As GuamDiary already observed, the New York Korea Society has become inconsequential to its general membership, offering them a steady diet of pretzels and beer in the form of book chats, films, exhibits, and the like. Ambassador Minton & co. serve up more substance fare for a List A of toffs.
On 5 May 2011 Korea Society found its way back to the days when Donald Gregg and Fred Carriere ran the show: then members feasted on subjects they could quench their thirst of issues on the two Koreas. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, the invited speaker, chose to discourse on ‘China’s approach to North Korea’.
Flake dabbles in conflict resolution. Fluent in Korean which he learnt during his stint as a Mormon missionary to South Korea. On the question of Korea, he wears many hats and, according to him, occupies in the various organisations with which he is associated,where he at times is a ‘liberal’, at others a firm ‘conservative’. Flake is no stranger to the Korea Society whose sycophantic senior vice president Stephen Noerper introduced as the ‘future secretary of state’. With a mane of well style white hair, dressed in a black suit, Flake makes a good impression as he stepped up to the podium. In manner and dress, he looks like a Mormon elder and has the bearing of a man on a religious mission.
Substantively, he had little to say on China than what a reader would discover in a general article in the ‘New York Times’ . On North Korea, however, Flake had a lot to impart. On the subject of the DPRK he is like an angry god hurling thunderbolts. Kim Jong il & co., to him, have little redeeming qualities, as he fingered his rosary of indictment, disapproval, and outright condemnation, with a shtick laced with ‘facts and figures’.
His charges are part of the standard vocabulary of the hoary vocabulary of the U.S. North Korean clerisy. Flake put his name to the conclusions of the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] special report on Korea [March 2010] that calls on the Obama administration to ‘roll back’ North Korea. At heart that is the alpha and omega of his remarks, which, of course, are honey coated in more soothing words.
Time and time again, the Mansfield Foundation's executive director kept coming back to the generous U.S. initiatives to resolvw issues with North Korea, if only the DPRK's leadership would listen with open ears. Flake's approach should give us pause in astonishment: as a maven of conflict resolution, surely he would grasp more clearly than others that North Koreans would look upon his 'solutions' as nothing but a transparent conspiracy to 'reform' and 'modernise' the DPRK through subterfuge, as a reason to resist them. For to North Korea they carry the bad odour of regime change. Undoubtedly, too, he more than others should know that North Korea's long resistance to Japanese colonialism and the rebuilding a country flattened by U.S. bombing during the Korean War -- which is frozen in place by a 1953 armistice -- the DPRK has a certain image of itself which is in conflict with Flake's standpoint. Thus, the confusion and incomprehension he expresses when he puts forth the U.S.' case, as well as his inability to see that transacting any business under these circumstance with the North runs into a cul de sac.
Flake is a muscular ‘imperialist’, with a message which has hardly changed in substance since the heady days of the Cold War, where in Korea stubbed its big toe in stalemate. Smoothly ambitious in thrust, his mantra is something straight out of John Foster Dulles’ bag of tricks. The U.S. has wisely calibrated its policy towards North Korea with South Korea’s Lee Myung bak’s take no prisoners approach. To anyone who has some knowledge of North Korea, they appear to be chasing a ma dream.
Well, the message shed of all the snake oil Flake’s peddling reads loud and clear. During the Q&A, some of his facts were boldly challenged. And like a smooth operator he is, he hid behind a ‘well, this is my opinion’, without conceding his slant on events.
The Mansfield Foundation’s executive director’s spiel carries weight in Washington where he is frequently called to testify on Korean policy, China, etc. Flake is fulsome in false modesty, which rings hollow the moment his words leave his mouth. The tragedy is that he and his fellow North Korean ‘clerks’ hog the conservation on U.S. policy towards the DPRK, hardly allowing a dissenting voice to be heard. As such, they hope to square the circle as they engage in a strategy of 'rolling back' North Korea, which runs the risk of renewed warfare as the world witnessed by South Korea's shelling of North Korean waters along the NLL [Northern Limit Line] in November 2010.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Tony Kushner censored: The dead hand of Israel on CUNY’s academic freedom
City University of New York has felt the dead weight of the US Israeli lobby when a trustee managed to sway the Board of Trustees to stop CUNY’s John Joy College of Criminal Justice from awarding the playwright Tony Kushner a ‘doctorate honoris cause’ at the 2011 graduation ceremony.
Kushner who is Jewish is poisonous to the Zionist state of Israel and its American cheering squads because he criticises Israel for its sins of omission and commission. So, in a word, if he’s not an anti Semite, he’s a ‘self hating Jew’ according to the boots of the army of Israel can do no wrong. Well where is the justice of that? The trustees’ decision has the sulfurous odour of criminality against freedom of dissent and of freedom of thought!
One of the U.S.’ famous dramatist, Kushner is known for his ‘Angels in America’ and in film for the script of Steven Spielberg’s harrowing ‘Munich’, which didn’t please Israel.
The larger issue here is the meddling through a rich American surrogate of the Zionist state of Israel on functioning of a New York City tax funded university. What is at stake is not only academic freedom but the freedom of the university to conduct its own affairs without the stamp of a foreign censor–the state of Israel.
CUNY’s president is hiding behind bureaucratic excuses, and not challenging the university trustee who are large donors with political connexions. It is intolerable that such interference is allowed. The arm twisting trustee should step down or be forced ot resign. And if CUNY’s president had any guts, he would allow John Jay to confer the degree on Kusher. And not only that, he should be sentenced to community service in order to learn the lessons of American democracy.
Will there be a ground swell of protest? Let’s sincerely hope so! And cast out the devils who attack America’s fundamental rights to criticise and hold other opinions!
Kushner who is Jewish is poisonous to the Zionist state of Israel and its American cheering squads because he criticises Israel for its sins of omission and commission. So, in a word, if he’s not an anti Semite, he’s a ‘self hating Jew’ according to the boots of the army of Israel can do no wrong. Well where is the justice of that? The trustees’ decision has the sulfurous odour of criminality against freedom of dissent and of freedom of thought!
One of the U.S.’ famous dramatist, Kushner is known for his ‘Angels in America’ and in film for the script of Steven Spielberg’s harrowing ‘Munich’, which didn’t please Israel.
The larger issue here is the meddling through a rich American surrogate of the Zionist state of Israel on functioning of a New York City tax funded university. What is at stake is not only academic freedom but the freedom of the university to conduct its own affairs without the stamp of a foreign censor–the state of Israel.
CUNY’s president is hiding behind bureaucratic excuses, and not challenging the university trustee who are large donors with political connexions. It is intolerable that such interference is allowed. The arm twisting trustee should step down or be forced ot resign. And if CUNY’s president had any guts, he would allow John Jay to confer the degree on Kusher. And not only that, he should be sentenced to community service in order to learn the lessons of American democracy.
Will there be a ground swell of protest? Let’s sincerely hope so! And cast out the devils who attack America’s fundamental rights to criticise and hold other opinions!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Three cheers for Daniel Barenboim
Argentine born, Israeli citizen, holding honourary Palestinian citizenship, world renown musician and conductor Daniel Barenboim and his Diwan orchestra, made up of Israeli and Palestinian musicians, gave its first peace concert in Gaza.
The bi national orchestra is the brain child of Maestro Barenboim and the late Edward Said. The vision of these two men sought to go beyond the borders separating physically, morally, and psychological Israeli and Palestinian. And thereby foster understanding and friendship between the two peoples.
Yet the Israeli government looks at Barenboim with a severe eye. In fact, it denied him entry to Gaza at the Israeli border. That move, however, didn't stop the maestro, he travelled with his 25 musicians in tow through Egypt's Raffah border, no longer closed since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
The Diwan orchestra played Mozarts' 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik' and 'Symphony in G Minor. The programme was well received and opened a link to encouraging music appreciation in Gaza and bolstering the morale of musicians suffering from the fallout of 'Cast Lead' who now know that the isolation that Israel tried to impose on them has failed.
Barenboim deserves our thanks and gratitude for swimming against Zionist waves of disapproval. Hip hip hurrah we say to him and his courageous musicians!
The bi national orchestra is the brain child of Maestro Barenboim and the late Edward Said. The vision of these two men sought to go beyond the borders separating physically, morally, and psychological Israeli and Palestinian. And thereby foster understanding and friendship between the two peoples.
Yet the Israeli government looks at Barenboim with a severe eye. In fact, it denied him entry to Gaza at the Israeli border. That move, however, didn't stop the maestro, he travelled with his 25 musicians in tow through Egypt's Raffah border, no longer closed since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
The Diwan orchestra played Mozarts' 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik' and 'Symphony in G Minor. The programme was well received and opened a link to encouraging music appreciation in Gaza and bolstering the morale of musicians suffering from the fallout of 'Cast Lead' who now know that the isolation that Israel tried to impose on them has failed.
Barenboim deserves our thanks and gratitude for swimming against Zionist waves of disapproval. Hip hip hurrah we say to him and his courageous musicians!
An historic occasion for Palestine
Today [4 May 2011] in Cairo history was made: Hamas and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement to put away differences and concentrate on furthering the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people living under the boot of Israel's 43 occupation. Today, to be sure, is an historic occasion for Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and in the Palestinian diaspora.
Israel's right wing government headed by the Revisionist Zionist 'Bibi' Netenyahu issued a statement by which he called dealings with the Palestinian Authority dead on arrival and as is his wont, condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Netenyahu's boldness knows no bounds since owing to his 'Drang nach der Jordan' has but one goal to parcel out the Palestinians in the West Bank into Bantustans made in Israel and absorb through accelerated Jewish colonisation what he calls 'Samaria and Judea' into a Zionist entity stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, based on the hoary reading of the Old Testament.
Truth be told, Israel's policy is backed up by a 60 history whereby its conditions are the tar and substance of a one way street: in a word, they have the force of a steamroller which its pro consul and protector the US backs up to the hilt.
Today's accord between Hamas and the PA is a shot across Israel's bow that the old days are gone. Of course Netenyahu is prepared to start military initiatives, but judging by recent history -- Cast Lead in Gaza, piracy and murder on the high seas, two lost wars in Lebanon -- the US will not sanction them, the more especially since the Obama administration is trying to find its feet in the Arab world since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, not to speak of its ham handed policies in Yemen and Bahrain.
Israel's right wing government headed by the Revisionist Zionist 'Bibi' Netenyahu issued a statement by which he called dealings with the Palestinian Authority dead on arrival and as is his wont, condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Netenyahu's boldness knows no bounds since owing to his 'Drang nach der Jordan' has but one goal to parcel out the Palestinians in the West Bank into Bantustans made in Israel and absorb through accelerated Jewish colonisation what he calls 'Samaria and Judea' into a Zionist entity stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, based on the hoary reading of the Old Testament.
Truth be told, Israel's policy is backed up by a 60 history whereby its conditions are the tar and substance of a one way street: in a word, they have the force of a steamroller which its pro consul and protector the US backs up to the hilt.
Today's accord between Hamas and the PA is a shot across Israel's bow that the old days are gone. Of course Netenyahu is prepared to start military initiatives, but judging by recent history -- Cast Lead in Gaza, piracy and murder on the high seas, two lost wars in Lebanon -- the US will not sanction them, the more especially since the Obama administration is trying to find its feet in the Arab world since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, not to speak of its ham handed policies in Yemen and Bahrain.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
US Pakistan: cheek to jowl
Osama Bin Laden's death has, as it should, raised questions about US relations with Pakistan. However, realistically speaking, calls from the wells of Congress, the press, and the street for abrupt end of aid to Islamabad are premature. The simple truth is: the US'
hip is knitted to Pakistan's hip.
This scorpion like dance lies in decisions made in Washington a half century or more ago to tilt in favour of Pakistan and punish 'neutralist' India. Not only that the US backed the military seizure of power that engaged in pushing an Islamist agenda. Who remembers Ayub Khan? The Baghdad Pact? CENTO? SEATO? General Zia al Haq proved especially a useful tool until he's was blown up along with the US ambassador. Military in power means arms to stay in power, suppress internal rivals, and engage in outside adventures.
Pakistan lost three wars against India, and the ground was laid for seeing India as its main enemy and target, the more especially one war cost Pakistan its eastern property now known as 'Bangladesh'.
As a result of US' anti India bias, Pakistan became a reservoir of America's taxpayer largesse.
Clever by half Ronald Reagan [and Jimmy Carter] pumped in billions in arms and funds to defeat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to save its client. When the Soviets withdrew, so did Reagan's concern as the Taliban seized power in that mosaic of tribes with a capital in Kabul. By washing its hands, the US left Pakistan with a legacy of refugees and other financial strains. And so Pakistan's army and its intelligence arm throw a protective cloak over Afghanistan, as radical Islam seeped into its neighbourhood. Meanwhile, it played the US for all its worth for arms and money even despite the cleavage in military and political identity of views.
If readers of GuamDiary find it troublesome in our argument, we suggest they quickly review US Iran relations until 1979. The US was played like an Amati violin by the Shah for his own advantages, and it is the same with Pakistan today holding the US hostage to its 'realism' in Pakistan, so much so the ally Pakistan is playing both sides of the street as the state descends into anarchy, but the military pulls the strings. [Events in Egypt should be a warning!]
So there's little the US can do to penalise Pakistan. It prefers playing charades with a public who sees through the gambit: Pakistan knew Bin Laden and others, including Mollah Omar are on the receiving end of its protection, largesse, and money a great deal of which comes out of the US rate payers' pockets.
Cheek to jowl is the best way to characterise US Pakistan relations until they implode.
hip is knitted to Pakistan's hip.
This scorpion like dance lies in decisions made in Washington a half century or more ago to tilt in favour of Pakistan and punish 'neutralist' India. Not only that the US backed the military seizure of power that engaged in pushing an Islamist agenda. Who remembers Ayub Khan? The Baghdad Pact? CENTO? SEATO? General Zia al Haq proved especially a useful tool until he's was blown up along with the US ambassador. Military in power means arms to stay in power, suppress internal rivals, and engage in outside adventures.
Pakistan lost three wars against India, and the ground was laid for seeing India as its main enemy and target, the more especially one war cost Pakistan its eastern property now known as 'Bangladesh'.
As a result of US' anti India bias, Pakistan became a reservoir of America's taxpayer largesse.
Clever by half Ronald Reagan [and Jimmy Carter] pumped in billions in arms and funds to defeat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to save its client. When the Soviets withdrew, so did Reagan's concern as the Taliban seized power in that mosaic of tribes with a capital in Kabul. By washing its hands, the US left Pakistan with a legacy of refugees and other financial strains. And so Pakistan's army and its intelligence arm throw a protective cloak over Afghanistan, as radical Islam seeped into its neighbourhood. Meanwhile, it played the US for all its worth for arms and money even despite the cleavage in military and political identity of views.
If readers of GuamDiary find it troublesome in our argument, we suggest they quickly review US Iran relations until 1979. The US was played like an Amati violin by the Shah for his own advantages, and it is the same with Pakistan today holding the US hostage to its 'realism' in Pakistan, so much so the ally Pakistan is playing both sides of the street as the state descends into anarchy, but the military pulls the strings. [Events in Egypt should be a warning!]
So there's little the US can do to penalise Pakistan. It prefers playing charades with a public who sees through the gambit: Pakistan knew Bin Laden and others, including Mollah Omar are on the receiving end of its protection, largesse, and money a great deal of which comes out of the US rate payers' pockets.
Cheek to jowl is the best way to characterise US Pakistan relations until they implode.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Osama Bin Laden
Osama Bin Laden's dead. After an almost 10 year search for him, the US found and killed him in an upmarket compound in a peaceful setting in a town in Pakistan 150 km from Islamabad. On one hand the American people have 'closure' on 9/11; on the other, they are waiting for the other shoe to drop on the revenge of Bin Laden's al Qaeda. The page, nonetheless, is turned but the WTC is not forgotten.
President Obama's terse but eloquent announcement from the White House at almost midnight on May day raises more questions than it answers. Do we buy into his argument that he had the full cooperation of Pakistan? Or the simple details of the JSOC mission aided and abetted by the CIA? His words are a challenge the more especially hour by hour and day by day, more info, mostly leaked, will come out to fill in the puzzle of Osama's death during an exchange of gunfire in his well built and fortified compound.
Already Philadelphia lawyers are condemning Bin Laden's death: wouldn't it have been better to capture him, bring him to trial, so on and on? It is a stretch of the imagination that Osama would've allowed himself be captured, slipping into a hoary life from a Hollywood oater--'he died with his boots on!' Then, there are the conspiracy theorists who believe he had nothing to do with 9/11, even though Bin Laden is caught on tape boasting about planning the attack on the WTC. Nothing will ever convince those who take fantasy for reality.
Where is Bin Laden's corpse? Buried at sea? Cremated? In a shallow grave according to Muslim burial custom? Many thirst for a photo like Che's strikingly like a Christ brought down from the cross that once graced the cover of 'Paris Match'. Alas their wish will not be granted.
With Osama's death the decline of al Qaeda will continue, in spite of the bombing of the Agana Cafe in Marrakesh. Germany broke the rhythm of an operation to collar Muslim terrorists on its territory to arrest two Moroccans and another Muslim a few days ago.
Bin Laden's death buoys the sagging ratings of Obama and enhances his stature against a sea of second rate Republicans who are wanting to run against him in 2012. It is a sign of a thaw in a run of bad luck -- political, military, and economic -- for the US. Is it the single swallow, a harbinger of a false spring? Will Osama no longer being on the scene mean that the US will wind down the war in Afghanistan? Now that General Petraeus will head the CIA, it may mean that the US is turning towards a JFK solution relying on guerrilla warfare? So many questions, so few answers.
And of course Pakistan continues to be a failed state with nuclear weapons. GuamDiary suggests reading Mohammed Hanif's excellent 'Exploding Pineapples' for a 'retour aux sources' in the radicalisation of Pakistan with the aid of the US. Looking behind Obama's words, it is obvious the US does not trust Pakistan whose secret services, controlled by the military, have been playing a treacherous double game: hold the US hostage for billions whilst coddling with the terrorists home grown or Afghani or serving as a training ground for global terrorists. Thus, the US cannot disengage without scars. [Remember the long 'love affair' with Pavlavi the Shah of Iran who held the US hostage for 25 years until he fled and the Mollahs took charge!]
Yet, the US military which is more firmly in the cat bird's seat in running the US will be emboldened to more adventurist designs that will continue to bleed the US treasury white and hasten America's decline.
Lastly but not least the tonnes of ink that will follow on the meaning of Osama Bin Laden's death, a new cottage industry.
President Obama's terse but eloquent announcement from the White House at almost midnight on May day raises more questions than it answers. Do we buy into his argument that he had the full cooperation of Pakistan? Or the simple details of the JSOC mission aided and abetted by the CIA? His words are a challenge the more especially hour by hour and day by day, more info, mostly leaked, will come out to fill in the puzzle of Osama's death during an exchange of gunfire in his well built and fortified compound.
Already Philadelphia lawyers are condemning Bin Laden's death: wouldn't it have been better to capture him, bring him to trial, so on and on? It is a stretch of the imagination that Osama would've allowed himself be captured, slipping into a hoary life from a Hollywood oater--'he died with his boots on!' Then, there are the conspiracy theorists who believe he had nothing to do with 9/11, even though Bin Laden is caught on tape boasting about planning the attack on the WTC. Nothing will ever convince those who take fantasy for reality.
Where is Bin Laden's corpse? Buried at sea? Cremated? In a shallow grave according to Muslim burial custom? Many thirst for a photo like Che's strikingly like a Christ brought down from the cross that once graced the cover of 'Paris Match'. Alas their wish will not be granted.
With Osama's death the decline of al Qaeda will continue, in spite of the bombing of the Agana Cafe in Marrakesh. Germany broke the rhythm of an operation to collar Muslim terrorists on its territory to arrest two Moroccans and another Muslim a few days ago.
Bin Laden's death buoys the sagging ratings of Obama and enhances his stature against a sea of second rate Republicans who are wanting to run against him in 2012. It is a sign of a thaw in a run of bad luck -- political, military, and economic -- for the US. Is it the single swallow, a harbinger of a false spring? Will Osama no longer being on the scene mean that the US will wind down the war in Afghanistan? Now that General Petraeus will head the CIA, it may mean that the US is turning towards a JFK solution relying on guerrilla warfare? So many questions, so few answers.
And of course Pakistan continues to be a failed state with nuclear weapons. GuamDiary suggests reading Mohammed Hanif's excellent 'Exploding Pineapples' for a 'retour aux sources' in the radicalisation of Pakistan with the aid of the US. Looking behind Obama's words, it is obvious the US does not trust Pakistan whose secret services, controlled by the military, have been playing a treacherous double game: hold the US hostage for billions whilst coddling with the terrorists home grown or Afghani or serving as a training ground for global terrorists. Thus, the US cannot disengage without scars. [Remember the long 'love affair' with Pavlavi the Shah of Iran who held the US hostage for 25 years until he fled and the Mollahs took charge!]
Yet, the US military which is more firmly in the cat bird's seat in running the US will be emboldened to more adventurist designs that will continue to bleed the US treasury white and hasten America's decline.
Lastly but not least the tonnes of ink that will follow on the meaning of Osama Bin Laden's death, a new cottage industry.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Egypt claims its traditional role in the Arab world
In the aftermath of the overthrow of Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, the military hanger ons who are transitioning Egypt to a 'brighter' future, has begun discarding the old chains of foreign policy that have weakened Egypt's traditional, and perhaps guiding, role in the Arab world: Cairo has brokered a peace between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, thereby healing a five year old breach; with that, it has recognised Hamas in Gaza, which Muburak had collaborated with Israel to not only isolated but destory; and it has renewed ties with a traditional rival Iran.
These three steps burnish Egypt's amorial bearings in the Middle East. Nonetheless, they have given Israel's right wing Likud led government of 'Bibi' Netenyahu a giant migraine headache. Suddenly, the Zionist state is thrown off its stride of 'bully' and now is girding its loins for more setbacks. One anticipated setback is going to be the 'de facto' if not 'de jure' of Palestine on land which the Israeli occupied as booty of the 1967 six day war and has steadfastly illegally peopled with settlers and proclaimed ownership based on a hoary interpretation of the Bible. A Palestine recognised by the world community immediately challenges Israeli colonisation and theft of another people's land; it raises the
These three steps burnish Egypt's amorial bearings in the Middle East. Nonetheless, they have given Israel's right wing Likud led government of 'Bibi' Netenyahu a giant migraine headache. Suddenly, the Zionist state is thrown off its stride of 'bully' and now is girding its loins for more setbacks. One anticipated setback is going to be the 'de facto' if not 'de jure' of Palestine on land which the Israeli occupied as booty of the 1967 six day war and has steadfastly illegally peopled with settlers and proclaimed ownership based on a hoary interpretation of the Bible. A Palestine recognised by the world community immediately challenges Israeli colonisation and theft of another people's land; it raises the
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