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the Letters page.
September 2007
Monks in the
vanguard for regime change [Sep 28] by Brian
McCartan (Sep 28) I found interesting. The article
told me something about the Buddhist religion of
Myanmar. But to write of regime change makes me
cautious. The US and Britain are pursuing regime
change in countries they don't agree with. They
call it democracy. If street demonstrations are to
be raised at the United Nations, then why weren't
France's recent severe street demonstrations by
the [disfranchised] youth of North African
background, in which thousands of cars were
torched, brought to the UN? In London we have had
1-million- and 2-million-people demonstrations
against the occupation of Iraq. The British
government under Tony Blair ignored these
demonstrators. It wasn't all that long ago when
such mighty demonstrations would have forced the
UK government to resign and call an election. But
they decided regime change was for foreigners
only. Now the street demonstrations in Myanmar
occupy the media in the UK, the rest of the EU,
and the USA. All have been engaged militarily in
regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan and have
ended up destroying both countries, for that is
all their kind of "democracy" can do. So let
Myanmar settle its own problems, or outside
interference can make things very much worse.
Imperial anger against both the Sudan and Myanmar
governments seems opportunistic to me considering
China is a major trading partner with both
countries. Can we have a more objective analysis
of the political and economic structure of Myanmar
without the imperial rage of the UK and the
crocodile tears of the Bush administration?
Wilson
John Haire
London,
England (Sep 28, '07)
I was a bit disappointed with
ATol's coverage of recent protests in Yangon,
Burma. [Compared with] your excellent coverage of
other regions, ie Afghanistan and Pakistan, where
ATol's readers get advance information on current
events, your reporting on Burma was rather slow. I
hope this has nothing to do with Air Bagan's
(owned by ... a close associate of Senior General
Than Shwe) advertisement on your website.
Siang
Bawi
Boston,
Massachusetts (Sep 28, '07)
The Air Bagan ad has not
appeared on the site for a while. In any case, our
editorial coverage is independent of advertiser
influence. As for being "late" with this story, we
foreshadowed it as far back as January 25 (Myanmar's 88
Generation comes of age), with a more detailed
follow-up (Slow train
through a forgotten capital) on May 25. - ATol
ASEAN
[the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] is
sitting on its hands while Burma is on fire. At
the very least we should get the word out to the
Burmese people and to the monks that we support
them. We should also find a way to tell the
Burmese soldiers that the guys they are fighting
are not worth fighting for and that we do not
support them. Let us call on the soldiers to
abandon the fight and to join with the people and
the monks. It's all over for the junta. If we
stick with them now, what kind of relationship can
we muster with the next government?
Cha-am
Jamal
Thailand (Sep 28,
'07)
Love
of freedom, liberty, is the most precious unseen,
unheard midnight tears. It is a soul with
unhealing pain, immortal connect and cause of God.
It is blind, deaf, cinders and ashes. The two
words, "freedom, liberty" written on worthless
papyrus are more precious than all the pearls,
petrodollars, diamonds and rubies in the world. O
Burmese, the blood of your martyrs is immortal
wherever it is spilled. It is for humanity. The
world is with you. Keep your spirits high. Fight
the devil-dictators hard. They will flee soon.
Writhing Cinders
Pakistan (Sep 28, '07)
The article US frets at
Iran's 'strategic dominance' [Sep 28] by
Gareth Porter is accurate in its assessment. One
way to put it is [that] the US has everything to
fear from Iran. The Iranian leadership is radical.
It is also extremely conservative on the
interpretation of the Koran. The US and all of us
in the West are "infidels" and deserve the lowest
treatment "infidels" should receive - whatever
that may be. Iran, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other
radical factors of the Islamic faith have already
set a front line of offense among the many
terrorist cells within our borders. I use the
words "front line" because those in the cadres of
these terrorist cells are more than willing to act
like the old-time French underground during Nazi
occupation back in World War II. The moment notice
is given it will be the West that will be struck
preemptively or, even worse, a more violent
"reaction" to any military expedition we have in
mind with Iran. At least that is one trump card
that Iran holds due to our own [US] incompetence
in our immigration regulations ... Alexander the
Great asked a group of Jain philosophers why they
were paying so little attention to the great
conqueror. Reply: "King Alexander, every man can
possess only so much of the surface as this we are
standing on. You are but human." Here is the
[clincher]: "You will soon be dead, and then you
will own just as much as the Earth as will
[suffice] to bury you." A 2,300-year old statement
that has relevance to both Western and Iranian
leadership today.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 28,
'07)
In When central
banks play with fire [Sep 28], Axel Merk
remarked, "A country dependent on the mercy of
foreign creditors can ill-afford protectionism."
The author might well have gone one step further
and said, "A country can ill-afford to be
dependent on the mercy of foreign creditors."
While it's true that any attempt, however
improbable, by foreign holders of the US dollar to
scuttle the currency would be an internecine
proposition, why would anyone ever want to
willingly place his own fate in somebody else's
hand? It's frightfully irresponsible of Federal
Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to sacrifice the
long-term financial well-being of the American
people and of the nation for the short-term
benefit of the banking industry. One simply cannot
continually put off doing the right thing, because
the day of reckoning will eventually come; and the
longer one waits, the more traumatic the
consequences will be.
John Chen
USA (Sep 28, '07)
Re Japan's new
premier faces India dilemma [Sep 28]: [Masako]
Toki's views on nuclear non-proliferation, and
Japan's responsibility towards it, suffer from the
same detachment from reality exhibited by
countless other non-proliferation supporters.
China signed the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty];
it did not stop it from proliferating away to
glory. India did not sign the NPT and yet has had
the sense of responsibility not to proliferate. If
Ms Toki seriously believes that the NPT is being
held together by some moral glue that comes from a
mere signature, then [one] can only feel pity for
her naivety. Ms Toki also suggests that India can
be nuzzled into the NPT and CTBT [Comprehensive
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty] regime by Japan through
"economic pressure". Nothing could be more absurd.
India was fully aware of all the economic
consequences of its nuclear policy when it
conducted tests in 1998 and economic sanctions
have never stopped it ... Last, every pragmatic
individual needs to ask oneself why the world's
largest democracy, fourth-largest economy and a
country bordering a potentially hostile nuclear
power does not have the right to have nuclear
weapons. Asia and the world are changing and new
regimes need to come up to deal with that change.
To expect regimes that upheld the Cold War status
quo to work in the 21st century is a flight of
fantasy that needs to nipped in the bud.
Pritam
Banerjee
Doctoral
Student
School of Public
Policy, George Mason University
Virginia, USA (Sep 28,
'07)
Re Down to the last
grain [Sep 28]: Two cheers for The Mogambo
Guru. He goes for the stomach. He deals in things
which the ordinary Jane or John can easily
understand, for it hits the pocketbook. The price
of bread, the staff of life, is climbing. Acres of
wheat are turning into cornfields to stoke the
"green market" for ethanol. Italians went a day
without pasta, newspapers and the television told
us a few weeks ago. They were protesting a
double-digit rise in the price of the primary
Italian household staple. The media, as usual, did
not let the cat out of the bag as to the why of
the matter. They skirted the issue: it had
everything to do with reducing wheat planting.
Where are today's muckrakers? There is no Frank
Norris on the horizon to write a modern-day
version of The Octopus,
alas. Adam Smith's invisible hand is not directing
the wheat futures, but making a fast Yankee dollar
on corn is. Now, here's the paradox: a few days
ago, Bloomberg Radio announced that winter wheat
being planted will bring in a bumper crop - a
bumper crop which will knock the pins out [from]
underneath the bull market in wheat. If this is
true, expect a good drop in wheat futures in
2008.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 28, '07)
In response to the article The Iraq oil
grab that went awry [Sep 27] and the
subsequent letter by Geoffrey Sherwood, I would
like to pose a question to Mr Sherwood: What color
is the sky on your planet?
Ken
Moreau
New Orleans,
Louisiana (Sep 28, '07)
Re Geoffrey Sherwood's letter
(Sep 27): One has to ask the question, would Iraq
have been invaded if the major produce was
tomatoes rather than oil? Assuming of course USA
produces enough tomatoes for its consumption.
B V
Pradeep
India (Sep 28,
'07)
Wait
for it - we hear the good folks at the American
Enterprise Institute have been buying up copies of
the 1978 film The Attack of the Killer
Tomatoes. If an
internationally plausible excuse for starting a
war with Iran turns out to be elusive, expect
"Iranian TMD" (tomatoes of mass destruction) to
get big play in the corporate media in the next
few months. You read it here first. - ATol
Re Military brains
plot Pakistan's downfall [Sep 26] by Syed
Saleem Shahzad: I was shocked after reading it. I
quote, "The only parallel in Pakistan's history
was the 1970 insurgency in East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh) when a colonel, along with a few other
middle-ranking officers in the Pakistan Army,
formed the Mukti Bahni (separatist group) for the
separation of East Pakistan. Later, Bengali
officers of the East Bengal Rifles mutinied
against Pakistan and joined the separatists." I am
shocked and stunned by this statement. I am
wondering how a person twists the information to
accommodate a significant historical event to make
a mockery and try to link it to his stupid theory.
The readers can read the history [on] this
site ... The people revolted, it wasn't
done by a few soldiers. I strongly protest against
this twist of historical data. I strongly advise
ATol to consider and correct this error. I hope
ATol respects the history of a sovereign nation of
Bangladesh. Three million people were butchered by
the Pakistan Army in nine months. I don't think
ATol would disrespect those 3 million people. I
think ATol would correct this error mentioned by
this person.
Adnan Nafis
Bangkok, Thailand (Sep 28,
'07)
I read
the article Nepal polls no
sure thing [Sep 18] by Dhruba Adhikary with
profound interest. Now that the political
situation has changed, there is another aspect
that the Nepali government needs to look into.
Nepal's eight-party alliance was established with
commitment to the peace process, and to organize
polls to elect a constituent assembly which will
write a new democratic constitution for the
country. But now, after the Maoists' withdrawal
from the coalition, how can the government still
go ahead with elections? Where is the legitimacy?
It is time for the interim government to prove
that its legitimacy is not challenged in a court
of law.
Sanu Sharma
Melbourne, Australia (Sep 28,
'07)
[Rory
E] Morty's letter to the editor [Sep 27] regarding
the Mahmud Ahmadinejad visit [to New York] seem to
categorize all Americans as unenlightened, rude
and arrogant because of a few vocal public figures
for whom our media provide a spotlight. Even
worse, the editor, whose comments are usually
measured and objective, gets in the same act,
characterizing Fox News as the predominant
influence (or at least it gave such an impression)
for Americans. I know it is tempting to generalize
considering the low caliber of our leadership, but
be mindful that there are many in America who rue
the day that [President George W] Bush entered the
scene and who value freedom of speech. Our
corporate media don't represent these views except
on the opinion pages. [They don't] report events
objectively because [they are] owned by the elite.
For that reason, I value Asia Times [Online]
because of its objectivity and the high quality of
reporting. Don't suffer the same narrow-mindedness
you see on the American front pages.
Jim of
Southern California
USA
(Sep 28, '07)
According to many Hindu
writers on this platform, Muslims are responsible
for doing so many bad things in India but Hindus
are the do-gooders. I have no hesitation in saying
that the fanatical saffron-clad Hindus are worse
than animals when it comes to butchering innocent
Muslims. We saw stomach-churning atrocities and
barbarities committed on Muslim women, young
girls, babies and old people by Hindu thugs in
Gujarat, and see it happening after every few
years in India. I ask Hindu writers if they could
tell me that the Muslims in Pakistan have ever
indulged in this kind of shameful barbarism on the
innocent Hindu Pakistanis ...
Saqib
Khan
UK (Sep 28,
'07)
Re Russia is far
from oil's peak [Sep 27] by F William Engdahl:
A book was published in 1998 by Cambridge
University Press, authors Harry Collins and Trevor
Pinch, titled The Golem at
Large about problems that arise with
technology. In it they discuss "Disputes about the
Origins of Oil". It seems that a well-respected
scientist by the name of Thomas Gold had this
theory about the abiogenic source of petroleum. He
talked the Swedes into drilling in 1985. The
result was a huge scientific controversy, very
negative about Gold and his theories. The kicker
for me was that [Dmitri] Mendeleev, the Russian
[who] came up with the periodic table of elements,
had proposed this in the 1870s. A lot of
geologists including the USGS [United States
Geological Survey] had mucho dinero riding on the
way things had been done, so there was a question
whether a lot of the negativity was scientific.
This is reminiscent of several of the so-called
urban legends about improving the automobile that
GM bought and hid both for its own benefit and
that of the oil companies. As The Guru
might say, "Hahaha, who would have thought it?"
William
O Bishop Sr
Eugene,
Oregon (Sep 27, '07)
The article Russia is far
from oil's peak [Sep 27] neglects to mention
the work of Dr Thomas Gold, who long ago stated
that oil resulted from hydrocarbons trapped deep
in the Earth during the formation of the Earth.
Search the Web and you will find articles by and
about Dr Gold. The big-money oil companies
declined to recognize his work.
Tom
Gerber (Sep 27, '07)
Austrian physicist Thomas Gold
(1920-2004) published his abiotic-origin theory in
1992, summarized as, "Hydrocarbons are not biology
reworked by geology (as the traditional view would
hold) but rather geology reworked by biology." -
ATol
Re Russia is far
from oil's peak [Sep 27: F William] Engdahl
may want to [respond to] some information provided
in The Oil Drum
website. There it has been stated in a post:
"Based on data, Russian crude-oil production has
basically been flat since October 2006. With
rapidly increasing domestic consumption, this
means declining oil exports. Note that when the
Russians report higher oil exports, they always
use comparisons to early 2006." However, another
post has also mentioned that Russia has plenty of
natural-gas supplies. But setting this issue
aside, should Russia not be going green? There is
global warming going on, you know.
May
Sage
USA (Sep 27,
'07)
There
is actually an underlying common theme to The Iraq oil
grab that went awry, Russia is far
from oil's peak [both Sep 27], French
warmongering aids Iran's cause [Sep 21], and
All power to the
weak in Lebanon [Sep 27] which is hinted at in
"The Iraq oil grab that went awry". The common
theme suggests that the Iraq war and US, Israeli,
and French activities in the region are intended
to achieve a goal that is worse than simply just
profiting from stealing another country's oil.
Dilip Hiro in "The Iraq oil grab that went awry"
writes that "the Pentagon's planners ... devised
their own super-secret plan [that] ... involved
the sale of all Iraqi oilfields to private
companies with a view ... for Iraq to weaken, and then destroy, OPEC." It has
been clear since the first Iraq war that Israel
and the US have been working towards commandeering
Iraq. The goal has always been to use Iraq to
undermine governments in the Middle East that to a
large degree serve the interests of their own
people and pursue their own legitimate strategic
interests when it comes to relations with Israel,
Russia, China, Europe and Iran. Undermining Arab
governments is a reasonable interpretation for US
actions and for why Israel has kept stalling in
the peace negotiations of the '90s and the early
part of this decade; Israel had to have believed
it would soon get a better deal after the US put
the screws to Arab governments. When it was clear
to others but not the US that the US was failing
in Iraq and that the US would not be able to use
Iraqi oil to destroy the economies of OPEC
[Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries]
states, the US nevertheless had the temerity to
start intimidating the king of Jordan to turn
Jordan into a constitutional monarchy whose
government would be manipulated as easily as the
US manipulates some of the governments in eastern
Europe. The US demanded that Saudi Arabia change
its school curriculum and open the political
process to better serve US interests rather than
Saudi national interests ... The US, an empire in
severe decline ¡ is engaged in a desperate and
futile effort to put a few hundred million people
under its suzerainty in the hopes that it will
somehow be able to create an empire that will
allow it to continue its assault on Russia and
China. Don't bet the farm on the US succeeding. I
am certainly not; I spend at least five hours a
day studying Chinese and Russian.
Abacus
USA (Sep 27, '07)
I've never seen a competent
argument that oil was a primary objective of the
US invasion of Iraq. Dilip Hiro's The Iraq oil
grab that went awry (Sep 27) is no exception.
The idea that Iraq was invaded foremost for its
oil is not entirely implausible, so there is
always the theoretical possibility that someone
espousing it will make sense. Unfortunately, Mr
Hiro repeats the same mistake that every advocate
of the thesis makes: equating interest with
primacy. You'd think by now, having had four and a
half years to hone their argument, that true
believers in the "war for oil" thesis would have
figured out that if you can't show how or why oil
supposedly achieved primacy over the neo-con
fantasy of remaking Iraq in America's image, and
over the fear of Saddam [Hussein] putting WMD
[weapons of mass destruction] in the hands of
terrorists, then it will forever remain an
unconvincing thesis.
Geoffrey Sherwood
New Jersey, USA (Sep 27,
'07)
Re Moment of truth
for Myanmar's military [Sep 27]: I wish
Burma's saffron-clad monks and its people well in
their struggle to get rid of the brutal military
junta. In the 1988 uprising over 3,000 people died
during the ruthless suppression. But Burma's
economy is in such a dire state now that the
majority if its 53 million people are so fed up
that they feel that they have nothing to lose even
if they perish in this struggle. There was a time
when Burma was known as Asia's rice bowl but
today, a third of its population can scarcely
afford a meal a day; its people are undernourished
and children underdeveloped. The monks have
surrounded the generals in a tight corner. They
are itching to crush the uprising, but this time
the whole world has turned against their long
oppression and suppression of free thought and
expression. The clique of military generals are
not known for patience or tolerance as far as any
political dissent is concerned, but the
circumstance and world opinion have made them
sensitive to international disgust and outcry.
They know that any brutality could make the
situation worse and ugly. This is a very delicate
and sensitive time for the generals, who have
recently drafted a new constitution on returning
the country to free elections and restoring some
kind of democracy but still maintaining military
rule and their control. I believe that even if the
constitution is put to national referendum, its
chance of winning popular support is vanishing as
the democracy march gains momentum. The military
generals have not many options left but sooner
[rather] than later will have to free Aung San Suu
Kyi from house arrest and let the people rule
their country. I am glad that [British Prime
Minister] Gordon Brown during his Labour Party
conference address said emphatically: "A message
should go out to anyone facing persecution
anywhere, from Burma to Zimbabwe: human rights are
universal and no injustice can last for ever." I
wish he could have said the same for the people of
Palestine, who suffer the ignominy of daily
humiliation, persecution, injustices and killings
at the hands of evil Zionist Israel.
Saqib
Khan
UK (Sep 27,
'07)
To
paraphrase a 1939 quote from George Orwell, Gordon
Brown's utterance sounded like "a prayer rather
than an axiom". - ATol
Re The bin Laden
needle in a haystack (Sep 27): One thing that
Michael Scheuer does not mention is that the Bush
administration most likely feels that [Osama] bin
Laden is worth more alive than dead. That would be
a good explanation for an obvious lack of effort
by the Bush administration in pursuing bin Laden.
His demise would take away the symbol of terrorist
fear that [US President George W] Bush has used so
many times to rouse the American citizenry into
some measure of support for his bankrupt goals of
occupying Iraq and the very real threat of
attacking Iran, the former without any real plan.
Bin Laden's periodic videos help to give a
simplistic image to the age-old weapon of fear
used so much since [September 11, 2001] by the
neo-cons.
Jim of Southern
California
USA (Sep 27,
'07)
[The
year] 2007 is the 150th anniversary of what the
British call the "Sepoy Uprising" and the Indians
the "First Indian War of Independence". It also
marks 60 years of India's independence. And one
thing is certain: the pre-eminence of the English
language among India's educated classes. As Raja M
points out [India: All
write, that's enough, Sep 27], it is commonly
accepted among publishers that Indians write an
English of high quality. The lists of well-known
writers from the Indian subcontinent grow with
each passing year in India itself, Great Britain
and the United States. If any further proof is
needed, one has but to look at Kiran Desai,
daughter of the award-winning Indian novelist
Anita Desai, who is the 2006 recipient of the
prestigious Man Booker Prize, which is awarded to
writers from the British Commonwealth and Ireland.
Fluency of writing in English may, as Raja M
suggests, find an outlet because of the ubiquity
of the personal computer. Yet it may also have
something to do with the kernel of wisdom in that
old chestnut that imitation is the sincerest form
of flattery. Writers like Salman Rushdie, Vikram
Seth and Arundhati Roy have opened the way for
younger Indian writers to find their way into
print. The golden ring is a best-seller which
brings immediate popularity, contracts for more
books and money, and an entree into that magical
circle of chattering classes and beautiful people.
Still, it further has the lure of mass
distribution of books and of translation into
other languages. Moreover, it brings a rising,
economically stronger India within the reach of a
global readership and market. It does not take
much thought to see the attraction of publishing
for the growing educated classes in India or in
the Indian diaspora who have not cut ties to the
mother country.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 27, '07)
Re 'Hitler' does
New York [Sep 26]: Once again, an excellent
article by Pepe Escobar. I've always thought that
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad made a lot of sense,
but then again, what would I know, Rupert? I do
have one comment to make about the article. Pepe
says that if President [George W] Bush were to be
treated in the same way as President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, then the "Pentagon would have
instantly switched to
let's-bomb-them-with-democracy mode". I think that
the policy is, "Let's bomb them into
democracy."
Graeme Mills
Australia (Sep 27, '07)
Two incidents in New York in
the past two days have highlighted just how
horrendously arrogant, impolite and unconstructive
people of influence in the United States can be.
Lee C Bollinger, the president of Columbia
University, one of the United States' premier
centers of intellect, adopted a disgraceful,
demeaning and insulting stance towards Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, which flew in
the face of scholarship by any definition. Worse
still, Mr Ahmadinejad was an invited distinguished
guest. How utterly base to invite a foreign head
of state to your country, under the pretext of a
scholarly discussion, so that you can publicly
humiliate him. Worse still was the hypocritical
address of US President George W Bush, who not
only had the audacity to try to promote human
rights in spite of being one of the leading
perpetrators of human-rights violations today, but
also adopted an insulting, accusing and bullying
tone towards several nations, as well as his host,
the United Nations itself. In an age where
engagement and reconciliation are emerging as the
only avenues through which we can solve the
massive political, economic and environmental
problems we are presently confronted with, I think
it is now patently clear that the United States is
not fit to lead, in any capacity, in our world
today. I have just one question for the American
people: Are you not terribly ashamed at the
atrocious example set by your leadership?
Rory E
Morty
Giessen, Germany
(Sep 27, '07)
Perhaps the antics at Columbia
University, home to America's brightest and best,
were a wake-up call to those who thought it was
only those whose idea of enlightenment is that
proffered by Fox News who have fueled the US
foreign/economic policy of "perpetual war". - ATol
Spengler likes to show his
philosophical skills [National
extinction and natural law, Sep 25]. But he
forgets that people don't propagate by
philosophical reasoning. There are trivial reasons
why populations decline (first and foremost in
industrial societies) which Spengler doesn't
mention: the invention of the birth-control pill,
job careers of women, nursing insurance, extreme
consumerism et al.
Joseph Bodenhofer
Austria (Sep 27, '07)
Re Spengler's National
extinction and natural law (Sep 25): It goes
without saying that the one religion that is doing
the best job of proselytization is Christianity.
Christians are devoting lots of their time, energy
and money to push their faith - it is hardly
surprising that they are getting converts. One
could have a better product like Apple, but pursue
the wrong strategy and you lose out to the PC
[personal computer]. Other faiths are less pushy;
Islam and Buddhism to some extent and,
unfortunately, my faith, Hinduism, do little to
convert others. The "fault" lies with Hinduism's
values - we believe that all faiths are equally
valid, faiths are like rivers that flow into the
same ocean - God. Whether you pray to Christ or
Allah or Durga does not matter. Entry to heaven
does not depend on your chosen faith, but your
character and conduct. A heaven where even
atheists are welcomed! Unfortunately, when a Hindu
converts, what he does lose are these liberal
values. It is a matter of pride for me as a Hindu
that there have been many converts to other faiths
from Hinduism who turned around and abused their
former faith but converts to Hinduism have never
abused their former faith.
Jayant
Patel
Chicago, Illinois
(Sep 27, '07)
The rationale given by Thai
and Laotian authorities to support their
ill-treatment of the Hmong in Thailand would have
made some sense if they had been talking about
cattle. If Laotian cattle had strayed across the
border and were found grazing on Thai pasture,
then I suppose that Laos would have a legitimate
claim on that cattle and Thailand would be
expected to return the cattle to the rightful
owners. The Hmong are not cattle, however. They
are legitimate refugees. They are also Laotian
citizens and they are free to enter Thailand and
to seek work here in accordance with a bilateral
agreement between these nations. Yet Thailand
insists on treating these people like cattle for
its own self-interest with total disregard for
international conventions on human rights and
refugees as well as for basic Buddhist values.
Thailand is paranoid to the point of mental
illness that if the Hmong in Thailand are
resettled in the West it will encourage more Hmong
to come to Thailand. There is also the matter of
Thai investments in Laos and of future electricity
imports from Laotian hydroelectricity projects.
And so I suppose the Hmong must be sold down the
river in this case just like so many cattle.
History will not record this incident as one of
which future Thai generations can be proud.
Cha-am
Jamal
Thailand (Sep 27,
'07)
Re 'Hitler' does
New York [Sep 26] by the Roving Eye Pepe
Escobar: Hold a mirror up to the face of this
nation, my country. I look in the mirror and all I
see is shattered glass. In those broken shards I
see fear, hate, naivety and ignorance reflected;
not-so-scholarly gracelessness, as the media
reflect the story. I see an angry crowd of alleged
scholars confronting [Iranian President Mahmud]
Amadinejad, who was on campus by invitation. It
was a grubby street scene where dialogue, as one
would expect, did not exist. Reasonable dialectic
was not even in the neighborhood. Columbia
University gave him the platform to speak but
exposed its own inability for rational debate.
Didn't even try. We lost it there. But then one
needs to admit also [that] presidents of nations
lately, be it Iran or the United States, share the
common characteristics of pomposity, arrogance and
a [narrowly] focused sense of their own
self-importance. Add to that the contradiction
that the people they supposedly represent are
never ever considered part of the equation. To
further complicate this basic absurdity, add a
university setting where one may expect something,
anything - and all you hear is a display of
responses from the crowd who have been essentially
ignored by their own leaders, then attack the
"other" after requesting him to speak? What did
they hope to achieve? Vindication for their own
powerlessness? What is to be gained here? Ugly
indeed. One can only conclude [that] any hope of
communication is lost. Too bad for all of us. What
next? Thanks, Pepe Escobar, for stating the
obvious.
Beryl K
Minnesota, USA (Sep 26,
'07)
Pepe
Escobar's 'Hitler' does
New York [Sep 26] was an excellent synopsis of
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's tour de
force of the heart of the American mainstream
media (MSM), New York City. If there was any doubt
that a handful of influential people control the
American MSM, that doubt has been pushed aside the
last few days. Both the CBS [Columbia Broadcasting
System] 60 Minutes
interview with Ahmadinejad, which was both haughty
and arrogant in its tone, and the not-so-veiled
accusations against Ahmadinejad that were
plastered across the New York papers had the air
of asking someone if they had stopped beating
their wife. The American MSM has been foaming at
the mouth the last couple of days over the visit,
barely able to contain itself as it falls all over
itself, with each form of media trying to one-up
the other in painting Ahmadinejad as some sort of
evil incarnate. Strangely enough, they never
mention the part of Ahmadinejad's speech at
Columbia where he brought up the plight of the
constantly under-siege Palestinians, whom Israel
has mandated will be the ones to pay for all past
transgressions, real or perceived, against Israel.
And for Columbia's president to cite the Council
on Foreign Relations (CFR) research as a basis to
attack Ahmadinejad is beyond absurd. In the past,
the CFR has devoted pages to right-wing religious
nutcases like Pat Robertson and the still at large
and wanted by Chile war criminal Henry Kissinger.
Whatever one thinks of Ahmadinejad, they have to
give the Iranian president high marks for keeping
his cool and not going ballistic by not taking the
bait, which was offered numerous times the last
few days in the form of leading and loaded
questions and hostile interviewers. Do you truly
think that the so-called "leader" of the free
world, President G W Bush, would have been able to
maintain his composure under such conditions?
Greg
Bacon
Ava, Missouri
(Sep 26, '07)
Re Pepe Escobar's article 'Hitler' does
New York [Sep 26]: There is another matter in
connection with Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad's visit to New York that requires our
attention. Tiara Francis, a Columbia University
junior [third-year student], was sharply on the
mark when she took Lee Bollinger, her university's
president, to task for insulting Mahmud
Ahmadinejad in contravention of elementary
courtesies at the Iranian president's appearance
on the campus. As Francis, quoted in a Boston
Globe report, said, Bollinger's tirade against the
speaker did not make the guest look bad but the
university look bad. How right she is! The Iranian
president, after all, did not barge into the
university; he was cordially invited to come. A
time-honored rule in universities and colleges for
such occasions is to stay away from mean-spirited
and disparaging introductory remarks about a
guest, no matter how loathsome his or her views,
and leave any heated exchanges to the later
question-and-answer session. Bollinger, in a
reprehensible departure from that norm, called the
guest, to his face, a "petty and cruel tyrant" and
a man "lacking in intellectual honesty". By doing
so, Bollinger sullied the university's reputation
as well as America's. The crafty Ahmadinejad on
his part stayed above such boorishness and did not
respond to the personal attack by his own vitriol
against the university, only gently and smilingly
reminding the hosts about a breach of protocol on
intellectual discourses. What a splendid way for
Bollinger to lend luster to Ahmadinejad's image -
and disgrace to America's - in Iranian society,
where gracious manners are considered the
essential oil of human relationships! With friends
like Bollinger, does the US need enemies in Iran?
Vipan Chandra
Attleboro, Massachusetts (Sep 26,
'07)
Re
Pepe Escobar's 'Hitler' does
New York [Sep 26]: [Iranian President Mahmud]
Ahmadinejad was skillful and articulate on how he
can twist lies to sound like truth. In Iran he
denied the Holocaust but he contradicted himself
in New York when he said the Holocaust took place
in Europe. He avoided obvious evidence that Iran's
nuclear program is purely peaceful, though in
Tehran he has repeatedly stated that Iran's
nuclear development will be used [for] a military
strike to annihilate Israel. As for his
government's participation in attacking US troops,
he made it sound like "self-defense" and [said]
Iran is the "victim" of terrorism. He may have won
the hearts of Muslims in the Middle East, but as
far as I am concerned ([as well as] many I talked
[to]), he was a good orator who knew how to sell a
lie. The trick of selling a lie is that as long as
there is a modicum of truth in the lie, gullible
people will believe his words. He used this method
skillfully at Columbia University. Many of the
Columbian students interviewed saw right through
him, while others were more supportive of him.
[Adolf] Hitler too was a great orator. He was able
to convince Europe that Germany was a civilized
nation and would never go to war, [that] Germany
only wanted peace with its neighbors. Sounds
familiar? Europe bought it hook line and sinker.
When [British prime minister] Neville Chamberlain
visited Hitler, he too was convinced of Hitler's
benign speech, only to return and make that
infamous line "peace in our day". Before World War
II the world never had a "Neville Chamberlain",
but with history we now know the folly of Mr
Chamberlain. All that Mr Ahmadinejad did was
sugarcoat the Iranian nuclear program, its hatred
of Israel's existence and almost everything he has
been espousing from Tehran to the UN and the world
of his true plans. The Muslim youth may buy it,
but I doubt if the world, knowing the ground
realities, is so easily sold. No doubt much of his
speech will be "edited" by the Iranian press, but
luckily the world has other ways of getting the
entire speech to the Iranian people, and that is
either through the Internet or by CDs. There is
money to be made here. The black-market sale of
the original speech on CDs will sell well in the
Middle Eastern region and those nations in the
Middle East who have a lot to fear from Iran will
buy these CDs and learn the double-talk that Mr
Ahmadinejad sold to the disbelieving US
population. Columbia University, which extended
the invitation to Mr Ahmadinejad, usually has its
name emblazoned behind the speaker, but this time
the name "Columbia University" was blacked out
when Mr Ahmadinejad gave his presentation. Why
would a prestigious university not want the world
to remember that President Ahmadinejad was invited
by Columbia University?
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 26,
'07)
Europeans, as you suggest, do
tend to demonstrate some collective ability to see
through political misrepresentation, which
probably explains why most of them did not believe
US President George W Bush and his friend Tony
Blair when they were pleading the case for
invading oil-rich Iraq. Now, rightly or wrongly,
there is skepticism in Europe (except, apparently,
in France's new Bush-friendly administration) over
the case presented by the US administration for
attacking oil-rich Iran. - ATol
Why do you not expose the
so-called Holocaust for what it is: a big hoax?
You people are educated enough (I hope) to have
read all the real literature on it. Any birdbrain
can figure things out and conclude the Holocaust
is a big fraud. What is the reasoning behind
comparing [Adolf] Hitler to the president of Iran?
Pepe [Escobar] is being silly and juvenile ['Hitler' does
New York, Sep 26].
Eric Yankovich, PE (Sep 26,
'07)
Educated enough? Now, that's ironic. -
ATol
[Mahmud] Ahmadinejad, the
president of Iran, is an elected member of a
complex governmental structure that serves under
the guidance of the clergy with Ayatollah [Ali]
Khamenei as supreme leader. Even a cursory study
of Iranian politics will show that it is not
possible for the president's office to exercise
dictatorial powers. It was shocking to hear Lee
Bollinger of Columbia University make the
incredibly stupid remark in which he called
President [Ahmadinejad] a dictator. A possible
explanation is the tendency in [the United States
of] America to use stereotypes and to pigeonhole
nations and cultures as either good guys and bad
guys. Once they decide that you are a bad guy,
then all the bad words apply. The tedium of
details is conveniently avoided.
Cha-am
Jamal
Thailand (Sep 26,
'07)
Fellow
academics are no doubt embarrassed and offended by
Lee Bollinger's rude and apparently ignorant
behavior, but this is to overlook the
extraordinary pressure he must have felt as the
host of a man who has been so relentlessly
demonized in the United States' latest bellicose
crusade. - ATol
President George W Bush
delivered his address at the United Nations
General Assembly in New York. In his address,
President Bush attempted to adopt a platform of
human rights, which left me utterly perplexed.
This is the same president who has illegally
invaded a sovereign country without UN sanction,
for entirely political motives, and in doing so
has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent
civilians, not to mention American soldiers, and
grotesquely and deliberately misled his own
people. This the the same president who supports
the use of torture. This is the same president who
supports "extraordinary rendition": a horrendous
process of detention without trial, with the
specific aim exporting prisoners to countries with
poor human-rights records so that they can be
"legally" mistreated. This is the same president
who actively blocks the unrestricted access of the
International Committee of the Red Cross - our
universal standard in human rights - to prisoners
detained in his own private concentration camp at
Guantanamo Bay. Is anybody else utterly
exasperated at the raw hypocrisy of the president
of the United States of America? His speech was an
insult to the United Nations.
Rory E
Morty
Giessen, Germany
(Sep 26, '07)
Syed Saleem Shahzad: I read
your article [Military brains
plot Pakistan's downfall, Sep 26] in ATimes.
You talked about a possible toppling of [Pakistani
President General Pervez Musharraf's] regime by
ex-army men. What are the visible signs of this,
if any? Though the attack at Terbela is very
significant, is there any other sign? Second, I
couldn't understand fully the motive behind the
soldiers' kidnapping. Their number is big but
there are no visible efforts on the part of the
Pakistani government to get them back.
Basit
Ijaz (Sep 26, '07)
Various groups were already
working to revolt against the government, but
recently resigned army officers with an ideology
and strategy would really make a difference. - Syed Saleem Shahzad
Praful Bidwai writes like an
alien enemy in his own country [Hindus say don't
mess with Rama's Bridge, Sep 25]. Any
foreigner visiting cities [in every] nook and
corner of India will see Ram lives everywhere.
From when people meet each other to when dead are
carried for cremation, the word uttered is "Ram
Ram". So the objection is national and not
political. Contrary to any rift, it has only
strengthened the alliance among the UPA [United
Progressive Alliance], as every component in it
[is] eager to destroy anything Hindu. The UPA
affidavit denied the existence of Ram, in spite of
the fact that no archeological excavations [of
Rama's Bridge] have been permitted so far, fearing
anything available in favor of Ram. Sensing the
mood of the nation and in view of elections, they
withdrew it ... Jawaharlal Nehru University
historians should verify whether there is really
any archeological, historical and geological study
undertaken so far to stand by. Such teachers will
only prove history is falsified. Even the American
agency NASA [National Aeronautics and Space
Administration] said [it] cannot prove or disprove
[the nature of Rama's Bridge]. Scientists all over
the world are still studying dinosaurs. and it
will be several millennia before truth will stare
upon their faces. The villain-like situation
arises in the article where the valueless
economics of the project is written at the end
with the hope that the article will be so boring
no one will read up to the last line. India can
become a global power even without globalization,
if only fake governments, historians and
commentators like this writer see reality. The
actual reality is, the present project [to dredge
a canal] is to help LTTE [Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam] terrorism. It is a pity that Asia
Times [Online] readers are taken for a ride with
bluff in the article.
Veenai (Sep 26, '07)
Why do you have this
left-wing-biased Praful Bidwai on your website? He
is so biased it's nauseating.
Sanjay (Sep 26, '07)
If Inter Press Service's
Praful Bidwai or anyone else commits
errors of fact, as opposed to writing things
you would prefer not to be true, please point them
out specifically and we will take the necessary
steps. - ATol
Your
article Shots in the
dark over Syria's skies [Sep 22] sheds little
light on the mystery. We are still contemplating
various scenarios and nothing but typical US
bullshit is being doled out to the world press. So
I might as well contribute to the rumors - the
least it can do is water down the US/Israeli
propaganda. I think it was an aborted raid on
Iranian nuclear facilities. Evidently the new
Russian radar and defensive missile equipment in
Syria is better than anticipated, and the Israeli
raid was detected and intercepted. That meant
immediate abortion of the raid and return to
Israel airspace. Hence all the bullshit. Stay
tuned for the next episode involving US cruise
missiles under cover of an Israeli overflight out
of Turkey.
Ken Moreau
New Orleans, Louisiana (Sep 26,
'07)
The
commentary by S Moubayed on Shots in the
dark over Syrian skies [Sep 22] drew the wrath
of a Mr C Wijeyasingha from Clinton, Louisiana, in
a letter in which he concludes, "Neither the world
nor Israel can wait for anti-Israel Middle Eastern
nations to develop weapons of mass destruction
before acting. These nations' military 'clout" has
to be taken out and they have to be brought to the
negotiating table before it is too late for all of
us." Some years ago on a cross-country journey, I
drove through the Pelican State and, if memory
serves, the entire state is approximately 400
miles north to south. I do not know where the
cities of Clinton or Jena are within the state of
Louisiana, but I would bet that they are at least
within 200 miles of each other. One would think
that the crisis in racial tensions in the city of
Jena would be of more immediate concern than, say,
Iran developing one or two nuclear devices as a
deterrent to the 200 nuclear devices that UN
experts claim Israel already has. Coincidentally,
in the neighboring state of Arkansas, celebrations
are under way to commemorate 50 years of the
integration [of black and white students] of the
capital city's main high school. Maybe Mr
Wijeyasingha is not aware that people in his state
are still practicing acts of hatred but is overly
worried about Israel. One can only surmise that
either he is not interested or capable of solving
local problems or he believes that he has the
right or ability to resolve problems that are
several thousand miles away from where [Hurricane]
Katrina hit ...
Armand De Laurell (Sep 26,
'07)
The two
Louisiana towns are 140 kilometers (87 miles)
apart. - ATol
Re Welcome to
Planet Gaza [Sep 22] Pepe Escobar writes about
the difficulties facing the population in Gaza. He
should try [to] imagine what would have happened
if, immediately after Israel left the Gaza Strip,
all terror activity from there ceased - which
means no rocket-launching, no weapons smuggling,
no efforts to bomb the border crossing points, no
efforts to send suicide murderers into Israel.
Then all the crossing points would have remained
open, there would have been free exchange of
merchandise, thousands of Gazans would have been
able to work in Israel. It would have been
possible to travel between the West Bank and Gaza.
The international community's financial help could
have been invested and helped the local economy.
Also, this would have made further Israeli
withdrawals from the West Bank much easier. But
Escobar knows very well that the Palestinians
chose to continue with their terror activity,
firing more that 1,000 Qassam rockets and hundreds
of bombs at Israeli towns and villages in the last
two years since Israel left the Gaza Strip to the
last inch. That should explain to Escobar the
reason behind Israel's response. No sovereign
country can tolerate a daily barrage of rockets
fired at its civilians without reaction. Israel is
no exception. Why should Israel supply the power
which is used to produce the rockets? ... Escobar,
as expected, forgets that the Jewish community in
Palestine accepted the UN partition plan, which
means they accepted the principle of the
territorial compromise. They agreed even to leave
Jerusalem out of the future Jewish state. Had the
Arabs done the same, today the independent
Palestinian-Arab state would have been 59 years
old, existing side by side with the independent
Palestinian-Jewish state. There would have been no
refugees and thousands of lives, on both sides,
would have been spared. And the Jews in Palestine
are not colonialists. Palestine is the place where
the Jews became a people, many centuries before it
became known as Palestine. They lost their
territorial base some 1,900 years ago and were
dispersed all over the world. But, in spite of
that, they never lost their historical memory and
strong emotional connection to the place of their
origin. There has been a Jewish presence in
Palestine for many, many centuries. And then came
Zionism, the movement of national liberation of
the Jewish people, [which] to the great
displeasure of Escobar, succeeded in
re-establishing the independent nation-state of
the Jewish people in the place of its origin. That
is unprecedented in all of recorded history.
Jacob
Amir, MD
Jerusalem,
Israel (Sep 26, '07)
Dear editors: I am still
waiting for your promised improvements to the
browsing experience that were brought up a few
weeks ago in response to my e-mails. Can you
advise on expected timing please.
Salt (Sep 26, '07)
Depends whom you ask. Whatever
is the case, your humble letters editor will be
the last to know. - ATol
Spengler (National
extinction and natural law [Sep 25]) writes
that cultural extinction is causing people around
the world to turn, more than ever, to
Christianity, in order to avoid cultural suicide.
This is a curious claim, because conversion to
Christianity, or another Abrahamic religion for
that matter, can be more likely to destroy
languages, ethnic groups, and cultures than
ceasing to procreate. Testament to that lies in
Spengler's own example of ancient Rome. The reason
Rome fell (as a civilization) has everything to do
with the conversion to Christianity, a fact well
known to Augustine's pagan opponents and to
[18th-century English historian Edward] Gibbon
(but evidently not to Spengler). Christianity, as
a religion of a single and jealous god, was also
largely responsible for destroying and denying the
heritage of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and even Greek
cultures, and in imposing itself as a supersession
of Judaism, and it is on the basis of this
[culturecide that] pompous windbags who preach the
gospel of Western civilization can get away with
forgetting almost everything about the antiquity
of western Eurasia (forgetting occurs everywhere,
but it has not been as drastic in South Asia and
East Asia, for instance). In his more wistful
moments, Spengler rhapsodizes about the Chinese
conversion to Christianity, ensuring the final
historical victory of "the West". At other times,
Spengler realizes that the economic, political and
demographic power of the West (the US, Europe, and
a few other countries of the Euro-diaspora)
relative to the rest of the world is quickly
dwindling, even in the US, where the population
continues to grow, and he calls for a new world
war to reverse this tide. Such a war, even faster
than childlessness or conversion, will ensure the
death not only of non-Western, but of Western
cultures as well. Though Spengler chalks up
European depopulation to secularism, its real
cause is war. Demographic decline in the Eurozone
is heaviest in Germany, and it began before the
Second World War, after Germany, as a nation,
people and culture, had already gone down to
defeat in one World War. World War II, with its
establishment of a 0-point in German history,
greatly accelerated this trend. The French and the
Scandinavians, on the other hand, are reproducing
their numbers and then some, secularism aside. The
Chinese would too if not for their government's
fear of over-population. So demography, about
which Spengler likes to lecture so much, in fact
tells the story of cultural suicide through war,
which dehumanizes its perpetrators and shreds
established cultural values. Culture warriors of
the West, who follow the original [Oswald]
Spengler's injunction to "do the necessary, or do
nothing", take note!
B Stremlin (Sep 25,
'07)
Re National
extinction and natural law [Sep 25] by
Spengler: Human cultures disappear for various
reasons. Some cultures die because, well, that's
just part of nature. Species of plants and animals
vanish for whatever reason; there's nothing
extraordinary or lamentable about it
([discomfiting] yes, because cultures are a part
of our own species). On the other hand, some
cultures are disappearing and many are being
steadily eroded, I believe, due to the capitalist
economic system. Similar to Brazil's Guarani
Indians who become suicidal after being displaced
from traditional life, people are displaced by
capitalism, if not physically, then culturally and
emotionally, until they are robbed of the will to
live and to procreate, or as Spengler so
eloquently stated, "When they have reason to cease
to believe in themselves, when the depredations of
the empires, or the great tide of globalization,
overrun their defenses and expose their mortal
fragility." The displacement of cultures, which
creates a psychological void, also explains in
part why droves of people in the global South
flock to religion - to fill the emptiness in their
psyche. As the author asserted, "Self-confident
and secure pagans do not seek life eternal through
belief in Jesus Christ, for they are quite happy
to believe in themselves."
John
Chen
USA (Sep 25,
'07)
Andrew
Symon has written an informative article (The making of
Vietnam's oil giant [Sep 25]). Yet he fails to
point out that the American [company] Shell
discovered Vietnam's oil deposits towards the end
of the US war in Indochina. Vietnam has a sweet
crude, meaning it has a low sulfur content, which
is highly prized. Although the Soviet Union helped
develop and expand the fields that Shell found, it
has taken Hanoi almost 40 years to build its first
oil refinery at Dung Quat. The loss of revenue to
the Vietnamese state by exporting its crude to be
refined elsewhere has very much to do with the
inner struggles within the Vietnam Workers' Party
[name of the Communist Party of Vietnam before
reunification] for where to construct the
country's refinery. Internal struggles also betray
geographical rivalry [among] south, central, and
northern Vietnam, and they translate into the
monies which would fill corrupt pockets (Vietnam
has a thriving kickback economy), and political
one-upmanship by bringing the bacon home to the
province from which came the high party or
military member. The battle is over, for ... the
new refinery which will come on line in 2009 is in
Quang Ngai province, the name of which might ring
a bell for any Vietnam veteran. Dung Quat is a
good distance from Vietnam's oilfields, which will
add to the cost of shipping and refining of
finished products. This is [of] little consequence
in a bullish oil market, as the barrel of oil is
climbing towards the US$100 [mark]. Still,
although the [Communist] Party officials who are
shifting the party [of] Ho Chi Minh on to the
rails of capitalism, thereby eviscerating its
Marxist-Leninist core, Hanoi's long march to
building an oil refinery deserves a treatment of
the inner twists and turns of indecision and
obstacles with a communist party, and disregard
for a country's economic development after almost
a half-century of war against the French,
Japanese, Americans, Chinese, and Khmer Rouge,
which was subordinated to personal and provincial
rivalries.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 25, '07)
Re Iran, Israel
ratchet up tensions [Sep 25] by Kaveh L
Afrasiabi, I do not know if the fireworks [will]
start in October or November, but it is not a
question [whether] President [George W] Bush will
or will not bomb Iran. The French president ... is
sounding like another toe-sucker in the fancy of
President Bush. The trio with evil Zionist Israel
have already drawn up war strategy against Iran.
President Bush will attack Iran, but the scenario
is horrific to contemplate for the White House:
what to do with the nuclear fallout after Iran's
nuclear installations are bombed to rubble? ...
Bush is a homicidal megalomaniac and wants to
invade and take over every Muslim country with oil
wealth. He has stepped up his war of words with
the Iranian president, accusing him of a covert
program to develop nuclear weapons and threatening
a region already known for instability and
violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.
In fact, he is responsible and the architect of
the instability, chaos, violence and civil war in
Iraq. By using deliberately the word "holocaust"
he has given a green signal to evil Zionist
Israel, instigating it to join the USA in bombing
Iran. President [Mahmud] Ahmadinejad was right
when he accused Mr Bush recently of impetus
adventurism of Iraq and an impediment to world
peace. He said, "We have an expression in Farsi,
which says, 'Bring up the one that you have given
birth to first, then go for another one.' Let them
do what they started in Afghanistan and Iraq then
think of other countries." President Bush has
decided to punish Ahmadinejad and attack Iran
before he leaves the White House in 18 months'
time. Only Congress has the power to declare war,
and Bush would need congressional approval, which
he is unlikely to get considering his sinking
popularity, but he could provoke Iran into doing
something that should give him enough reason to
attack Iran.
Saqib Khan
UK (Sep 25, '07)
According to the article Shots in the
dark over Syria's skies [Sep 22], Israel
conducted an "air raid". They did not just bomb
Syria. This was a coordinated strike and,
according to the article, supported by the US.
Syria has been meddling in Iraq along with Iran
for quite a while and as usual denying the act.
Now that Israel has found documentation that Syria
is planning its own nuclear program thanks to the
North Koreans, again Syria on cue denies it, even
when the proof has been revealed. The Arab states
wanted the extinction of Israel the moment it was
created and have gone to lengths to achieve this
goal. A nuclearized Syria along with a nuclearized
Iran is exactly the scenario to achieve the
annihilation of Israel. The world has learned that
many Arab states do one thing and say another in
world forums. Now the Syria situation follows the
same path. Neither the world nor Israel can wait
for anti-Israel Middle Eastern nations to develop
weapons of mass destruction before acting. These
nations' military "clout" has to be taken out and
they have to be brought to the negotiating table
before it is too late for all of us.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 25,
'07)
David
Simmons in his review of the book edited by
Dhandapani Alagiri notes that one shouldn't
compare India with China but rather with other
Asian democracies, "some of which have faced
similar obstacles to India's and yet, in varying
degrees, handled them more efficiently" [A comparative
failure, Sep 22]. Well, democracies come in
all shapes and sizes. The more dysfunctional the
system and higher its level of corruption, the
poorer it performs. In the US this fact is clear
when one looks at the standard of governance and
performance in highly corrupt local and state
governments versus those less so - say a New
Orleans, Louisiana and Mississippi versus a
Portland, an Oregon or another less corrupt state.
Further, dictatorships produce lots of
inefficiencies as well. How come no example like
China in say Egypt or North Korea or Zimbabwe? The
division between efficient dictatorships and less
efficient democracies is a false one. However, Mr
Simmons fails to understand that infrastructure
finance is financed at various levels: federal,
state and local. A key difference in India versus
China is the low level of fiscal decentralization
in India versus high fiscal decentralization in
China. Moreover, on top of this, India is
hamstrung by high levels of tax evasion.
May
Sage
USA (Sep 25,
'07)
I
refer to the letter from Jakob Cambria on US turns to
China to influence Myanmar (Sep 21) chastising
George Bush for not "supporting Burma's monks who
are directly challenging their [junta] rule"
instead of relying on Beijing, [which is] "very
cozy and comfortable with the military junta's
authoritarian rule [rather] than with seeking to
reform or tame it". For such an intelligent and
coherent veteran [as] Jakob, I find it surprising
that he can "overlook" the possibility that the
hands of the West (notably the US) are behind the
turmoil. It has all the hallmarks of an "Orange
Revolution" - well organized, fully funded and
backed by excellent widespread coverage. To me the
Beijing factor is just a camouflage and an
indirect warning from Bush to China not to
interfere with the "protests". For the record,
I've never been to Burma. Whatever I've read on
the country is from Western publications or from
authorized reprints. Seldom have I read or heard
any serious criticisms from ASEAN [Association of
Southeast Asian Nations] countries [or] even from
Indian authorities.
Walter Tseng
Hong Kong (Sep 25, '07)
Your last point can easily be
explained by the political/economic policies and
aspirations of India and the ASEAN countries, and
in particular the latter's strict policy of
non-interference in the internal matters of member
states. The evidence from independent observers
who have been to Myanmar, including writers for
Asia Times Online, is overwhelming that the ruling
junta is both brutal and incompetent, and that its
people are in great distress. - ATol
Lately
there have been many letters to the editor about
the caste system of the Hindus, some pro- (or
semi-pro) and many anti-caste system. I believe
some facts need to be brought out. One, the caste
system is 4,000-5,000 years old, and we cannot
judge or appreciate why it was introduced until we
can put ourselves in that era. Two, the Lord
Krishna whom Hindus worship all over the world
belonged to a backward caste (BC). Three, the
author of the great epic Ramayana was of one of the
lowest rungs of the BC. Four, in India people are
going on strike to be considered among the lowest
rung of the BC and five, more recently, the great
villain the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra
Modi, belongs to a BC. All BCs of Gujarat treat
him like a god and his desire is their command,
while the upper caste (especially Patels and
Vaghelas-Rajputs) are Mr Modi's staunch opponents.
Like everywhere in the world, India's educated
class (mostly the upper castes) are timid when it
comes to violence, while the less or uneducated
(mostly the lower castes) are at the forefront
during the riots. This was especially true in the
case of [the] Gujarat racial riot mainly because
all BCs considered Mr Modi's desire as their
command. So, my Muslim brothers, although your
hearts bleed for the BCs of India, in a racial
riot, [the chance of] a Muslim dying at the hand
of a BC Hindu is 90-95%. I thought you must
know.
Purajoshi
USA (Sep 25, '07)
Re Shots in the
dark over Syria's skies [Sep 22] ¡ Israel
bombs Palestine daily and kills innocent
Palestinians while they sleep in their homes. The
Zionist dream of creating an exclusive state for
the Jewish people in Palestine is unsustainable in
the long term. Israel's demographics present the
central challenge to the Zionist dream. There are
more than 1.3 million Palestinian-Israeli citizens
of Israel, or 25% [the number] of Israel's 5.2
million Jews. The Palestinian-Israelis are in
addition to the 4.2 million Palestinians who live
under Israel's occupation in the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank. Outside Palestine, 2.6 million are
registered in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon,
and Syria, plus 1.5 million scattered worldwide.
Israel cannot forever bomb its way to its
advantage, and it is about time they swallow this
arrogance and believe in living as equals [with]
and not as masters of Arabs ... I will advise very
Arab nation and in particular Syria to develop
nuclear weapons to face the bully state of Zionist
Israel head on and once for all stop its
aggression on Arab soil. Zionist Israel lives on
the handouts of the American taxpayers' money and
is doing so many evil things to the Palestinians
that the Nazis would have been ashamed of doing on
them.
Jalal Rumi (Sep 24,
'07)
Sami
Moubayed's Shots in the
dark over Syria's skies [Sep 22] addresses the
most recent US and Israeli statements made
regarding the Israeli violation of Syrian
airspace, all of which now involve the specious
allegation about technology that the US and Israel
do not want Syria to possess, an allegation
similar to one that recently resulted in a war in
Iraq in which maybe more than 500,000 civilians
were killed. The most recent
allegations/statements are a far cry from the
initial statements indicating that (1) Israel was
trying to send a message to Iran, primarily, and
Syria about its technological capability, (2) that
Israel does not want war with Syria, (3) that both
Israel and Syria had a rare mutual interest in
keeping quiet, and (4) that it "would soon be
forgotten". How do we explain this seemingly
bizarre evolution from not wanting to say anything
and not feeling a need to say anything about an
incident that "would soon be forgotten" to making
outrageous statements involving North Korea? It's
quite simply and most probably a case of the first
statements and the incident not having the desired
effect on Syria and having to be supplemented with
additional statements - really threats - to
intimidate Syria. From experience, one learns that
these statements don't just evolve along a
particular path for no reason. The first
statements by US officials, the behavior of the
attackers, and the absence of Israeli statements
seemed to indicate that Israel is trying to get
Syria to believe that either (1) Syria can keep
its mouth shut and let Israeli planes attack Iran
(and how they got there will be a "mystery"), or
(2) Syria can be an innocent bystander that can
get hurt if Syria interferes with Israeli planes
as they pass through Syrian airspace to attack
Iran's nuclear infrastructure. As indicated in an
earlier letter to the editor, Israel is very
likely to use nuclear weapons - and not
conventional weapons - if it attacks Iran's
nuclear plants. If Syria fires on the next batch
of airplanes, they may drop their munitions as the
previous violators did and Syria will have to
"take responsibility" for Israel bombing it with
nuclear weapons or polluting its environment. It
may not be happenstance that the munitions of the
most recent Israeli violators were dropped in
Syria while the extra fuel tanks were - most
probably - unnecessarily dropped in Turkey.
Shortly after the incident, US officials said that
Syria got the "message", as they often do
prematurely about most things. However, Syria was
not cowed and refused to keep silent, so the
explanations for the violation took the now very
familiar turn about technology whose possession
can lead to a devastating US attack, as Iraq and
the region now understand so well. According to a
reliable source, Syria has not been intimidated by
the most recent allegation.
Abacus
USA (Sep 24, '07)
Re Shots in the
dark over Syria's skies [Sep 22]: Although
Sami Moubayed doesn't spell it out, Israel's
September 6 raid on Syria, now publicly confirmed
by the boastful braying of Likud's Benjamin
Netanyahu, is but the continuation of [Israel]'s
menacing policy towards its Arab neighbors. Under
the pretext of nipping in the bud Syria's
putative, nascent nuclear industry, Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert gave the green light for this
[lightning] bombing raid. Among the reasons for
this action, which quickly gained US President
George W Bush's wholehearted support, is the
calculated goal of humiliating Syria's President
Bashar al-Assad and of bullying Syria without
provoking a violent response from Damascus. Olmert
slapped Netanyahu's hands for "speaking out of
turn", but the edgy silence of [Israel and the US]
has been broken, yet details of the Israeli
violation of Syria's airspace and air strike
remain largely unknown. Still, [Israel and the US]
have floated the trial balloon that North Korea is
supplying Syria with enriched uranium for nuclear
designs. Damascus and Pyongyang immediately issued
[denials]. But the raid has sent a message that
Israel will and can act with impunity against its
Arab neighbors when it wishes and at its own
leisure. It has strengthened the aggressive
designs of Israel's Likud, which has its
ideological roots in the writings of the extremist
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, [and] which many think will form
the next government. It equally serves and feeds
on the fears and prickly suspicions of right-wing
[US] Republicans who see in Mr Bush's discussions
with Pyongyang to denuclearize a divided Korean
Peninsula a stab in the back, and which offers
them a margin of maneuverability to try to undo
the damage that the American president's change in
policy has produced. After all, under the cover of
war against terror, [Israel and the US] have
almost the same geostrategic interests in the
Middle East. This said, the Israeli military
strike doesn't bring it a whit more security, nor
will it serve America's right wing, nor will it
firm up a [hopelessly] flawed Bush and company
design in that region.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 24, '07)
In Welcome to
Planet Gaza (Sep 22) [Pepe] Escobar lives up
to his reputation for disregarding facts which do
not conform to his world view and manufacturing
facts which reinforce it. There is hardly a
sentence in this libelous article which does not
distort truth. Escobar writes: "The crude Qassam
rockets fired over Israel - the apparent reason
for the blockade - are not even fired by Hamas,
but by al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades." The fact that
these rockets are fired almost daily, at the very
least disrupting normal life in the receiving
areas, but often enough causing injury and death,
does not seem to qualify as a "reason" for Israeli
reaction. The Hamas government, which rules Planet
Gaza, is absolved by Escobar of any
responsibility, because they did not themselves
(apparently) do any of the firing. Escobar writes:
"It was up to a lone, meek United Nations
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to urge Israel to
'reconsider' its decision - which once more is
'contrary to Israel's obligations towards the
civilian population under international
humanitarian and human rights law' (as if that
other occupying power, the US in Iraq, was giving
a damn to the suffering of the Iraqi civilian
population)." Escobar seems to not have noticed
that Planet Gaza is no longer being occupied by
Israel - (apparently) he is too busy manufacturing
news to devote time to read them. As Israel is no
longer an occupier, it has no more responsibility
for the population of Gaza than does Egypt, which
also shares a border with Gaza. In fact the
Egyptians have more of a moral responsibility
here, as most of the population of Gaza are fellow
Arabs and fellow Muslims. The only incentive for
Israelis to provide electricity and fuel can be a
commercial one - and which if they were wise they
would cede to the Egyptians. By the way, why not
rename your publication "Middle East Bad Times"?
It seems that at any time, more than half of your
articles are about the Middle East and are mostly
written by apologists for the former dictator of
Iraq and the current dictators of Syria and Iran.
Is there really not enough bad news coming out of
the other parts of Asia these days?
L
Gustafson
Reykjavik,
Iceland (Sep 24, '07)
Pepe Escobar is by far your
most eloquent reporter. His article [Welcome to
Planet Gaza, Sep 22] convinces of something
that I have long suspected: the Israeli Jews are
suffering from a mass outbreak of Stockholm
syndrome. Their almost comprehensive adoption of
Nazi tactics and methods in their dealings with
the Palestinians cannot be otherwise explained. In
fact, reading about the plight of the Palestinians
in Gaza brought to mind the eerily similar plight
of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews during the German
occupation of Poland. Are we by any chance
witnessing the beginnings of Israel's Final
Solution to its Palestinian problem? As for the
America's role in all of this: Can the USA sink
morally any lower? Can our government behave even
more despicably? I'm afraid that under [President
George W] Bush, [Secretary of State Condoleezza]
Rice and [Vice President Richard] Cheney the
answer can only be yes.
Jose R Pardinas, PhD
San Diego, California (Sep 24,
'07)
Re US captivated in
the theater of war [Sep 22] by Ira Chernus:
Like all navel-gazing about how Americans are
dealing with Iraq, this article ignores the [Iraq]
war's international consequences that make the US
a laughing-stock and take the decision-making
process out of American hands. For instance,
inside the US the news media portray the Iraqi
government as being inept, but outside the US
everybody knows that the top American military
commander in Iraq relies on mercenaries instead of
on his own troops to provide his personal
security. Iraq's leaders are exploiting such
contradictions by playing up the latest deadly
actions of mercenaries in order to show the world
that the Americans have failed. Rubbing salt in
the American wound, the Iraqis are saying that as
unruly as some of the mercenaries are, they
understand why the Americans will need to keep
using them. This discussion seems to be about
Iraq's sovereignty, but if we look closer, we see
that it's about the buffoonery of American leaders
who criticize Iraq's leaders for having to live in
the filth that the Americans have piled up in
Iraq.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
(Sep 24, '07)
Re Russia bolsters
ties with Iran [Sep 22]: ATol readers are
fortunate to have a resourceful writer like M K
Bhadrakumar to give us a factual analysis of the
triangular dynamic underlying the US-Iran
standoff. It seems nothing short of a complete
capitulation by the Iranians (renunciation of the
country's nuclear ambition as well as its designs
on creating an energy bloc) will suffice to
dissuade the US from conducting a military strike.
If the US succeeded in lassoing Iran, it would
likely find itself in a position to achieve an
unprecedented level of world dominance
economically and geopolitically. Should the
military campaign turn out disastrous, however,
the US, increasingly encumbered with ponderous
geopolitical and financial difficulties,
conceivably could be forced into a much-reduced
global role, hastening the advent of a multipolar
world order. With the stakes so high, it's
mentally titillating to ruminate on possible
counter-moves by Russia and counter-counter-moves
by the US in this fateful chess match. To that
end, one wonders why Mr Bhadrakumar left
unexplored the statement "Russia remains Iran's
main arms supplier." Also regarding Chan Akya's
and David Simmons' contributions [Rocking the land
of Poppins and A comparative
failure, both Sep 22]: These two articles
underscore the larger point that China and India
face arduous challenges ahead in their quest for
great-power status. Each country needs to have its
eyes firmly fixed on the road in front, not
sideways at each other jealously in an attempt to
outdo one another. Neither is regarded as a
paragon of economic efficiency; it would be
foolish to further waste already-limited resources
on senseless/needless competition. Save being
haunted by some historical grievances, no
irresolvable reason really exists for continued
enmity between the nations. And we're talking
about two of the oldest civilizations in humanity;
hopefully wisdom is a useful byproduct of their
lengthy existence.
John Chen
USA (Sep 24, '07)
China stands accused of using
its support for infrastructure projects in Africa
to buy into new sources of raw materials and
energy to sustain its industrial and economic
growth. It is further alleged that China hides
behind a self-imposed principle of sovereignty and
non-interference to turn a blind eye to
human-rights abuses and to support reprehensible
regimes in Africa and elsewhere in order to serve
its economic needs. In other words, China is
guilty of emulating the West a little to closely,
although it must be admitted that it still has a
long way to go to catch up with things like
geopolitical ambitions and colonialism.
Cha-am
Jamal
Thailand (Sep 24,
'07)
Shawn
Crispin: I found your September 21 article [Burning down
Myanmar's Internet firewall] on Asia Times
Online to be insightful and uplifting. It is true,
with all its restrictions on the freedom of the
Internet, the junta has not been able to
successfully control the 'Net in Myanmar. It is
encouraging to see that so much information has
reached the international media, due to the
persistence of Myanmar Web users. It is a big
development from 1988 when there was an
information blackout on events in the country. The
Internet is based on the values and principles of
freedom and democracy. The junta fails to
understand and appreciate the nature of democracy
and thus fails to understand and control the
[World Wide Web]. I believe at the end what is
pure and true will always prevail. Companies like
Fortinet, whose products directly hinder a
society's struggle for freedom and arm those who
deny its people's desire, should be brought to
light. I encourage the media to remind the
Fortinets of the world to be responsible and
ethical when considering [whom] they sell their
products to and commend the Glites to defend
[against] those technologies prohibiting freedom
of speech and basic human rights, the essence that
the Internet promotes and enables.
Danny M
(Sep 24, '07)
Re K L Afrasiabi's French
warmongering aids Iran's cause [Sep 21]: I do
not quite understand when the author states,
"[French President Nicolas] Sarkozy and [Foreign
Minister Bernard] Kouchner have harmed France's
international image". In my opinion France's image
is not much better than the US image. They used to
and still behave like old colonial powers.
France's leaders may now want to get closer to US
policy against Iran, since they might happen to
remember that they (and the US) had a common
history in Vietnam. France should also apologize
to the people of Rwanda for trying to protect some
of those responsible for the genocide ...
Manuel
de la Torre, PhD (Sep 24, '07)
Re It must be the
end of secularism [Aug 21]: Spengler has
written one of the greatest and most revealing
essays of his entire career. In this short essay
he comprehends the liberal ideological affinity
for the Muslim totalitarian theocrats as nothing
less than shared hated. And also nothing more than
that. A simply brilliant essay.
Peter
Hartman (Sep 24, '07)
Re the letter of Jalal Rumi
dated September 20: I am always amazed at the mass
of misinformation propagated about the Hindu caste
system. Coincidentally, many of them [propagators]
are Muslims. India is a huge country, [and] every
state, city, district and taluka has its own
characteristics. At some places you will really
see castes being followed rigorously. But with
ongoing urbanization, castes are falling aside
fast. Inter-caste, inter-religion and inter-state
marriages are so common that they don't evoke much
curiosity these days in cities ...
Niraj
India (Sep 24, '07)
In response to Jalal Rumi's
([letter] Sep 20) simple question, may I ask a
similar one? Does Islam promote terrorism? There
have been a lot of letters from Muslims asking
[people] not to blame the faith for the actions of
the followers (which I am totally in agreement
with), and it is disappointing to see one of them
turn around and mock another faith for the actions
of the followers. That is why the Danish cartoons
were so wrong, they mocked the faith, which had
nothing to do with present-day events. It is time
that people took responsibility for their actions,
instead of blaming the faith. Islam doesn't tell
its followers to commit terrorist acts, neither
does it say that women should be shuttered in burqas. The Mahabharata
may never have happened but for the elder of the
pandavas, in line for
the throne, choosing to give it up so that his
father, the king, could marry a fisherwoman. Most
Christians are opposed to slavery and some of them
accept gays, but their Bible teaches something
else. The people abusing gays are in fact true
followers of their Christian faith! This is one
instance where you blame the faith. Mr Rumi needs
to distinguish between Hindus and Hinduism. People
have converted to Hinduism without realizing it's
a liberal faith, the rules are different. There
are Hindus in the West Indies and South America
where there are no castes. Smaller numbers made it
difficult for arranged marriages to continue.
Arranged marriages, in my opinion, allowed castes
to solidify and made it [the caste system] the
evil it is today. Things are getting better,
especially in the cities, but we are not there
yet.
Jayant Patel (Sep 24,
'07)
The
Hindu caste system is not a division of labor as
claimed by Jayant Patel (letter, Sep 14) but the
beginning of putrefied apartheid in the history of
mankind. I would go along with Jalal Rumi [letter,
Sep 20] on how higher castes treat especially the
lower-caste Hindus. They cannot worship in the
same mandir with the upper-class Hindus.
Religions' apartheid galore belie their claims of
enlightenment. The Hindu religion in ¡ appearance
is a rich, colorful, ritualistic, ceremonial
culture yet discriminatory for lower classes.
Wariss
Shaw
Samundr, Pakistan
(Sep 24, '07)
I just want to say I love your
coverage of issues, especially the ones in [the
United States of] America. I'm so sick of reading
the same corporate-biased stories in our mass
media, and coming to your site is so refreshing. I
also love your authors' irreverent sense of humor
and how they tell it like they see it. Your sites
also give so much information compared [with] the
"short and sweet headlines" we get at CNN and ABC
[American Broadcasting Co] News. I get plenty of
[background]. So keep up the good work. I will
keep visiting and recommending your site to
friends.
Jeff D
Starkville, Mississippi (Sep 24,
'07)
The
Mogambo Guru (MG) is anything but frivolous. At
heart, he's a polemicist whose gifts lend
themselves to exaggeration and sardonic humor.
Some ATol readers may appreciate his ironical
tone; others definitely do not, dismissing it as
idle chatter if not downright twaddle [letter,
Shane Mulligan, Sep 20]. Nonetheless, MG is a keen
observer of the marketplace who claims some
important truths. Yet his prose has a smart-aleck
snap and private-school tie to it, which might,
alas, detract the reader's eye from what he is
saying. In The pinecone
currency of camptown [Sep 21] he is never more
serious about the marketplace and the flow of
money, rising prices, ballooning debt, the
attraction of precious metals, and the ever
looming shadow of inflation. MG works in the good
tradition when men were bound by rules, contracts
and laws, which in today's casino economy are
looser, laxer and more manipulatable, thus
increasing the chances that men and women are more
susceptible to being cheated of money and
property. MG certainly deserves to be read with
more seriousness and attention. A word about
America's president George W Bush relying on
China's good offices to keep the Burmese generals
in line [US turns to China to influence
Myanmar, Sep 21]. He would do better in
supporting Burma's monks who are directly
challenging their rule, for Beijing is very cozy
and comfortable with the military junta's
authoritarian rule than with seeking to reform or
tame it.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 21, '07)
Re US interest-rates cut: The
US is prescribing an opposite course of what it
preached during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis
[see The rate pirate
on the high debt sea, Sep 21]. I wonder what
would the IMF [International Monetary Fund] says
in this case. Shame on the IMF.
Soon
Hoe (Sep 21, '07)
Americans are now crying foul
that Alan Greenspan, their high priest of finance,
led them astray by supporting the Bush tax cuts
while serving as the chairman of the Federal
Reserve Bank, because they now realize that those
tax cuts for wealthy Americans were the seeds of
fiscal disaster. Yet the American system of
government and its intricate mechanism of checks
and balances do not include a high priest of
finance; and as chairman of the Fed, Greenspan had
no official role to play in fiscal policy. The
real question is not why Greenspan was so wrong on
this issue but why he was even being consulted on
this issue and why America needed to invent a
financial version of the Wizard of Oz and bestow
all those magical powers on a very old and
possibly senile individual. Superstition takes
many forms. We have fortune-tellers and Jatukam
good-luck pendants [see Thailand caught
in an amulet craze, Jun 28]. They have high
priests of finance.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Sep 21, '07)
Your comments remind us of an
article written just over two years ago by Henry C
K Liu, Greenspan, the
Wizard of Bubbleland (Sep 14, '05). Of course, few
were listening back then (other than ATol
readers). - ATol
The
purpose of the recent violation of Syrian airspace
was to deliver two messages to the region and Iran
[see Neo-cons have
Syria in their sights, Sep 20]. The first
message has to do with what kind of weaponry
Israel would use to destroy Iran's nuclear
infrastructure. The second message is intended to
get the Arabs to understand that - from Israel's
perspective - they are militarily vulnerable and
going to be in an even worse bargaining position
once Iran is weakened, so they might as well
participate in the US-sponsored November peace
conference and accept whatever Israel will give.
With respect to the first message, Israel was
signaling to those who can decipher its acts and
the statements of US officials and [Likud chairman
Benjamin] Netanyahu that it is willing to use
nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear
infrastructure. If Israel were to use conventional
weapons - even bunker busters - it would need most
probably over 45 airplanes to attack all the
Iranian plants, which are widely dispersed. The
limited number of airplanes, the specious
arguments about a South Korean nuclear connection,
and the participation of an opposition leader such
as Netanyahu in the deliberations leading to the
violation strongly suggest that Israel is willing
to use nuclear weapons to attack's Iran's nuclear
plants. However, if Israel attacks Iran, there is
a strong possibility that it will use missiles
with nuclear warheads rather than airplanes with
nuclear bombs. With respect to the second message,
Israel is signaling to the Arab world that if the
US doesn't act, it will, and the end effect - from
Israel's perspective - will be the same, greater
Arab weakness ... Far from being isolated in the
Arab world, Syria is secretly supported by at
least two Arab states. This is not surprising
given that some of the US's allies in the region
recognize that if Iran and Syria fall, the only
kings in the Arab world will be the four kings in
the deck of cards.
Abacus
USA (Sep 21, '07)
It is funny how a group of
mercenaries can incorporate and turn themselves
into a security firm in a few years. Blackwater pays
price for Iraqi firefight [Sep 19] by Daniel
Luban fails to mention that these are high-dollar
mercenaries. A contractor comes to your house and
installs a ceiling fan. A mercenary comes to your
country and kills your countrymen. Mr Luban,
please make note of this definition in the future
when writing about Murder Inc. from the United
States.
Bob Van den Broeck
American refugee
Kouchibouguac, New Brunswick
(Sep 21, '07)
Re Nepal polls no
sure thing [Sep 18] by Dhruba Adhilkary: I am
happy to read an article in your portal that
specially talks about Nepal. The article still
holds meaning though the ground reality has been
changed since it appeared in your portal. The
writer in fact was able to predict the upcoming
circumstances and the hypothetical analyses that
offered the political way out for Nepal. However,
I categorically disagree with the writer in terms
of his prediction that the Nepali Army would think
to take the situation under its control. Nepali
people have been the force of all the changes in
the country and a similar move will be
counterproductive for the Nepali Army.
Binod
London, England (Sep 21,
'07)
Shawn
Crispin: I wanted to congratulate you for (the
part of) your presentation that was published in
Asia Times Online [Thailand's rocky
road ahead, Sep 13] ... I have to say that I
totally share your views. Voila. Bravo. And I do
hope that you managed to open the eyes of the
foreign investors [who] listened to you.
TC
(Sep 21, '07)
You are definitely a class
outfit. And I am not the only one with this
sentiment. I have since my daily read of ATol been
referring [it] as a primo source of mature media
to friends in academia and have been sincerely
thanked for sharing.
Armand De Laurell (Sep 21,
'07)
Dahr
Jamail's piece Saudis quietly
go about 'business' in Iraq [Sep 20] is
excellent. It demonstrates what most analysts of
Middle Eastern affairs ignore: the greatest US
ally in the region is not Israel but Saudi Arabia.
The Israeli government has always put its own
interests ahead of all other considerations,
whereas the Saudi royal family has always pursued
the interests of the United States in the region
before everything else. Saudi Arabia has the most
fundamentalist regime in the world and it has
always sought to infect all other Muslim countries
and communities with its obscurantist virus,
sometimes with the enthusiastic support of the
United States, as was the case in Afghanistan in
the 1980s. The current US administration is
keeping its eyes closed on what the Saudis are
doing in Iraq for a good reason: the choice for
the future of Iraq is between a fundamentalist
regime of a Sunni kind, shared by Arabs and Kurds
[and] controlled by Saudi Arabia, and a
fundamentalist regime of a Shi'ite kind,
controlled by Iran. The US preference is
obvious.
Daniel Mazir
Perth, Australia (Sep 20,
'07)
Julian
Delasantellis' US rate cuts:
Like a blow to the head [Sep 20] reminded me
of Professor David Rowe's (at the time director of
graduate studies in international relations at
Yale University) testimony before the United
States Congress in which he advised the US to
purchase all surplus Canadian and Australian wheat
so as to impose "general starvation" on a billion
people in China, a cost-effective method, he
observed, to undermine the "internal stability of
that country". As an expert on the Asian mind, he
assured Congress that this policy would be
particularly welcomed by the Japanese, because
they had had a demonstration "of the tremendous
power in action of the United States ... [and] ...
have felt our power directly" in the fire-bombing
of Tokyo and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; it would
therefore "alarm the Japanese people very
intensely and shake the degree of their friendly
relations with us" if we seemed "unwilling to use
the power they know we have" in Vietnam and China.
Delasantellis isn't exaggerating when he says the
contrast between "the results of the [Federal
Reserve's] August meeting [and] Tuesday's is like
going to the doctor wanting to have a hangnail
removed and having the physician start his
conversation by asking how you feel about
cremation". Had the US bought all surplus Canadian
and Australian wheat it would likely be the case
that not just the Chinese would have been starved
to death and not only the Japanese would have been
sent a message. Similarly, the rate cuts are a
rather blunt instrument with which to attack
China, because the US is not, economically
speaking, only stabbing China in the back, but
also Japan, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia,
two of which hold more reserves denominated in
dollars than China. Maybe they are not a blunt
instrument and the US is trying to send a message
to countries besides China. One could argue the
United Kingdom should not have left Basra just
when the US was preparing to attack Iran; the
neo-cons are livid at the UK abandoning them.
Japan looks like it is not going to extend the
naval mission in support of the US-led operation
in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia isn't and hasn't been
toeing the US line with regards to Palestine,
Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Iran. It's interesting
to note that Saudi Arabia has become a wheat
exporter despite the US trying very hard to
dissuade it. Makes you wonder whether Saudi Arabia
was aware of Rowe's testimony in which he proposed
starving the Chinese. I would be interested in
having Mr Delasantellis comment on the effects of
the rate cuts on the other major lenders to the
US.
Abacus
USA (Sep 20, '07)
Martin Hutchinson's Winning the next
cold war [Sep 19] is riddled with false
information and wrong conclusions. First, Russia
is not an enemy of the United States or the West,
Russia is just trying to regain some of the
stature that it lost with the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Russia is no longer one of the two
superpowers of the world, but are the world's
14th-largest economy after No 13, Canada, a nation
of 33 million people. Mr Hutchinson's claims about
Russia and Western fighters and air forces are
insane. He writes about "a Russian Air Force that
may well be better in quality than the US Air
Force". Perhaps he also believes his grandmother
is a better basketball player than Michael Jordan.
His figures about the cost and capabilities of the
various fighters are all wrong. The Saudi Air
Force just bought 72 Typhoons for [US$]122 million
apiece, not $440 million. The Su-47 is a
forward-swept-wing jet that the US tested 25 years
a go and is not going into production. The next
Russian jet to match the F-22 is a least five to
seven years away and his price of $30 million a
plane is not worth the paper it is not written on.
He also fails to mention the F-35, which will cost
between $48 million and $63 million and will have
3,100 built for the US and its allies over the
next 25 years. Mr Hutchinson also fails to account
for the 15 US aircraft carriers, which have over
1,300 planes [and allow] the US to project its air
power around the world. Also, Russian electronics
are still a generation behind the US and
[elsewhere in] the West. His plan to deny Russia
credit is plain foolish: Russia makes billions
selling oil to the world, while the US needs to
borrow hundreds of billions to pay for it budget
deficit and imports.
Dennis O'Connell
USA (Sep 20, '07)
Re Winning the next
cold war [Sep 19] by Martin Hutchinson:
Vladimir Putin and the new Russia must be doing
something extraordinarily right to have so
thoroughly mortified the right-wing wackos
currently in power here in the good ol' USA. I
suppose it must be awfully galling for these folks
to see a brilliant leader like Putin transforming
his country into an economic juggernaut while our
idiot prince Bush and his witches' brew of
neo-cons, Zionists and evangelicals flush
America's prestige and promise down the toilet.
America confronts in Russia an ascendant power of
potentially the very first magnitude - one that is
militarily unassailable. That last in particular
must make the Russian pill doubly hard to swallow
for the habitual warmongers that Americans have
unfortunately become.
Jose R Pardinas, PhD
San Diego, California (Sep 20,
'07)
In his
article French-kissing
the war on Iran [Sep 19], [Pepe] Escobar comes
perilously close to pronouncing a fatwa against elected
leaders (the prime and foreign ministers) of the
French Republic: "Unguided missile [Bernard]
Kouchner has been to many a theater of war to know
better: he should beware his missiles don't reduce
himself - and his master - to collateral damage."
Such language coming from the appointed "Supreme
Leader" of Iran, or the self-appointed "Supreme
Leader" of the global jihad, would bring strong
censure from democratic nations - however, Mr
Escobar can hide behind the veil of journalistic
license. Mr Escobar also seems to not understand
the term "collateral damage". The venom he hurls
at the elected leaders of France incites directed
and intended violence, whereas "collateral damage"
is a euphemism for unintended victims of violence.
It is not the unintended collateral damage by
Iraqi or American forces that has created the
horrendous Iraqi tragedy, but the intended
violence of the al-Qaeda jihadis in Iraq against
mostly Shi'a "soft targets" and the reactive
counter-violence of the Iranian-backed Sadrists
against mostly Sunni soft targets. But all these
are mere details and can be discarded in the name
of the "higher-calling" journalism of Escobar.
L
Gustafson
Reykjavik,
Iceland (Sep 20, '07)
Re A peek at the
peak oil problem [Sep 19] by The Mogambo Guru:
Excuse me, editors, but I have to ask: Are you
actually paying this guy (?) for his twaddle? As
far as I can gather, his skills lie in writing
textual "hahas" to greet people who actually have
some understanding of the forces at play in the
world of international economy, ecology etc. This
seems a post-modern style, mockery mixed with
utter nonsense (that's meant literally - the
"guru" sends no message - and since when is
complete nonsense funny?). Can't you find an
out-of-work cartoonist who could peek at peak oil
(and surely come out with more analysis, and more
humor, than did our "guru")?
Shane
Mulligan
Montreal,
Quebec (Sep 20, '07)
Tomdispatch [ran] an
extensive interview that [Tom] Engelhardt had with
James Carroll under the title of "American
fundamentalisms", which I believe would more than
balance out Spengler's latest Fiddler on the Roof simile
about the Jews' love of life [It's easy for
the Jews to talk about life, Sep 18]. Besides
it being a pertinent ATol commentary, Tom includes
a joke that he heard recently, and I take the
liberty to pass it along. "I recently heard this
joke: How many neo-cons does it take to screw in a
light bulb? The answer: Neo-cons don't believe in
light bulbs, they declare war on evil and set the
house on fire."
Armand De Laurell (Sep 20,
'07)
We have
picked up the Carroll interview from Tomdispatch,
and not just because of Tom's joke, although the
hard-working staff at ATol could use some cheering
up at the moment. See US
exceptionalism meets Team Jesus . - ATol
With regard to many Hindu
writers' defense of the caste system embedded in
their religion, I would like to ask a simple
question and demand a straightforward answer, if
any of the non-untouchable Hindu writers on ATol
is willing to say that all untouchables are
his/her brothers and sisters; if they are willing
to intermarry with them; eat together on the same
table and share a plate of Indian aloo bhaji with them; and
sit together on a sofa next to each other for all
times? The fact of the matter is that that the
abhorrent Hindu caste system is not a division of
labor as claimed by Jayant Patel [letter, Sep 14]
in order to distinguish the untouchables but it is
in fact the stigma and label of birth as preached
by the Hindu religion. An untouchable was born an
untouchable since the inception of Hindu ethos. He
is not treated as an equal in the Hindu society
because for thousands of years, he has been
carrying the certificate (classification of birth)
"untouchable". India cannot claim to be a secular
state and a democracy when 75% of its masses are
treated as untouchables and shunned by the few
higher-caste Hindus as outcasts and the lowest of
Indian society.
Jalal Rumi (Sep 20,
'07)
Re Winning the next
cold war [Sep 19] by Martin Hutchinson: Okay,
so with the benefit of a hindsight - after a
panicky 50-basis-points rate cut - we know that
Ben Bernanke is not exactly keen on plunging the
US into depression in order to punish Russia,
which being in possession of one of the world's
most pristine balance sheets may in any case
survive the application of tough love far longer
than [the United States of] America, whose
financial underpinnings are nothing if not a house
of horrors. But then again, being a columnist for
the Prudent Bear website, he [Hutchinson] doesn't
exactly hide the fact that global economic
collapse is his easiest way to prosperity. If he
should scare a few innocent souls with [the]
Russian bugaboo on his way to a bank, so be it.
But that's not all of the story. Mr Hutchinson,
whose earlier writings betray a curious obsession
with all things Vladimir Putin, illustrates a
larger point, most of all, that the Russian
president - who will be remembered as one of the
greatest statesmen of this century -
understandably infuriates Russophobes the world
over. Everything he did - and they said wouldn't
work - worked. [The] Russia that was given up for
dead is quite alive, with a thriving economy and
improving social indicators. Apparently, Putin is
not even going to violate the constitution and/or
fix elections, confounding and embarrassing all of
the US-financed democracy-watchers with all their
silly predictions. I hope that the author doesn't
really believe his own propaganda, and his
cynicism tells me that he doesn't. When he once
complimented one of the biggest crooks the world
has ever seen (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) as "corrupt
but competent" and thus fit to be the president of
Russia (as opposed to uncorrupt and far more
competent Putin), he flashed his cards more than
sufficiently. Implying that Russia - which was
hounded by the West since the minute it decided to
end the first Cold War - is seeking a new cold war
is a bold lie that fits that mold. Next time
Martin Hutchinson pens an article, he should
preface it with a simple disclosure along these
lines: "I hate Russia, its culture and its people
- and here is what I have to say." Then it's all
fair.
Oleg Beliakovich
Seattle, Washington (Sep 19,
'07)
While
Martin Hutchinson [Winning the next
cold war, Sep 19] propounded a winning
strategy on paper for defeating Russia in another
round of potential cold war, there seem to be at
least a couple of not-so-trivial details that need
to be reconciled before we can give the author a
pat on the back. First, how does Mr Hutchinson
propose to keep oil and natural-gas prices
suppressed when the developing economies of China
and India can't seem to get enough of the
commodities? Don't forget, China first became a
net oil importer in 1993, after the collapse of
the Soviet Union. Second, the Russians have
throughout history displayed an uncanny ability to
learn from past defeats. After having been
flummoxed by the West in the first go-around, does
it not seem just a bit foolhardy to assume that
Vladimir Putin and his people would docilely
accept another dose of the same punishment? While
his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, was perennially
drunk and recklessly doled out his country's oil
assets at fire-sale prices, Mr Putin has proved to
be far more redoubtable.
John Chen
USA (Sep 19, '07)
Re Winning the next
cold war [Sep 19] by Martin Hutchinson:
Incredibly moronic analysis - higher real interest
rates will harm the US far more than its
adversaries by plunging the inordinately
bubble-based US economy into deep recession,
severely weakening the dollar and derailing what
little remains of US economic might on the world
stage. Mr Hutchinson's "strategy" to win the
emerging cold war is a fanciful dream and a recipe
for a massive US forfeiture of the entire game.
W
Joseph Stroupe
Editor
in Chief
Global Events
Magazine (Sep 19, '07)
Re Blackwater pays
price for Iraqi firefight [Sep 19] by Daniel
Luban: As well as telling us how Blackwater and
other such outfits operate, this article hints at
the nightmare the Pentagon faces in planning for
the option of having to withdraw American forces
and civilians from Iraq. Although Blackwater
itself will likely keep doing business in Iraq,
the Iraqi government has now shown that it knows
the Americans are incapable of handling their own
logistical needs. What's more, the typically
knee-jerk American reaction shows that Washington
at last understands the danger. The White House
keeps trying to buy time to make the surge work,
but it's only subjecting American troops and
employees to the increasing possibility that
they'll be caught inside Iraq as the Iraqi
government grows ever more willing to suddenly
hobble the mercenary outfits that support the
American presence. Granted, mercenaries can switch
between outfits, but that may not happen fast
enough if, for instance, American forces attack
Iran, thus giving the Iraqis, both officially and
unofficially, the chance to throw sand in the
American machinery by hampering the operations of
outfits like Blackwater.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
(Sep 19, '07)
It is outrageous for the
combined media outlets to report on Blackwater's
recent activities in Iraq and make "tsk tsk"
noises as they do so [see Blackwater pays
price for Iraqi firefight, Sep 19]. The media
have been contentedly reporting on so-called
security contractors in Iraq for the many years
they have now been operating in that particular
country. The media have wrung profit from their
reports of Blackwater's and others' operations in
that country. Now it would appear more profit can
be made by looking askance at those same
activities. I believe the media have to assume
some of the blame, as by labeling these people
"security contractors" for so long, they have
dirtied the water to the point that they are in
fact mercenaries - that is, people who are for
sale to do other people's dirty work for them.
This is the first war I am aware of [in which]
mercenaries have been labeled "security
contractors". By definition, a mercenary is a
killer, with no constitutional sanction from
democratic states to kill for money. Historically
speaking, our civilizations have decried the use
mercenaries in war or peace as the efforts of
despots and tyrants to impose their rule or shore
up illegitimate regimes. From the very beginning
of this conflict, the world media should never
have adopted the [term] "security contractors" in
reference to these people. Call them what they
are, people who will murder for money.
Warron
Conroy
Spain (Sep 19,
'07)
Re North Korean
bust-up over Syrian 'links' [Sep 19]:
According to the New York Times and the European
press, it was Beijing that called off the meeting
of the United States and the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) at the eleventh hour,
which is affirmed by US nuclear envoy Christopher
Hill, but Donald Kirk reports that it was
Pyongyang [that] put off the meeting. Does he know
something we don't? China's move was shrewd: it
delayed a meeting without endangering the progress
thus far made in North Korea's fulfilling its
pledge to denuclearize a divided Korean Peninsula.
And what's more, Kirk's assertion that the cock-up
lies squarely on North Korea's shoulders is
markedly at odds with Pyongyang's footprint in
"busting up" meetings, something any longtime
Korea hand would pick up immediately. North Korea
needs no surrogate to speak for it. The reasons
for the delay are found in the Middle East: the
Israeli raid and bombing of a target in Syria.
Israel claims that it has nipped in the bud
Damascus' germ of a nuclear program to which
Pyongyang was supplying uranium. Here we are
swimming in a swamp of the unknown, the more
especially since Israeli and American officials
and intelligence sources neither confirm nor deny
the true nature of [Israel's raid into] Syria.
Simply put, this cloak-and-dagger assault leaves
much to speculation and multiple scenarios,
without offering a shred of substance. Thus rumors
abound, and out of the woodwork come the likes of
John Bolton and company, in and out of [the US]
government, who are against any talks with the
DPRK and see in Pyongyang the nuclear devil's
apprentice in Syria. Of course, North Korea
rejects such labels. So, once again, we see the
rumor mill grinding fast and furious and leaks
springing up in Washington about Pyongyang's
perfidy, to which intelligence sources lend
weight. Are we hearing once again bruited stories
of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East?
We full well know what red herrings they are,
since they were false rumors which helped launch
President [George W] Bush's disastrous war in
Iraq. On the other hand, such tales spread by word
of mouth and under the cover of secrecy may very
well have another object in mind: the sabotage of
the meeting of South Korea and North Korea in
early October. This explanation resonates in the
European press and will surface in stories in the
United States. Donald Kirk's article in ATol
simply repeats official Washington's version, but
nothing more.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 19, '07)
Re North Korean
bust-up over Syrian 'links' [Sep 19]: The
"bust-up" has little to do with Syria. Mysterious
events over Syrian airspace just provided a neat
package of pretexts to retaliate over the surprise
question to [US president George W] Bush in
Australia by the president of South Korea,
basically, "Mr President, when will you sign the
peace and finally end the Korean War?" President
Bush was visibly irked by the question. Naturally,
most people in the US think the Korean War is
over. Even the M*A*S*H
TV series on the Korean War celebrated its 30th
anniversary. Mr Bush, not being swift on his feet
that day, declared that the Korean War will be
over when North Korea dismantles its nuclear
weapons. This does not bode well for Iraq. By now
nobody remembers the real reason for the Korean
War, and the new reasons for fighting it are still
being made up. Naturally, the sheer insolence of
such a question must have really hit home
afterward. One is to expect increasing demands, as
well as new definitions of what it means to
"dismantle nuclear weapons" and (finally) end the
Korean War ... It may well be that the mysterious
[Israeli] air expedition was Iran-bound, but was
intercepted by the Syrian air force. Rather then
risking an air battle, Israeli planes dropped
[their] ammunition and disposable fuel tanks and
headed for safety. It is obvious that the mission,
whatever it was, did not count on being detected,
let alone intercepted ... Thwarted designs bring
about much venom and fury. And nobody is more
venomous than the Sarkozy-Kouchner duet.
Bianca
USA (Sep 19, '07)
I am quite disappointed by
Pepe Escobar's article French-kissing
the war on Iran [Sep 19]. Almost every
reference to any military action in the Middle
East is linked to some kind of skullduggery to get
the oil. Mr Escobar never mentions that these
oil-rich nations [have been] playing an "oil game"
of their own for quite a while, from nationalizing
the oil sector to using oil as a bargaining or
even blackmailing tool against the consumers ...
As for the French statement that war is at hand,
he makes the French nothing more than oil-greedy
puppets of the US. France is the center of
continental European culture and power. It like
England has had a colonial past. But unlike the
Nordic nations and the US, France is a
Mediterranean nation and its statement of the
inevitability of a war with Iran is a tactical
move that prevents placing the blame on the US,
[the United Kingdom] or any other European or New
World power. Finally, France is one of the members
of the [United Nations] Security Council that most
likely will get the support of the US and [the UK]
to go to war with Iran. Iran's nuclear program
when fully developed will be an immediate
destabilizing force in the region and a viable
threat to the world, yet Mr Escobar brushes this
aside over the supposed "greed" for oil by the US
coalition ... We in the US and our allies have
been demonized by the left-wing press for so long
the pain of the sting has gone.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 19,
'07)
Your
site has [fewer] stories on development and
poverty in Asia of late and too many US-oriented
political articles that have little to do with
Asia. I preferred the old Asia Times [Online],
warts and all.
Paul Davis (Sep 19,
'07)
Re The cowboy
learns some finesse [Sep 18] by Dmitry
Shlapentokh: Despite the article's outwardly
plauditory tone regarding [Americans as natural
diplomats], one discerns a nuanced indignation at
and even contempt for the American personality.
Isn't the thesis of the article this: Don't let
the friendly exterior fool you; Americans can't be
trusted? If not, I fail to understand how Mr
Shlapentokh's portrayal of the average American
makes him/her such a good diplomat. Wouldn't the
"inexperienced foreigner" in the article, after
more extensive exposure in this country [US], soon
come to understand the superficiality and
two-facedness of his American colleagues/friends
and disregard their external amicability in the
future? In support of his analysis, the author
offers as an example George W Bush's recent
adoption of diplomatic postures in the face of
changing geopolitical realities. But Mr Bush has
been in office for almost seven years and his
two-term presidency is nearing its end; numerous
opportunities to maintain US world dominance have
been squandered with policies of coercion and
brute force, the president's intrinsic
congeniality notwithstanding. Rather than follow
the Romans' transition to greater diplomacy after the empire's fall,
couldn't the US have learned a lesson from history
and espoused more diplomatic ways, say, six or
even two years ago to help avert, or at least
delay, a possible repeat of the Roman decline? Ah,
that strident bugle we hear sounds like a marching
order to attack Iran.
John Chen
USA (Sep 18, '07)
Dmitry Shlapentokh with hardly
a wrinkle of irony in his prose dubs American
President George W Bush a "cowboy". Mr Bush is not
a hired hand who tends cattle, although he is
brash, [is] seemingly unvarnished in speech, and
feigns the look of a country boy. But as we all
know, that is an act. Shalpentokh's musings in The cowboy
learns some finesse [Sep 18] is hardly the
stuff out of which come drama and serious
political observation. To put a good face on the
American president's acceptance of China's
president Hu Jintao's invitation to attend the
2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing simply flatters Mr
Bush's vanity. (It is reasonable to believe that
similar requests will be proffered to other heads
of state, the better to preen the Chinese image of
it being the center of the world.) Seriously, Mr
Bush has little choice. On one hand he needs every
photo opportunity that he can get to shore up his
poor image at home and abroad; on the other,
Beijing holds billions of US Treasury bills and
has a healthy balance of trade thanks to the
American consumers' thirst for cheap products
"made in China". More, America's finance capital
is fueling China's phenomenal economic growth, and
its companies sacrificed the welfare of America's
workers to set up plants and industries in China
to garner windfall profits by exploiting cheap
labor. Mr Bush is pursuing a policy which former
president Richard M Nixon laid down on his visit
to China 35 years ago ... Mr Bush in his tiff with
North Korea has handed Beijing on a silver platter
a key role in Northeast Asia, one which has
weakened Washington's traditional position of
strength in that region ... President Bush looks
less like a cowboy than a steer roped and hogtied
by the Chinese.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 18, '07)
Chan Akya: Thank you very much
for discussing issues related to development and
carbon emissions [Osamanomics and
the greens, Sep 15]. I can see the
possibilities for the green revolution to
dramatically improve life in all parts of the
world ... Wind turbines ... [could] displace
regular purchases of coal and oil and effectively
reduce the price of electricity as the operator
can always sell at the lowest price. Some reports
claim that the US could be 100% wind-powered. In
addition to the effects on power prices (down), at
least for the US there would be significant
national-security advantages (the Russians, Saudis
[and] Venezuelans [would] see the global demand
for oil reduced and be forced to cut their
standard of living or move up the value chain).
For Asian economies there are many benefits: less
pollution (see China), no need to import fuels
(particularly in the case of Japan, which has no
significant fossil-fuel reserves), protection
against rising sea levels (Bangladesh, India,
elsewhere) from less greenhouse-gas emission, and
improved quality of life as the result of less air
pollution. It can also cool off the new Great Game
in Central Asia, since there would be less need
for oil. Additionally, this would help developing
economies skip some of the dangerous and dirty
phase. In the US northeast, every time I drive
north through western Pennsylvania I see the
damage done by fossil fuels: scarred landscapes,
old remains of coal mines and coal washers. It's
been probably 50 years since anthracite was
heavily mined there but the damage continues. One
example of this is the Centralia mine
fire that has been burning for over 40 years.
A second example is the damage done by
mountaintop-removal mining in West Virginia. You
note that organic farming is less efficient and
creates issues with pest control. There are
researchers [who] disagree.
Fewer inputs with [in essence] the same output is
a good deal. I would hope that developing nations
all over the world learn from the mistakes of
industrialized nations.
David Mayer-Summer (Sep 17,
'07)
Chan
Akya: I would just like to say, all other
arguments aside, that I find the use of [the]
"guilt by association" technique in this article
[Osamanomics and
the greens, Sep 15] rather offensive: "Leaders
with anti-establishment credentials are also
duty-bound to criticize the war in the Middle
East, even if most of them supported the original
invasion in 2003. This slippery slope, though,
immediately puts them on the road to endorsing the
objectives if not the methods of the al-Qaeda -
namely withdrawal of US troops from the region,
resistance to Israel's policies, and reforming the
military government in Pakistan, among others."
First of all, most "leaders with
anti-establishment credentials" opposed the
invasion in 2003, along with the vast majority of
the world's population, or else they lost their
anti-establishment credentials. Second and more
important, haven't "leaders with
anti-establishment credentials" endorsed decreased
US influence (both in the Middle East and
elsewhere), resistance to Israel's policies and
reforming military dictatorships (be it [General
Pervez] Musharraf's, Suharto's or any other,
especially if US-backed) for decades, long before
anybody knew who [Osama] bin Laden was? With your
logic, you would have to change [your] viewpoint
if Osama happened to express any similar view as
you have. It's like the old argument that you
can't support animal rights or be a vegetarian
because [Adolf] Hitler was a vegetarian and loved
animals. Let's hope Osama never endorses a
free-market economy, because then you'd have to
read up on your [Karl] Marx and Lenin to avoid
putting yourself on a "slippery slope".
Ola
Hakefelt
Sweden (Sep 17,
'07)
In his
article titled Mr Bush, your
sheikh is dead [Sep 15], [Pepe] Escobar is
clearly pleased to announce the death of an Iraqi
sheikh, an Iraqi patriot, who fought the true
enemies of the Iraqi people. Senhor Escobar, your
sheikh is still alive. Judging from the most
recent video he has released, he is looking
younger and more robust than ever. The fresh
mountain air and the good news on the heavenly
punishment his disciples are inflicting on his
enemies (and fellow Muslims) in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and other parts of the Muslim world have returned
the color and vitality to the hairs [of] your
sheikh's beard.
Leif Gustafson
Reykjavik, Iceland (Sep 17,
'07)
The
article Mr Bush, your
sheikh is dead [Sep 15] draws a factual
situation regarding the US role in Iraq. But the
article fails to cover the broader problems of the
Middle East that may force the US to resend troops
if they are all withdrawn. The minute the US exits
the stage, Iran will exert its power to the
fullest. It will seek to "conquer and divide" its
old enemy Iraq and most likely succeed. The
process [of] dividing Iraq will cause rivers of
blood before the partitions between Shi'a, Sunni
and Turks [sic] takes place. [Pepe] Escobar should
have also covered the rising nuclear power of
Iran. Already Israel has threatened to take out
Iran's nuclear program if the US does not do it.
This will involve neutralizing Iran's royal guard,
paralyzing Tehran by taking out vital
infrastructure and finally the eradication of what
we know of Iran's nuclear program. The Israelis
have also said that there is no time left. The
longer the world procrastinates, the stronger will
be Iran's nuclear strike force. Whether Israel
does it on its own or not, it will drag the US and
the coalition in fighting Iran and its followers,
al-Qaeda, the Taliban and its own radical Islamic
cadres. Then we have the never-ending conflict
between Israel and Palestine. We [the US] have
already lost a key senator 40 years ago who was
assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Muslim fanatic
who did not approve [of] Bobby Kennedy's lean
toward Israel. We have to include Syria [and] the
ever-growing clout of the Kurds who want a
"Kurdistan" that not only includes land in Iraq
but in neighboring nations. Already the Turkish
army has been engaged in warfare with radical
Turks. Finally and most crucially is the state of
Pakistan ... The conundrum of having the only
acknowledged Islamic nuclear [weapons] state fall
into the enemies of the US may result in a
preemptive strike by the US and the coalition
against Pakistan's nuclear facilities. Mr
Escobar's article is excellent in pointing [out]
one of the facets of a broad and complicated
region that is boiling and all too ready to take
on anyone who goes against the many parties'
ambitions, from Pakistan to Turkey. I am glad that
Mr Escobar pointed to the "enemy within" in Europe
in the form of radicalized Islamic youths. He
might as well [have] said the same about the New
World, namely the US and Canada. When a greater
war breaks out in the Middle East, it may not just
be the US and its coalition involved. Other powers
will get involved, mainly China and [Russia] for
their own purposes, thereby complicating an
already complicated situation. The ideological,
political and military ambitions of so many
parties will make this "war on terror" a global
event as we at home will be struck by underground
terror cells already in this country, in India, in
Indonesia, in Pakistan, in Europe etc. A true
civilizational war will take a very, very long
time to solve.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 17,
'07)
Re War of words
over Korean peace treaty [Sep 15]: Donald Kirk
presents the conservatives' case for replacing the
Armistice which cooled the guns of the Korean War
in 1953 with a peace treaty, but hardly the
reasons liberals in Washington would support such
a move. As Kirk points out, South Korea's
President Roh Moo-hyun before television cameras
pointed asked US President George W Bush for more
pointed answers to the American chief executive's
commitment for ensuring peace on the divided
Korean Peninsula since Pyongyang signed the
February 13 memorandum to shut down its nuclear
facility at Yongbyon. Mr Bush brushed the earnest
Mr Roh off with his usual indifference to a
serious question. A team of American experts who
recently visited North Korea's Yongbyon returned
with an evaluation which talked much of the easy
access to the facility and which did confirm that
the plant has been shut down ... Mr Roh's logic is
not accepted among the [Washington] Beltway's
conservatives who are nitpicking for any issue
that will delay a peace treaty. Their plan of
attack has the soggy smell of recycled
name-calling and misuse and disuse of facts.
Washington's conservatives see in such a treaty a
weakening of what they conceive of America's
global reach and power and ability to put its
finger in anyone else's pie. Their fear is
visceral in the fishbowl which is Washington, DC;
it is ideologically driven and blind to the way
things are going in the two halves of the Korean
Peninsula. Their objections disregard what
America's South Korean ally's president thinks is
best for his country and for the peninsula. They
constantly and consistently misread the signals
coming out of Pyongyang for a relaxation of
tensions and getting over the legacy of the past.
For them, the only acceptable resolution is
Pyongyang's waving the white flag of complete
surrender. How little do [those in] Washington's
conservative establishment understand history, and
like the Bourbons of old they've learned nothing
and forgotten everything. President Roh is going
to meet Kim Jong-il ¡ at the beginning of October.
The two Koreas will decide what is best for their
respective peoples and geopolitical interests
whether the American conservative elite like it or
not. What can the conservatives do short of
sabotaging the upcoming summit or engineering a
coup in Seoul or assassinating Mr Roh, whom they
never cottoned up to?
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 17, '07)
Re Russia's new
premier has bite [Sep 15]: John Helmer's is
one of the better articles I've seen on
higher-level politics in Russia, a country whose
role in the world it is no longer possible to
ignore or disregard (even if that fact does not
yet seem to have penetrated through the body armor
- of better quality, it would seem, that that
provided for US and so-called "coalition" troops
in Iraq and Afghanistan - of Messrs [George W]
Bush and [Richard] Cheney and the coterie of NATO
[North Atlantic Treaty Organization] enthusiasts
in Europe).
M Henri Day, PhD, MD
Stockholm, Sweden (Sep 17,
'07)
This
is with reference to Deep flaws in
Afghan peace drive [Sep 15] by M K
Bhadrakumar. Mr Bhadrakumar's unmitigated bigoted
drivel is biased: it has serious errors in it and
is typical of the anti-Pakistan tripe so pervasive
these days. Pakistan has now become immune to
"prophecies of doom". Pakistanis are sick of "do
more" lectures from a third-rate country that
piggybacks on superpowers to get a kick out of
beating up vulnerable populations. Your
[Bhadrakumar's] selective amnesia is amazing.
Pakistan was used by the USA in the first Afghan
war against the USSR. India at the time was on the
losing side of the battle and the USSR was not
only defeated, it imploded. Analysts see major
cavities. Today there is an overwhelming body of
evidence that a similar fate faces India. India's
major problem is not a nuclear-armed Pakistan, or
160 million belligerent Pakistanis or even 160
million Bangladeshis or the 160 million Indian
Muslims. India's problem is the 40 million Hindu
white widows, and the dalits and Naxalite
insurrection that threaten to destroy the heart of
the midland. While urban penury competes with
rural poverty [and] the plutocratic, dynastic
democrats, the extremist rightists, and the
megalomaniacs (Neros) dream of a global power, the
heart of India is in pain and destitution. Once
again, India is on the losing side in the war in
Afghanistan. The real Afghans sick of the
extremist Taliban and the other stooges will take
power in Kabul. Soon [Hamid] Karzai, the "mayor of
Kabul", will be seeking Indian asylum again,
choosing a condominium next to the Dalai Lama.
Afghanistan will soon be liberated again [and] the
other traitors and non-Pashtun puppets will hang
from the trees in Kabul. As the Afghans win, the
Indian consulates (the den of deceit and inequity)
will once again be shut down and the Indian
Embassy will again be sent packing back to Old
Delhi. If the plutocrats in India do not learn
their lessons, there will be another Mahmud of
Ghazni and another Ahmad Shah Abdali to teach
[them] that lesson ... This time New Delhi will
lose more than the Peacock Throne and the
Kohinoor.
Moin Ansari, MBA, CME
Morris Plains, New Jersey
(Sep 17, '07)
Pepe Escobar's Behind the Anbar
myth [Sep 14] explains in an intelligent and
unembedded way the realities behind the latest
White House smoke-and-mirrors ploy that played out
this past week in Washington, DC. The Bush White
House, never one to let the truth stand in the way
of spinning a story, is concocting more fables
about the slow-motion train wreck that is the war
against Iraq. To quote Pepe, "Petraeus's key
argument ... to prove his steering of the
Bush-devised 'surge' was a 'success' was to spin
..." Spin, indeed. This reminds one of the
Nixon-Kissinger quagmire that the Vietnam War had
become for another presidency, 40 years ago.
Seeking to extricate itself from Vietnam, or as it
was spun back then, "Peace with honor", the
[Richard] Nixon White House came up with the
clever idea of just declaring victory and getting
the hell out of Vietnam. Pepe's story shows that a
similar malapropism for peace will probably be
shortly forthcoming from the truth-averse Bush
White House in its desperate attempt to "declare
victory" in Iraq. As for the al-Qaeda element in
Iraq, my guess is that within 24 hours of the US
leaving Iraq, the foreign al-Qaeda fighters will
either be running for the borders or dangling from
the nearest utility pole.
Greg
Bacon
Ava, Missouri
(Sep 17, '07)
Re There's menace
in Osama's message [Sep 13]: [Michael] Scheuer
has written that bin Laden is [US President George
W] Bush's friend, given the administration's
foreign policy. And that is exactly right. And
given that the bogus "war on terror" is the very
lever this administration is using as the
rationale to reduce the republic to a police state
and the people to serfdom, and to destabilize the
Middle East, why in the world would he want to
eliminate him? On the contrary, another "terrorist
attack" would serve his purposes perfectly - as
many others have pointed out. And so would an
attack on Iran - despite its essential lunacy.
Scheuer ignores the large stack of documentation
pointing to very direct government complicity in
the events of [September 11, 2001], as well as the
obvious fact that any amount of bogus efforts to
"capture" bin Laden have yielded nothing, and
never will. It is rather like the "war on drugs"
... They both serve the same overall purpose of
installing dictator-like powers for political
elites. Fear works, and Scheuer knows where his
bread is buttered.
Jorge Dominguez (Sep 17,
'07)
I too
would like to extend a welcome to The Mogambo
Guru (TMG). His daily newsletter has lightened
things up at ATol especially as we navigate the
choppy waters of the subprime meltdown. I would
like to add, however, that while the laughs are
great, I personally will be judging TMG by how
much cash his investment advice yields. For
starters I have made the recommended forays into
gold, silver and oil. I await additional advice to
help shelter my rapidly depreciating nest egg.
Sir
Rogers
USA (Sep 17,
'07)
Much of
our disposable income goes into a certain
gold-colored fluid; current average price on the
Bintabaht Market: 65 baht per bottle. - ATol
The recent [US] military,
political and GAO [Government Accountability
Office] reports on Iraq and their congressional
testimonies followed by the president's speech
keeps the [United States] indecisively at status
quo and in a dichotomic quandary as a result.
De-Ba'athification of the early invasion era has
now been replaced with re-Ba'athification, thereby
rewarding the Sunni-al-Qaeda alliance culprits
[who] are responsible for most of the fatalities.
That notwithstanding, most indications lead us to
reluctantly accept that the extended stay of our
[US] 100,000 military personnel in Iraq, so long
as we depend so heavily on oil import and remain
under the influential "special interest" lobbying
groups in Washington, is a grave reality to
grapple with for decades. The American "sanitized
and sensational" media that depend so heavily on
instantaneous ratings and are thus parts of the
corporate conglomerates are not much of help but
more of a problem as they continue playing the
horn from the wider end of it. Until such time
that the [United States] rises and critically
reassess our objectives in Iraq so as to implement
a genuinely multi-jurisdictional political process
by which our interests synergistically with the
aspirations of all the Middle Eastern peoples for
justice and peace are duly served, we continue to
sink further in the [quagmire] created, unless we
equitably resolve the dilemma. And last, for those
warmongers who see troop redeployment to Iran as
the "face-saving" in Iraq in order to expand the
corporate venture interests of the few, stop the nonsense, will you
please?! Has not the [United States] witnessed
painfully and paid dearly with lives and capitals
for your ludicrous, self-centered doctrine in
Afghanistan and Iraq?
David N Rahni
Pleasantville, New York (Sep 17,
'07)
Re Petraeus out of
step with top brass [Sep 14]: Timely reporting
by Gareth Porter, giving us hope that competent,
principled people are looking at what is best for
America's - and the world's - future, as opposed
to their self-interest. I am not sure that I
should give credit to [US President George W] Bush
for appointing Admiral William Fallon as chief of
the Central Command (Centcom). I'm not sure anyone
was left with any credentials. After all, the pool
is restricted in the military. Even Bush loyalists
overall are declining in numbers, leaving us with
some hope that competency might even override
loyalty to Bush as an attribute for appointed
candidates to vacant positions like secretary of
state. Porter did not address Fallon's influence
with Bush in making vital decisions like invading
Iran, shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan,
etc. I fear it is because Bush does not or will
not listen to him.
Jim
Southern California, USA (Sep 14,
'07)
Re Petraeus out of
step with US top brass [Sep 14]: [Admiral
William] Fallon strikes me as an arrogant,
self-serving prick. By his own twisted standard,
where an officer marks his effectiveness by the
enemies he makes, [General David] Petraeus must be
the finest officer in the corps. In any case, if
Fallon is in charge of this Iraq mess, then he is
a complete incompetent, and [I hope] he will get
his just deserts in some future war-crimes
tribunal. In the meantime, maybe they can remove
this prick from command and find a pasture where
he can't hurt himself and others.
Ben
Echols (Sep 14, '07)
Re Brad Glosserman's article
Japan's Abe
takes one for the team [Sep 14]: Whatever else
one might say about [outgoing Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo] Abe's scandal-ridden and failed
leadership at home, he redeemed himself a good bit
by the manner of his leaving. The honesty and
candor of his confession that he had lost people's
"support and trust" [were] in refreshing contrast
to the continued mendacity, deceitfulness and
incompetence of George W Bush, who is utterly
contemptuous of both reality and informed public
opinion. Abe will depart from his office with a
bit of honor and grace; the unrepentant and
pig-headed Bush seems determined to leave the
White House in nothing but infamy both at home and
abroad. Abroad, Abe at least pulled out one
glorious feat in contrast to Bush's multiple
global fiascoes (unless, of course, one wants to
recall the "love and honor" that Bush received in
the great nation of Albania this year). Addressing
the Indian Parliament on August 22, Abe delivered
a spell-binding speech filled with tributes to
eminent Indian leaders - from Emperor Ashoka of
the remote past to recent figures like Swami
Vivekananda, R N Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, J L
Nehru, S C Bose, and justice Radhabinod Pal, who
was the lone pro-Japanese voice on the Tokyo
war-crimes tribunal of the late 1940s ... Abe's
[mention of 17th-century Muslim prince] Dara
Shikoh's idea of "confluence" was a master stroke.
Not only did he invoke it for deepening and
expanding the multidimensional convergence of
interests between India and Japan, he also subtly
reminded many sectarian-minded Hindus and Muslims
of the noble though neglected legacy of a great
ecumenical spirit. As far as I know, no Japanese
leader has ever risen to that kind of challenge in
India with such extraordinary power. Abe will soon
be gone from his office, but in India he is sure
to be remembered with profound affection and high
regard. And I am sure his successors in Tokyo will
build upon what he started in the
hitherto-lackluster Indo-Japanese relations.
Vipan
Chandra
Attleboro,
Massachusetts (Sep 14, '07)
Brad Glosserman in Japan's Abe
takes one for the team [Sep 14] fails to
analyze the potential for [Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo] Abe's resignation to further galvanize
support for Minshuto [the Democratic Party of
Japan, DPJ]. Yes, he is accurate that Abe is net
worst [sic] than a potential LDP [Liberal
Democratic Party] successor (be it [Taro] Aso,
[Yasuo] Fukuda, [Sadakazu] Tanigaki, or [Kaoru]
Yosano) for the party's ability to govern, but his
resignation is also symbolic of the LDP's
inability to stand up for itself amid a sea of
moral, political and policy failures. It also
seems likely that Abe stepping down may
temporarily increase public support for the LDP,
but [DPJ leader Ichiro] Ozawa's ability to spin
LDP failures/missteps into political successes, as
your article notes, for Minshuto is quite
remarkable and perhaps a sign of the inevitable
decline in Japanese public support for the LDP. If
Ozawa can convince the Japanese polity that the
LDP's failures are structural rather than related
to personnel misjudgments in the party, it may
ensure a more resurgent awakening of Minshuto in
the Japanese Lower House.
Nirav
Patel
Research
Associate
Center for a New
American Security
Washington, DC (Sep 14,
'07)
The
article US and Europe
drain Iran's half-full glass [Sep 14]
describes the end of the first prong of the
two-pronged strategy aimed at bringing down Iran's
government, and bringing the country under US
control. My concern with this, and many other
articles, is the lack of focus on key adversaries
in the conflict, and therefore, the lack of focus
of what is really at stake. Am I the only one who
sees the stage management in who met whom, or why
the Bushehr plant is again on hold? I believe that
this not where the ball is. To paraphrase the
bragging of one Fox analyst, the fall of Iran will
bring about an entirely new geopolitical reality
in the world! Did he had to really spell it for
the rest of the analysts to catch on? I hope it is
by now crystal-clear that taking on Iran is a
direct challenge to Russia, and with it China and
the rest of Asia. The process of controlling the
Middle East and then Central Asia is a continuum
of well-thought-out strategy aimed at
incrementally neutralizing Russia's defenses, and
gradually making irrelevant its nuclear parity
with the US. For the nuclear parity to work, it
will have to show that the challenger is deterred.
It is clear that the US believes that Russia's
military will not intervene to forestall the US
advance into Iran. By then, the US expects, the
Central Asian states would switch sides, leaving
China's security on the ropes. Russia and China
have successfully employed diplomacy to stop the
drive for further sanctions on Iran. IAEA
[International Atomic Energy Agency] success,
however, has been expected by the US. For that
reason, a new policy of accusing Iran for being
militarily involved in [Iraq] has been pushed into
high gear. The anti-Iran pronouncements by
Pentagon officials and all levels of government
have become more strident on a daily basis. While
it was expected that the EU would in the end back
the US, Germany [has] communicated to the US that
it will not back additional sanctions. This
effectively ends the UN track. This move is not
helping Iran. Taking the issue back to [the United
Nations Security Council] would have allowed for
very public and embarrassing international
scrutiny of the EU/US dynamic duo. And it was
certain that Russia would veto any further action,
as Russia supports the IAEA agreement with Iran.
Now, the deck has been cleared for the military
option, and short of another diplomatic or
military development, it is now a matter of time
... By then, pressures through the UN and other
institutions would result in the "window of
success" being gradually closed. If that comes to
pass, the Mother of All Unintended Consequences
(MOAUC) may have the final say.
Bianca
USA (Sep 14, '07)
Shawn W Crispin: Just having
read your latest at ATimes [Thailand's rocky
road ahead, Sep 13], I have a question for
you: "All of this, of course, is semi-educated
guesswork. There are already unconfirmed reports
circulating of heavy-duty money-politicking -
where MPs [members of the Thai Parliament] are
allegedly going for about 40 million baht (US$1.2
million) per head in the northeastern region -
financial incentives that could result in shifting
allegiances and mass defections in the run-up to
the polls. Whom the smaller Thai Ruam Jai and
undecided elements of the Saman Chan parties
finally join forces with is still a wild card."
Can you explain the above paragraph? I don't
understand if it means they pay that much to buy
themselves the job, get paid to be in the job or
the costs associated with campaigning for that
post.
Michael (Sep 14,
'07)
The
reference was to provincial politicians who are
now reportedly selling their services to the
highest-bidding political party. How a particular
politician deploys those funds - for vote-buying,
influence-peddling or personal enrichment -
assumedly varies case by case, depending in
particular on how hot competition is for a certain
constituency. Once in power, provincial
politicians have historically found ways to
augment their paltry official salaries through
skimming budgets and other misappropriation of
funds. However, the money often flows in the
opposite direction at the highest echelons of
government, with ambitious and often
business-linked politicians paying ruling-party
bosses for coveted and potentially lucrative
ministerial and state-agency posts. - Shawn W Crispin
[Re ATol response to Jayant
Patel's letter of Sep 13] The fact remains that
not all Muslims are terrorists but 100% of the
terrorists in the world are Muslim. The fact
remains that Muslims have chosen a cowardly way to
fight - this needs to condemned by all good
people. Innocent lives are being lost by these
cowardly people. It is disappointing to me that
you chose to walk a fine line regarding [M
Abdullah] Tariq's letter [of Sep 12] - the problem
was with Pakistan and the US. Why [is] the fact
that missiles are being targeted at India
mentioned? There is an implied threat, and we
Indians do not appreciate it - that's the talk of
a coward. As for religion, I made no mention of
the religion itself. There are many things in
religion that people do not follow, A lot of
Muslims say that Islam does not condone the
actions by terrorists, yet the cowardly attacks
continue. A lot of Hindus engage in caste
discrimination but the Hindu faith itself does not
support caste discrimination. Caste was used to
identify certain people - learned people were
called Brahmins etc - that's all. Time was if you
educated yourself you got to call yourself a
Brahmin; unfortunately, with the advent of
arranged marriages, caste solidified. When we talk
about caste, we usually refer to Hindus, the same
way we refer to Muslim terrorists, the same way we
refer to Christian pedophiles. But the religion
itself, Hinduism, does not teach caste hatred, not
does Islam teach terrorism, nor does Christianity
teach pedophilia. Learn to separate the people
from the religion.
Jayant Patel
Chicago, Illinois (Sep 14,
'07)
I hope
that the newest definition of "hypocrisy" in both
Webster's and Oxford dictionaries contain some
icon which represents the US government. The White
House comes to mind as very representative. To
berate Iran as a supplier of weapons to Iraqis who
are fighting an occupying country for their
homeland, and at the same time shipping millions
of tons of weapons to Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia,
Afghanistan, and any other nation willing to sell
the soul of their country to US imperialist
designs, has got to be the most hypocritical
action ever to be represented by the word.
Ken
Moreau
New Orleans,
Louisiana (Sep 14, '07)
I think K Darbandani's
contribution US public
shrinks from war's reality [Sep 13] is an
excellent description of the American way of
thinking that many of us have difficulties to
understand. I, [like] the author, do not think
that Americans are that stupid not to know what
kind of brutalities are committed by their
soldiers in Iraq. They start to protest when
things start to go wrong for them [as] in Iraq now
(and previously in Vietnam). That they (American
public) react in this way might come from their
fixation [on] victory that we see in almost every
Hollywood movie. My theory is that the Vietnam
defeat has left a kind of national trauma that
they want to wash off whatever the price. Since
things have not worked out that well in Iraq, they
might embark on another adventure against Iran. If
this does not work well too, then the last
resource might be Hollywood (again) to portray
them like the "good guys" "doing the job" against
the inhuman, barbarian Iranians. Or why not start
another war?
Manuel de la Torre, PhD
(Sep 13, '07)
K Darbandi wants to know why
the US public
shrinks from war's reality [Sep 13]. The
answers can be grouped mainly to that they don't
care (or they have other things to care about) and
that they don't know. Reasons why they don't know:
They don't read. Teachers
are having a hard time prodding their students to
read. Most students stop pursuing higher education
after high school. Even that [a high-school
diploma] is already a great achievement as
dropouts are high [in number] and education in
general is poor. Most can't spell correctly.
News is mostly from local
sources. Foreign news is rare. So if you have
media that sound like Fox, you have an uninformed
audience.
Sports are tops [with] the
public. People are more concerned and
knowledgeable about baseball, football, wrestling,
ice hockey etc than about current events. Most
audiences are attracted to sports that have a lot
of punching, kicking [or] tackling.
A culture of violence is
prevalent at present. Sports and shows that
contain violence are most welcome by the
people.
Reasons why they
don't care:
With sports events the
whole year around, people have plenty of
distraction ...
People are concerned if
things are close to home.
Wendy
Cai (Sep 13, '07)
In his absurd article titled
US public
shrinks from war's reality [Sep 13], K
Darbandi desperately tries to whitewash American
genocide and mass murder in Iraq. like his fellow
warmongers in Fox News, this shameless
Iranian-American wants to provide more ridiculous
justifications for another human tragedy in the
Middle East. Quislings like Darbandi and war
criminals like [US President George W] Bush are
really a shame for humanity.
Shiri
Tokyo, Japan (Sep 13,
'07)
I have
no doubt that There's menace
in Osama's message [Sep 13]. But menace alone
will not do the job if the facts do not back it;
anyway, we have already been "menaced" by Osama
[bin Laden] and his ilk in recent years. As for
the African-American/white racial conundrum, he
stipulates that the African-Americans will do
better as Muslims. Yet he fails to mention that
long before the Europeans ever got into slave
trade, Islamic Muslims were tearing apart African
villages and selling the Africans into slavery as
far back as the 13th century. Many of his other
statements have a pinch of truth backed up with
hype and pure idiocracy. As for his wish that the
rest of us convert to Islam, one must remember
about us Christians. Back during the rule of the
Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, she had a religious
discourse about merits and failures of Catholicism
verses Protestantism with the then Catholic
ambassador from Spain. Ultimately the ambassador,
tired of this discourse, announced: "Madam, there
are two kinds of men on this Earth, Catholics and
heretics." When one adds the Crusades that took
place several centuries earlier, Osama's desire
that we convert to a religion that in recent
history has become radicalized, lacking in human
compassion, and willing to do whatever it takes to
attack other faiths across the planet, and
targeting the largest Christian-following nation
in the world, the US, he sounds no better than the
local village idiot. We (the US) have taken
punishment, whether it was our own civil war in
the 19th century [or] the major wars in the 20th
century, and have come out victorious. Menace
indeed. He needs to do some reading (other than
the Koran) before he makes speeches that are
factual.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 13,
'07)
Re There's menace
in Osama's message (Sep 13): It's incredible
how journalists, politicians and some experts
follow the establishment's lead regarding
important figures such as Osama [bin Laden. US
President George W] Bush doesn't really have an
interest in Osama now, for Bush has already
exploited Osama as a specter of fear. [Republican
presidential hopeful] Fred Thompson even added his
superficial evaluation of bin Laden being
irrelevant. The trend has already been established
of shallow thinking and wrong-headed, self-serving
actions regarding terrorism with our [US] entry
into Iraq. So bin Laden is not taken seriously by
agenda-bound leaders and candidates. Everything is
centered [on] them: Bush and the political
candidates. There are some candidates less
narcissistic, but they are not the
front-runners.
Jim
Southern California, USA (Sep 13,
'07)
Fred
Thompson's stance on Osama bin Laden seems to be a
"developing story". First, after bin Laden's tape
was released, he said the al-Qaeda leader is more
"symbolism than he is anything else". Apparently
flustered by media reaction to that remark, he
then said bin Laden "ought to be captured and
killed". Latest news flash: bin Laden should get
"due process" before being dispatched to a
raisin-rich al-Qaeda paradise. Thompson may not
understand politics, but he has always been a
great entertainer - which is, history shows, an
important criterion for winning the White House. -
ATol
Just as the Beijing government
is said to try its utmost to cover up its "warts"
during next year's Olympic Games (Kent Ewing, [Beijing's silly
season begins], Sep 13), that writer is doing
his utmost now to jeer and criticize the
government in the comfort of freedom of expression
in Hong Kong, China. The improvement of air
quality in Beijing is being tried out
experimentally by various methods, the combination
of which should not be pronounced ineffective at
the moment. The International Olympic Committee
was, and is, not unaware of the conditions when
granting permission to hold the Games. There is no
need for foreign journalists to [rack] their
brains in contacting Chinese citizens to help air
their grievances. All they need to do is to take a
trip to Hong Kong to gain audience to Mr Ewing,
who has all the data gathered from many
organizations around the world. He would know what
happened where, even as far [away] as Tibet.
Seung
Li (Sep 13, '07)
The Mogambo Guru is a welcome
addition to ATol. His humor is light but
derisively mocking. Ups and downs in
an economic black hole [Sep 13] provoked tummy
laughs. The arcane argot of Benoit Mandelbrot and
the dense langue de
bois of economists are held to the light of
irony, and are found wanting. The Mogambo Guru is
not a Dean Swift, yet his faux naif innocence pokes
a finger in the eye of puffery. Mandelbrot and
company state the obvious, and like Little Jack
Horner who pulls a plum out of his pie, they
willing proclaim what good boys they are, the more
especially since they discovered that a wheel is
round.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 13, '07)
Re US may attack,
but will Iran fight back? [Sep 12]: Glasnost
is perhaps not the first term which comes to mind
when thinking of the present US administration,
and giving rise to doubt about what the imperial
court in Washington will do next is very much a
part of its foreign - and not least, domestic -
policy. Thus the difficulties in predicting
whether - or perhaps more aptly, when - the US is
going to attack Iran mentioned in [Alan G]
Jamieson's well-researched article. Now, however,
Mr Jamieson says, things are different, and he
here presents rather convincing evidence that the
likelihood of a US attack before January 20, 2009,
when presumably Messrs [George W] Bush and
[Richard] Cheney will leave office, or, still more
probably, before November 4, 2008, when perhaps
half of US registered voters will choose - or be
allowed - to exercise their franchise, has
increased. He seems, however, to have overlooked
another piece of evidence that would go a long way
to strengthening his case: I refer here to the
long-overdue accommodation that the US regime
seems to be in the process of reaching with their
counterparts in the DPRK [Democratic People's
Republic of Korea]. That Bush and Cheney now, in
great contrast to their exacerbation policies of
the last six years, seem not only willing to
defuse the situation in Korea but also to take
steps toward a more permanent resolution indicates
that they have, willy-nilly, been forced to
realize that, given the present state of the US
military, a war on Iran is not feasible unless
other demands on these forces are reduced, at
least temporarily. It is also possible that the US
administration hopes for less resistance from
China and Russia to another US military adventure
in Southwest Asia if it is seen to be contributing
to a lowering of tensions in a region of vital
concern to both these latter powers. None of us
know what will happen before it does, and it is
just possible that the present failure in Iraq
will impel Messrs Bush and Cheney on the path of
prudence rather than adventure. But given the
record so far and what is known of the
personalities of the chief protagonists, this
seems to me rather unlikely. As captive witnesses
to the shell game that this duo is playing with
the whole world, we can only try to keep our eye
on the pea and the players' hands, while hoping
that the pickpockets in the audience are not going
to relieve us of our lives, as well as our
treasure.
M Henri Day, PhD, MD
Stockholm, Sweden (Sep 13,
'07)
Re Pakistan's
military kitted for new power [Sep 11] by Syed
Saleem Shahzad: So [US Deputy Secretary of State
John] Negroponte is heading for Afghanistan and
Pakistan in the role of ueber problem resolver?
Trust me, this guy is a one-trick pony. Watch for
Afghan and Pakistani death squads soon.
A
Bystander
Quebec,
Canada (Sep 13, '07)
Re Julian Delasantellis' Uh, uhhm: Say no
more, Iraq is a slam dunk [Sep 11]: I
sympathize with Delasantellis' exasperation about
his own country. Perhaps Oscar Wilde was right
when he said that America was the first country to
have gone from barbarism to decadence without the
usual intervening period of civilization. As
countries go, one is tempted to give up on so sick
a patient. To illustrate, I read that [President
George W] Bush's approval ratings had actually
gone up after General David Petraeus' ludicrous
dog-and-pony show in Washington. And yet: Where
can one turn for hope if not to America?
Jose R
Pardinas, PhD
San
Diego, California (Sep 13, '07)
Michael Moore gave Cuba a try.
- ATol
Asia Times [Online] readers: I
know from outside the US Americans must look
pretty pathetic as a people. You have just seen
three of the topmost US officials, ie, the
attorney general and two "real" generals, discuss
our affairs publicly as though they all came to
Congress from Mars or Jupiter. We live with this
disconnect from reality so much that many people
here don't even notice how outrageous some of the
lies and dissembling [are]. Most Americans got
sick and tired of this circus years ago, and have
just blocked it all out. This, of course, is
exactly the response these people prayed for and
have worked at getting for years. It's just such a
shame that the rest of the world has to suffer
with the consequences of our somnambulism. I
apologize for them.
George in PA (Sep 13,
'07)
Is
anyone else sickened by the letter from Abdullah
Tariq (Sep 12)? So the so-called friend of
Pakistan, [the United States of] America, is
messing with Pakistan and he wants to bomb India?
What a cowardly mentality! It keeps shocking me to
see time and again letters supporting [this] kind
of people. These people are cowards - putting
bombs in crowded places and detonating them from a
safe distance. That's not a brave person, this is
a person who has no morals. Tariq, if America is
messing with your country, have the guts to stand
up to it. Muslims like Tariq only strengthen the
impression that they are a cowardly lot - look how
quickly the Iraqi Army ran, abandoning their brand
new weaponry. And who can forget all those Muslim
countries attacking Israel and getting beat up? In
a fair fight, these people don't have the guts to
stand and fight. Yeah, let's sneak up on people in
the dead of the night and plant bombs and run
away! Yes, that's the Muslim fighter way.
Jayant
Patel
Chicago, Illinois
(Sep 13, '07)
Are you the same Jayant Patel
who wrote on this page on September 12, "We
[Hindus] respect all faiths [and] do not refer to
those of other faiths in a derogatory way ..."? M
Abdullah Tariq did not say he "wants to bomb
India" but simply stated that Pakistan is a
nuclear-weapons state and that it probably has
missiles aimed at India - hardly breaking news. -
ATol
Alan Jamieson's article US may attack,
but will Iran fight back? [Sep 12] is riddled
with mistaken assumptions about how the attack
will take place and what will be Iran's response.
Contrary to what Mr Jamieson writes Iranian
produced armor-piercing IEDs [improvised explosive
devices] have killed hundreds of American
soldiers. Iran's Islamic government's first act
upon the world stage was to commit an act of war
on the US with the taking of the US Embassy. This
act has been followed with many more acts of war
over the last 28 years, including the bombing of
the US Embassy and marine barracks in Lebanon, and
the attack on the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia.
The point of the attack is not to bring about an
Iranian surrender but to set back Iran's drive for
a nuclear weapon, and hopefully to make Iran
behave more cautiously in Iraq. Mr Jamieson
writes, "With Iran's regular armed forces largely
destroyed," Iran will turn to the Revolutionary
Guards. He could not be more wrong. First, Iran's
army will be almost completely untouched; the
attacks will concentrate on Iran's air force and
navy and air defenses. These attacks will be meant
to destroy materiel (planes and boats) and not
kill people. Hopefully the military planners will
show no such kindness towards the Revolutionary
Guards and Iran's security apparatus. As for
Iran's ability to respond to an American attack,
Mr Jamieson fails to take into account the US
ability to completely destroy Iran's access to
gasoline and electricity in less than one hour.
This would bring about the complete collapse of
the Iranian economy and as such would have equally
bad implications for the Iranian government. Also
if the attack comes, it will be a completely
American attack with no outside help, for many
different reasons known to any true student of
world affairs.
Dennis O'Connell
USA (Sep 12, '07)
Re US may attack,
but will Iran fight back? [Sep 12]: There is
an underlying premise in this, but [also] in many
other articles, that Iran is isolated. This is not
the case. There are clearly forces in the US
pushing for destruction of Iran. But Iran is not
Iraq. [It is] not only that a plausible excuse is
not easy to find, since this is really no longer
needed in US internal politics. Anti-war
proponents have no support in either party, so
that nicety is a thing of the past. If the
proponents of attacking Iran prevail, the only
issue will be: Will it be a surprise attack or it
will be announced? Circumstances argue for a
surprise attack. Any form of announcement will
result in global players having the opportunity to
speak out. That would demonstrate that Iran is not
isolated. With all the staged confusion, Iran has
the political support of SCO [the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization], and with it, military
support of CSTO [the Collective Security Treaty
Organization]. A surprise attack, therefore, can
badly backfire. The CSTO, with Russia in the lead,
has already increased its state of readiness. Any
surprise attack in the direction of Iran is too
close to CSTO borders. There will be no way for
its defenses to determine that the incoming threat
is not in fact aiming at its own installations.
Therefore, the surprise attack could result in
defensive countermeasures with unforeseen
consequences to the Persian Gulf fleet, as well as
Guam and other forward deployments from which the
attack would be launched. Unfortunately, even
though the ardent supporters of attack know of the
dangers, they are intoxicated with the possibility
of testing themselves against Russian forces in a
"limited" manner. I hope that the truly irrational
element does not prevail, as we all may suffer the
unintended consequences of such mad adventures.
Bianca
USA (Sep 12, '07)
Condoleezza Rice, [US]
secretary of state, August 2007: "Iran constitutes
the single most important single country strategic
challenge to the United States and to the kind of
Middle East that we want to see." What kind of
Middle East do we [Americans] want? The present
Republican administration contends that above all,
a nation like Iran would not fit into our picture.
The Iranian government would not accept our
administration's policy as the sole policy for the
Middle East. The administration wants the natural
resources of the area and a market where our
corporations would sell our hardware and
second-class arsenals. Iranian potential to
develop nuclear arsenals would be of minimum
consequence to our national defense; after all, we
faced the Soviets' fully developed nuclear
arsenals. Iran, a third-class nation, is more of a
nuisance than a real threat. Iran could be a
threat to our satellite nations, not by sheer
military force, but by example of defying our
Middle Eastern policy. The satellite nations, like
Iran under the shah, have a tenuous existence. One
way or another, the people of these nations will
free themselves from the yoke of their despotic
masters. The [US] administration finds it much
easier to deal with a single ruler than to deal
with a whole nation. We just pretend to desire the
concept of messy democracy for these nations,
knowing well the hostility of the regional
population to our American foreign policy. Are we
trying to make an example of Iran? Iran under the
shah was incapable of producing a sewing needle;
in contrast, Iran today is developing a strong
population of educated men and women, a solid
industrial base and national pride. Iranian
democracy must develop from the Iranian base, a
brand of democracy suited to the historical and
cultural sense of the population. Like our
American republic, democracy in Iran will nurture
with time, experiencing up and down until the Bill
of Rights of Iran will be established. But Iranian
people are just collateral damage. What are we
going to do? We have to enforce our foreign
policy; Iran is not an exception. We have bases in
164 other nations just to manage our foreign
policy. [For] Iran to survive, it should just
relent to our demands or pay the high price of
destruction. Iraq did not; just see what we have
done to them.
St Michael Traveler
USA (Sep 12, '07)
Re Asians find
common ground in Buddha by Raja M (Sep 12): I
do hope that more Asians as well as non-Asians
will take heed to the Buddha's teachings. As a
Hindu, I think Hinduism and Buddhism belong to the
same family of liberal, democratic faiths. We
respect all faiths, do not refer to those of other
faiths in a derogatory way, our view of God is a
god who welcomes all good people into her heaven,
not just members of a particular faith. We do not
threaten or abuse others. In the article, Raja
uses poor choice of words when he states that it
is ridiculous to think that the Buddha was a
reincarnation of Lord Vishnu. If the writer is a
Buddhist, he is out of place in commenting about
another faith's teachings. If he is Hindu, I am
afraid that he needs to dwell more on Hindu
teachings. The Lord made a promise to all
humankind, that she will come to our aid when evil
raises its ugly head or when needed. It's a lovely
and beautiful concept - please do not condemn it
in haste.
Jayant Patel
Chicago, Illinois (Sep 12,
'07)
Raja M
(Asians find
common ground in Buddha [Sep 12]) gives a good
summing-up of Vipassana Buddhism. He may also have
a point when he asserts that Buddhist teachings
can't be called a "philosophy" if [the latter] is
defined as an "intellectual debating game for
philosophers and bearded sages". That said, one
may, however, need to come up with a new word to
describe most Asian non-Abrahamic teaching
systems, which have the same characteristics of
being systems of practice and not dogma. This is
starting from the Indian "dharmic family"
(Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism) to
Taoism, Confucianism, etc. Also, he is being a bit
naive in his ridiculing of the traditional Hindu
observance of Buddha as the 10th avatara (Dashavatara) of
Sri Vishnu, the Preserver aspect of Indian
divinity. One could debate endlessly about
"God/not God" etc, but the fact remains that this
"cross-doctrinal" respect given to Buddha by
Hinduism underscores a key to the millennia of
social harmony in India, unbroken until the advent
of Abrahamic conquests in the form of Islamic and
Christian imperialism starting from the 12th
century CE onwards. Contrasts with the serious
blood-soaked rifts among societies with Abrahamic
thought systems (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) are
obvious.
Karigar
USA (Sep 12, '07)
Marwaan Macan-Markar writes in
a sour manner in Cambodian royal
shirks Khmer Rouge trials [Sep 12]. Does no
one remember when Norodom Sihanouk was dubbed a
"demigod" by French journalist Jean Lacouture?
Poor Norodom Sihanouk, prince and former king, has
had bad press for more than a half-century. Fate
has tried persistently to thwart his great deeds
and personal suffering for the good of his
country. Beloved beyond reason by the majority of
his own people, with the reverence due to Buddhist
traditions, he [has been] hotly pursued by his
detractors with great malevolence since the days
that, as Prince Sihanouk, he embraced the spirit
of Bandung and steered Cambodia on the road of
neutralism. [US] president Richard M Nixon
undertook to overthrow him through Lon Nol, and
this very act opened wide the gates of hell and
genocide by allowing the Khmer Rouge to seize
power in 1975. The United States chose to ignore
that Sihanouk was a nationalist who put his family
above the welfare of his country and his people.
He chose an alliance with Pol Pot and company to
save Cambodia, and his decision Washington
supported and funded with money and arms, his
forces and theirs, after the Vietnamese overthrew
the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Now [that] the United
Nations' Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of
Cambodia [is] charged with bringing to trial the
surviving Khmer Rouge leaders for past crimes, the
former king is demurring to appear. In this Prime
Minister Hun Sen agrees. Macan-Markar reports that
a relatively unknown NGO [non-governmental
organization] based in the United States is
spearheading the movement to have Sihanouk
testify, as though he needed to explain his past
actions to save his country from the machinations
of the Nixon administration. Macan-Markar does not
name this NGO, and it is only logical to ask who
are they, and why does he leave us to guess their
motives? If this NGO is truly interested in the
genocide that the Khmer Rouge waged in Cambodia,
it should begin with its own government, which set
the holocaust in motion in 1971.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Sep 12,
'07)
Syed
Saleem Shahzad: I was going through the article Pakistan's
military kitted for new power [Sep 11] and
found it close to reality. but later when you've
talked about the dialogue between [the Pakistan]
Army and the Taliban where they strengthen their
bond, I don't think it's happening at all. The
reason is that the [Benazir Bhutto government] (if
she comes in power) is the ace card of the Western
lobby (as you mentioned) and they would never want
relationships to build between the Pak-Afghan
border civilization and the Pak army. I'm saying
this because of the long-term ([as] now seems
happening) goal of the Western lobby to create a
tension and distrust between them so that Pakistan
doesn't become stable and hence India gains power
so as to become the American proxy for China.
Moreover, America cannot attack Pakistan like that
because [it has] already messed up in Afghanistan
and especially Iraq - for that reason America is
begging NATO forces to join. Here it goes without
saying that Pakistan is an atomic power, and if
America takes a step towards [it], then India is
already on target of Pakistani atomic missiles.
M
Abdullah Tariq (Sep 12, '07)
Syed Saleem Shahzad: Your
article [Pakistan kitted
for new power] of September 11 is very
thoughtful and well written. I am curious, how do
you get the inside information, or is it based on
the most likely/plausible scenarios based on
current events?
Rehan Saeed
Los Angeles, California (Sep 12,
'07)
I speak
to concerned sources, intellectuals and the
politicians, then make my own opinion on any
possible scenario and reflect it in the story. -
Syed Saleem
Shahzad
The man with the
dyed beard returns [Sep 11] by Ramzy Baroud
alludes to the group that translated the recent
[Osama] bin Laden video, but no more. A little
time spent searching for details about SITE
[Search for International Terrorist Entities]
finds the following info about SITE and one of its
founders, Rita Katz. From Source
Watch: "The Terrorism Library, on cursory
investigation, looks to be a straight data scrape
from the US Department of State's Patterns of
Global Terrorism - 2003, Appendix B. The list of
publications often provides a very short synopsis
of a news item, with a reference given for a
translation from their premium service; [at] other
times they offer full mirrors of news items,
poorly marked up. Rita Katz is director and
co-founder of the SITE Institute. Born in Iraq,
her father was tried and executed as an Israeli
spy, whereupon her family moved to Israel [the
move has been described as both an escape and an
emigration in different sources]. She received a
degree from the Middle Eastern studies program at
Tel Aviv University, and is fluent in Hebrew and
Arabic. She emigrated to the US in 1997. Katz was
called as a witness in the trial, but the
government didn't claim she was a terrorism
expert. During the trial it was discovered that
Katz herself had worked in violation of her visa
agreement when she first arrived in [the United
States of] America in 1997. She also admitted to
receiving more than [US]$130,000 for her work as
an FBI [US Federal Bureau of Investigation]
consultant on the case." It was telling that CNN,
when airing the latest video from BL, never
mentioned once who performed the translation. An
article in
the New York Times credits SITE with the
translation. Guess they didn't want to get into
sticky details, like the one that the head of
SITE, Rita Katz's father, was executed for being
an Israeli spy. Or that Katz has been receiving
money from the FBI. But that wouldn't influence
anyone's impartiality, now would it? And that bin
Laden: the last time he appeared, the Republicans
were needing help in the 2004 presidential
elections. Now he appears just as the Republicans
are needing help continuing the war against Iraq
and selling the next war against Iran. Boy oh boy,
is that BL clever or what? He should go to work
for the CIA [US Central Intelligence Agency].
Greg
Bacon
Ava, Missouri
(Sep 12, '07)
Re Cartoons aid US
lynch mob mentality [Sep 11] by Kaveh L
Afrasiabi: Maybe we are all instances of our own
complaint. Mr Afrasiabi's article may make some
good one-sided points [about] a vicious
demonization of Iran, but when it comes to Nazi
cartoons, who can compete with Iran's hateful
[president], who literally hosted a contest for
drawing anti-Jewish cartoons based on a non-Jewish
cartoonist's work from Denmark depicting Mohammed?
Not even Afrasiabi could imagine George Bush
having a similar grotesque contest to disparage
blacks or Arabs. An equivalent cartoon contest
would indeed stimulate lynch-mob mentality and
make Bush look like a madman. However, that's a
conjecture, unlike the reality of the Iranian
[president's] cartoon hate contest. Understanding
is rare. It entails passion for one's side,
compassion for the other side and dispassion
overarching all. So-called spiritual political
leaders fail at this.
Stanley Arcieri (Sep 12,
'07)
I have
just discovered Henry C K Liu. Wow! I have
understood the inherent problems with the
so-called free market, but have had very little to
read that attacks these problems and
misconceptions as Mr Liu does. My question for Mr
Liu after starting to read his articles on the Organization of
Labor-intensive Exporting Countries [Feb-Mar
'06] is, has he ever read the papal encyclicals
from the 18th and 19th centuries on labor? Rerum Novarum (around
1880) and Quadregessimo
Anno (around 1930) anticipate his criticism of
the so-called free market and propose similar
solutions. I was very happy to see criticism of
neo-liberal free trade from a non-Catholic modern
source. Thanks to Mr Liu and to Asian Times
[Online] for these great works.
Robert
J Hanten (Sep 12, '07)
I have noticed that updates to
ATol's podcast have recently become very sporadic.
Indeed since June 10 (three months ago) we have
not had any updates. What is going on?
Sir
Rogers
USA (Sep 12,
'07)
The
problem was caused by a technical error in our
Hong Kong office, which is not always as on the
ball as the Thailand office where your humble
letters editor toils. The glitch has been fixed
and an up-to-date podcast should now be found at
the usual link.
- ATol
Re The man with the
dyed beard returns [Sep 11]: What Ramzy Baroud
does not say is that [Osama] bin Laden, if he is
alive, most probably was bypassed by the Bush
regime so that he could be used as an image, first
to rouse Americans to the war that neo-cons always
wanted to fight (for imperialistic reasons) and
secondly to support the periodical whip of fear
and terror used by Bush operatives. It has been an
indispensable tool for [US President George W]
Bush's re-election in 2004 and a continuation of
the quagmire in Iraq. The argument of Bush regime
incompetence is often used to dispel this charge,
but we all have witnessed successes where
important neo-con goals apply: the Iraq war, tax
cuts for the rich, election of a mediocre Texan
twice, and huge national deficits to finance the
war and fund fraud-ridden contracts for friends.
Failures basically relate to unimportant goals:
[Hurricane] Katrina victims, wounded veterans,
planning the Iraqi occupation, health care for the
poor, sharing prosperity with the poor, etc.
Jim
Southern California, USA
(Sep 11, '07)
Re The man with the
dyed beard returns by Ramzy Baroud: The new
video of Osama [bin Laden] - his first since
October 2004 - showed him to be in good shape and
healthy. He has put on some weight and dyed his
beard fully black. He looks more like a preacher
calling the non-believers, especially the
Americans, to embrace Islam and to redeem
themselves from the evil of materialism,
secularism, unbridled greedy colonialism and
imperialism of their governments, and also free
themselves from degradingly immoral ways of
Western life. Osama is not an accident of time: he
carries the torch of [Wahhabism] in which he was
educated and later used by the Americans so
blatantly to disintegrate the Soviet Union and
finally dumped as a rejected item when his use was
no longer needed. Osama turned into a monster for
the Americans when he realized too late that in
Afghanistan he was used an instrument that
facilitated a long conspiracy of the American
imperial design to re-colonize the Middle East and
the region for greed of oil and its natural
resources lying under the soil of Arabian deserts
and Central Asian Islamic nations. He needed a
climate and an environment that existed in
Palestine and then in Iraq and Afghanistan to
breed and give birth to a new group of followers
who believe that they can change the course of
history in their favor by taking violent action
against their oppressors the USA, Israel and
[their] cronies killing innocent Muslims in
hundreds and thousands. I believe that [US
President George W] Bush and [bin] Laden are like
cheese and cake - both need each other for their
respective agendas of avenging violence with
greater violence ... The crucial point to remember
is: bin Laden and his followers do not hate [the
United States of] America because it supports
Israel; they hate Israel because they see it as
the evil branch of America in the Middle East and
that the Arab-Israeli conflict is in fact an Arab
and not only a Palestinian conflict with the West
and in particular with American colonialism. It is
this "colonialism" which is giving birth to more
and more extremist al-Qaeda[-related] and other
hitherto unheard-of groups.
Saqib
Khan
UK (Sep 11,
'07)
Re The discreet
charm of US diplomacy [Sep 11]: Paraphrasing a
statement made in James A Baker's commentary [The case for
pragmatic idealism, Sep 6] - the US will
likely remain the predominant global power for
some time, but how we [Americans] wield that
unparalleled capability will determine exactly how
long we remain at the front of the international
pack - has been transmuted into a Spenglerian
notation of, broadly speaking, the choices being
forced on Iran, now that Sarkozy the First has
committed himself to the US's neo-con stand, are
two - one is benign and the other one is not. The
Spenglerian ¡ hallucinations of just two choices
can only hasten Mr Baker's warnings about the
likelihood of the US remaining the predominant
global power for a shorter period of time. But
then Spengler may have just written his
two-choices scenario to placate and encourage both
[neo-conservative writer Norman] Podhoretz to
further prayers in the Wall Street Journal, and
[French President Nicolas] Sarkozy to commit
either the French Army or the Foreign Legion to
replace the British vacating Basra.
Armand
De Laurell (Sep 11, '07)
James Chou wondered aloud in
his letter [Sep 10], "God knows what has motivated
Washington to push the envelope this time" when
"Washington openly and explicitly claimed that
neither 'Taiwan' nor the 'Republic of China' is a
recognized state in the international community".
I believe the answer can be found in Spengler's
article The discreet
charm of US diplomacy [Sep 11], in which he
correctly asserted, "The chances of avoiding war
with Iran are slim." Could it be possible that
these two events are connected? While French
President Nicolas Sarkozy may not be as
straightforward as meets the eye, a military
confrontation between the US and Iran has the
potential of completely altering the world
geopolitical landscape.
John Chen
USA (Sep 11, '07)
Re Know your
gold by The Mogambo Guru and [Uh, uhhm: Say no
more, Iraq is a slam dunk ] by Julian
Delasantellis [both Sep 11]: These two articles
are very critical of the knowledge of people in
general and certain groups in particular and
everyone else is critical of everyone else. It is
hard not to be in today's world. The promises of
science have been used and abused as well as
provided us with so-called "miracles". I have
enjoyed Mr Delasantellis' articles and some of
them have been very informative, but I do my own
investment research and I need access to as much
information as I can get. I believe he
has good information on financial matters
from the information sources he has. The Guru has
a good sense of humor and I'm sure he is very well
informed on the gold market. I have trouble
figuring out how gold fits into the currency
situation other than being more than a commodity
in the same way as petroleum. Today's world is
trying to be digital when the world is analogue as
are people's brain/minds. My point here is people
are being told if you can't do the math, you're
not allowed to do the science and if you don't do
the science, you're dumb! I have my own prejudices
and in an information society I find information
sources limiting my access to information.
William
O Bishop Sr
Eugene,
Oregon (Sep 11, '07)
Re North Korea:
Brainwashing in reverse [Sep 11]: Sunny Lee
has his ear to the ground in Beijing on what's
going on in North Korea. Pyongyang publicly
announced [that] a failed espionage plot by a
foreign agent traveling as a businessman [who]
tried to turn North Koreans into moles had failed
miserably. This, might one say, is a red-flag
event? North Korea's National Security Agency has
kept a tight lid on the whole matter. At its
public but restricted press conference, it gave
few details, yet enough to send a message to
intelligence agencies abroad that Pyongyang keeps
a sleepless eye on foreign machinations to glean
information on the DPRK's [Democratic People's
Republic of Korea's] "major military installations
and places of vital importance". North Korea,
generally speaking, is a foreign-intelligence
failure, even to its closest allies and friends.
Snippets of rumor or innuendo or seemingly hard
fact are culled and pasted together in a pattern
in order to see which way the wind is blowing in
Pyongyang. Nonetheless, the conclusion from this
exercise remains imprecise and tentative, although
at times it might be spot on. Sunny Lee reports
that the undisclosed country that tried to buy
information from North Koreans might be Japan, but
still one is not sure. Pyongyang prefers in tried
and true manner to issue a warning before taking
the issue to a high level. Surely, it is saying
that it would be preferable that countries
normalize relations with the DPRK for more
fruitful contacts, no matter how limited they
might be. Normalization will bring North Korea out
of the cold once and for all, thereby admitting it
into the comity of nations and allowing for
regular, ordinary exchanges to take place. Will
that, says a wag, deter a country [from] spying on
another? Hardly, but it will reduce major
embarrassment among peers, even among longtime
allies, say, the United States and the United
Kingdom.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Sep 11, '07)
Regarding Bush's silence
relieves Taiwan (Sep 8), the correct angle of
perspective on the intended referendum is why
Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian chooses to
promote it at this time, and not during his past
several years in office. He is implicated in
corruption, along with his wife and son-in-law.
His wife has refused to appear in court for
several months under the pretext of ill health and
he is shielded temporarily as a sitting president.
Once his term is over, there are only two possible
scenarios. Either he flees to somewhere with his
money, or he hides behind the banner of having
been a true promoter of Taiwan independence. This
move may also galvanize voters to support his
party [in the next] presidential election. If
[they do], the successful candidate may not want
to prosecute him. In fact he is playing the
ultimate game to arouse tension across the Taiwan
Strait by drawing in the unwilling [US President
George W] Bush and [Chinese President] Hu Jintao
in a move to save his own ass.
Seung
Li (Sep 11, '07)
Praful Bidwai [US exercising
India's military muscles, Sep 8] is well known
as a leftist journalist and therefore his views
cannot be surprising. In India leftist
politicians, journalists and other sympathizers
have made it their lifetime mission [to be]
anti-USA whether the national interest is served
or not. The leftists are so loyal to China and the
USSR that sometimes they seem to be going
overboard in disregarding India's interest and
actually promote China's interest. Where they came
into power in states like West Bengal and Kerala
[they] have managed to ruin the economy and
terrorize people in voting. And they have
perfected the art of land grabbing by terrorizing
farmers in spite of working for peasants. He
[Bidwai] definitely belongs to that class of "red
ivory tower" guys who, even if China has accepted
failure of communism and very hugely adopted
capitalism, like an ostrich, keep their head
buried in sand and advocate socialistic policies
which, instead of improving the lot of poor
people, makes them poorer and more sadly dependent
on authoritarian forces of the communist [parties]
in India. Foreign policy is another [area] where
they keep on dishing [out] advice by sheer force
of habit. Fortunately India is now able to see its
self-interest and see through the hypocrites and
clever manipulators of state policy.
Dinesh
(Sep 10, '07)
The article US exercising
India's military muscles [Sep 8] by Praful
Bidwai brings to mind a quote by president George
Washington, the father of the US, "To ensure
peace, a nation should prepare for war." This
massive naval exercise fits the above quote. The
protestations of the communist left in India that
this could cause a destabilizing effect in the
region is pure humbug. Long before India started
its military buildup, China [was] building its
military might even when there were no credible
threats from its immediate neighbors. Way back in
the 1950s, China developed the nuclear bomb and
tested it, then it developed the hydrogen bomb and
tested that too. It has been aggressive in using
its military might to annex Tibet, to aim missiles
at the US and India, has helped Pakistan become a
nuclear-armed state and has constantly threatened
Taiwan's sovereignty. What has the communist left
got to say about these actions by China? In
regards to Pakistan, it too has been aggressive in
building and spreading its nuclear technology to
other nations, many of which are rogue nations
like Iran. It has initiated war with India three
times ... Now that Asia's second-most-populous
nation has decided it is time that it becomes a
regional power, the communist left within is
screaming hysterically that this is the wrong
move, but they don't have a credible alternative
...
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 10,
'07)
Re Bush's silence
relieves Taiwan [Sep 8]: The DPP's [Democratic
Progressive Party's] proposed referendum [on
whether to mount a campaign] to join the UN under
the name "Taiwan" might have been "perplexing" to
the American geopolitical strategic planners in
Washington, as with the expected [bullying] from
China, as it holds veto power in the Security
Council of the UN to block any move made by
Taiwan. Yet the clarity of the messages and
criticisms conveyed by Washington in the past
weeks to the 23 million Taiwanese [will] have
profound significance in Taiwan politics. It seems
to be a perfect political watershed to the like of
Taiwan independence supporters when Washington
openly and explicitly claimed that neither
"Taiwan" nor the "Republic of China" [ROC] is a
recognized state in the international community.
God knows what has motivated Washington to push
the envelope this time, as the statement alone
[will] certainly boost the campaign in the
upcoming legislative and presidential elections in
Taiwan in favor of the DPP. The US move clarifies
that the "Republic of China" is nothing but an
illusion painted by the KMT [Kuomintang when it]
lost its legitimacy a long time ago. And it
further convinces the Taiwanese that statehood
must be fought [for] and earned, such as the
proposed referendum to join the UN under the name
of Taiwan, peacefully and democratically
regardless of any objection or military threat
from the PRC [People's Republic of China] ...
George W Bush's mistake is to target his
displeasure against President Chen personally, yet
[he] has not been able to convince the Taiwanese
people. Democracy is indeed a double-edged sword.
Bush's silence at the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation summit] comes [as] no surprise to me.
It is a calculated, smart move of not pouring fuel
on the fire. By the way, an error needs to be
corrected. The KMT's version of the UN referendum
must be read carefully in two parts; first it
asks, "Should we return to the UN under the name
ROC?"; second, it asks, "Should Taiwan join all
other international organizations using pragmatic
and flexible strategies?"
James
Chou
Vancouver, British
Columbia (Sep 10, '07)
Andrei Lankov sets up his pins
neatly so that he can easily bowl them over in If the North had
won the Korean War [Sep 8]. His intention is
as dry as cold embers. Central to the theme of his
musings is an unimaginative reiteration of
countless articles of his which have appeared in
ATol, the central argument of which is that the
Kims of North Korea are bad, bad, bad. It does not
take a trained historian, judging by what we know
of Pyongyang today, to write a scenario of what
today's Korea would look like [had] Kim Il-sung's
army won the war in Korea. Lankov's screenplay has
the odor of an Aldous Huxley or George Orwell
novel. His Korea is a bleak landscape without hope
under the heel of a Stalinesque dictator. Lankov
may get an adrenaline kick out of his
ideologically directed picture, but one wonders
what is the thrill of it all ...? Let's humor him,
and do suppose that Kim Il-sung had during the
Korean War reunited an arbitrarily divided Korean
Peninsula in 1945. The mineral-rich north would
have gained the fertile fields of the agricultural
south, which would feed the country as a whole.
Second, the strength of Korea's Communist party
lay in the south, and although Kim Il-sung was a
hero for his armed struggle against the Japanese,
he was a very able organizer, and thus probably
would have gained control of the party. Saying
this, he would have to come to some agreement with
his southern compatriots. Moreover, a united Korea
had the potential for a different kind of economic
development than the one that we see in the North
today, and let us not forget that until the 1970s,
Pyongyang had higher [economic] growth than Seoul.
It is easy to envisage that the Soviet Union and
China would vie for Mr Kim's favor so that the
monetary, trade, and technical assistance would
also have hastened a reunified Korea's development
and prosperity. Suppositions can go on and on, yet
this scenario is at odds with Lankov's inferno of
one Korea under Kim Il-sung. Even though truth
hardly matters in what-ifs, the semiotics of the
exercise allows for any number of permutations and
designs, since we hover in the realm of
metaphysics and not history.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Sep 10,
'07)
Reading Henry C K Liu's
two-part analysis of the financial market [Credit
Bust Bypasses Banks: Part 1: The rise of the
non-bank financial system, Sep 6, and Part 2:
Bank
deregulation fuels abuse, Sep 7] brought to
mind an admonishment one of my high-school
teachers used to give the class, "You can fool
yourself and you can fool others, but you can
never fool the truth." During the past few years,
newfangled and convoluted financial schemes were
created, pandering to the insatiable lust for
money while profligate irresponsibility pervaded
the financial system. Now the house of cards is
crashing down, mercilessly taking with it the
hard-earned income of the gullible public. Makes
one wonder if the other major events that
transpired over the same time period followed a
similar pattern of development.
John
Chen
USA (Sep 10,
'07)
I read
with some bemusement letters to your site
complaining that a writer used the name Myanmar
instead of Burma in reference to that country just
west of Siam/Thailand [Lodestar of
liberty, Sep 1]. It was as if there was
nothing more important to consider in the review
[of the book Perfect
Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi] or that
his views were somehow undermined by this choice
(later clarified as an editorial choice). One
wonders why activists and others, who [are]
apparently deeply concerned with the welfare of
those living in that territory, should be so
fixated with this issue. To refer to the country
as Myanmar calls forth such vigorous criticism
from, by all accounts, intelligent and good people
that one really is left pondering what is the real
source of this reaction. I have my own theories
but suffice to say, I cannot imagine how anyone in
Burma/Myanmar will benefit from this so-called
debate.
Sharaad Kuttan
Bangkok, Thailand (Sep 10,
'07)
Names
are important, whether they are personal names or
names of a homeland or of any other beloved
geographic entity, and some people get passionate
about them in ways that can be bewildering. We see
this phenomenon outside Burma/Myanmar as well -
Arabian vs Persian Gulf, Sea of Japan vs East Sea,
Farsi vs Persian, America vs United States. Asia
Times Online tries, not always successfully, to
stay out of such arguments. - ATol
Re Trinkets and
treasure: China tames the US (Aug 31): Julian
DelasaNtellis' article gives the impression that
China is having the upper hand in its trade with
the US and that China is conquering US with its
massive cargo ships. He likens the relationship
between China and US to that of 19th-century
England and China. I find the analogy misplaced.
It is the modern-day US rather than China that is
playing the role of 19th-century England. One and
a half centuries ago, England got China addicted
to opium, which the Chinese [had] to pay for in
real gold and silver. That eventually sucked the
Manchu government dry and led to the [bankruptcy]
and collapse of the imperial throne. Today, China
is addicted to US dollars and has to pay for them
in real goods and services. The US is not paying
for the shiploads of goods in real gold or silver
or other tangible commodities. It is paying for
the goods with fiat money which it can print at
will, a point that has been repeatedly stressed by
Henry C K
Liu. China may be the banker, but the US is
the mint. If anything, it is the US that is
laughing all the way to the bank. So who is the
bigger fool?
S K Wong
Singapore (Sep 10, '07)
[Hong-Lok] Li seems to think
that the US is correct to deal in every situation
around the world with superior weapons [letter,
Sep 7]. What the US is doing is imperialism at its
core, with at least 180 bases around the world and
increasing. What is the reason for its presence in
Iraq except for oil, as the three top oil
producers in the Middle East are Saudi Arabia,
Iran, and Iraq? If needed, the US will also occupy
Saudi Arabia and proclaim to the world that it is
liberating the Saudis from the sheikhs. The US
will never have to conquer Alberta, Canada, until
all the oilfields around the world are depleted.
Plus, Alberta has oil sands, not oilfields, and it
is more difficult to extract oil from such places.
People do not become terrorists overnight. These
people are desperate because they are occupied and
they cannot fight conventional war with the
occupiers. Besides, the [Americans are] looking
for their long-term interest by staying there.
They will have all the oil from Iraq for
themselves only. It is called monopoly.
Wendy
Cai (Sep 10, '07)
In fact, Alberta has plenty of
conventional oil and gas fields as well as the
Athabasca Oil Sands, though the latter indeed hold
vast reserves and will likely become targets for
more aggressive acquisition as conventional
supplies become scarcer. - ATol
The Koran is the basic source
of Islamic law and as it is not a written book but
a Revealed Book, it can only be properly
understood if one is familiar with the historical
context of each revelation and with [the] coherent
inner thread of the text and not by indulging [in]
wild guesses as done by non-Muslim perfidious
writers on ATol. It is in this broader context
that the widely used phenomenon "jihad", or
so-called holy war, is understood by non-Muslims
and even by secular Pakistanis like [Asia Times
Online Pakistan Bureau Chief Syed] Saleem Shahzad.
If Shahzad were an adherent of Islam, he would
shun using the word "jihadis" as cheaply and
conveniently to describe [those] who are fighting
a war of liberation to free their homelands from
the modern-day Western secular oil looters, gold
thieves, murderers, colonialists and imperialists
[who are occupying] Iraq and Afghanistan, and of
Kashmir by Hindustan. As the word jihad means physical,
moral, spiritual and intellectual effort, it is
not used anywhere in the Koran to mean, as
Westerners are mendaciously used to [calling it],
"holy war". There are words in Arabic meaning
"armed struggle", like qital (killing), harb (war) sira'a (combat) or ma'araka (battle), which
could have been used by the Koran, but [instead]
it uses the broader word jihad, meaning "struggle"
on all fronts, moral, spiritual, political,
physical and intellectual. It involves sincere and
ceaseless efforts with total devotion and
determination for the good cause of faith through
righteous means leading to true love of Allah
(God) and Mohammed (SAW). It could be through a
Sufi's teachings or a theologian's or a scholar's
pen, a wealthy man's charity, a preacher's sermon,
or an ordinary man's determination for the
safeguarding the faith and upholding decent human
values. Prophet Mohammed said: "A mujahid [one who is
engaged in jihad] is one who struggles with his
own self in submission to the will of God," and "A
mujahid is one who
exerts himself for the cause of God" (Musnad
Ahamed 6:22).
Saqib Khan
UK (Sep 10, '07)
In the article The Pakistani
road to German terror [Sep 7] by Syed Saleem
Shahzad, one statement stands out regarding this
latest Islamic terror attack on US interests
abroad and possibly in the US in the near future,
and that is, "Out of this wreckage, the belief
went, an Islamic caliphate would be revived in
Pakistan and Afghanistan and Muslim armies would
eventually march to liberate Palestine." One must
remember that Islamic terrorists did not begin
with [September 11, 2001] or the Beirut bombings
of US marines but much earlier. When senator Bobby
Kennedy ran for [the US] presidency in 1968, one
of his platforms was the support of Israel over
Palestine. He paid for that with his life by an
Islamic terrorist named Sirhan Sirhan. This may
have been the beginning of Islamic terrorism
within the US, where a major politician was
assassinated by an Islamic terrorist. We should
remember this because the sensational havoc caused
by September 11 and earlier attacks within the
years before [was foreshadowed by] the
assassination of senator Bobby Kennedy by an
Islamic terrorist way back in 1968, which is close
to 40 years ago. The US has been a target for many
decades by radical Muslims, and not just in the
last couple of decades. Keeping this in mind, the
worldwide spread of Islamic terrorism and the
response of the US and its coalitions will not end
in the near future. We will have to go through a
darker, more sinister period before we know who
really has the upper hand in this continuous but
just course against global Islamic terrorism.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 7,
'07)
Re The Pakistani
road to German terror [Sep 7]: Syed Saleem
Shahzad has written interestingly about the
Pakistani connection to [the] arrest of three
al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Germany. These
arrests now give German authorities much wool to
thread, because they establish a Turkish link to
al-Qaeda training camps in North Waziristan. And
need it be again told that Germany has a large
Turkish immigrant population who have more or less
not been assimilated into German society and whose
status has remained as "guest workers"? Still, two
of the three men arrested are Germans who recently
embraced Islam in an extreme form. Their
conversion suggests among German youth a tendency
of deep crisis. Forty years ago, such young men
may very well have become members of the
Baader-Meinhof gang. These converts are receptive
to wild plans that al-Qaeda spins to entice the
disaffected who find refuge in conversion or who
are unhinged enough to willingly commit terrorist
acts of carnage and mass murder for some
pie-in-the-sky rewards. The training they received
in Pakistan along with the third man - an ethnic
Turk who is living in Germany - equipped them to
take the simplest of everyday ingredients and turn
them into powerful explosives. The targets, it
seems, were the very busy and largest continental
European airport at Frankfurt am Main, and the
largest US-NATO [North Atlantic Treaty
Organization] base at Ramstein, Germany. Yet for
all the secrecy and planning of the terror that
they were going to spread in Germany, they were
easily tracked by Germany's intelligence services.
It is an indication of the parochial self-interest
that al-Qaeda uses to send the "true believers" on
terrorist missions. It is also an indication [of]
the weakness within what Shahzad describes as a
reinvigorated al-Qaeda network. (Although there is
not an al-Qaeda link to the arrest of Islamist
extremists in Copenhagen a few days before, the
Danish internal security forces show that in
Europe at least, no one is slacking off on the
job.) No matter how Byzantine the route, all roads
lead to Pakistan. As long as Islamabad takes no
steps to clamp down on al-Qaeda and other Islamic
terrorists on its territory, such plots uncovered
in Germany and Denmark will continue.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Sep 7,
'07)
Re
Brian Downing's analysis of the American
"alliance" with the tribes of Anbar [Something to
report on Iraq, Sep 7], perhaps the
"undeveloped oil resources in Anbar" make the
"strategically worthless" Sunni territory a prize
to those hungry for oil (and intentionally blind
to their own greed as well as to the cost of its
satisfaction). Is not the undeveloped oil in the
West Qurna field the prize for which the
aggression was undertaken?
David
George
Glacier,
Washington (Sep 7, '07)
Another excellent article (Jihadis strike
back at Pakistan [Sep 6] by Syed Saleem
Shahzad). There is one interpretation of the
events of this week that has escaped many.
Complicity of some Taliban/al-Qaeda sympathizers
within the military establishment and ISI
[Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence] has been
suspected for many terrorist attempts, including
the ones on General [Pervez] Musharraf himself and
the twin suicide bombings this week in Rawalpindi.
The fact that 410 soldiers and officers including
one colonel surrendered to 20 militants without
firing a shot and allowed themselves to be
"abducted" is the most serious and watershed
development. It is not that the 20 militants were
like the famed Mongol soldiers of Genghis Khan,
overpowering a larger enemy force with ease. Was
it an abject surrender, an inability to even offer
nominal resistance by "highly trained and
professional" Pakistan Army personnel, or was it
an eager embrace to the militants and a willful
act to be captured? This in fact is a clear
declaration by the grassroots Pakistan Army that
it is sympathetic to the Taliban/al-Qaeda nexus
and that it does not conform to what a
professional army is normally expected to do -
follow the orders from the command above. This is
the beginning of the end of the last remaining
intact institution in Pakistan - The Pakistan
Army. Idealization of the army started by General
Zia [ul-Haq] is coming to fruition at last.
D
Bhardwaj
Chicago,
Illinois (Sep 7, '07)
I am totally confused by Tom
Engelhardt's long article Seven years in
hell (Sep 6). Under the Bush administration in
the last seven years, did [the United States of]
America have a Watergate scandal to force a
president to resign? Did America have to face
something like the hostage crisis in Iran in 1979
[when] Americans completely lost confidence in
their president and put their faith in the next
president, Ronald Reagan, for re-creating the
American dream? ... Again, in the last seven
years, did America go for a half-measure war like
first Gulf War without victory? Did America have
the Clinton-Lewinsky saga, which was caused by a
president's [immoral] behavior, which riveted the
attention of the whole world? In 1993, after
terrorists attacked US troops in Mogadishu,
Somalia, anti-Iraq war Democratic [Congressman]
John Murtha urged then-president [Bill] Clinton to
pull out US troops from the region. Clinton
followed his advice, [and] what was the
consequence? Osama bin Laden then later credited
[this] with emboldening his terrorist fighters and
encouraging him to mount further attacks against
the US. Is the last seven years a hell? Let the
truth speak for itself - there has not been a
single terrorist attack in the US homeland since
[September 11, 2001]. Today, some people still
believe that the intention for America to stay in
Iraq is purely for oil. If that is the case, I
guess America does not need to send 170,000
soldiers to a country [thousands of] miles away;
instead, 3,000 soldiers are more than sufficient
to conquer the Alberta oilfields in Canada.
Looking at the US war bill in Iraq, it costs
almost $100 billion a year. If that is a business,
who wants to run such a business? It is worth
[pointing] out that not only is the US affected,
but the whole Western world will also suffer if
the oil in the Middle East is controlled by
terrorists. As for the Vietnam War, undoubtedly
America was totally defeated in a humiliating way.
In fact, it was not only a triumph for communist
Vietnam but also the anti-war left, which had long
proclaimed the war to be an unwinnable quagmire.
Apparently, it is the easiest way to surrender,
yet the most shameful and irresponsible. Instead
of empty words which would do no good to real
peace, civilization has been guarded by superior
weapons and discipline. There are no doubt some
politicians elsewhere who hope to win popularity
both by carping and sneering at the US.
Nevertheless, it is the best interest for the US
to act when action would be simple and
effective.
Hong-Lok Li (Sep 7,
'07)
This
is in reference to the article India's Muslim
'problem' [Sep 1] by Chan Akya. Although I
fully endorse that all-around economic upliftment
should include all segments of Indian society
including Muslims, I disagree with the remedy for
India's Islamic terrorism offered by the author.
India has been poor for many centuries and not
just now. Its 200 [million] or in my opinion 400
million poor do include majority of non-Muslims
too. So why do they not go out and blow away
people? If you look at the [alleged] Glasgow
bomber from India and other Indian Muslim
terrorists, then like anywhere else, they are all
from well to-do backgrounds and well educated,
which [according] to some other oxymoron would
mean that educating certain communities produces
terrorists. It's not the truth. Sikhs were the
most prosperous when some of them took to
terrorism. In my opinion, terrorism is an
"ideology", having its own authors and leaders
just like Mein Kampf,
and then it can inflict anyone and have many
recruits, rich and poor, educated and illiterate.
Mix it with religion and politics, and you have
the headiest cocktail. The remedy therefore lies
in breaking the ideology and de-conditioning the
milieu that nurtures and sustains it. The milieu
lies in politics, the educational system and above
all the so-called vanguards of faith - the clergy.
This universal fact applies anywhere, not only in
India.
Davender Bhardwaj (Sep 7,
'07)
"And
it appears that Pakistanis, other than a small and
weak minority, are solidly united behind al-Qaeda
and the Taliban's mission to destroy the United
States and other free societies" are extremely
uncalled-for comments by John Smith in his
September 6 letter. He and his like are fond of
reading through the lips of [US President George
W] Bush and the plundering neo-cons of this world.
They are deaf, dumb, [and] blind to ground truths
and feign being oblivious of realities of history.
A true middle-class Pakistani [like] me would
better inform John Smith that it is not at all
about al-Qaeda [or the] Taliban that Pakistanis
care about. It is the ruthless atrocities
unleashed on civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Palestine, [and] Kashmir by Bush, NATO [the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and the] UK that boil
their blood chemistry in sympathy and hatred for
perpetrators of genocide. Does not [Westerners']
blood boil against Bush, when their soldiers are
killed for no cause but lies of Bush [and former
British prime minister Tony] Blair? The West must
appreciate that an anti-occupation freedom
struggle is being fought in these counties and
they have to correct their misplaced perception to
see the true perspective to find the right
solutions. My request to John Smith and his like
is not to invent self-serving, frivolous analogies
of "nukes going into militant hands". Big
nonsense. These were already with North Korea,
[which] you equated [to the] biggest threat. Did
anything happen? Do not lie as Bush, who wants to
hold the twilight of his power still by
ignominious, scaring lies, since not God but the
devil speaks to him.
Wariss Shaw
Samundri, Pakistan (Sep 7,
'07)
The
political consensus in Thailand is that Thailand
does not need the EU to supervise and legitimize
its democracy because it is not a failed state and
because it is more evolved politically than
backward countries like Cambodia and Bangladesh
that do accept EU election observers. This
argument contains a flaw. The leverage that the EU
enjoys over Cambodia and Bangladesh derives not
from the political immaturity of these nations nor
from their need for European expertise to govern
their own countries but from their poverty. Both
of these countries are dependent on foreign aid,
and this dependency plays into the hands of the
Paris Club and other donor oligopolies. These
donors enjoy a sense of omnipotence in the
relationship because they are able to set
preconditions to further aid disbursements. The
so-called "conditionality" of foreign aid gives
the donors a great deal of leverage over poor
countries and the opportunity to use this leverage
to push a European agenda upon them. It was
possibly in that momentum that the EU mistakenly
doled out the same kind of treatment to Thailand,
possibly having forgotten that Thailand is not one
of their clients.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Sep 7, '07)
Syed Saleem Shahzad: Thanks
for the interesting report (Jihadis strike
back at Pakistan [Sep 6]) and for your other
insightful articles over the past several years.
The US clearly can't leave Pakistan or Afghanistan
alone (that's what led to the September 11 [2001]
attacks), and it appears that Pakistanis, other
than a small and weak minority, are solidly united
behind al-Qaeda and the Taliban's mission to
destroy the United States and other free
societies. Pakistan has already demonstrated its
inclination to share nuclear weapons with hostile
entities (eg, through the A Q Khan network).
Indeed, it has been widely reported that Pakistan
came close to providing nuclear weapons to the
Taliban (there had been a plan pre-September 11 to
give the Taliban custody of Pakistan's nuclear
weapons to safeguard them against an Indian first
strike). Is there no substantial constituency in
Pakistan for non-support of terrorism? If not,
would it make sense for the United States to team
up with India and others to neutralize Pakistan as
a threat? It seems that the United States and
other free societies are now in desperate straits
and need to make one last effort to snuff out the
terrorist threat by going to the source (ie,
Pakistan and possibly Saudi Arabia) with whatever
force is required - if that takes nuclear weapons,
so be it. From what I can see based on your
reporting, there appears to be no workable
alternative given the failure of targeted military
and law-enforcement measures coupled with "hearts
and minds" campaigns, and the longer the United
States and its allies wait, the less likely they
are to succeed in saving the world from the
scourge of terrorism (ie, if they don't act soon,
Pakistan's nuclear weapons will have been turned
over to al-Qaeda and deployed, if not detonated,
throughout the United States and Europe). Thanks
again for the interesting reporting.
John
Smith (Sep 6, '07)
The article Jihadis strike
back at Pakistan [Sep 6] points to the fact
that President [General Pervez] Musharraf not only
cannot count on any kind of popular support from
Pakistanis, he cannot count on his own military
and the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]; [as]
past articles have pointed [out,] both agencies
are riddled with jihadi sympathizers or, even
worse. jihadis themselves. The very act of over
400 Pakistani soldiers being captured by the
jihadis makes one think that there might be an
"inside" job by the military that is sympathetic
to the ouster of President Musharraf. Already
large sections of Pakistan (mainly North-West
Frontier Province but also among the Pakistani
citizenry and the theocratic parties) are already
Talibanized. President Musharraf is in a no-win
situation, and if he wants his life to be saved he
should concentrate on an exit strategy. No matter
what the US dictates, whether it be war or peace
with the jihadis, Pakistan along with Afghanistan
will be a lost cause for the US strategists,
especially with President [George W] Bush
vacillating on the Iraq war, the Iranian crisis
and domestic issues. These jihadis are not stupid
and they can see the weakness of the US in its
leader and the constant bickering in Congress, and
they will play their hand when the time is right.
First Pakistan then the US and our coalition.
Already the years spent on the war in Iraq have
surpassed the time the US spent in World War II
and there is no end in sight.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana (Sep 6,
'07)
Re Jihadis strike
back at Pakistan [Sep 6]: Although Washington
may have nudged Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf to kiss and make up with former prime
minister Benazir Bhutto, Syed Saleem Shahzad,
ATol's man in Pakistan, ignores an important
aspect to this coming together of military and
secular forces, one which would be true to
Muhammad [Ali] Jinnah's idea of what kind of state
would be modern Pakistan. It is noteworthy that
these very forces acknowledge the logic and
importance of closing ranks and uniting in
purpose, in order to the counter the threat to
state power by the jihadis ... The Red Mosque
precipitated a crisis within Pakistan as an
alternative center of government based on the
strictest precepts of Islam. As a result, the
crushing of this mini-putsch set into motion
attacks against the army and civilian population
with one goal in mind: to spread terror. The
jihadis have a base in the two Waziristans; they
are heavily armed; and they hold as hostage army
officers and men. It is quixotic of Shahzad to
think that a compromise can be worked out between
Musharraf and Co and the jihadis, for the jihadis
have cleared the battlefield for civil war, and
have thrown down the gauntlet to Islamabad.
Shahzad passes under silence the agreement worked
out between Musharraf and the militant pro-jihadi
tribes in the Waziristans. This endowed those
tribes with the cachet of the state backing tribal
dissidence and a basis for fighting central power.
Shahzad may think that Islamabad is but an excuse
for Washington's war against terrorism. He is
wrong. The Pakistani state has the express
obligation to safeguard its own existence against
any internal threat. And such is what is at stake
in the shifting ground in Pakistan today.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Sep 6,
'07)
Syed
Saleem Shahzad: I'm impressed by the article [Jihadis strike
back at Pakistan, Sep 6]. It should have been
obvious that either RAW [Indian Research and
Analysis Wing] or Indian-supported extremists
should have been blamed by the media and the
government for the Rawalpindi blasts. It's
surprising that the authorities have not trodden
the beaten path. Could you offer some explanation?
T N
Vikram
Research
Fellow, University of Mysore
Karnataka, India (Sep 6,
'07)
The
good thing about the Pakistani government and the
media is that they are not India-obsessed in all
negative things and do speak the reality, unlike
the Indian establishment and media, which always
see the hand of the Pakistani Inter-Services
Intelligence in everything. - Syed Saleem Shahzad
Syed Saleem Shahzad: I am
writing a piece on the issue of the translation of
religious terminology in news reports. In your
article Jihadis strike
back at Pakistan [Sep 6] you quote an e-mail
message from militants: "Dusk on July 10 witnessed
the fall of a gallant warrior. Perhaps the bravest
this land has seen. His revolutionary pride
refused to bow down before a system which is based
on tyranny and oppression. He might be dead, but
he lives through the cause his blood sanctified.
To our nation, which has been enslaved for the
past 300 years, he gave the will to resist the
ruling class and the imperial powers with the
slogan Shariat ya
shahadat. [We are back with a bang.]" Can you
tell me whether "We are back with a bang" was
indeed part of the e-mail, and if so, what you
imagine the militants mean by presenting it as a
translation of Shariat ya
shahadat, which seems to speak of Islamic law
and the testimony of faith? How would you
translate the phrase?
Charles Cameron (Sep 6,
'07)
"We are
back with a bang" was part of their e-mail.
Shariat ya shahadat is
a slogan on which they concluded their message. It
means that they are ready to sacrifice their lives
for the enforcement of Islamic laws and ready to
embrace martyrdom in this cause. Shariat means "Islamic laws" and
shahadat means
"martyrdom". - Syed Saleem
Shahzad
The sentence "We are back with
a bang" probably should not have been in square
brackets, as it was apparently part of the
quoted e-mail and not an insert or translation.
The article has been clarified and re-uploaded. -
ATol
The politically motivated,
totally senseless confrontation between those
fighting to defeat occupation in Afghanistan and
[the] establishment of host country Pakistan is
beyond comprehension of anyone with an iota of
sense, a love for Pakistan and every sympathy for
the success of resistance in Afghanistan. There
are credible reports of prospective large-scale
American air strikes on resistance bases inside
Pakistan in the foreseeable future. Jihadis by
entangling themselves with Pakistan security
forces may soon find themselves stuck between a
rock and a hard place. Few survive by detonating a
bomb inside their own sanctuary. Iraqi resistance
is entirely Iraq-based, and I can't see why that
cannot be a good precedent for the Afghan
resistance to follow. Going exclusively indigenous
would be a much better choice than messing around
with the forces of [a] host country that may or
may not have its own problems and limitations. It
may well be that going totally indigenous is
entirely possible and a viable option and has been
ruled out for now for domestic Pakistani political
reasons [rather] than out of any necessity or real
benefit to Afghan resistance as such. Our Afghan
brethren and their genuine sympathizers
inside Pakistan need to get their act right and
focus their resources and energies in winning the
war in Afghanistan sooner [rather] than later
before [a] coalition of a determined enemy and
dismayed host has [the] remotest possibility of
having a degenerative impact on the resolve and
morale of resistance against the real enemy.
Rashid
Hassan(Sep 6, '07)
Re The case for
pragmatic idealism [Sep 6] by James A Baker:
If given the benefit of the doubt and read with an
unpragmatically open and forgiving mind, former
secretary of state James Baker's opinion piece
appears to be a prescription for improved
relations between the US and the international
community and between the US government and its
people. However, if it is read from a pragmatic
perspective - and it should be read from such a
perspective, because it does not include a
substantive mea culpa
as to why the US is facing difficulties
promoting its policies around the world - one is
left with the feeling that the same old sophistry,
lies and disinformation will be used to give the
appearance that human liberty and free markets are
being promoted when the reality is that US
interests are being rapaciously and unjustly
expanded at [others'] expense. In many of the
conflicts in which the US finds itself, an honest
man listening to US officials hears over and over
again a message that sounds very much like, "This
animal is very wicked: when it is attacked it
defends itself" (Theodore P K, La Menagerie). Everyone,
even a dim-witted, illiterate peasant, can
recognize the absurdity of the foregoing quote. It
maybe takes a little more effort to recognize the
absurdity in US misrepresentations of armed
conflicts or economic conflicts (past, present or
emerging) in Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Palestine, North
Korea, Libya, Russia, France, Japan, and China,
but it does not make the misrepresentations less
absurd than the foregoing thoroughly absurd quote.
The eagerness to make misrepresentations as absurd
as the foregoing quote partly arises from an
unwillingness to see things from another's
perspective. The unwillingness to see things from
another's perspective is the Achilles' heel of
government analysts and State Department marketers
on whom the US relies to make sure that Baker's
second maxim - that the US not be the world's
policeman - is not violated. These marketers and
analysts never seem to tire of finding yet another
place for the US to "defend" in a highly
counterproductive manner. Baker's second maxim is
just another way of stating Ferdinand Foch's
(Marshal of France) maxim on defense: "Those who
defend everything, defend nothing" (Principles of War). When
the US falls - and it will fall in my lifetime -
it will be because the Foch-Baker maxim on defense
was violated too often.
Abacus
USA (Sep 6, '07)
Re Seven years in
hell (Sep 6): Tom Engelhardt's analysis is
impressive and I believe accurately evaluates the
sorry situation in Iraq and American leadership.
Most of what the public sees reported on the
subject is superficial and/or agenda-based. Many
of the featured news stories are still formulated,
or at least framed by administration media types.
I have seen journalists declare the surge a
success because body-counts are down or because
the number of businesses operating in a market
surpass the goals set by the government, however
brief the operating hours or however much
manipulated. Too few sources that command public
attention - that would be network TV - provide any
real analysis. Rather it's spectacle, photo ops
(meaningless [President George W] Bush photo op in
a safe Iraqi location), and trivia. This is
supposed to be a real representation of the hell
in Iraq. The whole media apparatus is still
treading water and the public is not struck with
anger from being - in effect - shushed by its
leadership. Meanwhile our [US] troops die, Iraqis
flee and/or die gruesome deaths, our global
prestige crumbles, our national debt escalates,
and Americans continue in their narcissistic
apathy. Top all this off with a possible secret
attack on Iran and Engelhardt's analogy with
Rome's decline will become evident much sooner.
Jim of
Southern California
USA
(Sep 6, '07)
ATol deserves high praise for
having a stellar collection of writers on staff.
Henry C K
Liu (I believe as far back as 2002) and Julian
Delasantellis long ago sounded alarm bells about
the US housing market when the mainstream media in
large were still blithely inebriated by the
bubble-generated capital gains. Reading M K
Bhadrakumar's and Dmitry Shlapentokh's analyses of
geopolitics approximates watching a tense chess
match, albeit one with real actors and with
enormous real-life consequences. Mr Liu (two years
ago, if my memory serves me right) and, most
recently, Spengler, with his [Sep 5] article Western
grasshoppers and Chinese ants, recommend that
the Chinese government develop a more robust
domestic market to help unfetter the country from
over-reliance on its export industry. One can only
hope that the Chinese government will soon come to
realize the wisdom of this advice and act on it
expeditiously. Humanity is at an important and
exciting historical juncture; ATol, its editors,
and all its writers do an outstanding job in
helping the readers better understand the world
around us.
John Chen
USA (Sep 6, '07)
The impulsive liars (like Syed
Saleem Shahzad) [whom] you have employed to
contribute to your publication are fatally
damaging your credibility, if you ever had any.
Iftikhar Sarwani (Sep 6,
'07)
Re Defectors reveal
hard road to Korea reunification [Sep 5]: Jeon
Woo-taek, psychiatrist at Yonsei University
Medical School in Seoul, is a wise man. A pioneer
in studying the health of mental health among a
fraction of North Koreans defectors who now live
in South Korea, he has opted, Sunny Lee writes, a
"reunification of heart" for the strong feeling
among North Koreans and South Koreans who long for
reuniting the two halves of a divided Korea at the
38th Parallel. Take the problem of language which
Lee briefly comments on: capitalism is differently
defined in Pyongyang from what it is in Seoul. The
disparity is not confined to Korea alone. Since Dr
Jeon is much sought after for discussions on
unification in a reunited Germany, the same
difference in language is equally apparent after a
half-century of division, even though East Germany
was not the sealed vase that until recent North
Korea was. South Korea at least has the edge of a
reunited Germany: it has an example of hasty
reunification with all its attendant problems and
discontent ... Dr Jeon does understand that deeply
felt sentiments of identity as a North Korean,
molded in the crucible of socialist Korea's
authoritarian structure and vehement
indoctrination that South Korea is an American
puppet government, go hand in hand, and thus
[there are] large potholes on the road to any
concrete form of reunification. Seoul's "Sunshine
Policy" certainly meets the meaning of
"reunification of the heart"; it, on one hand,
[it] has generously provided economic assistance,
thereby forestalling the collapse of North Korea
after the demise of its benefactor the Soviet
Union. On the other hand, the willingness of Seoul
to extend a helping hand to Pyongyang has had the
effect of lessening tensions between North and
South Korea, in spite of North Korea's testing a
nuclear bomb. Saying this takes not a whit from Dr
Jeon's findings among his North Korean subjects.
They more or less have found a home in South Korea
but suffer to varying degrees feelings of anxiety
any emigrant or refugee feels.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Sep 5,
'07)
Re
Spengler's excellent article Western
grasshoppers and Chinese ants [Sep 5], I will
add if Spengler did not object, "Chinese killer
ants". The Western governments' euphony among the
businesses about the pace and expectation of
Chinese economic health and growth is sounding
alarms as many Chinese begin to admit that all is
not rosy on the economic front while the Chinese
society faces deep-seated conflicts. It has always
been said that a growing wealth gap between the
expanding cities and the rural interior is
creating a lot of worries for the Chinese
leadership because of the inequities emerging on
the surface, not only because of the sudden leap
forward but also by epidemic corruption by the top
officials followed by nepotism, bribery and
exorbitant accumulation of wealth by the
privileged few. The sudden speed of Chinese growth
turned out to be a wonder for the outside world
but has created a fundamental economic issue for
the Chinese. A friend of mine visited China last
year and was so astounded at the speed of
construction of buildings, roads, highways and
bridges that he could not believe his eyes; the
whole skyline around him changed in a fortnight.
The change in China is so vast and rapid that it
makes a contradiction from the times of Mao
Zedong, and how long is this economic
transformation, the world's biggest, going to
last? China is still a workshop economy with over
200 million people working in small factories
under horrendous conditions ... The ominous signs
are that if America fails to recover quickly, it
will take along to the drains the Western world as
well as Japan.
Saqib Khan
UK (Sep 5, '07)
Re India's Muslim
'problem' [Sep 1] by Chan Akya: I would like
to just mention that it is so silly to say that
"the country's criminal underworld is almost
entirely Muslim". Just take the example of the
Indian state of Bihar. Bihar tops the list of
states in crime rate. Can this author say,
"Bihar's criminal underworld is almost entirely
Muslims"? If not, how can the country's criminal
underworld be almost entirely Muslim?
SAM
USA (Sep 5, '07)
I want to commend [Chan] Akya
on India's Muslim
'problem' [Sep 1]. However, I think new
terrorism is not just linked to lack of
opportunities. Ever since independence
opportunities have been limited. The new dynamic,
it seems to me, is the rise of [the] Hindu right
in India and how this has affected the Muslims.
Muslims in urban areas definitely need assistance.
A few years ago I read a three-part essay by
Ranmohan Roy which simply quoted NSSO [National
Sample Survey Organization] stats to explain
Indian Muslims' urban plight. The other issue is
communalism. This also affects the new dynamics, I
think. There is a rise in communalism. I would say
this is [because of] the "lack of capacity" in
elected officials at the local and state levels
and the lack of capacity of their functionally
illiterate public. A few years ago an Indian NGO
[non-governmental organization] working to improve
capacity in panchayats
[village political systems] illustrated why
"lack of capacity" is a major element in this mix
in a report on this subject. Too bad it never got
much notice. I expect communalism to rise as lack
of capacity seems impossible to remove because of
inattention and the challenges facing Indian
politicians, ie, the issues they need to address
to improve the lives of their public are set to
keep on increasing. One must also keep in mind
[that] Indian prosperity is time-limited by its
graying economic-engine south and youth of [the]
more backward north. This matter was addressed by
an article in 2006 [May 5] in ATol, Doubts over
India's 'teeming millions' advantage by Sudha
Ramachandran. What current prosperity has provided
is a window of opportunity to change the dynamic.
If that opportunity is ignored, as seems to be the
case right now, for dynamic changes, this
prosperity is time-limited.
May
Sage
USA (Sep 5,
'07)
Shawn
Crispin: I read with interest and great attention
your important article on Kith Meng [The rise and
rise of a Cambodian capitalist, Sep 1]. It is
the first thorough article about the Okhna. I have
know the family since they established themselves
in the late 1970s in Canberra. I was a good friend
of his late brother. I should, however, point out
that regarding the title of Okhna, what you wrote
- "In Cambodia that privilege comes with a royal
title known as Okhna, which is bestowed on those
who make sizable financial contributions to the
royal family. Kith Meng is believed to be one of
the youngest businessmen to ever receive the
honorific" - is not accurate. While in the past
the title of Okhna was indeed given to business
people and public servants who contributed
significantly to the royal family's purse,
charities or community projects, since the
re-establishment of the Cambodian monarchy in
1993, this honorific has been used by the
Cambodian government and, in particular, by the
Cambodian People's Party to raise funds for their
own activities. In fact, it has become a way of
rewarding those that have served the party and
Prime Minister Hun Sen well.
Ambassador Julio A Jeldres
(Sep 5, '07)
It's interesting that Julian
Delasantellis, in his response [Sep 4] to my
letter, quoted Adam Smith, whose nonpareil insight
allowed him to formulate the Invisible Hand theory
of [the] free market, but seemingly lacked the
prescience to foresee what destruction would be
wrought by the pernicious force of capitalism. The
present-day corporate chief executive officer must
be, I suppose, considerably different from a
business owner of Mr Smith's time. While the
modern CEO retains sufficient latitude in deciding
how to operate his company in an efficient manner,
the ultimate aim of profit maximization has been
long ago decided for him, by the invisible hand of
the capitalist system. Should a virtuous and
conscientious CEO decide against relocating his
company's manufacturing to a low-cost country, for
example, due to his misgivings about that
country's questionable social practices, and
subsequently underperform vis-a-vis his
competitors who don't suffer from such moral
qualms, he likely wouldn't last very long in his
position. Mr Delasantellis' quotation leads one to
believe that Adam Smith would likely bemoan the
erosion of human and societal values/virtues by
the bane of capitalism, but that is what has
happened, is happening, and will continue to
happen until this economic system has run its
course in history.
John Chen
USA (Sep 5, '07)
Sami Moubayed [Another rabbit
pops out of the Iraqi hat, Sep 1] is to be
praised for not underestimating Muqtada al-Sadr
and recognizing that the step taken by Sadr in
suspending for a few months his Mahdi militia for
"reorganization" may be a brilliant strategic
move. Unfortunately, Moubayed did not examine the
move in the context of US strategy vis-a-vis Iran,
but an examination in such a broader context may
be worthwhile. A strategic move is either an
attack or a defensive move. There is nothing about
the suspension that suggests that it is an attack
in disguise, so it is most probably one or more
defensive moves ... There are really only two
defensive moves that are applicable to the facts
at issue, reverse signaling and putative
withdrawal - the first of which is directed at
[Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri] al-Maliki and his
allies and the second of which is directed at the
US. These defensive moves are all predicated on
the fairly strong possibility that the US will
want to attack Iran in the next six months. If the
US is going to attack Iran, it is going to happen
in the next six months, and such an attack is more
likely to happen if Iraq is or appears to be more
peaceful. Sadr's move to suspend militia attacks
against the US military in Iraq is a putative
withdrawal that is intended to sucker the US into
attacking or at least coming very close to
attacking Iran. Having discussed putative
withdrawal, we can turn our attention to reverse
signaling. Putative withdrawal and reverse
signaling are kind of similar because they both
invite the opponent to self-inflict harm. In
reverse signaling, you take a small step that will
force your opponent to take a big step that the
opponent may not wish to take or never thought it
would be forced to take. Sadr's opponents are
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Abdul-Aziz
al-Hakim's SIIC's (Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council)
Badr Brigade, which are backed by and supposedly
loyal to Iran, but have sat on thrones built for
them by the US. Well, if Iran were to be attacked,
their loyalty [would] be put to the test while
Sadr and his militia have the luxury of sitting on
the sidelines or jumping into the murderous fray
with glee. Which will it be for Sadr and his
militia, sidelines or the fray? In the event of a
US attack on Iran, Maliki and the SIIC will either
be exposed as unreliable frauds that bite the hand
that feeds them or as reliable agents who haven't
forgotten who butters their bread. Which will it
be? It's enough to say that the neo-cons and the
US just don't have a clue as to what they are up
against.
Abacus
USA (Sep 4, '07)
Another rabbit
pops out of the Iraqi hat [Sep 1] by [Sami]
Moubayed is factual. But the rabbit is getting
fatter and menacing, and growing bigger teeth as
[Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-]Maliki's position
becomes unsustainable. Muqtada al-Sadr is a
potbelly stuffed with windy beans, a criminal and
gangster who operates murder squads to slaughter
innocent Sunnis and make their lives living hell
until they leave Iraq. This rabbit has ordered his
murderous militia and Mahdi Army to suspend
offensives for six months so that he could take
over the reign of southern Iraq after the British
withdraw altogether from southern Iraq and then
slaughter every remaining Sunnis who dare to stay
in his territory. The fact of the matter is that
this sadist, murderer, criminal and political thug
wishes to wipe out his rivals, even members of the
Shi'a Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council [SIIC]. So the
fight now is who wins the real war: Muqtada
al-Sadr, a poodle of [Iranian President Mahmud]
Ahmadinejad, or Maliki, the poodle of President
[George W] Bush, or the SIIC, poodles of both Iran
and the USA. Muqtada al-Sadr's murderous Mahdi
Army and militia are the biggest threat to the
stability of war- ravaged Iraq even ahead of the
al-Qaeda network. Sadr, a self-proclaimed Shi'a
messiah, wants Iraq to be ruled by Shi'as and
wants Sunnis expelled. Muqtada al-Sadr is a thug
and not a good Muslim because a God-fearing Muslim
will never have so much fat deposited on his
belly. There is a saying of Prophet Mohammed (SAW)
that a good Muslim eats with one but a unbeliever
eats with seven hands. A fat man is more
interested in stuffing his belly with sumptuous
food and is occupied with worldly leisure [and]
comforts and would have less time for theological
thought or religious affairs. A potbelly's eyes,
hands and stomach will always feel hungry and his
brain occupied with greed, desire for money and
mischief-making ...
Jalal Rumi (Sep 4,
'07)
Sami
Moubayed's article on Muqtada al-Sadr [Another rabbit
pops out of the Iraqi hat, Sep 1] is
refreshing to those of us who have tired of the
unrelenting agonizing over what Washington is
thinking and planning. As far as Iraq goes,
Washington lost control of the decision-making
process when American troops first crossed the
border in 2003. But don't tell that to the major
candidates running for president, as they promise
to keep the US going down a path that will lead to
growing power for China and Russia.
Harald
Hardrada
Chapel Hill,
North Carolina (Sep 4, '07)
I have read Justin Wintle's
very fine biography of the only hope of Burma and
agree with [Sreeram] Chaulia's assessment [Lodestar of
liberty, Sep 1]. The only way something can
change in Burma is through sustained pressure. The
only sad side is Chaulia adopting the junta's
terminology in the review. Wintle himself
consistently calls Burma "Burma", not "Myanmar".
Let the Burmese people decide what name they want
for their country and capital. Down with military
colonialism!
Myint
New Jersey, USA (Sep 4,
'07)
For the
record, Sreeram Chaulia's original copy used
"Burma", not "Myanmar", but it is Asia Times
Online policy to conform to United Nations usage
on place names. The official name of the country
has been Myanmar since 1989; recognition of that
fact in no way implies that ATol takes any
political position on the legitimacy of the
unelected junta that imposed that name, which is
in any case just a more literary form of the
colloquial name "Bama". - ATol
Sreeram Chaulia clearly
appears to be pro-democracy in Burma. However,
[his] review [Lodestar of
liberty, Sep 1] of Daw Suu Kyi's biography has
one major anomaly that is puzzling. How come
Chaulia accepts the junta's terminology of
"Myanmar"? As a mark of solidarity, Burmese
activists worldwide and some news organizations
like the BBC [British Broadcasting Corp] continue
to use "Burma". Burma is Burma until a freely
elected government can change the name. Tatmadaw
[the Myanmar military] has no legitimacy to play
with the country's name. Chaulia should know
better than just swallowing the regime's whims and
fancies. Recently, the junta shifted the
centuries-old capital from Rangoon [Yangon] to a
new obscure place. Maybe that is the capital of
Burma for Chaulia?
Majid Askari
Free Burma Coalition (Sep 4,
'07)
An
unelected government moved the capital of Siam to
Bangkok, and another unelected government later
renamed the country Thailand. Are we making a
political statement by not insisting that the
country is still "Siam" and the capital Ayutthaya?
- ATol
I was very disappointed to
read Sreeram Chaulia's Lodestar of
liberty [Sep 1]. The reviewer has not done
justice to Aung San Suu Kyi as a woman. Chaulia,
being male, is impervious to the serious demands
placed on women in general and Burmese women in
particular to rear kids and run the household.
Here's a simple poser: would Suu Kyi become the
great figure she is had she married a typical
Burmese man? Chaulia says that [Justin] Wintle
offers a correction to Suu Kyi's image as an
ambitious politician. Well, no one would have had
to even debate the issue had Suu Kyi been a man.
Had she been male there would be no need to
castigate her as someone who sacrificed family for
the same of politics. Look at [Mahatma] Gandhi: he
was a failed father, but it never mattered to
people because, as a man, he could shed household
for nation. I wish Chaulia was more
gender-sensitive.
Lucy Miller
A modern-day suffragette (Sep 4,
'07)
I was
wondering why Kaveh L Afrasiabi has not included
in his piece A small break
for Iran [Sep 1] quotations from the document
published by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy
Agency]. In its Article IV, it stated: "These
modalities cover all remaining issues and the
Agency confirmed that there are no other remaining
issues and ambiguities regarding Iran's past
nuclear program and activities." It also says:
"The Agency has been able to verify the
non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at
the enrichment facilities in Iran and has
therefore concluded that it remains in peaceful
use." With statements like these, it is no wonder
the agreement has not been covered by the
mainstream media in the US and Europe. As the
nuclear alibi is getting harder to sell by the
day, the US warmongers are concentrating all their
efforts on finding a different kind of
justification for their planned attacks on Iran.
The accusation of Iranian involvement in Iraq has
become their best bet. Regarding the complaints
about ads popping up in ATol's articles, I would
like to point out that I don't have that kind of
problem as I use Firefox as a browser instead of
Internet Explorer. I read and print the articles
with no pictures in them. Firefox can be
downloaded for free and it is much more reliable
and secure than IE. It has plenty of features and
one of them is for blocking unwanted ads. I do
click on a few ads (non-commercial ones) from time
to time, though, just to help ATol.
Daniel
Mazir
Perth, Australia
(Sep 4, '07)
Donald Kirk is making his
rounds while he is in Washington, DC. His A summit within
a summit in Korea [Sep 1] takes us into the
world of the National Security Council (NSC),
which is chaired by American President George W
Bush himself, and on it sit the vice president,
secretary of state, secretary of defense and the
president's assistant on national security. The
NSC's senior adviser for Asian affairs, Dennis
Wilder, has deep concerns about the October
inter-Korean summit meeting in Pyongyang between
North Korea's chairman Kim Jong-il and South
Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun. Wilder's worries
reveal an uncertainty about Mr Roh's lack of will
to push a pro-American agenda when he meets Mr
Kim. The rub stems from the [opacity] in the NSC's
own reading of the pace of Pyongyang's
"denuclearization process". It also indicates that
the dialogue with Seoul is dysfunctional. In fact,
he fears that Mr Roh may sell the shop to Mr Kim
... After 62 years of the US's presence in South
Korea, the NSC has learned little [or] nothing
about that country ... It is to be wondered [why]
the NSC has so misread the pulse of the South
Korea, and the rising and ebbing tide of
anti-Americanism fueled by Washington's
heavy-handedness and lack of tact with an ally
that it has shown great disdain [toward] ...
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Sep 4,
'07)
With
due respect to [M K] Bhadrakumar, his analysis on
this occasion is a bit lopsided [Gridlock on
Pakistan's road to change, Sep 1]. Presumably
he does not specialize in South Asian affairs.
[Nawaz] Sharif's appeal, if there is any such
thing, is limited to Lahore and surrounding areas
of upper Punjab after adding the support of the
Gujarat-based Chaudhry clan and Faisalabad-based
Jallandhari (Zia plus Chaudhry) clan. Talking
about agitation, even on the emotional issue
relating to [Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry],
there was no agitation in lower Punjab, not even
by lawyers. The PPP [Pakistan People's Party]
vote-bank is totally different than the PML
[Pakistan Muslim League] vote-bank and is
considerably less prone to agitation, particularly
on issues like pro- or anti-Americanism. It is for
the leadership to decide what is best for the
country. Even today no party or alliance can beat
the PPP on popular vote, and if free and fair
elections were to be held today, the PPP is
destined to sweep them. Benazir [Bhutto]'s
personal aura has limited relevance to such an
outcome given the way [the] Bhuttos have built and
held the party together. Impact of internal
dissidence, if any, is also more likely to be
limited to Lahore, where influence of the MMA
[Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal] also starts and ends.
Outside Lahore, the MMA core has limited appeal in
Punjab. The MMA could have probably counted in the
past on the cities of Karachi, Hyderabad and
Multan, but due to [the Muttahida Qaumi
Movement]'s support for [President General Pervez]
Musharraf, it will presumably make a tactical
voting deal with the PPP in these cities. The
PPP's biggest scourge is the Jallandhris embedded
in [the] intelligence services who have been
manipulating election results since 1984. If
Musharraf can in some way enlist independent
international UN observers to authenticate the
genuinely independent and transparent election
results, then he can proceed with transparent
elections safe in knowledge that the PPP will take
over ... All morals and institutions were
completely paralyzed to bring the Sharifs into
power in the early 1980s and were so paralyzed at
the time when they were forced out in 1999. For
many Pakistanis, the Sharifs are synonymous with
the culture of pandemic social corruption. The
Sharifs must never return and will never return to
power.
Rashid Hassan (Sep 4,
'07)
Never
let novices who do know about Asian history and
politics write for your online publication, as
they can easily undermine your credibility. Or at
least hire a decent editor who can check for too
obvious mistakes. Your article China breathes
new life into Mongolia [Sep 1] mistakenly
attributes the following quote: "The Chinese
government's National Development Strategy 2021
anticipates per capita income in Mongolia
increasing from US$1,100 today to $7,000 in five
years and $15,000 by 2021." Sorry, for the first
time in my life, I learned from the article in
your online publication that the Chinese
government sets development goals for the
independent country formally known as the Republic
of Mongolia. I understand that these figures came
from the National Development Strategy, prepared
by Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar, not the
Chinese government. Shame that you, the editors,
mislead readers or support the PRC [People's
Republic of China] nationalistic ambitions to
"annex back" Mongolia, which become independent
back in 1911, and, as a matter of fact, become a
full-fledged member of the UN in 1961. Shame on
Daniel Allen, a bad journalist and supposedly "an
expert" in China affairs, too eager to cook up
stories but too lazy to check simple facts.
Lutaa
Badamkhand (Sep 4, '07)
Calm down, the insertion of
the word "Chinese" was an editing error, which has
been corrected. Writer Daniel Allen's original
reference was to the Mongolian government's
National Development Strategy. - ATol
Re Trinkets and
treasure: China tames the US [Aug 31]: China
cannot tame the US, even if it wanted to. The same
applies to Europe or Japan or even the UN, for one
simple reason: the USA defines the value of the
dollar, exclusively the USA and nobody else. If
the Americans wanted, they could easily let the
Chinese economy collapse (or even the world
economy) by devaluing the dollar. They have done
so on several occasions versus the yen and the
pre-euro currencies. That the Americans do not do
so does not mean that they are weak. It just means
that they want China to become more addicted to
the dollar. I am astonished that a
business-consultant like the author is unaware of
these basic facts.
D Busse
Germany (Sep 4, '07)
Once again a thought-provoking
article by Julian Delasantellis (Trinkets and
treasure: China tames the US [Aug 31]).
However, Julian does not take into account the
fact that although the United States has lost its
manufacturing supremacy to China, it continues to
be the largest producer of quality knowledge
through excellent research institutions and
world-class universities. Until China invests
significantly in research and development and
builds local knowledge capacity, it cannot expect
to match US pre-eminence. As China takes over US
manufacturing, the US has moved on to a
knowledge-based and service-oriented society. The
only loser in this game is Europe, which has lost
its industrial base to China and also lags far
behind US in developing knowledge-based
societies.
Amir Ali
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(Sep 4, '07)
I'd like to respond to the
letter to the editor by John Chen (Aug 31), who
said this: "As money is the oil that lubricates
the capitalistic engine, the corporate elites will
do anything (including selling their soul to the
devil) to maximize profit. Globalization, while
helping to fill the capitalists' coffers, makes
the game much more competitive in the long run."
As an economist, the concept that the profit
motive is central to the capitalist dynamic is
vaguely familiar - I think I read it in a book
somewhere. However, the ethic that it is
legitimate to place the private-profit motive as
the superincumbent social value, more important
than either national interest or social stability,
is a fairly recent extension of traditional
capitalist theory. As Adam Smith wrote in The Theory of Moral
Sentiments, "The wise and virtuous man is at
all times willing that his own private interest
should be sacrificed to the public interest." If
this sentiment seems slightly anachronistic in
this era of market triumphalism, I'll paraphrase
the famous New York Sun 1897 headline about Santa
Claus: "Yes, Virginia, there once was a thing
called the public interest."
Julian
Delasantellis (Sep 4, '07)
Re A hidden menace
in Bush's words on Iran (Aug 31): Not one of
the reasons given by Trita Parsi over the latest
intensification in the war of words between Tehran
and Washington can address some of the most
troubling features surrounding Iran's alleged
pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability. The
report just handed down by the International
Atomic Energy Agency concluded that while Iran
continues to enrich uranium in violation of United
Nations Security Council resolutions, its
fuel-enrichment plant at Arak has produced "well
below the expected quantity for a facility of this
design". While this was a positive finding, the
report also listed some "outstanding issues" that
need to be resolved for the agency to assess
Iran's nuclear program. These include alleged
links between Iran's nuclear enrichment,
high-explosives testing and the design of a
missile capable of flying above the atmosphere and
then re-entering it. Tying all of these several
facets together, Iran has surprised US
intelligence analysts by describing the mid-flight
detonations of missiles fired from ships on the
Caspian Sea as "successful" tests. What these
tests actually help to determine is whether Iran's
Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a
nuclear warhead, can be detonated by a
remote-control device while still in high-altitude
flight. According to US defense scientists, the
most likely purpose of these tests is to prepare
the groundwork for detonating an electromagnetic
pulse (EMP) attack. This is where a single nuclear
warhead exploded at high altitude, say over the
US, will interact with the Earth's atmosphere,
ionosphere and magnetic field to produce EMP
radiation that flows back down to Earth,
catastrophically dismantling entire
telecommunications systems. The purpose of such an
EMP attack, unlike a nuclear attack on land, is
not to kill people but in effect to kill or
immobilize the movement of electrons. During the
Cold War, the Soviet Union experimented with this
same idea as a kind of super-weapon against the
US. Clearly, the current status of Iranian missile
technology would have to progress a lot further
before it posed such a serious threat to the
American continent. But the fact that the regime
is indeed conducting such tests, with some amount
of success, seems to suggest that the rhetoric
coming from Tehran may not be all that far removed
from a future reality.
Reverend Dr Vincent
Zankin
Canberra,
Australia (Sep 4, '07)
I want to commend you for the
article The US also has
lethal toys [Aug 22]. I went to check out what
was on the back of these toys that are mentioned
in the article and I could not believe it. As a
mother of three, I will no longer allow my
children to play with toys that promote violence
and war.
Jilinda Carlson (Sep 4,
'07)
August Letters
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