Monday, March 26, 2007

Whose and What Rights?

Human rights are being violated every day in U.N. member countries by the leaders of those countries that enjoy to mingle with the advocates of human rights in New York at every one of the global hollow get togethers of global leaders to celebrate something or other that was just as meaningless and hollow as the previous soirée. This is nothing new. The Khmer Rouge butchery in Cambodia’s killing fields, was not stopped by the U.N., no different than the genocide in Darfur.

The Khmer Rouge leaders escaped being tried for their murderous politically motivated rampage, because the U.N. repeatedly delayed establishing the tribunal agreed to try them. Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge leader who died in 2006, had ousted Pol Pot in 1997 and was the group’s final leader. He had been held in a military prison since 1999.

The New-York based Open Society Justice Initiative wants a probe into corruption allegations against judges of the long-awaited and long-overdue Khmer Rouge tribunal. It cites allegations “that Cambodian court personnel, including judges, must kick back a significant percentage of their wages to Cambodian government officials in exchange for their positions on the court.”

Up to two million people were executed or died of starvation and overwork between 1975 and 1979, when the communist Khmer Rouge forced millions into the countryside in their drive for an agrarian utopia.

Human rights are still being violated on a systemic scale by Cambodia’s Hun Sen government. According to Yash Ghai, the U.N. secretary general’s special representative for human rights in Cambodia. In The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Cambodia he released on September 26, 2006, he said: “With aid-giving comes the responsibility to ensure that it helps the people. The international community in Cambodia must give far higher priority to human rights and actively advocate for their implementation.” He concluded the government manipulates the democratic process, undermines legitimate political opposition, uses the state to accumulate private wealth, with no rule of law, property rights, or independent judiciary. Illegal land expropriations go unpunished and unpaid for. Thousands of families have been forcibly evicted from land their families have lived on for generations. In some cases, entire communities have collapsed as a result, since their whole existence was organized around this land.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Cuba

Cuba is the longest running example of how and why embargoes don’t work. Cuba’s economy is unique. Over 90 percent of the entire Cuban economy is state owned by a military dictatorship that today is run by Castro’s brother Raul after his brother Fidel, who lived to the ripe old age of 80, handed him the reigns of power ─ much like the Bush family in America. Raul is trying to bring about in Cuba a China style transformation. A more open Chinese economic model. He has traveled a number of times to China to study first hand Beijing’s economic policies, and in 2003 invited the leading economic advisor to China’s then-premier, Zhu Rongji, who played a key role in opening China to foreign trade and investment, to Cuba to give a series of lectures. Lectures his brother Fidel boycotted.

Raul trimmed the military to 45,000 active personnel, down from the 300,000 a few years earlier. He has created a lean and mean military business machine modeled on China’s PLA. The military own and manage hotels, resorts, transportation and have their fingers in just about every industry opening up. Better it adopt the Chinese model rather than the Russian model which it could have so easily succumbed to.

He’s sent senior military officers trained in Russia’s most prestigious military academies to learn hotel management in Spain and accounting in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Canada. Cuba is opening and has been since Castro came to power in 1959. State of The Art Israeli farms and Chinese made bright-blue buses are right up there with the numerous joint ventures Cuba has established globally notwithstanding the embargo.

Cuba’s foreign exchange earnings have nearly doubled since an integration agreement with Venezuela was signed in 2004, due mainly to the export of medical and other services to Venezuela and record high nickel prices. Economic growth has been three times what it was at the start of the new millennium when Cuba began to recover from the post Soviet slump after it got dumped. Everyone is benefiting at the expense of America. The U.S. has slammed the door in its own face and is having a hell of a time getting on the right side.

The 40-plus year “el bloqueo,” the U.S. embargo on Cuba that has been such a failure, that every kind of U.S. made product is available there. MasterCard, Visa and every consumer item from soft drinks to diapers can be found by the more than 200,000 plus American citizens who travel there in defiance of the embargo. Western Union has an office there to facilitate the wire transfer of dollars – including those from the Oil-for-Food program.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Russian Defiance

Reagan, and his foreign policy team, brought the Soviet Union to its knees and splintered it into numerous independent states now circling in Russia’s orbit and dependent on its largess, oil and gas. The minute any state, or Russian oligarth with money, political opponent or critic questions or challenges Russia or its Oil Czar President Vladimir Putin, Russia instinctively resorts to cold war totalitarian bombastic rhetoric and tactics, that include assassination and embargo-like cut-offs of oil and gas, desperately belonging and needed by its European neighbors during sub-zero cold European winters. Western Europe imports 30 percent of its oil and 40 percent of its gas from Russia.

The new cold war Russia has launched, unlike the first one, is not a fight for military supremacy, but rather for gaining control of energy resources. President Vladimir Putin is transforming Russia into a new oil and gas superpower with vast gaining power over the European community. Russia is the world’s eight largest producer of crude oil and the largest of natural gas. Moscow is using its energy clout for geopolitical gains, especially in the regions that were once under Soviet control are now independent countries.

Assassinations in London including the high profile nuke assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KG spy who had accused Mr. Putin of leading an autocratic, murderous and corrupt government. Litvinenko was a figure in the struggle between the Putin government and Russian Oligarchs for the country’s most prized possessions ─ the oil and gas fields controlled by the Russian oil companies, the state-controlled Gazprom, and the privately held Yukos. Harassment of the British ambassador in Moscow, silencing the BBC broadcasts in Russian, and cutting off oil and gas to the Ukraine, Belarus and all air, sea, rail and road transport as well as postal deliveries and money transfers through the Russian postal system to Georgia. To its credit, Russia has established and deepened Europe’s dependence on Russian energy sources, and elbowed the European Union into near silence in the face of threatened boycotts and Russia’s refusal to sign the charter of good conduct between energy suppliers’ and their clients. After all, Russia hold’s a veto and a gatekeepers prerogatives in relation to the West’s hopes to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Russia’s support of Iran is short-sighted. Russia backing Iran’s nuclearization is a short-sighted financial goal that only takes the world into dangerous potential nuclear conflict zones, but also puts Russia in harms way.

A nuclear armed Iran on Russia’s border is not in its national interest, especially with Russia’s own 20 million Muslim citizens becoming more radicalized. That Iran is seen as a principle backer of the Chechen separatists is also testimony to the truly short-sighted vision of Russian policy.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Effective Mediator ─ Stalled Agreement

China has proven that it is capable of mediation in thorny international disputes. China is a power broker that did strong-arm a recalcitrant North Korea to the negotiating table in February 2007, to sign off on an agreement that was hailed as another “breakthrough.” John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. summed up the terms of the agreement best, a “charade” and a “hollow agreement.” Let’s also keep in mind that North Korea has has reneged on many agreements it signed and sealed in the past.

The point not to be missed while people debate the merits of the agreement is, China can muscle regimes that ignore U.S. threats and are reluctant to accept America’s overtures. What China did to North Korea is something it can do with Iran as well. Especially now that Kim has agreed to stop nuclear proliferation and is known to be helping Iran prepare for its first nuclear underground test. Iranian military advisors regularly visit North Korea to participate in missile tests. North Korean technical knowledge can expedite the Iranian nuclear program and put it on a fast lane no one is prepared for. Only China can help the U.S. derail the test and Iranian nuclear program.

The agreement is even worse than the one negotiated by the Clinton administration in 1994 that the Bush administration scrapped in 2002. All North Korea agreed to do was shut down its main nuclear reactor and “eventually” dismantle its atomic weapons program. North Korean media hailed the agreement as a “temporary suspension” of the countries nuclear facilities. There are too many unanswered questions left to be addressed in the future. An invisible road map left to the parties sincerity and good faith.

What happens to the uranium enrichment program which was not addressed in the agreement and the half dozen plus nuclear warheads Kim is believed to possess? Warheads that can probably be delivered to Japan by North Korean missiles and backpacks to America.

Kim certainly came out the winner and proved how weak and desperate America is for some geopolitical progress on any international front to shore up its disastrous policies in Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Venezuela…where does one stop?


The fact is that although North Korea has tried to formally end the Korean War and normalize relations with America since 1991, it will not give up the nuclear weapons it has worked so hard to develop without regime change. To get the necessary regime change, the six party talks have to be jettisoned and new five party talks without North Korea start, as I proposed in my October 30, 2006 blog “Forgeetaaaboutit ─ Treat North Korea Like Haiti,” before a new U.S. administration with an eight year window is in place. Kim is smart and recognizes that the Bush administration will sign off on any deal today to claim a victorious success, and no more. After all why should Dear God trust the Bush administration any more than the Clinton administration it succeeded ─ and promptly disavowed and dishonored the 1994 agreement?

The Dear Leader is stuck in the sixties Cold War mentality and is waiting for America’s political meltdown because he believes that he can then get everything he is demanding of America. China will not allow him to continue on his delusional path and will continue to reign in its recalcitrant over dependent neighbor.
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