Breaking the Israel-Palestine Deadlock

To break the logjam it will be necessary to dismantle the reigning illusion that the U.S. is an “honest broker” desperately seeking to reconcile recalcitrant adversaries, and to recognize that serious negotiations would be between the U^.S.-Israel and the rest of the world.

If U.S. power centers can be compelled by popular opinion to abandon decades-old rejectionism, many prospects that seem remote might become suddenly possible.

South Korea’s Reunification Plan Hardly Realistic

At the moment, what South Korea needs most is to remain calm. In the Hollywood blockbuster Inception, the main character uses a spinning top to judge whether he is in a dream or in reality. Now the spinning top for South Korea poses a series of question: Will its actions help reduce tensions? Will its policy help address issues with the North? Will its decisions facilitate cooperation among powers like China, Russia and the US? If the answers are yes, then South Korea is in reality. Nevertheless, if the answers are negative, South Korea is dreaming.

Dialogue with Pyongyang Is Not a Luxury, But a Necessity

Governor Richardson said he “hoped to make a difference” in bringing a more stable situation into being, and settled down to substantive talks with men he knew well. A trickle of sensible-sounding suggestions soon surfaced; establishment of a three-way military commission involving the US and North and South Korea, to study crisis avoidance; setting up a “hot line” between the North and South; the return of recently discovered remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean war; possible resumption of visits by IAEA inspectors to Yongbyon, and sale of enriched nuclear fuel rods to foreign buyers, including South Korea.

Is North Korea a Convenient Scapegoat for America’s Northeast Asia Strategy?

… all three major military drills took place directly under America’s “(both peacetime and wartime) operational control.” South Korean President Lee Myungbak, like all of his predecessors, does not have any legal, military and political power or authority to order or control over his own nation’s military whatsoever.

This extremely dependent (so many call it “puppet”) system is known seemingly the only case in the world in which a sovereign nation has let other country’s foreign (local) military commander has the host nation’s military (army, navy and air) operational control.

US, Insidious Harm to Korean Peninsula

In the face of a tinderbox, to trigger or to defuse the impending danger is not a choice of no consequence but a wisdom defining life or death. The U.S., as a close ally to South Korea, should be highly conscious of the destruction that the regular war games could bring about, rather than obstinately supporting the saber-rattling exercises while being heedless of its ally’s danger and safety. It is a crystal clear point that if the disaster simmering on the Korean Peninsula could put China into the knee-deep water, there must be somebody else who would get drowned.

Who Is Behind WikiLeaks?

At the outset in early 2007, Wikileaks acknowledged that the project had been “founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa…. [Its advisory board] includes representatives from expat Russian and Tibetan refugee communities, reporters, a former US intelligence analyst and cryptographers.” This mandate was confirmed by Julian Assange in a June 2010 interview in The New Yorker:
“Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia,

A Color Revolution in China? Keep It Red

Maintaining this moral standing — hence the slogans of socialism and nationalism — is crucial for China to continue on this path. Western-style electoral democracy, as advocated by the West and some inside China, could only lead to tyrannical populism and its twin brother, extreme nationalism.