (Jun 12) complains that I portray Islam and Muslims "in the worst possible light". Does the very fact of quoting Tariq Ramadan constitute defamation of Islam?
Spengler (Jun 13, '07)

Re Spengler's The faith that dare not speak its name [Jun 12]: Professor [Tariq] Ramadan represents a vile form of Islam (by emphasizing Islam's vilest aspects) that is proliferating in the Sunni world. But his views of tawhid [oneness] are at odds with significant strands of Islamic thought, including Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab's, the founder of Wahhabism, and cannot be taken as evidence that tawhid descends from a pagan totalitarian sensibility. Islam is more totalitarian than it is not, but this qualification makes me wonder if "totalitarian" is the right characterization. To this day, non-Muslims may practice their religions modestly and cautiously in most Muslim nations. The restrictions are many, and they are inevitably treated as second-class citizens, but it is not totalitarianism. Call it totalitarianism lite. To say that tawhid results in a totalitarianism so absolute that it leaves no room for tensions or doubts is incorrect. Even the life of someone who is consistently portrayed as an archly conservative Muslim like Wahhab is proof that in Islam doubt is not only acceptable, it is mandatory. One only has to use extreme care not to doubt the wrong Islamic tenet lest one lose a limb or head. Wahhab doubted the correctness of many of the then-mainstream interpretations of the Koran and Hadith, and wrote about those doubts, offering corrections in great length. The current gagged and bound version of Wahhabism as practiced today by millions of Sunnis has much in common with early Wahhabi teachings, but, critically, has mostly lost Wahhab's mandate to revisit and reinterpret accepted wisdom. Wahhabis have forgotten how to doubt. And I'm sure that great mass of humanity's ancestors - the "pagans" - whom we mold to our own liking were very good doubters, too. Anatomically modern humans have had basically the same brain power for the past 100,000 years. From the moment some Cro-Magnon know-it-all first uttered, "You know, people who don't believe in the Earth Goddess are going to pay dearly in the Afterlife," someone sitting on the other side of the campfire was uttering, "Bullshit." Even though acceptable doubt within an Islamic context is severely constrained, a little doubt can have the unintended consequence of opening the mind to greater curiosity and investigation, and ultimately, it is hoped, an abandonment of all unquestioning certitude, and victory for the deeply personal and spiritual over the dogmatic and scriptural.
Geoffrey Sherwood
New Jersey, USA (Jun 13, '07)

Kooky definition of Islam + kooky definition of paganism + assumption that F Rosenzweig's opinions are divinely inspired and inerrant in the original manuscripts = Spengler's latest article display of Islamophobia [The faith that dare not speak its name, Jun 12].
Lester Ness (Jun 13, '07)

Spengler: You call Tariq Ramadan a pagan (The faith that dare not speak its name, Jun 12). What next, the world is flat? You are crazy and Asia Times [Online] must take steps to ensure writers [it publishes] are sane.
Asif Niazi (Jun 13, '07)

Spengler tells us, "Pagan society is 'totalitarian' in character, subsuming the individual in the group and promoting a culture of death" [The faith that dare not speak its name, Jun 12]. Could he please tell us whether he considers this to be true of Orthodox Judaism as well? If not, why not?
Rowan Berkeley (Jun 13, '07)

The actual words quoted here are those of the editor who summarized the article, but their gist is correct. - ATol

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Larry Jagan's article on the ties between China and Myanmar [Myanmar best bad buddies with Beijing, Jun 13]. It is hypocrisy for the West to impose sanctions on Myanmar just because it is a military state. Pakistan is ruled by the military and so were several South American states in the '70s and '80s, but certainly the West never ostracized them. It is through engagement (economic and development) that China can gently prod the Myanmar generals towards change. In other words, to get influence, you have to earn it. While the West continues to avoid the sweat and toil it takes to build (literal) roads, China is supporting the people of Myanmar by investing in the nation. Perhaps Chinese assistance could be called upon to help resolve the Iraq crisis. One can only wonder!
Vigilant Reason
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Jun 13, '07)

Re Myanmar best bad buddies with Beijing [Jun 13]: The British have a good feel for Burma or, as it is known today, Myanmar. The name of Maurice Collis comes to mind immediately; he served in the British colonial service there. Upon his retirement, he wrote many books about Burma - many, alas, are out of print today. Collis knew China well. His Foreign Mud remains a textbook on commissioner [Lin Zexu] and the Opium War. To me, Larry Jagan walks in Collis's footsteps in reporting on contemporary Myanmar and the renewed interest China has in attacking this "hidden Burma" (Collis title) today. Yangon has full well known to humor the whims of Beijing. One example will suffice. In the late 1950s, China undertook to rectify its boundaries with its neighbors to efface the after-effects of its own humiliation during the years it was subjected to unequal treaties and the Open Door Policy. Rangoon agreed to paper over the wrongs of the past by agreeing to a redrawing of Burma's border with China ... [Jawaharlal] Nehru's India did not, and ended up losing a war with China in 1962 and [this marked] the ultimate end of prime minister Nehru's political career, if not his moral stature worldwide. Jagan's reporting on China's current interest should be read closely. Since the Burmese generals are … pariahs globally, it is interesting to note Beijing's pressure on them to smarten up their imagine, one that is more internationally palatable. Cutting a new pattern to the generals' military tenure will [first] lessen any bad publicity on China itself; [second, it] will bring the generals' regime more in parade step to the one the Chinese commissars march to. Thus cleaning up Myanmar's image, to China, is a win-win situation. ATol has already featured articles on the economic importance of Yangon's ports to the transshipment of vital primary and secondary materials to sustain China's dynamic economic development in time and cost. China is willing to improve Yangon's infrastructure in transiting these vital imports, and eventually as another channel for China's exports. By opening up roads, it will open the way for the generals to tame the seemingly never-ending warfare with Myanmar's ethnic minorities, and at the same time help modernize the neighboring Chinese provinces far from Beijing. Jagan is right in saying that the Beijing commissars discount the role of Moscow in Burma; they rightly see India as their major rival for playing the card of its former influence in Myanmar, which in the past was attached to the British Raj. The Myanmar military know this well. They are no fools. They will try to play the Chinese as much as the Chinese play them. And as a military caste, it is easy to substitute a pro-Beijing general for a pro-New Delhi one. They also know that they will always have the Indian card to play against the Chinese, who, burned on the Aung San Suu Kyi question, will play a more subtle game in trying to draw Yangon into its orbit of vassal states.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 13, '07)

Baradan Kuppusamy's Malaysia mired in a holy quandary [Jun 12] presented only a visible dimension of the phenomena of "creeping Islamization" and the evil attempt by one segment of the more dominant racial group (Muslim Malays) to further entrench itself by openly engineering to succumb the supremacy of the civil constitution to the sharia laws, with scant regard to the basic concept of fairness, rule of law, fear and concern of the sizable non-Muslim communities. What he did not dare or [failed] to reveal is the complex and sometimes downright racist/fascist Islamist hidden agenda of the ruling UMNO (United Malays National Organization) elites in wanting to completely overwhelm any vestiges left of Chinese/Indian influences, whether in politics, economy, culture, sports or for that matter all aspects of national lives in this tiny little self-perceived god-zone/paradise. Sadly speaking, these Malay elites are themselves caught in an inadmirable psychological quandary - with virtually nothing of essence (achievements) to boast of in all respects of human endeavors (whatever they do invariably end up in total failures) but yet [possessing] an untenable, oversized egoistic instinct with regards to their self-professed rightful place among respectable nation-states, they have now completely run dry of their wits to elevate their twisted self-esteem and henceforth [are] forced to resort to all sorts of draconian measures to subjugate the legitimate wishes and aspirations of the Chinese/Indian minorities as lawful citizens of the shared nation. This inferiority-complex syndrome is further exacerbated and aptly manifested by, besides the above display of Islamist supremacy, the more severe and evil practice of racial superiority, albeit disguised as affirmative-action bumiputera-ism (prince of soil: native sons). The final conclusion is all too apparent: like all things built on faulty foundations, the whole experiment will start crumbling down and crush those hands with evil intents while Malaysia, as a nation, will most probably pay the final price as a splintered and failed state.
Sad Malaysian (Jun 13, '07)

This story is not funny (Indian glamour finds foreign stars, Apr 4). I am a journalist in India and Indian. Your correspondent may be familiar with my name. That, too, a serious business journalist. You may check my credentials for yourself. And I am aware "Tina Edwin" is not a common name. Your correspondent could have surely given the Canadian referred to in this particular story another pseudonym. I find this very offensive.
Tina Edwin (Jun 13, '07)

Spengler ([The faith that dare not speak its name] Jun 12) might be interested in knowing that today we live in a post-Judeo-Christian world. His beloved Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), the born-again Jew who rejected the concept of assimilation but chose to identify with a religious form of top-down control, did in fact embrace religious fascism. It is certainly not Islam alone among the three monotheistic religions that is controlled from the top down by leaders who are driven by a lust for power. Thugs and born bullies have been jumping to the heads of dogmatic parades since the beginning of time, in every generation and in all religions. It could be argued that the three competing monotheistic religions in particular provide the most fertile ground for career development of cruel and sadistic leaders who have learned to hide behind spiritual platitudes and theatrical manners. In today's world, pronouncements from dogmatic centers bristling with hatred and contempt for "the other" are truly incomprehensible. Spengler, please think independently, say what you mean in a straightforward manner and please don't say "we" when you mean "I".
AAL
Canada (Jun 12, '07)

Spengler, in The faith that dare not speak its name (Jun 12), is becoming even more desperate to damn the religion of Islam as a pale carbon copy of Judaism and Christianity. He latches on to some dubious scholarship that suggests Islam's totalitarian "culture of death" has its roots in a pre-modern paganism "that parodies the outward form of revealed religion". This he lavishly contrasts with Christianity's supposedly anti-totalitarian doctrine of the divine Trinity, whereby the Godhead, in the (necessarily) self-individuating act of human salvation, is revealed as a differentiated unity of three persons. Despite this grand contrast, the fact is that Christendom's shameful history bears no such resemblance to Spengler's forced logic that it should therefore display less of a totalitarian tendency than Islam. Take, for example, the events of September 11, 2001. What we all witnessed - in true totalitarian style - was the rising of Christian America to fight the never-ending battle against international "tyranny", where every single US citizen was expected to do [his or her] own part in defending the "American way". The language of apocalypticism and death had permeated every carefully crafted speech that fell from the lips of US President George W Bush in his national call to arms against Islamic jihadists. Nothing, therefore, can erase the fact the problem we are facing does not in any way reside in a particular belief system. No, it resides fully and squarely in the human heart.
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin
Canberra, Australia (Jun 12, '07)

Isn't what "resides in the human heart" a belief system? Surely even atheists do not pull their life values out of thin air, but learn from the behavior and teachings of others. While we're not trying to second-guess Spengler here, it would seem apparent that if we exist in a totalitarian system chances are we will abide by that system, as the consequences of doing otherwise may be dire. - ATol

I am writing to express my extreme disgust at the fact that Asia Times [Online] continues to allow writers like Spengler to spew hatred and propagate their bigoted world view on a site such as yours that I, for one, visit to obtain a more balanced view of events. I reside in the USA and frankly am quite fed up with the way Islam and Muslims are consistently portrayed in the worst possible light. People like Spengler are more interested in using world events to fulfill their demented agenda of abusing the faith and adherents of one-fifth of humanity. I strongly urge you to do yourselves a favor, and find writers who are balanced and not mentally sick - Spengler being a case in point.
Molten Gold (Jun 12, '07)

Ah, but Spengler is the balance for all our anti-US, anti-Zionist (see letter from Matthew Lanier below), anti-Christian, anti-Spengler coverage. - ATol

Spengler: I await with bated breath your soon-to-be-forthcoming piece as to the linkages between the recent flying lessons undertaken by Mohammed Sweirki and the life and times in 1600s Bohemia. Are we witnessing the birthing pangs of reason or is it just another splatter in a long list of internecine battles? Is Mohammed al-Rifati the Palestinian version of [Wilhelm Grav] Slavata? Or are we merely witnessing a novel way to kill rivals in Gaza City?
Patrick Kennedy
Ottawa, Ontario (Jun 12, '07)

Readers, let's help Spengler out. What's the word for "being kicked off a roof"? "Detectation", maybe? - ATol

Benjamin Shobert [China-US: A long, hot summer, Jun 12] gives an even-handed look at American political forces that are adding to trade tensions with China. Stemming from their overweening religiosity, Americans have refined the art of sanctimonious hypocrisy, which leaves them blind to the unfair trade advantages that the US has long enjoyed. George W Bush and Henry Paulson are being reasonable about China, but they'll have a hard time fending off criticism from those Americans who have a passion for hanging on to the dead past. Bush has always encouraged and played upon such emotions, and now it's all coming back to bite him as other politicians ape his style in order to heap blame on anybody but themselves. Unfortunately, it will bite the rest of us as well.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Jun 12, '07)

Re China-US: A long, hot summer [Jun 12]: An interesting article on the increasing consensus in Washington to in effect "show China who is boss". The US naturally believes it is the boss, and can still put China in its place, but maybe the facts speak otherwise. According to [Finfacts.com], exports to the US only account for 20% of the value of Chinese exports (exports to the EU another 20% and exports to the rest of the world the remaining 60%). If exports in toto account for 30% of China's GNP [gross national product], that means that exports to the US account for roughly 6% of China's GNP. Because China's economy is growing at around 10% a year, even if all Chinese exports to the US suddenly stopped, China's economy would still be able to clock in an impressive 4% growth without the US. The upshot of this is simple: maybe China needs the US a whole lot less than the US need China.
Francis
Quebec, Canada (Jun 12, '07)

Re Golden opportunity for foreign banks [Jun 12]: A new gold rush is on for access to China's Shanghai Gold Exchange and the retail banking market, as Olivia Chung writes. On one hand it is instructive to note that of the five banks initially invited to join the SGE, not one is American. Is Beijing signaling Washington its displeasure? On the other hand, among the 11 foreign banks eager and willing to establish retail banks on mainland [China]'s soil, you will find the name JPMorgan Chase. One way or the other the Chinese are falling back on a tried and true gambit: using the foreigner to tame the foreigner. Be it the SGE or registered foreign retail banks, as Chung observes, they open doors to global markets which the Chinese hope to use. Beijing full well appreciates the expertise and efficiencies of scale of Western and Asian banks which their own lack, and so will use them for their own goals. Boundless as the foreign banking community may think the Chinese market [is], the day will come when they will have to pay Peter's pence. And only then will they learn that all that glitters is not gold.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 12, '07)

What is this bile of an article you have published titled Turkey not done with the Kurds [Jun 12]? I did not know that Asia Times Online was a bastion of uninformed anti-Semitism and blind Turkish nationalism. The article states that "Kurdistan has since become the staging ground for US and Israeli intelligence's covert operations against Iran" while providing absolutely no support for such a claim. The author then goes on to argue that Kurdish nationalism is a product of the American-Israeli Zionist conspiracy, which he apparently prescribes to without question. While believing that Kurdish nationalism is a product of external forces may soothe the author's conscience, he is surely aware of the fact that the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] arose in Turkey without external influence. He is certainly aware that numerous Kurdish nationalist organizations fight the Turkish government because of its fascist policies, including the genocide of 300,000 Kurds since Turkey's foundation and the complete prohibition on the Kurdish language which the Turkish government enforced for 80 years. Certainly he is aware that Kurds are bitter toward the Turkish government because of the military's forced relocation of 2 million Kurds and the destruction of 5,000 Kurdish villages in the last two decades. He also makes outrageous claims such as [Iraqi Kurdistan's President Massoud] Barzani's purported support for the PKK. Apparently he is referring to the recent train incident in northern Kurdistan. This is a remarkably humorous statement by the author given that anyone who does not get his news from Turkey's state-owned news agencies knows that the train in northern Kurdistan was stopped by the PKK and that the weapons were on their way to a Turkish military base. I expect better journalism from Asia Times Online, but perhaps I should rid myself of those expectations.
Matthew Lanier (Jun 12, '07)

Re Putin's smart Gabala gambit [Jun 9]: No mission accomplished at the G8 [Group of Eight] meeting in Heilegendamm for [US President] George W Bush. His tightly scripted scenario, which seemingly one step forward, one step backward on global warming, AIDS [and] Africa went the way of all flesh. For Russia, Vladimir Putin pulled a rabbit out of his bag of tricks, throwing Mr Bush's timing woefully off. Whereas President Bush has been intent on installing a missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland and calling on Moscow to join in this initiative, President Putin has countered this proposal with one of his own: if the United States so wants a base for its missiles, the wily Russian offered a joint plan to base them partially on a former Soviet radar station in Azerbaijan. With one wave of a hand, Putin put the ball right back in Bush's political squash court. Let anyone look at the picture of the G8 leaders on the front page of London's Financial Times. Everyone is smiling but President Bush, who is on the group's left edge, looking out of sorts. The American president's response to the Russian proposal was a terse "sounds interesting". Steven Hadley, the White House's national security adviser, put a rosy spin on the proposal, as Nikolas Gvosdev writes: "We asked the Russians to cooperate with us on missile defense, and what we got was a willingness to do so." Is it in truth? No word in the Main Street press of how poisoned the Putin apple is? Azerbaijan is near Iran, and stationing an American anti-missile shield on its territory will make more shrill the bells and whistles in Tehran. Not only that, it will hasten the development of Iran's nuclear arsenal, which will encourage hawks in Washington and Israel to call for a preemptive strike, to rid them of that axis of evil. The Bush White House has never entertained the possibility of treating Mr Putin as an equal - a blind spot in their view of the world, for now Mr Bush is going to have to deal with him on an equal footing as a partner or an ally or a cold warrior. One way or the other, Mr Bush has painted himself into yet another corner.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 11, '07)

Syed Saleem Shahzad, re An insurgency beyond the Taliban [Jun 9]: Please contact DemocracyNow.org to get the word out about the problem of the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] policy in Afghanistan and the innocent people losing their lives, which will only fuel the civilian support of the insurgency as your report indicates. May you be safe and successful in your travels and work, reporting for those of us who are subject to US mainstream media misinformation regarding the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.
Lisa Childs (Jun 11, '07)

Kaveh [L Afrasiabi] seems to be forthrightly way off base when he states that "post-revolutionary paradigm shifts away from monarchical rule and toward the republican system of separation of powers and checks and balances" and also when he adds that this "contradicts the stereotypical image of the Islamic Republic as a closed, hermetically intolerant society" [Iran revisits the Khomeini legacy, Jun 8]. The Iranian regime does not have the capacity of tolerating even the pro-state reformists who have undoubtedly and repeatedly vowed allegiance to the theocratic elements of the government and are more concerned with the defending posts than promoting democracy. Shutting down the slightly dissident press, tampering with the elections and plundering the national resources all are easy-to-prove evidence.
Amin (Jun 11, '07)

I wish your reader Chrysantha Wijeyasingha [letter, Jun 6] was handling Sri Lanka's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We in India never knew the Chinese are good at confronting guerrilla warfare. It would be fun to watch them taking on the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] head-on, dismantling them with ease and thereby turning themselves into Lanka's heroes. What an insult to the intelligence of Chinese!
Ajith Kumar
Sharjah, UAE (Jun 11, '07)

When more than 100,000 lowland and upland Lao, including General Vang Pao and his army, sought refuge in Thailand in the '70s and were then resettled in Western countries, there was in fact a very pronounced "pull factor" at work that caused a further exodus much bigger than the first. The second wave of Lao refugees were leaving not so much because they were being pushed out by adverse conditions at home, as the original refugees had been, but pulled by the lure of "placement" in [the United States of] America. Thailand was, by dint of geography, caught in the middle of this mass-migration nightmare and does not wish to go through that experience again. Although Thailand's unwillingness to involve UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] or to allow another round of "placement" in the West may be understood in this context, the Thai authorities might wish to consider that the circumstances have changed dramatically since the '70s mostly as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. First, conditions in Laos have improved socially, politically, and economically and the insurgency appears to be over, the last remnants having surrendered some years ago. The flight syndrome of the '70s no longer exists in Laos. Second, the [Laotian] government is being bankrolled not by the Soviets as [it was] back then but by Western donors and international aid agencies, and that allows the West to exercise a certain degree of leverage over the LPRP [Lao People's Revolutionary Party]. Third, since 2002, there has been an agreement in place between the Laotian and Thai governments that has pretty much removed all barriers for Laotian citizens to enter and to work in the land of "bright lights", as Thailand appears from the other side of the Mekong. Thailand's tough stance on the Hmong issue seems weirdly incongruent under these new conditions. A compassionate and humane policy might foster a simple program to identify those that are to be charged with criminal acts and deal with them as appropriate. The rest of these people are just Laotian citizens who are allowed to enter Thailand as they wish and to work here if they wish as tens of thousands of their compatriots do, or to voluntarily return to Laos. They do not belong in refugee camps. They might even be allowed to ... be resettled in the West without fear of the pull factor. The pull factor now is too weak and it cannot exist at all if there is no refugee camp, and no refugee camp is necessary under the 2002 agreement. The humane solution would be good for the Hmong, good for Thailand, and good for Laos as well.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Jun 11, '07)

Enjoy dying while it lasts by Thomas Palley and How to escape China's noose by Peter Morici [both Jun 8] are fantastic, must-read articles for anyone that wants to know the truth about the current state of affairs between the US and China. Palley clearly explains how Wall Street and the US government are selling out the interests of American citizens and both American and Chinese workers in the quest for ever higher corporate profits. He is also the first writer I've read who correctly identifies the destruction of US manufacturing as a national-security threat, which it is. Morici's article is valuable because it doesn't suffer from any delusions about China's leaders' intentions. He also exposes the reality of the complete worthlessness of dialogue with China when words are not backed up with action. The China-hosted six-party talks have resulted in lots of dialogue and a nuclear North Korea, the recently concluded US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue yielded lots of dialogue but no significant breakthroughs or policy changes (and never will), and China is protecting the genocidal leaders of Sudan and the genocidal wanna-bes of Iran at the UN, where China's leaders have expressed a desire for (surprise!) more dialogue, not sanctions or other UN action that might stop the slaughter. This list could go on and on. There is a time for dialogue. However, when entire sections of the US economy are being destroyed, when wealth is flowing out of the US at historically unprecedented levels, and when rogue governments are going nuclear (North Korea), bombing, raping and murdering [their] own civilians (Sudan), and threatening to wipe Israel off the map (Iran), the time for dialogue has passed. The Bush administration's acquiescence to China leaves the spineless Democrat-controlled US Congress to stand up and take action. So much for more action and less dialogue.
TaMu
China (Jun 8, '07)

Peter Morici [How to escape China's noose] and Thomas Palley [Enjoy dying while it lasts, both Jun 8] have an objective in common: they don't want American consumers to have freedom of choice. In whining about China, they ignore the barriers to trade that the US has imposed for generations. One example is governmental subsidizing of agriculture, which harms Americans as taxpayers and consumers and which destroys topsoil. The effects of such subsidies go beyond national borders, driving Mexican farmers off their land and leading them to seek work in the US as illegal aliens. The ethanol boondoggle will only make things worse. But our two authors don't earn their keep by telling the whole story.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Jun 8, '07)

David Isenberg's article And they call China a threat ... [Jun 8] is spot-on in illuminating the not-so-great threat China's military spending poses to the world. Since the fall of the Central Intelligence Agency's generated bogeyman, the USSR, various persons, think-tanks and the US military-industrial complex have been fishing about for another bogeyman to scare the gullible American public into buying another over-hyped threat to Americans. Create enough hysteria and fear - a tactic that both President [George W] Bush and his vice president, [Richard] Cheney, excel at - and the military-industrial establishment is given a blank check to spend as much as it takes to counter the latest bogus threat. The latest craze is "Islamofascism". But various terms, branding and new-product roll-outs to make the American public hunger for more have not generated enough fear to give this threat the legs it needs to last for generations. Enter the Chinese bogeyman. Yes, the good old Commie menace. This "alleged" threat is back stage, undergoing rehearsals before it enters the play completely as the next-generation bogeyman. Unless, of course, the US, bankrupt in more ways than one, has its financial feet pulled out from underneath it and collapses into the next "Great Depression". At [that] point, most of the world will heave a collective sigh of relief, glad that the world's [No 1] arms merchant and purveyor of fear is taking a much-needed rest in its own sanatorium.
Greg Bacon
Ava, Missouri (Jun 8, '07)

China's military support for Africa has a longer reach into the past than retired Colonel Susan Puska's analysis [Military backs China's Africa adventure, Jun 8] would have us believe. Take Beijing's role in the Angolan civil war following the collapse of the Portugal's centuries-old rule in 1974. China's support was less than benign. It staked out its ideological turf to thwart its socialist-imperialist enemy, the Soviet Union and its East European minions, who were supporting the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). China backed the MPLA's rival for control of Angola's destiny, the [National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA] with Jonas Savimbi at it head. Beijing threw its weight [behind] UNITA with the full knowledge that Savimbi enjoyed the full support not only of the United States but also the apartheid government of South Africa, whose troops were fighting alongside UNITA's guerrillas against Mario [Pinto de] Andrade's MPLA. It is useful to recall that Beijing threw its lot in with South Africa and the United States during the last years of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. Although backing UNITA had no economic heft, this example is instructive of the realpolitik that China pursues - here, in a close ideological struggle with the Soviet Union. Today, China and its military, as Puska reports, [have] other fish to fry in Africa, a continent rich in minerals and [other] natural resources that they covet. Beijing's record has its blotches nonetheless. You only have to scratch the surface to find the intense energy that it has put behind the Sudanese government, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, and its manipulations to corner the copper concession in Zambia. In brief, China will act in a manner which fits its glove of political goals, be it made of velvet or iron.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 8, '07)

This letter has reference to the article India caught in a ring of fire by Dhruba Adhikary (Jun 6). The article, no doubt, presents a vivid picture of the dominant political role India is playing in its neighborhood. I am simply tempted to emphasize a few points which Adhikary has touched upon. As far as the ambivalent relations subsisting between Nepal and India [are] concerned, [the latter's] veiled patronizing of a quasi-colonialist view about its smaller neighbors is not only anachronistic, it is morally bankrupt. Such a love-hate [relationship] with India is, in fact, the central axis of Nepal's international concern. Even after three years in office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's conduct towards Nepal appears to have been [guided] less by a comprehensive and consistent long-range policy than by a general [colonial] orientation tied to several controversial elements of policy dictated by its bureaucracy. The result of this approach, at least in the near term, has been a sharp worsening of bilateral relations to a level of serious mutual suspicion. It is also an irony that being a de facto regional power, economically as well as strategically, has contributed very little to mitigating the chronic woes that Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are tormented with. Adhikary is right in pointing out that unlike other issues, matters involving foreign relations are not regularly discussed in [India's] Parliament. In the name of diplomatic sensitivity, the government keeps these issues always secret and away from the public, on whose behalf it is working. A dispassionate analysis of India's foreign policy would reveal that a macho proclivity is the guiding force behind its policy towards [its] weaker neighbors and blatant double standard is its conspicuous feature. It is a colonial legacy that it [has] so far failed to part with. India is, to a considerable extent, responsible for the enormous humanitarian problem of Bhutanese refugees who are currently languishing in seven camps in eastern Nepal, a decade-long "people's war" waged by the heavily armed Maoist insurgents, the separatist movements germinating in the southern plains of the kingdom, and above all, the venomous antagonism between the people of hill origin and those residing in the Terai. These instances pitted against the India's policy towards the Kashmiri movement for independence expose their double standard in interpreting terrorism and fundamental principles of human rights. It is equally regrettable that the Western world has recently started looking at Nepal's political imbroglio through the Indian windows.
Ratna Bahadur Rai
Kathmandu, Nepal (Jun 8, '07)

US missiles hit Russia where it hurts [Jun 7] by M K Bhadrakumar is a brilliant article. The only place of my disagreement is where the author describes US policy towards Russia as "well thought out and clear-cut". To me it appears as being the exact opposite, because the outcome achieved so far is extremely detrimental to American interests. US interference in Russia's domestic affairs only further marginalizes opposition [to President Vladimir Putin] and strengthens Russia's hardliners. The average Russian today is more anti-American than even in the late USSR. Within the populace there is huge pent-up demand for confrontation with the West, [which] will keep on growing unless the US backs off its present course. If it chooses not to, then it will be forced into retreat in a most humiliating way - at the barrel of a gun. When backed into a corner, Russians can be as good at brinkmanship as anyone. Once that happens, Russia and [the United States of] America will become sworn enemies for a long time. And this time around Russians won't surrender. The memory of what came about the last time it happened is seared in Russian collective consciousness. Of course, nothing in today's Washington is "well though out", so there is no surprise. US foreign policy is mostly reactive, and where it aims to be proactive - is in the AMD [anti-missile defense] issue - it only causes more problems for a country already beset by a multitude of bad-to-worse options. America's aggressiveness should be seen as a symptom of increasing and spreading weakness. Its bid to dispel the "paper-tiger" notion in Iraq only worked to reinforce what it sought to disprove. Shackled by its own ideological rigidity and chronic overestimation of its power, the US will most likely be defeated again and again until its behavior on the international scene reflects its 23% share of world's economy. Right now it acts as if that share is 99%. A nuclear strike on Russia would be suicidal for America. As US conventional capabilities deteriorate, its strategists display more willingness to entertain the ultimate solutions to clear the path to endless happiness of Pax Americana. That's a sign of desperation, not strength. Yet even in the depths of unimaginable despair, armchair warriors in Washington know that a "nuclear winter" is not an optimal fix for the global-warming conundrum.
Oleg Beliakovich
Seattle, Washington (Jun 7, '07)

M K Bhadrakumar [US missiles hit Russia where it hurts, Jun 7] excels at revealing the strategies that lie beneath a nation's public posturing. Although Washington's strategy for dealing with Russia may seem clear-cut, one doubts whether it's well thought out. Right now the tooth fairy reigns on Wall Street, not disguised as the recent nominal highs in stock prices, but instead as the yen carry trade that has been keeping aloft the prices of American bills and bonds, thus suppressing the yield curve at both ends. This reign will come to an end and American politicians, ignorant as they are of reality, will learn the hard way that they can no longer outspend the rest of the world on military security. Military analyst Gwynne Dyer has quoted a Japanese official as saying George W Bush is like a 12-year-old with a shotgun. Unfortunately that simile applies as well to many other American leaders, who upon finding that the market has thwarted their dreams of regaining unipolarity are liable to do rash things that will harm the US more than help it.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Jun 7, '07)

M K Bhadrakumar has [used] his long years in diplomatic service to parse out the American, Chinese and Russian positions in US missiles hit Russia where it hurts [Jun 7]. His thoughts deserve our attention. Is a new cold war building up? It seems so. The jury, however, is still out on the question. Let's not lose sight of the fact that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin has been invited to visit President [George W] Bush at his father's Kennebunkport [Maine] summer home in August. [Former US president George H W Bush] will no doubt be on hand to help round off his son's rough-edged Russian policy. Will it be good cop, bad cop? We cannot say. Yet it may be safe to say that the soft soap will be applied generously to bring Mr Putin to reason, and with promises of sugar plums for playing second fiddle to Washington. There is no question that President Bush has given Mr Putin much cotton to thread. [US] Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wasted no time in reading the riot act when she was in Moscow. An oil-rich Russia which under Mr Putin has donned the mantle of the czars in reclaiming privilege in Central Asia, and in playing the Big Game everywhere that it can in the world, is putting it on a collision course with the United States. Bhadrakumar raises the issue of the Bush administration's plan to deploy missiles on Czech and Polish territory. He sees in this a spur under the saddle of NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] unity. His prognostication is too dark. Lest we forget, European NATO members also belong to the Common Market [European Union], and Moscow's cyber-war with Estonia has not sat well with the member states of a united Europe. [From this] we may infer that at best Europe, in a Three Musketeers posture of "one for all and all for one", may tilt towards a politely neutral stance about the stationing of American missiles in Central and Eastern Europe. As for Bhadrakumar's analysis of China's standpoint, Beijing, as is its wont, is playing two sides against the middle. Remember, Secretary of Defense [Robert] Gates has recently traveled to China to explore tighter joint military collaboration at the very moment Washington has stepped up its hardly suppressed anger at Beijing's military buildup. On the other hand, Beijing still needs huge foreign capital investments. A current example is worth noting: China is hungry for foreign investment in its plans to expand the peaceful use of its nuclear industry, this in spite of the huge mass of foreign reserves its exchequer is amassing. This said, it is an indication that in this sector, China very much needs not only foreign monies but foreign expertise. China is wanting to harness Russia's oil-and-gas empire for fueling its rapid industrial revolution. And for Beijing, the underdeveloped hinterland is a vast market for its products, industrial and agricultural. Beijing still bears the scars of the old Sino-Soviet rivalry, and knows its Eurasian neighbor well. It harbors no illusions, and will use its newly found friendship with Mr Putin's Russia for its own strategic goals, be they a goad to the United States or a soothing cup of tea of friendship. It has everything to gain from a renewed cold war should it come to pass, for Washington and Moscow will be vying for Beijing's support.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 7, '07)

Re US missiles hit Russia where it hurts [Jun 7]: M K Bhadrakumar's essay is a definitive, broad and encapsulated view of a moment in time as referenced to a comment attributed to a Chinese think-tank about the "laws of the jungle" that seems to be the lot of mankind. The law-of-the-jungle story comes to mind and may parallel the present somewhat comedic stance of President [George W] Bush in claiming that the missiles [proposed for the Czech Republic and Poland] are intended to protect Europe from Iranian and North Korean nukes when logically if one wants to protect Europe from Iran the positioning would be Israel rather [than the Czech Republic]. As far as North Korean nukes, their announced targets have always been the west coast of the US. Coming back, though, to the laws of the jungle, it's beginning to read more like the story where the lion struts through the jungle challenging any and all sundry neighbors to respond to his "Who is the king of the jungle?" and gets a unanimous answer that "You are the king of the jungle" until he crosses paths with an elephant whose reply is basically "Don't bother me," and when the lion persists, the elephant grabs it by its trunk and flip-flops several times. [Then] the lion licks his wounds and cries, "You don't have to get mad if you don't know who the king of the jungle is." Which brings to mind a Frenchman's opinion that "power never remembers and never forgets". Still makes one wonder which way the EU will go.
Armand De Laurell (Jun 7, '07)

President [George W] Bush has some explaining to do with respect to the [US]$3.5 billion he wants to spend to install missile interceptors on Russia's doorstep. Iran is not a threat to Poland and its missiles do not have the range or accuracy to threaten any part of Europe or America. The rationale given by Mr Bush for this installation is not credible. This proposal is an unnecessary provocation and a rogue act. The EU should stand with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin on this issue. The money would be better spent on the homeless problem in Mr Bush's home country. In my last visit to Honolulu I found homeless people sleeping on the tennis courts in the municipal park. Homelessness in [the United States of] America is a more pressing issue than imaginary missile wars with Iran.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Jun 7, '07)

Regarding the article India caught in a ring of fire [Jun 6], concerning Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war whose victims now are close to 100,000, one line in the article stands out regarding India's duplicity, "if [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leader Vellupillai] Prabhakaran can obtain Indian support for his fight for a separate Tamil state". This only confirms India's bloodstained hands in prolonging Sri Lanka's civil war and proves to Colombo that India is no friend of Sri Lanka ... No matter if New Delhi is under the delusion that Sri Lanka falls under India's so-called "sphere of influence", Sri Lanka has every right to seek outside help to bring this civil war to an end. The best option is China. China is the closest major power in that region. Sri Lanka can offer China a naval base in its strategically important harbor, Trincomalee, in exchange [for an end to] this bloody civil war. Surely China can do a better job than separatist-supporting India, especially when India's army was beaten by the Tamil Tigers (not the Sri Lankan military). This would give a new and sinister meaning to the much-touted word "Chindia".
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Jun 6, '07)

Emad Mekay's article Bush adds some sheen to US standing [Jun 6] echoes French President Nicolas Sarkozy's appraisal of [US President George W] Bush's latest initiative on global warming as an "encouraging evolution. Whether or not it is sufficient is another thing, but it is an evolution." Mr Sarkozy's assessment is neutral. Unlike Mr Bush, he is a strong believer that the international community must needs agree on a program of clearly defined goals. Which means he's is a proponent of multilaterialism, whereas his American counterpart is a unilateralist. Although President Bush has put a momentary shine to the American apple, he is also a bearer of a poisoned chalice to his European and NATO allies in the form of an anti-missile shield which he wants to place in the Czech Republic and Poland. This has stirred Russian President Vladimir Putin to act; he is going to reposition Russia's missiles so that they face Europe. Some see in his response seeds of a new cold war. The political thermometer of angry words between Moscow and Washington has headed suddenly dangerously north. Mr Bush has in the past claimed clairvoyant powers. Has Mr Putin so soon forgotten that the American had simply to look into the Russian president's [mind] to find out that he was a good man and one Mr Bush can implicitly trust? On the other hand, Mr Putin has remained mum on what he thinks of the American president. President Bush is tone-deaf and color-blind to post-World War II history, and the value that [Josef] Stalin (or any Russian leader for that matter) put on Eastern Europe. Russia breaks out in a sweat when it has no assurance of a cordon sanitaire to protect its borders from a long history of invasions, from Napoleon Bonaparte to Adolf Hitler. Mr Bush's anti-missile strategy has aroused old fears, which should make his European and NATO allies uneasy since Russian missiles have them in target range. Like the Bourbon kings, Mr Bush knows nothing and has learned nothing. His folksy ways will not hide his false words nor his obvious, provocative designs.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 6, '07)

In reporting on [US President George W] Bush's "Korea model" for Iraq, Jim Lobe covers the implications in terms of permanent US troop deployment but ignores the implications for the breakup of Iraq (Bush's Korea specter in Iraq, Jun 5). There is no doubt that the Korea model's neo-con appeal stems from the potential containment of a hostile Sunni population behind the borders of a resource-poor, isolated state, a la North Korea. This Sunni state, in the feverish delusions of the neo-con brain, would be surrounded and contained by pro-American, oil-rich Kurdish and Shi'a states (South Korea). Thus the real significance of Bush's Korea comparison is that it suggests that the objective of the "surge" is not to control sectarian violence, as is often claimed, but to eventually effect the breakup of Iraq. Of course, whether this dream is realized or not depends upon the Iraqi people themselves.
Tom Baker
Vancouver, British Columbia (Jun 5, '07)

Re Bush's Korea specter in Iraq [Jun 5]: The Bush administration is floating a trial balloon. It is openly talking about stationing US troops in Iraq on a long-term basis, and is holding up as a paradigm Korea, which has in this month of June had the presence of American military on its soil for the last 57 years, since the outbreak of the Korean War. [US President George W] Bush and Co are straining at gnats. The idea has an Alice in Wonderland feel to it. It reminds us of those heady days of the [Lyndon] Johnson administration when generals and think-tank wonks and high-level bureaucrats and university professors would play game theory in devising ways to parry, check and mate Vietnamese guerrillas - and this in a one-term presidency when the Johnson administration was desperately trying, as they used to say, to [snatch] victory from the jaws of defeat. The scenario would go like this: take for example the defeat of Maxmilian's French troops by Benito Juarez' forces at the Battle of Puebla [Mexico] in 1862. The adepts of game theory would tweak history so that the French would win, thereby giving body to [Charles] Louis Napoleon [Bonaparte]'s dream of an outpost in North America. This of course is the arrogance of hindsight, and so by playing tin soldier, strategists and tacticians on a mockup of battlefields, these earnest men in Washington would win wars hands down. Vicarious as the thrill of winning is, these games or models could not delay ultimately the defeat of US troops in Vietnam. And the same is true today for President Bush's fanciful notions that he will be able to leave an American military in Iraq for an open-ended period. This conceit rings the right chimes in the Bush White House. His grandiose scheme is based on a false analogy, and Alice, who in answering the Caterpillar's command to "explain yourself", passes judgment on it by reciting the closing lines of "You Are Old, Father William": "Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off ..." And such is fate to be of the Korean model for pulling the plum of victory out of Mr Bush's war in Iraq.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 5, '07)

John Lasker's piece on the threat that US missile defense poses to China [US ramps up missile tests in Pacific, Jun 5] read more like a piece of tech-pork advertising from the Pentagon or Lockheed, mixed with some pseudo-geopolitical analysis that is really nothing more than patriotic boosting. There's a huge mistake at the heart of the article, and that is that neither the THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] nor the Standard 3 are meant to intercept large ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] of the kind China has: they are directed at short- and intermediate-range missiles, and the THAAD test conduct in Hawaii in April against a Scud-like target assumed the Scud didn't separate into several vehicles on re-entry, as happened over Israel during the 1991 Gulf War (though there it was accidental). And this is the kind of weakness someone fighting asymmetric warfare would take advantage of; the fact that the MDA [US Missile Defense Agency] refuses to learn this lesson doesn't bode well for the rest of the program. As to the Standard 3's promise as a floating THAAD that threatens China's ICBM fleet, it would be interesting to hear Lasker explain how one missile with a less-than-300-mile range could threaten another fired more than 500 miles inshore - or does Lasker assume that China is North Korea? ...
Carlos of Manhattan
USA (Jun 5, '07)

Following the regular Letters column, it is apparent that a version of Hollywood's "Only sex and gore sell" mantra applies to the people writing in as well. The ratio of people writing to complain versus those praising your writers is around 3 or 4 to 1 (yes, I really should go out more often). If only the people writing in to complain stopped and considered the illogic associated with their action, ie, when you write in, it provides free publicity to the very people being criticized. In turn, this encourages other writers to become more sensational or outrageous, to attract attention. Instead if you want to change the behavior of writers, try to focus on the chaps you happen to like and "encourage" others to slowly change their ways. That brings me to the story by Scott North [Japan: Get a life, Jun 2] on the work culture in Japan, which I had to confront as an expat a few years ago in the mid-1990s (thus it's not exactly new, nor is it purely due to the recession). The two gaijin recently posted there found the habit of people waiting until after we left every day quite intriguing, so we started simple tests wherein we went out for drinks at 5pm every day with the lights off in our office, coats taken away etc. Pretty soon, most of our Japanese colleagues learned to leave on time and come back well refreshed the next morning. Also, we had more applications from within the company for any open position as compared to from outside, as the good news about the work habits spread.
Salt (Jun 5, '07)

Just about when I am puzzled as to why and how could Asia Times [Online] ever miss such an important news item on Malaysia's Nina Joy's case when the rest of world media [are] abuzz with such frenzy, Chan Akya's When progress is against the law [Jun 2] appeared as a timely drop of water in the desert. There is a buzzword among the foreign expat community - whatever the Malays touch, the object will invariably turn from gold to coal ... It would be really lovely to fast-forward and imagine a future scenario where there will be no Chinese and Indians left in Malaysia, where Malaysia will likely descend into a medieval feudal state. By then, the Malays will still find themselves marginalized because they still cannot compete with their more hard-working and resourceful brethren from Indonesia. What an awfully twisted irony!
Observer
Malaysia (Jun 5, '07)

In my letter regarding [W Joseph] Stroupe's article The Cold War: Fears of an unfinished victory [May 31], I asked Mr Stroupe for the source to his claim that the West "sponsors proxies such as the Chechen separatists". A proxy is someone or a group that acts as an agent of another, like Hezbollah is the proxy for the Iranian government, for which it gets tens of millions of dollars in money and weapons. Mr Stroupe replies [letter, Jun 1] by stating that the US and Britain "offered various forms of support to the top leaders of the Chechen movement". Mr Stroupe suggests all I need to do is Google up some facts. Well, I looked - there are none to support Mr Stroupe's position. He further claims that Russia will attack US ABM [anti-ballistic-missile] sites as they "become operational", meaning a preemptive attack. I also could not find any source for this claim. In his reply letter, Mr Stroupe claims that the CIA [US Central Intelligence Agency] "trained armed and funded" Osama bin Laden. I have read every important source about Osama in the last 10 years and I have never read that. American aid to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion was filtered through the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] and was mainly in the form of money with some weapons like the Stinger anti-aircraft missile. The Arab contingent fighting the Soviet occupation usually brought money - they did not need to be funded when they got money from wealthy Arabs. This does seem pointless, but I will again ask Mr Stroupe for his source. Then Mr Stroupe asks if I have "heard of US support for Kurdish Islamic radicals and terrorists". No, I have not. If Mr Stroupe is thinking about Ansar al-Islam, the largest of the Kurdish Islamic groups, they have been attacked numerous times by the US. On March 23, 2003, BBC [British Broadcasting Corp] correspondent Jim Muir wrote [that] US planes had bombed positions held by Ansar al-Islam. If this is Mr Stroupe's idea of support I'm glad I'm not his ex-wife. If Mr Stroupe looks at [the] list of the 25 largest oil- and natural-gas-producing countries, more then 20 in each list has a more Westerly influenced outlook on the world, they are not in the Russian-Chinese orbit. As for protecting its supply lines, I don't believe there is any power that comes close to the US in power-projecting ability.
Dennis O'Connell
USA (Jun 5, '07)

One of the most effective misleading propaganda and psychological wars is lies mixed and decorated by half-truths. That is exactly what Spengler does. I am wondering why he sees evil only in the Muslim countries and not in the Western killing of millions of people, monumental distractions, and manufacturing dictators and corruption in the Third [World] in the past 200 years particularly in the past half a century.
Ali Shokouh
USA (Jun 5, '07)

Re Rice demand nukes Korean 'peace regime' [Jun 2]: It would be wrong to dismiss the concept of a "peace regime" when it comes to divided Korea. No matter how idyllic visions of the lion lying down with the lamb may be, tensions in divided Korea have subsided since Kim Dae-jung went to meet Kim [Jong-il] in Pyongyang, thereby inaugurating the Sunshine Policy. It has had its starts and stops, but as a bird builds its nest twig by twig, so is Seoul laying out the land for furthering the reconciliation between North and South Korea. Step by step … the contours of this policy [are] becoming clearer and clearer. The recent flapdoodle with Pyongyang has its roots in the inability of bureaucratic Washington to release US$25 million frozen in Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macau. On one hand twisting as it did the Treasury Department's reluctant arm, the United States has agreed to releasing the funds, but the Treasury has not lifted its ban on doing business with BDA, which has not mitigated Washington's "kiss of Tosca" on commercial and financial institutions for doing business with Pyongyang, and puts a curse on North Korea's access to foreign markets. This interdiction on a bank on Chinese territory has infuriated Beijing, which has put the brakes on the release of funds to Pyongyang. The release of the monies is a sine qua non for Pyongyang's implementing the February 13 agreement to shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyan. It does not take close reading of the press to figure this out. Washington's mixed signals and visceral inability to cut through bureaucratic red tape has put a sour face on the euphoria that Washington had in a regional context belled the North Korean cat. On the other hand, although there is much hope that the free-trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and the United States will meet quick approval by Seoul's Parliament and Washington's houses of Congress, the Kaesong Economic Zone near the 38th Parallel in North Korea raises questions which might delay quick passage of the FTA. The Bush administration has to make up its mind whether it wants to calm the angry waters it stirred up by branding [North Korea] an "axis of evil" nation, in order to take care of its war in Iraq, or it wants to bring closure to more than a half-century of arctic cold war with Pyongyang, which will allow Seoul to pursue a "peace regime" with Pyongyang.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 4, '07)

I have lived in Asia for 25 years and am used to the long working hours. Some years ago I was employed as a consultant by a very large Japanese retail conglomerate. The staff there were in the mold of your recent articles on the time spent at work by new graduates [see Japan: Get a life, Jun 2]. Catching the last train home and getting the first one back to the office was a badge worn with pride. And the staff was even proud of the fact that six staff had committed suicide - this deserved [a medal] in their eyes. Staying late had nothing to do with the workload, it had only to do with staying later than the boss - who of course had to stay later than his boss, etc. Working efficiently wasn't recognized - staying at your desk was seen to be the way to the top or even just to keep your job. After the six-month project filled with frustration and observing that no one had the authority to make any real decisions, I simply ended my relationship with them ... It would be easy to laugh at the inefficiencies in the Japanese distribution process, except that the customer (the Japanese customer) got such a lousy deal. I could walk away to Hong Kong and work with China, but it was so sad to think of the wasted talent of both the male and female graduates. At least I was able to encourage a few bright female graduates to move abroad, but even there, because they continued to work in the Japanese trading companies, their progress was frustrated and blocked by ancient trading practices. There are now one or two companies [that] are delivering better value to their customers, and good luck to them. The process of change, though, in the working practices is wholly unacceptable to the young graduates who want a balanced life.
David Kirkman (Jun 4, '07)

"This would require that people like [Paul] Wolfowitz, [Donald] Rumsfeld, and many others be called before a select, bipartisan committee of [the US] Congress to tell us what, in their view, really happened." - Mark Danner, Words in time of war [Jun 2]. A truth and reconciliation commission? Elsewhere people going before such commissions have to admit they did wrong. Will these sub-geniuses do so?
Lester Ness
Kunming, China (Jun 4, '07)

A recent commentary by William Hartung appearing in Asia Times [Online], Why should Japan bail out Lockheed Martin? [May 31], is based on flawed assumptions about the nature of US foreign military sales as well as inaccuracies concerning Lockheed Martin programs. Contrary to what is implied by the commentary, the F-22 is a transformational combat aircraft designed and built for one customer only - the US Air Force. By US law, the F-22 cannot be marketed to any non-US customer, Japan included. The implication that Lockheed Martin is looking toward sales to foreign customers is baseless. Lockheed Martin recognizes that any decision regarding F-22 sales overseas must, and should, come from [the US] Congress. Further, Mr Hartung was inaccurate regarding the cost of the F-22. The US Air Force states the fly-away cost of the aircraft at [US]$136.6 million, not the figure quoted in the commentary. In fact, the multi-year contract proposal authorized by Congress provides a greater return on the significant investment already made to develop the F-22. The estimated saving is approximately $225 million over the three-year period of the multi-year contract. With extraordinary performance, the F-22 remains a healthy program with strong support in the air force and in Congress. No deal of the century, as Mr Hartung incorrectly notes, is needed to sustain the F-22. The F-22 has demonstrated exceptional performance during exercises, including the first Red Flag Exercise in February, as 100% of planned sorties were successfully conducted. And last summer during the Northern Edge Exercise, F-22s flew 97% of planned missions. As for the programs mentioned in the commentary that are experiencing difficulty, Lockheed Martin is working with the customer to bring them on track. In the case of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), Lockheed Martin has been forthcoming with the US Navy about costs and provided regular, detailed cost updates to the service to ensure complete transparency. The US Navy's own studies confirm that all first-in-class ships experience costs increases. We believe that the cost of the LCS-1 ship is consistent with, if not lower than, that of other recent first-in-class ships. Lockheed Martin is proud of the progress made on LCS. The entire acquisition process - from concept to first ship in the water - has taken a little over four years, which is 60% faster than conventional ship-building timelines. The portions of the Deepwater Program for which Lockheed Martin is responsible remain on track as the most extensive modernization of the US Coast Guard in the service's history. Our responsibilities include aviation, command and control, logistics - virtually all elements of the program other than shipbuilding. The record shows that the assets we have deployed under Deepwater are making a positive contribution to coast-guard missions including search and rescue, drug interdiction and undocumented-immigrant interception. The coast guard's decision to assume the lead role as systems integrator for all Deepwater assets is not news. Under our contract, the coast guard has always retained the authority to act as integrator and has done so on a number of occasions. Lockheed Martin, partnered with industry and government, is committed to meeting its October 2009 deadline for initial operating capability for the VH-17 Presidential Helicopter. While this is a very aggressive schedule, at least three years faster than programs of comparable complexity, recent reviews by the US Navy confirm the program is on track to meet the deployment date established by the White House. Mr Hartung implies that Lockheed Martin needs a shot in the arm with a lucrative international sale. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lockheed Martin continues to record robust earnings in 2006 and the first quarter of 2007. Our business model anticipates changes in the marketplace and emerging opportunities to sustain value for our customers, shareholders and employees. In fact, when we reported our first quarter earnings in April, we increased our financial guidance for the year. The 140,000 men and women of Lockheed Martin are keenly aware of the significance and complexity of the work that our customers entrust to us. With 3,000 individual programs - the majority operating on time and on budget - Lockheed Martin enjoys the confidence of customers in 75 countries worldwide. In all cases, Lockheed Martin conducts its business to the highest operational and ethical standards.
Dennis R Boxx
Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications
Lockheed Martin Corp (Jun 4, '07)

I read the [May 30] Spengler article on Iran [Why Iran will fight, not compromise] and quite enjoyed it, and then read the Letters section to see the reaction to it. As I expected, based on the letters, Spengler has again hit a nerve, and the letters generally confirmed, to paraphrase the comments of one reader, that Spengler's critics lack both self-awareness and any sense of irony. If they can't bear to read it, and say they don't, how can they quote from it? Now, if Spengler's facts are correct, or close to correct, just what part of his conclusion is so suspect? Iran is not like the United States, because the US has a huge and diverse economy, and with an educated and well-trained workforce, with huge amounts of capital and corporations with international interests. No, Iran is in fact a little pocket of Persia, going essentially nowhere. It has no products to export, because oil is not exactly a product. When the oil runs out, what then? Except of course, oil doesn't exactly run out, it just gets more and more expensive to extract, but the return does decrease. What then? Or does anyone think that the Iraqi Shi'ites will cheerfully support the Iranian people when the Iranian oil runs out? Dream on. Spengler is just saying that the Iranians are in a pickle. He says it in a very provocative way, which is why it is enjoyable to read his columns. But by the way, just what well-known manufactured item is produced and exported by Iran? Just asking.
Richard Stone (Jun 4, '07)

Read on. - ATol

Regarding the article Why Iran will fight, not compromise by Spengler (May 30): It is absolutely democratic to have a range of opinions in any political debate and I greatly appreciate that. As a secular Muslim and liberal, I am committed to read opposing and conservative views from objective and professional outlets. In this letter, I don't want to challenge Mr Spengler's political view but his racist and unnecessary comments that [have] nothing to do with his analysis. In this article, about Iran's economy, Mr Spengler writes: "The country exports nothing but oil, carpets and dried fruit (excluding the growing human traffic in Persian women)." This is the first time I [have seen] a so-called expert include "human traffic" in international trade. I am sure he knows that that is not the case, and if it is not for the sake of insulting and humiliating Iranians' dignity and satisfying his instinct hates and racism against Muslims, what could it be? Just for the sake of argument, let [us] say he did because he is concerned about women's rights. Did the editor ask him or herself whether this man has ever written or questioned [hundreds of thousands] of prostitutes, legacy of Western "civilization", left behind in Vietnam? Were they American and British "liberal-economic promotion" in Vietnam? And, later on, [tens of thousands] of these women became US citizens. Where they US "imports?" Has he ever been bothered when an American soldier from "the best-trained and the most professional army in the world" raped or "democratized" a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then burned her buddy and killed or "liberated" the rest of the family including a child? Was it a Western "export gift" to Iraq? What about the Iraqi women refugees, among 2 million, in Syria who [were] forced into prostitution to support their families as a result of a catastrophic condition imposed upon them by US-UK occupation of Iraq ("Desperate Iraqi refugees turn to sex trade in Syria", New York Times, May 29)? Are they "exports" of US-UK's "democratization" project in the Middle East? Has he ever noticed that wherever the Western military goes and establishes military basis even in a so-called "peacekeeping" mission, they leave behind a local prostitution industry? The list is very long and way beyond this writing (even only in the field of prostitution, excluding the political prostitution, the Western legacy in the Third World countries). I do not deny many of the great Western democratic ideas and I appreciate them. I am very happy to be a member of American society. At the same time, we have to confront the evil and anti-democratic forces in Western societies that try to eliminate these great ideas. In this regard, I believe Mr Spengler is the symbol of the arrogance, racism, and dark part of the West and an ugly stain on the face of ATimes Online. Here, I am questioning ATimes Online, not him. You, as [editors], read his articles before publishing them, and I assume you have the knowledge that "human traffic" is not an item in international trade. If that is the case, didn't you ask yourself, what is the reason for him, unnecessarily, to mention that "human traffic in Persian women" as Iranian exports, and for you to publish that? ATimes Online allowed this man to insult Iranian nation; that is why I believe ATimes Online owes an apology to Iranian people. Finally, why should it be so impossible for ATimes Online [to find] some objective, professional, and non-racist conservatives to express their opposing opinions? Can't you find a conservative better than this?
Ali Shokou
USA (Jun 4, '07)

Prostitution and its darker elements, including human trafficking, are indeed a significant part of the economy (albeit usually "underground") in many societies, regardless of whether some pretend it isn't so. For more on Spengler's take on Iran's role in the "export of women", see Jihadis and whores (Nov 21, '06). - ATol

Lately, several people have written letters complaining about Spengler's articles. While I did find some of his earlier articles thought-provoking with his blend of theology and geopolitics, I stopped reading him a while ago, unable to stand his irrational and almost psychotic crusade against Iran. His calls to war and profound hate toward Islamic culture [have] been widely denounced, while leaving ATol editors rather indifferent. However, the main emotion exposed through his surrealist and quite absurd descent into warmongering madness seems to be fear - fear that his race of racist, demagogic, bloodthirsty dinosaur is going extinct (unlike Arabs) and fear that he will not be able to see a new world war before likely going to hell. Yet Spengler's overly simplistic and [prejudicial] view of Iran and Islam is obviously light-years away from reality, and fortunately, ATol publishes articles by many other talented writers [who] have different (and more convincing) opinions and/or extensive knowledge of the Middle East, like Pepe Escobar, Henry C K Liu, Kaveh L Afrasiabi or M K Bhadrakumar among many others. Escobar (in The second coming of Saladin [May 18]) even did a veiled response to Spengler stating that "crypto-scientific Western babble of the 'Arabs are extinct' variety is plain silly" and indirectly telling him "to get a grip on reality", sidestepping ATol's stated policy of "not carry[ing] articles that react against or critique articles or writers previously published in Asia Times Online". I agree with letter writer Sam Armand [May 31] that financially related questions must explain, at least in part, ATol's decision to continually publish Spengler's writings. I would compare that decision to a respected, but financially struggling, art museum that decided to boost its visits by exposing some kind of freak show recruited out of a circus justifying it as "alternative" art. Every visitor surely would pass by to see the freak show, pushed by a twisted and half-shameful curiosity, and it could possibly become the museum's most popular exposition and maybe bring new visitors, but the main reason most people come would still be to admire very fine pieces of art. ATol is one of the greatest sources of news and analysis one can fine anywhere. So keep up the good work while keeping in mind that the main reason most readers visit this site is not your "freak show" but your very fine pieces of journalism.
MaTo
Quebec, Canada (Jun 4, '07)

In his [Jun 1] missive to your good selves, the peerless Armand de Laurell accuses me of calling him a coward, and yet a careful perusal of my mail a few clicks down shows no such thing. After all, I had merely pointed out that the two possibilities of Armand and others like him judging Spengler without reading him, or actually reading him but adopting an air of superior condescension ... Finally, if only Armand were familiar with the works of Roald Dahl, he would know that Salt is a "real" name.
Salt (Jun 4, '07)

I stumbled upon your site while searching news on Afghanistan. I must say that I am now addicted to it - the articles are very well written and more detailed than I have ever seen in any news syndication online or in print. I have learned a lot and have done a lot of further historical research as a result of your articles. You cover such a wide variety of topics from all around the world and ... provide enough information, including follow-up information and links - to a curious girl like me, that is awesome. Thank you to all your journalists - and editors, of course. They are very good at what they do.
Tina
Canada (Jun 4, '07)

I'd like to congratulate Hisane Masaki about An awkward visitor for Tokyo and Beijing [Jun 1]. Instead of making threats to Japan due to former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui's visit, it would be helpful if Beijing learn more [about Taiwan's] way of prosperity, friendship, freedom and democracy. It's natural that Taiwan has more things to do with Japan than with China, but Beijing hasn't anything to worry [about], just learn. And don't be ashamed to copy.
M Murata (Jun 1, '07)

Re Afghan refugees sing Hekmatyar's tune [Jun 1]: This article appears to affirm the suggestions that [Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar, who fled Afghanistan in 1974, was sheltered, trained and patronized by the late Z A Bhutto regime [of Pakistan in pure national interest and that the Afghan jihad led by Afghan Islamists like Hekmatyar, Burhanuddine Rabbani and Abdul Rasool Sayyaf started much earlier than July 1977 when Bhutto was overthrown by Zia [ul-Haq] and long before 1979 when Russian tanks actually rolled into the Afghan mountains. It also seems to affirm some of the suggestions that most definitely even in the absence of Zia ... Pakistan would have still sponsored and supported the Afghan jihad in the way it did in pure national interest in conjunction with the overwhelming American interest ... I do not believe Bhutto would have had a lot of sympathies for the Islamists as such, but in sheer national interest he most definitely would have gone to any length.
Dr Rashid Hassan (Jun 1, '07)

Re The right (wing) man for the World Bank job [Jun 1]: Emad Mekay has it "right". His article's headline is simply too cute and anachronistic with "wing" in parentheses. President [George W] Bush has quickly [moved to fill] the presidency of the World Bank as is his privilege as chief executive of the United States under an agreement when the bank was established by the Bretton Woods agreements in 1945. He has nominated a man who will follow his administration's policies on one hand, and implement a bipartisan consensus on foreign aid and lending. He nominated Robert Zoellick, whom he called "the right man to succeed Paul [Wolfowitz] in this vital work". Zoellick will air out the stench that the Affaire Wolfowitz left in the corridors and high offices of the World Bank. Zoellick [will bring] an expertise to the bank whose primary goal is "providing finance and advice to countries for the purposes of economic development and eliminating poverty". His curriculum vitae is impressive, as is his service in financial institutions and government service, which makes Paul Wolfowitz' credentials look like small potatoes. Zoellick's presence will calm heated tempers in the World Bank and allay major country contributors to the bank. He is the second Goldman Sachs banker to join the Bush team. Zoellick burnishes the blazon of the powerful investment-banking house of Goldman Sachs, which has its financial fingers in influencing monetary policies of many governments. A recent article in The Financial Times shed light on the anger which the investment bank of note has aroused in Italy with rumors flying that the finances of Rome were being manipulated by Goldman Sachs. Still, Zoellick's [nomination] to the presidency of the World Bank has safeguarded America's prerogative to lead the bank world without end.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Jun 1, '07)

Re Foreign firms could lose out on 3G in China [Jun 1]: The issue for 3G [third-generation mobile telephony], regardless of standard, is the inability of today's semiconductors to efficiently amplify the RF [radio frequency] signals used by such systems. The linearity required by such signals also generates heat which today's power amplifiers cannot efficiently dissipate. A new technology called gallium nitride (GaN)-on-diamond seems to resolve this problem, and could be, I believe, a way forward. It will very likely take a decade to filter down to consumer goods such as mobile-phone systems, however.
Sullivan
Hawaii, USA (Jun 1, '07)

Dennis O'Connell (letter, May 31) objects to the portrayal of the world as increasingly polarized between the emerging East that is opposed to excessive US global dominance and the declining West that seeks, for the most part, to perpetuate and reconsolidate unipolarity (The Cold War: Fears of an unfinished victory, May 31). As such, he betrays his complete inability to recognize and to deal with the reality of the emerging global situation. Not only is the world re-polarizing across the dividing line of the issue of those favoring and those opposing excessive US global dominance, but it is also polarizing across the closely intertwined dividing line of who will sit in control of strategic global resources. In case Mr O'Connell hasn't noticed, the tight braid of these two issues is woven throughout the center of every major dividing issue that arises between the US and its allies on one side, and Russia and its allies on the other side, from Kosovo independence (where crucial pipeline routes will help decide whether Russia's export monopolies are strengthened or weakened), to US plans for anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) systems in Europe and the Caucasus, to North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion, to the Iran issue and other issues arising in the resource-rich Middle East, to nearly every other issue of major importance one may cite. The reality is that the East-West divide is re-emerging, with a vengeance, whether Mr O'Connell cares to recognize that fact or not. Russian President Vladimir Putin's vow to counter US imperialism and his proclaiming of the fact that the US has triggered a new style of arms race only further bolsters the view that the East-West divide is rapidly re-emerging as the reinvigorated US-Russia rivalry (in all its aspects and issues) rises to the top of global attention and the world's powers choose sides on the twin issues I mentioned above. That trend will now only accelerate, along with a much more open re-emergence of the East-West divide. Mr O'Connell's apparent inability to recognize the reality of this situation is not my problem - rather, it is his problem. With respect to Mr O'Connell's objection to my statement regarding US/British support for Chechen separatists, one only has to Google up a few facts on the issue to see the widely documented fact that both the US and Britain have repeatedly met with and offered various forms of support to the top leaders of the Chechen movement. The two powers have also sought to pressure Russia to meet and compromise with the separatists so as to reach an accommodation with them, thereby weakening Russia's grip on that key region. The idea of negotiation and accommodation may sound reasonable to most, at first blush. However, Russia's position is that it will not deal with terrorists, and that the US and Britain have a double standard - they do not meet with and accommodate Osama bin Laden or Hezbollah, so why should Russia bend with respect to Chechen separatists, whom Russia sees as nothing more than terrorists? Mr O'Connell then makes the almost unbelievable claim that the US would not engage such types and would have nothing to gain from supporting such Islamic radicals! Perhaps Mr O'Connell is unaware that a battle of colossal proportions between the US-European Union and Russia has been going on for the access to and control over energy resources to which the Caucasus serves as an important gateway? Perhaps he is also unaware of the fact that in the 1980s the US Central Intelligence Agency trained, armed and funded an Islamic radical named Osama bin Laden and employed him and his followers against the Soviets in Afghanistan? Perhaps Mr O'Connell also hasn't heard of US support for Kurdish Islamic radicals and terrorists? Maybe he should ask the Turks about that one. Maybe Mr O'Connell imagines US foreign policy is somehow enwrapped in the pearly-white robes of moral righteousness and purity, robes as white as the wind-driven snow? I ask, who is it that thinks and lives in a fantasy-based bubble here? My source for my assertion that Russia insists on its right to attack and destroy US-sponsored ABM sites is none other than Mr Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who have this week proclaimed, on the heels of their dual missile tests in which a brand-new Iskander-based and highly accurate cruise missile was successfully tested, stated that their new cruise missile was designed to take out such ABM installations ... Mr O'Connell … resorts to the inane fall-back position of the typical Rush Limbaughian neo-cons to the effect that the US economy is so huge that it is virtually invincible, and that Russia and its partners could not, therefore, achieve any "win" against the US. Here, fundamental vulnerabilities matter more than size, for the ability of the entire US economy to keep standing is wholly reliant upon one Achilles' heel-like factor - massive imports of oil ...
W Joseph Stroupe
Editor, Global Events Magazine (Jun 1, '07)

ATol's comments on Jayant Patel's letter (May 31) have missed the point. Every country on Earth has a lot more to do to improve. The important thing, especially for African nations, is whether there is a general improvement in the livelihood of people as a result of trade with China and India. Concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is common even in the Western nations. Let us recall the old days of free Chinese railway building in Africa when China was much poorer. Never mind any political "plots" or motives as many others suggested. The result in the receiving countries speaks the loudest.
S P Li (Jun 1, '07)

We didn't miss Jayant Patel's point, nor disagree with it (or yours, for that matter), but stressed what you yourself have said here: results are what matter. In that regard, it is far too early to assume - especially using GDP figures alone as a guide - that Chinese and Indian investment in Africa will have a significant positive impact on that continent's poor, who happen to be fewer in number than the poor of China and India. Double-digit GDP growth is nice for people with stock portfolios, but it is small comfort to an African, Indian or Chinese who cannot afford to feed, educate or provide health care for his family. - ATol

In his letter published by ATol on May 31, Salt references one of my letters to the editor published along with another letter the same day critiquing a Spengler commentary. Included in Salt's letter is an accusation that I and the other letter sender are basically "cowardly". In the case of Salt, a review of his past letters to ATol during which he has made it a habit to complain about scantily clad girl pop-ups and other insignificant sidebars, but never addressing any of ATol's commentators, he now is assuming the role of criticizing and insulting letter writers. An individual [who] uses an alias such as Salt/Spengler is more likely a real coward than one who does not. If the letters editor is in on this farce to jack up Spengler's reputation, it's in bad taste, and ATol readers do not deserve that ...
Armand DeLaurell (Jun 1, '07)

Does anyone really regard Spengler as anyone but a Zionist propagandist? He constructs one vicious attack after another on non-Jews and non-Jewish ideas ... Spengler exemplifies their [Zionists'] intolerance for all others and their ideas as he attempts to destroy all that is not Jewish or celebratory of the Jewish people. God has made all of the nations with gifts of beauty and grace. Jews are not the wisest people on Earth nor are they the most intelligent. Jews do believe they are the real heirs to the Earth and all in it. I bow to the god of Israel and to his son, but the Jews are not my masters nor will I allow them to become so without serving my god. Meanwhile the missionary of Zionism preaches his false teaching to diminish all but the Jews and their ideas. Israel wants war on Iran and Spengler is cobbling vitriolic prose to poison us against the Iranian culture. He is a wellspring of toxic argument long since divorced from reason as well as moral responsibility ... As a Christian, I with Torah Jews reject the state of Israel as a legitimate entity.
Otto Reich (Jun 1, '07)

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