Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Generous South Korea?

After ROC [Republic of Korea aka South Korea]president Lee Myung bak assumed the power of his office in March 2008, he trashes the 'Sunshine Policy' towards the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea aka North Korea] that his predecessors had initiated.He thus cut off all aid in kind--chemical fertilisers and foods, in his 'drag nach Norden', to bring Pyongyang to its knees, by softening its stance on the nuclear issue and in the belief he could give the DPRK a strong dose of its medicine. He failed completely.
Now in late October 2009, he is allowing 10.000 ton[ne?]s of corns and 20.000 ton[ne?]s of powdered milk for North Korea. Its his payment in kind for Pyongyang's 'ouverture' towards the US, since citizen Bill Clinton's mission of mercy to the DPRK in early July 2009. Mr. Lee fearful that his ally in Washington might abandon South Korea, has had to run fast to keep in place and save face.
US president Obama [BHO] expressed a willingness to engage in direct talks with the DPRK, but with a condition or two--Pyongyang's return to the six power talks Kim Jong il swore North Korea had left for good. Politics has a way of twisting threats, so the likelihood is that a dual track of talks with ensure as the modalities are worked out.
Seoul's Lee Myong bak, after lobbying long and hard for BHO's public iteration of never abandoning an ally, invoking protection of the ROC under the US' nuclear umbrella, and strong declarations similar to China's invocation of the Sung dynasty as a protector of North Korea, now Washington is the lips to Seoul's teeth.
Mr. Lee has floated an idea or two about lessening tensions on the divided Korean continent. They are hardly veiled proposals for North Korea's surrender. Little does he know his 'brothers to the North'. Had he read African history, his eye might have come across the name of Sekou Torre, who dared defy France's Charles DeGaulle. Torre flatly refused the neocolonial trappings of a French community of former colonies by opting out of DeGaulle's offer. He let it be known that he preferred his country proud yet poor to one suppliant on its knees before its old master.
Now what do we ascribe Mr. Lee's 'generous' [sic] 10.000 ton[ne?]s of corn? It's a one time payment in kind, to the tune of us$3,5m, for the resumption of uniting families in the North and the South separated since the Korean war which remains without a peace treaty.
Obviously, Mr. Lee has little intention of softening his stance towards the DPRK. He prefers a stalemate at best in the hope that the DPRK will collapse on its own weight. His bones will turn to dust before that happens. It is more believable that he will see the termination of his presidency first.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Lankov on North Korea

Dr.Andrei Lankov has studied North Korea [Democratic Republic of Korea or DPRK]. His latest book
details the daily life beyond the 38 parallel, in the DPRK. He has written of the demise of Stalinism in North Korea. In the November/December 2009 issue of the prestigious house organ of the US Council of Foreign Relations [CFR], appears his essay 'Opening North Korea'.
Professor Lankov grew up in the Soviet Union; he received there his training as a Korea expert. Now he lives and teaches history at Seoul's Kookmin University, which financially helped underwrite his article. He also lived and taught in Australia. Like other former Soviet scholars, he looks for the vein of change in Kim Jong il's DPRK; his model, more or less, remains the instrumentality which led to Communism in the west's demise, on one hand, and nourishes the hope that Pyongyang will copy the road to capitalist development which China and Vietnam have taken. He, however, is less hawkish than other scholars trained in the East European schools, calling for regime change.
Obviously, his article is not 'value free'. Furthermore for all his learning, Lankov fudges. Consider his sweeping opening statement that 'North Korea, a small country with no economic potential to speak of'... Guam Diary suggests that he contact Goldman Sachs' analysts in Seoul for a copy of that investment house's glowing report on yes, the economic potential of the DPRK! If the world's foremost bankers smell profits in North Korea, why cannot Lankov. The Japanese colonisers tapped its rich mineral potential for their own economic development. If that is not enough 'the irritant that North Korea is', according to the Kookmin professor is on the cutting edge of rocket technology, and in nuclear technology, has proven to be no slouch. The DPRK has
the industrial wherewithal, if harassed to the good will and cooperation of the Republic of Korea [ROK or South Korea], to give Japan and neighbouring China a run for their money in trade and global market share.
Consider, Mr. Lankov's remarks on the lack of economic reform in North Korea. Pyongyang, willy nilly, since the abrupt ending of Soviet aid and certainly the great famine of the early 1990's, which caused a severe human and economic crisis, has by the force of things, allowed economic reforms. The writings of Rudiger Frank suggest this. the North Korean leadership has done much running to stay in place in the beginning, and then has seen, encouraged, and at times limited freedom of action in the economy. We see through the reports of Russian Korean hands and of NGO's, proof of a degree of decentralisation in the provinces, the rise of 'free markets' all over the DPRK, and 'experiments' of pale liberalisation on the Cholema model, which in other words reads as a North Korean solution sui generis [despite borrowings from elsewhere].
Now let's consider the contract with an Egyptian company to instill coaxial cable for the internet throughout the DPRK. No matter the restrictions, this 10 year contract is an example that the leadership in Pyongyang is quite away of the steps to modernisation of infrastructure it needs to take. Fire walls or attempts to fool them notwithstanding, Pyongyang is not the 'old duffer of failed Communism' critics describe it to be. It has its own agenda. And North Korea watchers would do best to follow the evidence more closely, and less eager to make rash predictions.
Now, let's turn to cultural exchange. Pyongyang is no stranger to cultural exchange. Take for example, the visit of the New York Philharmonic to Pyongyang. It was broadcast live from Pyongyang, and then rebroadcast. The Philharmonic's maestro Loren Mazel in a heartfelt message in English and some smattering of Korean, spoke of the hope for a wider exchange between the US and the DPRK. Pyongyang did not demur. Washington put the kabosh on any follow up. There was even talk of the Pyongyang orchestra performing in London. It appears the reluctance comes from the west.
As for North Koreans total isolation from the outside world. Well, here the claim is porous. North Koreans, and not only the DPRK's elite corps, know of the latest telenovelas produced in South Korea and Japan. Information follows through the 'Arab telephone', so to speak, out of China, visitors from Japan and Koreans living elsewhere through the world. Although it cannot be denied that after 60 years of state propaganda, their view of the world may be not larger than the diameter of a well looking at the sky of its bottom. But, it is surely interesting to note that information does filter trickle down to the far most villages in the DPRK.
Were the readers of 'Foreign Affairs' more savvy about the DPRK, they could and should quest Dr. Lankov's assertions. The CFR is the fount of America's elite, but on some issues they remain as ignorant as cabbages.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Obama's Nobel prize

Guam Diary steps timidly into the ring of opinion on Oslo's awarding the 2009 Nobel prize for peace to the US president Barack Obama [BHO]. Little did the august, restrained circle of judge misread the reaction. In the US, it caused a tempest of derision and scorn and cynicism; an award to a new president who has hardly had time to test his mettle. The bile and etching acid of criticism has come mainly from BHO's reactionary detractors, mainly Republican, and even some from the scolds on the left. One lefty equated the nomination to Bertold Brecht's receiving a Lenin peace prize! The right wingers have poured ice water on BHO's nomination with no amount of silly advice, and even the so called middle, read the 'New York Times' gassy Thomas Friedman has tilted towards putting acceptance off till BHO has done something worthy of the man. Others have called for outright refusal. Which betrays historical shortsightedness. Jean Paul Sartre refused his prize, but for the year he won it, he is still listed as recipient with in parathesis 'refused'.
To Guam Diary, it seems, the Nobel peace prize marks a decisive shift from fearing the specter of a unilateral, single superpower throwing its weight around arrogantly with little or no regard for the world, as exemplied by George Bush & co. bank of blind avenging angels. BHO has as a herald of high moral hopes and a message of cohering the US with the world at large. Called it the biblical 'balm of Gilead', if you will; it's comparatively speaking in the same league as the youthful JFK whose election like BHO's brought a universal feeling of youth and change, even though the potential might remain short in reality.
The detractors in the US, for all the Colonel Blimp patriotism they wear on their sleeves, they fail to recognise that the US in the person of BHO, is being honoured and restored to its own image as a beacon of hope and liberty and freedom. In this sense, they bear the onus of 'anti American', which at every turn possible they try smearing everyone else but them.
Like it or not, BHO is the 2009 holder of the Nobel prize for peace.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Israel stews in a broth of its own making

Israel is getting a taste of its own medicine.
Today [16 October 2009], the UN Human Rights Commission voted to send the findings of Goldstone report on Israel's 21 day war on Gaza, to the Security Council for consideration and action. A setback for the Netenyahu right wing government, and for the Obama administration, a dilemma, the more especially since the US will no doubt exercise its veto, thereby running the risk of damaging mending fences with the Arab and Muslim world which Mr. Obama [BHO] puht on track with his speech in Cairo.
Now, Israel's longstanding ties with Turkey are loosening. And Israel's blitzkrieg of a war 60in Gaza which targeted Gaza's civil population and infrastructure as a means of getting back at the Hamas government, and as such, as an martial exercise in 'collective guilt', a blatant violation of international law, which Jerusalem whimsically uses selectively and for its own purposes.
Turkey has cooperated with Israel almost from its founding 60 years ago. Military, economic, and diplomatic relations have withstood the turbulent wars Israel waged against Palestinians and its Arab neighbours. With the rise of renewed Muslim sensibility in secular Turkey, these ties began fraying.
It became noticeable at the 2008 Davos economic summit, when Turkish prime minister Erdogan criticised Israel's preemptive war in Gaza. Sharing the stage with Mr. Erdogan was Israeli president Shimon Peres who proceeded not only to rebuke the Turkish premier, but in a snit began shouting at him, which resulted in Mr. Erdogan stomping off the platform, as Mr. Peres continued his rantings.
Afterwards the Israeli president realising his mistake, apologised in the hope that Turkey would overlook Mr. Peres' display of diplomatic bad manners. Turkey obliged. And relations, it seemed, take on their normal pattern until Israel again ruffled Anakara's feather, and yes, the sting was Gaza. For on a visit of the Turkish foreign minister to Israel, the Likud government denied his request to visit the Gaza strip.
Israel's over the top war against Palestinians in Gaza, left Jerusalem with two black eyes. The unwarranted and seeming targeting and killing and maiming its civil population and deliberate bombing of roads, schools, mosques, churches, and hospitals, has won Israel few friends. And the 'tsuhal's' [Israeli Defence Force] brutality has turned a friendly Turkey into a critic. Denying a top government minister access to Gaza simply reopened the rift between Ankara and Jerusalem.
The upshot was immediate. Turkey canceled joint military exercises with the Israeli air. force.
And if that were not a wake up call for Israel, on Turkish television a documentary on the war in Gaza with a distinctly anti Israeli cast. Of course, Jerusalem presented its protests to the acting Turkish ambassador. It says something that Turkey has no appointed ambassador d to Israel: further proof of rapidly cooling of relations between Ankara and Jerusalem.
Consider the charm offense Israeli former and current diplomats, spy masters, and high officials, and spokesmen and women in the international media, to defend Israel against its own actions, especially during the war in Gaza, in particular, and its illegal land grabbing of land and bare knuckled treatment of Palestinians in the Israeli 42 year occupation of the west bank. Two examples will suffice here a BBC interview with a top ranking former diplomat which thanks to the spot on grilling of the broadcaster poked holes in Israel's oft recited script of blaming the victim the Gazans. The other: the PBS programme host Charlie Rose whose nightly transmissions enjoy a global audience. His guest another top Israeli official who presented a convoluted, long winded defence against the Goldstone report and for Israel, a limp boosterism for the right of his country to attack Gaza and its civilian population, saying more than less that every house, school, hospital, religious institution was a valid target since it housed rockets, which but on the basis of Israeli propaganda existed but never independently verified.
The US will shield, to the detriment of its own wider national interests, its client Israel. Israel is now more than ever thrown on the ropes of growing international criticism and isolation. The fault lies not in Israel's enemies, but in the nature of Israeli arrogance and belief that it is beyond the norms of international law and civilised behaviour. As such, it will have to taste more of its own bitter medicine.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Things coming together in divided Korea

As Guam Diary has continually noted, events are going in the directwhon of discussions of matters on a divided Korean peninsula, mucgh to the distaste of the hard liners in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo dream of nothing but regime change or the complete collapse of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea aka North Korea].
Instructive is today's article in 'Asian Times Online' by Dr. Kim Myong chol on Pyongyang's 'plan c' for breaking the logjam on denuclearising the Korean tpeninsula, Pyongyang's returning to the six party talks in Beijing, and the Obama administration's opening direct discussions with the DPRK. 'Plan c' is a 'bomb' in itself; its object is Washington's 'de jure' recognition of North Korea as a nuclear power.
For those who know of Mr. Kim, he is a Korean born and living in Japan, and who is called the 'DPRK's unofficial spokesman'. His utterances are never flights of fancy but herald the broad outline of North Korea's policy. So what he does say, should be read with an attentive eye, to say the very least, not dismissed out of hand. He is signaling president Obama, to state the obvious.
President Bush tacitly acknowledged the nuclear status of Pyongyang after it exploded a nuclear device. He immediately reversed his long standing hard line policy towards North Korea, quieted down his talk of regime change, and stopped twisting the North Koreans' tail by demeaning Kim Jong il. In fact, he opened more contacts, admittedly guarded and indirect with Pyongyang.
Kim Myong chol defines the US' 'de facto' recognition of the DPRK's advance in nuclear technology to citizen Bill Clinton's mission of mercy in July 2009. Such shading of fact has more to do with the DPRK's dislike of Mr. Bush. Weeding through Dr. Kim's article, his attention does dwell on the domestic scene in the US; he weighs its domestic policies which have eaten into president Obama's [BHO] poll numbers; he reviews with a longer view the sad story of DPRK US relations, mentioning the long forgot[for Americans] 'Pueblo incident'. In his attempt to flatter BHO, he suggests that the American president, now a Nobel Peace laureat, sweep aside anyt barriers by visiting Pyongyang, a la Nixon's trip to China in 1972, and what's more admitting the DPRK into the nuclear club of 8.
On the last point, Mr. Kim, astute student of the American scenery, misjudges the 'public mind', meaning not only the American people but and especially those diplomats and CIA analysts past and present, think tank pundits, and members of the chattering class who favour more openness toward the DPRK. Mr. Kim knows them, since they are the very people who maintain channels to North Korea, on one hand; on the other, he misreads them.
Consider the opinion of former diplomat and current president of New York's Korea Society, Evans Revere, and Gordon Flake, Korea expert and member of the Mansfield Foundation. These two men spoke at a panel on North Korea at New York's Japan Society at the beginning of August 2009. Both Revere and Flake to varying degrees, are for keeping channels open to Pyongyang. Nonetheless, on the matter of recognising the DPRK as a nuclear power, both bristled, and both were of one mind: 'totally unacceptable'. And that is the feeling, visceral it seems, of friends of North Korea.
So, in a way, Dr. Kim is proposing a maximal position of the DPRK. Obviously, it is an agenda item when direct talks between the US and DRPK take place. Yet, the suggestion is enough for the so called good guys on contact with Pyongyang, to take fright and run. And since they have BHO's ear more or less, to warn against any action on the matter.
Guam Diary has the feeling that the DPRK has always sought legitimacy, especially from the US and its allies. Were BHO willing to grant 'de jure' rights on the nuclear issue, the DPRK would renounce its nuclear programme and ambitions, much in the same way Libya's Colonel Qaddafi did. Of course, this requires diplomatic recognition, among other agenda items. Furthermore, Pyongyang's thirst for a place in the sun of normal nations is such that its admission to the comity of countries, is worth denuclearising the Korean peninsula.
BHO won't go to Pyongyang. Would Kim Jong il risk the trip to Washington?

Netenyahu strikes a Jehovah like pose

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netenyahu spoke like Jehovah before the Beth Kenesset [parliament]. Casting thunderbolts of scorn and disdain at the findings of the Goldstone report, he vowed that not one Israeli is going to be tried for crimes of war which Israel's 21 day 'blitzkrieg' visited on the population of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009. South African jurist Richard Goldstone, a Jew and a Zionist, commissioneds by the UN Human Rights Commission, issued a report on war crimes committed during the war in Gaza. His conclusions did not exempt Hamas from guilt, but they did point the finger of condemnation on the overwhelming blame of the Israeli army. The 'tsuhal' or Israeli Defense Force overwhelming targeted the Palestinian civilian population and the Gaza strips infrastructure as prime targets, resulting in at least 1400 dead, children, women, and men, an even higher number of wounded, but hardly delivering the 'knockout blow' to the ostensible object of the war--Hamas.
The war brought into out living rooms thanks to the media, did Israel more moral harm than Netenyahu can imagine. The iconic halo that Israel wears on with arrogance, may be tarnished beyond saving in the eyes of the world. Even its stout defenders began questioning Israel's motives.
And Netenyahu resorted to Israel's damage control, for the Goldstone report documents Israel's brutality against Gaza in a war conducted as an exercise in 'collective guilt' which contravenes norms of international law. He couldn't act otherwise. He poured hot bile on the report's findings and recommendations that Israel be brought before the international court of justice for crimes of war. He cast Israel's responsibility on the shoulders of Hamas, for launching home made rockets after Israel, to break an Israeli strangehold on the economic and social life of Gazans, with the view of reducing the will of resistance throw slow starvation. He preaches the valour of Israel's democracy which keeps its own Arab citizens in second class status, and in its 42 year occupation of the west bank continues to steal Palestinian land for settlers thereby fulfilling the Zionist goal of an Israeli state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river; the Arab owners of the land properly dispossessed and abandoned to tight little islands in Bantustans, killing any hope of an independent Palestine.
Netenyahu's boasts won't win him more friends, but more likely than not turn Israel into a pariah state, in pursuit of a dream which as Guam Diary suggests, means the end of Zionism and the fall of any purely Jewish state

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Boomerang on shelving the Goldstone report. US powerless to stop Israeli land grabbing in east Jerusalem and the west bank. The end of Zionism!

Pliable Palestinian Authority [PA] president Mahmoud Abbas [Abu Mazzam] turned tailewed on his refusal to advance the UN Human Rights Goldstone report to the UN Security Council. Putty in the hands of secretary of state Hillary Clinton to stop the report from ever reaching the Security Council, Mr. Abbas willing obliged. But the Palestinian streets was swift in condemning him as as a traitor denying them justice in condemning Israel's war of collective guilt in December 2008 and January 2009. Faced with a groundswell of anger, he reversed himself.
The Barack Obama [BHO] administration has shown itself incapable of pressuring Israel on negotiations of a two state solution, and unable to throw lest in complete and total support of it. Instead once again he is sending his special adviser George Mitchell, in the spirit of an elusive hope that he can revive the road map to peace which for Israel is dead in the water. Israeali prime minister Benjamin Netenyahu has responded to BHO's initiative to get the two states solution off the ground by inflicting on BHO a humiliating rebuff. He simply continues the illegal gobbling up of Palestinian territory in Israeli occupied west bank and the spoiliation of Palestinian property in east Jerusalem. What does Senator Mitchell hope to gain from further discussions with the right wing Likud government? Not much. In fact, the ultra national Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has never shied away from pursuing Israel's version of 'Lebensraum' in the occupied territories, put a big stick in the spokes of any US effort in support of a 'viable Palestinian state'. Lieberman without a blush of shame nor hypocrisy, simply put BHO on notice that any resolution of the 60 year old Palestinian question, is year's away. [Read, till hell freezes over.] BHO reacts mildly to Israel's rebuffs. His unswerving support of Israel, annuls any 'public relations' offense by the Obama administration to sway the Arab and Muslim main street and heads of state, on its determination to birth an independent Palestine.
The US simply wont slap Israel hard on the knuckles in the same way that Dwight Eisenhower did during Israel's preemptive seizure of the Suez Canal in 1956. Then the US president threatened withholding military and economic aid unless David Ben Gurion withdrew Israeli troops, which he immediately did. Now, we find Washington has become Israel's cat's paw.
It is more and more obvious that the two state solution has not future today. Israel is intent in marginalising millions of Palestinian Arabs in disconnected islands of poor land, thereby realising the political goal of Zionism, of a Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the river Jordan. A state called 'Israel' with a minority ruling Jewish population with complete rights and an Arab majority with little or no rights; second class citizens condemned to an unequal and separate status similar to the non white population of apartheid South Africa. The minority may rule for years but ultimately its centre won't hold; it is doomed to failure unless it resorts to an ethnic cleansing which the world community won't allow. Ultimately, too, Arabs will regain full rights, and a Jewish state will perish in favour of a secular state with full rights for all. Confident as Israeli leaders are today they are digging Zionism's grave.

Monday, October 5, 2009

The New York Times floats rumours about Iran's nuclear capabilities

US NSC [National Securtiy Council] chairman General Jones today firmly shot down the Sunday 2 October 2009 'New York Times' lead story that the Islamic Republic of Iran is designing nuclear warheads. The general stood firmly by the Pentagon's 2007 assessment that Iran was not capable of producing nuclear weaponry. The story written by David Sanger, the 'Times' man with an in at the Pentagon, William Broad, and Mike Mazzetti spoke of an IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna] report, not made public yet.
The more attentive eye would and should have picked up on the fact that the 'Times' article is based on third party accounts, on sources which had heard of the IAEA report, but which few had read. So in brief, the paper of note is peddling rumours and hearsay.
Guam Diary then asks why did the 'Times' allow the story to run as a lead article in its much read Sunday edition? It is more noteworthy since it appears that there is a good crack in the 30 years ice of no contact between Washington and Tehran, not since the hostage crisis of 1979! Discussions between the US and its allies with Iran look promising, and an Iran watcher in the US in his commentary called it 'the October suprise in US Iran relations'.
The 'Times' did cover its tracks by saying, the 'scoop' needed verification, but its prominent place on page one demands further digging as to the sources of the article's rumours.
It is an open secret in Washington that the old guard in the Pentagon and state deepartment are fighting a rear guard fight with the Obama administration. Proof of this is General McChrystal open criticism of vice president Joseph Biden's view on fighting in Afghanistan, during an interview in Great Britain, at a time president Obama is weighing the commitment of more troops to Afghanistan. And then there is the element in the military and state who side with the Israeli view of how dangerous Tehran is in developing a nuclear programme which they qualify as nefarious and hostile to the US client Israel.
General Jones stand should for the moment quiet the overt differences on talks with Iran, but the battle is joined to derail any thaw in US Iran discussions and resumption of normal relations. This is yet another indication of a seemingly life and death struggle in defence of the Bush polices which have been deleterious to US aims and role in the world. Guam Diary suggests that we have not heard the last of such sleights of hand, manipulation of the media, and the go for broke reactionary designs which bode ill for a peaceful resolution of differences.

Israeli vice premier fears arrest for crimes of war, Mme Hillary Clinton spares Israel from being tried in the Hague for war crimes

Bully Israel may throw out its chest in the Middle East, but abroad it is not feared. Consider the refusal of Israeli vice premier Moshe Yaalon's cancellation of a trip to attend a fund raising dinner for the Jewish National Fund, a private organisation. Although he would ultimately be protected by diplomatic immunity, Yaalon had feared arrest in Britain for alleged crimes of war, the more especially since he was coming to Britain for a non official reason. As he was military chief of staff, Israel dropped a one tonne bomb in Gaza City killing 15 people including a Hamas leader and 8 children in 2002, as part of Israeli strategy to assassinate Palestinian leaders whoi refuse to bow to Jerusalem's will. So, to avoid embarrassment at best and losing face internationally at worst, Yaalon elected to remain in the cozy comfort of his country.
Israeli prime minister have in the recent past been the object of arrest warrants for war crimes, but they had gone abroad on official business. As such, the request for their arrest were denied on the grounds of diplomatic immunity. In Yaalon's case, this was not so.
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In a move which may very well erase the good will US president Barack Obama's [BHO] speechor in Cairo, calling for better relations and understanding of Arabs and Muslims, his secretary of state successfully twisted the arm of Palestinian Authority's president Mahmoud Abbas [Abu Mazzan] from presenting the finds of the UN Goldstone report before the UN Security Council. Washington swift action assures that the US client state Israel won't face charges before the International Court of Justice [ICJ] in the Hague for war crimes in Gaza where Israel's blitzkrieg killed at least 1400 civilians, women, children, and men, and destroyed the enclaves schools, hospitals, municipal buildings, roads, and the like. The Goldstone report, as Guam Diary noted, pinned the tail of crimes of war on Israel, responsible for 95 per cent of the human and physical destruction; it also blamed Hamas for war crimes.

Had the Palestinian Authority brought the Goldstone report before the Security Council, Israel would come under harsh cri ticism for its preemptive war in Gaza. It would have faced a serious blow to its own manufactured image of a pygmy among armed Arab giants. A serious twisting of the truth, to say the least, the more especially since Israel with its powerful military industrial complex, untold billions of military and economic aid, and a nuclear stockpile of more than 200 bombs, can believably be qualified as 'helpless' in a Palestine not yet born but whose lands it is stealing piecemeal in violation of international law on the west bank it occupies for the last 42 years, and millions of its Arab neighbours!

Debate in the Security Council would embarrass Israel's protector the US. Mme. Clinton couldn't lap dog Washington is, he will continue to gobble up west bank land. And the Palestinians will end up in encircled colonies by Jewish settlers. Any hope of a state viciated!