5112개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.
The HK based magazine Asia Times published following story 5.26..
North Korea's creepy-crawly capitalism
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia and BANGKOK, Thailand - North Korean capitalism is thriving - just not inside North Korea. Pyongyang has steadily established a string of legitimate and less legitimate front companies across East and Southeast Asia, aimed at earning the cash-strapped government badly needed hard currency. And, by all indications, business is booming.
Consider, for instance, Cafe Pyongyang, one of Vladivostok's most popular eateries. It is so popular, in fact, that there are plans to build a new restaurant in the shape of a North Korean peasant's hut, similar to the one where the late leader Kim Il-sung was born in 1912. Here, gracefully clothed North Korean women serve up traditional Korean fare, while patrons sing popular Korean tunes.
Similarly themed restaurants have popped up in Beijing and Shanghai in China, and Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia. But this by no means represents a North Korean business diaspora similar to the ethnic-Chinese community that now controls a large swath of Southeast Asia's economy. Rather, the Pyongyang government owns and operates all of the eateries - and their regional interests reach far beyond restaurants.
North Koreans are becoming skilled capitalists outside their own strict centrally controlled country. For instance, they own a 15-story, 160-room hotel, complete with a nightclub and a sauna, in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang. There, government entrepreneurs also run a North Korean-owned computer software company and an Internet service provider. Even more imaginatively, a company in Dandong, a Chinese city just across the Yalu River from North Korea, acquired the exclusive rights to sell North Korean medicines on the international market - including a brand called Cheongchun No 1, a home-made version of Viagra.
Angry enemies, profiting allies
While China is welcoming, North Korean companies have gotten a rise out of Japan and the United States, which contend that Pyongyang uses these concerns sometimes to procure raw materials and dual-use technologies clandestinely to support its missile and nuclear-weapons programs.
Until recently, North Korea was able to acquire sensitive industrial components and chemicals through companies in Japan, which were affiliated with the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents, or Chosen Soren. But when the Japanese authorities began to crack down on this trade a few years ago, the North Koreans began buying more goods from Thailand.
In November 2002, a Tokyo-based, Chosen Soren-affiliated company called Meishin - or Myongshin in Korean - attempted to export three power-control devices to North Korea. But when the company informed customs of the planned shipment, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry responded that Meishin required special permission under regulations governing the export of dual-purpose equipment that can be used in, or converted for use in, the production of weapons of mass destruction. The power-control devices could, for instance, be used to stabilize the heavy flow of electric current to uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
Meishin (Myongshin) failed to procure the appropriate documents, but on April 4, 2003, it shipped those same devices to a Thai telecommunications company, Loxley Pacific, which in turn planned to ship them to North Korea's Daesong General Trading Co. But customs in Hong Kong, where the ship stopped on its way to Bangkok, acted on a tip-off from the Japanese, seized the devices and returned them to Japan.
Loxley Pacific has major commercial interests in North Korea, including the operation of a mobile-telephone network, and was a perfect conduit for the stabilizers to North Korea. A Loxley spokesman at the time insisted that the devices were not destined for North Korea's nuclear program.
"The electricity situation is poor in North Korea ... They need stabilizers to avoid hurting their household appliances," he said in a press interview at the time. It is possible, though not altogether likely, that Loxley was unaware of what the dual-use stabilizers were actually intended for.
Thailand, which has cultivated close commercial ties with Pyongyang, recently replaced Japan as North Korea's third-largest trading partner. Two-way trade with Thailand was US$165 million in 2002, rose to $265 million in 2003, and jumped again to $332 million in 2004. In 2005, North Korea imported $207 million worth of goods from Thailand, and exports reached $134 million, or a total two-way trade of $341 million, according to statistics from the Thai Customs Department.
Thailand exports rice, fish, fuel oil, textiles, chemicals and pharmaceuticals to North Korea, while it imports fertilizer, optical equipment, and some iron and steel - at least according to official records. It may seem odd that Thailand, with a well-developed fertilizer industry and as a net fuel importer, would import fertilizer and export fuel oil.
But it seems to indicate off-balance-sheet barter deals, which are famously favored by the North Koreans. In exchange for oil, they give fertilizer to their Thai partners, who, in turn, repackage it using locally produced chemicals of questionable quality, or fertilizers received as aid from South Korea, and sell it at a favorable price to countries such as Laos, Cambodia or Myanmar.
Opaque trade flows
It's exactly that lack of transparency that has North Korea's critics in Washington and Tokyo fuming. North Korea's embassy in Bangkok is its biggest in Southeast Asia, and it operates in conjunction with two locally registered companies, both of which have North Korean citizens listed as directors and allegedly deal in electronics components, ceramics and consumer goods.
The first, Kosun Import Export, was set up in 1991 and operates out of a small apartment block not far from the North Korean Embassy. The other was set up in 1995 and was first called Kotha Supply Import Export, but is now registered as Star Bravo. The company is reported to be a subsidiary of the Daesong Group, which is North Korea's main state-owned trading corporation and the overt arm of Bureau 39, the clandestine foreign-exchange-earning branch of the ruling Korean Workers' Party.
Daesong operates openly under that name in Hong Kong, but no longer in Singapore, where in 2001 it changed its registered name to the more innocuous-sounding Laurich International. In Macau, Daesong was known as Zokwang Trading. But the North Koreans fled the former Portuguese territory last September after the US Treasury Department identified a local bank, Banco Delta Asia, as a "financial institution of primary money-laundering concern". The bank, the US authorities asserted, "has provided services for over 20 years to North Korean government agencies and associated front companies".
The Treasury Department accused "North Korean entities" of being engaged in criminal activities, including the counterfeiting of US currency. The naming of Delta Asia in particular caused depositors to rush the bank and withdraw their holdings. The Macau government had to step in to prevent the bank from collapsing, and Delta Asia finally agreed to dissolve its North Korean links. Subsequently, Zokwang - the first North Korean trading company in the region and active in Macau since the mid-1970s - evacuated its office in the territory and moved its operations to the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone just across the border in mainland China.
The Delta Asia affair has had a snowball effect on everyone doing business with Pyongyang, veritably criminalizing dealing with the regime. Nigel Cowie, the British general manager of the Pyongyang-based Daedong Credit Bank, stated in a speech at an informal meeting hosted by the European Business Association of Pyongyang in the US on May 4: "The result of these actions against banks doing business with the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is that criminal activities go underground and are harder to trace, and legitimate businesses either give up or end up appearing suspicious by being forced to use clandestine methods."
Foreign customers conducting legitimate businesses in Pyongyang, he said, "have been told by their bankers overseas to stop receiving remittances from the DPRK, otherwise their accounts will be closed". Now, vast amounts of cash are being carried physically to banks overseas, which would indeed appear suspicious in the eyes of international law-enforcement agencies.
The US action raised important questions about the nature of North Korean capitalism, and underscored the dilemma the world faces from a cash-starved, nuclear-armed Pyongyang. Washington, no doubt, realizes that more international trade and economic development is essential for Pyongyang to move forward and evolve into a responsible regional player. Some North Korea-watchers contend that Washington's recent intervention in Macau will only discourage what was a slow but sure effort by Pyongyang to integrate with the global trading economy and promote an experimental measure of free enterprise, similar to what the Chinese communists did in the late 1970s before implementing their capitalist reforms.
South Korea, in particular, has long advocated economic engagement with North Korea, arguing that unless the North is urged and helped to develop and strengthen its economy, both the South and the North would likely collapse upon reunification. For this reason, Seoul has openly fallen out with its US ally on this score.
Others argue that the flow of more hard currency into Pyongyang's coffers only serves to delay the inevitable collapse of one of the world's most atavistic regimes, thus prolonging the extreme suffering of the North Korean people. There is little or nothing to suggest that the money that the North Korean front companies are earning in the region is being employed for social development at home or spent on basic necessities, such as putting food on the tables of the country's starving people.
Whatever the case, North Korea is likely to find new ways to continue its commercial drive across the region - albeit more cautiously. Perhaps that's where far-flung places like Vladivostok will come into play. At one of the tables at Cafe Pyongyang, two North Korean officials recently talked business with a Russian entrepreneur. They offered North Korean workers in exchange for timber from Siberia's vast forests, where North Koreans have for years toiled as lumberjacks.
The US may try to tighten the screws on North Korea's expanding global businesses, but there are always others - Russia, China and Thailand - who are more than willing to do business with an enterprising Pyongyang.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HE26Dg02.html
About the Haditha massacre Time magazine published following last Sunday..
The Shame Of Kilo Company
Sparked by a TIME report published in March, a U.S. military investigation is probing the killing of as many as 24 Iraqi civilians by a group of Marines in the town of Haditha last November. Several Marines may face criminal charges, including murder. And new revelations suggest that their superiors may have helped in a cover-up
The outfit known as Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, wasn't new to Iraq last year when it moved into Haditha, a Euphrates River farming town about 150 miles northwest of Baghdad. Several members of the unit were on their second tour of Iraq; one was on his third. The men in Kilo Company were veterans of ferocious house-to-house fighting in Fallujah. Their combat experience seemed to prepare them for the ordeal of serving in an insurgent stronghold like Haditha, the kind of place where the enemy attacks U.S. troops from the cover of mosques, schools and homes and uses civilians as shields, complicating Marine engagement rules to shoot only when threatened. In Haditha, says a Marine who has been there twice, "you can't tell a bad guy until he shoots you."
But one morning last November, some members of Kilo Company apparently didn't attempt to distinguish between enemies and innocents. Instead, they seem to have gone on the worst rampage by U.S. service members in the Iraq war, killing as many as 24 civilians in cold blood. The details of what happened in Haditha were first disclosed in March by TIME's Tim McGirk and Aparisim Ghosh, and their reporting prompted the military to launch an inquiry into the civilian deaths. The darkest suspicions about the killings were confirmed last week, when members of Congress who were briefed on the two ongoing military investigations disclosed that at least some members of a Marine unit may soon be charged in connection with the deaths of the Iraqis--and that the charges may include murder, which carries the death penalty. "This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them," said Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and former Marine who was briefed two weeks ago by Marine Corps officials. "This is going to be an ugly story."
With the U.S. struggling to hold on to public support for the war and no end to the insurgency in sight, the prospect of possible indictments has induced an aching dread among military and government officials. As the military launched another probe--into the April 26 killing of an Iraqi civilian by Marines--General Michael Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, headed to Iraq to address Marines on the growing crisis. Marine Corps public-affairs director Brigadier General Mary Ann Krusa-Dossin says the allegations "have caused serious concern at the highest levels" of the corps.
A military source in Iraq told TIME that investigators have obtained two sets of photos from Haditha. The first is after-action photos taken by the military as part of the routine procedure that follows any such event. Submitted in the official report on the fighting, the photos do not show any bodies. Investigators have also discovered a second, more damning set of photos, taken by Marines of the Kilo Company immediately after the shootings. The source says it isn't clear if these photos were held back from the after-action report or were personal snapshots taken by the Marines. The source says a Marine e-mailed at least one photo to a friend in the U.S.
Almost as damaging as the alleged massacre may be evidence that the unit's members and their superiors conspired to cover it up. "There's no doubt that the Marines allegedly involved in doing this--they lied about it," says Kline. "They certainly tried to cover it up." Three Marine officers, including the company commander and battalion commander, have been relieved of duty in part for actions related to the deaths in Haditha. A lawmaker who has been briefed on the matter says the investigations may implicate other senior officers.
In hindsight, it seems remarkable that the Marines were able to conceal such a horrific event for so long. It began, as so many things in Iraq do, with an explosion. At about 7:15 in the morning on Nov. 19, a string of four humvees were on routine patrol in a residential area when a white taxicab approached from the opposite end of the street. The Marines made hand and arm signals for the taxi to stop. But as the taxi halted near the first humvee, a bomb under the fourth humvee exploded, killing its driver--Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas--wounding two of his comrades and shattering windows 150 yards away. Marines said the convoy almost immediately began to take fire from several houses on either side of the road. Locals dispute that, claiming the only firing after the explosion was done by the Marines. Suspecting that the four students in the taxi either triggered the bomb or were acting as spotters, the Marines ordered the men and the driver, who by then had exited the taxi, to lie on the ground. Instead, they ran, and the Marines shot and killed them.
The military's initial report stated that Terrazas and 15 civilians were killed in a roadside blast and that shortly afterward, the Marines came under attack and returned fire, killing eight insurgents. But as TIME reported in March on the basis of interviews with 28 individuals, including military officials, the families of the victims, human-rights investigators and local doctors, much of that account is dubious. Members of Congress, as well as military sources, have confirmed the critical details of TIME's initial report--that after gunning down the five fleeing the taxi, a few members of Kilo Company moved through four homes along nearby streets, killing 19 men, women and children. The Marines contend they took small-arms fire from at least one house, but as TIME's story detailed in March, only one of the 19 victims was found with a weapon.
The day after the killings, an Iraqi journalism student videotaped the scene at a local morgue and the homes where the shootings had occurred. "You could tell they were enraged," the student, Taher Thabet, said last week. "They not only killed people, they smashed furniture, tore down wall hangings, and when they took prisoners, they treated them very roughly. This was not a precise military operation." A delegation of angry village elders complained to senior Marines in Haditha about the killings but were rebuffed with the excuse that the raid had been a mistake. TIME learned about the Haditha action in January, when it obtained a copy of Thabet's videotape from an Iraqi human-rights group. But a Marine spokesman brushed off any inquiries. "To be honest," Marine Captain Jeff Pool e-mailed McGirk, "I cannot believe you're buying any of this. This falls into the same category of AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) propaganda." In late January, TIME gave a copy of the videotape to Colonel Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. After reviewing it, he recommended a formal investigation. The ensuing probe, conducted by a colonel, concluded that Marines, not a bomb, killed the civilians but that the deaths were the result of "collateral damage," not deliberate homicide. Nevertheless, after reviewing the initial probe, senior military officials launched a criminal investigation.
A military source in Iraq says the men of Kilo Company stuck by their story throughout the initial inquiry, but what they told the first military investigator raised suspicions. One of the most glaring discrepancies involved the shooting of the four students and the taxi driver. "They had no weapons, they didn't show hostile intent, so why shoot them?" the military source says. Khaled Raseef, a spokesman for the victims' relatives, says U.S. military investigators visited the alleged massacre sites 15 times and "asked detailed questions, examined each bullet hole and burn mark and took all sorts of measurements. In the end, they brought all the survivors to the homes and did a mock-up of the Marines' movements." As the detectives found contradictions in the Marines' account, "the official story fell apart and people started rolling on each other," says the military source.
Military sources told TIME that the first probe is focusing on the unit's leader, who was at the scene of virtually every shooting that day in Haditha. Pentagon officials say the sergeant has served more than seven years in the corps and was on his first Iraq tour. At least two other enlisted men may be directly involved, Pentagon officials say, and perhaps as many as nine others in the 13-man unit witnessed the shootings but neither attempted to step in nor reported them later.
Among the mysteries still unsolved is what caused such a catastrophic collapse in the Marines' discipline. U.S. troops are trained to make the deliberate distinction between friend and foe and are aware that the enemy has completely mixed into the civilian population. Marine Sergeant Eddie Wright, who lost both hands in a rocket-propelled-grenade attack in Fallujah two years ago, said it's natural "to want to kill the guys who killed your buddy." But, he adds, "you don't lash out at innocent people."
So why did some men in Kilo Company apparently snap? Perhaps because of the stress of fighting a violent and unpopular war--or because their commanders failed them. Military psychiatrists who have studied what makes a soldier's moral compass go haywire in battle look first for a weak chain of command. That was a factor in the March 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when U.S. soldiers, including members of an Army platoon led by Lieut. William Calley, killed some 500 Vietnamese. Says a retired Army Green Beret colonel who fought in Vietnam: "Somebody has failed to say, 'No, that's not right.'" No one, apparently, was delivering that message last November in Haditha.
For more exclusive coverage of the killings in Haditha, including reaction from local residents, visit time.com [This article contains a complex diagram. Please see a hardcopy or pdf.] THE SCENE At 7:15 a.m. on Nov. 19, 2005, Marine Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, was killed when a bomb exploded under his humvee on a road just south of Haditha. Within hours, Marines killed two dozen Iraqi civilians, including women and children
HUMVEE CONVOY
To central Haditha
Movement of Marines
Hay al-Sinnai Road
1 Bomb explodes 2 Taxi Four teens and driver killed
3 Waleed house Seven killed, including two women and a child
4 Younis house Eight killed, including six women
5 Ayed house (son) Group of women and children guarded
6 Ayed house (father) Four men killed in adjoining house TIME Graphic by Jackson Dykman and Joe Lertola; satellite image from Digital Globe via Google Earth
For more exclusive coverage of the killings in Haditha, including reaction from local residents, visit time.com
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1198892,00.html
Another very strange report you can read here..
http://www.antiwar.or.kr/maybbs/view.php?db=antipabyeong&code=board&n=7340&page=207
More you can read here..
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski153.html
In Haditha, Memories of a Massacre
Washington Post
Witnesses to the slaying of 24 Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in the western town of Haditha say the Americans shot men, women and children at close range in retaliation for the death of a Marine lance corporal in a roadside bombing.
Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who said he watched and listened from his home as Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, recalled hearing his neighbor across the street, Younis Salim Khafif, plead in English for his life and the lives of his family members. "I heard Younis speaking to the Americans, saying: 'I am a friend. I am good,' " Fahmi said. "But they killed him, and his wife and daughters."...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052602069.html
PS..
According to the German magazine Der Spiegel, 5.31, a internal report by the US Army confirmed the massacre.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,419064,00.html
Iraq witnesses tell of killings by marinesIHT, NYT published yesterday. |
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Hiba Abdullah survived the killings by U.S. troops in Haditha last Nov. 19, but she said seven others inside her father-in-law's home did not.
She said U.S. troops shot and killed her husband, Rashid Abdul Hamid, with gunshots to the head and shoulder. They killed her father-in-law, Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, a 77-year-old in a wheelchair, shooting him in the chest and abdomen, she said.
Her sister-in-law, Asma, "collapsed when her husband was killed in front of her eyes," Abdullah said. As Asma fell, she dropped her 3-month-old infant. Abdullah said she picked up the baby girl and sprinted out of the house, and when she returned, Asma was dead.
Four people who survived the killings in Haditha, including some who had never spoken publicly, described the killings to an Iraqi writer and historian who was recruited by The New York Times to travel to Haditha and interview survivors and witnesses of what military and Pentagon officials have said appear to be unjustified killings of 24 Iraqis.
Some in Congress fear that the killings could do greater harm to the image of the U.S. military around the world than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Military officials declined on Sunday to comment on details of the killings described by survivors. "The investigations are ongoing, therefore any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process," said Lieutenant Colonel Sean Gibson, a U.S. Marine spokesman.
The four survivors' accounts could not be independently corroborated, and it was unclear in some cases whether they actually saw the killings.
But much of what they said was consistent with broad outlines of the events of that day provided by military and government officials who have been briefed on the military's investigations into the killings, which the officials have said is likely to lead to charges that may include murder and a cover-up of what really happened.
The name of the Iraqi who conducted the interviews for The New York Times is being withheld for his own safety, because insurgents often target any Iraqis deemed to be collaborators.
Haditha, a sandswept farming village flecked with date palms on the upper Euphrates River, is in one of Iraq's most dangerous areas, ridden with insurgents in the heart of Sunni-dominated Anbar Province.
Three months earlier, 20 marines from a different unit were killed around Haditha over a three-day span. Fourteen were slain by a bomb that destroyed their troop carrier. Six others, all snipers, were ambushed and killed on a foot patrol.
Insurgents appeared to later rejoice and boast about the sniper ambush, releasing a video over the Internet that appeared to show both the attack and the mangled and burned body of a dead American serviceman.
Haditha is under the control of insurgents that include Tawhid and Jihad, a name that has been used by the terrorist organization of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said Miysar al-Dulaimi, a human rights lawyer who has relatives in Haditha and who returned there two days after the killings and spoke to witnesses and neighbors.
Dulaimi said that outside of their bases, the Americans control almost nothing.
"People are so scared," he said. "They have lost confidence in the Americans. If the Americans show up in the neighborhood, the insurgents will come and take away people they accuse of being stooges of the Americans."
But just over six months ago, 24 people in the Subhani district of Haditha faced a different death, witnesses and survivors say.
The killings began after 7:15 a.m., as the neighborhood was stirring awake, when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb in Subhani that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, Texas, as his patrol drove through the area.
According to one U.S. defense official, most of the subsequent killings are believed to have been committed by a handful of marines led by a staff sergeant who was their squad leader, although other marines are also under investigation.
In the home that Abdullah escaped from, she said, U.S. troops also shot in the chest and killed a 4-year-old nephew named Abdullah Walid.
She said her mother-in-law, Khumaysa Tuma Ali, 66, died after being shot in the back. Two brothers-in-law, Jahid Abdul Hamid Hassan and Walid Abdul Hamid Hassan, were also killed, she said.
She said she saw U.S. troops kick her family members and that one American shouted in the face of one relative before he was killed.
In addition to Abdullah and Asma's baby, two others survived. One, 9-year- old Iman Walid Abdul Hamid, said she ran quickly, still clad in her pajamas, to hide under the bed covers with her younger brother, Abdul Rahman Walid Abdul Hamid, when she saw what was happening.
"My mother was screaming and crying because she was shot and she fell on the ground bleeding in front of the bedroom door, and no one helped her," Iman said. "We were scared and could not move for two hours. I tried to hide under the bed," she said.
But both children were hit by shrapnel.
Abdullah assumed that the two children had died, but she said they were later found at a local hospital.
The U.S. defense official, who described information collected during the investigation, also said that one of the victims was an elderly man killed in his wheelchair. He appeared to have been holding a Koran, according to the official.
Some victims had single gunshot wounds to the head, and at least one home where people were shot and killed had no bullet marks on the walls, inconsistent with a clearing operation that would typically leave bullet holes, the official added.
Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, pledged on Sunday to hold hearings on the Haditha killings as soon as the military investigation was concluded.
"I'll do exactly what we did with Abu Ghraib," he said on ABC television, referring to hearings. He added that there were serious questions of "what was the immediate reaction of the senior officers in the Marine Corps."
In all, 19 people were killed in three separate homes in Haditha, and five were killed after they approached the scene in a taxi, survivors and people in the neighborhood said.
Abdullah said that after the killings in her father-in-law's home, the U.S. troops moved to the house of a neighbor, Younis Salim Nisaif. She said he was killed by gunshots to his abdomen and chest.
His wife, Aida, who was recovering from surgery, was shot in her neck and also died, as did her sister, Huda.
Five children were also killed at that home, shot in their abdomen, head, or chest, she said.
There was one survivor, Safa Younis Salim, 13, who in an interview said she lived by faking her death.
"I pretended that I was dead when my brother's body fell on me and he was bleeding like a faucet," she said.
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eKantipur published following yesterday..
Nepal urges Maoists to drop extortion practices
CPN-UML General Secretary, Madhav Kumar Nepal on Sunday urged the Maoist rebels to drop the practice of use of force to extort money to manage its army.
Speaking at a programme in Biratnagar, Nepal today claimed that the government could provide aid to the rebels if they stopped extortions from the people.
"The government can ask for funds from international donors to help the Maoists army," Nepal said.
Hinting at the Maoists' demand of dissolution of the recently reinstated House of Representatives (HoR), Nepal also said that dissolving the newly revived House would be suicidal before any political outcome is achieved.
"The House has to be there until another reliable institution with public representation is setup," he said.
The Maoists have been saying that the present House and the government should be dissolved before forming an interim government and constitution to go for constituent assembly elections.
The government and Maoists, in their first round of peace talks on Friday, announced the 25-point Code of Conduct governing the cease-fire announcements so as to ensure a violence-free environment.
They agreed that donations and financial assistance in cash, kind or service shall not be collected and mobilized against anyone's will.
Both sides agreed to invite credible national and international monitoring teams to oversee the ceasefire and compliance to the Code of Conduct.
According to the Code of Conduct, the government and the Maoists have agreed to stop new recruitment in their armies and to refrain from strikes in industries and educational institutions.
http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=74983
...
Just let.s see what will bring the future...
2006 FIFA WORLD CUP
DIE WELT ZU GAST BEI FREUNDEN
Before last week the Italian newspaper La Stampa wrote that "German Neo-Nazis are preparing for the big showdown for the World Cup".
Since the last week the racist attack against "non-white" foreigners are increasing in Germany, especially in the East.
Since last Tuesday in Wismar, Weimar(here about 20 nazis were attacking a small party by four Africans. Witnesses said that the fascists were called by neighbours..to kick them out.. During the "very brutal attack", so the daily newspaper TAZ, no-one wanted to help the attacked people, even no-one called the police. "The neighbours and by-passers were just watching"), Berlin... foreigners, mainly from Africa and Asia, but also Afro-Americans were physically attacked by German fascist gangs. And according to Neo-Nazi websites "this will be just the beginning"..
Actually the only answer should be:
BOYCOTT FIFA WORLD CUP 2006!!
or better.. BOYCOTT GERMANY!!
IHT, NYT published yesterday following STUFF..
China's brand: Pictures of Mao
Few images created in the last century are as recognizable as the official portrait of Mao Zedong that looms over Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
For decades, the 4.5-by-6 meter, or 15-by-20-foot, oil painting has served as a national icon. This is the same image that, in the 1960s and 70s, was widely reproduced and hung near the entrances to millions of homes, schools, factories and government buildings.
During the Cultural Revolution, when Mao was raised to cult status, it seemed as if the entire nation had set about drawing a Mao portrait, or at least honoring one. If Mao's Little Red Book was the national bible, Mao's official portrait was the national stamp.
And while people in China seem to have lost some affection for Mao, and even protested in 1989 by splattering his Tiananmen portrait with paint, his image still represents something indelible and intangible, experts say.
"This is the most important painting in China," said Professor Wu Hung, an art historian at the University of Chicago. "This is not an artistic judgment. But look at how many people have seen this image over the last century."
Mao's image may also be considered the first and only Chinese global brand. Even though China is a rising economic power, it still does not have a BMW or a Coca-Cola to sell to the rest of the world.
But it does have Mao - a kind of George Washington, James Dean and Che Guevara wrapped in one; a historic and pop figure who continues to be hip and fashionable, even when communism and the Communist Party are not.
And so it is no surprise that a firestorm erupted in China a little over a week ago after a state-controlled Beijing auction house wheeled out an old official portrait of Mao, owned by a Chinese-American, and said it would sell the piece to the highest bidder on June 3.
Huachen Auction said the small portrait, dating from the 1950s or '60s, was painted by Zhang Zhenshi, one of first official portrait makers of Mao and the artist credited with the model for the painting that hangs in Tiananmen Square.
After critics on the Internet in China lashed out at the planned sale, Huachen withdrew the item, saying the government had intervened and "suggested" the work be placed in a national museum.
But the controversy raised some intriguing questions. Who actually painted Mao's official portrait? And why is it still up in the square, when many Chinese seem more eager to buy Gucci bags than Mao suits?
Some of the answers can be found in Wu's book "Remaking Beijing," which says Mao's image, like the socialist state, was actually created by committee.
Nor was it the first such portrait to hang in Beijing. A large one of Sun Yat- sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic, was raised in the square after his death in 1925. And the image of Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, was hung there in 1945.
Mao's portrait appeared in 1949, after the Communists assumed power. First, a hastily sketched portrait was hung in February of that year.
Then, on Oct. 1, when Mao declared the founding of the People's Republic of China from the rostrum at Tiananmen Gate, an official portrait, based on a photograph, showed Mao wearing an octagonal cap and coarse woolen jacket.
The cap-wearing Mao did not last long. A year later, 30 artists were asked to create a new image, and Zhang, a teacher at the Beijing Art Institute, was named the official portrait maker.
From 1950 to about 1964, Zhang painted Mao's Tiananmen portrait, based on official photographs, often with the help of artists who were supposed to be anonymous.
The portrait evolved over time. Mao in an army cap gave way to Mao's sideways glance, which was replaced by the now standard Mao frontal pose, with his eyes peering directly at viewers. An early piece was criticized because Mao appeared to be looking away from - possibly ignoring - the masses.
Historians say that in the 1950s or 60s, Zhang created the standard image, based on a photograph of Mao in his trademark gray suit. And by 1967, when the Cultural Revolution was under way, a final tweak had been added: The painting showed both of Mao's ears, rather than just one, proof that he was listening to all the people and not just a select few.
The artists, Wu said, were not supposed to be creative, but merely render the image from carefully selected photographs.
"If you emphasized the artist, then it would be a work of art," Wu said. "That was not the intention."
Over the years, the painted Mao has aged, appeared grim, taken on a fatherly look, and even shown a faint smile. At some point, the shadow on his face was reduced.
Since 1949 there have only been four official portrait artists, but many unofficial contributors, like Wang Qizhi, now in his late 70s, who said in an interview last week that he had worked for over 20 years on portraits of Mao, leaving few records.
"The old canvas was reused by putting on white paint to cover the previous painting," Wang said. "One piece of canvas was used five or six times. When it became too thick to paint, people pulled off the canvas and put on a new one."
Apparently, Mao's colorful oil portrait came down only once, briefly, after his death in 1976, when it was replaced by a huge black-and-white photograph, a sign of mourning.
Why has the image not come down since? Some believe that such a move would signal the demise of the party. Others say the portrait is a cultural relic.
"It's a very complex image," said Wu, who grew up near Beijing. "It has different meanings to different people. To the party, it symbolizes the party and the nation's founding. But to a lot of people it symbolizes China, or it has very personal memories."
That is one reason Mao's official image has changed mostly in subtle ways.
Beyond Tiananmen Square, however, artists have experimented more freely, and after Mao's death, some played with his once-sacred image. Wang Keping attracted international attention in 1979 by carving a wooden image of a Buddha-faced Mao called "Idol."
In the 1980s, Wang Guangyi dissected Mao by putting him behind bars, or a large grid. Li Shan put a flower and lipstick on him. Gao Qiang made him look sickly, swimming in a blood-red Yangtze River.
But Mao's defenders are never far behind. Zhang's painting of Mao is no longer up for auction, thanks to government intervention.
And several weeks ago, when Gao's sickly Mao was raised in an exhibition space in the trendy Beijing area of Dashanzi, the police showed up. They had the image removed. Officially, there is still only one Mao, and he is still the national icon.
SHANGHAI Few images created in the last century are as recognizable as the official portrait of Mao Zedong that looms over Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
For decades, the 4.5-by-6 meter, or 15-by-20-foot, oil painting has served as a national icon. This is the same image that, in the 1960s and 70s, was widely reproduced and hung near the entrances to millions of homes, schools, factories and government buildings.
During the Cultural Revolution, when Mao was raised to cult status, it seemed as if the entire nation had set about drawing a Mao portrait, or at least honoring one. If Mao's Little Red Book was the national bible, Mao's official portrait was the national stamp.
And while people in China seem to have lost some affection for Mao, and even protested in 1989 by splattering his Tiananmen portrait with paint, his image still represents something indelible and intangible, experts say.
"This is the most important painting in China," said Professor Wu Hung, an art historian at the University of Chicago. "This is not an artistic judgment. But look at how many people have seen this image over the last century."
Mao's image may also be considered the first and only Chinese global brand. Even though China is a rising economic power, it still does not have a BMW or a Coca-Cola to sell to the rest of the world.
But it does have Mao - a kind of George Washington, James Dean and Che Guevara wrapped in one; a historic and pop figure who continues to be hip and fashionable, even when communism and the Communist Party are not.
And so it is no surprise that a firestorm erupted in China a little over a week ago after a state-controlled Beijing auction house wheeled out an old official portrait of Mao, owned by a Chinese-American, and said it would sell the piece to the highest bidder on June 3.
Huachen Auction said the small portrait, dating from the 1950s or '60s, was painted by Zhang Zhenshi, one of first official portrait makers of Mao and the artist credited with the model for the painting that hangs in Tiananmen Square.
After critics on the Internet in China lashed out at the planned sale, Huachen withdrew the item, saying the government had intervened and "suggested" the work be placed in a national museum.
But the controversy raised some intriguing questions. Who actually painted Mao's official portrait? And why is it still up in the square, when many Chinese seem more eager to buy Gucci bags than Mao suits?
Some of the answers can be found in Wu's book "Remaking Beijing," which says Mao's image, like the socialist state, was actually created by committee.
Nor was it the first such portrait to hang in Beijing. A large one of Sun Yat- sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic, was raised in the square after his death in 1925. And the image of Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, was hung there in 1945.
Mao's portrait appeared in 1949, after the Communists assumed power. First, a hastily sketched portrait was hung in February of that year.
Then, on Oct. 1, when Mao declared the founding of the People's Republic of China from the rostrum at Tiananmen Gate, an official portrait, based on a photograph, showed Mao wearing an octagonal cap and coarse woolen jacket.
The cap-wearing Mao did not last long. A year later, 30 artists were asked to create a new image, and Zhang, a teacher at the Beijing Art Institute, was named the official portrait maker.
From 1950 to about 1964, Zhang painted Mao's Tiananmen portrait, based on official photographs, often with the help of artists who were supposed to be anonymous.
The portrait evolved over time. Mao in an army cap gave way to Mao's sideways glance, which was replaced by the now standard Mao frontal pose, with his eyes peering directly at viewers. An early piece was criticized because Mao appeared to be looking away from - possibly ignoring - the masses.
Historians say that in the 1950s or 60s, Zhang created the standard image, based on a photograph of Mao in his trademark gray suit. And by 1967, when the Cultural Revolution was under way, a final tweak had been added: The painting showed both of Mao's ears, rather than just one, proof that he was listening to all the people and not just a select few.
The artists, Wu said, were not supposed to be creative, but merely render the image from carefully selected photographs.
"If you emphasized the artist, then it would be a work of art," Wu said. "That was not the intention."
Over the years, the painted Mao has aged, appeared grim, taken on a fatherly look, and even shown a faint smile. At some point, the shadow on his face was reduced.
Since 1949 there have only been four official portrait artists, but many unofficial contributors, like Wang Qizhi, now in his late 70s, who said in an interview last week that he had worked for over 20 years on portraits of Mao, leaving few records.
"The old canvas was reused by putting on white paint to cover the previous painting," Wang said. "One piece of canvas was used five or six times. When it became too thick to paint, people pulled off the canvas and put on a new one."
Apparently, Mao's colorful oil portrait came down only once, briefly, after his death in 1976, when it was replaced by a huge black-and-white photograph, a sign of mourning.
Why has the image not come down since? Some believe that such a move would signal the demise of the party. Others say the portrait is a cultural relic.
"It's a very complex image," said Wu, who grew up near Beijing. "It has different meanings to different people. To the party, it symbolizes the party and the nation's founding. But to a lot of people it symbolizes China, or it has very personal memories."
That is one reason Mao's official image has changed mostly in subtle ways.
Beyond Tiananmen Square, however, artists have experimented more freely, and after Mao's death, some played with his once-sacred image. Wang Keping attracted international attention in 1979 by carving a wooden image of a Buddha-faced Mao called "Idol."
In the 1980s, Wang Guangyi dissected Mao by putting him behind bars, or a large grid. Li Shan put a flower and lipstick on him. Gao Qiang made him look sickly, swimming in a blood-red Yangtze River.
But Mao's defenders are never far behind. Zhang's painting of Mao is no longer up for auction, thanks to government intervention.
And several weeks ago, when Gao's sickly Mao was raised in an exhibition space in the trendy Beijing area of Dashanzi, the police showed up. They had the image removed. Officially, there is still only one Mao, and he is still the national icon.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/28/news/mao.php
Don.t believe the enemy!!
But if you want to fight your
enemy, you must study him, her...
Lawmaker: Marines killed Iraqis ‘in cold blood’
Navy conducting war crimes probe into November violence in Haditha
WASHINGTON - A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.
From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.
One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.”
On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.
Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.
A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls.
The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.
On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said.
U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong.
Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed.
One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine.
“This one is ugly," one official told NBC News.
Three Marine officers — commanders in Haditha — have been relieved of duty, and at least 12 Marines in all are under investigation for what would be the worst single incident involving the deliberate killing of civilians by U.S. military in Iraq.
The Marine Corps issued a statement in response to Murtha's remarks:
"There is an ongoing investigation; therefore, any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process. As soon as the facts are known and decisions on future actions are made, we will make that information available to the public to the fullest extent allowable."
Murtha held the news conference to mark six months since his initial call for "redeployment" of U.S. forces from Iraq.
He said U.S. forces were under undue pressure in Iraq because of poor planning and allocation of resources by the Bush administration.
Please check out Hammurabi Human Right Assn., a Iraqi HR organization.. I am sure they have the .best. informations about the massacre, because they were reporting at first about it..
.........................
Even, for example, CNN yesterday was reporting about this as a massacre..
eKantipur reported yesterday following..
Govt-Maoist talks: Both sides agree on 25-point Code of Conduct
At the end of the first day the government-Maoist peace talks, both sides have agreed on a 25-point Code of Conduct to go for the constituent assembly elections.
The talks ended at 10:15 p.m. after more than six hours of closed-door negotiations between the two parties at Gokarna Forest Golf Resort in Kathmandu on Friday.
Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula and Krishna Bahadur Mahara, heads of the government and the Maoist negotiating teams respectively signed the Code of Conduct.
The 12-point understanding reached between the seven-party alliance (SPA) was also discussed during the negotiations today.
Both sides also agreed to hold another round of talks after reaching the agreement today.
The government on Thursday had given full shape to its team headed by Home Minister Sitaula and formally called the Maoists for negotiations while the Maoist preparatory talks team headed by the party spokesperson Krishna Bahadur Mahara had arrived in Kathmandu last week; another member Dev Gurung arrived on Thursday.
HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE: The government (right) and Maoist (left)
negotiating teams pose for a photograph during the first round of
preliminary talks at Gokarna Resort, Kathmandu, on Friday.
|
But the would.be imperialist neighbour India is already warning...
Maoists should not take you for a ride: BJP President
In its first official reaction on Nepal after the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) came to power last month India's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s top leadership on Friday cautiously welcomed recent developments in Nepal. As he met a four-member political delegation from Nepal, BJP President Rajnath Singh welcomed the installation of the SPA government in Nepal and expressed hope that peace and normalcy would soon be restored in India's Himalayan neighbor. Yet he expressed concern when he said, “The BJP would not appreciate a situation where Nepal loses its true identity and buckles under the Maoist pressure.” And he urged the SPA government, to "ensure that it is not taken for a ride by the Maoists." He further told the delegation at BJP's Central Office in New Delhi, "Any peace talks or power sharing with the Maoists would be futile and dangerous if they did not shun violence by laying their arms completely.” BJP Vice President Bal Apte was also present there. The delegation was led by former Foreign Minister and Nepali Congress leader Chakra Bastola. Other members in it included Arjun Narsingh KC and Shekhar Koirala and Delhi-based South Asia Foundation's Rahul Barua. Since arriving here on April 22 for a roundtable seminar they have been holding political parleys. The BJP strongman further said, according to a statement, “Though the Maoists have declared a ceasefire and say they are willing to join the peace dialogue they are busy with extortion and recruitment to the ‘people’s liberation army’. "Their attitude has generated suspicion and distrust that they want to use the ceasefire period to consolidate their position, as they have done twice before.” Interestingly, referring to the Indo-Nepal Treaty of 1950 Singh said that the treaty is a crux to Indo-Nepal bilateral relations and added, "It should continue in spite of pressure from certain quarters to write it off.” Yet he hoped that the SPA government would be able to deal with the complex political situation.
|
Uhuu... how stupid and ugly...
IHT published before yesterday, 5.25, following report..
Asia Times, HK, published this article some days ago..
US feels sting of South Korean protest
The prayers and chants of the elderly farmers and young activists waft from the circle of land in front of a small white-walled church at the heart of this village on the prow of a hill some 65 kilometers south of Seoul.
"No US base," they shout in Korean. "Save our land."
It is a daily ritual staged in defiance of thousands of South Korean police against a plan to turn the region of rice paddies and orchards into one of America's largest overseas bases.
The police control the countryside, blocking off traffic, but the farmers cling to this enclave of sturdy brick homes in a standoff that embarrasses the United States and South Korea - and reveals some of the weaknesses in a deteriorating alliance.
"It's up to the Korean police to get them out of there," grumbles an American officer, observing the standoff from the security of nearby Camp Humphreys, shielded by double rows of wire fencing. "I can't see why they don't get them out of there."
The reason appears to be the desire of Korean leaders to avoid a showdown of tear-gas grenades and bashed heads and also underlying questions about South Korea's relationship with the United States.
Korean officials swear they're living up to their agreement for the US to build the base, and South Korean soldiers are busy setting up a 24km barbed-wire fence surrounding the whole area set aside for the base.
The fact is, however, they're appalled by the prospect of the base becoming an easy target for the same activists who've been demonstrating off and on for years outside US bases elsewhere. An assault by 10,000 police officers on May 4 managed to dislodge hundreds of activists from an abandoned school building but failed to stop the protest, much less get the farmers to leave the homes that they view as their reward for more than half a century of hard work tilling the soil since the Korean War.
That refusal of farmers to leave makes their cause an easy one for activists, who for years have demanded the departure of all US forces from Korea.
A firebrand Catholic priest leads daily slogan-shouting protests at the epicenter of the worst standoff in nearly four years between South Korean forces and an array of student groups and labor organizations.
The priest, Moon Jeong-hyun, 69, returned here less than a week after holding out for most of a day on the roof of the school building with nine other priests and two National Assembly members defying the riot police, who drove the activists from the building, some of them kicking and screaming.
A distinctive figure with a flowing beard, often seen holding a video camera as he records prayer meetings and confrontations, Moon and his cohorts were promised they would not be arrested before descending down a ladder from the roof on May 4.
Moon has lived in the village for the past two years, making it the center of the same anti-US struggle that he led during enormous protests in Seoul after the deaths of two schoolgirls, run over by a 50-ton US armored vehicle during military exercises nearly four years ago.
"Pray for this land," Moon preaches to the villagers. "You have prospered on this land. Pray for your homes. You have built these homes. The land is yours. Your prayers will protect you."
Now Moon is protected by activists manning checkpoints at entrances to the village within shouting distance of police blocking off narrow paved roads across the rice paddies into the village, on the western fringe of the bustling town of Pyongtaek, on the main railroad to Seoul.
The activists carry banners, not weapons, but they're clearly ready to battle any attempt by police to enter the village. They appear to have returned quietly by night across the rice paddies, staying in the homes of farmers who view them as defenders against government forces. They meet in the church and a small government building, having lost the school to demolition by bulldozers and loaders that tore it down as soon as Moon and his cohorts came down from the roof on May 4.
Police officials directing the thousands of officers in well-ordered array at strong points on the roads are under strict orders to avoid violence, stopping protesters with shields, throwing them back in occasional clashes, but refraining from bashing heads, much less using weapons.
Conservatives fear the fracas over the base plays into the hands of North Korea, while South Korea and the US are at odds on how to pull the North back into six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Some wonder if the South's governing Uri Party is actually encouraging the standoff in which an assembly member from the party, Im Jung-in, is playing a leading role.
Im was up on the roof with the priests before they all came down on May 4 - and has appeared again at rallies in the village. He talks frequently on his mobile phone with party officials, and his presence in the village symbolizes support for the farmers and activists in the government.
US officials, fearful of upsetting already strained relations with the government, say only that they expect South Korea to live up to the agreement and turn over the land for a base. They wonder, however, how the US can move its military headquarters from Seoul to the base while protests persist.
"We'll have to build a new headquarters building," says a US officer. "That's not going to be easy."
More difficult, the US Army has to move combat forces, now headquartered at Camp Casey on the historic invasion route from North Korea to Seoul, down here. The base, when it opens, will have facilities for 20,000 US troops, the vast majority of the 25,000 expected to be left in Korea by the end of the decade. Most of the remaining US forces remain just 16km closer to Seoul at Osan Air Base, headquarters for US combat aircraft.
The ruckus over the base provides a rallying cry for anti-American forces at a time when the US and South Korea are at odds over how to deal with the North on such issues as nuclear weapons, counterfeiting and human rights.
Although none of these issues immediately affects the base, the relationship is clear.
The US Command regularly advances the argument that US forces have to move south of Seoul to keep them out of the way of North Korean artillery. No one conjures the specter of a North Korean attack, but the threat remains - and could increase if other issues persist.
"A nuclear North Korea is a problem for everyone," says Jon Wolfsthal, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He sees no solution, though, while North Korea refuses to attend the six-party talks and the administration in Washington loses interest in a solution.
"We're likely to see a prolonged death that nobody wants to watch," says Wolfsthal. "We're not likely to see any progress any time soon." He sees those favoring regime change in North Korea as "on the ascendancy".
Washington hardliners, he believes, are proud of the impact on Pyongyang of economic restraints imposed on banks and trading companies dealing with North Korea in retaliation for that country's counterfeiting and still hope for collapse of the regime.
"The United States is back into isolation and [it's] a waiting game," says Wolfsthal, while "North Korea is content with its nukes." In the meantime, the Pentagon sees the base relocation as part of a "global repositioning plan" in which forces here would be free to deploy anywhere in the region, possibly, in some unforeseen war, against China, a short hop across the Yellow Sea.
At this village, Moon and other activists see the whole military issue as irrelevant.
"South and North Korea are reconciling with one another," says another priest visiting the village. "We don't need US forces in Korea at all."
That's a view that US officials fear may come to dominate the outlook of a South Korea government already seen as left of center as thousands of police face the unpleasant task of finally removing the diehards from their homes - and the troublesome priest from the village chapel.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HE17Dg03.html
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