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the Letters page.
October
2007
With regards
to M K Bhadrakumar's A velvet divorce in
China [Oct 31], it's a classic
Bhadrakumar article. Mr Bhadrakumar, the
likelihood that a velvet divorce took place in
China is equivalent to the likelihood that a group
of young and old eunuchs (the participants in the
trilateral meeting in China and the
non-participants) would worry about paternity
suits. The tension among the participants at the
trilateral meeting in China is a mole hill that is
turned into a mountain range rather than just a
mountain. It may help to put things in
perspective. The US and Japan are presently locked
in a dispute over 1) who should cover the costs of
subsidizing the US military presence in Japan and
other areas in the the Far East and 2) the
Japanese fuel supply operation in the Indian Ocean
in support of the war in Afghanistan. The split
between the US and Japan is only going to become
worse because Japan has doubts over whether the US
will protect its interests as the dispute with
Russia over the Kuril islands revealed. If the US
cannot protect its interests, surely Australia and
India are not going to be able to do better, but
that's a new trilateral pairing that Bhadrakumar
suggests is emerging as a consequence of the
velvet divorce. About two years ago, when the US
was being pummeled senseless in Iraq, Russia
asserted its claim to the Kuril islands over which
it had an ongoing decades-long dispute with Japan.
Russia is investing over US$1 billion in building
a gigantic airport on one of the islands and
improving facilities. Japan and the US stood by
and did nothing. Two years ago, Vladimir Putin's
special envoy in the Far East, Konstantin
Pulikovsky, bluntly told Tokyo to forget about the
disputed Kuril islands. He said that "Russia does
not have any problem of Kuril islands", meaning it
is happy with the status quo. The "so-called
territorial dispute" is a sort of publicity
platform for Japanese politicians, Pulikovsky
claimed. "It is absolutely their internal affair,
we have nothing to do with it," he said. In the
meantime, the Kuril Islands will become "a
beautiful corner of prosperous Russia", Pulikovsky
said. The Iraq war and the dispute over the Kuril
islands revealed the limitations of US power and
the weakness of Japan that is partly due to US
intimidation that has prevented Japan from
developing a strong military industrial
capability. The US's legendary arm-twisting and
threats that prevented Japan from building the FSX
fighter is something that India should keep in
mind as it examines the Dr Jekyll side of the US.
The weakness of the US is only going to get worse
with time and is another thing that India should
consider as it pursues a "strategic relationship"
with the US, Australia and Japan, a trilateral
pairing that could not do much about the Kuril
islands two years ago. It would not be hyperbole
to state that India, Japan and Australia are kind
of like the Ottoman Empire on the eve of WWI; they
are most probably going to lose no matter what and
would do better to try to minimze their losses
(ie, steer clear of the US) rather than try to
maximize their gains (ie, jump on the US's
bandwagon).
Abacus (Oct 31, '07)
[Re: M
K Bhadrakumar's A velvet divorce in
China, Oct 31] It can sometimes be such
a privilege to get lost in the intricacies of
incisive articles like this one where Bhadrakumar
runs an absorbing commentary like a diplomatic
surgeon ... as he masterly dissects the layers of
complex global community. Applause for the
writer!
Rash SS (Oct 31, '07)
Kaveh
Afrasiabi’s review of Showdown with Iran
[Preaching to the
converted, Oct 31] suggests the PBS
documentary is naive, with "serious shortcomings".
This is generous. The apparent naivety reveals
that PBS, like all major American broadcast media,
is a propaganda arm of the US imperial complex.
The cowboy title gives this away at the start:
which side of this showdown are "we" on? Your
[headline] "Preaching to the Converted", finds the
point. The program’s shortcomings are intentional.
The naivety is then found among its viewers who
vaguely believe PBS can be relied on for some
notional "objectivity". Its advertising slogan,
"If PBS doesn’t do it, who will?" has established
the impression that PBS is filling some valuable
democratic space that would otherwise be lost to
forces of ignorance. But the function is not to
promote freedom of thought. Rather, in this case,
it is to imprint on a small pseudo-educated
population of the American middle class the idea
that they are sophisticated, and are being given
objective insight - by the very organization that
helps to direct their thought! Such sophisticated
naivety is the hallmark of the American people and
its broadcast media. The American people
understand what a showdown is. Their memory, if
any, of what led to the showdown weakens in
inversely with the buildup to the showdown. Once
that battlefield is prepared in the imagination,
only humane thoughts remain to be
swathed.
David George
USA (Oct 31,
'07)
Spengler's latest opus [When you can't deal with the
devil, Oct 30] on the demands to
finally undertake the liberation of and installing
a regime change of the "devil" in Iran is further
proof of an individual's descent into demagogic
dementia. His voice was among the select few
voices that called for military intervention in
Iraq and are now calling for war with Iran. Why
should anyone on this planet believe that that
conflict with a larger and more resolute enemy
would be handled any more capably? There are
retreats or institutions for individuals that
exhibit Spengler's continuing intellectual
deterioration. AToL is definitely not one of
them.
Armand De laurell (Oct 31, '07)
[Re When you can't deal with the
devil, Oct 30] The KKK hide behind a
hood to spew their venom because hate is not an
easy sell. Like the KKK Spengler hides behind a
hood of anonymity as a ghost writer from the
Hitler era no less. Why can't he identify himself
and his credentials to give credibility to his
rantings? Or is there some other agenda that I am
missing?
Mary Hough (Oct 31, '07)
[Re When you can't deal with the
devil, Oct 30] I usually enjoy (used to
enjoy) reading Asia Times Online [but] I am very
disappointed with ... Spengler´s contributions. He
(or she?) smells like a "neo-con" ... so, there is
no use commenting on his last contribution. I just
think that it's difficult to take [Spengler's]
kind of "analysis" and "opinions" seriously. I may
have to stop reading ATol.
M de la Torre
(Oct 31,
'07)
[Re When you can't deal with the
devil, Oct 30] When you can't deal with
Spengler it's because you know he's the devil.
After years of receiving the balanced payoff of
entertainment and sobriety that only the acme of
sinister rhetoric can deliver, I'm not going to
click on this one either. For a cynical iconoclast
it's odd that he takes literally the doctrines of
the vicarious death and chosen status of the Jews.
I guess even the devil has to scratch up a premise
or two for radically warmongering conclusions.
Exclusivist monotheism is always handy on that
count and he rides it with atavistic abandon over
Islam and secularism. I doubt an intelligence
analyst or academic could fall for much of it.
Merely a comment section after his articles would
break the spell of words, but for that we have to
go to the forum and many poor souls never make it
that far. Tragically, such might include pundits,
politicians, and state department and Pentagon
staff. Simon Floth
Australia (Oct 31,
'07)
When you can't deal with the
devil [Oct 30] is Spengler at his
rock-bottom worst. I had to laugh when he wrote
about "the best of American diplomacy". Is he
serious? When have American politicians ever
engaged in good faith diplomacy with their
counterparts in the Middle East? It is outrageous
that Spengler calls down suffering so nonchalantly
upon others - the Iranians and Western civilians -
saying it's a heavy price but "well worth it"
(well worth it to who?). Spengler shows himself
well aligned with the American establishment,
which has been reading in the Zionist playbook for
many years now, and has learned well the arts of
duplicity, self-righteousness and brutal violence
- utterly condemning in others the faults it fails
to see in itself. I am sick of it, sick of the
destruction of what was once a good, if flawed,
nation, the USA - and sick of commentators like
Spengler perverting their admitted intelligence
and remaining sense of justice to goad the morally
weak and intellectually delusional players on the
world stage to war, war, and more war. There is
certainly a devil, but the devil is not Iran or
even America - but the devil uses what tools he
can find. What's the agenda? To destroy what
remains of human civilization. Why else would the
USA invade the land Between the Rivers, the cradle
of human civilization, and now turn its blind and
bloated eye to Persia - which has had a
civilization going back 2,500 years? Yes, indeed,
the object is to destroy the living past and
replace it with a machine-made and manufactured
condition of totally manipulable souls. For
Spengler to drag himself down into this wallow of
arrogance, delusion and demagoguery does not speak
well of his abilities of discernment.
Caryl
Johnston (Oct 30,
'07)
Spengler has outdone
himself with his latest blood-thirsty, hysterical
screed When you can't deal with the
devil [Oct 30].The question must now be
asked: did John Bolton or Michael Ledeen ghost
write this article, or does one or the other of
these illustrious gentlemen permanently hide
behind Spengler's mask?
John
Seal
Oakland, California (Oct 30,
'07)
Re: When you can't deal with the
devil [Oct 30] I wish that Spengler
would look at his devil’s mirror and stop
preaching dropping atomic bombs on Muslim people
... Does he wear blinkers or is so myopic that he
cannot see the horrendous story of catastrophe and
destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan that he is
continually shouting at full throttle to bomb Iran
only because it wants to possess nuclear
technology for peaceful purposes? Has he forgotten
the barbaric event of August 6m 1945 when on a
clear morning, the Americans dropped an atomic
bomb on Hiroshima and later on Nagasaki to
announce to the world that the US from henceforth
was the supreme military power of the world? In
that summer over 60 Japanese cities were burned
down by incendiary bombing. In Tokyo, a million
civilians were made homeless and over 200,000
burned and died because of the bombings. Does
Spengler want to see another genocide of Iranians
so that the mad man sitting in the Oval Office
goes on terrorizing the world until he vacates the
White House? The fact of the matter is that Iran
is no where near in producing an atom bomb but its
intention to possess nuclear technology is a crime
for punishment for the pea-brain G W Bush.
President Bush should understand one simple fact
that the attack of September 11 announced to the
world that the USA was no longer invulnerable even
on its home ground and the event of August 6 1945
marked the beginning and end of two historical
periods in American history. America will become
more vulnerable to attacks if it ventures or dares
war on Iran. G W Bush is a devil incarnate; a man
full of evil.
Saqib Khan
UK (Oct 30,
'07)
Re: Spengler's [Oct 30] When you can't deal with the
devil, another sobering article. Very
persuasive, but the counsel for the West is bitter
indeed. Spengler is to be praised for stating what
no one wants to hear.
Peter Hartman (Oct 30,
'07)
[Re: Spengler's Oct 30
When you can't deal with the
devil] I stopped reading Spengler
several years ago when he forecast the imminent
entry of Russia into Iraq. Actually it was more
wishful thinking on his part. When that didn't
occur he then hoped that newly
converted-to-Christianity sub-Saharan blacks would
teach the Muslims a lesson they would never
forget. A lesson that George W Bush hadn't been
able to teach. Now the headline (I refuse to click
on it) of his latest column is yet another
exhortation for the Western horde to attack yet
another recalcitrant state of a backward religion
to make the world safe for his oh-so-ever-loving
God. I urge everyone to not click on the link to
his screed. It only encourages bad behavior by
ATol.
Idi (Oct
30, '07)
I generally find M K Bhadrakumar’s
writings very enlightening, however, in Iran looms over Turkey crisis
diplomacy [Oct 25] he quoted
Nostradamus which was completely inappropriate,
especially after I read the following in
Wikipedia: Shortly after the September 11 attacks
on New York's World Trade Center, the following
spoof text was circulated on the Internet, along
with many more elaborate variants (one of them
signed 'Nostradamus 1654' – when he would have
been just 150 years old): In the City of God
there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn
apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the
great leader will succumb, The third big war will
begin when the big city is burning . As it
turns out, the first four lines were indeed
written before the attacks, but by a Canadian
graduate student named Neil Marshall as part of a
research paper in 1997. Ironically enough, the
research paper included this poem as an
illustrative example of how the validity of
prophecies is often exaggerated. For example, the
phrases "City of God" (New York has never held the
title of "City of God"), "great thunder" (this
could apply to many disasters), "two brothers"
(many things come in pairs), and "the great leader
will succumb" are so ambiguous as to be
meaningless. The fifth line was added by an
anonymous Internet user, completely ignoring the
fact that Nostradamus wrote his Propheties
in rhymed four-line decasyllables called
quatrains. Nostradamus also never referred to a
"third big war".
Ali Amir (Oct 29,
'07)
[Re Reader Dennis
O'Connell's Oct 25 letter concerning M K
Bhadrakumar's Oct 25 story, Iran looms over Turkey crisis
diplomacy.] It's quite clear that
Dennis O'Connell doesn't understand the history of
the Kurds in the region, not to mention the reason
for India's economic success. The Kurds have been
a source of antagonism in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and
Turkey for hundreds of years, whether justified or
not. Western intervention has intensified this
because the US/Israel will use them like rented
mules to attain their end goal. There are 20
million or so Kurds in Turkey ... that's a heap of
potential problems that has antagonized Turkey for
generations. To understand that is to understand
the depth and history of Turkish attachment to
their land and the state. Any move towards Kurdish
autonomy will be met with opposition. It is also
disconcerting that US arms provided to the Iraqi
Kurds have somehow ended up in the hands of the
PKK , and aimed at Turkish soldiers. More of a
gamble is the close association of Israeli
intelligence among the Kurds which are functioning
to create instability in Iran, and to seek out the
answer to the so called nuclear threat of that
nation. I don't know if that has occurred because
of the failure in Iraq, or because Bush wishes to
play the provocative card in that region, but one
thing is certain, any move towards Kurdish
autonomy will not be tolerated by Turkey. It is
probably less of a threat in Iran because of the
numbers , but you can bet their close association
with Israel will not reap them any favors in
Tehran.In the end the weight of the western
intervention will fall on the shoulders that can
least afford to bear it.
Miles
Tompkins
Canada (Oct 29, '07)
Despite the
fact that the US balance of trade lies in a
perilous state, the USA has today decided in favor
of tough sanctions against Iran. The reasons they
took this action is due to their allegation that
Iran intends to obtain nuclear weapons of mass
destruction and has links with terrorism. Ring any
bells? Yes exactly the same reasons were given for
the illegal invasion and subsequent destruction of
Iraq with the loss of over 1.2 million lives. The
allegations once again are untrue and not based on
intelligence or reality. What is consistent
however are the real reasons for this action,
control of oil reserves and an attempt to defend
the US dollar in its declining position as the
world's reserve currency used for oil
transactions. The fictitious story that [Iranian
President] Mahmud Ahmadinejad threatened to wipe
Israel off the face of the map is repeated daily,
the fictional half truth that Ahmadinejad said the
holocaust was a myth rather than it was a myth
that a Jewish State had to be superimposed over
Palestine because of an alleged holocaust in
Europe is repeated ad infinitum by the American
and British press. Any day now I expect to hear
that Ahmadinejad uses human shredders, eats babies
and builds palaces with the oil revenue. I don't
expect these sanctions to work, I don't think even
the American government expects them to work, I
can't see the Russians, Chinese, Indians or even
Europe refusing to buy Iranian oil because of the
tantrums of a mad American president. But
nevertheless they are a sinister developments, a
step the US government needs to take in the first
instance as a prelude to a military attack. Bush
is already talking about World War III, it seems
to me that despite public opinion around the
world, even in the United States itself, he is
intent on going ahead with it. Perhaps we, the
citizens of the world, could demonstrate to Bush
that sanctions can be effective under certain
circumstances and for the right reasons. It’s not
just governments that can impose sanctions, the
ultimate power actually lies with us, the citizens
of the world that are tired of the genocide in the
Middle East, who are tired of the continuous
threats being issued by Washington and not only
against Iran. Who is tired of American attempts to
dominate the world? The power is in our pockets,
we don't have to buy American goods, or goods
produced by American-owned subsidiaries. There's
always an alternative to American produced motor
vehicles, soft drinks, cosmetics, trash food or
even entertainment. Let's hit the Americans in the
place it hurts the most, in the trouser pocket
area, so they can appreciate in just a small way
how sanctions can be painful. You never know, it
just might bring them to their
senses.
Michael Lee
Oxford, UK (Oct 29,
'07)
Thank you for publishing
the musings of K Darbandi [Gulf renamed in aversion to
'Persian', Oct 27 ] on the
name-blame-game on the Gulf of Idiots. Your
columnist displays more maturity and intellectual
grasp of the situation on the ground than all the
Arab sheikhs combined, even if that's not
necessarily a terrible stretch. Keep up the good
work.
Salt Shaker (Oct 29, '07)
With
regards to K Darbandi's Gulf renamed in aversion to
'Persian' [Oct 27] he questions whether
the concept of the nation state ever took hold in
the Gulf. Sadly, his questioning is legitimate and
supported by the fact that some of the Gulf
countries seem to have had the United Kingdom, at
one time, and now the United States, create much
of their foreign policy. It is hard to be a nation
state when you cannot act in your interests and
when you have to ignore your national memory and
accept the whims of a foreign power. When the Shah
of Iran was the superlative ally of the United
Kingdom and the US, the emirates, in particular
Sharjah, that later formed the United Arab
Emirates, were forced to accept Iranian claims to
the islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser
Tunb. Indeed, Britain acted as the government of
Sharjah and negotiated an agreement with Iran that
turned over the islands to Iran. My father at the
time was a very close friend of the Emir of
Sharjah, Sheik Khaled Al-Qasimi, who described to
him the arm-twisting to which he was subjected, on
this and other matters, by the British. The
agreement was made by the British possibly at the
behest of the US in order to get greater Iranian
cooperation during the Cold War. As Darbandi seems
to suggest, back then, the term "Persian Gulf" had
much greater currency then it does now. Now that
Iran is considered an enemy by the US and the UK,
the term "Arabian Gulf" is something that most
probably both locals and the US want to promote
and not just the locals as suggested in the
article. I would urge the UAE to treat Iran fairly
because the US Navy is going to shrink
dramatically in the next 20-30 years, but Iran
will still be there and most probably more
powerful than it is now. With regards to the
inhumane conditions to which foreign workers are
subjected as described in the article, Sheik
Khaled (God rest his soul) would be very
disappointed, were he alive, that such conditions
exist in some areas of the UAE as is most proably
the current Emir of Sharjah who is an intellectual
with a PhD. Sadly, in much of the UAE, capitalism
without a heart has been imported along with the
emirs' advisors, the Western development companies
and their staffs. Unfortunately, for every step
forward, Islam in the UAE is taking three or four
steps back.
Abacus
USA (Oct 29, '07)
You not only have some
of the most provocative writers around but even
your letter writers are of a singularly superior
caliber. Correspondents such as Dennis O'Connell,
Abacus, Harald Hardrada and Oleg Beliakovich have
such unique perspectives on things that it is
impossible to read their letters without gaining
some new insight. ATol is a monument to the power
of the free exchange of ideas. May your
publication live long and prosper.
Jose R.
Pardinas
San Diego,
California (Oct 26, '07)
The main idea in Peter
Navarro's [Oct 26] article By the light of a Chinese
moon seems to be that China is
dangerous to the USA because it is no longer poor,
backward, helpless. What nonsense! The Navarros of
the USA should realize that safety comes from
making friends, not enemies, of the rest of
humanity.
Lester Ness
Kunming, China (Oct 26,
'07)
I am
astonished by Peter Navarro's [Oct 26] article By the light of a Chinese
moon. Apparently, the Chinese space
missions are nothing more than a cover to put
nuclear missiles in orbit, extract helium and/or
moon colonies. China is hardly the first nation to
militarize space. The US program of "gravity
bombs" ... envisioned placing projectiles high
above orbit, capable of equal destruction to
nuclear missiles. Why would China want to put a
missile in space anyway when ICBM's are relatively
easy to develop? May I remind readers that China
is also the only nation to have a "No First Use"
policy. As for the author's claims of fusion and
moon colonies, his entire claim is presposterous.
First, fusion is a long way from fruition. And if
it does succeed, there is no need to fly to the
moon to obtain fuel, as the raw material can be
easily found in our oceans. Second, the logistics
and technology to develop viable space colonies
are really so far off, that to claim that China is
pursuing this goal is nothng more than trying to
scare Americans about the China bogeyman. Besides,
so what if China does want to establish a moon
colony? Does the author believe that only the
Americans have the right to do so?
Vigilant Reason
Kuala Lumpur (Oct 26,
'07)
Peter
Navarro's [Oct 26] article By the light of a Chinese
moon did not add anything new except to
spread the Chinese Threat theory. He was wrong to
claim that China was the first to shoot down its
own weather satellite. This had been done
previously by Russia and USA. Also, it is
preposterous to say that Shenzhou can leave behind
8-foot by 9ft orbital modules during their flight
as it is clear from all pictures that Shenzhou was
too small for the astronauts to walk around. He
claimed the launches were secretive. Can he show
us if the American's launch over the weekend has
anything different to show that it is transparent?
He also said that the launches pose serious
threat. Would the world be any better if USA is
the only country in the outer space? I would hope
all contributors to ATol can be unbiased and not
to treat ATol readers as if they are morons!
Wendy
Cai
USA (Oct 26,
'07)
Peter
Navarro's [Oct 26] article By the light of a Chinese
moon is just a typical response from an
unpleasant onlooker who likes to assign sinister
intentions. The late start of Chinese space
exploration, a half century after Russia and the
US is now viewed as bearing "hawkish" intent. The
downing of a satellite was fine for those two
countries but not for China. Professor Navarro
would be well advised to continue teaching
business but not to stir animosity. Appropriate
and friendly comments have come from Michael
Griffin of NASA and Louis Friedman of the
Planetary Society which should convey an exemplary
mindset.
Seung (Oct 26, '07)
Peter Navarro's [Oct 26]
article By the light of a Chinese
moon is a lesson in US-style
propaganda. The statement "The best evidence of
China's hawkish intentions is its blasting out of
the sky one of its own weather satellites last
January. This ASAT test could have only one
purpose: developing a capability to neutralize or
destroy the complex web of satellites that make up
the eyes, ears, and brains of the American
military." Because a country has the audacity to
prepare themselves for defense against US
aggression, they are deemed "hawkish". In general,
the arrogance of the viewpoint of US citizens is
something to behold!
Ken Moreau
New Orleans, Louisiana (Oct 26,
'07)
Is
Mogambo coming up with a definitive acronym
glossary? This will be a great addition to the
English Dictionary (or at least the Wikipedia).
Some would even say it would be an improvement to
the English language. I might even buy a book.
Bite Your Tongue (BYT).
K S Chin
Malaysia (Oct 26, '07)
WROTFLATT! (We're rolling on
the floor laughing at the thought!) OBOMTY (On
behalf of Mogambo, thank you.) - ATol
In Iran looms over Turkey crisis
diplomacy [Oct 25] Mr Bhadrakumar
quotes a line from Nostradamus written in 1654
since Nostradamus died in 1566 I will assume it is
a hoax. Mr Bhadrakumar is an old-line Indian
leftist whose central organizing principle of
political thought is that the US is evil. Mr
Bhadrakumar should look at the progress that India
has made in the last twenty years after they gave
up their socialist fantasies. Mr Bhadrakumar seems
to imply that the US is behind the PKK and is
trying to stir up trouble to pressure Turkey for
some political gain. First, George Bush has a hard
time planning his next move in a game of
tic-tac-toe so I doubt he has some great evil
scheme. Mr Bhadrakumar writes, "Yet nothing much
can happen in the region without US acquiescence."
I guess one could then assume that the US supports
Syria's aid to jihadists infiltrating into Iraq
and Iran's aid to insurgents to kill Americans and
Iran's drive to become a nuclear power. It is a
theory that makes absolutely no sense. Also it is
not in the interest of the Kurds to make trouble
on their periphery when they have not secured
their center. The Kurds will need a way to ship
their oil to the world and Turkey is by far their
best choice. To antagonize Turkey goes against the
interests of a Kurdish state struggling to come
into existence. As a student of prophecy for the
last thirty years if Mr Bhadrakumar is looking for
a sign of World War III, that would be the
rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.
Dennis
O'Connell
USA (Oct 25,
'07)
M K
Bhadrakumar's Iran looms over Turkey crisis
diplomacy [Oct 25] and Sami Moubayed's
No end in sight of the Kurdish
fight [Oct 25] are both necessary to
understand what is happening to Turkey.
Bhadrakumar is correct in stating that Turkey is
facing an "existential choice." Moubayed is
correct in stating that the US "risks Turkey
walking out of the 'war on terror' and halting US
use of a Turkish air base that is a vital conduit
for supplying US forces in Iraq." While their
analyses are quite good, we might be able to
strengthen them by considering why Turkey, unlike
Jordan and Saudi Arabia, refused to help the US
invade Iraq and why Turkey has since 2003 markedly
improved its relationship with Syria, other Arab
countries, and Iran. The Turks, unlike the
Jordanians and Saudi Arabians understood the
ramifications of US success in Iraq. The more the
US succeeds in Iraq the less value Turkey has
strategically to the US and Israel and the more
vulnerable Turkey is to being redesigned to suit
Israeli and US interests as alluded by
Bhadrakumar. Proof that the Turks were right in
assessing US actions is the US pressure later put
on King Abdullah of Jordan and King Abdullah of
Saudi Arabia - when the US thought it was winning
in Iraq - to begin a "reform" process that the US
intended to lead to constitutional monarchies, or
worse, in both countries. The proof that the Turks
were right is the disclosure to me by a former
long-serving minister in an Arab government who is
very close to the US immediately after returning
from a trip to the US in 2005 that the US's next
step is to turn Jordan into Palestine. I guess the
lesson is that when your strategic value declines
the US reserves the right to do what it pleases
with you. The Turks almost certainly understood
that it would be only a matter of time before the
US would turn its attention to redesigning Turkey.
That time has almost come. When things didn't
quite work out in Iraq, the US seems to have
decided to go for double or nothing by targeting
Iran (and Syria) with the expectation that if Iran
(and Syria) falls, the 'moderate' Arabs would have
even less strategic value to the US and be in a
weaker bargaining position with regards to
demanding that the US put pressure on Israel in
peace talks. If Iran were to fall, Turkey would
also be weakened and be vulnerable to more
"Anglo-American" pressure. While Iran is being
squeezed by the US, Turkey is facing again an
existential choice similar to the one indicated by
Bhadrakumar and similar to the one it faced when
it rejected helping the US invade Iraq. Given what
has transpired in the region since 2003, there
should be no uncertainty or risk as to what Turkey
should do. The US has to fail in both Iraq and
Iran, and a very good first step in that direction
is for Turkey to halt US use of the "Turkish air
base that is a vital conduit for supplying US
forces in Iraq."
Abacus
USA (Oct 25, '07)
Re Iran looms over Turkey crisis
diplomacy [Oct 25] by M K Bhadrakumar.
I am at a loss concerning certain parts of this
article. First the article states "man has never
before in his bloody history waged preemptive war
against the spread of knowledge". What part of
"annihilating Israel" once this knowledge is fully
gained does Mr Bhadrakumar does not understand?
Secondly the part that states "The United States
came to Iraq from tens of thousands of kilometers
away. Why and for what purpose it came I cannot
say." Well I can. The World Trade Center was
destroyed by Islamic terrorists who came to the US
from tens of thousands of kilometers away - mainly
to wage war on the US and kill as many as they
can. The US has returned in kind. Iraq is a
success story because the US has destroyed that
nation and left it to kill each other in a bloody
civil war. The US has also caused the entire
Middle East to totter towards a regional war where
more of "them" will die. I believe this is a
clear-cut tit-for-tat. If the Islamic terrorists
decide to cause more harm in the US then the
Middle East can expect more violence from the US.
This is called simple common sense. The Middle
East has treated the US like the "Great Satan". It
is time we REALLY act like one.
Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
Clinton, Louisiana
USA (Oct 25, '07)
[Re Ahmadinejad, Iran's
Putin?, Oct 25] Kaveh L Afrasiabi's
underlying theme is that it takes a successful
leader to be an international role model. Iran
isn't the only country whose leaders look to the
Kremlin for guidance. For several years now,
Israel's leaders have been making regular trips to
Moscow to find out what to do. With the same
regularity, Israel's leaders have been making
trips to Washington to tell the White House what
to do, thus showing that the Kremlin's influence
ranks two steps higher than Washington's. This is
partly due to the growing power of Israel's
Russian immigrants, who are less blinkered by
ideology or religiosity than political leaders in
the US are. Once an opinion becomes generally
known and accepted, its days are numbered: in the
US, the so-called Zionist lobby is currently
recognized as wielding outsized clout. But that
clout is already useless because the American
leaders who kowtow to it fail to deal with the
world as it is.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
USA (Oct 25, '07)
Perna Mankad's Sanctions on Iran a prelude to
conflict? [Oct 24] reminds me of the
time Lloyd Cutler, former White House legal
counsel during the Bill Clinton administration,
came to visit my law school to receive the 1995
Jefferson Medal in Law. He was a guest of my
international law class, and in response to a
comment by someone that economic sanctions are
ineffective, he stated that to the contrary they
can be very effective. He said it was the economic
sanctions against Japan that provoked the attack
against Pearl Harbor and gave Franklin D Roosevelt
the excuse he needed to unleash the US military
against both Germany and Japan. Cutler's comment
is supported by an authority no less than Henry
Stimson, Roosevelt's secretary of war and one of
the architects and proponents of the sanctions
regime, who confided in his diary after a meeting
of the war cabinet, "The question was how we
should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing
the first shot without allowing too much danger to
ourselves." After the attack on Pearl Harbor,
Stimson confessed that "my first feeling was of
relief ... that a crisis had come in a way which
would unite all our people." The foregoing may be
a surprise to many, and indeed it was a surprise
to the class and even the professor. Eminent
historian and political economist Robert Higgs has
written: "Don’t bother to ask the typical
American what US economic warfare had to do with
provoking the Japanese to mount their attack,
because he won’t know. Indeed, he will have no
idea what you are talking about." The label of
ignorance on the topic of economic warfare most
probably cannot be applied to US officials.
However, their understanding of history might
actually be terrible liability in this case. Has
it occurred to anyone that maybe the Iranians want
to be attacked or could live with an attack? Could
it be that the one that would get hurt the most
would be the US, and that China, Russia, and Iran
might all benefit substantially from an attack?
One cannot help wondering whether anyone in the US
still thinks strategically anymore. As a very wise
friend used to say, "don't bet on a donkey in a
horse race".
Abacus USA (Oct 24,
'07)
I
thoroughly enjoyed Chalmers Johnson's excellent
book review [Intellectual fallacies of the
'war on terror', a review of The Matador's Cape: America's
Reckless Response to Terror by Stephen Holmes,
Oct 24] However, I have a bone to pick with what's
implied by the book's title. I don't for a minute
believe that the US government was goaded, like a
dumb brute, into reckless action following the
events of September 11. For one thing, no
competent politician anywhere could ever have
truly conceived that an outfit like al-Qaeda might
pose a credible threat to any well-organized
modern state. As has been amply demonstrated in
Iraq and elsewhere, Sunni terrorists are a threat
mostly to themselves and to their fellow
countrymen. Coordinated international policing is
all it takes to permanently frustrate al-Qaeda,
and this has likewise been amply demonstrated. The
invasion of Iraq was far from an extemporaneous
expression of blind rage by the American
government. In fact, the invasion of Iraq and its
context, the so-called "war on terror", are quite
possibly the biggest premeditated scams ever
perpetrated by any government anywhere.
Al-Qaeda’s attack merely provided a golden
opportunity for the well-organize and well-funded
army of darkness that has subverted America's
better destiny in our own time. The latter, a
consortium of neocons, Zionists and evangelicals,
has morphed a nation that should rightly have been
humanity's standard bearer into a malignant,
metastasizing military hegemon. Sad to say,
Chalmers Johnson is probably right, the US seems
headed into a century of continuous, unnecessary
and calamitous warfare with no end in sight. Sic transit gloria mundi,
I guess.
Jose R Pardinas
San Diego, California (Oct 24,
'07)
Donald
Kirk has given us a flavor of campaigning Korean
style in Korean race pitting capitalism
against conscience [Oct 20]. It is not
as though two mighty forces are trying to grind
the other down however. We are seeing former
minister of unification Chung Dong-young, the New
Democratic Party's hopeful, jockeying to narrow
the strong lead of the candidate of the Grand
National Party Lee Myung-bak's strong lead in the
polls before the presidential elections in
December. Chung who is hoping to succeed the lame
duck Roh Moo-hyun is playing the "Sunshine Policy"
card. Yet, it seems as though it were an immutable
law in politics that as the date of the December
19 elections nears, the polls will and do show a
tightening in the race for South Korea's top
office. As Kirk documents, the margins that
propelled both Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun to
office, are quite slim indeed. And in the present
race, they may realistically be the same again.
The shadow of detente with North Korea no doubt
looms large over the elections, yet both Chung and
Lee are realists, and they prefer stability in
their backyard to confrontation with Pyongyang, in
spite of a recent claim that South Korean military
vessels have violated its territorial waters
(which raises eyebrows over the Northern Limit
Line in the Yellow Sea as stated in the joint
communiqué of the October inter-Korean summit).
Kirk mentions the preference of South Korea's chaebol for Lee.
Nonetheless, they are woof and warf of Seoul's
economic and political infrastructure, and whoever
occupies the Blue House, is certain to respect
with a large or short hand, the mighty engine
which has catapulted South Korea into a mighty
first-world economy. The victor in the December
elections will have more or less to continue the
Sunshine Policy, which has broad appeal among
South Korea's voters.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Oct 24, '07)
Please remind Wu Zhong
[How bourses bring democracy to
China, Oct 17 ] that stock markets,
like all other market forces, are plutocratic and
have nothing to do with democracy (as today's
China vividly demonstrates). Those who say that
stock markets are democratic are pushing a twisted
delusion, as the power of one-person one-vote is
antithetical to entrenched financial interests.
Chris
Laprise (Oct 23, '07)
[Spengler wrote in Why does Turkey hate
America?, Oct 23] ... "just as the
Saarland chose to join France rather than Germany
in 1947" ... The Saar is part of Germany still
today. Maybe some fact checking would do Spengler
some good.
Peter Moritz (Oct 23,
'07)
Thank
you. Other Saar-saavy readers have also brought
this to our attention. Our sincere apologies. - ATol
Your article Turkey fears Kurds, not
Armanians [Spengler, Oct 16] is far
from expressing the reality. The author seems to
have to basic knowledge of Middle East history and
politics, [but] expresses only one side of the
story as the one and only truth and tries to
create a ''reality'' in the minds of the readers.
Asia Times Online in my opinion should be equal
and fair to all ideas but maintain the truth as
well. Such assertations put forward thousands of
miles away usually are far from being the reality
in a region like the Middle East and I believe you
owe an apology to the Turks.
Savas
Bilecikli (Oct 23, '07)
[Re China: Where the dull lead the
dynamic, Oct 23] Kent Ewing made a
valid observation - the Chinese Communist Party's
national congress is a dull affair. Appearance
aside, however, substantive results do emerge from
this "insipid masquerade". Mr Ewing noted, "It is
clear that the Chinese people are ready for a
change. Most of them paid no attention to the
soporific goings-on in the Great Hall this past
week." Well, maybe the people paid no attention
because they trusted that the government would
continue on the present path of economic
liberalization, and that was all they really cared
about. If they had really been pining for a
political change, wouldn't they have craned their
necks to sniff the party flavor emanating from the
congress? The author remarked that the Chinese
people "are far too busy doing the real work that
has led to China's remarkable economic rise and
new place on the world stage". I'm sure Mr Ewing
would agree that social progress doesn't happen
haphazardly, for even worker bees need a master
plan to properly do their job. I submit it's at
these soporific party congresses that the
blueprints for China's meteoric economic rise are
hatched. To be sure, few people would suggest that
the CCP is anywhere near perfect, and myriad
formidable challenges lie ahead that will test the
party's leadership; but even Mr Ewing conceded
that China "is a nation crowding in on the first
tier of world powers", this from a backward
country of a fraction of its current global
significance merely two decades ago. I trust
anyone with a decent sense of objectivity would
agree that the CCP leadership deserves no small
amount of credit for this remarkable achievement,
"insipid masquerade" and all.
John
Chen
USA (Oct 23,
'07)
[Re: Benazir's second
homecoming by M K Bhadrakumar, Oct 20].
M K Bhadrakumar has been an unbelievable addition
to Asia Times Online. He is by far the best
analyst for South Asia region anywhere. I hope
someone is paying attention to what he writes
because his proposed solutions are very perceptive
and practical. They are crucial for the peace in
Pakistan and for the prosperous region that we the
hapless and hopeless people have been waiting for.
Please keep up the good work. What a treat it is
to read his analysis, Thank you for giving him a
forum.
R Ahmed
Illinois, USA (Oct 22,
'07)
After reading the [Oct 20]
article Benazir's second
homecoming by your correspondent M K
Bhadrakumar that assigns rather specific roles to
the British and American governments in the return
of Benazir Bhutto to Pakistan, it occurred to me
to question the kind of evidence that Mr
Bhadrakumar can marshall to support these
allegations. Living in the UK I am quite surprised
that the British can pull off any such venture
without an embarassing slip-up or five; if indeed
Mr Bhadrakumar is correct and some members of this
government can still display competence from time
to time perhaps the flames of hope haven't
completely died in our country yet. As for the
reported American role in the process, oh please,
does anyone even remember when was the last time
the Bush administration achieved anything in the
region without ordering an airstrike?
Salt
Shaker (Oct 22, '07)
Dear Dinosaurs by
Chan Akya [Oct 20], and The Werewolves of
Inflation by The Mogambo Guru [Oct 20]
provided exceptionally witty, humorous, and
frightening commentary. Is the US already in a
recession? Is the BIG D far behind? The dinosaurs
prey [sic] for the werewolves.
Sharon
USA (Oct 22,
'07)
Syed
Saleem Shahzad's Bhutto bombing kicks off war
on US plan [Oct 20] failed to ask who
who will benefit most by demolishing pro-democracy
elements and derailing the democratic process in
Pakistan. Not the disenfranchised tribesmen in the
far flung frontier areas but the demons of
dictatorial dispossesion. Whenever moblization of
masses is poised to pick up some momentum, the use
of force, violence and intimidation attempts to
cow the people into passivity. Does someone care
about the consequential complications? By
tomorrow, the media will leave this sad episode
behind. The October 18 blasts in Karachi are aimed
to punish the hundreds and thousands of people who
voted with their feet for a change. This is not an
isolated incident. September 29 manifests how a
free hand was given to baton yeilding thugs to
suppress free expression. Instead of upholding the
rule of law, its custodians held up the baton.
Instead of tolerating the right to assemble,
authorities resorted to the might to disperse.
What kind of accomodation such blantant display of
heavy-handedness is supposed to Pakistan to? The
series of mishaps from March 8 (Chief Justice's
dismissal) to May 12 (12 killed in Karachi) and
September 10 (Nawaz Sharif's forced deportation)
to September 29 (brutal beating of lawyers and
journalists) suggest that there are some
perennially disposed to display power rather than
flexibility and accomodation that steer Pakistan
to tolerance and peaceful plural co-existence.
Yossri Zurkah (Oct 22,
'07)
I appreciate Indrajit Basu
writing India to curb foreign funds
deluge [Oct 19] and hoped he may have
been able to actually give us a clearer picture of
what exactly occurs when foreigners use
derivative-based instruments to "invest" in
foreign countries with growing economies. It
appears with each decade we can see that western
financial institutions are audiciously adept at
fraud from Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Junk Bonds, and
now CDO/CDLs which are enfolded into opaque
derivatives. Somehow - due to mass hypnosis or
pyschosis many countries still feel as if these
"assets" are beyond question - despite a plethora
of evidence to the contrary over decades. The
questions that would be of value to countries
currently being overloaded with foreign
investments should be looking to appraise the
quality of leveraged funds flowing into their
country. For example, what if Enron used its
market cap to successfully squeeze out other
competitors who could have actually finished
projects but did not participate in wholesale
fraud. Currently a lot of these derivatives are
based on subprime, and other shoddy paper and can
appear as billions of dollars of funds, and then
before being discovered buy a lot of manpulation
in foreign markets (especially developing ones) -
in essence transferring western incompetence for
continued and sustained poverty in the east, once
again. I would really like to know ... what
happens when the basis of the leveraged product
which forms the underpinning of the massive
foreign investment is found to be fraudulent? Does
the sovereign nation basically get stuck with
loss? For example when utilities, natural
resources etc are transferred to foreign entities?
I recall how Enron could use the US courts to
force India to pay for a product it did not
receive, but I have rarely seen any foreign
country which has been fleeced by foreign
investment actually recover any losses. These sort
of questions are particularly relevant as
infrastructure, economic fundamaentals, and
sovereignty of natural resources are all being
mortgaged (pun intended) to the highest bidder,
who may not only have a plethora of worthless fiat
currency but engages in duplicitous practices at
many levels ... to appear to be investing
tremendous sums into "developing" nations. I do
hope Henry CK Liu will tackle this important
question with his usual brilliance, brevity and
lucidity.
Sanjay
USA (Oct 22,
'07)
[Re: Bush's faith run over by
history, Oct 19] Mark Danner's
disclosure is certainly no revelation to anyone
now. I think that most of us against rushing into
war knew by early 2002 that Bush and his war had
gathered the force of a juggernaut and that he
would not be deterred by anything. The look in
Bush's eyes, the overwhelming support of the
corporate media - all spelled out war whether WMDs
were found or not, whether a million took to the
streets, or even if troops were not prepared
(which they were not). Those of us who staged
candle-lite vigils, asking for a full assessment
of Iraq's intentions before an attack, knew it was
a done deal. And now most Americans expect only
lies coming out of the mouth of this man, because
finally and almost numbly we have accepted his
lack of integrity, his lack of competence, his
committment to rich friends, and his lack of
compassion. And unfortunately we have accepted 15
more months of his bankrupt leadership.
Jim
Southern California (Oct 19,
'07)
[Re:
Nick Turse's Masters of war plan for next
100 years, Oct 16] It would be
interesting to have Mr Turse let us know whether
other powers, including Russia and China, are
pursuing research into urban operations equipment
and tactics described in the article. If they are
not pursuing this type of research, why not? The
reason I pose this question is because Robert
Gates, US Defense Secretary, told students at an
elite Russian military academy about a week ago
that much of the inspiration for the US military's
modernization in the 1980s came from Moscow. In a
rare appearance for a Pentagon leader at Russia's
Military Academy of the General Staff, Gates
outlined the history and implications of US
military transformation, saying the seeds of US
combat successes in the 1991 Gulf war were sown a
decade earlier with an infusion of new ideas on
using modern technologies to fundamentally change
the nature of warfighting. "What is less well
known, especially in America, is that much of the
original thinking on these matters was done by the
Soviet military as far back as the 1970s when
officers wrote about what was then called a
`military technical revolution' ", he said. Having
worked on a US military satellite program,
followed US weapons development and procurement as
described in the press for almost three decades, I
am concerned that our masters of war are doing
what we often do very well to our detriment,
taking a near-solution or far-solution (something
that can be produced only after substantial
research and development effort) and trying to
find a problem it can address even if the problem
is really not that significant. I say that because
the next war is not likely to be as easy as the
Iraq war making the prophesy of Duane Schattle,
the director of the Joint Urban Operations Office
at US Joint Forces Command, that "the war in the
streets of Iraq's cities [is]...the protopye for
tomorrow's battlespace" an inaccurate one. The
lessons we should be learning from the Iraq war
are not derived from examining our actual
experience, but rather from examining what our
opponents could very well do but did not do for a
reason that may not be applicable in the future.
It is this type of gap in analysis, preparation,
tactics and weapons development that led to
Israel's near-success (or near-defeat) in the
summer of 2006 at the hands of Hizbollah. Make no
mistake about it; the last four years in Iraq have
been a "cakewalk". US Lieutenant General Ricardo
S. Sánchez's remark that the Iraq war is a
"nightmare ... with no end in sight" is a little
disconcerting because the war has not really
started yet. The heat can be turned up much
higher. The next battlefield - which may very well
take place in Iraq - is likey to be a barely
predictable mutation of the Hizbollah and Israel
match, but "on steriods".
Abacus
USA (Oct 19,
'07)
Re:
Pakistan plans all-out war on
militants, [Oct 19] by Syed Saleem
Shahzad shows a ray of hope that the "shura" will
be defeated and forced to accept the ultimatum
that they have turned down. The article focuses
all the destructive power only in the Waziristan
area of Pakistan but the article also points out
that the "Shura has long been calling the shots in
Wazirisstan, imposing Sharia law (and this is most
important)and turning the area into a strategic,
command and control hub of global Muslim
resistance movements ..." This could also mean
that they have access to advanced weaponry and are
not just situated in the Waziristan area of
Pakistan but have "sleeper cells' across Pakistan.
If the purpose of this war is to irradicate them
out of Pakistan this would be a new paradigm which
the "shura" have not dealt with before. If the
Pakistani army is going to pull all stops in this
impending battle then one must accept the "Shura"
will do the same and the war will not be limited
to the Waziristan area alone but encompass all of
Pakistan.
Chrysantha
Wijeyasingha
Clinton,
Louisiana USA (Oct 19, '07)
"Iran and Russia are
today objects of American coercion, their national
security interests and objectives imperiled by the
US's post-9/11 militarism and its feudalistic
ossification of the international order," says
Kaveh L Afrasiabi in Caspian summit a triumph for
Iran [Oct 18]. I really feel that even
the saner sort of grand bourgeois would welcome a
standardized vocabulary, instead of such wild
instant metaphors as "feudalistic
ossification".
Rowan Berkeley (Oct 18,
'07)
[Re: Caspian summit a triumph for
Iran, by Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Oct 18] I
agree with Afrasiabi that from Iran's vantage
point, this summit was resounding success and a
complete turnaround from the disastrous Caspian
Sea summit of leaders in Ashghabat, Turkmenistan,
in 2002. This time, the five leaders bordering the
Caspian Sea with huge oil and natural gas reserves
agreed to set up an economic cooperation body that
will be watched by Western energy companies with
great interest and caution. If the new
organization should reach an agreement on how to
divide the Caspian’s waters, the littoral states
will seek technical help from the West for the
offshore drilling and further exploration, which
Russia is not sufficiently capable or
technologically advanced to provide. If that
should happen, Moscow and Washington will have an
intense struggle on routing the pipe lines with
White House has determined should bypass Russia.
President Putin is the first Russian leader since
Stalin met Churchill and Roosevelt in 1943 in
Tehran for their common interests during World War
II. This time Kremlin was interested in trying to
limit American political as well as economic
influence in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Kremlin and Tehran share common disgust for
President Bush’s belligerent foreign policy and
behaving like a thug and a bully boy who wants to
take over the world, particularly those regions
with rich oil wells and vast gas reserves. Iranian
President Ahemedinejad should taken some comfort
in out flanking his sworn enemy, pea brain, G W
Bush by creating a discord between him and
President Putin. Russia may not want Iran to be a
nuclear power but for the time being it is happy
opposing economic sanctions on Iran. Meanwhile,
Iran is advancing towards a nuclear weapon
capability, which it considers its God-given
right.
Saqib Khan
United Kingdom (Oct 18,
'07)
[Re: Multinationals fear US-China
trade wars, Oct 18] Let the trade war
begin. As far as I am concerned the multinationals
and the circus poodles in liberal and conservative
elite circles here in the United States have lead
this country into a economic and geo-political
state that has put this country at a global
disadvantage that it will probably never recover
from. The world is flat, according to Tom
Friedman. That is great when the flow of
opportunity is going in your favor. Tom Friedman
in a recent interview on the Charlie Rose show
said that he was the idealist's idealist. He
basically admitted to being two steps removed from
reality than the current one step removal
displayed by President Bush. In a documentary
Friedman narrated a few years ago to counter some
of the rhetoric from the John Kerry campaign he
toured through India in attempt to sensitize US
citizens to the human benefits of outsourcing. It
was cute but did nothing to sway me on the
benefits of watching my IT career go overseas.
Years later the real downside effects are still
being felt. The most revealing moment in the
documentary was when Friedman visited a rural
location to gives us his insight as to how
citizens of India will also feel the pain that US
citizens feel. He spoke of the woman selling
incense in India's rural economy that will be
displaced with the new and improved global
economy. The only problem is that the informal
economy of the incense maker represents the vast
majority of India's rank and file citizens. It
also represents the rank and file of most of the
developing world. That kind of dislocation causes
a lot of political problems. The problems are
going up the income food chain here in the States.
On China's stock markets and democracy. [ How bourses
bring democracy to China, Oct 17]
Wishful thinking. The stock market is a reflection
of the party as indicated by the stock holders
which reflects the goals of the congress. So
investment is an indirect reflection of party
strategy-global market hegemony. Let them cry all
they want at the WTO, the country is governed by a
bunch trade hacks guising as free market
operators.
Radnoti
USA (Oct 18,
'07)
I am
a keen reader of Pacific-Asian current affairs,
specifically in regards to development issues. I
have been increasingly concerned with the lack of
discussion on the matter of self-inflicted
Westernisation on the part of Chinese policy
makers. As a UK citizen of Japanese decent I have
found the blatant mimicking of all things Western
by both Japan and China painfully embarrassing.
For every step forward China makes it takes two
back. The increasing wealth of China is being used
to promote its inferiority to Western cultures.
This subservience is being immortalized in
Shanghai's infrastructure and architecture which
would leave a very poor message for future
generations. How can any citizen have pride in
one's country when their very homes, cities and
transportation systems are either modeled after
foreign artistic trends or explicitly designed by
foreigners? I urge you to publish more on this
subject ... a campaign for new artists and
philosophers is desperately needed to give
direction to the massive gains of the business
classes.
Dan Ishigaki
United Kingdom (Oct 18,
'07)
[Re:The geopolitical stakes of
the 'Saffron Revolution', Oct 17, by F
William Engdahl] Mr Engdahl is to be commended for
his work on the geopolitics of oil and gas, and
this article does much to illuminate the role of
these among the vagaries of US "democracy
promotion". However, the credibility of his work
is not helped by the presence of claims such as
that the US-India nuclear energy agreement
"legitimiz[es] India's open violation of the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty". India has not
violated anything here: it is a foundation of
international law that sovereign states cannot be
held in violation of treaties they have not agreed
to. Nor is the US in breach of its own NPT
obligations, so long as the technological
cooperation with India does not serve "in any way
to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear
weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire
nuclear weapons”"(Article 1). Washington’s
badgering of Iran is another story, of course.
Shane
Mulligan
Montreal,
Canada (Oct 17, '07)
[Re:The geopolitical stakes of
the 'Saffron Revolution', Oct 17, by F
William Engdahl] I have enjoyed reading your
coverage of Burma's Safforn Revolution these past
weeks. However, I was distressed to see you
posting such shoddy pieces as Mr Engdahl's
"analysis" of the geopolitics of Burma. Mr Engdahl
takes real facts about Burma's condition and
importance and invents a conspiracy behind it. It
is no secret that the government funds some
opposition figures and news sources, but that
certainly does not mean that the US orchestrated
the protests somehow. US intelligence couldn't
even determine if Iraq had WMD or not. Moreover,
if our interests in Burma so great, wouldn't the
US have sought to engage the regime rather than
put up sanctions, which are typically a sop to
domestic democracy interests. Would the primary
spokesperson on Burma policy really be Laura Bush?
Furthermore, his account bears no relation to the
facts I have heard about how US government
officials have reacted and the fact that the
revolution has failed. While I appreciate reading
different points of view, there are far too many
views on Burma based in reality to allow such
conspiracy-theorist nonsense on your site.
Dom
(Oct 17, '07)
[Re: Masters of war plan for next
100 years, Oct 16] It is often said
that the war in Iraq is a failure, that America
has lost. That is true, but it is not a failure
for the Pentagon and the defense industries. For
them it is an unmitigated success because it
boosts the war economy and has spurred R&D in
weapons technology, robotics, spyware and all the
other sciences of destruction and oppression. We
may be losing the war but we are developing war
technologies way beyond that of any other nation.
Our losses today will only increase our
stranglehold on power in the future. Our destiny
and our lifeblood is war. Democracy is ended.
Truly free elections are a thing of the past. We
are a National Security State. All politicians,
both Democrat and Republican must pass the war
litmus test, which is: Are nuclear weapons off the
table in the coming conflict with ... ? The
correct answer is: Nothing is off the table.
Success in war is everything. Although failure is
not the end either. Peace is the end and that
cannot be permitted under any circumstances. That
is why Bush is still treated with honor. He may
have failed but at least he did not bring peace.
Peace really scares us. It is much more than the
absence of war. It is a denial of our very
identity. America has become the symbol and the
champion of war on earth. Only through war can we
maintain our supremacy.
R Lafontaine
Youngstown, Ohio, USA (Oct 17,
'07)
I
really enjoyed reading [Spengler's Oct 16] Turkey fears Kurds, not
Armenians. The author showed a very
good understanding of the region, and its history.
It is very rare to come across such a meaningful
article. Thanks.
Ed (Oct 17, '07)
With regards to Spengler's
Oct 16 Turkey fears Kurds, not
Armenians, , it has always been a
surprise for me as a regular reader how
over-simplistic, dis- and misinformed and
Eurocentric Spengler's style is. It's the same in
this case. In the broadest sense, Spengler
full-heartedly accepts that nation-states in the
Middle East tend to disintegrate into ethnic
constituents. This is its destiny as Spengler
states (as any self-acclaimed 19th century
orientalist would do): "The Middle East has known
nothing but chaos for most of its history." Moving
from this a priori
premise Spengler decides to analyze the past, the
present and the future of Turkey, melting the
Kurdish and Armenian genocide problems into one
pot. First of all, the problem of Armenian
genocide is an issue of international politics,
not a historical one. There are conflicting sides
of historians and it seems that it will stay so
for the near future. The archives of Western
countries (particularly Germany) are still sealed
off to add more to this ambiguity. To jump into
easy and clear-cut conclusions with reference to
Wikipedia is immature. To reference Britanica or
Wikipedia for a political analysis can only be
acceptable in high-school. To claim that Kurdish
and Armenian "problems" is a single one is also
immature. For instance, in one of his latest
articles, Hrant Dink went on to claim that
Armenian genocide was executed by the Kurds, not
by Turks. What will we do with this statement
then? To see the history and the emergence of
nation-states as a pure ethnic matter is
inherently racist. History of political science
should have add a more dynamic and scientific ways
to understand political change, but for Spengler
time seems to stop somewhere in the early 19th
Century, while Marx was on the playground and
while industrial revolution and modernity were not
coined. To speak of Armenian genocide one should
know the details of World War I. Moreover one
should know that theoritical background of Ittihad
Terakki Party that ran the government at the time
is completely different than the Kemalist
ideology. That is why Enver Pasha died in the
Caucasia in a dream to unite all the Turkish
ethnicities, whereas Turkish Republic is based
upon a concept of "Turk" that is a term of the
people who set up the Republic. So theoritically
and practically Kurds are founding partners of the
Republic. To sum up, America is responsible for
the chaos in Middle EAst, contrary to what
Spengler says. So is Britain and so is France and
so is the Ottoman Empire ... But beyond these,
there are the failures of the Middle East itself
and the gains of its own history of modernity.
"Tragic flaw" is the conception that ethnic and
religious identities determine the history, the
present and the future. Spengler seems to learn a
lot from Huntington but not everyone reads the
same book!
Ogan Guner
Turkey (Oct 17,
'07)
[Re:
Spengler's Oct 16 Turkey fears Kurds, not
Armenians] A great article about Turkey
and their genocide problem. Please do not be
afraid to tell the truth. Also write something
about our "genius" president the Bushwhacker.
Thank you.
John M (Oct 17,
'07)
India's Congress party backs
off nuclear pact [Oct 16] was a
very interesting article by Siddharth Srivastava.
I've been following the twists and turns of
India's nuclear deal with the US, and it's
geopolitical implications, for some time. I always
believed the deal would be scuttled by the
American left. Especially at this late stage of
the game, who would have guessed the deal would
have been scuttled by the Indian side? My hunch is
it was Sonia Gandhi who brought this issue to
resolution. Interestingly, even though she stood
aside on the prime ministership, it seems she made
a new position and even more powerful position for
herself: as a kind of modern day Queen Victoria,
Empress of India. She only has to say the word and
everyone listens ... just like the old Queen
Victoria, only better, because the old Victoria
never donned a sari.
Francis
Quebec, Canada (Oct 17,
'07)
With regards to
Spengler's [Oct 16] Turkey fears Kurds, not
Armenians, Spengler concludes his
article by stating that his hoped for
disintegration of the Middle East is not happening
because the "little men behind the desks in
Washington do not have the stomach for it". It is
ironic that Spengler provides this explanation for
why disintegration is not happening even after
having referred to the Ottoman's involvement in
World War I as a historical parallel to current
events. Disintegration is not happening and will
not happen even if the "little men" wanted it
because, unlike Spengler, at least with regards to
the matter at issue, the Turks and Arabs seem to
have learned much from history. In WWI, the Turks
made the mistake of allying themselves with what
later emerged as the "losing side." The Turks are
not about to make that same mistake of siding with
the losing side and lose some of the little that
they have left. If Spengler was wondering why the
Turks didn't help the US invade Iraq, now he
knows. If he's been wondering why they are not
ignoring the Kurdish terrorists (who have been
caught with weapons allegedly "illegally imported"
into Iraq by Blackwater which is now the subject
of a US government illegal trafficking
invesigation) as the US would like, now he knows.
Similarly, it is apparent to some observers - but
apparently not Spengler - that Arabs recognize
that history is repeating itself, and for some
time now, they have had a choice with regards to
propping up a decaying world order - imposed to
the extent that the US can still impose one - or
expanding their strategic relationships in order
to traverse safely this troublesome period in
history. The earlier period of history is one that
is quite familiar to my family [as my] grandfather
was a Turkish captain and my great-grandfather a
Turkish general in World War I. Until they died,
they used to decry the lack of unity and
sophisticated strategic thinking that existed back
then among leaders and movements that should have
known better. Were they still alive, I am sure
they would be happy to note that mindless
obeisance to the will of Western powers, such as
that extended to the United Kingdom 90 some years
ago, is not being repeated today. Where Spengler
imagines or hopes for fragmentation and
disintegration, there is greater unity and
concerted action. Turkey today has better
strategic relationships with Arab countries than
the Ottoman Empire had with Arabs at its height,
rather than its demise. Turkey has enviable
relations with near neighbors Greece and Iran, and
with Russia, it has very good relations that are
only improving with time. At no time in the last
59 years, have Turkey, Iran, and the Arab world
discussed as often the matters of Israel and the
Kurds and possessed the current remarkable level
of agreement with regards to those matters. The
US's closest NATO ally in the area, Turkey, and
its closest non-NATO allies, the Arab Gulf states,
have all publicly refused to jump on the US's
bandwagon with regards to Iran. In Sophocles' Antigone, Creon ponders
whether he "rules for himself or others".
Disintegration is not happening and cannot happen
because the rulers in the Middle East are choosing
to rule in the interest of their peoples rather
than the interests of the latter-day Creon, the
US. It's that simple, Spengler.
Abacus
USA (Oct 16,
'07)
[Re:
Turkey fears Kurds, not
Armenians, Oct 18] A definite
Spenglerian "new era cartograhpic" epic
brushstroke of what was hinted at in the infamous
Clean Break project authored by a coterie of Bebe
Netanyahu's neocons. Or the viable Middle East as
envisaged by big men behind little desks in Tel
Aviv and DC. An Israel that stretches from the
banks of the Nile in Egypt all the way east to the
banks of the Euphrates which will undo most of the
"dirty old work of the WWI era cartographers".
According to the Spenglerian sage Iran, Iraq,
Syria and even Turkey are not viable entities and
therefore will not hold together much longer or
not as long as all the immigrants from Poland,
Russia, Rumania, Estonia, Czchoslvakia, and other
selected entities last in the self-supporting and
self-perpetuating creation of the UN in 1948.
Given his penchant one can imagine what his
conclusions would have been if he had witnessed
the emergence of separate states into the present
USA.
Armand DeLaurell (Oct 16,
'07)
[Re:
India's Congress party backs
off nuclear pact, Oct 16] Unfortunately
India's political elite get their kicks out of
blind anti-Americanism. the left would rather
India be China's "little brother'" than show any
kind of support for the US. They forget that
people in the US can still say and do pretty much
what they want to even to this day whereas China
just crushes the slightest dissent. They and the
"intellectuals" are a couple of decades behind in
their yearning for a "worker's paradise". They
should spend a year as ordinary people in North
Korea or even in China and see what it would
actually mean for the average citizen. The only
thing they are bothered about is staying in power.
Prosperous well informed people wouldn't vote for
them if woken up abruptly from deep sleep! So
their "stand" isn't surprising at all.
Kaushik
Venkatasubramaniyan
Indian living in Budapest,
Hungary (Oct 16, '07)
I have spent a number
of hours on the website after randomly clicking
to it from a Google search using China as
part of the keyword. China is on my mind to the
point of obsession. The focus of that obsession is
the geopolitical situation in relation to the
trade issue with the US. Personally, I am of the
school that thinks it is in serious need of review
and some change is warranted. Since I am a US
citizen I naturally have a bias. The articles I
have read so far are outstanding and the
perspective is refreshing. Coverage in the fashion
you present is almost non-existent here in the US
mainstream media. I pay close attention to current
events across the board and have a good idea of
what is being covered and how. My problem with
China is the manner they use the party apparatus
to advance a geo-political agenda using market
forces that are extensively manipulated by the
government. The sovereign funds, various hedge
funds, and financial institutions originating in
the country are of particular interest. I am
fairly new with the internal market dynamics of
China. The politics is nothing new and is
something that I have observed for a period of
decades. My limited understanding is that China is
basically a neo-communist state allowing just
enough freedom for a market to finance its global
hegemony along with its friends in the Kremlin. In
some ways it's logical when considering what sits
in the Whitehouse. The global village euphoria
with the collapse of the Berlin Wall followed up
with President Clinton came to an abrupt end in
2000. It seems there is global understanding of
the downside potential of an insular US presidency
dominating an ineffective congress. This condition
would make anybody nervous including myself. It
has also weakened this countries geo-political
advantage as outlined in some the articles I have
read and followed up on through the links in the
forums. My specific interest is in the market
dynamics of the emerging command economies that
seem to defy the free market enthusiasts here in
the US. I have trouble understanding how we are
supposed to compete when every aspect of the
competitor is being rigged in a fashion that is
illegal or politically unacceptable here. The
banking and investment sector is where a whole lot
of mischief can occur. Transparency is a real
issue and something that is difficult to obtain. I
read [Henry C K Liu's Oct 12-13 two part series on
captalism, SUPER CAPITALISM, SUPER
IMPERIALISM]. Much of it was material
that I have observed and felt. Corporate and
multinational consolidation leading to income
consolidation. This seems to be the global trend.
However, the approach the author uses is
interesting. It has aspects of China's
perspective. Dollar hegemony in relation to global
hegemony seems a bit of a stretch when considering
what China has to offer. Is the forum permanently
closed? I would like to post some comments on the
various articles but the FAQ says its been locked
out except for current members. I can understand
this from reading the India, Pakistan, and
religious exchanges. It is definitely something
that no wants to spend a lot of time on
administering. Not pretty.
Andre
Radnoti (Oct 15, '07)
Very
glad to have you at ATol and thank you for your
kind comments. As for your forum question, if you
go to this link and follow
the instructions you should be able to find forum
satisfaction. - ATol
I wonder if Al Gore had
become the United States president instead of
George W Bush if he would have won the Nobel Peace
Prize or followed Bush's disastrous war course and
made humanity suffer most grievously. I believe he
would had made the earth a better and more
peaceful world for all, not just for neo-cons. One
can only weep concerning the wrong choices
Americans make for their presidents. Al Gore, keep
doing your noble work as a "mission". Americans
learn from your mistakes!
Abdullah Mustafa
Billaly
Peshawar,
Pakistan (Oct 15, '07)
[Re: Malaysia takes the rock out
of music, Oct 13] The American singer
Beyonce Knowles has given a black eye to
Malaysia's 'Islam Hidhari' [Civilizational Islam].
She flatly refused to comply to Malaysia's dress
code for entertainers. She simply crossed the
Malacca Straits to Indonesia, Malaysia's Muslim
neighbor and at times rival, which, no less
Islamic, has not imposed dress restrictions on
visiting rock stars. 'Islam Hidhari' is but the
expression of the paralyzing grip of Islam on
Malaysia. Its thrust is more political than
religious in a society where the ruling party
UNMO, which is power for the last 50 years, is
wracked with corruption, nepotism, cronyism and
criminality. Abdullah Badawi, Malaysia's prime
minister, is soft spoken but he carries a big
stick of cultural conformity to mask the strong
currents of discontent, among the Islamic
fundamentalists and the more conventional Muslim
establishment, boiling just below Malaysia's
seemingly placid surface. Let's take a more recent
example: on the eve of Hari Raya Aid Id Fitri, a
Malaysian doctor landed on the space station Mir.
You would have thought that the news would have
been an advertisement for a 50 year old nation
putting a Malaysian in space. You would be very
wrong. All the world press reported was in which
direction would he face towards Mecca, as he
circled Earth and would he pray five times a day.
The scientific nature of the Malaysian astronaut
took a back seat to religion, and that is the very
essence of 'Islam Hidhari', which bowdlerizes and
regularizes political correction for Malaysians
and foreigners alike, in order to maintain a
political order which is more and more out of step
with the realities of the modern world.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Oct 15,
'07)
Only
recently have I started reading the Asia Times
Online and I am very impressed with the quality of
your articles. I find myself making hard copies
for my files. Is it possible to set up a more
printer friendly version where there is a full
page of text, minus the graphics?
Robert Billyard (Oct 15,
'07)
Welcome to ATol and thank you
for your kind words. We are painfully aware of the
hard copy problem and our Internet gurus are busy
rewiring the hamsters to make ATol more
printer-friendly for all our readers, old and new
alike. - ATol
Although I have thousands of
reasons to hope that Richard Daughty is right
regarding the future of silver, [The Rodney Dangerfield of
commodities, Mogambo Guru, Oct 11] his
credibility would be much enhanced if he knew
something about the great capitalist, Bernard
Baruch, who he labels a "fascist". Even if
DaughtyˇŻs research is limited to perusing
Wikipedia.org, - should he not wonder why Baruch
served as a trusted advisor to both President
Woodrow Wilson and President Franklin D Roosevelt.
Then again, some say ˇ°The New Dealˇ± was a
fascist deal. Regarding Alan Greenspan, Daughty
once again exhibits his limited understanding of
history and our government. Clearly, Daughty
over-estimates the unilateral powers bestowed upon
the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Perhaps the
reason ˇ°The Rodney Dangerfield of
commoditiesˇ± gets no respect, is because he
earns none.
Prophiteer (Oct 15,
'07)
[Re:
Korean Holy Ghost descends on
China, Oct 12] Jakob Cambria opined
that "Embracing Christianity in the sprawling,
economically active cities of China, is more an
expression of a growing middle class which finds
little aid and comfort in a decadent Communist
ideology." This is a curious notion considering
the current middle class is the product and main
beneficiary of ChinaˇŻs economic
great-leap-forward. Besides, the "decadent
Communist ideology" has long ceded center stage to
more practical mantras of "to get rich is
glorious", "the four represents", by former
Chinese presidents Deng XiaoPing and Jiang Zeming,
and current president Hu JingtaoˇŻs
"harmonious society". Truth of the matter is,
notwithstanding the fact that the rising economic
tide hasnˇŻt yet lifted all boats, the
majority of the Chinese people understand and
embrace the leadership of the current regime. This
point is driven home by the recently released Pew
Global Attitudes Project, which found 83% of the
people in China to be satisfied with the current
state of the country and 89% being satisfied with
the current government. Understandably, after
decades of religious inactivity, many in China are
seeking outlets to express their spiritual
curiosity; whether their fulfillment is to be
found through Christianity remains to be seen.
After all, the Chinese civilization had existed
and flourished for thousands of years prior to the
birth of Christianity (or the introduction of
Buddhism, for that matter), guided by
autochthonous understanding of the universe,
nature, and humanity. (Examples of this wisdom
include the Yi Jing/I Ching and the Yin and Yang
concept. The latter, while beautifully simplistic
in presentation, represents one of the most
profound philosophical insights ever achieved by
humanity.) Meanwhile, the Chinese government seems
sufficiently cognizant of the greater spiritual
and psychological needs of the hoi polloi during
these turbulent times of an economic interregnum,
and is trying to rekindle popular interests in
classic Chinese philosophers such as Confucius and
their teachings. To be sure, the spread of
Christianity in China bears close watching as this
development will have far-reaching implications
for not only the Middle Kingdom, but also the
world.
John Chen
USA (Oct 15,
'07)
Saqib Khan's comments
[Oct 11] on Kent Ewing's Lust lost in (Beijing's)
Translation [Oct 6] should open up an
interesting debate among educators, government
bureaucrats, theologians and others. Most families
have their own social "norms" and "rules", and so
do communities and by extension countries. Since
everything in the world is in a state of flux, why
not push the frontier of democracy in accepting
showing of sex beyond the cinema screen, to
promote progressiveness, democracy, and tolerance?
Is it the "bloody business of bureaucrats" to
prohibit an impassioned couple from engaging in
sexual intercourse in the park, in the tiny world
of oblivion meaning no harm to others?
Psychologists should have a field day debating
what should come next, as we are witnessing and
condoning sex on the screen, not just "talking"
about it. So let us resign to each country's
handling of, and attitude toward, its own social
norms, at least not openly encouraging what some
individuals would want. Call it hypocrisy if you
want, as we are all more or less hypocrites.
Seung
Li (Oct 12, '07)
Henry CK Liu's critique of
[former US labor secretary Robert B] Reich's
economic views [ PART 1: A
Structural Link, Oct 12] in a few
decades will you remind of discussions of medieval
philosophers about the difference of angels and
archangels. They will be hopelessly irrevelant.
Why? Because overproduction and the search for new
consumers will be a problem of the past because
cheap energy, not manual labor produces today's
goods. And there will be no cheap energy
(especially oil) anymore.
Joseph Bodenhofer
Austria (Oct 12,
'07)
[Re:
Sunny Lee's Korean Holy Ghost descends on
China, Oct 12] Christianity came to
Korea from China. It took firm root there.
Pyongyang, lest we forget, was once known as the
second Jerusalem. It also became an expression of
nationalism and opposition to oppressive Japanese
colonial rule. It is not for nothing that among
the leaders of the March 1, 1919 demonstrations
for independence ... were prominent Christians.
So, is it little wonder that evangelical
Christians, in turn, are bringing Christianity
back to China? Sunny Lee worries that if the
religious fervor of these Koreans who preach or
proselytize in China would result in an Afghan
stand-off? He needed not worry too much nor too
long. The type of Christianity that the Reverend
Jiggu George Bogi preaches, solemnly encourages
quietism and a withdrawal from political activity.
The Paraclete [Holy Spirit] may descend on his
flock but they are hardly the twelve apostles who,
though they writhe and wail in an agitated and
confused manner, will after services go out to
preach glad tidings [and] with overthrowing the
political order in mind. Embracing Christianity in
the sprawling, economically active cities of
China, is more an expression of a growing middle
class which finds little aid and comfort in a
decadent Communist ideology.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Oct 12,
'07)
When I read something
as patently false as [Why RussiaˇŻs mum on
Myanmar, Oct 10] "Russia, which is
currently one of the world's leading exporters of
natural gas, is on the path to achieving near
monopoly on the fuel source throughout Europe", I
just wonder if people writing it ever bothered
with a thing called "research". Probably not.
Which is puzzling, considering that in the age of
the Internet the truth is often only a mouse click
away. Here is a real picture of Russian
'monopoly". Today Moscow supplies 27% of EU's gas
and a similar share of its oil consumption. The
word "monopoly" shouldn't be used in describing
this situation even as a metaphor. But however bad
that is, it gets worse, as the [anonymous] author
continues, "It (Russia) most likely utilizes its
growing access to Myanmar's oil and natural gas
deposits to drive forward its apparent aim of
monopolizing Europe's energy industry". Even
without looking at the map of the world that
sounds impossible. And it surely is. The most
disturbing point in all of this is not that people
just throw around their own erroneus opinions
dressed up as facts, but that all of this nonsense
is written by someone who obviously regards
himself or herself, - and may very well be
regarded by others - as an "expert". Clearly, it's
not the case. But at least the writer had some
sensibility to avoid identifying self by name.
Must be an easy way to make a living.
Oleg
Beliakovich
Seattle,
Washington USA (Oct 11, '07)
[Re: Lust lost in (Beijing's)
translation, Oct 6] I do agree with
Kent Ewing that the Chinese people do have sex and
should be quite lusty about it, and who
isnˇŻt? Their government can impose
censorship, stop provocative selling, ban sexy
adverts and do whatever it likes but what happens
in peopleˇŻs bedrooms is no bloody business of
the bureaucrats. Probably, Chinese civil servants
in gray suits with laptops watch more pornography
than a man going into a cinema or to see a pole
dancer slithering down the long pole ... Why not
talk about great films and great literature - sex
and all, as Kent said.
Saqib Khan
UK (Oct 11, '07)
Do you have someone on
hand to help wipe the froth away from Chan Akya's
mouth after his [Oct 6] rant [Ram-ming the Indian
economy] against Indian communists?
More pertinently, after railing against American
home owners, the world's central bankers and now
communists, the question begs - does your
columnist actually LIKE anyone? I think we should
be told.
Salt (Oct 10,
'07)
Of
course, the recent anniversary the death of "Che"
Guevara has spawned a surfeit of articles on the
departed revolutionary and his epic existence,
amongst them Pepe Escobar's Aug 10 pean [Che lives] to the
murdered demi-god. While I too find Che an
attractive figure (despite his many unattractive
aspects), I can't help but wonder how much of my
attachment stems from emotionalism; his romantic
visage (dramatized ad
infinitum by many artists and illustrators),
his defection from bourgeois life (he was, after
all, trained as a physician and what could be more
stolidly burgermeister than that calling?) and his
quixotic and obviously doomed revolutionary
enterprises in Congo and Bolivia all haunt those
of us condemned to live a prosaic existence as
wage slaves. If only I ... well, you get the idea.
Nonetheless, and lest we move too rapidly to full
deification, let me point out two needless
embellishments of the Che legend by Sr Escobar.
First, Che's actual last words are entirely a
matter of speculation. Second, Che might have been
many things, but a "humanist" he was not. As for
the first point, Jon Lee Anderson in his
definitive biography, Che:
a Revolutionary Life reports a somewhat more
prosaic version of the last words legend.
According to Anderson's research, Che reportedly
said to Mario Teran, "I know you've come to kill
me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a
man." Felix Rodriguez, the CIA goon detailed to
the Bolivian military unit which tracked the
exhausted and dispirited revolutionary, has
exploited and embellished this event to his own
benefit many times and he appears to have been the
original source for the testimony. Rodriguez also
stole Che's Rolex GMT-Master wristwatch. Teran
recently underwent eye surgery (gratis, by Cuban
physicians) and so has every self-interested
reason to amplify Che's epitaph. Despite all that,
Escobar's version is the most romantic and
sentient of the lot and implies a good deal of
rehearsal by Che or newly recalled eloquence by
Teran, decades after the event. Second, Che might
have been many things, but a "humanist" he was
not. His admittedly fair treatment of some members
of the defeated Batista army in 1959 at La Cabana
was negated by his imprecation that,
"Individualism must disappear" and the retributive
"revolutionary justice" by which he attempted to
carry that warning out. He candidly stated his
proposed method in a February, 1959 letter ("The
executions by firing squads are not only a
necessity for the people of Cuba, but are also an
imposition by the people"). So, Che imposed "the
will of the people" and shot plenty of them
without trial. Despite all that, Che's insights on
failed revolution (the long-suppressed diary, The African Dream) ought
to be required reading for anyone attempting to
meddle in African politics. Along with that, his
Guerilla Warfare and
Bolivian Diaries
should serve as dire warnings on lessons learned
and later forgotten. Two closing comments: the
commercialization of Che's image and visage began
almost immediately after his death, initially in a
poster advertisement for the tres chic, Evergreen
Review ("The Spirit of Che lives in the New
Evergreen"), circa 1968. Next, the avatar of the
French Revolution and creator of "The Terror",
Robespierre, remarked to the Legislative Assembly
in 1792, "No one loves armed missionaries." Che,
if he knew that from reading it, forgot it. If he
didn't know of that stellar insight, he certainly
learned it ... the hard way.
Keith
Comess (Oct 10, '07)
In Koreas have something to
cheer about [Oct 6] Donald Kirk grouses
about South Korea's president Roh Moo-hyun's
triumphal coup de theatre
at last week's second inter-Korean summit in
Pyongyang. Even the skeptical Anna Fifield, the
London Financial Times journalist in the two
Koreas had to admit that the meeting's final
statement marked a important stage in the changing
and growing relations between Seoul and Pyongyang.
It is easy for Kirk to disparge Mr Roh and the
delegation he brought with him to Pyongyang.
Certainly, it included his closest associates, but
also representatives from Seoul's financial and
business communities, as well as poets and
writers. This speaks well for Mr Roh's wider ideas
about enlarging ... Korean contacts. But who are
these influential Koreans who remain nameless, but
for the few identified names who often frequent
Kirk's reporting on Korea? There may be some truth
in the views that they express, but today's final
communique is not the 1992 communique between then
president Kim Dae-jung and North Korea's chairman
Kim Jong-il. Much water has flown under historical
bridges since then, and at moments they churned
violent and menacing owing to the ideological
driven policy towards South and North Koreas.
President Bush has done much to snub Mr Roh and to
turn Mr Kim into a member of the nuclear club.
Kirk takes it for granted that Lee Myung-bak, the
conservative presidential candidate in the
forthcoming December elections, will be the
winner. But that may not be so. And if it is, will
Mr Lee keep closely to election rhetoric as to how
he would deal with Kim Jong-il? Winners do tailor
election promises to meet the needs of the office
they ascend to. Kirk forgets that Mr Lee is known
as an arch pragmatist, and will act accordingly as
the new president. He will not go against the will
of the majority of South Koreans on the relaxation
of tensions with the North, nor will he impede the
expansion of South Korea's businesses interests in
the DPRK. Although president Sygman Rhee vetoed
his representative at the 1954 Gevena conference,
General Choi Duk-shin, from signing the Armistice
agreement, the US has always insisted that Seoul
will be a recognized signee of any peace
agreement. This is a position that Henry Kissinger
insisted on more than 30 years ago, but China and
North Korea demurred. Today matters have changed,
and it doesn't seem a stumbling block to
concluding a peace treaty; however, it looks as
though the US will put the breaks on any move in
that direction as long as George W Bush sits in
the White House. This is another story.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Oct 10,
'07)
The
otherwise anonymous "Jakob Cambria," whose main
occupation seems to be that of letter-writer to
Asia Times Online, again is singling out one of my
pieces. While I am honored by the special
attention that he devotes to my work, I wish to
correct him on a couple of points, factual and
otherwise. First, in reference to his previous
commentary, I'm a resident of Washington DC and
visited there last summer to spend time with my
sons and friends and take care of repairs on my
home. I did not talk to neo-cons and pro-Israel
types, as he suggested, though I did go to a
briefing by Christopher Hill at the State
Department, visited the Korea Society in NY a
couple of times, attended speeches by Kim Dae-jung
and General Casey, US army chief of staff, at the
National Press Club, of which I happen to be a
member, and was a panelist on a couple of TV
gabfests. I hope this full accounting responds to
Mr Cambria's suspicions about why I was in
Washington. I might add I would be glad to see him
as well but understand he prefers to remain
anonymous - "secretive," as one contact put it.
That said, I should point out that Kim Dae-jung
visited Pyongyang in June 2000, not 1992, as Mr
Cambria seems to think. Regarding those who prefer
to remain "anonymous" - not counting, of course,
Mr Cambria - I quoted three people by name in my
latest piece, including one well known defender of
Mr Roh's policies. Obviously I didn't have space
to go on dropping names. Again, if Mr Cambria
wants more names, he's welcome to get in touch
with me, and I'll be glad to help whenever he
chooses to surface and reveal who he is. Regarding
Lee Myung-bak, he remains the front-runner for
president in December, but, as everyone knows, a
lot can happen between now and then. I first ran
into him while researching a book on the Hyundai
group 15 years ago (Korean
Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung) and have
interviewed him twice, once while he was mayor of
Seoul and again last March. I have stated more
than once that I doubt if he'll want to turn the
clock back on South Korean relations with North
Korea. On the basis of his background as chairman
of Hyundai Construction in its heyday, he can be
expected to want to pursue trade and investment
with North Korea. He also may be expected to want
South Korea to profit from these ventures -
something that has yet to happen. Regarding US
recognition of South Korea's role in a peace
treaty, that's obvious. The question is what role
North Korea will want the other parties, including
South Korea, to play. Mr Cambria may be a better
forecaster than I. Korean history has been full of
surprises. All I can say with much certainty is
that we may expect more surprises, for better and
also for worse. Again, any time Mr Cambria wants
to reveal his identity and get in touch with me
when I'm back in the States or he's in Korea (I
have no idea if he ever gets here), I would be
glad to discuss these issues at greater length.
Meanwhile, I look forward to more of his
(anonymous) missives. - Don
Kirk (Oct 10,
'07)
I
read [Syed Saleem Shahzad's Oct 5 article, Taliban poised for a big
push] regarding a possible offensive by
the Taliban before the end of Ramadan a few days
from now. I would just like to know where you
obtained this information and if anything new has
been reported, because I've never even heard a
report of the Taliban possessing 20,000
fighters.
Alexander Garcia (Oct 10,
'07)
It is
a post-Ramadan offensive (written clearly in the
article). It has been reported many times that
alone in North Waziristan and South Waziristan,
the total number of Taliban (al-Qaeda, Pakistani
Taliban and Afghan Taliban) are nearly 50,000, let
alone thousands of other fighters in southwestern
and southeastern Afghanistan. - Saleem Shahzad (Oct 10,
'07)
[Re: Lust lost in (Beijing's)
translation, by Kent Ewing, Oct 6]
There is a great deal of interest in the movie Sex, Caution which was
directed by the famed Ang Lee and which captured a
top award recently. One is led to wonder if the
steamy sex scenes are not there, will there be the
same general acceptance and acclaim? Likewise,
would Lee's other award-winning movie, Brokeback Mountain, be
equally appreciated without exploring the subject
of homosexuality which people in general are so
curious about. This writer ventures to suggest
that the boundary between "art" and "pornography"
has been successfully pushed more and more to one
side to the benefit of box office receipts. In the
Chinese mainland ... the vigorous sex scenes are
removed in theaters, in conforming to the existing
rules on the showing of sex and violence, which,
incidentally, are actively promoted in movies of
Western countries, which Mr Ewing would term
progressive. Of course there are no lack of sex
criminals, from rapists to pedophiles, in those
progressive societies. It is also interesting to
note that lately whatever topic that foreign
"observers" of China touch on, there is the
inevitable link between that topic and the
upcoming 17th National Congress of the CCP. Is
that to suggest some political acumen? As to the
banning of provocative advertising pictures of
figure-enhancing bras, it is important to know
that bras are displayed and sold in department
stores in China. There is no lack of women
customers who want to enhance the look of their
figure.
Seung Li (Oct 9,
'07)
Thanks to Oil produces expensive Caesar
salad [Oct 6] by The Mogambo Guru, I
got my daily laughs and some useful information.
But does he not know that shipping things over
long distances costs the shipowner only a few
pennies (or equivalent) and saves the refineries
owners thousands of dollars, because the poisonous
stuff the ships burn ought to be sent to a
competent garbage firm? And, not being so fluent
in American, please tell me what a Caesar salad
is. Can one eat it?
Lilo Lottermoser
Hamburg, Germany (Oct 9,
'07)
One
certainly can, though accounts of its origins and
etymology vary. Some say it was invented by an
Italian chef in Chicago, Illinois, in 1903. He
named it in honor of Julius Caesar. Others cite a
restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico on the Mexico-San
Diego, California, border named "Caesar's" at a
later date, but all agree a Ceasar salad is
typically a salad of greens, grated cheese and
croutons, with a dressing of olive oil, lemon
juice, garlic, and raw or coddled eggs. Anchovies
are optional. - ATol
(Oct 9, '07)
In India holds key in NATO's
world view [Oct 6], M K Bhadrakumar
tells us that ... Daniel Fried, the US assistant
secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, in
testimony in the House Committee on Foreign
Affairs in Washington in July, said "in action in
key operations in the world ... [since] it is the
greatest security instrument of the trans-Atlantic
democratic community to deal with security
challenges today and tomorrow". He listed the
security challenges facing NATO as including
violent extremism, terrorism, nuclear
proliferation, failed states, cyber attacks and
insecurity of energy resources. [Bhadrakumar also
noted that] "Through its robust partnership with
NATO, Tokyo hopes to ensure that a coalition
composed of partners who share basic democratic
values takes place in the Asia-Pacific. Japan
defines it as an active coalition for maintaining
global security, comprising countries that
subscribe to Euro-Atlantic values. Such an
approach would leave NATO to form an association
with China, but that would remain an affiliation
system, like Russia's, for the limited purpose of
engagement and confidence-building." Well, excuse
me, but the expressions "trans-Atlantic democratic
community" and "Euro-Atlantic values" should have
been left in the press release, not copied into a
supposed news story.
Rowan Berkeley
London, England (Oct 9,
'07)
In
Ram-ming the Indian
economy [Oct 6] Chan Akya concludes his
article with: "Lacking any energetic leaders, it
is unlikely that the BJP can actually ramp back
into power at the next husting, even if that may
turn out to be the best thing for the economy in
the coming decades." I didn't know that Mr Akya
was a communalist. He seems to have missed the
point that riots and communalism aren't good for
business. Moreover, India is a country of the
poor. Their needs need to be met otherwise India's
prosperity will be transitory. An economic policy
that favours the elite is OK if the minority is
poor not the majority. Maybe that is why BJP
thinks the religious card can act as a fig leaf.
India is facing looming dangers of water loss (and
agricultural loss), aging, oil peak and climate
change. For this reason a government that focuses
on these issues, is a government that works for
the people. Oherwise, Left or Right an Indian
government will in the end aid the demise of India
as we know it.
May Sage
USA (Oct 9, '07)
The politicizing of America's
foreign policy goes on, and The myth of the all-powerful
Ahmadinejad [Oct 5] by Philip Giraldi
addresses the symptoms of this in the Middle East.
That America's government - Republican or Democrat
- is so blind to the actualities of the Middle
East is breathtaking. With the Bush administration
injecting an almost mindless militarism into all
foreign relations, even Democrats can't seem to
release themselves from this grip. There is
obviously an intense fear, warranted or not, of
appearing wimpish or weak. This is probably the
continued impact of BushCo's propaganda campaign
in past elections to make Democrats and any
opposition seem weak and wimpish. One wonders if
this political game will push the US into another
dangerous and deadly confrontation, simply because
no politician wants to appear weak in front of his
constituents. That major Democrats signed the
declaration classifying the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards Corps as a terrorist group and provided the
White House with language to justify the use of
military force against Tehran is scary. The
potential consequences of attacking Iran must be
known by the Congresspeople who signed the
declaration: regional war, the closing of the
Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf leading to
global highs in oil prices, terrorist attacks and
toppling of pro-Western leaders in the Middle
East. Foreign policy based on political posturing
is not intelligent.
James Hoover (Oct 9,
'07)
[Re:
Reaping what is
sown, Oct 6] I have only one question
for Julian Delasantellis. If capitalists engage in
so much "rape and pillage" of the working classes,
why do people come from all over the world to live
in the USA, the most capitalist country of them
all? I would advise your readers to discover Ayn
Rand's works for themselves and not take anybody's
representation of her ideas as truthful.
Jack
Crawford (Oct 9, '07)
[Re: Taliban poised for a big
push , Oct 5, by Syed Saleem Shahzad]
ˇ°Pakistan's reaction - or inaction - in the
tribal areas will have a direct bearing on the
Taliban's offensive in Afghanistan, and the longer
its troops are on the defensive, the better the
chances of the Talibanˇ±, are the closing
remarks of Syed Saleem Shahzad's article. But it
has me wondering and pondering a few questions and
their answers. Still, why failures? People tell
Shahzad the future strategic plans and locations
of Talibans, inch-by-inch, hour-by-hour. He is
quicker than the CIA, ISI, and all intelligence
agencies operating in Afghanistan. Super powers
fighting the minions, the Taliban, and for whose
gain? Musharraf's 100,000 combat troops in 1,000
military posts at the Pakistan-Afghan borders are
suffering heavy losses of men and moral to help US
President Bush accomplish his geostrategic agenda
in Afghanistan and Pakistan - but to whose avail?
Bush loses heavily back home. He should by now
realize who gains. Let him ponder, if he would,
America's real enemies. They are; Musharraf,
Karzai, Maliki - men who have consolidated their
power base and bloated their fortunes ... at the
cost of American taxpayers and Afghan coffins. The
more suicide bombers, the stronger these despots
are. Their power base is flimsy, illegal and
dependant on American support. Withraw
immediately, remove them. Negotiate with genuine
representatives to extricate your nations from the
quicksand laid by these selfish despots for their
vested ends. I ponder these solutions. I invite
you to join me. Stop talking and smelling blood
for few bucks and save this earth from the agony
of more blood.
Zeenate-e-Jehan
Karachi, Pakistan (Oct 9,
'07)
[Re When the 'Greenspan put'
became a 'call', by Bob Hoye,
Oct 5] I always enjoy reading Hoye's stuff. Also,
it's great that you post regular articles by The
Mogambo Guru and by Doug Noland. For a while I
thought you were giving far too much space to
whingers who blame it all on China but now you've
set things aright.
Harald Hardrada
Chapel Hill, NC, USA (Oct 5,
'07)
In
A potent inflationary
cocktail [Oct 5], The Mogambo Guru
blared the inflation siren and tolled a foreboding
knell presaging the impending global
financial-market meltdown. On closer examination,
however, one sees rather different inflation
pictures in China and in the US. In China, the
white-hot economic growth is still relatively
confined to the coastal regions and pockets of
inland big cities. Sadly, while hordes of the
newly rich insouciantly plunk down $10,000 wagers
at the Macau and Las Vegas casinos, millions of
their less fortunate countrymen continue to wallow
in squalid penury and pine for the day when they
can eat three basic meals daily and have decent
clothes to cover their malnutritioned body. So on
a certain level, the underlying problem
doesnˇŻt appear to be excessive liquidity as
much as a ghastly uneven distribution of wealth
across the nation. Potentially, therefore,
macroeconomic policies can be instituted to
address this inequality and to help alleviate
upward price pressures in the coastal areas.
Meanwhile, in the US inflation is much more
generalized. One additional ounce of liquidity
added to the market would literally translate into
one more ounce of inflationary pressure, further
enlarging the already bloated stock-market bubble.
Well, we all know that bubbles donˇŻt last
forever. So as the sagacious Guru has repeatedly
warned, weˇŻre freaking doomed!!! (Note the
triple exclamation points, which is a sure-fire
way of detecting importance!)
John
Chen
USA (Oct 5,
'07)
Re:
Chinese media go easy on
junta [Oct 5], for the saffron clad
Buddhist monks, the prevailing political war is
nothing new as they have on many occasions in the
past raised the banner of justice and freedom
against the oppression of tyrannical regimes to
change course of history. In the 16th century
Japan, the war-like monks of Mount Hiei caused
such a trepidation and havoc in Kyoto that the
warlord Oda Nobunaga had them slaughtered and
destroyed their temples to rubble. In 1963, the
monks in Vietnam set themselves alight to protest
against the anti-Buddhist policies pursued by
President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was a staunch Roman
Catholic. Once again, the Burmese monks are
mounting the most serious challenge against the
ruthless military junta since 1990, when Aang San
Suu Kyi won the general election and was
imprisoned. Whenever monks have raised their
banners for justice, regimes have trembled and
gone, but it is too early to say who wins this
battle. As the international clamor of protests at
the military regime increased, [US] President
[George W] Bush called on China to exert influence
and pressure on the junta. At the same time,
President Bush is to become the first American
president to meet the Dalai Lama, the spiritual
leader of Tibet and Buddhists around the world,
much to the annoyance of Beijing. Fact of the
matter is that Burma imports over $2.5 billion
worth of goods a year, with China providing one
third, Thailand, one fifth, Singapore 15%,
followed by Malaysia, India and South Korea.
French oil company Total is one of the biggest
Western investors in Burma with its activities
[worth] over $450 million a year. Besides, South
KoreaˇŻs Dawoo, JapanˇŻs Suzuki and US oil
giant Chevron all have huge investments [that
support] ruthless military dictators. China cannot
be seen to be openly condemning the military
junta, not only because of its political and
financial interests but also because it would
encourage millions of Chinese dissidents who would
love to come out in support of Burmese monks. As
long as China maintains its diplomatic and
economical support for the regime by ensuring
supply of consumer and capital goods, and
assistance to Burmese infrastructure and energy
projects, the junta can survive political
isolation and economic sanctions. As long as China
buys Burmese natural gas and enjoys access to
naval facilities which open to the Indian Ocean,
Beijing gives two fingers to world opinion and
President Bush in particular. As Mohammed Abdullah
has written in his letter [Oct 4], and I agree
with him, the solution is to hang a few of them
from a post in their khakis with their medals
pinned tight to their chests, and their favorite
military band playing. The painful consequences
that have stemmed from dictatorships have caused
humanity nothing but untold misery, pain, tears
and profound loss of dignity.
Saqib
Khan
UK (Oct 5,
'07)
Today, White House press
secretary Dana Perino told reporters that ˇ°This
country [the United States] does not tortureˇ±.
I beg to differ. The all-too-well documented cases
of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib and Bagram
Collection Point clearly illustrate the
willingness of the Bush administration to torture
detainees. The legal cases of Abu Omar, Majid
Mahmud Abdu Ahmad, and Muhammad Bashmila, amongst
many others, have highlighted this fact. If the
Bush administration is indeed opposed to torture,
why does it deny its detainees the protection of
the Geneva Convention? Why does it deny its
detainees unrestricted access to the International
Committee of the Red Cross? Why does it need
secret detention facilities in Cuba and Eastern
Europe? Why does it need ˇ°extraordinary
renditionˇ±? This absolute lack of transparency
can mean only one thing: the United States of
America DOES condone the use of torture, and tries
to hide this fact from the public. Under
International Law, torture during a time of armed
conflict is a war crime. The United States is
involved in armed conflicts in Afghanistan and
Iraq as part of its self-proclaimed ˇ°war on
terrorˇ±. By definition, the United States is
guilty of war crimes, and should be charged as
such.
Rory E Morty
Giessen, Germany (Oct 5,
'07)
Under the goad of fear, the
worried, jaundiced eye of the critics of the
second inter-Korean summit meeting in Pyongyang
reject its outcome with a dismissive wink. In 'Dissed' by Kim
Jong-il, [Oct 5] Collin Baber opines
that North Korea's Kim Jong-il "dissed" South
Korea's Roh Moo-hyun. The BBC's man in Seoul gives
the meeting short shrift with a curt, sour comment
- "cheap talk", says he. And the prestigious voice
of London's Institute of Strategic Studies
balefully calls it "a soundbite". Of course, like
all over-simple classifications, if you press the
point, they are artificial, dull and dry as the
thinking of a scholastic, and were you to poke
them deeply, they seem absurd. These criticisms,
however, do contain a grain of truth; they reveal
how deeply rooted are the long-held prejudices and
attitudes of Korea watchers and the Korea lobby.
It makes you scratch your head, nonetheless. Have
they not heard the loud voices of South Korea's
business groups who happily hailed the summit
meeting a qualified "success"? Have they turned a
deaf ear to the breakthrough on the western sea
border of a divided Korea which the United Nations
hastily drew more than a half-century ago, thereby
creating a tripwire to confrontation in fishing
waters? Are they stunned, Medusa like, by the
determination of Mr Roh and Mr Kim to push for a
treaty which would replace the 1953 armistice,
thereby ending once and for all the long Korean
War? To the Korea lobby's disbelief, Mr Roh and Mr
Kim have established a bond of trust. The summit's
final statement will allow for more frequent
inter-Korean confabs, but the most intriguing and
important aspect of this meeting remains that the
two Koreas have a calculus of their own in
determining how they conceive of reducing
tensions, further closer and better relations, and
in seeking in the long-term the fulfillment of the
ache in Korean hearts of a reunited homeland.
Jakob
Cambria
USA (Oct 5,
'07)
Re India, China: A giant trade
partnership of unequals [Oct 4]:
Nirupama Rao, the Indian ambassador to China, was
right on the mark when she commented, "India and
China cannot turn our backs on each other. This is
simply not a feasible option.ˇ± Both countries
understand that they canˇŻt achieve a smooth
ascent on the global stage, let alone the
prematurely-suggested Asian Century, if their
mutual backyard is inflamed. The Sino-Indian
relationship may represent one case in which
geostrategic considerations preponderate over
purely mercantile ones. As such, the forecast for
the future relationship between the two giant
neighbors calls for sunny skies with occasional
patchy clouds, with temperatures in the mid-80s to
the low 90s.
John Chen
USA (Oct 4, '07)
In response to B V Pradeep
(letter, Sep 28), the War for Oil thesis goes like
this: The Bush administration lied about Iraqi
WMD; they couldn't possibly have believed they
could make a secular democracy out of Iraq; access
to cheap and plentiful oil is a matter of national
security; the US military did little to stop the
plundering of Iraq's antiquities, yet immediately
secured the Oil Ministry; therefore the war is all
about oil. Maybe my vision is distorted under a
tomato-colored Jovian-Jersey sky, but the thesis
really does seem that facile. There are huge
contextual gaps: In spite of all the lies and
exaggerations about the status of Saddam's nuclear
weapons program, there was a genuine fear that our
intelligence was missing something, just as it had
underestimated the extent of Saddam's WMD programs
in the 1990s. Al-Qaeda had been (and remains) in
active pursuit of WMD, and received help from
Pakistani nuclear scientists like A Q Khan. Anyone
not concerned with the potential nexus of Muslim
nuclear nations, or rogue Russians, and
terrorists, is just as misguided, I believe, as
one who thinks that anyone in the Bush
administration is more concerned with oil than
with the prospect of nuclear-armed terrorists. The
world press was filled with commentary mocking
Americans for believing Dick Cheney's suggestions,
unsupported by corroborated intelligence, that
Saddam helped orchestrate 9/11. Those same
commentators were oblivious to their own delusion
that there was no need for concern over the
meetings between Saddam's representatives and
al-Qaeda. The possibility that a brutal, bloody
Iraqi regime and equally bloody terrorists could
see a shared interest in attacking the US was
thoroughly discounted in the "thinking" of those
commentators. It is willful ignorance of
astounding proportions. It is certainly possible
that Saddam's only reason for dealing with
al-Qaeda was to trade safe harbor for a pledge not
to work against Saddam's secular regime. But that
is only one of several possibilities. To discount
any of the reasonable possibilities would have
been folly. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul
Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith have been so
incredibly mistake-prone and arrogant that it is
difficult to avoid demonizing them. But that is
what is at work here among the War for Oil crowd.
They have created cartoon caricatures of these
individuals, and refuse to allow them to possess
any motives that are not rapacious. In the end,
it's not about oil, it's about the need to create
demons.
Geoffrey Sherwood
New Jersey, USA (Oct 4,
'07)
It
is reported that on October 3, Major Htay Win of
the Burmese army crossed the river into Thailand
to seek asylum because he was unwilling to
participate in the massacre of Buddhist monks. The
significance of this event is that it likely
represents the crack in the armor of the junta
that the international community may use to bring
down the brutal military regime in that country.
ASEAN's use of the word "revulsion" in describing
events in Burma while at the same time carrying on
business as usual with the military regime, is a
charade. If we really mean to help the people of
Burma in this hour of need we must make it clear
to them that we support them and we must call on
the soldiers to not kill their fellow citizens and
their monks but to join with them in the
liberation of their country. I know that ASEAN has
investments there as well as energy supplies that
must be protected for our own self interest but in
the long run those interests would be best served
by aligning ourselves with the people and not with
a despotic regime that is on its way out.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Oct 4, '07)
During his visit to the
United Nations in September 2007, President
Ahmadinejad of Iran hosted a dinner at the New
York Intercontinental Hotel for American scholars
and journalists. They came with the apparent
intent of proving that Mr Ahmadinejad was deranged
because he had questioned the Holocaust, denied
that there were gays in Iran, and called for the
destruction of Israel. However, the dinner
conversation failed to show that he was deranged
and so they concluded that he was wily as a fox.
It was a multiple choice question. Rational or
normal were not available choices.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Oct 4, '07)
"We're not there yet!!",
"We're not there yet!!" the kids in the back seat
keep hollering. The Guru [Demand sacrifices quality
packaging, Oct 4] is so busy bumping
Poor Old People with the SUV he isn't paying any
attention to them. I keep telling the Kids we are
just going to Recession Land and they'll just have
to wait till they get Depression Land built. I've
told them over and over how there was a Recession
Land a couple of years before they built the Stock
Market Roller Coaster in 1929 and how the Fortune
Tellers said there wouldn't be Depression Land.
Even Old Hoover said "Things are looking up" just
before they discharged him. Anyway, look how long
it took to build the Depression Land in Japan.
Stop your laughing and pushing those poor, old
people around, you hyena! Sorry for poor
imitation,
William O Bishop, Sr
Eugene, OR, USA (Oct 4,
'07)
Just
read Pakistan's plan is coming
together [Oct 4]. It seems to me that
more appropriate headline would be "US's plan is
coming together".
ayyubi (Oct 4,
'07)
Selam. I have just read an
article attributed to you [Syed Saleem Shahzad]
published on Asia Times Online. It was beneficial
to me. We would [hope for] more articles,
especially relating to Afghanistan, of which we
have no adequate true knowledge but corporate
media.
Khoda Hafez (Oct 4,
'07)
There should be a permanent
solution against dictatorial rules and not ad hoc
[ones]. Not after dictators have done the worst
damage to their countries' people, eg, Burma,
Pakistan ... Imagine the torture and hell they let
loose on their nations during their tenure (state
crimes such as killings, injustices, rapes, false
cases, murders, torture, etc). Can any punishment
be enough for their crimes? Try them and their
accomplices in power ... and hang them as a
deterrent. This is the least humanity can do
against them, or let more billions suffer at their
hands ... and pass UN resolutions after 48 years.
Rise, world conscience!
Abdullah J Mohammad
Pakistan (Oct 4, '07)
Bernt Berger wrote [Why China has it wrong on
Myanmar, Oct 2], "Indeed, the lack of
interference into a rogue regime's internal
affairs can have important humanitarian and
developmental implications for the global
community. Insistence on human rights and
development is not just a way to pressure abusive
governments, but because of spillover effects, is
increasingly important to maintaining global
security." There are several problems. First and
foremost, how do you define "rogue regime"? Is it
a broad and inclusive statement that refers to
regimes that suppress their people and deny human
rights to them, or those regimes that are super
nice to their own people, empowering them with
so-called "freedom" and "democracy" but treating
the rest of the world as their playground,
competing for primacy? The damage the latter could
possibly do to global security far outweigh that
from the former. It's true that what happened in
Myanmar recently is appalling and the junta is
despicable, but what threat do they pose to the
global security? Is Myanmar going to invade
Thailand? Secondly, if countries are told it is
perfectly OK to interfere whenever they believe it
is necessary, you are going to toss "sovereignty"
and international laws out the window and that's
when it will become really dangerous. You will see
countries invading one another from left to right
in the name of "maintaining global security".
Global security? More like a global mess.
Juchechosunmanse (Oct 3,
'07)
Why China has it wrong on
Myanmar [Oct 2], by Mr Bernt Berger, in
many ways is pure humbug. Mr Berger claims that
"China has reverted to its traditional stance of
non-interference in another country's internal
affairs". This is pure propagandist bullhocky.
China has been actively engaged in the inernal
affairs of Pakistan by making her a nuclear power;
India by claiming Arunachal Pradesh as her
territory and taking part of Kashmir offered by
Pakistan, and according to recent news the Chinese
army has been involved in hacking US intelligence.
If there is any skullduggery there is a good
chance China is involved. So why is China so "shy"
in getting directly involved with the junta of
Myanmar? Maybe because China has a lucrative deal
already signed with Myanmar on her enormous gas
fields and any interference from Beijing might
jeopardize this deal. China desperately needs
energy for her stellar growth. A bit of silence
from Beijing may not end this deal with Myanmar's
junta. As for India, contrary to Mr Berger,
according to other articles she is playing her
role in this ever growing unrest in Myanmar and
India has less to gain than China.
Chrysantha
Wijeyasingha
Los
Angeles, USA (Oct 3, '07)
The story [Why China has it wrong on
Myanmar,Oct 2] should be renamed "Why
Bernt Berger has it wrong on Myanmar". It is easy
for citizens of countries that are at a safe
distance from the troubled spot, in this case
Myanmar, to say that the neighbors of the troubled
country should take a "principled" stance. I am
sure Bernt Berger's country need not fear blowback
from Myanmar. It is easy for Bernt Berger to say
that India so far has preferred to deal with
Myanmar's crisis by looking the other way. India
has enough challenges within it's own borders and
the Indian government in power has no need for
participating in others' troubles. Indian foreign
policy has finally matured and has become infused
with a modicum of realism. What is the benefit for
India from taking a "principled" stance and be
seen as interfering by the Myanmar military
government in power? A flood of refugees. Passive
or even active support for militancy in India by
an enraged Myanmar military dictatorship. Natural
resource and business deals that will benefit
other nations (have already benefited other
nations including China) that do not criticize the
Myanmar government. When you live in a hotspot you
learn to let sleeping dogs lie. Taking a
"principled" stance may make sense to India (or
China) if it appeared that the Myanmar military
government were on it's last legs - but it does
not appear to be the case in Myanmar. In the
current scenario, India's foreign policy stance
with reference to Myanmar is the realistic one. In
the meantime, we can safely depend on writers from
distant countries to make hypocritical
pro-democracy noises.
Bhaskar Rao
Boston, USA (Oct 3,
'07)
By
isolating themselves in Naypyidaw, the SPDC
generals of Burma have unwittingly set themselves
up as a made-to-order target for cruise missiles.
There is a good density of high-value targets in a
well defined area and a minimal possibility of
collateral damage. Also, there is no uncertainty
about where the generals are. It would take no
more than two or three well-placed missiles and
this thing could be over. If ever there were a
reason to invent the idea of regime change, this
is it.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand (Oct 3,
'07)
The
headline of Donald Kirk's article [A crack opens in the Korean
wall, Oct 2] on South Korea's Roh
Moo-hyon's arrival in Pyongyang is not quite
right. A crack didn't open in the Korean wall, it
has been there since the visit of former president
Kim Dae-jung's 1991 visit to North Korea, thereby
inaugurating the Sunshine Policy. Mr Roh has
widened the opening by walking across the heavily
guarded 38th parallel; he took an historic step
over a yellow plastic tape with the words "peace"
and "prosperity" written on it, a loud and clear
message of the tone that Mr Roh wishes to set at
his meeting with Kim Jong-il. His welcome in
Pyongyang among women in gaily colored hanbok and men in
spotless white shirts with ties and neartly
pressed trousers and an endless display of pink
and purple peonies, had a cineaste's touch to it.
And on hand for Mr Roh's arrival was North Korea's
president Kim Jong-il, which greatly disappointed
Korea watchers in the south and elsewhere who
thought the South Korean president's welcome would
be treated with less care than the reception Kim
Dae-jung received. Well it wasn't. It had a
different coloring to it, but it was a first class
welcome. Proof of this: after Mr Roh and Mr Kim
shook hands, Mr Kim withdrew a bit so that his
North Koreans could and would shower the South
Korean president with great acclaim. Mr Roh's
departure and his welcome is fraught with
symbolism: the color of yellow, the words "peace"
which englobes for the doubters, yes, the ending
of the North's nuclear program, and "prosperity",
the infusion of aid and technical help to lift up
the North's economy. The choice of the peony says
more. And of course Kim Jong-il's effacement after
greeting Mr Roh in Pyongyang shines a light that
reflects on the importance that Mr Kim lends to
the summit meeting. No matter what transpires at
the two Korean presidents' discussions, it is
clear as mountain water that Seoul and Pyongyang
have an agenda of their own to further detente and
a long range view for uniting a divided Korea.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Oct 3, '07)
Sages said, ˇ°Testing of a
tested one is idiocyˇ±. However, the cream of
our [Pakistani] society, the lawyers, determined
to enforce the supremacy of law by hook or by
crook, from top to bottom and across the board,
stood like a wall against the law-breaking khakis
and did it steadfastly. Eventually came the day
when the Chief Justice was restored and our
lawyers, writers and intellectuals were signaling
Pakistan to be on track to freedom, and shadows of
a utopia immediately gripped the minds of our
populace. We forgot one thing, that our Chief
Justice is in love with our obsolete system, he
never wanted to derail the system, and [when] he
... took oath under [the] Musharraf regime, it was
his bona-fide intention to save the system, for
someone had to save it. From now on, I would call
Honorable Mr Justice Iftikhar Chaudry, Chief "The
Savior" Justice. Dear Sir, we would truly remain
in the liberated state of military rule with your
consistent support. Thanks from the core of our
hearts.
Arbab Daud
Pakistan (Oct 3, '07)
Dear friends, make sure you
visit www.IMAGINEPEACE.com on October 9th, John
Lennon's birthday, for the unveiling of the
incredible IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on the isle of
Videy, Reykjavik, Iceland. Please visit the site,
have a look around, IMAGINE PEACE and send your
wishes to join over 495,000 others buried in
capsules around the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER, dedicated
to my late husband: musician, poet, artist and
peace activist, John Lennon. Please join us on
October 9th at www.IMAGINEPEACE.com. Wherever you
are, we will all be together that day. With the
deepest love,
yoko ono (Oct 3,
'07)
This is in response to
the article in your e-paper Ahmadinejad and
Bush: Mirror men [Oct 2] by Stephen Zunes. I
do believe that freedom of speech is a central
pillar to construct healthy opinions and
dialogues, but I also believe that this freedom of
speech must not encircle the territory of biased
reporting. The writer has blatantly censured the
Iranian president without corroborating the facts.
It reflects a pot-boiling revulsion on Iranian
national or foreign policy. May I ask, from which
angle do the two presidents look alike? President
[George W] Bush plays the hide-and-seek game
ˇ blaming the Iranian nation as terrorists.
President [Mahmud] Ahmadinejad has tendered many
friendly ties which were completely ignored by the
recipients. The column is a clear inference of
deep hate for the Iranian president and his policy
down the line. I request [that you] neutralize the
articles that are published to avoid wrathful
debates among the sects.
Kulsoom Ali (Oct 2,
'07)
The
article by Dr [Stephen] Zunes [Ahmadinejad and
Bush: Mirror men, Oct 2] is a verbatim
publication on CommonDreams.org (except he has
changed the title) - it was very poorly received
and I urge many to see the discussion still on the
website. I have sincerely enjoyed and been
enthralled by the quality of your authors such as
Henry C K Liu, Chan Akya, and M K Bhadrakumar to
name only a few. However, I urge you to stop
publishing tripe by comfortable establishment
hacks like Zunes. His "work" is simply disguised
propaganda and has no merit in terms of due
diligence required of scholars, not to mention
objectivity and honesty. Please allow the
thousands of readers like myself to continue to
enjoy the high standards Asia Times [Online] has
so far maintained in its articles. Please, for the
sake of your publication, be very careful in
allowing propaganda disguised as journalism to
corrupt your publication and ultimately drain your
readership.
Sanjay S Desai (Oct 2,
'07)
Stephen Zunes writes for
Foreign Policy In Focus,
to which a number of
websites subscribe - that's why the ATol and
CommonDreams versions were "verbatim" (various
publications write their own headlines). - ATol
Re Al-Qaeda wants
a part of Afghan talks [Oct 2]: Any
initiatives of negotiations that seek to drive a
wedge between the Taliban and al-Qaeda are only to
be condemned and rejected. If [Afghan President
Hamid] Karzai and his regime and associates are
sincere in the negotiations, then they should
declare the intention and schedule of withdrawal
of foreign troops and start such withdrawal
immediately in order to induce and facilitate any
meaningful negotiations.
Rashid Hassan (Oct 2,
'07)
Re
The devil and
Alan Greenspan [Oct 2]: Since the publication
of his autobiography The
Age of Turbulence, the media are treating Alan
Greenspan as a primitive god, not a devil. He is
lionized on two continents. Interviewed, he speaks
as though he were the oracle at Delphi. His
pronouncements are enigmatic: they either confuse
or you read into them what you want to hear. A
believer in the rugged individualism and raw
capitalism of Ayn Rand, he lacks the dollars and
sense of his political convictions. He serves his
masters well. Under America's president Bill
Clinton and his strong secretary of the Treasury
Robert Rubin, Greenspan approved of diminishing
the debt and creating a surplus. Under the present
US president George W Bush, a man whose instincts
and philosophy are closer to his own, he
acquiesced to doing away with surplus, approved of
a ballooning debt, because as he says, mimicking
the pigs in [George] Orwell's Animal Farm, "Surpluses
are bad, debt is good." As a rugged capitalist, he
lacks the courage of his convictions; he is
unwilling to take responsibility for the mess that
the American economy is in. When he had the chance
to put in a strong word to stay Mr Bush's
disastrous tax-cutting policy which benefited but
the rich, thereby allowing 300,000 Americans to
accumulate wealth equal to the earnings of 150
million of their fellow citizens, he stayed his
hand from any action. Now as Spengler well chose a
quintessential Greenspanian spin on logic in
condemning but at the same time absolving the
three major credit agencies, Moody's, S&P, and
Fitch: they knew what they were doing yet they
didn't. Thus boiled down to its essence, Greenspan
knew what he was doing with world markets, and
then he didn't. His eerie pronouncements say
everything and then they say nothing. And very
much like Brutus, Greenspan finds that the woe
that affects the average American now lies in the
stars but not in his pusillanimous judgment and
his lack of backbone.
Jakob Cambria (Oct 2,
'07)
The
various letters trying to glorify or despise India
one way or other all have a problem in failing to
understand democracy (however imperfect it may be
in India) and variegatedness fully. No one in his
sane sense can approve of the fundamentalist
violence that raised its ugly head five years ago
in Gujarat. At the same time no one can overlook
the fact that though in late '80s Punjab was
seeking a separate homeland based on religious
identities and many sectarian (barbaric) killings
of non-Sikhs happened. Today it [India] has [as]
its prime minister (the most powerful position in
the country) a person from this very community of
Sikhs. It is also to be noted that religious
minorities, especially Muslims [and] Christians
apart from the socially backward, have affirmative
action in the form of quotas in various states
such as Andhra Pradesh, Kerala etc in education
and government employment. States such as Kerala,
Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Punjab and Jharkhand
have all had chief ministers who were not Hindus
... This in itself may not mean a very tolerant
state or people but it simply means democracy,
howsoever imperfect it can be, will have to cater
to all and cannot afford to ignore one group in
the long run - so much so [that] in many southern
states those people who were once socially
backward dominate all spheres of life, political,
cultural and economic.
Madhav
India (Oct 2, '07)
I wouldn't want Donald Kirk
[Detours on the Korean
roadmap, Sep 29] to read a roadmap were
we lost. Nor Sunny Lee [Same ole, same
ole, Sep 29] for that matter. Like
a tongue searching a sore tooth, Kirk is trying to
keep the story that North Korea was supplying
Syria with enriched uranium for Damascus' nascent
nuclear industry. During his sojourn in
Washington, Kirk got an earful from the neo-cons,
the right wing and the military who took Israeli
intelligence as gospel truth about president
Bashir al-Assad's challenging Israel's nuclear
preeminence in the Middle East. Kirk took their
allegations as though they were gospel truth. When
it comes to Pyongyang, Kirk's reporting is a
mixture of rumor, folklore and believing in the
worst scenario possible. The Pyongyang Damascus
connection is an allegation which lacks hard
facts. Yet Kirk is willing to lay a Hansel and
Gretel trail of circumstance to give body to
stories from people who have given us a fabricated
war in Iraq. This nexus of the evil balloon has
fallen flatter than a failed soufflet. Sorry to
disappoint Sunny Lee. The meeting of powers in
Beijing on denuclearizing North Korea's nuclear
plants has ended with a rough draft of an
agreement. If this is not a breakthrough, it comes
very close to it. It is the opening bell to hard
negotiations, before a final accord is hammered
out. Nevertheless, this document signals a change
in North Korea's and the United States' diplomacy.
Kirk is spot on on point observation: American
President George W Bush is desperately looking for
a life preserver in a turbulent sea of diplomatic
failure. Bush has authorized the release of US$25
million in fuel aid under the terms of the
February 13, 2007, agreement at ending North
Korea's nuclear program. The stroke of the
American president's pen is surefire proof that
the North Korean nuclear issue is on a faster
track than certainly the American press and even
ATol's coverage on North Korea lead us to believe.
Jakob Cambria
USA (Oct 1, '07)
Re Capitalism does
work [Sep 29] by Chan Akya: There
should be little doubt that, moving forward,
capitalism is the best economic system for Asia -
after all, since the country's economic
liberalization millions of people in China have
been emancipated from the dungeon of destitution.
However, to advocate an unbridled form of
capitalism constitutes an entirely different
matter. Interestingly, Akya's two examples
actually show the need for better governance and
not abrogation of governmental oversight. In the
first case, had the US government taken timely
steps to curb freewheeling consumption and to
check rampant market liquidity, the housing and
financial bubbles likely would have been
forestalled. (Asian countries without question are
culpable of contributing to the global financial
turmoil, but for the author to place the blame for
the subprime mess entirely on their shoulders is
akin to absolving drug dealers of their
malfeasance because of the existence of drug
users. Countries like China are neophytes in the
capitalist system and need to learn greater
accountability for their actions; on the other
hand, veterans such as the US must provide more
disciplined leadership.) In the second example,
Akya offered that a major reason for the US auto
industry's current predicament is "The US
government's intransigence in pricing negative
economic goods" which "markets take advantage of".
Again, had the government implemented tougher
environmental laws to guide US automakers and
consumers away from being hooked on "fat"
vehicles, the US auto industry likely would not be
in the big competitive disadvantage it presently
finds itself. Furthermore, this example
illustrates that without governmental regulation,
companies on their own simply would not adopt
environmentally friendlier practices as those
measures would prune immediate profits. (By the
way, this just in: the pharmaceutical firm
Bristol-Myers Squibb is fined over US$515 million
for giving physicians kickbacks to encourage
prescription and promotion of the company's
medicines.) In Akya's estimation, capitalism is
nearly perfect. Well, it is, for the purpose of
maximizing profits, but not of optimizing societal
welfare - the "public good" that the author
cursorily glossed over. A highly efficient and
ruthless money-making machine, capitalism is
capable of creating tremendous wealth, but
unfettered, can also wreak awesome havoc, with the
potential victims being you, I, and ultimately
society as a whole. In order for this economic
system to better serve us, we must give it proper
guidance and supervision. Herein lies a valuable
lesson for citizens across not only Asia, but also
the globe.
John Chen
USA (Oct 1, '07)
There is quite a bit of
worldwide hooray going on over the Myanmar
demonstrations [Myanmar's blogs of
bloodshed, Sep 29] and the reaction of
the government. It is a very one-sided affair and
until some leader organizes and unites the
population into a gigantic civilian revolt, or an
organized civil war, it will always be put down by
the military. Naturally, the US government sided
with whomever was going to cause strife to China
or Russia. Its all part of this great Central
Asian game. The US public, having just demonized
the president of Iran under the tutorship of the
president of Columbia University, is all set to
gobble up any other mendacious bunch of nonsense
put out by the US government and/or its corporate
press. Amid all of the howling support for the
Buddhist monks of Yangon, there is not one iota of
howling support for the Iraqi people who are dying
by the hundreds daily trying to remove the
tyrannical yoke imposed by the US invasion and
occupation.
Ken Moreau
New Orleans, Louisiana (Oct 1,
'07)
Whatever the outcome of the
Caspian Great Game [A massive wrench in Putin's
works, Sep 29], it's hard to imagine
that it can materially injure Russia, even if
Turkmen gas is routed to completely bypass its
territory, which given the scale of an already
installed infrastructure is improbable to the
utmost. The problem with the West's strategy is
that pretty much all of the natural gas that
Russia imports from Turkmenistan it subsequently
sells to Ukraine at a minimal mark up. Since
Ukraine is Europe's second-largest gas consumer
(after Russia), but with a gross domestic product
of less than 5% of Germany, any significant switch
- let alone a total changeover - to a far more
expensive Russian gas would indeed prove to be a
"massive wrench" - but in the works of a country
that vacillates precariously between the West and
Russia. Ukraine's external debt counter would go
into overdrive, the debt would be held by Russia
and the country itself would effectively be handed
back to Moscow on a geopolitical platter. That
Turkmenistan will use this scramble to its own
advantage should worry Kiev and Brussels, first
and foremost. If Russia is forced into the bidding
war, it'll likely prevail, but it'll be Ukraine
and Europe who will be obliged to cover the cost.
I'd be surprised that the simple capitalist logic
of "consumer always pays" has so far been so
thoroughly ignored - if I haven't learned by now
that there is no self-defeating purpose that the
US and the West wouldn't work towards if there was
an even a slight chance of discomfiting Moscow in
the process. That's the stuff that all blowbacks
are made of.
Oleg Beliakovich
Seattle, Washington (Oct 1,
'07)
Unveiling men in the Arab
world [Sep 29], by Sami Moubayed, is
very informative and well argued, though I believe
the author, being an Arab himself, needs some
unveiling of his own. He wrote: "Banning the book
[The Satanic Verses]
in various countries was 100% legitimate" and
"Religious symbols, which arouse so much passion
among people, should be red lines (by law) that
cannot be touched in the name of art,
intellectualism, etc." When you put something
(religious symbols in this case) above criticism,
you pave the way for all sorts of taboos while
dressing all kinds of obstacles on the way of
progress and knowledge. The Prophet Mohammed was a
human being like the rest of us and the Koran is a
book like any other book: they can and must both
be criticized. When you grant Mohammed's deeds and
words a holy status, you grant the rulers of
Muslim countries the right to kill poets because
that's what the Prophet did and you grant Muslim
men the right to marry four women because that's
what the Prophet said (and did much worse). What
is missing from the article is (are) the cause(s)
of the backwardness in the Arab world compared to
what it was in the 1960s. You can trace back
whatever happened in that region for the last 50
years - foreign invasions, religious intolerance,
dictatorship, human (especially women) rights
abuses, etc - to the curse of the Middle East:
oil. In the case of religion, it is the billion
petrodollars that inundated the Saudi family that
enabled it to spread its brand of fundamentalism
to its neighbors, through the building of mosques,
schools and universities with a Wahhabi agenda,
the financing of charities whose real business is
the recruitment and indoctrination of jihadis,
sponsorship of television and radio programs,
books, newspapers and magazines that
systematically interpret the world in terms of
Allah's will, whims and curses, etc.
Daniel Mazir
Perth, Australia (Oct 1,
'07)
September Letters
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