Saturday, April 30, 2011

A death in Nablus

Three buses of right wing religious Jews, arrogantly assumed the right, without prearranged permission of the Palestinian Authority, to visit Joseph’s Tomb in the Palestinian city of Nablus, thereby resulting in the death of one pilgrim by a town policeman. This killing speaks volumes of why the Israeli government cannot reach agreement on an independent Palestinian state.

Any death is to be deplored. However the dead man Ben Josef Livnat happens to be the nephew of Limor Livnat, minister of culture and sports in the Likud led government of Binjamin Netenyahu. As such, the minister has characterised the killing as ‘murder’; Ehud Barak, the defence minister, repeated the charge. In death, Ben Josef Livnat has become a symbol of the rising tide of ultra orthodox religious illegal settlers on Palestinian land — a massive land grab sanctioned by the government — in evoking hoary claims from the Torah that it is Samaria and Judea, a divine given birth right with no time limit.

Illegal settlement on Palestinian land has recreated the American myth of how the West was won by the seizure and killing of its Native occupants of land. Israelis, through brutal occupation, believe that force make right, thereby making them a law unto them. Any arrangements which they do not like, they ignore. And Livnat’s death is a good example of ignoring the law.

For these religious fanatics, and for a majority of Israelis for that matter, the Palestinians have little or no rights; Joseph’s Tomb belongs to the Jews, and like it or not, they will by sheer number impose their right to pray at the Prophet’s tomb regardless of the need of Palestinian permission. Here again, we find another example of reenforcing the demonising Palestinians’ right to land they have occupied for centuries, and the even deeper slide into mire of racism which is everywhere palpable in Israel itself and the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

What it comes down to is plain and simple: as the occupier and warlord, we repeat, Israel imposes a law of its own. Israeli Jews but not Israeli Arabs can travel anywhere at will. Palestinians cannot without standing hours in long lines to pass military controls and being tarred with the brush of abject humiliation.

If an Israeli kills an Arab, it’s a mistake, but if as in the case of Livnat, a policeman, nervous at the sight of a cluster of determined religious Jews — claiming the right without any conditions to go anywhere they want and thereby by their very act of defiance not only challenging the right of Palestinians to govern the little territory they are allowed to hold but denying the right of Palestinians to have any right to the land itself — fires on the crowd and kills one and wounds others, it’s a disaster which only vengeance and Palestinian death will assuage.

But as is many times documented, Israeli settlers and military shooting to kill Palestinians, rare is it that any punishment is meted out.

So it is not only a question of double standards, double measures, but a deliberate policy to usurp the land of one people for the use of another. And, alas, that is at the root and branch of the Israeli government if it adheres to traditional Zionist ideology or as in Netenyahu’s case, revisionist Zionist policy.

Keller, the New York Times, and Wikileaks

Today [25 April 2011]the 'New York Times' had extensive coverage of almost 800 recently released US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks on the US prison at Guantanamo. GuamDiary encourages its readers to compare the coverages of these documents with that of the UK 'Guardian', French 'Le Monde', and German 'Der Speigel', for the emphasis is different in each.

Twice in the investigative reporting spread out over four pages, the Times reporters slip in the phrase, to the effect, that this broadsheet of note received the cables from a source other than Wikileaks. Probably that source is the Guardian.

Wikileaks, at first, shared its information with the Times, then struck the newspaper off its list of recipients for a reason Julian Assage explained in an interview on 'Democracy Now'. The Wikileaks founder thought that the 'gray old lady' of US press aristocracy had betrayed 'her' journalistic integrity by showing the documents and its reporting first to the Obama White House before breaking the story.

The Times' cosiness with the US government is well known and documented, the printing of the 'Pentagon Papers' almost a half century ago notwithstanding. Salzburger & co., playing it coy and two sides of the street, cut and pasted its journalist cloth to a government fit. And this is the reason, the Times was and continued to be cut out of Wikileaks loop, and must depend on the kindess of the Guardian newspaper.

It also explains why Assange has reservations about the 'Washington Post', and it goes a long way to explain why Bill Keller the Times' editor in chief never refrains from 'ad hominem' attacks against Assange. Keller feels insulted and humiliated and is on the warpath to avenge his and the Times' honour.

Wikileaks denied the Guardian access to US diplomatic cables on Guantanamo

Yesterday GuamDiary suggested that, as in the past, the 'Guardian' newspaper provided the 'New York Times' with the US diplomatic cables on Guantanamo. We were off target: the Guardian itself, in its coverage, alluded to an unspecified source for the documents they received.

In the UK, the 'Daily Telegraph' got the documents, however. GuamDiary will leave the unknown source behind its veil of secrecy.

What may explain the sudden drying up of cables becomes clairer when we look at the list of new book titles: 'Public Affairs' published the Guardian's 'Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assanges' War on Secrecy'. It is no secret that the Guardian has had a rocky relationship with Wikileaks' founder, going as far as deflating the much talked about 'Assange ego'. Additionally, there is an element of the Guardian's high moral tone of journalism which in analysising the US diplomatic cables sought to through its weight around with a mere 'colonial', it seems. These elements -- and there very well may be more -- provided the tinder for the explosion between Assange and the Guardian.

As a result, Wikileaks drew a black line through the Guardian's name on its list. Will the Guardian learn that you cannot strangle the goose that lays the golden egg of information and scoops and banner headlines? Maybe yes. And then maybe no.

The story that the low level and declassified material is too important the unspecified source thought to be denied either the Guardian or the Times. The more widely the data can be disseminated the better, and in a way, the wider the net cast, the truer it fulfills Wikileaks' own mission for transparency and honesty.

Jimmy Carter in Pyongyang: the trouble with US policy towards North Korea

Jimmy Carter is always welcome in Pyongyang. Since his 'visite eclaire' in 1994 when he went to North Korea against the expressed wishes of the US government, he's brought a voice of sanity to a more and more off the pier US policy towards the DPRK.

Once more, he is in Pyongyang as a 'private citizen' surrounded by what is prettily called 'the Elders' -- Martti Ahtisaari of Finland,Mary Robinson of Ireland, and Harlem Brundtland of Norway -- to meet Kim Jong il, if possible, or senior North Korean officials. Their mission is to nudge resumption of the stalled six party talks in Beijing, look at ways to alleviate the dire lack of food, and possibly for Carter to bring home yet another US citizen under arrest. Just as important is the desire of these elders is to bring a message to the intransigeant and opening hostile and aggressive South Korean president Lee Myung bak, to engage with Kim Jong il. Not an easy task.

Yet, GuamDiary who's long followed the pretzel like twists and turns of US policy towards North Korea, cannot help but wonder: isn't this 'deja vu all over again'? but with the trappings of a few Europeans thrown in. On Carter's last visit, not only did he bring home a naif evangelical Christian sentenced to hard labour and a multimillion dollar fine, but he also hand delivered a letter from Kim to president Obama, which went unanswered as far as we know.

Carter's integrity and his 'guts' speak for themselves, but the US government is less than honest in dealing with North Korea. Surely, under the guise of a 'private' mission can glaring political issues festering for the last 60 years even begin to be ironed out. You need face to face meetings on a governmental or diplomatic level to kick start the process, something the US has turned itself inside and out to avoid doing. This 'virginal' shyness goes a long way in explaining the failure of the off again on again six party talks in Beijing dealing with the nuclear issue on a divided Korean peninsula.

Studies have shown that the George W. Bush administration loathed to speak to North Korea, so it came up with a strategm using the good offices of China to talk to Pyongynag. Almost 10 years later, it has borne nothing but bitter fruit. Obama has not only continued Bush's approach but upped the ante by supporting Lee's military adventures along the NLL [Northern Limit Line] within a whisper of North Korea's territorial waters, resulting in November with a North Korea riposte which did not quite chasten Lee nor Obama in pursuit of war like policies.

It is an open secret that with two failed wars in Asia, and a fancy pass in Libya, the US is looking for a way to wiggle out of the tripwire that is its and South Korea's policy towards North Korea. The Elders may bring some balm to soothe open wounds, but they won't budge Lee in Seoul much. And the US will find itself where it always is with the card it draws: 'Go back to go', meaning start all over again.

Carter is willing to do his best to lessen tensions. He has the will but not the power Obama does and refuses to use wisely. Instead Obama continues to treat North Korea as a wayward child who understands only threats, sanctions, warnings, short of a good spanking which would mean reopening the frozen Korean War.

And that in a nutshell is the weakness of Carter's latest journey to Pyongyang. The US has to and should engage face to face with North Korea, but, alas won't, it seems.

GuamDiary has always thought a Geneva like conference kill a multitude of problems: it would provide the venue for a tete a tete between the US and North Korea, a setting for four -- the US, China, North Korea and South Korea -- for ending the Korean War with long last a peace treaty [the inclusion of Seoul is a favour since Syngman Rhee refused to sign the 1953 Armistice Agreement, and so technically, South Korea has no right to sit at the table], and finally six party talks -- US, China, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, and Japan -- to work out modalities on the nuclear issue.

Is the Birther issue settled? A way to revive racialist attacks on Obama

Barack Obama finally decided to put the birther issue at rest by publishing his full birth certificate? Maybe not. It won't satisfy the 'true believers' that it is a falsified document and he was actually born in Kenya. What's more he's a Muslim in Christian clothing. In other words, nothing will satisfy them.

The huckster Donald Trump has used the birther matter, in order to throw his hat in the ring for the 2012 presidential nomination on the Republican Party ticket. His tack has shot him high on opinion poll ratings. Now that the president has decided to quash rumours that have been floating in the media and on the blogosphere and spread by whispering campaigns, the 'silliness', as he calls it, should come to an end.

It hasn't. In fact, Trump seized the ball Obama put into his court to talk credit for making the president come clean finally. And if political mileage is to be made of attacking him without respite, the Donald is now worrying about how the 44 president got into Columbia and Harvard. Without explicitly saying so, Trump is implying that BHO [Barack Hussein Obama] got in through a policy of social promotion which favours people of colour. It makes no difference that the president's SAT scores more than meet admissions requirement, the seeds of doubt are liberally spread on the fertile imaginations of the anti Obama crowd and may very well appeal to a sea of whites who feel children of theirs got bumped so that colour not merit counted more in getting ahead in this life.

And there you have the subtext of the attacks mainly from the Republicans and the Tea Baggers and opportunists like Trump to make sure Obama becomes a one term president. The racialism is not subtle: each response is met by another question, another worry, another fear that it is not straightforward. In this way, licence is given to open a Genie's bottle of prejudice. Invidious it is to introduce again the fear of the Black or the Brown or the Yellow into the American mainstream of what's licit.

On the other hand, Obama's sloth in letting matters lie has worked against him. Was he clever by half? Perhaps. His unwillingness to crush his opponents quickly reveals a tragic fault. GuamDiary is not saying he's a Hamlet, but the way he works does the country a disservice.

Netenyahu is not amused: more bitter pills to swallow

Israeli right wing prime minister Binjamin Netenyahu is not amused. He’s given the Palestinian Authority a ‘choice’: side with us to work out a deal or nothing if you hook up with Hamas. After almost 20 years after the Oslo Accords, and Netenyahu’s moves to sabotage them, no Palestinian state is on the horizon. We only see the incessant illegal land grab of Israeli settlers, defying international norms and laws, by ‘manu militari’ conquering the lands of Samaria and Judea, based on hoary tales in the Old Testament.



Netenyahu’s ukase went so far as to insult Palestinian aspirations for a land of their own by referring to a portion of the West Bank as ‘Samaria’. Israel’s intentions are simple and clear, as if they ever were complicated and mysterious: it’s our way or the highway, no more, no less. In other words, he is giving the Palestinian the third finger!

The US which should have on the drawing board newer approaches to the rapidly changing geopolitics of the Middle East, has, as is its wont, backed up Netenyahu. For these two countries, Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and that’s that. So stuck is Washington in its mindset grown long in the tooth, and has become a relic worthy of veneration, history is passing it by.

‘The New Yorker’ and the ‘New York Times’ talk of heated discussion in the White House about a new direction for US Israeli policy, but little is readily obvious that change is underway.

Since the heave ho of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt things ain’t what they used to be for Israel, a majority of Egyptians think it worthwhile to keep the Israeli Egyptian peace treaty on track notwithstanding. Yet the relationship no longer suits the Egyptian condition: consider the interruption of national gas which Egypt supplies Israel for its needs, delivery is inadequate, and besides that fact, the pipeline delivery the gas was blown up, which will be a heavy drag on Israeli economic growth.

What’s equally obvious is that Israel is losing its patina in the world community, owing to its thumbing its nose at international law on at least two glaring occasions. One the preemptive war against Hamas, euphemistically dubbed ‘Cast Lead’, with its destruction of civilian lives and property and infrastructure under the guise of fighting Hamas. The other, its resort to piracy and murder on the high sea in the case of the ‘Mavi Marmara’ in effectively stopping the Peace Flotilla bound for Gaza with building supplies and medicine to succor the devastated Palestinians living in Gaza.

Yet, Netenyahu & co. maintain a set course to fulfill the goal of Revisionist Zionis: a Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, by seizing Palestinian land, driving the Arab population into what is without a doubt ‘Bantustans’ of recent South African history.

Netenyahu is not amused, the more especially his cover is blown. He’s a ruler without clothes. And even more galling is that a fellow Revisionist Zionist like Tzipi Livni recognises that time is no longer on Israel’s side. And it’s more and more evident, it is not.

It is likely that the UN General Assembly will recognise Palestine as a legitimate state with all the trappings that go with statehood despite Israeli illegal seize of Palestinian real estate. And will Netenyahu keep his smug complacency when the world community challenges Israel’s right to grab land which it does not own; to round up in sweeps thousands of innocents simply because they are Arab; to treat Palestinian Arabs and its own Israeli Arabs with the contempt of conquerers in the colonial mould of racialism, so on and on.

Netenyahu may not be amused but behind his smugness and arrogance is the bully’s fear that like Samson’s his locks will be shorn and he, too, will topple the Zionist pillars of expansion.

Jimmy Carter socks it to Barack Obama and Lee Myung bak

Arriving in Seoul, South Korea from Pyongyang, North Korea, Jimmy Carter sharply criticised Barack Obama and Lee Myung bak from denying North Korea much need food supplies, political issues notwithstanding.

Carter appeal for food supplies fell on deaf ears. For the last two years, the US and South Korea have cut off any humanitarian aid to the North. The two countries hide behind the bureaucratic excuse that Kim Jong il’s government will not give the right to take control of food distribution.

North Korea has been hit by a string of natural disasters: heavy rains and a long, cold winter which have wiped out more than four fifths of its crops. Its people’s are suffering and on the razor edge of starvation. So, Mother Nature has given North Korea a double whammy, to say the least.

Earlier GuamDiary noted that Pyongyang’s call for food fell on the wayside of the world’s conscience. A concerted refusal came from the US, South Korea, Australia, and the European Union. As a result, the North appealed to private donors. Here the rub is that these voluntary organisations receive food from the very countries refusing to help the people of North Korea stave off starvation and early death.

Nonetheless, the US’ cover has been blown on ‘PBS News Hour’. GuamDiary reproduces its entry from March 2011.

Food for the starving North Koreans?
GuamDiary has commented on the deaf response by the US, EU, South Korea, and Australia to North Korea’s appeal for food aid. Mother Nature has been unusually cruel towards North Korea: floods and long months of freezing temperatures which have wiped out 80 per cent of winter wheat crops.
In fact, the US and South Korea have not give a gram of food for the last two years. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why: the two allies have a common goal to ‘roll back’ Kim Jong il & co. until they fall from power.
An observation: the US, for example, cries crocodile tears when it comes to saving civilians from wars and famine and earthquakes. Of course, the support is selective; North Korea may receive sighs of ‘too bad’, ‘a tragedy’ and the like, but behind this moralism is the mean thought that the North Koreans should rise up as one and throw out of the rascals. And so hypocrisy of concerrn and ‘treat your neighbour as he would treat you’ stays the rich hands from dipping into surplus food supplies. Dante would surely assign such men and women to the eight circle of Hell!
Webstreaming today, GuamDiary saw the unflappable Margaret Warner ‘speaking’ with David Austin of Mercy Corps who has recently returned from a visit to the most exposed provinces in North Korea where the people are starving.
Warner raised the old red herring of how can you trust Kim Jong il & co. and make sure the food goes to the people it is intended for, as her finely manicured nails beat a tattoo on her desk on a big gem on her fourth left finger–a picture of controlled indignation if not disgust.
Austin spoke plainly. He informed Warner and the PBS ‘News Hour’ audience that the North Koreans were forthright; they allowed Mercy Corps to go wherever they wanted, to visit empty graneries, homes, hospitals, schools, etc. Since North Korea’s appeal for food fell on deaf ears, Pyongyang turned to private agencies. We learn that until two years ago when the food dried up, the North Korea had respected a protocol it signed with Mercy Corps, meaning Mercy Corps controled and monitored food distribution from the port to the people the food was meant for, without interference. Still, Warner did not seem convinced.
Mercy Corps has broached the White House for the food, but as Austin put it, the Obama administration is discussing it. In other words, there is no action yet and may not very well be.
So is there food, funneled through the private sector to starving North Koreans? we cannot say for sure. And doubting Thomases that we are, we think the Obama regime won’t lift a little finger.

It is always interesting to observe that practising Christians like Barack Obama and the evangelical Lee Myung bak remain impervious to the basic notion of Charity when it comes to North Korea. On the other hand, Jimmy Carter does take his Christianity seriously, and therefore appeals to tight fisted US and ROK to send much need food.
Carter is not blind to that fact of the serious divide politically between the North and the South and the US. He has always laboured in the fields of peace and understanding, and worked and works for a political denouement of outstanding differences, especially when it comes to North Korea.

Carter also brought a message from North Korea that it is willing to resume six party talks in Beijing, as well as to open the agenda to other matters.Yet, Obama and Lee have coordinated a policy the goal of which is to not only humble Kim Jong il, but plan for his overthrowal. Washington’s and Seoul’s stubborness will earn them little, but making open sores fester the more.
They are clever by half. And what’s more their intelligence on the North is incomplete and spotty if not shoddy since it reflects a monkey chasing its own tail.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Malaysia's sex train goes off the rails

The Malay states have a long history of carefree, fun loving peoples. Today's modern Malaysia, as its racial and religious face dons the 'burqah' of Islamic conservatism, if not a deep tinge of fundamentalism, has become obsessed with sex.
Its prime minister Najib Razak narrowly escaped blame in the murder of a Mongolian model, yet the stain remains. His rival Anwar Ibrahim has been in and out of gaol, in and out of the courts, on alleged charger of diddling a male aid of his, which he has steadfastly challenged and denied, claiming political intrigue against him.
Ulema who read the Koran too closely are trying to subject women to the whims and desires of their husbands even to the point of being beaten. A woman, after all, has to serve her lord, her husband's sexual appetite anywhere, anyhow, and at any moment.
Malaysian women have rights but the rigid religious right try to subvert, if not do away with them.
And yet the army of prostitution flourish among the believers. How do the sanctifiers of the holy word square that circle?
Women in modern dress suffer, as do women who don't cover their heads.
And now, boys who exhibit 'effeminate' behaviour are sent to boot camps to make men out of them, on unproven evidence that these boys prefer boys of their own sex!
More oft than not, if we look at the record of pediophilia suggests, the he men whose goal is turn these boys into men, are prone to abuse them sexually.
Psychology is weighed down with studies of the narrow religiousity whose taste for the prurient, the fantasy of sex magnifies unhealthly. As Freud would say, they project their desires on to others whom they take great pleasure in persecuting.
And Malaysia is going down that primerose path with a vengeance.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Aidan Foster-Carter 'apologia pro sua vita'

Eventually everything comes out in the wash. Aidan Foster-Carter, honourary lecturer in Korean history at Leeds University, confesses in a recent article in the e paper 'Asia Times Online', which publishes his articles, that in his youth he was a cheer leader for North Korea. And as fervent as his devotion was it came to an end.
And with the fevour of the disappointed, he waxes highly critical, using his words as though they were a hatchet, of the DPRK.
At one point, Kim Jong il so exasperated him, the good lecturer cried out in frustration, that he wished that North Korea would simply disappear. Thus, would, it seem, end Foster-Carter's existential torment of the sins of his youth.
His demons pursue him, thereby colouring his reporting, the more the pity since in more measured tones he could make his case.

Sostiene Richard Goldstone

After his opinion piece appeared in the 'Washington Post' [1 April 2011], expressing his 'if I'd known what I know now' about Israel's 'Cast Lead' targeting civilians in Gaza, the UN 'Goldstone Report' would have been less critical of Israel's undeclared war targets, Judge Richard Goldstone, not repudiating the totality of the report which bears his name, has lapsed into the silence of the sphinx.
His fellow judges on the UN panel upheld the complete findings which Goldstone departs from by downplaying Israel's defence forces blitzkrieg attack against Hamas and with the intention of visiting collective punishment on the Palestinians for having democratically Hamas, which refuses to recognise the Zionist state of Israel, and against whom Israel has conducted low level warfare, including targeted assassinations against its leaders. Hamas, for its part, has, under the dictum of 'Exodus 21:24' of giving an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
The publication of the 'Goldstone Report' brought thunderbolts on the head of the South African judge. He was on the receiving end of the collective invective of his fellow Jews, good Zionist that he is; a daughter turned sour against her father; and on the eve of a grandson's bar mitzvah, rumblings among South African Jews caused concern that the boy's passage to manhood would be disrupted and you couldn't rule out violence. Cooler heads managed to calm matters so that the synagogue wouldn't turn into a 'Cast Lead' of Jew against Jew.
As GuamDiary suggested, time will out: we know now that the Zionist establishment got to the good judge. Israel refused to cooperate with him and his panel in investigating both Hamas and Israel for crimes of war committed during 'Cast Lead'. And after many months, the Zionist state provided evidence which is open to question,to the judge, who, as he told a rabbi, he would rejoice should 'evidence' be given him to prove him wrong as to Israel's designs against the civil population of Gaza.
Goldstone did rejoice in print in the 'Washington Post', without much explanation, other than saying 'had he known then what he knew now...', before lapsing into silence. His partial recantation bestowed on him a dusted off welcoming mat into the the hearts of the Israel and Jews in the diaspora. Suddenly off of Goldstone's shoulders slipped the mantle of pariah to almost a good member of the Tribe. Rarely, now, would he hear such condemnation that the 'ueber' Jew pronounced of Goldstone being a traitor to the Jewish people.
Here it would be useful to suggest that as a South African who opposed apartheid, Goldstone treasured the illusion that his experience in his homeland would find its mirror image in Gaza and Israeli conflict. It was not even though some parallels contributed to make him think so. And on that hook hangs another reason of his disavowal of a crucial point of the UN report.
Israel may feel vindicated in a perverse way, but in no way, looking at the evidence, does Goldstone's remarks, absolve the Zionist state from the crimes of war against the people of Gaza.
Goldstone has his own conscience to deal with; his opinion piece might bring him balm; he's a peace with an angry daughter; he's at one, more or less, with his fellow Jews and the Israeli elite, but his silence also suggests moral ill ease. And consequently, he endures in his adopted mutism.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Will 'Bibi" Netenyahu address the joint houses of the US Congress?

As the Obama administration struggles with a new initiative to settle the Palestine Israeli question, the Republic majority leader Joyn Boehner of the house of representatives is wanting to invite Israel's right wing prime minister 'Bibi' Netenyahu to address the upper and lower chambers of the US Congress.
Boehner's manoeuvre is obvious as it is simple: his aim is to sabotage president Obama's speech on settling the Palestine Israel conflict, in the glaring light of upheavals in the Arab world, which demand a new set of rule for America's interests in the region.
Netenyahu will again address AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], a powerful pro Israel lobby which has never stopped from defeating or trying to defeat any candidate who however mildly critises Israel. Last year, the Republic whip of the house, Eric Cantor, an observant Jew, pledged his fealty to the state of Israel, for which he was duly 'rebuked'. Cantor issued a clumsy apology: his remarks raised the question of dual loyalty. As an elected official, his pledge of allegiance to the Zionist state makes him ill fit for office, and if he had any honour let alone shame, he would have resigned his post.
Netenyahu is frothing at his political mouth, for his policy of 'farniente' or do nothing has not only sabotaged the Oslo Peace Accords but has driven Israel into a cul de sac. As GuamDiary quoted the former Zionist foreign minister Tziporrah Livni in an interview with Simon Schama, 'time is no longer on Isreal's side'.
Touts given good bets on the UN General Assembly conferring global recognition of an Palestinian state with 1967 borders. and even the IMF where Washington has clout is tilting towards recognition of such a state! Yes, Netenyahu is a man with a hopeless mission. Like Darius he is trying to command the winds to stop and the tides to be still. It didn't work for Darius, and it won't work for revisionist Zionist Netenyahu as well.
Will a more sensible and even handed approach by the US calm a fire storm that Boehner & co. wish in order to consume Obama in its flames and to make him a one term president, as he and the Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the senate, who's in the hip pocket of the robber barons on Wall Street, openly declared?
Netenyahu's addressing the two houses of Congress is an insult to the American people, and an intrusion into this country's internal affairs, which, alas, has not stopped him and the Zionist elite from swaying US policy.
It seems the time for such interference is coming to an end!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Blame Ronald Reagan for Michelle Obama's near aeroplane mishap!

Why blame the dead Ronald Reagan for Michelle Obama's near air mishap?
Doesn't anyone remember that one of the first acts of the 'great communicator' when he took office was to smash the air controllers' union which supported his bid for the presidency?
Here is a prime example of gutting a public workers' union and letting the market do it worst in regulating it. So we saw and still see a much reduced workforce,working extended hours at lower pay, in order to perform the tasks of several for the price of one.
Since Reagan guillotined the union, the morale and the strength of air controllers have spiralled downwards, and made it a profession best left alone.
And so in 30 years we see the chickens have long come home to roost with a First Lady who might have become the victim of market forces and efficiencies and a Scrooge way of economy.
So the public outcry might call for disciplining controllers who fall asleep on the job or make errors of judgment, but no one really digs deeper to explain why.
As the reactionary Republican governors attack public unions with a sole view to kill them no matter what they say, we have proof positive of what that will mean for public safety and the way of life for Americans.
Market forces are blind and for those that pull the strings it brings profits and for those who submit to them poverty and for all -- profiteers and victims -- a danger to human life.
And so it is fair to shine the light on Ronald Reagan for the nastiness that the American way of life has become.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

How will S&P downgrade affect US corporate socialist welfare?

Markets tumbled one per cent or so on news of S&P's downgrading US sovereign debt, which, however, for the moment retains triple A status. But for how long?
How will the shift to a negative rating affect US corporate socialist welfare?
Probably not very much. The one or two percent of Americans who control as much wealth as the combined wealth of 40 per cent of its fellow citizens [serfs? who labour and struggle so that the rich get a pass in paying their fair share and taking responsibility for the duties that wealth bestows].
Will Congress slash the military budget which operates on the principles of 'Parkinson's law'. Let's quickly visit the opening salvo of Cyril Northcote Parkinson's book: an astute observation of how the British Colonial Empire shrank, its budget went up. Alexander Cockburn echoes this finding in the way it relates to the bloated US defence department's outlays as the military slims down, three wars notwithstanding. The defence budget is a vehicle for corruption, cost over runs, and buoying up the bottom line of America's military industrial big shots. George W. Bush fed this Pantagruel by privatising warfare.
One sure way to tame the bloated defence establishment and its gypsy troupe is to slash the military budget. Who reads today Seymour Melman's 'Pentagon Capitalism'?
The Republican shils fronting for the rich want to go after Medicare, Medicaid, and other educational and social programmes that would weaken America's economy, laying the burden on the shoulders of the least who can afford to pay without pushing them down to edges of spreading misery. Oscar Wilde famously quipped that 'the rich are [simply] different'. Different in that they can buy their way through life?
So isn't it time to raise the tax on the rich to where it was during the halycon days of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, an era that the Tea Party fanatics put on an altar to worship before? And what about the 'globalised' US corporations who pay no US taxes, send work outside the country whilst the US employment figure skates on the thin ice of nine per cent, although the wags would double it and wouldn't be far off the truth!? The elected representatives of the American people on the whole have the stomach to challenge the hand that feeds their electoral campaigns?
And where is the need for a change of values? The Tea baggers have driven the US popularist reflex to the edges of proto corporate style fashion which bore fruit in the 1920s. And where is the protest on the mild US left?
Oh sure, on the grassroots level there is some action, but it doesn't translate to a national pull. And then the crushing blow of the economic recession triggered by the big bracket banks which the US government gave its fat economic teat to restore to health and more, has had depressing reverberations on the US population with the attendant plague of high unemployment, no health assurance to speak of for they are priced out of the market by the rapacious insurance industry, the collapse of US education, now harnassed to the model of private initiative and ownership under the guise of 'charter schools'. [The rich buy their children charter schools to play with and at the same time make money!]
So the S&P downgrade won't force the hand of the robber barons that run the US. Eventually even their wealth will be threatened and the mood they are in, they will look for a man on a white horse to lead them, throwing US democracy to the winds, to save the most tender past of their collective body on which they sit and from which they produce their 'wisdom'.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Read Matt Taibbi!

Matt Taibbi is a journalist. He does not shy away from polemics. The 'mighty' Goldman Sachs, whose reputation is fraying, hates his guts. For Taibbi's mighty pen famously characterised the house of that the drapper Goldman built with Sachs as 'a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money'.
In the 18 April issue, MT has smoked out the corruption that prevades the world of high US finance in 'the Real Housewives of Wall Street', an expose of how two wives of Morgan Stanley's senior management, with no experience, parlayed from the largesse of the US ratepayers in rescuing MS and Goldman and other big bracket banks from collapse in the mess they made in 2008, into a billion dollar cottage industry. And thanks to little or no government oversight on the money it dispersed liberally to anyone who could make a case for it, the wife of John Mack, ceo of Morgan Stanley, found a way of buying her and hubby a posh house in Manhattan's upper eastside with a ticket price of some us$44 million.
GuamDiary also suggests reading a collection of Taibbi's writings in the recently published 'Griftopia : bubble machines, vampire squids, and the long con that is breaking America', as well as his other writings.

S&P hint of downgrade US debt rating sends tremours through markets

The gods are roaring in heavenly aisles. What a big joke for S&P [Standard & Poors] who got away with profiting from kickbacks from big bracket banks -- Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Lehmann, Morgan Stanley, UBS & the like -- by rating suspect financial instruments like CDOs & co. that sent the world into a global recession bordering on a depression, now is threatening the US to downgrade its debt with the fractious American government cannot agree on a draconian budget allowing the Republicans in the pay of the robber barons to put the burden on the shoulders of the poor, the needy, and the growing misery for the ordinary American.
The clever by half senior management of S&P and its sisters Moody's and Fitch should now be behind bars as should the big shots of the big bracket banks who benefitted grandly from the US ratepayers' largesse. [For an apercu of just how perverse the bailout was with handing out billions without control, GuamDiary suggests reading Matt Taibi's 'Real Housewives of Wall Street' in the 28 April issue of the 'Rolling Stone' magazine. Taibi has smoked out the wives of fat cat bankers who know nothing about money, yet paralayed a low ball investment into a billion dollar ponsy game bilking the US public in the way a cannibal feasts on the flesh of his victim!]
Now the chickens have come home to roost: since the Obama administration did not break the backs of the Wall Street and Credit Ratings mafia, it has become their victim with the help of the rich and super rich swooping down on vultures feeding off the carcus of progressive legislation that assure and insures a more level playing field for the American people.
S&P's threat will make the reactionary monied forces behind the scenes to fund even more the benighted sellout Republicans who line their own pockets and say 'the devil be damned' in putting the interests of the little people who ignorant or fooled by campaign rhetoric, first and foremost.
Is the time past to smash S&P & co. with the billy club of the law?

Sunday, April 17, 2011

1961: Lumumba, Gagarine, Bay of Pigs, & US advisors to Vietnam

A half century ago signs of strain and cracks in the American imperium showed up in grainy, rough designs.
The Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagrine circled the earth, marking another step in the advances of the USSR's sciene. A winning smile, a seemingly pleasing personality won him worldwide admiration. His 'first man in space' thumbed the Soviet's nose at its arch rival the US, which Nikita Khrouchtchev in the best of one upmanship during his visit to America, promised to 'bury'. And should that since Moscow launched 'Sputnik 1' in 1957, US science lagged behind, it seemed.
In response the new youthful president JF Kennedy promised that the US would be first to land a man on the moon, thereby upping the ante in prestige and outlay of money.
The Bay of Pigs brought shame and failure. The poorly thought through strategy to topple Fidel Castro sent ripples throughout the underdeveloped world [later called 'Third World'], theatre of the CIA's dirty war against anything that smelled of socialism or communism.
In 1961, the US through its army of spooks managed to do away with Patrice Lumumba who had the audacity to put his people's interests before his former colonial masters Belgium and the capitalist standard bearer of the world, the US. And through the willing agency of Lumumba's rivals, he was killed along with UN secretary general Dag Hammerskjold in a shallow grave in Moise Tshombe's copper rich Katanga province. Mark one for the US as it manoeuvred to weave newly decolonising African countries into its web of exploitation.
And it was also in 1961, Kennedy, who in recasting US diplomacy by imbedding CIA spooks in US embassies and coopting university elite and students, the press and labour unions, as well as anti Communist left wing organisations and parties, committed a fatal mistake: he sent in the first contingent of Green Berets as 'advisors' to South Vietnam to crush the Viet Cong. Everyone knows what that lead to and the push it gave the US down the slippery slope of long decay as world power.
Now 50 years later, Gagarine remains a hero at home and abroad. Lumumba's assassination proved a Pyrrhic victory for Congo remains a mess and theatre of ongoing tribal fighting and foreign marauders.
Cuba remains a thorn in the US lion's side and Castro star has never tarnished, in spite of the US embargo and propaganda war.
And Vietnam is reunited, and the open wounds of the undeclared US war continues to plague America.

Time is not on our side says Tzipporah Livni

Tzipporah Livni, former Israeli prime minister and Mossad operative, has let hair down in an interview with Simon Shema, in the weekend issue of 'the Financial Times of London'.
She freely admits that Israel is on the losing end of the arc which will in the UN General Assembly recognise and welcome Palestine in the comity of nations.
The Zionist elite running Israeli are cut from the wood of Revisionist Zionism: be it a Netenyahu or a Livni. Livni's bona fides of belonging to a political elite, which stakes its claim to 'nobility' to the terrorist Jewish groups, notably the Irgun and Betar, the right wing youth movement, which in prewar Poland was shunned by mainstream anti fascist groups for the plain and simple reason they recognised in Betar the germs of Jewish fascism.
As head of Kadima, Ariel Sharon's party, she is not a fan of 'Bibi' Netenyahu whose 'laissez faire laissez aller ' policy undermined the Oslo Accords and has sabotaged any initiative in coming to an agreement with the Palestinians for a two state solution.
Although she does not say so, the seeds of Zionism's degenercy lies with the very nature of Revisionist Zionism which sees a greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, founded on the hoary claims of pre diaspora claims. And out of this subjective realisation, Livni believes that time is running out for Israel.
Given the unwillingness of Netenyahu & co. to embrace the sweeping trends of openness in the Middle East, to sweep out the cobwebs of diminishing returns of policies which no longer work, and to save Israel from itself, she sees that the international community's raising Palestine to international recognition with all the rights and privileges of a political entity called 'a state or a nation', will put Israel between a rock and a hard place. She sees it happening soon, and as such, will challenge Israel's illegal land seizures and its repressive, colonial policies in the West Bank that have turned the territory in a separate but unequal 'gan eden' for religious Jewish fanatics.
Netenyahu has recently said he would withdraw all the Zionist's military from the occupied West Bank. Translating his remarks tilts more towards a charm offense to win back the EU and especially the US, to maintain unconditional support for the Zionist state.
It has to be an 'epiphany' of sorts for Livni to realise that were she ever to become prime minister she would have to through overboard the dead weight and chains of Revisionist Zionism of her father and her youth.
In a 'tour d'horizon', Israel's elite has gone to seed: scandal follows Ariel Sharon & son, Moshe Katsav now in prison for rape, and Avigdor Lieberman present foreign minister for corruption, to make the point. Israel's long slide into the extremism of the Middle East with the stranglehold of the ultra Orthodox on political life.
Livni will argue that Israel is a democracy, but a formal democracy: the right wing has hollowed out the rights of its citizens and heavy hand of the military rents the veil of civilian control, and the stream of Israelis, most secular in outlook, emigrating underscores the anemic pull on its citizenry to stay the course.
Little wonder Livni acknowledges that the sand in the hour glass is running out for Israel.

Vittorio Arrigoni RIP

Vittorio Arrigoni joins a long list of people who left their homeland and embraced the cause of another struggling for its liberation. In Arrigoni's case, he became a citizen of Palestine, living in Gaza.
Unlike Franz Fanon, who joined the ranks of Algerians fighting for a country of their own against France, Arrigoni believed in non violence, in order to blunt the thrust and control of the Israeli occupier. Fanon gave free rein to man's blind,visceral destructive force, Arrigoni held Gandhi as a model.
Abducted by a Salifist group, who demanded the release of their members in Hamas gaols, his body was found in an empty house. These purists of anarchic thirst for blood, acted out frustrations of political extremism which Fanon's 'damnes de la terre' [wretched of the earth] might understand.
Arrigoni's death by Islamic extremists discredits the Palestinian struggle for a homeland, and as most acts of this kind, it boosts the Zionist claim to smashing the Palestinians' hope and dream of a nation of their own.
A Freud would understand the recourse to assassination as the inevitable consequences of Israeli's policy, especially since the occupation of the West Bank in the six day war.
On the other hand, Arrigoni's sacrifice for his adopted country will spur others to carry out his work and through a campaign of pacific resistance, disinvestment, and boycott has begun to yield good results and put Israel in the hot seat, the more especially since the right wing Zionist elite ressorts to piracy, collective punishment, undeclared war, and continued robbery of Palestinian land in the West Bank, and other elements of international law.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

A change in US policy towards North Korea?

Strains and cracks in the splendour and awe of the American imperium are more and more noticeable. Events in the Arab world, two thankless and bruising wars in Iraq and Afghantism with no end in sight, and the hard nut to crack of dealing with North Korea have pushed the Obama administration to begin a reassessment of US foreign policy.
And this is no more evident in the sudden visits of Hillary Clinton, Donald Gregg, and Jimmy Carter to the Korean peninsula. [Carter soon will be on a mission of mercy to bring back Su Jung Young, a Korean American with business interests in Pyongyang, who has been under arrest for 'witnessing for Christ', since November 2010. Su is the third American in the past two years burning with evangelical zeal who is detained by North Korean authorities.
[Evangelicals in South Korea and the US make no bones about restoring the aureole of Pyongyang as the 'second Jerusalem', which, in Christian circles, it once was.]
As a reminder, let's remember that when Jimmy Carter was last in North Korea, he brought back Aijalon Gomes, another enthusiast for Christ, back to his family in Boston, the former president also hand delivered a letter from Kim Jong il addressed to Barack Obama. It never had a reply, as far as we can tell....until now?
Meanwhile tensions have continued to mount between North and South Korea,owing to the in your face forward policy of the ROK's Lee Myung bak, strongly supported by the US. A game of chicken along the NLL [North Limit Line]within a sneeze of the North's territorial waters played out with live ammunition. In spite of Kim Jong il & co. stern warnings that should a shell fall into the DPRK's waters, Pyongyong would riposte. And towards the end of November 2010, it did, resulting in hitting Yeonpyeong island that housed military installations, and brought the two Koreas into a warlike situation.
Humiliated and 'insulted'Seoul and Washington kept fuelling tensions with joint military exercises in the same area, and with live ammuniation, but a strong break on where to shell. Nonetheless the draconian policy towards the North never let up.
Now, let's consider the timing of the arrest of Su: November 2010 the very same month that almost brought renewed warfare to the divided Korean peninsula. Is Su a hostage to force Obama to stay Lee Myung bak's hand in pursuing his foolhearty adverturism to 'roll back' North Korea's regime, something which has found a firm voice of support among America's North Korea clerisy [see GuamDiary entries on the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations report and Scott Synder in 2010].
Faced with serious disruption of its interests in west and central Asia, Obama & co. may have had second thoughts of cooling down confrontation with North Korea and get a handle on denuclearising the Korean peninsula. And GuamDairy speculates that it dusted off Kim Jong il's letter, to assess the possibility of jump staring the six power talks in Beijing, which it did everything previously to drag out and delay in doing anything, in a vain attempt to exhaust the patience of the North Korean leadership. A no win strategy if ever there was one!
In order to approach Kim, Washington had to 'mollify' 'Bulldozer' Lee who had a bull seeing the red flag when it comes to dealing with his Northern brothers. And here China comes into the picture. Beijing is embarking on a 'charm offensive' to soothe the prickly feathers of Lee by proposing a three step plan to create conditions so that Seoul would recognise Pyongyang as an equal partner in reducing tensions on the Korean peninsula.
And then hardly reported in the US media, former US ambassador to the ROK Donald Gregg shows up in Seoul. A man with a mission: he came to persuade Lee to send food to the North, in order to feed a population badly hit by natural disasters which have ruined at least 80 percent of crops. Gregg is well regarded in South Korea. Now in his 80's, he, we believe, carried a strong message to Lee of US intentions to modify policy towards the North. The former ambassador during his presidency at the New York Korea Society cultivated an opening to the North, which during the George Bush regime earned him much grief.
And here Jimmy Carter reappears on the scene. Dismissed by the hard liners and cynics as 'Kim Jong il's marionette', his track record belies any such slurs and perverse gossip. Were it not for him in going to North Korea in 1994 Kim Il Sung might not have opened talks with the Clinton administration to 'warehouse' its nuclear programme. In more tense times, especially with George W Bush in the White House, the North Koreans see not only a man of peace but a channel to express their willingness to negotiate. Bush & co. saw little purchase in that; their shortsightedness resulted in Pyongyang's testing a nuclear device which made North Korea country number 8 in the world's nuclear club!
As the Obama administration in a 'tour d'horizon' is weighing its options, it hoped that commonsense is prevailing in dealing with North Korea. And if as we write comes to pass, Washington and Seoul may soon embark on a 'peristroika' with North Korea, something which countries in northeast Asia will surely welcome. For now, signs point to a thaw, but we had other signs in the past that didn't pan out. However, oil and the Arab world 'en vaut une messe', as Henri IV said when he became king of France. And in redirecting and redefining policy towards North Korea is certainly worth the venture!
And Jimmy Carter comes

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

America's moral rectitude and the ______________ Hat

GuamDiary readers may wonder why the opening of a warmly received play on Broadway, starring the comedian Chris Rock, bore the truncated headline 'The ______________________ Hat'. To find the complete title, the reader would have to go elsewhere. So imbedded is American rectitude in protecting the morals and the eyesight of its citizens, it is by a Supreme Court ruling that seven words are bleeped in the media [Pacifica vs. the US government]. So to a visitor to the shores of the 'land of the free, home of the brave' listening to, say, a programme on the television, should someone blurt out one of these banned words, he would hear a bleeping sound or a strange noise to put a 'niqb' on his ears and, it goes without saying, his eternal soul from damnation, even though a child of three already knows and uses them daily.
God bless the British! The esteemed business daily, "The Financial Times of London" practised a modified form of 'censorship' of propriety if you will, in giving a fuller title: 'the Motherf....en Hat'. And the pillars of world capitalism hardly stirred by this revelation but in the US, it would have awakened the guardians of public morality, which, of course, would have spiked up tickets sales for the eternal curious and the prurient.
As America has turned more and more to the right, the rise of right wing social conservatism has usurped the right to dictate morality. And yet the public's thirst for celebrity and scandal seems never slacked. Consequently, the psychological dissonance bordering on moral hysteria.
And to tame a population, demoralised by a serious recession which toed the edges of a global depression,hardly able to whether the assaults of the corporate elite to burden them with paying the bill whilst the wealthy get away with paying little or nothing, the influence of religion and moral keepers who speak for the rich and powerful hold sway.
America is now in the throes of private corporate power who manipulate elected officials like marionettes, and who toss aside the Constitution for its own gains. The rise of 'corporatism' with a democratic face recalls the rise of fascism in Portugal under Antonio Salazar.
Meanwhile the American standard of living is eroding fast: functional illiteracy has reached an all time high, impoverishment has grown in leaps and bounds, as has infant mortality and the per centage of children at a starvation level; the youth, especially minority youth, are more likely to spend years in prison, thereby increasing thanks to the prison industrial complex expanding the army of criminals; massive outlays of funds to fill the pockets of war profiteers and allowing the US to engage everywhere it wishes in war and in supporting 700 bases around the world...and so it goes...have seriously weakened America's claim to rule the world.
And if that is not enough, hypocrisy and corruption rules with almost a free hand. And from the pulpit or the street corner Bible thumper calls to repent and turn away from evil and take the path of the righteous. Here, we have a classic case of the kettle calling the pot black when the clergy is caught redhanded in buggery of boys and rape of girls; with hands in the honey pots; and the solons in the halls of Congress who hurl thunderbolts against demon sinners are found in male or female brothels or have been robbing the public treasury for years. And yet they may suffer social disgrace but hardly time in prison.
And for the masses who see little hope for themselves or their children or grandchildren, they are offered that 'soda shop in the sky' called 'heaven' but not in this world.
And so banning words which as we've noted even a three year old knows is an indictment of a country where hypocrisy and fraud are endemic. And a wag might say for want of a full title Hat....

China gives US a taste of its own medicine

China firmly believes in the old saw: 'what's good for the good is good for the gander!' And this is no better exemplified in Beijing's issuing its own report on human rights violations.
Not surprising it denounces America's hypocrisy of holding high standards to measure others but fails to apply them to itself.
Consider the Obama administration's banging brass pots and pans for internet freedom around the world, whilst at home it is fiercely waging war against Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange, going so far as to pressure US private internet providers from denying American citizens to access to Wikileak's own website. And if this is not enough, it has marshaled corporate media to follow suit in the covering the drip drip drip revelations of low level classified and declassified US diplomatic cables. So much so that it tarnishes America's long cherished and time honoured First Amendment of the US constitution.
China goes a step further in sticking its finger in the puffery of America's moral rectitude by pointing to growing homelessness; high infant mortality; increasing misery among children; high incarceration of US minority youth; rise in violent crime; the predominant role of money in American political life; the cheapening of the rights of US citizens; and the US propensity to go to war, best noted in the Bush war against Iraq, based on lies.
China's report, it does not take a rocket scientist to discover, is in direct response to the US department of state's annual assessment of human rights around the world. These reports are very critical of China.
China has returned the favour by stressing the glaring sins of omission and commission which the US tries to pooh pooh without success.
Chinese criticism of America's human rights violations should be a wake up call to the American government: it is no longer above scrutiny, criticism, and condemnation.
Here one is tempted to quote theBible: 'you may see the speck of dust in your neighbour's eye but neglect the mote in your own'.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Netenyahu's slip's showing

Israel's right wing prime minister 'Bibi' Netenyahu has come up with a startling proposition: recognising that his talks with the Palestinian Authority are a lost cause, he is thinking, says he, of withdrawing all Israeli troops from the West Bank, thereby ending 43 years of the Zionist state's control, 'manu militari' of
the booty Israel seized during the 1967 six day war.
Are Netenyahu's words a feint or as a result of his recent trip to Europe [and Shimon Peres journey to the White House and UN headquarters in New York] a realisation that Israel can no longer order the tides of history to stop?
Revisionist Zionist that he is, Netenyahu's thinking of rallying the US and the EU and his erstwhile allies to defeat the UN General Assembly move to recognise Palestine as a legitimate state among the nations of the world. Out of the 183 member states making up the UN General Assembly, it is doubtful, despite the arm twisting by the US & co. and the bribes and other goodies in Israel's bag of tricks that recognition of Palestine can be derailed. Let's not forget the IMF is well prepared to do that, and as Netenyahu surely knows, the IMF has powerful friends in Europe and not so few in the US.
So trying to seize victory out of defeat, Netenyahu is offering troop withdrawal. Is it possible? Probably not. What about the hundreds of thousands illegal Zionist settlers, armed to the teeth, on the land they stole from the Palestinians? Will 'Bibi' abandon them to an uncertain fate? What about his hoary claim to 'Samaria and Judea' that is today's Palestine?
What we are seeing today is that the Zionist elite is finding itself in the same quandry as did those who vainly fought to keep 'l'Algerie francasie' and failed.
So now the Zionist state is caught in the failures of its own wiles and ruses to deny Palestinians a state of their own. Isral's democracy will not stand strong against the influx of rapid ultra Orthodox settlers fleeing into Israel proper.

Monday, April 11, 2011

African Union in Libya

Headed by South Africa's president Jacob Zuma, the delegation of African Union leaders brought a road map of peace to Libya. As usual, the AU has been out to lunch.
When the Arab League, the US, the EU, and the UN called on the Union to join them in a resolution condemning Qadhafi's colonial style warfare against his own people, it refused.
After two weeks of fighting, suddenling the AU has sent a delegation to 'make harmony' and bring the two sides of the Libyan conflict to agree to a cease fire, thereby allowing diplomacy to prevail in bringing an end to hostilities.
Consider the delegation's composition: in addition to South Africa, there is Mali, Mauritania, Congo Brazzaville, and Uganda. Hardly a strong delegation of the willing to restore peace in Libya. In fact, the AU's shying away from common action against Qadhafi lies in the largesse of oil money that he has long 'invested' in Africa, to counter the pariah status imposed by the West especially after the bombing of the PanAm flight over Lockerbie.
The wily colonel has had an eye on Africa as part of his delusions that Tripoli would play the role of the centre of a huge 'united' Africa with him at the helm of a continental ship of state.
And the AU delegation feel under his charm offense during its visit to Libya. You might be willing to say, it fawned all over him in praise for accepting the Union's unworkable plan.
Proof of which is that its head Zuma, seeing how the game is being played by Qadhafi, took a powder as the Au delegation's other members headed to Benghazi to parlay with the 'rebel' forces, who rejected the plan out of hand since it allows Qadhafi & sons to remain in power.
The AU has proven over time to be toothless. It failed in the Ivory Coast and the UN and France had to intervene to bring Gbagbo to heel. And failure has tracked them to Libya and the embarrassing outcome of its mission to Qadhafi.

Israel responds to Hamas' messages for a cease fire

Suddenly aggressive Israel is responding to Hamas' messages for a cease fire. Has common sense come a knocking on the Netenyahu's government's door? Possibly.
No one in the mainstream global media really looks at the cause that led Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups to launch 130 mortars into southern Israel in a three day period. They did not do it for 'the hell of it', but in retaliation for targeted Israel attacks on Hamas and the civil population of Gaza.
Although Netenyahu has spoken in cold steel terms of retaliation, the Zionist state through its defence minister Ehud Barack, is willing to consider the terms of a cease fire, thereby cooling the rising war fever in Israel.
Is it that both sides are girding loins for renewed battle? Or are conditions shifting rapidly in the Arab world and among Israel's allies abroad that make it impossible now for the Zionist elite to engage in the kind of pull out the stops warfare characterised by 'Caste Lead' in December 2008?
A quieting of the Gaza front has not slowed down one whit Israel's illegal seizure of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank nor in dispossessing Arabs in Jerusalem of home and hearth.
As GuamDiary suggested in a recent blog, Netenyahu's tour of Europe and Peres' travels in the US have resulted in a lack of the usual rah rah support Israel has enjoyed in the past. Germany's Angela Merkel is cool to Israel expansion in Palestine, and consequently, Netenyahu cannot play the guilt card. It has been noted in Germany and elsewhere in Europe that Israel's thirst for 'Lebensraum' to its east in the West Bank shares many characteristics with the Nazi troops in occupied Europe.
In the US and at the UN headquarters in New York, Peres' warnings have fallen on lazy ears, meaning Israel's latitude for military solutions is narrowing fast.
The big question nevertheless remains: is Israel willing to adapt to the new reality in the Arab World?

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Israel's damage control: Netenyahu in Europe; Peres in the US

Israel's stock in the EU is low. It is of course better in the US, but for how long since behind the scenes debates are becoming sharper and more critical in the White House and department of state?
So, it is not surprising to see Reconstructionist Zionist prime minister Netenyahu in Russia, the Czech republic, and Germany, to shore up flagging support as the UN slouches not so slowly, to recognise Palestine as a state 'de jure' and 'de facto'.
Nor is it startling to see the old hawkish veteran, president Shimon Peres at the White House.
In the case of Netenyahu, the press covered him. However, in the US, Peres' presence almost went unnoticed: no phot op with Obama, no press conference in the Rose Garden, his visit slipped under the press wire but for an opinion piece in the Murdoch 'New York Post' by Benny Avni.
Peres has been around so long, he carries a legacy from the creation of the state of Israel until today's Zionist state's leaning more and more to the right and fallen into corruption, intolerance, and decadence, these last 60 years. An embattled warrior, he lobbied hard the US president and members of the UN in New York not to take the step of raising to the ranks of an independent state.
As far as GuamDiary can make out, both Netenyahu and Peres have not been as successful as they would have hoped. The word is out: Israel has crossed a line whereby it has flouted the Geneva Conventins and international law for its pre emptive, collective punishment blitzkrieg against Gaza during 'Cast Lead' and its repeated acts of piracy on the high seas, resulting in the killing of nine peace protestors on the 'Mavi Mamarai', braving the blockade of Gaza, and its continuing 'Drang Nach Osten' by illegally seizing Palestinian territory in the occupied West Bank and throwing Palestinians out of their own homes in scenes recalling the way the Nazi Army acted during the second world war.
Judging by the past, Israel could sluff off outside criticism; it could and still does count on unconditional US support--diplomatic, economic, and military. Nonetheless recent events in the Middle East have raised the question of the utility of anchoring policy on Jerusalem. The US and the EU are scrambling hard and fast to redefine and realign policy in the changing Arab world.
Israel has done everything to buck the strong incoming tide of change among its neighbours, relying on bankrupt, hoary 'smash 'em in the face' solutions which are proving more and more a losing choice.
So the damage control is not succeeding much to the Zionist's chagrin.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Judge Goldstone goes to Jerusalem

No one should be surprised by the announcement that South African judge Richard Goldstone is going to Israel.
Even since he 'recanted', he has gone from being reviled to being a man who owns up to his mistakes.
Right wing prime minister & his more extremist Revisionist Zionists in and out of government will strew palms along the judge's path as he wends his way through heavily guarded Jerusalem.
On the eve of 'pashot', it would seem that one of questions asked at the Seder: why is this night different from any other night? takes on a different reading.
Goldstein, as GuamDiary, has suggested swallowed the bait the Zionist state put at the end of a tempting hook. Slowly but surely the steps the Israeli government took to make Goldstone turn, will come to the light of day.
The good judge has handed a boon of publicity in saying 'what I know today, my report would have drawn different conclusions' or words to that effect. His words ring hallow since almost 16 months after the Israelis ended the hot, pre emptive, collective punishment war 'Cast Lead', it has produced 'evidence' which pushed Goldstone to recant.
Let's not forget the very same Zionist cast of characters did everything in their power to thwart Goldstone and three other judges to investigate the crimes which the lion's share goes to Israel in targeting civilians in Gaza. In fact, since Israel refused stonewalled his investigation, Goldstone flew his Israeli witnesses to Switzerland to depose them. And depose they did, and their testimony proved highly embarassing to Israel.
In the meanwhile, Israel has not stopped its thuggery. Remember its piracy on the high seas of killing nine Turks on ships heading towards Gaza with humanitarian supplies. Contrary to what the smug Zionist spokesman Marc Regev contends, Israel is not a democracy. It is more a proto fascist state in formation possessed of a totalitarian ideology, and with the support of religious extremists who with government approval seize Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Netenyahu & co. may crow about Goldstone's confession, but the dawn is past and Israel remains condemned in the international court of public opinion. Even its protector the US is rethinking its unconditional support of the Zionist state the more especially since such support with impede and detract from a radical thinking on the sea change that is happening in the Arab world.
So Goldstone might be the poster boy of the month, but his report in toto is a striking indictment of Israel's guilt.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Israel is getting a taste of its own medicine

Since the dumping of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has not fully restored the flow of natural gas to Israel.
The Zionist state has appealed to its pro consul US to put pressure on the new Egypt to hurry up in furnishing Israel with a source of energy necessary to meet all its needs. It is doubtful that America can do much the more especially it came late to calling for Mubarak to step down. And more to the point, US policy towards the changes in the political landscape in the Arab world, and we shouldn't forget the sticky glue of policies that it cannot too quickly pull itself out of in Yemen, Baharain, and now Libya. The Arab world, when you come down to it, is by far more important to the US than Israel, the heavy handed Israeli lobby's influence on the US government notwithstanding.
Egypt is trying to patch up a seriously damaged ship of state and Israel is not of immediate concern. Saying this, does not mean abrogation of peace between the two countries, but new conditions are colouring relations. Hence the working overtime of Israel's sweat glands.
Of course, Israel who looks down on Hamas and on the Palestinians and Arabs in general, is now feeling the pinch of being deprived of a vital element of a country's life. But the dose of this medicine is light indeed! Of course, too, the Zionist state has no empathy with the hardships that it has imposed on Gaza and the humiliating treatment it metes out to Palestinians on the West Bank.
The shoe may pinch but it hasn't persuaded Israel to change course in the light of the restructing of the Arab world towards openness and democracy, which when established would highlight the shabbiness of the Zionist state's credential as a 'democracy', and the only one in the Middle East.

Judge Goldstein has a change of heart

The much vilified South African judge Richard Goldstone has written in a 'Washington Post' opinion piece [01 April 2011] that he had he now the information that Israel decided to make public, his UN report on 'Cast Lead', Israeli undeclared aggression against the Hamas government in Gaza, would be different.
GuamDiary has to wonder:why did the right wing Netenyahu government categorically refuse to cooperate with the Goldstone commission, which accused Goldstone, himself a Jew, of being a traitor to his race? We remain suspicious of the wily ways of the extreme right wing shift in Israel and how they managed to 'get to Goldstone'. Only time will expose the Zionist state's machination. But the fact remains in revisiting 'Cast Lead' that Israel purposely targeted not only Hamas but resorted to collective punishment to destroy a Palestinian government which refused to bend to Israel's way, and which violates the basic laws of international law.
Hina Jilani a member of the Goldstone panel said on the BBC that even with the 'new information' the report's conclusion would be the same. Israeli smooth speaking Marc Regev quickly seized on Goldstone's words to demand that the report be repudiated but only in the parts in which the Zionist state is concerned: translation the evisceration of the report which would leave the minimal pages blaming Hamas for violations of international law.
Regev's designs are obvious: he pulls out of his bag of tricks the old hoary rationalisations that Israel is a 'democracy', with open discussion of difference, and system of government based on checks and balances, so on and on. Left out is discrimination against its Arab citizens, the illegal seizure of occupied Palestinian territory for Israeli settlers, and of course, violations of international conventions of war and peace. And what about Israeli piracy on the open seas and the Zionists' IDF attack on the aid flotilla headed for Gaza?
Never one to let an opportunity to go by on an interview, he went on with the sobs of mock indignation by condemning the UN committee on human rights, on which sat Colonel Qadhafi's Libya, and ending his peroration with the committee is waging war against Israel.
Thus in a nutshell, we have the same old refrain: poor democratic Israel is being attacked and besieged on all sides; therefore, it has to use any means necessary to defend itself, including pre emptive undeclared war in Gaza with the obvious intention of teaching Gazans--civilian children, men and women of all ages--a hard lesson. And 'Cast Lead', according to Israeli mouth pieces at the time of the war, was through serious destruction of Gaza's infrastructure and heavy loss of innocent civilian lives that Palestinians in Gaza would rise up in revolt and wage war against Hamas. That ploy did not work; if cynical Israel thought it would they were dreaming!
'Cast Lead' was designed to do as much damage as collective punishment for a trapped population by closed borders to its north in Israel and southwards on the Sinai by Mubarak's Egypt. Regev's excuses do not wash easily. Any student of war would dismiss Goldstone's 'apologia' and the Zionists' propaganda machinery.