Venom in a Vacuum?

"I was pleased that she did not respond [to the provocations and jeers as she showed up for work wearing her police uniform]. She has thick skin, just like an elephant, and that's important in our society. Silence is the best response."
"We are part of this society [as Israeli citizens], so we should serve it. The people attacking her are a gang of wild kids with nothing better to do with their lives. They should go find themselves and think about what, if anything, they have actually done on behalf of their community [in a predominately Arab town in Israel]."
Ali Saadi, Arab Israeli, Bedouin village of Basmat Tabun

"The new generation that has grown up sees the truth and feels a sense of belonging and identification. It understands the mood in the community much better than you and realizes that many of the problems facing Arab society are the result of those slogans, lies, and conspiracy theories that you have been peddling to us to benefit yourselves."

Mohammad Kabiya, Israel Defense Forces air force member, from the Bedouin northern Israeli village of Kaabiyye

Sabrin Saadi, Facebook

The Injaz Center for Professional Arab Local Governance in Israel conducted a comprehensive study published in 2015 on the scope of crime and violence in Israel's Arab sector. It found that a dramatic rise in that sector in crime occurred since 2007, in parallel with an associated rise in incarcerated Arabs. Arabs made up 42% of all prisoners in Israeli jails in 2010. That figure rose by 2014 to 49% and statistics further showed an over-representation of youthful Arabs between the ages of twelve and eighteen, when Arabs represent 20% of the total population of Israel.

In response to that very real problem, new police stations were positioned in two Arab villages in the north of Israel; Jisr az-Zarqa, and Kafr Kanna. In an effort to assure the population of a shoring up of the presence of police to address the situation, the two stations were properly staffed and prepared to act as required to protect the towns' populations. A swift response erupted mere days later when a short video showed up on Facebook.

In the video a young policewoman from a nearby Bedouin village was shown in uniform wearing a hijab on her way to the Kafr Kanna station. Assembled around her was a group of young demonstrators, loudly cursing her and spitting their contempt toward her. Policewoman Sabrin Saadi appeared to take no notice, continued on her way, and entered the police station to begin her day's work.

She may not have visibly reacted to the virulently hateful provocation, calling her a traitor to the Palestinian 'cause', aiding the 'occupation' in the vilest of taunting terms, but when she returned home after her shift, she spoke with her father, telling him how she had been affected by the demonstration. He encouraged her to continue on just as she was doing, that her aspiration to become a police officer spoke to her dedication to her country, and her wish to represent it in the critical maintenance of law and order.

Ms. Saadi and other Bedouin, Arab and Druze citizens of Israel who choose to serve their country's military and police services are in the minority, but they represent Israelis who value their citizenship and the nation that promotes their place in society as equals even while the majority choose to oppose the very notion of a Jewish state. The irony here is that most Arab Israelis prefer to live within Israel rather than under the Palestinian Authority, and they oppose any notion of transferring their villages to Palestinian rule under a nascent Arab state.

A Palestinian protestor lights a tire on fire during clashes with Israeli security forces in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on December 29, 2017, following the weekly Muslim Friday prayers (AFP / Musa al Shaer)

With the American declaration of the recognition of east Jerusalem as Israel's capital meriting the official move of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem where all Israel government offices are located, the Palestinian 'resistance' and anti-'normalization' went into overdrive. Outrage and resistance to the U.S. administration's controversial move was instant and virulent, with promises of violent reaction materializing in a new intifada, incited by fiery defiance speeches by President Mahmoud Abbas, and echoed by Hamas.

Palestinian youth nursed and nourished from the cradle through their formative and educational years on hatred and opposition to Israel and the presence of a Jewish State took to the new intifada with enthusiasm as more reason to riot, storm the streets and enact their opposition in time-honoured Palestinian flourishes of burning tires, rocket barrages and rock-throwing along with Molotov cocktails at Israeli security.

The exception was those among the Arab population who have recognized and sought out their futures with Israel. For Sabrin Saadi it meant she is not on her own, there are friends who will support her and defend her, among them Mohammad Kabiyya who had enlisted in the IDF and who takes pains to speak with her almost daily with the promise that he and his friends are determined to do all they are able to reassuring her she has chosen to do the right thing. Those led by the Islamic Movement will be restrained from harming her or other young Arabs following her example.


According to IDF airman Kabiyya, activists from the Arab Balad party joined their opposition with the Islamist demonstrators who speak of the new police stations as an Israeli plot to gain control over Arab villages. A member of the Israeli Knesset, Jamal Zahalka, who is the Balad party chairman, took part in one of those demonstrations reviling Sabrin. Arab Israelis are able to elect their own representatives to reflect their interests in Israel's Parliament, and as parliamentary members go out of their way to suborn the state, serving the anti-'normalization' interests of Islamists.

 

"This is no friendly hello. The Israel Police are spreading lies. We have seen that there has been no drop in crime rates in those settlements in which a police station has already been established", claimed Zahalka, that the stations have been placed in Arab villages for one purpose; to track young Arabs for security purposes, and not the stated reason linked to community safety. His purpose, to condemn the initiative of Israeli Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan.

In point of fact, when public safety and security violations take place with impunity in villages and towns it is the residents who suffer from crime and violence. And since most of the violence is done at the hands of those youth, it makes eminent good sense to 'track' them for 'security purposes', since tracking them is completely linked to the goal of achieving community safety. But this MK's purpose in condemning the initiative and slandering its purpose spurns logic and courts a backlash of the very type of violence he claims to be non-existent.

Palestinian protesters run for cover as tear gas is fired towards them by Israeli security forces during clashes in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on December 29, 2017, following the weekly Muslim Friday prayers. (AFP / Musa al Shaer)

In the village of Salem, in northern Israel, children there are bedded down in bathroom bathtubs at night so they won't be hit by random gunfire. Violence in the Arab sector continues. A report published in Haaretz described the gun battles that take place each night in the village of Salem. Policewoman Saadi's father feels that the verbal assaults his daughter copes will won't evolve into physical violence, since there are many from his village and from Kafr Kanna who have offered support and encouragement to his daughter.

Several lawyers from the Arab sector have offered to represent her pro bono, to help her and any other young people, should she decide to bring charges of defamation against those who attack her.
In the greater scheme of things, there are so many loud voices calling for 'resistance' against the 'oppressor', in the process of winning influence and control over the young and the malleable who want to believe that a great wrong has been done their community, the uphill battle of Mr. Saada and his daughter seems impossible.

A young boy insults US President Donald Trump and threatens Israel during a Hamas rally in Gaza, December 2017. (Screen capture: MEMRI video)

In a shocking display of just how influential Palestinian groups like Fatah (the PLO group of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip are in their mind-control over vulnerable young Palestinians, a boy of no more than eight years of age, fully dressed in Hamas military gear complete with face mask, screamed a diatribe at a December 15 Hamas rally in Gaza threatening "Trump the idiot", and "Netanyahu, son of Jewish woman". The video clip has been shared widely on Palestinian social media.

"This is a message to Trump the idiot. You idiot, your promise to Israel will not be successful. You idiot, Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine for all eternity."
“I say to that idiot Benjamin Netanyahu, you son of a Jewish woman, you don’t know your own origins. Here in Gaza, we will trample the heads of your soldiers underfoot, like we did in Nahal Oz [A Hamas gunmen attack from a tunnel, infiltrating an Israeli army base, killing five soldiers in 2014]."
"Here in Gaza there are men who do not fear death. Get it, you son of a Jewish woman? You have no source in history. Get it, you son of a Jewish woman? Jerusalem is ours, it is our capital. We will not relinquish a single inch of the land of Palestine. Get it, you son of a Jewish woman? Get it, you son of a Jewish woman?"
"You have never existed in history. Get it, you idiot? If you don’t get it, we, the children of Gaza, will trample you underfoot until you get it. Get it, you son of a Jewish woman? Peace and Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you."
Ahmad Idriss, Gaza

Palestinian Muslim worshipers take part in a demonstration against the US president’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, outside the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City’s al-Aqsa mosque compound on December 29, 2017. (AFP / Musa al Shaer)AFP / Ahmad Gharabli)

From Gaza, groups like Islamic Jihad fire missiles over the border into Israel in an expression of their cordial respects for the Jewish State. Hamas repeatedly emphasizes a new intifada, inciting all Palestinians to violently confront soldiers and settlers. At the Gaza border fence where Gazan Palestinians cross into Israel -- including family members of the leaders of Hamas -- for expert medical care at Israeli hospitals, Ismail Haniyeh the Hamas leader, gives high praise to the "blessed intifada", urging that Jerusalem be liberated.

One young mother dressed in a black burqa, her face mask etched with the Hamas emblem, brought her baby to the rally, so he would come "to love Hamas and the Al-Qassam Brigades" (the terrorist armed wing of Hamas). "We bring our small children to teach them to love Hamas. No matter what the Jews or the Arab world do to Hamas, we will support it", she said to an interviewer, above the screams of her baby.

Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab/Muslim Agenda

"The recurrent harassment and restrictions imposed on Palestinian refugees in recent years have forced most of them to resort again to other countries such as Canada, Chile, Brazil and other European countries. Due to these violations, only about 7,000 out of 40,000 Palestinian refugees are now residing in Iraq. It is a shame to which an end should be put."
"Instead of protecting the Palestinian refugees from daily violations and improving their living and humanitarian conditions, the Iraqi government is making decisions that will have a catastrophic impact on the lives of these refugees."  
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor 

A new Iraqi law, recently ratified by Iraq's President Fuad Masum, effectively abolishes the rights of Palestinians living there (free education, healthcare, travel documents, work in state institutions), changing the status of Palestinians from nationals to foreigners. Pictured: Iraqi President Fuad Masum (right) meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (left) on November 30, 2015. (Image source: Video screenshot, Office of Mahmoud Abbas)

Israel, founded as a Jewish State, as a return to its Zionist-Judean homeland of antiquity so that those in the great historical diaspora would have a renascent nation of their own to turn to as a remedy for the never-ending scourge of anti-Semitism and the lethal violence it unleashes, resulted with international approval as a backlash to the Holocaust, when nations of the world recognized their disinterested complicity in the horrendous extermination plan of Nazi Germany's Final Solution.

That Jewish state is forever assailed by its neighbours and by the greater Islamic ummah as a foreign interloper in Muslim territory. Arabs originally from Egypt, Syria and Jordan who settled in the area known as Palestine and where the original Palestinians were known as the Jewish community which had remained there for thousands of years, just as other Jews had migrated to the Arab countries of the Middle East when Roman might destroyed the Second Temple of Solomon and exiled the Jewish population, appropriated the term 'Palestinian' to distinguish themselves as the original inhabitants.

Now, these Palestinian Arabs feel justified in excoriating Israel as an apartheid state, when even the most unobservant of onlookers could ascertain if the least bit inclined to do so, that Israel has absorbed millions of Arab Muslims and Christians, Druze and Kurds and those Christians of European descent, along with refugee Africans, diluting its Jewish demographic in a democratic, humanitarian gesture that recognizes equality and citizenship for all concerned.

The surrounding Muslim population along with their international leaders elsewhere in the world, saw fit to exile Arab Jews, and despite evidence to the contrary, dispute Israel's legitimacy of existence, and in their sequence of military attacks planned to obliterate Israel from the map of the Middle East. The Palestinian Authority has in fact, obliterated the presence of Israel from all the maps it produces, claiming the entire territory, 'from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean)' as a Palestinian legacy.

Yet, despite all the hostility directed toward Israel in slander and deadly violence, and the encouragement of Arab countries in the Middle East toward Palestinian entitlements, the Palestinians who fled the area now held by Israel, to find temporary haven that became permanent in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere, are considered by those countries to be unwelcome guests. Only in Jordan alone are Palestinians given citizenship and they comprise half to two-thirds of the Jordanian population.

In Lebanon, the Palestinians have always been despised and viewed as inferior, as trouble-makers. In Syria, the Palestinians have been besieged and they have been deprived of food, water, medicines by the Syrian regime. In Iraq, Law No.76 of 2017 published in the Iraqi Official Gazette No.4466, ratified by Iraqi President Fuad Masum, removes the right to free education, healthcare and travel documents, denying Palestinians employment in state institutions.

"Palestinians can even apply for citizenship in non-Arab countries and receive it. But not in countries such as Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It is easier for a Palestinian to obtain Canadian or US citizenship than to get one from most of the Arab countries."
Khaled Abu Toameh, journalist, Jerusalem

And when they find solace and haven and reception and equality in countries of the West, they settle in, make themselves comfortable, take advantage of all the entitlements of citizenship and social services denied them in the Arab countries of the Middle East. Palestinians do not denounce the unequal treatment they receive at the hands of their Arab brethren. What they do is export the baggage to accompany them in their emigration from the Middle East, and mount public relations campaigns to impugn and dispute Israel's legitimacy.

Palestinian children protest against Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Photograph: APAImages/Rex/Shutterstock

From teaching their children to detest Jews and to recognize their duty as Palestinians to 'resist' the 'occupation', exposing children to the viral blooms of hatred and violence, inspiring a martyrdom obligation in the young, to breeding terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to practise warfare against the Jewish state, in the hope that jihad-driven militias will succeed where the organized military coalitions of the past failed to, the Arab world has engineered the world's longest-lasting and most intractable conflict of the present age.

They bring with them to the West from their origins in the Middle East, the bacterial infection of Arab anti-Semitism. Portraying themselves as helpless, hapless underdogs despite the violence that the Palestine Liberation Organization and its sister groups with their terrorist agendas wrote into history; the highjacking of planes and ships, the bombing of Jewish synagogues and community centres abroad, and the intifadas that brought suicide bombers into Israel.

What the international community heard and saw was not the viciousness of the Palestinian campaign to delegitimize Israel, but a dominant nation forced to defend itself from implacable enemies which they preferred to characterize as an 'occupying force', adopting the terminology of the Arab campaign. The 'defenceless', 'victimized' Palestinians became the darling of the socialist democrats in their progressive mood of social justice.

Unquestioning and ignorant of both history and reality on the ground, the underlying social venom of anti-Semitism reawakened, the actions and influence of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in the United Nations has entirely perverted the meaning of human rights, sovereignty, history and truth. That the Palestinians have been used by the Arab League and the OIC in their campaign to slander and delegitimize Israel, while failing to give their own recognition and aid to the 'Palestinian refugees' speaks volumes about the true agendas of both.

Haley chastised the UN at Friday's session for its 'hostility' towards Israel [Kevin Lamarque/Reuters]

 

Mindanao, Philippines, Islamist Insurrection

"A further extension of the implementation of martial law ... will help quell completely and put an end to the ongoing rebellion in Mindanao and prevent the same from escalating to other parts of the country."
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte

"The reason we live under a red alert is that the Maute can look like civilians. We worry that they may come here [Iligan City]. We fear that they are already among our population."
"That is why we support martial law. We know that Duterte does this for our own safety."
Daryl Lugatiman, clothing designer, Philippines

"We call the Maute terrorists because of the destruction they have caused in our place [Marawi, Mindanao]. They claim they are jihadists and are suddenly calling themselves Islamic State, but that is branding. They do not even know what jihad is."
"What they really are is extremists. What they are doing is un-Islamic. They have taken Islamic principles and misinterpreted them."
Nassib Sambaco, former Marawi councillor

"[The Maute were] inspired by ISIL central, ideologically and tactically."
"[However], the group built] their narratives based in a local context of perceived or real government discrimination, a slow-moving peace process and the hard approach taken by President Duterte."
Ahmad Elmuhammady, Islam International University, Malaysia

"Is there not an alternative to air strikes? They have become an effective tool for the Maute to recruit in reaction]."
"The Maute are like a bacteria. They exist in parts of the body that are sensitive. But they are only one percent of the population, if it is even that high. This must be stopped but in the right way."
"[The people of Marawi do not support extremism], but what happens in Iraq and Syria means that our hearts and minds can be easily manipulated."
"This happens because of globalization. It is so easy now to exchange ideas and information. Young people and even some older people here can see extremist videos that were made in the Middle East. They like these videos because they believe that they tell them about Islam. The truth is that this is not Islam at all."
Abdullah Ahmad-Ali, lawyer, Marawi, Mindanao

"There was shooting and burning everywhere, the main campus of the University of Mindanao was badly damaged and the Maute were warning people to leave or they might die."
Marjana Sagusura, student, Marawi

"To see the planes flying is good. There has to be bombing because that is the terrorists' stronghold."
"I am not angry with Muslims, but I wonder why they make trouble. We must be vigilant to keep our own city [Iligan City] peaceful and safe."
Ricardo Naboyng, duty guard

In a press conference, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Duterte this week will receive the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ recommendation on whether military rule in Mindanao must be prolonged. AP/Bullit Marquez

If jihad is not Islam, then it would be most instructive to the world at large to know what Islam is. Muslims claim it to be a religion of peace. The Koran and the Hadiths have the duty of believers writ  large in their obligation to engage in jihad, one of the vital pillars of Islam. The 'extremists' are simply exercising their obligation as believers to follow the instructions of the Koran. To state ad infinitum from various points of the globe from among the ummah that this is not Islam is beyond disingenuous.

The Christians living in Iligan believe that the people of Marawi, Philippine Muslims, deserve what is happening to their city for their tacit complicity in support of the Islamist groups, the Maute, Abu Sayyaf and Islamic State. Of the 100-million population of the various islands that comprise the Philippines, 80-million are devout Roman Catholics. They are willing to live with the Muslims in their midst, but not, obviously, when the 'extremists' among them are violently abusive, threatening stability and causing death and destruction.

It is a small percentage of the ten-million Muslim Filipinos admittedly, that are wreaking this damage to the larger community of the Philippines by attacking villages and cities to claim them for Islam, and by kidnapping foreigners, holding them for ransom, and when none is forthcoming, placing the Philippines in international news headlines by beheading the captives. The Islamist opposition to the central command of the federal government is not viewed kindly by its president, a man who never hesitates to employ violence when he is opposed.

The martial law imposed when the Maute clan and their allies, foreign fighters and Abu Sayyaf invaded Marawi in a five-month conflict remains in place despite the military having brought order and control to Mindanao killing the elite of the militant terrorists. Because the threats yet continue martial law has been extended through the coming year. Fears that the deadly conflict from Muslim Marawi could spread to Christian Iligan City ensures that support for Muslims is muted.

In this June 2, 2017 photo, President Rodrigo Duterte visits the 102nd Infantry Brigade Headquarters in Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay. PCOO/Released

Even so, in Iligan City thousands of Philippine troops pass one another, the battle-weary ones passing in the opposite direction of the fresh troops heading toward the fight as Vietnam-era helicopters whomp overhead and PA-50 warplanes carrying rockets and bombs stream forward to the southern battle zone. In the besieged city of Marawi, police and army checkpoints create a gauntlet of restricted passage. In the last general election that elevated Duterte to the presidency, Marawi voted for Duterte.

In most of Mindanao the man remains popular and trusted to put down these violent insurrections, yet his air strike war on Marawi has understandably undercut his support from Muslims. Central Marawi is destroyed thanks to the air bombing campaign. In the ruins of Marawi, the Maute/AbuSayyaf/Islamic State fighters were able to hold out by hiding and fighting in its ruins even while vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Philippine forces.

A situation that "lifted the prestige of the Philippine fighters in the eyes of ISIS central [and] has inspired young extremists from around the region to want to join [them]", wrote the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict. Only a strong government determination to rebuild the destroyed city will give Filipino Muslims in Mindanao the comfort to believe the government views their needs as equal to those of the Christian population.

"I don't like Muslims because they make trouble for Christians by bombing and ambushing them. Some of them are traitors who hate Christians. My feelings are so strong that I can't really talk about them, although I know that some Muslims aren't bad", stated Pentecostal Merlinda Halisbas, as she mulled the future of the country and her president's challenge once the restoration of peace has been accomplished.

The Ultimate National Hero

"[North Korean scientists and workers would continue manufacturing] more latest weapons and equipment [to] bolster up the nuclear force in quality and quantity."
"[Medals awarded to] those in the field of defense science who most faithfully and perfectly carried out the Party’s plan for building strategic nuclear force, successfully test-fired ICBM Hwasong-15 and thus demonstrated the dignity and might of our powerful state all over the world once again."
North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un 

"He solemnly declared that the development of new strategic weapon systems including A-bomb, H-bomb and ICBM Hwasong-15 with indigenous efforts and technology and the realization of the great cause of completing the state nuclear force serve as a great historic victory of our Party and people of the country."
North Korean state media 

"We have never heard of him killing scientists. He is someone who understands that trial and error are part of doing science."
Choi Hyunkyoo, senior researcher, NK Tech, South Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claps during a celebration for nuclear scientists and engineers who contributed to a hydrogen bomb test. North Korea/Korean Central News Agency KCNA Photo: Reuters

If any group within North Korea can be viewed as hugely privileged, beside the military elite who humble themselves urgently before the imperial orders of His Royal Eminence Kim, it appears to be the very industrious, skilled scientific engineers and technicians of the country whose exploits in swiftly refining and perfecting advanced rocketry and miniaturizing nuclear devices have amazed the outside world.

This select group of the blessed within the hermit kingdom are known by such sobriquets as "nuclear duo"  and "missile quartet", identifying their specific specialties, having succeeded in building an intercontinental ballistic missile that seems able to strike any city in the United States. An achievement of which the Kim regime is extraordinarily proud, enhancing its agenda to awe and threaten.

World-class threat to the world order as he is, Kim Jong Un has shocked the international community on many counts, not the least of which is the startlingly unexpected capacity of his scientists to excel in short order in the level of advanced technology they appear to have mastered. He has also shocked the global community by his penchant of casually ordering the gruesome murders of those who have displeased him, irrespective of how secure they might seem to be in the regime's elite order.

The mastermind behind North Korea's missile program has been revealed as middle-aged scientist Kim Jong-sik

The ruthless dictator has reserved a special place for scientists, honouring and presenting them as national heroes. Their engineering and physics breakthroughs represent startling feats of accomplishment that outsiders find it difficult to credit, yet the proof is there, in every advanced rocket blast and nuclear test, each of which demonstrates the North's capacity to forge ahead, disturbingly and with bellicose emphasis.

For a country viewed as impoverished with the spectre of yet more famines looming over the populace, imprisoned in a country that values its ability to extort and threaten other nations, each new exploit accompanied by photographs exhibiting their celebrity and celebratory value to a 33-year-old man whose behaviour seems more indicative of that of a mentally maladjusted teen with unimaginable state power, propels the North deeper into its agenda and the world into a perpetual state of bated breath.

Posters are placed everywhere showing the state's rockets as they soar into the atmosphere to crash into Washington. Ri Hong-sop, director of North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Institute, is on the United Nations blacklist and alongside him in the "nuclear duo" is the former chief engineer of the Yongbyon complex, site of the nuclear weapons program. As for the "missile quartet", the president of the Academy of National Defense Science and a former air force commander serving as first deputy director of the ruling Workers' Party Munitions industry department are two of the four.

Each of the scientists in the North's double program of rocketry and nuclear device is seen as indispensable to the nation, heroes extraordinaire. And their official status as valuable, protected and promoted has the deep gratitude and favour of their leader. They are, however, wholly subservient to Kim, surrendering credit for whatever it is they advance in technology to Kim's credit; their successful achievements are his, entirely, as the star of the North's nuclear weapons program.

Making the Rules

"He has tried to build an image of himself, with a fair amount of success, that he is different, that he's a reformer, at least a social reformer, and that he's not corrupt."
"And this [recent revelations of excessively costly personal acquisitions of real estate property -- sumptuous mansion and luxury vessels] is a severe blow to that image."
Bruce O. Riedel, former C.I.A. analyst, author

"Our country has suffered a lot from corruption from the 1980s until today. The calculation of our experts is that roughly 10 percent of all government spending was siphoned off by corruption each year, from the top levels to the bottom." 
"Over the years, the government launched more than one ‘war on corruption,’ and they all failed. Why? Because they all started from the bottom up."
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman bought Château Louis XIV in 2015 for about $300 million. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

With vast financial resources, wealth beyond imagining, access to the world's most extravagant and rare properties and art are within reach. It would take enormous self-discipline and a penchant toward asceticism and indifference to the rare and the beautiful, to spurn ownership of desirable objects which 99.9% of the world's inhabitants would never even dream of having. Obviously, the scion to the richest fortune in the world even if it represents a state fortune, is not prepared to deny himself such opportunities when others about  him, extended members of the same royal family, indulge in massive expenditures for desirable properties.

The difference being, of course, is that while the others are indifferent to world opinion and make no effort to establish that they have the greater interests of their country at heart, let alone the fortunes of those living as co-nationals struggling to get by, the heir to the throne of the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has portrayed himself as a hard-working, abstemious man prepared to sacrifice for the greater good of the future of Saudi Arabia in the face of vastly educed income from falling oil prices.

True, he has distinguished himself through statements of his intentions to liberalize the socially straitened norms of his country in its commitment to bare-bones, fundamentalist, Salafist Islam. The private life he leads is one of self-indulgence, and since his father the king sees no reason to restrain his son-and-heir he appears free to do as he wishes. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon has led a purported crackdown on 'corruption' within the kingdom, deploring extended family members and the elite business class for withholding money from state coffers to stuff their personal bank accounts.

The Serene yacht docked in Auckland in New Zealand in January 2015, when it was then owned by Russian tycoon Yuri Schefler       Phil Walter/Getty

Fiscal austerity is the new byword in Saudi Arabia, a tightening of the financial belt for one and all. With a handful of obvious exceptions, since those who make the rules don't necessarily play by the rules. While the Crown Prince has placed a dozen royals and hundreds of Saudi business elites under luxury detention to crack down on corruption, some view the action a a political purge. "Ludicrous", scoffs the prince: "So you have to send a signal, and the signal going forward now is, 'You will not escape'."

The kingdom's budget deficits must be met with financial discipline. To that end a quarter of a trillion dollars in state projects have been set aside in an effort to balance deficits against revenues. Which did not, evidently cause King Salman to hesitate in his plans to build a luxurious new vacation palace on the coast of Morocco. He is, after all, the king. And Prince Mohammed is the Crown Prince. So that when he went agog over a 134-meter yacht equipped with two swimming pools and a helicopter at a selling price of $420-million euros, he simply proceeded to acquire the yacht.

Wouldn't you smile ear-to-ear if you were he? Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman  Newsweek

He did because he could. He could not deny himself what he impulsively craved. He paid less for the chateau in Louveciennes, modelled on Versailles, recently built to exact standards and 21st-century technology enabling remote control by iPhone of all its electronic and electric features and recognized as the most costly private home ever to hit the market. Not that the Prince spends all his time negotiating acquisitions. There is also work to be done; launching an air campaign in Yemen, blockading Qatar, loosening the religious reins restricting Saudi women.

Just to think of it boggles the mind; ownership of the work of one of the world's most profound artistic, scientific geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci. When Christie's put da Vinci's 16th century masterpiece Salvator Mundi up for auction in the fall, it was bought for a figure that outdistanced any other artwork in the past. How do you, in any event, put a price on such a rare, historical, masterful work of art? One that should be housed in a prestigious national gallery of art in a world capital, to be viewed by the masses.

Now, to be viewed privately by one man, MbS.

Christie's Auction House

Reality, Responsibility, Recognition, Repentance

"We know that our community is being attacked because of our and Canada's support for Ukraine in the current war that Russia is waging there."
"The Russian government is trying to stir up controversy and sort of obfuscate from the current situation that's taking place in Europe."
"I think that the premise of calling them [nationalist Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis] Nazi collaborators is slanderous. I think the real story here is about the Russian Embassy and what they're trying to do to our community and how they're trying to create an issue where there isn't one."
Ihor Michalehyshyn executive director, CEO, Ukrainian Canadian Congress

The cenotaph at Oakville's St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery, Wednesday, October 25, 2017. Peter J Thompson/National Post

"It would be refreshing and perhaps a form of self-healing if Ukrainians could offer a conception of their recent past that looked at all aspects of these events, recognizing in passing that heroes could be criminals."
David Marples, professor, University of Alberta, "Heroes and Villains"

"I've known about Roman Shukhevych since I was little, [but not] about him being in any war crimes or anything we should be hiding. I have never heard in my life that Shukhevych may have been involved in war crimes."
"Roman Shukhevych was the leader, very much respected even after the war, to continue this battle against the Soviet regime. He's completely seen as a hero, and respected to this day as a symbol of the fight for freedom."
Paras Podilsky, spokesman, Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, Edmonton

"[Leaders such as Shukhevych] symbolize this long and historical attempt by Ukrainians to resist, to defend themselves. The Russian perspective is because there is a dark side, and the collaboration with the Germans, you reduce the entire insurgency to atrocities. And therefore the very idea that Ukrainians or any other group can resist Russian or Soviet occupation is delegitimized."
"Unfortunately, the Ukrainians-Canadian organizations have not shown real readiness to discuss these issues. On the whole, there's a great deal of resistance."
Dominique Arel, Chair, Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa

"I think the question that Canadians really need to ask is, does the presence of these monuments in any way contribute to anti-Semitism, or other forms of racism or bigotry in Canada today?"
"[The answer appears] no [since] the intent of these monuments is not to stir up hatred or to glorify crimes against Jews."
"[B'nai Brith doesn't see any requirement for existing monuments to be removed]. I think that the communities that have established these monuments, so namely the Ukrainian-Canadian community, should take a critical look at these facts and should remind themselves that many of these people were engaged in collaboration with the Nazis."
Aidan Fishman, interim director, B'nai Brith Canada League for Human Rights

Russia in Canada‏Verified account @RussianEmbassyC

There are monumets to Nazi collaborators in Canada and nobody is doing anything about it. #NeverForget #Holocaust #WorldWar2

The facts as they are alluded to reflect the reality of the times, more nuanced than the Russian Embassy in Canada's public questioning of the loyalties and purported anti-Semitic cooperation between Nazi Germany occupied Ukraine drive toward. It does seem indisputable, in any event, that the Russian effort is meant to exploit potential divisions between Ukraine and the support they have been given by Canada politically and practically in response to Moscow's violent intervention in Ukraine and the unquestioned international criminality of annexing Crimea to Russian possession.

There most certainly were Ukrainian military units in cooperation with fascist Germany in its occupation of Europe and its preoccupation in rounding up European Jews for extermination. The enduring anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe was a virtual guarantee that Ukrainian police and military as well as local militias would be more than eager to help rid Ukraine of its traditional presence of Jews, forever persecuted there as elsewhere. Even in France, where secular civility is a prided attribute, French police were enthusiastic and brutal participants in making the country Judenrein.

As far as Russia is concerned, it is up to its usual mischief in its ongoing efforts to spread distrust in the West. What is at issue here is a number of Ukrainian monuments in honour of figures of national importance to Ukrainian independence and resistance to both Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The Galician military division comprised of Ukrainians focused on rallying against the Soviets placed them in the German sphere where both were on the same side in battles. These are the "Nazi collaborators" that the Russians refer to.

Concurrent with supporting the ethnic Russian Ukrainians, supplying them with arms, training and the presence of Russian troops and its 2014 illegal repossession of the Crimean Peninsula, the Russian Embassy has targeted the 1.3-million Ukrainian-Canadians as fascists-in-waiting for whom their national heroes are icons of salvation and adoration, when in actual fact many among them were actively engaged in aiding the Nazi occupation in rounding up and dispatching Jews to the death camps and their lethal crematoria.

One monument that has received attention stands in Oakville, Ontario at the St. Volodymyr Cemetery commemorating a battle fought by the Ukrainian Galician Division of the German Waffen SS against the Red Army where over three-quarters of the Ukrainian soldiers perished. "Fighting on the German side doesn't mean to be a Nazi right? You have to understand, those were the people who were fighting communism" explained Oleg Bezpitko, manager of the cemetery. The division in question was formed once a majority of Ukrainian Jewish victims had been targeted, though the Waffen-SS represented the military, not those tasked with operating concentration camps.

Another monument under question represents a bust of Roman Shukhevych standing at the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in Edmonton. The Organization for Ukrainian Nationalists linked themselves with the Germans for help in battling the Soviets occupying Ukraine. Shukhevych commanded one of two Ukrainian divisions attached to the German army, called the "Naghtigall". Shortly after the battalion arrived in Lviv a pogrom occurred, killing thousands of Jews. Shukhevych set up another local militia which played a central role in killing Jews.

A veteran of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) marches with people dressed as UPA soldiers on October 11, 2009 in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to mark the 67th anniversary of the founding of UPA in 1943. YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP/Getty Images

Individual members of the Ukrainian insurgency army which Shukhevych later also established were known to be involved in killing Jews and ethnic cleansing campaigns against Poles in Ukraine. But it is of course the broader conflict for Ukrainian independence that Ukrainians cherish their memories of this man for. The Soviets were already tainted with the death and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians around the end of the war. Adding the memory of the Holodomor, the deadly famine that killed millions in the 1930s, there is no love lost among Ukrainians for Russia.

An organization named the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter conducts efforts to reconcile with the past, inviting experts on Ukrainian and Jewish history to discuss their scholarly research and resulting interpretations of what had occurred, in the hopes of reaching a combined narrative in agreement of truth and justice.

"It's about time that somebody paid attention to it [researching Ukrainian involvement in the Holocaust]."
"The fact is the  Ukrainian government and the diaspora have been honouring Holocaust perpetrators and war criminals for a long time."
"The West should put greater emphasis on confronting the past. I do think they're neglecting their role if they're not putting pressure on Ukraine to do an honest confrontation with the events of the Second World War."
John-Paul Hinka, professor of history, University of Alberta

This man, Dr. Hinka, has conducted research that implicates Canada's current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland's grandfather, to Nazi collaboration; he also happens to be Freeland's uncle. Dr. Hinka has researched and written about his discoveries of the reality of Ukrainian responsibility in cooperating with the Nazi occupiers of Eastern Europe.

The data he retrieves and attempts to make public knowledge has not endeared him to the Ukrainian community. He is viewed as a Ukrainian traitor to Ukrainian history. He reports having been banned from Ukrainian-Canadian publications in his efforts to bring research on Ukrainian involvement in the Holocaust to public knowledge.

Canada, Steadfast Ally of Israel

"Canada is a steadfast ally and friend of Israel and friend to the Palestinian people. Canada's longstanding position is that the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. This has been the policy of consecutive governments, both Liberal and Conservative."
Global Affairs Canada statement 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to stand by Israel 'through fire and water' and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several times   CBC

Under the previous Conservative-led government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Israel could have no doubt whatever that Canada supported it in every conceivable way, recognizing it formally and informally as a counterpart democracy and a legitimate homeland for the Jewish people restored to their heritage position in the Middle East. PM Harper had little patience for the United Nations' constant sanctions against Israel, ignoring the plight of people living under the deplorable dictatorships of its neighbours in a powerful Islamic bloc that continually slammed Israel for human rights abuses they themselves regularly indulged in, but Israel did not.

Under the Trudeau administration, Canada has continued to block resolutions brought to the Security Council and the UN Human Rights agenda, condemning Israel for one contrived reason or another, charges brought against it by the very same human rights abusers who have long transformed the purpose of the United Nations in upholding universal human rights and equality, into a forum for the world's most vicious human rights abusers to stand in sanctimonious judgement of nations with a stellar position on human rights. But the very fact that Canada opposes corrupt resolutions is merely a reflection of the fact that it should, that it is morally obligated to do so.

That it reflects a specific bias in favour of Israel is not in fact the case. In very point of fact, Canada states its official position being that of equal favour to both Israel and the Palestinians, neutral on the issues that divide them, supportive only of the fiction that a two-state solution is achievable, when the Palestinian Authority has proven time and again, despite hypocritically claiming to the contrary, that it has no intention of cooperating in the forging of a peace treaty, nor officially arriving at an agreement that would result in two separate, sovereign states.

The statement that the PA is so fond of, that it disseminates in Arabic to the Palestinians is a Palestinian State from the river to the sea; from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, reflective of its official map that has erased Israel from existence. Yet the Western fiction of the Palestinians working toward peace and the establishment of two states persists, enabling PA President Mahmoud Abbas to prosecute his plan to achieve greater legitimacy of a Palestinian state in de facto existence, giving it status in the United Nations and within its member bodies.

Trudeau's Canada believes that there is a global obligation, reflective of a motion that was brought before the UN, to "promote the realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to self-determination, to support the achievement without delay of an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and of the two-state solution on the basis of the pre-1967 border." That "occupation" resulted from an all-out conflict imposed yet again on Israel, which it successfully repulsed, gaining the territories in question, as a result.

The "occupation" is one of self-protection, defense from constant violent attacks inspired by the Palestinian leadership in the Palestine Liberation Organization's Fatah movement and that of Hamas; the former aspiring to achieve the downfall of Israel through furtively organic means including incitement to popular violence, the latter directly and equally infamously, through violent military offences. If the Palestinian leadership were prepared to settle differences reasonably, there would be no "occupation" because there would be no threat to the existence of Israel. But the byword is to refuse "normalization"; recognition and acceptance of Israel's existence.


Last December, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, China and 162 other UN member-nations gave their unequivocal support to UN resolution 17/96, guaranteeing the protections of the Geneva Convention to Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories, when there is no real and actual threat to Palestinian civilians other than those they themselves provoke through incitement to violence, threats to destroy Israel, and never-ending incidents of deadly violence.

Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital despite intense Arab, Muslim and European opposition to a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and risk potentially violent protests. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

The most recent resolution brought by Turkey and Yemen in the United Nations to the general assembly against the American announcement by the Trump administration that it was finally in favour of committing to relocating its embassy now in Tel Aviv to the de facto capital of Israel in Jerusalem, to impose pressure brought by the weight of the world body's censure of the U.S. was beyond absurd. Jerusalem is Israel's capital, despite the Palestinians claiming prior heritage status of the ancient city, when it was the capital of Judean Zion thousands of years before Arabs and Islam entered history.

As a sheer matter of principle, were it not for the governing Liberals' pride in their 'progressive' values, reason and intelligence should have ensured that Canada would vote "no" to denounce the resolution damning America for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. While the UN body daintily quibbles its outrage over Jerusalem, North Korea and Iran in their industrious commitment to ICBMs and nuclear warheads threatening world stability become a non-issue. Turkey's murderous assaults on the Kurds, Syria's on its own Sunni population and Yemen's deadly civil war, mere trifles.

In choosing to abstain, Canada has, in essence, allied itself with countries such as Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Venezuela. The result of the vote represented an exculpatory boost to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas, whose corrupt histrionics have been handsomely rewarded by the Non-Aligned contingent and the European democracies which pride themselves on their equanimity in the face of Islamist conquest, alongside the craven inability of countries like Canada to face the courage of the convictions they have mislaid along the way.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during an extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Turkey, December 13, 2017. (photo credit: REUTERS/KAYHAN OZER/POOL)

United Nations -- True to Form

"[The 57-member group Organization of Islamic Cooperation remains committed to a] just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution." 
"[The United Nations must end] the Israeli occupation [of Palestine and declare the Trump administration liable for] all the consequences of not retracting from this illegal decision]."
"[We] consider that this dangerous declaration, which aims to change the legal status of the [city], is null and void and lacks any legitimacy."
Organization of Islamic Cooperation statement

"The OIC rejects and condemns the American decision. This is a violation of international law ... and this is a provocation of the feelings of Muslims within the world."
"It will create a situation of instability in the region and in the world."
Yousef al-Othaimeen, secretary general, Organization of Islamic Cooperation

"Now, Muslim countries in addition to a whole lot of others that are allied with the Palestinian cause will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine."
"And those Islamic countries are ready to sever relations to punish any one country that follows in the footsteps of the United States in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."
Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst, Al Jazeera

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during an extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Turkey, December 13, 2017. (photo credit: REUTERS/KAYHAN OZER/POOL)

"We are here today to say together and in clear language: Jerusalem was, still is and will always be the capital of the State of Palestine." 
"We will apply to the UN Security Council for the annulment of US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital."
"We call on world nations to reconsider their recognition of Israel over its conduct toward Palestinians and its dismissal of decisions by the international community with the backing of the United States."
"We came to say 'no' to the Trump declaration and to the policy of occupation and ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel in Jerusalem."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

Today's resolution brought before the United Nations to condemn the Trump administration's recognition of Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the State of Israel, saw most of the nation-members of the UN vote in favour. There were a handful of rejections of the resolution and a larger group of fence-sitters, among them Canada, all of whom abstained, but the resolution carried with a majority vote in favour, non-binding though it is. The Trump administration does not look favourably upon the craven submission of most UN member-countries in supporting this resolution and in so doing backhand-slapping the U.S.

Co-sponsored by Turkey, the current chair of the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Yemen, chair of the Arab Group at the United Nations, Mahmoud Abbas characteristically and predictably called the event a resounding success. Believing that his contention that the Palestinians are a distinct and entitled group of Arabs whose heritage decrees that Jerusalem with its undeniable (supported by UNESCO's denying Judaism's historical, Biblical and archaeological links to Jerusalem) Arabic heritage must be recognized as the capital of a nascent Palestinian state despite the falsity of the claim.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose hatred of Israel is clear in his spewing of vitriolic accusations of Israel as a genocidal, terrorist nation, confuses his own country's verifiably documented persecution and slaughter of Armenians, Greeks and Kurds with his version of a country whose civility and just and fair treatment in equality of citizenship with Israeli minorities, religious and ethnic groups are in stark contrast to Turkey's. The sectarian slaughter that is taking place in Yemen scarcely qualifies that country to condemn another in the region whose goal truly is peace. All that has occurred in this as in other instances of Muslim hostility to Judaism is sadly typical of Arab/Muslim countries.

As for the emergency conference called by Erdogan in Istanbul earlier this month to gather the 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation for the purpose of standing together in unified defiance of the American statement on Jerusalem and condemning Israel for thinking it could reclaim its history and heritage and deprive the Arab world of its claims that the heritage and history are its, when in fact it is a well documented usurper, the conference did not go quite as planned when its most important members failed to present themselves. A tepid showing serving to demonstrate just how divided the cooperative members truly are among themselves.

Palestinians protest in the West Bank town of Hebron on 13 December against Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Israel last week. Photograph: Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA

International Allies Versus North Korea

"The meeting of the Vancouver Group is going to be another visible sign that the international community is acting in concert to speak to the government of North Korea and to say this is threatening us all, and the pressure will increase until the behaviour changes."
"Having said that, we are confident that this campaign of international pressure will lead to the best outcome for the whole world, I think the only outcome for the whole world, which is a diplomatic path to a resolution to this crisis."
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Christia Freeland

"At this stage, we are not sure what kind of meeting it will be. We have not made decisions."
"The danger which Canada may feel will be more and more. Canada should be one of the main players."
Japanese official

"What's important for North Korea to know is that this pressure campaign will not abate, we will not be rolling any of it back, it will only intensify as time goes by."
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Diplomacy has accomplished nothing with North Korea in the past; pacts have been signed, promises made and flouted. Attempts to wheedle North Korea away from its inexorable path to nuclear weaponry and intercontinental ballistic missiles, along with threats have been hugely disappointing. Efforts to appease the Kims have resulted in nothing but temporary and largely illusory halts in the regime of the People's Republic's steady and accelerating mission, and to continue to rely on the hope that further talks could conceivably result in an understanding and accommodation on the part of Kim to backtrack on his trajectory remains an illusion.

The uncompromising stance of defiance and bellicose threats emanating from Kim Jong Un remain unchanged. He heeds no one, not the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, nor the Chinese patrons who have supported the Kim dynasty whose presence represents a dike in the Chinese regime's castle. Now news that Kim has reacted with the ultimate finality toward a principal architect of his nuclear program by 'dismissing' him from existence through execution. Park In Young, officially responsible for the Punggye-ri nuclear test site is no more.

That news carried to South Korea through the defection of yet another North Korean soldier. This man, formerly chief of Bureau 131 of the ruling Central Committee supervised military facilities such as the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test facility and the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. Some feel his execution is linked to the October nuclear test, the country’s sixth, a 100-kiloton hydrogen bomb seven times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

The test facility is located south of a mountain, Mantapsan, and a series of small earthquakes shook the area after a September test launch, leaving fears the mountain, may no longer be stable. A number of tunnels collapsed, killing up to 200 people. "If North Korea were to attempt to continue testing under this mountain , then we would expect to see new tunneling in the future near the North Portal, still under Mt. Mantap,". explained Frank Pabian and Jack Liu, researchers who wrote a report published on the North Korea monitoring website 38 North.

A South Korean scientist shows seismic waves taking place in North Korea on a screen at the Korea Meteorological Administration center on September 3 in Seoul. More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility. North Korea is believed to have punished an official responsible for the test site, according to reports in Japanese newspaper Asahi

So there is some internal destabilization linked to North Korea's indelible venture to destabilize the parts of the world he ascribes threats emanating from, toward North Korea. An stealth American training initiative that almost sounds like a combination of Bay of Pigs and Osama bin Laden assassination has been underway, where American soldiers have been training with their South Korean counterparts in potential rescue operations should war break out. According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, the exercise was meant to simulate "infiltrating North Korea and removing weapons of mass destruction in case of conflict." 

In the meanwhile, the United States, Japan, South Korea have been placed on notice that they are all tagged by North Korea as possible targets should Kim Jong Un feel convinced at any time that his country is under direct threat of invasion, when a missile carrying a nuclear payload could be armed and aimed in their direction. As far as Canada is concerned, in aiming for the U.S. mainland, such a missile could conceivably go astray and fall short of its target, hitting Canada. A reality that brings Canada into the planning fray.

Canada offered Vancouver as a meeting site, for a meeting called the "United Nations Command Sending States Meeting", outlined in a briefing by a U.S. State Department official. The countries in question were members of the United Nations Command representing military grouping countries such as South Korea, the United States and fifteen others, including Canada, all of which contributed to defense of the South during the 1950 to 1953 Korean war. All the Korean war states are to be invited to attend along with Japan, India and Sweden.

Japan, the one nation that has suffered two ICBMs flying over and into its airspace, falling into the Sea of Japan, appears to be uncertain about the purpose and the potential outcome of such a conference. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono hesitated to commit his country to any move before year's end. The Japanese offer a realistic point of view that dialogue simply for the sake of dialogue is essentially meaningless. The strategy at present is to place sufficient pressure on North Korea through economic sanctions to force it to seek a mutual agreement.

This too has never worked in the past. While ordinary people in the North become ever more impoverished and the spectre of starvation hangs over the countryside, Kim Jong Un's privileged officials will never lack for both fundamentals and luxury items to ease their passage in life. And China, while genuinely expressing alarm over the impetuously dangerous actions that Kim mounts -- deliberately oblivious to the danger he places himself and his country in, using the blackmail of imposing mass death and destruction on the South -- yet hesitates to abandon its client state.