Friday, September 30, 2011

Occupy Wall Street day 14

The 'Occupy Wall Street' campaign is entering its third week. Thanks to the heavy handed tactics of the New York City police, which, according to the 'New York Times' is law unto itself, the protest has gained worldwide attention.
In the US, the campaign is spreading by word of mouth and slowly by a supine media tightly wedded to Wall Street through powerful corporations on the New York Stock Exchange and to Big Bracket banks, 'too big to fail'.
More importantly, each day brings more sympathisers to Liberty Park within a short walk to the hallowed grounds of the World Trade Centre, to join for the day the protesters.
More significantly, too, is that labour unions under attack by corporate America and municipal, state, and federal government are joining the 'Occupy Wall Street' campaign. Today protesters will join US Postal Workers in a peaceful march to the central post office to publicly show that they are not going to take cuts in wages, benefits, employment, and six day postal service.
The attack on America's 'middle classes', working class, and the poor are the result of the 2008 global financial crisis that the Wall Street banks are responsible for. Yet, not one banker on the Street has been tried, convicted, and sent to prison for sending millions on breadlines, the dole; in fact, the men responsible like US secretary Timothy Geitner is in Obama's cabinet, and in a position to protect his class of super rich. The Republicans are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Wall Street bankers whom the taxpayer feed grandly and profitably so that American capitalism wouldn't go down into the drink!. Does anyone recall when Congress was debating the Dodd Frank bill to make US finance capital more accountable but not before the courts of justice, the Elephant party's Mitch McConnell was on Wall Street working closely with the banking lobby to stay, delay, or defeat any regulations on the banks? Does he and his party as servants of finance capitalist give a thinker's damn about Americans losing homes and jobs which are directly traceable to the computer generated financial instruments bundling mortgages and sold to investors for handsome profits? Probably not as the record shows.
Now a popular movement is on the rise and the plutocrats and coupon clippers and corporate military industrial America should take heed. Already American values and jobs have energises an indecisive Obama as he enters another presidential election cycle. The Elephants (the Republicans) trumpet they stand for the true America! Eyewash! They represent the rise of American nativism and know nothing thinking that run through 19 century American history. They stand for the wealthy and the privileged and the Anglo Saxon elite. They support a very narrow fragile sand castle which a populist tide will wash away.
And that is the meaning of 'Occupy Wall Street'.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Wanted 174 Israel military for crimes against the 'Mavi Mamara'

Turkey is not taking Israel's cavalier dismissal of its call for an apology and compensation to the families of the killed and injured and aggressed by the Israel Defence Force's special commandos who illegally bordered the 'Mavi Mamara' in June 2010, killing nine Turks and hijacking the ship to the port of Ashkalon.
The Turkish ship formed part of a peace flotilla carrying non military supplies of food, medicines, educatioanl and building materials to Gaza. The eight ships had the intention of breaking Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza which its blitzkrieg three week war at the end of 2008 brought death to its civilian population and destroyed its infrastructure in what the Israeli called 'Operation Cast Lead'.
To exact justice for Israeli crimes of piracy and targeted killing, Turkey has published a 'Wanted' poster of 174 pictures and names of IDF military involved in the assault of the 'Mavi Mamara' on the high seas in violation of international treaties and conventions.
Now each participant in the raid has a 'price on his head', meaning he or she is libel to pursuit before international courts of justice.
No longer can Israel get away with murder and mayhem. Justice, if not in Israel but elsewhere, hold Israel responsible for acts of murder and violation of international law.

1100 reasons not to believe Netenyahu

Israeli prime minister came to undercut Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas' call for full membership in the name of the state of Palestine in the United Nations.
He proudly thumped his oratorical chest by saying the UN wasn't the proper venue for talks on a Palestinian state. The right place was outside the international body in negotiations between Israel and the PA.
Everything is on the table, he trumpted. But was it? With the US threat of a veto of the Palestinian bid at the Security Council and the obsequious treatment accorded to him by a supine American media, Netenyahu could and did return home to a 'hail thee hero for a job well done'.
Basking in the glow of his PR campaign to thwart Palestinian aspirations for a state of its own, and a moment of supreme overconfidence, the Zionist prime minister gave the green light to the construction of 1100 housing units in Arab East Jerusalem and illegal Israeli settlement on the West Bank.
By doing this, Netenhayu was giving the 'birdie' to the Palestinians, the UN, and the US his most ardent backer. He was telling the world that Israel was above and beyond the rules of international law, and was a law unto itself.
If further proof needs be, Netenyahu is not willing to agree to a two state solution in the Palestinian matter. The record shows the many times he has held power, he has done everything in his power to sabotage the 1993 Oslo Accords and any and all negotiations with the PA unless they cave into to Israeli demands.
For him, as a revisionist, right wing Zionist, he embraces the goals of a 'Greater Israel' from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river which includes the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. To him, the West Bank is the biblical 'Sumaria and Judea', which is God given land and not the land of the Palestinians.
Netenyahu's gambit is open to challenge but not from the US: he full well knows that Israel has become an American domestic issue; in the upcoming presidential cycle, he also knows that American Jews have an influence far beyond the three percent they represent in the US population. And by and large, they support in contributions the Democrats. Obama, in a presidential election year, is in for a fight for his political career, so he will not push Israel hard on negotiations and will do its bidding at the UN.
As such, Netenyahu speaks with a forked tongue. And there is little reason to trust his words; only concrete steps in helping the Palestinians to have a state of their own will show that he is telling the truth.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

South Korea's Grand National Party looking to relax tensions with North Korea in a post Lee Myung bak era?

Bles 'Agence France Presse' for venturing where Anglo Saxon wire services tip toe.
In a press release from Seoul, AFP makes mention that the Grand National Party which rules South Korea under the hard liner president Lee Myung bak is going to send a high ranking party member to North Korea.
Since Lee's ascension to the Blue House, he has done everything with the power he has to return to a cold war with the North; reckless and ill thought out his joint military activities using live fire with US approval along the Northern Limit Line in November 2010 within a spit's throw of North Korea's international waters, provoked an exchange of gun fire. That incident set the region's teeth on edge since one it was the first such incident since the 1953 armistice putting the Korean war on hold between the two Koreas, and two, it raised fears of another war in Asia. The US stayed Lee's bellicose designs at that time, but it has hardly stopped his irrational exuberance in trying to provoke Kim Jong il.
Happily, Lee cannot run for re election. So, it may very well be that the GNP is planning to make nice to North Korea to ease 'high cross border tensions' Lee has kept on red alert!
Park Keun Hye, a dominant GNP figure, as well as the daughter of the assassinated ROK dictator Park Chung hee, four years ago, met Kim Jong il in Pyongyang. Lee unlike his predecessors has never gone to Pyongyang. North Korea has apparently agreed to the visit of the GNP's leader Hong Joon pyo.
Are we seeing the first signs of a more flexible GNP policy for post Lee South Korea? If so, it is a welcome sign!

Monday, September 26, 2011

Support Jeju islanders protest of the building of a US ROK naval base

To its credit 'The New York Times' has been covering the protest of South Korea's Jeju islanders against the construction of a US ROK naval base on the UNESCO designated World Natural Heritage site. Gloria Steinem, out of solidarity, written and spoken out on this issue. She remains almost alone in bringing the issue before the court of public opinion besides the inhabitants of Jeju Island themselves, who, in a way, are hampered by language and broader access to the outside world, and under the constant harassment of the Lee Myung bak government in Seoul.
The people of Jeju do not want at the Gangjung naval base that would damage the ecology of the island; house 20 warships and two US Aegis missiles to begin with. They do not see the won or dollars and sense in the base; the US and South Korea do as the Republic of Korea expands its military eye in the region.
Lee claims with full support of US military agreements and backing that the naval installation will 'protect' South Korea from an irrational North Korea, and therefore keep South Koreans, including Jeju islanders, safer than they are now.
The Jeju protesters do not see the base with the same eye. If anything it will put them and South Koreans further into harm's way. Look at the map: navy ships and missiles armed with multiple warheads [atomic?] pose a threat to China and Japan and of course North Korea which is hardly in the vicinity of Jeju; they also make Russia which share a narrow border on the Korean peninsula and might cause unease in Mongolia and of course heighten anti US and Korean feeling on a restive Okinawa where for the last 66 years lives uneasily with US bases.
The base at Gangjung is not only a step to challenging China's claim to the Yellow Sea as its 'mare nostrum', but also conflicts with small islands which are no more than rocks which China, South Korea, and Japan claim as its own, and then there's the untapped large natural gas undersea gas reserves which no one is talking about.
The Chaebol Samsung has the contract to build Gangjung, and as such, risks a boycott of its long list of products should Jeju islanders call for one, which they should.
Jeju needs the support of foreign friends to spread the word, bring pressure on the US and ROK to stop construction, and keep Jeju a South Korean 'garden of eden' rather than an the frontline of naval confrontation!

Mahmoud Abbas pulls the chain on the US and Israel

Mahmoud Abbas' speech before the UN General Assembly on 24 September 2011 pulled the chain on US' and Israel's street fighting policies to deny the Palestinian people a state of their own.
The Palestinian Authority president showed before the world body's gathering the letter of application to the Security Council for full membership. By this act, he stripped the US of its right to broker a two state solution between Israel and the PA, and brought it back to the only 'fair' body that can act as a broker of peace between the two peoples and ease the birth of a Palestine state composed of the West Bank, Gaza, and Arab East Jerusalem.
President Obama's speech was not directed to the UN but to his Jewish backers who do not see him as being 'pro Israel' enough and may very well not contribute to his campaign to run for the White House again in 2012.
Prime Minister Netenyahu, once again, arguing that the UN wasn't the right place to birth a two state solution, made it clear again that he wasn't going to honestly enter negotiations, for the plain and simple truth, for him, there is no Palestine only Judea and Sumaria which are the West Bank that he is tirelessly bringing into a 'Greater Israel' from the Mediterranean and Jordan in violation of international law and conventions.
Suddenly Abbas cut the ground from under Obama and Netenyahu. He defined an alternate way to achieve peace and a two state solution with clearly defined borders on the land which will house Israel and Palestine.
He broke the US Israel egg, and scramble the yoke any which way you like, in the end, the 44 year occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem will ultimately be the state of Palestine with Hamas controlled Gaza.

Occupy Wall Street

On 17 September 2011 the 'Occupy Wall Street' began. A heavy police presence, however, kept the hundred of protesters well away from Wall and Broad where the New York Stock Exchange reigns. The protesters--mostly young--took over nearby Zuccotti Park to stay the course; they had come to stay and raise the flag of citizen discontent: at a time when a majority of Americans are having a hard time to make ends meet; when many are out of work for a long time; when families are failing below the already low bar which the government sets for the poverty level; when millions face home foreclosures; when schools are underfunded and the countries infrastructure is falling apart, the big bracket banks that are too big to fail, after having being rescued by the ordinary taxpayer from collapse for the 2008 global recession they engineered, have not only recovered but are sitting on trillions of dollars that they are not lending to spark economic recovery but are feathering their own bed with horse chocking bonuses and flaunting modesty by conspicuous consumption with monies that could feed, house, and clothe millions in need--the financial elite, aided by the government in Washington they have bought with campaign contributions have rarely been held accountable for high crimes against the livelihood, the lives, and commonweal of the American people.
'Occupy Wall Street' participants have cried 'basta ya!', enough's enough, and they are bringing the people's anger to the bastion of US finance capitalism demanding an accounting and a call for indictment, punishment, and imprisonment of the fat cats who are driving Americans to despair and ruin.
Wall Street is a golden goose for New York City. It is a major industry and although it pays less taxes than it should, what it pays buoys up an economy that lives by cheek and jowl. Translation the poor pay more and receive less in goods and services which are geared to the pleasure of the plutocrats, coupon clippers, and the rich.
So, the billionaire mayor Bloomberg doesn't take the protests lightly. New York City police have roughed up the demonstrators, arrested them on the slimmest excuse which violate their civil rights of freedom of assembly and speech and then release them without charges. They do it simply for harassment and in order to push the 'Occupy Wall Street' organisers and participants to roll up sleeping bags [yes! more than a hundred have camped out in Zuccotti Park since Day One; hundreds more go home at night but return in the morning; still others come down to cheer the protesters on and swell their ranks].
Radio has fleetingly mentioned the campaign to occupy Wall Street; national television is sternly silent except for rare exceptions like Rachel Maddow and Amy Goodman.
Suddenly on Saturday 24 September, a week into the protest, the police turned the ignored 'Occupy Wall Street' into an object of international media coverage. In a large, peaceful march to New York's Union Square, swelled to several hundred marchers, New York's finest as the police pride themselves in being, manoeuvred the protesters into meshed walled in pens where the law officers beat, dispersed pepper spray, and ultimately arrested 90. The excessive use of force by police authorities turned a small march into an international event, making headlines and gracing media with repeated showing of police attacking peaceful protesters on television and in still photos.
'Occupy Wall Street' is like a magnet which draws 'right on!' cheers from everyone who is suffering from the fallout of the 2008 global recession and today's fear of an anemic economy slipping into depression, whilst stuff shirt bankers like JPMorgan's Jaime Dimon is ranting and raving that governments are trying to make banks pay a greater share of profits to pull the economy at home and abroad out of economic morass if not disaster.
And the 'Occupy Wall Street' protest continues, and with the passing of each day, complacent bankers should take note and be afraid of the people's anger.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Sorry Obama and Netenyahu, the UN is the right venue for the Palestinian question

You have to give it to Obama and Netenyahu in their attempts to grossly distort the truth why the UN is the proper venue for resolving the long standing Israeli Palestinian question.
The two leaders have engaged in a campaign on a grand scale to further propaganda goals of their own, and at the time not only disparge the UN but also to weaken its role as a peacemaker.
It was alright for Israel to seize the UN in 1948 for recognition of statehood. However, the Zionist state is also bound by UN resolutions as to the creation of a two state solution. Israel has evaded or ignored or simply showed a defiance of abiding by international conventions and laws, to deny Palestinians of a state of their own.
According during 44 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, they have illegally grabbed land for settlements to house Jewish colonists. Dispossed Palestinians are pushed off their land into what looks more and more as South African styled Apartheid 'bantustans'. For the Israeli agenda is the realisation of the Zionist goal of a 'Greater Israel' from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river'.
For Obama, caught in intractable economic morass and in the trap of its own 100 percent support of Israel, the Palestinian Authority bid for full membership of a Palestinian state in the UN has weakened any pretence that the US is an 'honest broker' in a two state solution. As GuamDiary keeps noting, Israel has become a domestic, election issue which mainstream politicians, including president Obama, cannot ignore short of political suicide.
The PA's call has forced both Obana and Netenyahu to engage in innuendo, threats, half truths, and the like. Try as they might, they failed miserably in 'trashing' the UN and the aspirations of the Palestinian people.
It will be under the UN umbrella that negotiations can take place between Palestine and Israel can take place for a two state solution. Contrary to the Zionist blatther, Netenyahu has had to 'recognise' the 1967 borders even though he will work for Israel's total occupation of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.
Gaza remains outside Netenyahu's plans for a 'Greater Israel'; it has its own independent existence which an Israeli blitzkrieg three week war could not dislodge a freely elected Hamas government.

F-16s for Taiwan

Not since Nixon and Kissinger were willing to give Taiwan away to Mao's China in
1972, to further isolate the Soviet Union, has the US threatened downgrading its willingness to upgrade Taiwan's defence until now.
The US has treaty obligations to Taiwan. As American administrations have grown cozy with mainland China, an independent Taiwan, which Beijing calls a 'renegade province', has proved at times useful, at others, bothersome.
Today as Taiwan enters an election cycle, the US by 'withholding Taiwan's request for F-16s, Obama is throwing a snit. Why? The 45 American president is pleased by the current Kuomintong party in power's snug relations with mainland China; such warm and comfortable and unguarded relations trouble independent minded Taiwanese who for the last 66 years have developed a national identity of their own.
Obama's display of pique is a way of US interference in the presidential race which is going to be a cliff hanger, and may bring the Democratic Progressive Party back to power.
The DPP has pushed for independence or, let's put it another way, played the role the 'parti quebecois' plays in Canada: a spur in US China relations, which are far from smooth. According to recently released Wikileaks US diplomatic cable, Washington looks with disfavour on the return of the DPP to power.
And accordingly, the US is doing its best to interfer in the Taiwan elections, by using the threat of weakening its defence faced by a powerful China who thinks nothing of lassoing Taiwan back into its fold, in violation of Taiwanese feelings.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Would you buy a used motor car from Netenyau?

Israel's prime minister 'Bibi' Netenyahu has the gift of the gab. Were he not a politician, he would have had a successful career in the world of 'Mad Men'. Advertising which Freud's brother in law dubbed 'propaganda' during the Great War, is the art of selling something you might not want.
And when Netenyahu appears before the UN General Assembly today [24 Sep 2011], he is going to marshal his oratorical skills to sell a 'lemon' of an argument that the Palestinian Authority is 'not prepared yet to give peace to Israel'. For the last 20 years--and please do check the record--the PA has been negotiating with Israel to reach a two state solution. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Zionist leadership, especially during the premiership of Netenyahu, has done everything to torpedo the Oslo Agreement and to way lay any proposal for the creation of a Palestine as its neighbour.
The record clearly shows that instead the Israeli government has accelerated illegal land grabs of land on the Palestinian West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem and build settlements for Jewish colonists, with one single purpose in mind: to create a 'Greater Israel' from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, a Zionist dream of resurrecting the ancient kingdom of Judea and Sumeria of the Torah.
Little wonder the PA president Mahmoud Abbas has called on the UN to admit the state of Palestine to full membership in the world body, to save his people's identity and land that are rightfully theirs.
In Netenyahu's hawking of Josef Goebbel's 'Big Lie' brand of blather, the Zionist right wing leader has the backing of the US. The American president Barach Obama's position on negotiations with the PA is a carbon copy of the Israeli nationalists. In his speech before the General Assembly he, too, dissembled, and conveniently forgot to call, as he has done in the past, for the end of settlement building on the West Bank and negotiations based on the 1967 borders. The 45 US president has learnt to eat humble pie in late spring 2011 when Netenyahu, invited by the Republicans to address a joint session of Congress--an invitation arranged by Republican congressman Eric Cantor who has mixed allegiance to loyalty to the office to which he holds and to the US by allowing his religious beliefs to trump that sworn fidelity to uphold the US constitution.
Netenyahu's speech to the US congress was full of half truths and a message that a two state solution was out; he explicitly called the Palestinian West Bank 'Judea and Sumaria', meaning the land for a Palestinian state was 100 percent Israeli real estate, and 44 years of occupation of that land has given the Zionist state the right to do with it as it sees fit.
Obama got the message, and as he vainly tries for a second term in office, he is losing the Jewish vote in the US. No American president has succeeded in dissuading Israel from its 'appointed' goals on this matter.
Sadly, if the US vetoes the creation of the state of Palestine, which it plainly says it will, and even if the UN General Assembly upgrades the status of the Palestinians at the UN, Israel will seize all Palestinian territory and fulfill its dream of a Greater Israel.
And then its trouble will really begin. 'Proverbs' say 'pride preceedeth the fall' and Netenyahu and his poodle Obama are preparing the way for the end of Zionism and the state of Israel.
Such is the second hand car Netenyahu is trying to palm off on the world community. It is an outright destruction of the Palestinian people, no more, no less.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Obama's UN speech signal US decline in Middle East

President Obama's speech before the UN General Assembly was politely received. Everyone knew what he was going to say, and say it he did warily.

The US intention to veto Palestinians bid to full UN membership surprised no one. Obama, in spite of a last ditch effort to make Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to shrink back in advancing his call for the world body's recognition of the state of Palestine, failed completely. In broadly parsing Obama's words, his speech had the rock glint of a harsh diet for Palestinian statehood; he mentioned neither Israel's illegal land grabbing on the West Bank, settlement expansion of Jewish colonists, everyday assaults on Palestinian human rights, as well as the usual cruel and exacting punishment by the IDF against Palestinians, so on. In all, he endorsed in substance and form prime minister 'Bibi' Netenyahu's ultra nationalist agenda.

In fact, France's Nicholas Sarkosy upstaged him by proposing an upgrade of Palestine's status short of complete membership at the UN. The French president broke ranks with the US by his call: Palestine's status would allow it full access to UN conventions and treaties, thereby enabling it to pursue Israel before the International Court of Justice as well as other venues for violations of international law and conventions.

Abbas' application for full UN membership is a defeat for the US and of course Israel. The PA's plan may not completely achieve its objective; yet it can walk away with the enhanced status Sarkosy was calling for. In any case, the Palestinian cause has marked a significant step forward.

On the other hand, look at the weakened position of the US in the Middle East: Israel's deteriorating relations with Turkey, a strong US and NATO ally, show signs of stress in overall American influence in the region; the Zionist state's 'problems' with Egypt after the fall of Mubarak is fraught with hidden diplomatic and strategic mine fields; it might not come as a surprise that the new Egypt will soften its stand as Turkey did, with Iran; and Israel's lack of foresight is stressing out the tight American Saudi reality.

As GuamDiary keeps noting, Israel is a domestic and presidential election issue; it holds any US administration hostage. The longer the US remains a prisoner to its no holds bared support of Israel, the greater its fall from playing a pivotal role in the Middle East. The lack of movement by Israel on a two state solution will increase its own instability which in the shorter run will lead to war with its neighbours, a war, like its war in Lebanon, that shall bring defeat.

Palestinians may be hopeful but they remain on the 'qui vive' living as they do under 44 years of a brutal Israeli occupation. Israel's future looks dark. And the US will wear uncomfortably its decline and the stupidity of continuing a failed policy concerning the agony of the Isreali Palestinian divide.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

US--Israeli's cat's paw

The Palestinian Authority's bid to call for UN recognition of the state of Palestine has torn the veil off the temple of US diplomacy.
By going to the UN, PA president Mahmoud Abbas has shown US and Israel for what they are: dishonest brokers in achieving a two state solution. More than that, his call has clearly shown that Israel is a domestic issue and also a 2012 presidential campaign issue that might deny president Obama of a second term in office.
American diplomacy when it comes to the Israeli Palestinian question is a most uncertain instrument. Some cynics may even can it perfidious if we read the 2011 released al Jazeera files that reveal US lack of frankness as an honest broker between the PA and Israel; the documents reveal that US administrations favoured Israel to the detriment of Palestinians' aspiration for a state of their own.
Abbas has swept the board clean by knocking down the well worn chess pieces of diplomacy, and has called for a new game that will end up with recognition of the state of Palestine.
However if you read or hear or see the American media you would see the mean delight of roasting the Palestinian Authority for betraying the US and knocking the pins out from under Israel. Nothing is further from the truth! Freud would call such half truths and outright distortions 'projection', meaning throwing one's faults, flaws, and blame on another party.
Consider this scenario: if the US wants to ensure that Palestinians on the West Bank do not go, say, without food, owing to the high percentage of unemployment created by Israeli policy, it has to get prime minister 'Bibi' Netenyahu's approval. The right wing premier has steadfastly sabotage the Oslo Accords and done everything he could to subvert any negotiations leading to a Palestinian state. In his world, Palestinian lands are for the creation of a Greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. In his view, he thinks that by dispossessing Palestinians of their lands, they will be forced to beggar their neighbour Jordan by conquering the Hachemite Kingdom for their own.
Decades of US policy have brought the US to this horrendous state of dependency on a client state. It is as if America has taken on the cloak of a Neville Chamberlin. How the mighty superstate has fallen low!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Palestine Authority bid to the UN

Mahmoud Abbas is shorting going to formally call on the UN to consider Palestine's bid for full membership in that international body.
As president of the Palestine Authority his gesture has thrown more than a grain in the sand in the US Israeli led campaign to stay its hand in pursuing such a goal.
Suddenly the question of Palestine has become 'the issue' before the 2011 General Assembly. With this bid, the US threat of exercising its veto to block Palestine's full membership will badly wound the Obama administration's diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world. Israel is hiding in the bunkers of its self imposed isolation by not seriously considering a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; under the disastrous leadership of the right wing, revisionist Zionist 'Bibi' Netenyahu, Israel is pursuing a 'Greater Israel' agenda of a Jewish state occupying all the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, based on hoary biblical claims. Forty-four years of occupation of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, Zionist governments--left, right, and centre--have illegally confiscated Palestian land and encouraged illegal Jewish settlement on stolen territory.
Recent events in the Arab world have changed the region's dynamics and the fallout has added spice to Palestinians to call upon the UN for recognition of a state of its own even though that state is under foreign occupation, as well as acknowledgment of 1967 borders.
Israel and its pro consul protector may block full membership but it has not the votes in the General Assembly to elevate a Palestine state to the rank of 'non voting member'; such a move would open international conventions and treaties to Palestine, and as a 'state' it could pursue Israel before the International Court of Justice and other judicial venues for illegal land confiscation, settlements, violation of human rights, so on. Even less than full membership would upend 44 years of Israeli policy, underpinned by the US. However, the Palestinians are not ruling out Israeli army attacks in the West Bank and Gaza, out of Zionist frustration and failure to keep things the way they are; translation where Israel acts with impunity!
Tomorrow the New York police is bracing itself to keep in order a pro Israel rally on the UN. The figure of 10.000 is being bandied about. The demonstration might turn violent, out of frustration and rage by the participants. Of course, the marshaling of 10.000 is child's play considering the size of New York Metropolitan area Jewish population. And since Israel is a 'domestic' American plank in the two major political party platforms, no one should be surprised by the presence of high ranking politicians, clergy, and the like.

Baton diplomacy

All signs point to opportunities in the divided Korean peninsula.
Cultural diplomacy is playing a part. The world renowned [South] Korean conductor wearing his hat as 'maestro' of the Seoul Philharmonic Chung Myung whun just returned from a four day trip to North Korea's capital Pyongyang. There he not only met with high ranking cultural officials and musicians, he also conducted North Korea's prized orchestra in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
The choice of Beethoven takes on special significance for Chung and his North Korean hosts. For the concluding movement sets Lessing 'An der Freude' [Ode to Joy] to music, with a lofty chorus of voice expressing exultant happiness in brotherhood.
This message underscores the existential ache shared by North and South Koreans in a divided land; it is an expression of a common hope that one day the North and South will be reunited into a single Korea.
For Chung his 'visite eclaire' was moving beyond the words he could convey; for him, too, it was an opportunity to discuss common musical projects between North and South musicians.
North Korean officials were open to Chung's initiative, but as the maestro observed, 'they were positively inclined and wary'.
And 'wary' they have to be: experience, say, in music diplomacy, has taught them to be on the 'qui vive'. Consider the big splash that the New York Philharmonic made in Pyongyang in late February 2008. An evening of American music was televised worldwide, and then there was no follow up, dashing any hopes in a breakthrough in US North Korean relations.
The New York Korea Society played a big role in arranging the logistics of the NYP's trip to North Korea. If anyone looks at the DVD of its 'historic' performance, the eye would pick out in the concert hall in Pyongyang former US ambassadors, ex high ranking department of state officials, and Bush appointed diplomats. According to unnamed sources, in the weeks immediately after the Pyongyang concert, the Korea Society got word from Washington to play down contact with North Korea. Dutifully it did.
Little wonder the authorities in Pyongyang remain on their guard. Saying this, they, nonetheless, keep extending a hand to improve relations with the US and South Koreans, for example, alas with little or no response. Still, they have not stopped trying.
Maestro Chung remains 'optimistically cautious' plans for more musical contacts between the two Koreans, with Southern musicians playing in the North and Northern musicians playing in the South.
More musical exchanges will broaden the North's classical repertoire. Kim Jong il's officials in a significant gesture allowed Chung to conduct in Pyongyang the Ninth Symphony'.
Realistically, the maestro looks out for threatening dark clouds in the political skies that could and would threaten any break through with his plans.
In 2008 the press waxed hopeful that the NYP was like the US ping pong diplomacy would open North Korea to the world. It didn't happen. The Lee Myung bak government, after scuppering the 'Sunshine Policy' embarked on a hostile campaign against North Korea; he has hardly soften his stand.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Israeli fundamentalism

The media vomits concern over Islamic fundamentalism, and more particularly with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its avatars in country's going through the 'Arab spring'.
Slipping under the radar is the rise and triumph of Israeli fundamentalism. However, the disgraced 'New York Times' reporter Judith Miller did 15 years ago. In her well received book 'God has ninety-nine names' [Simon & Schuster, 1996] did! After a 'tour de horizon' of the Arab world as the 'NYT' woman in Cairo, she ended with a chapter on the rise of and similarity of Israeli ethno religious fundamentals with its Arab and Muslim counterparts.
Since then the fundamentalists control the Likud led government and proliferate like rabbits on illegal settlements on Palestine's West Bank. It does not take a rocket scientist to connect the dots of why Israel has dragged its feet on negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on a two state solution. For Netenyahu and his more far right wing nationalists like foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, the 1993 Olso Accords have died an early debt; they have pushed the envelope by illegally seizing Palestinian land in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank and settling ultra Orthodox settlers, armed to the teeth, on stolen lands.
No one in the mainstream, western media dare talk about Israeli fundamentlism which has taken hold in the levers of power in the Zionist state. If they do, they run the risk of Israel and its supporters at home and abroad wracking vengence with a capital V through mendacious propaganda, denying funding in elections, and much more.
And Israel pro consul protector the US has allowed Israel to act as a law unto itself by showing utter contempt for international conventions, treaties, and laws; by engaging in piracy on the high seas, especially in the Mediterranean, and sending hit squads to murder opponents here and there and everywhere in the world.
Now that the Palestinian Authority has applied for full member at the UN as the state of Palestine, do we find a mention of Israeli fundamentalism in the last sentence of a piece by the Israeli American correspondant of the 'Times' living in Israel.
Were more proof of the programme of Israeli fundamentalism needed, consider premine minister Netenyahu's address to a joint session of the US Congress in May 2011. Loudly cheered by American elected officicals, he dashed any hope of a two state solution by referring to Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of [Jewish] Israel and the West Bank as 'Sumaria and Judea'. If ethno religious Zionist fundamentalism is lacking in example, Netenyahu's words should clear any doubts, excuses, or evasions on the true aims of Israeli fundamentalism: a 'Great Israel' from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River with South African apartheid like 'bantustans' to house the Palestinians who have not fled but stayed in their own homeland.

Friday, September 16, 2011

800 pound gorilla in NY's 9 Congressional district snap election

Oceans of printer's ink and gales of political blather have flowed over the election of Bob Turner who first time in a century snagged the seat left vacant by the disgraced Anthony Wiener, for the Republicans.
The overarching opinion of the talking heads and pundits and sundry other commentators and whoever saw in wet behind the ears Turner a condemnation of the way president Obama's record on a fast sinking US economy.
Everyone is hurting, it goes without saying, but the very rich whose interests Turner has sworn to uphold and further endow with tax privileges. However, and we stress however, two issues predominated the race against the David Weprin the Democrat who lost.
The 800 pound gorilla in the wings is Israel. The three time mayor and major pooh bah of egoism Ed Koch put his two cents at the beginning of the contest. He was going to send a message to Obama whom he tarred and feathered as not being pro Israel as he thinks.
The 9 NY Congressional district is majority Jewish. It houses a strong orthodox element which in the past has voted Democrat. In fact, it went for Obama big time in 2008. Local Democratic councilmen and state representatives crossed party lines to send Obama Koch's message: don't weaken US unconditional support for Israel. If anyone doubted that Israel is a domestic issue in American politics, doubt no more. Contrary to America's record on Israel, the propaganda mills of the Israeli lobby, with big bucks and lobbying and contributions to political races on the local, state, and federal level, carries a big stick it never hesitates to use liberally for anyone who steps out of line.
A liability on Weprin's slate was his vote for same sex marriage which alienated him from his more pious and conservative supporters even though he is an orthodox Jew!
Israel and the gay issue brought big money and huge support from the Catholic church, orthodox Jewry, evangelicals, and of course, infusion of funds from right wing Republicans, and they tilted the balance for Turner's win.
The economy played a lesser part in Weprin's defeat.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Lehman's bankruptcy three years later

Hardly any mention of the third anniversary of Lehman's failure which sent shock waves throughout world financial markets causing a global recession. Maybe tomorrow the talking heads will discuss it.
Lehman's downfall is still with us as the US rows back to deeper economic troubles and the Euro zone looks as though it will shatter into 27 parts with an outcome too terrible to foresee, including another war on the European continent.
The US political class is paralysed; the American president lacks the 'intestinal pluck' to challenge the reactionary Republicans who insist on featherbedding and protecting billionaires, plutocrats, and coupon clippers. Meanwhile by all indicators, the once mighty US is slouching into impoverishment and crisis for the majority of its citizens; they have prepared the grounds for the rise of a radical right, racialism, and beggar thy neighbours, a heady mixture for homegrown incipient fascism.
Results of educational tests show a marked decline in American youngsters to grasp the fundamentals of English and mathematics; The media has strayed along the easy path of glitz and glitter fostering a trend of bread and circus but hardly encouraging critical thinking.
Cutting budgets by punishing education, public welfare, and infrastructure, such as decent transportation and roads, is encouraging a 'dog eat dog' approach to American life. The scraps the ruling classes leave on the table are bitterly fought over by the growing army of have nots and the unemployed. On the other hand, the decadent rich have gone overboard in conspicuous consumption and lavish living whilst American children go to bed hungary at night.
And three years after Lehman, things do not look better. The big bracket banks may have recovered thanks to the taxpayers, but they are greedy and selfish enough to bribe a willing Congress and ruling class to not consider any other agenda but that which keeps them calling the shots. Still the worm is in the apple of their arrogance and sense of being a law unto itself, for on their books remain those nasty toxic financial instruments which toppled Lehman and still risk to topple the house of cards that they and their henchmen in the corridors of power have constructed and try as they might to maintain.

Israel evacuates embassy in Jordan

Israel got its fingers burnt in Egypt when its ambassador to Cairo fled for his life as enraged Egyptians assailed the Israeli embassy.
To avoid a repetition of public rebuke and humiliation, the right wing Likud government of 'Bibi' Netenyahu has ordered the evacuation of its embassy in Amman before the announcement 'million man march' to protest US Israeli designs revealed by Wikileaks release of American diplomatic cables.
It is an open secret that since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Israel had long suggested, if not sought, turning what was called 'TransJordan' into a state for Palestinian refugees who fled their land during the Arab Israeli war.
King Hussain torpedoed this idea through measured and skillful diplomacy to keep the Kingdom of Jordan, Jordanian, and eventually signed a treaty with the Zionist state after Egypt's Anwar Sadat did thereby regaining his country's sovereignty over Sinai.
Yet the idea of 'expelling' Palestinian out of the West Bank into Jordan to fulfill Zionist dreams of a greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, has never been far from bedrock of Israeli nationalism. And of course from US thoughts of once and for all to solve the festering problem and giant headache of not achieving a two state solution that would favour its ally Israel.
Of course such plans are shortsighted: they leave out of the equation of Jordanian sense of its own identity and nationhood, even though Jordan has welcomed tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees since 1948.
The US cables speak of Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel proper to Jordan.
So to sidestep another show of diplomatic and political disgrace, Netenyahu's government has evacuated its embassy staff. Who would have thought that within the last month that Israel's fortress of arrogance would crack wide open, exposing great weaknesses?

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

It's not what the US wants....Palestine bid at the UN

Secretary of state Hillary Clinton clearly warned the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the PA's bid for statehood at the UN is 'not what the US wants'. So in a last minute attempt to stop him, she's sending her two man team of advisors on the Middle East to thwart the PA plans. As GuamDiary wrote, one, the two men are pro Israel and make no bones about it; secondly, the al Jazeera files made public earlier this year revealed that the US has steadfastly twisted the PA's arm to concede to Israeli demands which the Zionist state has no intentions in fulfilling as part of a two state solution.
GuamDiary can only surmise that Clinton's last collage try to abort PA's bid at the UN by bringing it back to the sterile negotiating table with an unreliable Israel will be accompanied by threats and menaces, the least of which would be to cut off any and all US aid as much as it is.
With imperial arrogance, the US has issued its 'diktat': 'what we do not want...' Clinton's words are without nuance; they have the pure and simple intention of inflicting the maximum pain on the Palestinians who refuse to play a charade called 'the road map to peace' with Israel. Why does not the US secretary of state pose the right question: 'what do the Palestinians want?'
Clearly it is something little considered: for would US policy makers dare, the Israeli lobby would bring the roof down on the US elites heads; they would challenge 60 years of pro Israel support, but for the rare exception of Eisenhower's threat to Ben Gurion during the Suez crisis 55 years ago to cut off all US economic and military aid.
Clinton steadfastly remains deaf to Abbas' intention of sending the PA bid to the UN Security by Friday 16 September. The US already announced that it would veto it. Thus, we ask why is the Obama administration is continually pitiful political theatre bound to fail? The answer lies in domestic politics, even though a veto would alienate its friends in the Arab and Muslim world.
2012 is a presidential election year so the Jewish vote counts heavily in favour of the Democrats as well as the political contributions. It would be unwise to alienate the pro Israeli lobby which has clout among US lawmakers.
Consider the loss of the disgraced Anthony Wiener's seat in a heavily Democratic district to a little known Republican, in more than a century. The issue introduced by the mean spirited three time mayor of New York Ed Koch was that the Obama was not pro Israel. The big lie worked and the Democrat Weprin, himself an Orthodox Jew, lost.
The US is slow to absorb the rapidly changing Arab world. Clinton's overbearing 'ukase' is symptomatic of how much US policy is fossilised.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Glass Steagall with a British flavour?

The capitalist West's imperfect grasp of economic has shaken the pillars of dominance to their very foundations. Greed and the lure of bigger and fatter fees in the US sent the American lawmakers in 1999 to demolish the New Deal dam separating the reliable commercial banking practices from the unbridled risk derring do of investment banking. And thereafter almost every 'mature' capitalist' state joined in the rush for the high stakes, sparkling bottom lines, and sumptuous bonuses, to the delight of the plutocrats and the coupon clippers, through fancy, hardly understood computer generated, tricky financial instruments with exotic acronyms.
A mere nine years later, the devil came for his due, and the whole deck of painterly cards fell down, leaving the bill to the rate or taxpayers to foot the bill for a lackluster recovery. And to their shame and discredit, the mighty Wall Street and City and Parisian and Frankfurt banks kept rotten debts at full value on the books like people in the shadow of a plague hoping that they will be spared once the impending disaster would pass over with little damage. Wrong!
The reemergence of slipping into double digit recession has forced the Conservative government of David Cameron to propose something like Glass Steagall to treat the ailing British economy, in order to save him, his party, his bankers, and as a second thought the people of the British Isles from depression like conditions. He is calling for a 'fire wall' between commercial and risky investment banking, which, when you think about it, is a 'conservative' solution by preserving something that worked very well in the past from the aftermath of the Great Depression of the late 1920's until the eve of the 21 century.
Of course the roar has come from the very sectors that stoked fierce the flames of the 2008 global recession: such a remedy will drive banks out of the UK to sunnier shores where they can continue sharp practices of their and garner fabulous sums as a reward. These wailers who moil and roil miss the point: given the extent and depth of the crisis, ultimately some version of Glass Steagall will prevail here, there, and elsewhere. So old darlings get used to tightening the belts around bloated waists!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Totem and Taboo: 10 years after 9/11

The day long ceremonies at Ground Zero are over. The grief of the families of victims and first responders were palpable. New York, officials tell us, is not the same.



A new New York has risen from the ashes of 9/11.

Patriotic speeches aside, the US has been greatly transformed: it is mired in financial distress and stress. Its arch friend Osmana Bin Ladin’s flesh is moulding in a watery grave, yet his revenge is everywhere to be seen in the decline of America.

Consider 80 per cent of America’s economy is claimed by the military. The 20 per cent marked out for the civilian economy will fall very soon under the scalpel of the lunatic fringe of the US ruling class. The voracious ogre of the military industrial complex has a gargantuan appetite that is never satisfied. The idiocy of America’s financiers have thrown the economy on the ropes owing to the greed to stuff pockets with profits, thereby provoking a worldwide recession in 2008, which looks as though it is coming back with a strong second breath.

The chosen war which Bush with lying stealth pushed the US into Iraq has mightily failed, draining the country of its men and women and emptying its treasury. The war in Afghanistan is going nowhere fast in spite of massage infusions of troops and dollars. No exist is in sight for with war; furthermore even if the US pulls out troops, it will be forced by the logic of its failure to prop up client regimes. And so the waste and drain of troops and money and corruption and bribery loop back and forth and around in a vicious cycle. [And what about the wrack and ruin and death and debilitating legacy that these wars have visited on Iraq and Afghanistan?]

Bin Laden has succeeded beyond his wildest imagination in humbling the US: he has sentenced the American people to a lackluster future of reduced circumstances and comfort; for him 9/11, has stripped the obese American wealth not quite to the bone, but enough to condemn future generations to a standing and status of living in a once powerful empire living in the glories of the past and the niggardly frugality of a cramped and barren existence.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Lee Myung bak's delusional fantasy of unifying Korea

Art imitates life? 'The man with the Baltic stare', the fourth in James Church's Inspector O series, revolves around South Korea's designs to unify the divided Korean peninsula, with a few twists.
South Korea's president Lee Myung bak has, it seems, read the inards of a milk calf that foretell with inevitable certainty that he will begin the process of unifying the two Koreas under Seoul's leadership.
Proof of his meglomania is announced by an 'Agence France Presse' release that Lee's unification office from 26 September 2011 will produce 'video content, weekly news, and other material' to be aired on the unitv.unikorea website.
And the twist the knife in the open wound of two Koreas, 'an internal channel will begin broadcasting news on unification and interviews with North Korean refugees' on uniradi.inlive.
Surely,the announcement by the ROK's Yonhap news agency is a formula for grand mischief. It is a provocative move that will favour North Korea's displeasure, undoubtedly doing everything to promote disharmony and digging even deeper the distrust of the North towards the South.
The unitv and uniradio broadcasts are a bolder step in the cold war style propaganda war that the Lee regime expanded since the ROK president occupied the Blue House in 2008 and scuppered the 'Sunshine Policy'.
Every move Lee has taken is calculated to push Kim Jong il to trip the wire to war. In face, it was South Korea's joint military exercises with live fire with the US along the Northern Limit Line within spitting of North Korea's territorial waters,
caused a reply from Pyongyang when the South's shells fell into the DPRK. The North's response set the US to stay the hand of the South from further antagonising the North lest the dormant Korean War would turn hot after 57 years.
Lee has not tempered his sham Caesarism to impose a 'Pax Koreana' on the DPRK. His meglomania knowns no bounds. He is, more than ever, intent of pushing the North to edge of collapse or war.

Isreal meltdown

To hear the plaintive voice of Marc Regev, the Israeli spokesman for the Zionist state's prime minister, it would stop you in your tracks. Normally, he speaks with superior authority; today, his voice has seemingly lost its certainty and self assuredness.
The flight of the Israeli ambassador to Cairo is a major cause for concern for the right wing led government of 'Bibi' Netenyahu. Is it an omen of worse things to come in the 31 years since Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement?
Netenyahu's sham Caesarism has not achieved its desired ends in the Middle East. The 'Arab Spring' has left the Zionist state dominance in the dust. In a way, its military might notwithstanding, the Likud led government is like a farmer living on exhausted soil.
Without Egypt as an 'ally', Netenyahu's policies has had the unhappy outcome of forcing Israel into a ghetto of its own making, hinting at weakness and impotency.
A further turn of misfortune is Israel's rupture with Turkey, an ally of 63 years, for want of an apology and compensation for the assault and murder of nine Turks on the 'Mavi Mamara' in June 2010.
A telling sign is the taming of the sharp tongue of the aggressively nationalist--and some might say 'proto fascist--foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Now is he mouthing soothing sounds towards Ankara. Yet he was the architect for not apologising to Turkey. Suddenly a crack of sanity has penetrated into the smug Israeli leadership, but not enough to apologise.
The Zionist's state fossilised strategy will ensure recognition of Palestine as an 'associate state' of the UN. The Obama administration's veto will deprive the Palestinian Authority of outright statehood 'de jure'. The minions of the American president are calling for cutting off US aid to the PA. Such a move would underscore without a doubt that the US is not an good broker but a partisan of Israel.
On the other hand, Netenyahu is arming illegal Jewish colonists on seized land in the Palestinian West Bank and putting its army through its paces out of fear that a PA victory at the UN would lead to an uprising in the occupied territory in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem under the Zionist heel for 44 years.
GuamDiary thinks that the UN recognition of the state of Palestine would provoke an Israeli armed attack on Palestines, out of sheer and utter frustration and blind rage of failure.
A military assault on Palestinians by armed vigilantes and the defence force will weaken further the strained ties with Egypt and might very well incited universal condemnation and further isolation falling back on its only 'friend' the US.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Israel's predominance in the Mediterranean shrivels

Israel is saying little after its ambassador to Cairo unceremoniously fled for his life. The 'tsahal's' violation of Egyptian territory in the Sinai resulting in the killing of five border guard has fuelled unrest in Cairo.
In the Zionist state's weltanshauung', Egypt is a central player. The promise of peace that Anwar Sadat's trip to Israel is fastly being squandered. Post Mubarak Egypt may not shed its treaty with Tel Aviv, is transforming it to something less than what the right wing Likud led government of 'Bibi' Netenyahu is hoping for.
A less pliable Egypt is bad news for the Israeli economy; Mubarak's Egypt's 'friendship' allowed the Zionist state to reduce military expenditures which it shifted to rapidly develop the economy with good returns on the shekels invested to at least six per cent growth a year. Them days are a thing of the past, it seems.
Internally, this 'economic miracle' has hastened a general impoverishment of the majority of Israelis who cannot pay the rent and put food on the table and pay doctor's bills, in favour of oligarchs and their political friends living in the laps of luxury. A permanent 'Netenyahu ville' has grown up in the heart of Tel Aviv, and protests continue to spread and grow throughout the land, drawing at last count some 300.000.
The ever growing tension with its ally Turkey, owing to the regime's unwillingness to apologise for and offer compensation for the killing of nine Turks aboard the 'Mavi Mamara' in June 2010, has ended up turning Anakara sour with the Zionist state. Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador and downgraded Israeli diplomatic representation to the lowest level.
More threatening to Israel is Turkey's challenge to Israel predominance in the Mediterranean. Until now, the Zionist state has with impunity ruled the waves; it has flaunted it presence with shameless abandon and flouted international treaties and laws of the sea much as would Barbary pirates.
Consider Israel's sinking the 'USS Liberty' in 1967 and killing Turks on the 'Mavi Mamara' as it took part in a freedom flotilla to brave and break an illegally imposed blockade of Gaza.
Now Turkish ships will ply the Mediterranean, thereby challenging Israel's self styled hegemony of the seas. Furthermore, it will challenge Israel's claim to exploit natural gas deposits offshore and not necessarily in its territorial waters. More, they will escort future freedom flotillas headed for Gaza.
Not only that, it is bringing Israel to the International Court of Justice in the Hague for its crimes.
Could anyone have imagined these developments two years ago?
The Zionist state's ruling classes are withdrawing to ghettos that their intransigence have created, thus exacerbating political and moral isolation. No more can Israel claim that the Mediterranean is 'mare nostrum'.
It is looking more and more probable that in the UN General Assembly meeting in late September 2011 Palestine will be recognised as a legitimate state even though its territories in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem is under 44 years of Israeli occupation. Such a state will benefit Palestine with the protection of UN conventions and treaties that challenge Israeli 'ethnic cleansing' of Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank through illegal expropriation of Palestinian land, expulsion of Palestinians, and the illegal implantation of Jewish colonists.
Time is no long on Israel's side.

Friday, September 9, 2011

DPRK celebrates 48 anniversay

North Korea celebrated the 48 anniversary of its founding with great panache.
Viewing the display of military might, Kim Jong il and his 'heir apparent' and third son Kim Jong un reviewed, on Kim Il sung square in Pyongyang, wave after wave of Worker Peasant Red Guards and the DPRK armed forces stream by.
On display were, among other weapons, howitzers, anti aircraft gun, tanks, and a variety of multiple launch rocket systems, for which North Korea has developed to a state of the art level, with a current of jets flying overhead.
The display of armed forces and worker peasant guard reserves is a rebuke to the DPRK's critics who for the past 20 years have been reading the signs of the regime's collapse.
The parade also served as a reminder that North Korea and its people will defend their motherland against outside aggression.
The aged senior military staff remember clearly the wrack and ruin US planes visited on the country during the Korean war 60 years ago. Photos of a flatten North Korea taken during the US UN led forces rushing to the Yalu where they were 'rolled back' to the 38 parallel remain forever seared in the memory of North Korea. And a strong army, for them, is a 'sine qua non' to resist aggression that would bring the North back to the 'year zero'.
Hostile joint US ROK manoeuvres along the Northern Limit Line had sparked the first exchange of fire between South and North since the war which remains in limbo awaiting a peace treaty, in November 2010.
That incident is a cause to remember that the government of Lee Myung bak in Seoul and the Obama administration in Washington do not wish North Korea well.
Lest we forget, the DPRK's army and people's brigades have a powerful back up: North Korea's nuclear programme which has not stopped the South and the US from military adventurism and raise the ante of war in a divided Korean peninsula.

It's official: the US will veto Palestinian bid for statehood

The games are over. The Obama administration has threatened for months now to veto any Palestinian Authority bid for a state recognised by the world comity of nations at the UN.
As GuamDiary mused, the 45 American president's emissaries brought an empty letter of promises to the PA president Mahmoud Abbas to forestall the PA's plans. It failed. It couldn't otherwise: Obama sent his advisor on the Middle East Dennis Ross to convey his message. Ross is a partisan of Israel, so what he had to deliver was a poison cup of delay and of further weakening of the will towards a Palestinian state.
Did Obama think he would succeed? As we suggested yesterday, no, but he could benefit from a supine US press to blow the trumpets of his latest endeavour as a 'peacemaker', for domestic consumption.
The odds that an American veto in the Security Council will stay General Assembly approval of the state of Palestine make for a large spread on the order, say, 60 to one.
Attentive reading of the press points to Israel as a domestic issue. Consider the campaign to replace the disgraced Congressman Anthony Wiener in a once safe Democratic district. A former mayor of New York has thrown a spanner in what would normally have been a shoe in race. Ed Koch, a three term mayor, goes ballistic on the question of support for Israel. He questioned the 'bona fides' of the Democratic candidate David Weprin, an orthodox on his allegiance to the Zionist state, by backing a little known Republican candidate. His sticking his nose into a routine election has tightened it so that even if Werpin wins, it might be by a hair. The Democrat Koch is doing his best to get back at Obama for his 'kinder, gentler approach' to the Arab and Muslim world. In that he sees a weakening US resolve to back Israel to the hilt, contrary to the evidence.
Israel, in other words, is beyond reproach like Caesar's wife!
Consequently the US is a prisoner of its own stark support of Israel even in local domestic politics and elections.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Obama's charm on the Palestinian Authority fizzles

There is not much to be said for the Obama administration’s charm offense to sidetrack the Palestinian Authority bid to “seek recognition" as a state at the forthcoming UN General Assembly this month.
Promises for renewed peace talks with Israel in lieu of a UN blessing of a Palestinian state fell on deaf ears. Furthermore, with 24 hours, Palestinian Authority president rejected them out of hand. Did president Obama seriously think that Mahmoud Abbas would commit political suicide by accepting his proposal?
Although the US had long announced that it would veto the PA’s elevation to “non voting status” at the UN, the Americans had done their sums and come out wanting in votes to defeat a vote in the General Assembly. Recognized as an “non observer state”, Palestine would then “join dozens of UN bodies and conventions”, enhancing thereby its ability to pursue Israel before the International Criminal Court in the Hague for violation of human rights and illegal seizure of land on the West Bank and in Arab East Jerusalem and establishing settlers on Palestinian land.
Obama gave his campaign to persuade the PA to drop its plans, a good, old college last try. Did he expect it to work? We do not think so. So whom did the president hope to impress?
Surely, not the Israeli government. It already had girded its diplomatic loins for defeat. The right wing Likud government of Bibi Netenyahu is suspicious of the Obama administration since his speech at Cairo University in June 2004 calling for a “new beginning” in US Arab and Muslim relations, and in spite of the glaring evidence that the US back Israeli adventures to the hilt and dispensed with a large hand billions in military and economic aid, much of which is forgiven.
And let’s not forget Israel’s refusal to stop settlement building, nor Netenyahu’s rebuff of Obama’s giving new life to the Green Line as a bargaining chip in arriving at a two state solution. The Green Line, recognized by the ICJ, set Palestinian territory within 1967 boundaries; they include the West Bank, Gaza, and Arab East Jerusalem.
The American president resurrection of the Green Line will strengthen the Palestinian case when it comes before the UN. It is an anathema to Netenyahu who in a disdainful snub to the president ripped off the veil of Israel’s intention to negotiate with the PA by calling the West Bank “Judea and Samaria”, a revisionist Zionist goal of a “Greater Israel” from the Mediterranean to the Jordan based on biblical sources.
The Palestinians do not expect much from the Obama administration either. It has proven itself timid in making Israel live up to its commitments of a two state solution. In fact the Palestinian File of 1600 Israeli Palestinian documents, released by al Jazeera in January 2011 portray America’s role of arm twisting the PA to accede to Israeli demands, thus weakening its own case.
So who is the target of Obama’s initiative with the PA? The American people. Israel is a domestic issue, and favoring Israel brings in votes and campaign contributions.
The president weak tea approach to a two state solution has raised serious doubts of his and the US’ commitment to a strong, viable Israel. Although his wooing of the PA failed, he really did not think it would succeed. So to snatch victory from defeat at the UN, he staged shoddy political drama. Was it worth the effort? If anything it makes him look like indecisive, though it might have been worth the effort. The real threat comes a crisis between Turkey and Israel that is causing Obama more wool to thread than fear of violence in the West Bank, for the PA coordinates its strategy with the Israeli defense forces. And in the end, the US quietly accepts Palestinian recognition by the UN.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

North Korea not meeting terms for Beijing talks, say US

Let's be clear about the US assertion that North Korea is showing 'no signs yet' that it is 'prepared to meet conditions', in order to return to the suspended six party talks in Beijing on the North's nuclear programme.
Blithely ignoring Kim Jong il's call for sitting down to talks with 'no conditions', the US is unwilling to restart talks but on its own terms.
Now that is a 'demand' that the North has long rejected. Kim Jong il has signaled his willingness to rejoin talks with 'no preconditions' through two former US presidents--Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton--senior department of state officials, and visiting intellectuals and scholars. President Obama has turned a deaf ear to these messages.
Therefore, as the state department's spokeswoman Virginia Nuland criticises North Korea for dragging its feet on returning to Beijing, her words reek of the propaganda war, coordinated with South Korea, against the DPRK. They are a shroud to cover the stinking corpse of a policy that does not want to deal with North Korea on a level playing field, to resolve nuclear and traditional tripwires in a divided Korean peninsula.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Israel Embassy conspires, FBI wiretaps conversations

Once again the "New York Times" [05 Sep 2011] strips the wraps on the Obama administration's war on leaks. An Israeli born FBI contract translator Schmai Leibowitz split the beans to blogger Richard Silverstein on monitored conversations within the precincts of the Israeli embassy in Washington involving an unnamed Congressman from Texas, a strategy of placing Israeli propaganda that influential supporters of Israel in government, the media, business, and the arts would put their names to, and coordination of Israeli designs to influence American opinion favourably through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Leibowitz pleaded guilty, but here's the rub, the judge sentenced him to 20 months in the slammer without knowing anything about his case on government say so...translation, it is on a need to know basis, and you do not need to know, but trust us!
Isn't this the type of justice, the US roils and moils against when it denounces its enemies? Isn't it an example of a 'Black Star Chamber' whereby the power of the executive is not bound by common law?
Silverstein, according to the 'Times', 'offers a glimpse of American spying on an ally'. This kind of skullduggery is the meat and potatoes of spying. Even the Israelis admit that they are aware of it and just as probably, do it even in the US. Does anyone recall Adlai Stevenson at a UN Security Council meeting denouncing Soviet wiretapping of the US embassy by displaying the American Eagle which housed a listening device in the early 1960s?
Consider: Leibowitz has been under lock and key for over a year, so why, we ask, is the story making front page headlines as an exclusive on today's 'Times'?
According to Silverstein [see his blog 'Tikun Olam', Leibowitz a trained lawyer in Israel before emigrating to the US fear Israeli designs to bomb Iran. Silverstein feeling the heat of the US government centring on him burnt the transcripts he received from the contract translator, to avoid prosecution as 'receiving "classified" documents'.
To answer our question: a new book on US spying is scheduled to appear at year's end, and that may explain why the story appeared now. However, the 'Times' 'scoop' may arise more from the Obama administration's frustration with Netenyahu's pigheadedness. It very well may have to do with Israel's refusal to apologise for and unwillingness to pay compensation to the families of the nine Turks killed on the illegal assault of Israel special forces on the Turkish ship 'Mavi Mamara' in June 2010.
The Netenyahu Likud led government's perverse obstinacy has greatly affected its relations with its once staunch ally Turkey; it has led to a downgrading in military, economic, and diplomatic relations.
Netenyahu has put the US in an embarassing situation: two firm allies of the US engaged in a cold war with each other. Turkey is a member of NATO, to boot. Israel's intransigence further muddies the waters of the Obama's approach to the Arab and Muslim world. So, in other words, the stakes are high. And that may explain the 'scoop' as an expression of Washington's displeasure with Israel.
Is Leibowitz an American patriot by his actions? Silverstein thinks so. He is in a way like Bradley Manning who is under lockdown without being charged. What will become of Manning now that all 250.000 US diplomatic cables are in the public domain? That remains unknown.
In spite of US discomfort over Leibowitz's whistle blowing, which it successfully kept a tight lid on for more than 15 months, it will cast a veto against recognition of Palestine in the forthcoming UN General Assembly. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is telling Netenyahu to clean up his act.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The world has gone by leaving US policy on Palestine in the dust

The world has moved on as to the matter of Palestine. Now, the US is taking a last ditch stand to ‘buy off’ the Palestinian Authority from seeking recognition of Palestine as a state at the up coming session of the UN General Assembly. It has fallen back on bribery and arm twisting to stall the PA initiative. Washington is in a muddle, which it itself is to blame for favouring Israel’s designs throughout decades owing to the demands of domestic politics.

The Obama administration is desperate: it will cast a veto when the resolution to come to a vote in the Security Council. American diplomats have done the sums and have come up short in killing the GA’s bestowing legitimacy on a Palestine the territory of which is under 44 years of Israeli occupation, punctured with illegal land seizures and Jewish colonization in pursuit of a grand design for a ‘Greater Israel’ from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

Events are quickly changing in the Arab world and the Middle East that have left the US flat footed. It stuck too long to Mubarak in Egypt; has shown itself ‘pusillanimous’ facing down the right wing Israeli irredentist ‘Bibi’ Netenyahu; and failed in its efforts to patch up the broken alliance of Turkey and Israel, owing to the Zionist state’s intransigence in the ‘Mavi Mamara’ killings.

America’s foreign policy in the Arab world is broken. Like Humpty Dumpty, try as any US administration might try, it cannot be patched together again. Yes, the world has moved on and America is caught with its pants down.



The world has moved on as to the matter of Palestine. Now, the US is taking a last ditch stand to ‘buy off’ the Palestinian Authority from seeking recognition of Palestine as a state at the up coming session of the UN General Assembly. It has fallen back on bribery and arm twisting to stall the PA initiative. Washington is in a muddle, which it itself is to blame for favouring Israel’s designs throughout decades owing to the demands of domestic politics.

The Obama administration is desperate: it will cast a veto when the resolution to come to a vote in the Security Council. American diplomats have done the sums and have come up short in killing the GA’s bestowing legitimacy on a Palestine the territory of which is under 44 years of Israeli occupation, punctured with illegal land seizures and Jewish colonization in pursuit of a grand design for a ‘Greater Israel’ from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

Events are quickly changing in the Arab world and the Middle East that have left the US flat footed. It stuck too long to Mubarak in Egypt; has shown itself ‘pusillanimous’ facing down the right wing Israeli irredentist ‘Bibi’ Netenyahu; and failed in its efforts to patch up the broken alliance of Turkey and Israel, owing to the Zionist state’s intransigence in the ‘Mavi Mamara’ killings.

America’s foreign policy in the Arab world is broken. Like Humpty Dumpty, try as any US administration might try, it cannot be patched together again. Yes, the world has moved on and America is caught with its pants down.



The world has moved on as to the matter of Palestine. Now, the US is taking a last ditch stand to ‘buy off’ the Palestinian Authority from seeking recognition of Palestine as a state at the up coming session of the UN General Assembly. It has fallen back on bribery and arm twisting to stall the PA initiative. Washington is in a muddle, which it itself is to blame for favouring Israel’s designs throughout decades owing to the demands of domestic politics.

The Obama administration is desperate: it will cast a veto when the resolution to come to a vote in the Security Council. American diplomats have done the sums and have come up short in killing the GA’s bestowing legitimacy on a Palestine the territory of which is under 44 years of Israeli occupation, punctured with illegal land seizures and Jewish colonization in pursuit of a grand design for a ‘Greater Israel’ from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

Events are quickly changing in the Arab world and the Middle East that have left the US flat footed. It stuck too long to Mubarak in Egypt; has shown itself ‘pusillanimous’ facing down the right wing Israeli irredentist ‘Bibi’ Netenyahu; and failed in its efforts to patch up the broken alliance of Turkey and Israel, owing to the Zionist state’s intransigence in the ‘Mavi Mamara’ killings.

America’s foreign policy in the Arab world is broken. Like Humpty Dumpty, try as any US administration might try, it cannot be patched together again. Yes, the world has moved on and America is caught with its pants down.



The world has moved on as to the matter of Palestine. Now, the US is taking a last ditch stand to ‘buy off’ the Palestinian Authority from seeking recognition of Palestine as a state at the up coming session of the UN General Assembly. It has fallen back on bribery and arm twisting to stall the PA initiative. Washington is in a muddle, which it itself is to blame for favouring Israel’s designs throughout decades owing to the demands of domestic politics.

The Obama administration is desperate: it will cast a veto when the resolution to come to a vote in the Security Council. American diplomats have done the sums and have come up short in killing the GA’s bestowing legitimacy on a Palestine the territory of which is under 44 years of Israeli occupation, punctured with illegal land seizures and Jewish colonization in pursuit of a grand design for a ‘Greater Israel’ from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

Events are quickly changing in the Arab world and the Middle East that have left the US flat footed. It stuck too long to Mubarak in Egypt; has shown itself ‘pusillanimous’ facing down the right wing Israeli irredentist ‘Bibi’ Netenyahu; and failed in its efforts to patch up the broken alliance of Turkey and Israel, owing to the Zionist state’s intransigence in the ‘Mavi Mamara’ killings.

America’s foreign policy in the Arab world is broken. Like Humpty Dumpty, try as any US administration might try, it cannot be patched together again. Yes, the world has moved on and America is caught with its pants down.











































Lunacy seizes Israel's relations with Turkey

The British writer Rebecca West thought men in power ‘lunatics’. The reputedly ‘savvy’ Israeli prove her point. The Zionist state’s leadership unwillingness to ‘apologise for’ and pay compensation to the families of the nine Turks its defence forces killed on the Turkish ship ‘Mavi Mamara’ in international waters as part of a Freedom Flotilla to break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza, has now brought the expulsion of the Zionist ambassador to Ankara, a break in military cooperation, a cutting off the Israeli materiel for Turkish forces.

The final break came after more than a year to patch up tattered relations between the two countries, with the publication of a flawed UN report on the ‘Mavi Mamara’ incident of June 2010. The report is a ‘yes, but…’ explanation of this event. On one hand, it pins the blames of unjustified force on the Israel, yet it does not condemn them as carrying out an act of piracy on ships in international waters. On the other hand, it equates any resistance of unarmed passengers on the ‘Mavi Mamara’ for resisting Israeli’s assault, thereby putting on equal footing a highly trained, highly armed Israeli special forces that aggressed an armed group of people wanting to break the illegal Zionist blockade of Gaza by ferrying material to rebuild infrastructure, medical supplies, and food, and the like to a Palestinian population aggressed by Israel’s preemptive three week war in December 2008, called ‘Cast Lead’.

The report pours salt on open wounds by saying that Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza is seen as licit under international law [a spurious reading], and tilted its concern more towards the Israeli military than to their victims dead or alive who were very roughly handled.

Turkey reacted strongly as noted above, for Israel acts as a law unto itself, ably assisted by the US and some of its western allies. The break with Turkey opens a can of worms for the Zionist state, not the least consequence is Ankara’s seizing the International Court of Justice challenging Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The Likud led Netenyahu government has set itself for a fall in the UN when in the 2011 General Assembly will recognize a Palestinian state in spite of Israel’s 43 occupation of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. As a spearhead of Muslim countries, a globally recognized Palestine will force Israel into a diplomatic ghetto of its own making; throw mud on the US’ attempt to ‘broker’ peace and reconciliation in the region by always backing up the Zionist state for internal American politics.

Finally Israel’s nightmares might not be over: Egypt might expel Israel’s ambassador to Cairo, and loosen ties military and commercially almost to the point of breaking. And the docile Jordan might also follow suit.

Israel has made the point of idiocy by its refusal to own up to crimes on the high seas and killing nine Turks on the ‘Mavi Mamara’.



South Korean monks in Pyongyang; revival of anti Americanism in South Korea

Thirty seven Buddhist monks from South Korea have journeyed to North Korea, to partake in the observance of the millennium of the ‘Tripitaka Koreana, ‘the world's most comprehensive and oldest intact version of Buddhist canon in Hanja script, with no known errors or errata in the 52,382,960 characters which are organized in over 1496 titles and 6568 volumes’, at a ceremony at the Pohyon Temple in the mountains near Pyongyang.
The arrival of South Korean monks in the North’s capitol is significant: one, a lifting of South Korea’s ban of all civilian travel to the DPRK, other than for humanitarian purposes. Two, it comes immediately after the appointment of Yu Woo ik as Unification Minister. [Yu replaced Hyun In taek, known for his strong hard line towards the Kim Jong il government.] Although the North Korean leadership insist that the nomination is cosmetic, Yu’s new position might force the shut door of travel to the North of South Koreans.

On the other hand, the demonstrations against the construction of a South Korean naval base on the semiautonomous and self governing island of touristic and natural flora and fauna of Jeju, has aroused the barely sleeping serpent of anti Americanism, which festers like a sore tooth of US ROK relations since 1945. A court has ordered the suspension of the building of the port, but it has nonetheless continued. Squads of military and civilian police are on hand to halt demonstrations, rough up and arrest protesters.

Strategically a naval base on Jeju will better control sea lanes and position South Korea so that it can readily respond to irredentist claims to rock formations by Japan or China that the ROK also claims ownership. Furthermore, geophysical data suggest huge gas reserves which the three countries covert. Militarily speaking, the projection of South Korean naval power in the surrounding waters impinges on the claims of China and Japan as an infringement on what they consider their ‘mare nostrum’. The new port will welcome US ships and nuclear powered vessels, which will certainly send danger signals to a China intent on its own naval expansion in the region.

Finally the US is fulfilling its promise of us$900.000 in aid to ‘flood hit’ North Korea, through NGOs. America’s supplies have no food for the starving North Koreans; they consist of emergency relief items such as blankets, soap, and hygiene kits. A US representative spoke of ‘concern about the well being of North Korean people, and this humanitarian assistance is not linked to any political or security issues’. Of course the absence of food shows that politics are in play. The Obama administration harbours a strongly felt feeling that food would be funneled to North Korea’s armed forces, in spite of the contrary of past food distribution, say, by Mercy Corp. or Swiss NGOs.

Friday, September 2, 2011

A one term president? or ABO

The Elephant party has long been trumpeting Anything but Obama. We don't want him around after 2012.
It doesn't take rocket science to figure out Republican strategy: if president Obama suggests measures that the plodding pachyderms desperately want, in a show of spite, they will vote them down.
Obama isn't no FDR who took the fight into the trampled politics of the Elephants gleefully. Nonetheless even at the nadir of his popularity the 45 president of these 50 states can sally out for a battle royal which will in the end damage the Republicans.
T'aint no secret the strategy comes from the old Southern states which even today have strong vestiges of racism. How can you explain Obama's embracing the Elephant senator Tom Coburn, a Southern Baptist, 'not only a dear friend, but a brother in Christ' when months later this very 'brother' slapped the president's cheek by saying in essence were Obama not black and took advantage of 'social promotion' to get in Harvard and then catapulted into the presidency in 2008?
It does not take a rocket scientist to come up with the trumpeting Elephants strategy to defeat Obama at the polls in 2012 when he runs for a second term: that plan of action has less to do with the president's leadership or managerial skills but more to do with the ugly strain of racialism among the southern influenced evangelical Christianity.
We are witnessing the tyranny of the 'peasant' mentality that has raised the flag of revolt across in America, especially in the emergence of the Tea Party; the political system has disrupted, if not destroyed, the social and economic underpinnings of their comfort and security. As a result, they fall back on an America where blacks, browns, and yellows know their place and left the world to the whites, meaning Protestant Christians, to rule.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

The Guardian 'wars' against Wikileaks

It is no secret that Wikileaks Julian Assange had an uneasy relationship with David Leigh, editor of the British newspaper 'the Guardian' in publishing the initial batch of US diplomatic cables. In this he was ably assisted by Bill Keller of the 'New York Times'.
Assange has a prickly personality, but Leigh and Keller display the arrogance of self styled authority of journalism, the jealousy of having to share a major scoop with an 'amateur'.
The recent release of some 130.000 American diplomatic cables has focussed attention of Assange. This said, Wikileaks contends, and proof there is that Leigh for all his 'journalist integrity' breached Wikileaks security by publishing a password to unlock its secrecy. Suddenly out in the open came 'unredacted' cables that named names of informants big and small.
Leigh may have a vicarious thrill in 'sticking it to Julian' yet where is his much publicised concern for the people mentioned in the cables? This 'Guardian' editor has a long trail in his 'animus' against Assange, including a long 'expose' on the Wikileaks' founder's sexcapade in Sweden that has caused him a lot of legal trouble to thread in the British courts to avoid being extradited to Stockholm, in spite of Aussage's willingness from the beginning to answer questions about his intimate relations with two consenting women which Swedish authorities rejected after initially dropping charges.
Behind the campaign to put Aussange in prison is a not so strange gaggle of bedfellows: the US government caught with its diplomatic pants down and the wrath of editors who had egos bruised.
And rotting in a cell is the 'alledged' arch leaker Bradley Manning whom the US government has not charged but for almost two years has kept under lock and key, using Abou Gharib techniques to make him crack. They failed.
The onus is on the US government for its lax security. The winners are governments and the ordinary man and woman on the street everywhere but in the US who now have access to these cables. Only Americans in the US are denied full access to them for obvious reasons.