Let's talk about international law, Hamas and Israel

Who is Natasha Hausdorff?

After a law degree at Oxford University and an LL.M. specialising in public international law, Natasha clerked for the President of the Supreme Court of Israel in Jerusalem, acquiring a particular insight into the Court’s application of international law. In 2018, as a Pegasus Scholar, Natasha was a Fellow at Columbia Law School in the National Security Law Program. She frequently lectures around the world on aspects of public international law and national security policy.

Natasha Hausdorff schooling the BBC

New Zealand's foreign policy signals virtually no virtue

The war on Ukraine and more specifically the war on Ukrainian people is heart-breaking, revolting and has rightfully appalled most governments around the world. The response of many countries have been wide ranging sanctions. The Financial Times summarises many of them imposed by the US, UK, EU and other Western countries like Canada and Japan including:

• Travel bans and asset freezes for Russian and Belarus politicians and officials
• Bans and sanctions on banks, including prohibitions on trading and borrowing by financial institutions
• Bans on Russian companies raising finance and bans on trading with major Russian companies
  
• Restrictions on technology exports, including aerospace and telecommunications 

Australia has imposed its own series of autonomous sanctions, including banning exports of oil exploration technologies, prohibiting financial institutions from providing credit or loans to Russian financial institutions, military or petroleum companies. 

Even scrupulously neutral Switzerland has imposed asset freezes on certain Russian individuals. 

How about New Zealand? The Wall Street Journal has highlighted it for shame.

Well it has done the following: 

• a travel ban on Russian officials "involved with the invasion" (even though none could ever travel to New Zealand under current rules that prohibit entry to NZ for non-permanent residents/citizens without specific visas)
• Prohibit exports to Russian military and security forces
• Suspended bilateral foreign ministry consultations.

It's literally pathetic. Now the Government has since announced it will be looking to pass legislation to go further, but given NZ's foreign policy is awash with virtue signalling, this looks very much like very little virtue at all.  The constant declaring of what they might be thinking of doing is par for the course for this government led by someone who wants global acclaim.

Look at two of NZ's virtue signalling foreign policies:

• Anti-nuclear policy: This has achieved absolutely nothing to enhance the peace and security of NZ or anywhere else in the world. However, it is the height of virtue signalling against the US, UK and France.
• Climate change policy: NZ's contribution towards reducing climate change has infinitesimal impacts, but the Ardern Government wants to be "leading" global commitments to reduce climate change, regardless of the economic cost. It's a showcase designed to encourage others to go further, rather than to simply follow in concert with NZ's major trading partners, but in actual impacts it is almost "net zero".

Yet when a nuclear-powered sovereign state attacks another sovereign state, NZ is found wanting. Of course the Government rejected Gerry Brownlee's bill for multiple reasons.  Minter Ellison Rudd Watts gives various reasons for it being rejected.  

It concluded that "it is likely that the specific regime proposed would have achieved little more than political signalling (and some counter-productive signalling at that)". Yet that has been at the forefront of so much foreign policy to date.  The "counter-productive signalling" is being able to act outside multilateral organisations, but this is exactly what the problem is today. A Permanent Member of the UN Security Council is waging war, and multilateralism wont address this, as much as well-meaning NZ lawyers might think this is "counter-productive" they aren't likely to be victims of war waged by Russia, or indeed China. (Note the lawyers call Ukraine "the Ukraine", unfortunately). 

However the lawyers mainly opposed it because "if passed, the Bill would certainly have further complicated the regulatory compliance obligations of New Zealand exporters, importers and trade facilitators".  Do they seriously think Ministers would impose sanctions in some manner that doesn't take into account the impacts on those trading and investing in sanctioned countries? How is this remotely different to NZ having to impose sanctions mandated by UN Security Council Resolutions?

I'm not going to say Brownlee's Bill was perfect, but its timing deserved more attention. It certainly shouldn't have been rejected because moral equivocating Marxists like Teanau Tuiono think it might create "further risk of politicisation of sanctions rather than fairness and equity" (code for sanctions on regimes he quite likes). 

Now NZ sanctioning Russia would largely be symbolic, but it is also about plugging gaps in the global financial and trading system.  The New Zealand Dollar is apparently the tenth most traded currency in the world, so NZ does actually need to plug the risk that it will be used to subvert sanctions from other jurisdictions.  Fonterra has already announced it is suspending exports to Russia. 

Russia takes 0.49% of NZ's exports by value (27th place), slightly less than Egypt. Whereas about 0.97% of NZ's imports come from Russia (19th place), with NZ being a net importer from Russia. The main export is dairy products, the main import is oil products. 

There is no good reason to hesitate. If Switzerland... SWITZERLAND... which until recently refused to join the United Nations in order to remain neutral, can impose sanctions quickly, so can New Zealand.  

To say it can't do it quickly is of course a nonsense. The Ardern Government has demonstrated that when it sees urgency, it gets legislation drafted and passed under extraordinary urgency when it wants, and did so for Covid 19. It could get legislation drafted and passed in the coming week if it wanted to.

The difference is that the Ardern Government didn't plan to have to deal with actual war, war that shows the limits of the United Nations, war that was predicted for weeks in advance.  

It really does need to join the rest of the world, and quickly.

Korea: Real change or the cycle of bluff?

North Korea watchers are split on what the outcomes of the latest diplomatic activities on the Korean peninsula will mean.  There was the usual, tiresome, anti-Trump kneejerk reaction to his threats to the DPRK, which of course follow the DPRK's missile and nuclear tests, all of which breach UN Security Council Resolutions.  Trump rightfully declared that no regime oppresses its citizens like North Korea.  Liberty in North Korea gives you more on this, which I wont repeat.  It's a regime that controls movement of its people not only to leave this prison state, but to leave your own town.  It runs gulags in which it incarcerates entire families for the political "crimes" of one (that mean elderly relatives down to babies).  It is difficult to exaggerate the scale of this, but it's also important to remember that this ISN'T a priority internationally.  

So let's be clear about what the DPRK is.

• Totalitarian regime with unrivalled levels of control on media, speech, movement of people compared with virtually any other country.  There is little internet access, almost no access to broadcasts from outside the country, and very few ever have permission to travel outside the country.  There is very little private enterprise, with what there is being restricted to informal (but tolerated) market stalls.  All other retail and trading activities are undertaken by the state, and economic activity is directed by central planning with limited use of price as a tool to manage demand and supply.
• Highly militarised, with a standing army of 1.1 million (and over 8 million reservists) out of a population of around 25 million, with the military taking around 20% of GDP.
• It is the creation of the USSR, which entered the northern half of Korea near the end of World War 2 as the US entered the southern half, as Japan withdrew its imperial forces.  Japan had occupied Korea and treated it is a vassal state since 1910, treating Koreans in many cases as slave labour.  The UN sought to hold elections across Korea, but the USSR refused to allow the holding of an election in the northern half.  The south held elections, and the Republic of Korea was formed, with the first President Syngman Rhee.  The north declared the Democratic People's Republic of Korea shortly thereafter, with a Stalinist system led by Kim Il Sung.  At the end of the 1940s the US withdrew from south Korea, and Kim Il Sung was given approval from Stalin and Mao to reunify Korea under a communist system, starting the Korean War.  After three years of bloodshed, including UN intervention on the side of the south (led by the USA), the war ended roughly at the same point as where it started.  The DPRK declared "victory" as it claimed the south started the war, led by "US imperialism".  
• The USSR instituted Kim Il Sung as Supreme Leader of the DPRK, with a Constitution and party/state structure mirroring that of the USSR at the time (under Stalin).  Kim Il Sung was a minor guerrilla fighter who led a small band of resistance against the Japanese, before fleeing to the USSR where the Red Army schooled him in Stalinism.  

However, it is important to remember what it tells its citizens:

• They are the luckiest people in the world with (as Barbara Demick's book was titled) "Nothing to Envy in the world".
• South Korea is a "puppet regime" run by the USA as a slave colony of fascism, where the people revere the Kim dynasty and ache for reunification under their leadership.  South Korea would quickly reunify with the North if the US imperialist withdrew their "troops of occupation", but the USA treats its south Korean "subjects" like the Japanese used to.
• Kim Il Sung led an army which was responsible for liberating ALL of Korea from Japanese imperialism, and he entered Pyongyang to adoring crowds grateful for his feats of military acumen.  Kim Il Sung was the most intelligent, skilled, amazing, adoring and generous man of all history, he is admired globally by billions of people, and his works are consumed by them and inspire their own feats.   
• Other countries are either impoverished or comprise a small rich elite that take advantage of a mass of downtrodden workers, who are all impoverished, without the wondrous goods and free housing, healthcare and education of the DPRK.  
• The Korean War was NOT started by the DPRK, but by the USA wanting to aggressively turn all of Korea into a slave colony.  The US has always wanted this.

Kim Jong Un's number one priority is regime survival.  This has two elements.  One is protection from foreign attack (primarily the US, seeking to destroy its nuclear arsenal) and the other is internal revolt.

Kim Jong Un may have a big ego and be ruthless, but he is no fool.  For decades, the DPRK relied on the Cold War to ensure that it didn't really fear any US attack, because that was deterred by the USSR.  However, with US military action to overthrow Saddam Hussein, to support the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and to strategically attack military sites in Syria, there is real fear of the US (particularly under Trump, compared to Obama), striking the DPRK.

Yes Kim Jong Un knows the US fears the DPRK striking back, not so much with nuclear weapons, but with a massive conventional attack on south Korea, which may also include chemical and biological weapons (it is widely believed that the DPRK has all three primary types of WMDs).  However, he also knows that the US and south Korea can easily defeat the DPRK on the battlefield with conventional weapons and if nuclear weapons were used by the DPRK, Pyongyang would almost certainly be levelled by a similar response.  He is as deterred by the devastation and scale of death as the US is, so he is keen on lowering of tensions.

His survival also needs protection from internal revolt.  The only institution capable of doing this is the military.  Mass revolt by the population is almost inconceivable, as the whole country outside Pyongyang faced starvation during the late 1990s and there was little sign of resistance.  However, shortly after Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, his widow (who was not Kim Jong Il's mother, but his stepmother) apparently sought to get the military to stage a coup against Kim Jong Il (widely thought of as a lazy psychopathic playboy), but failed.  His response was the "Songun" (military first) policy that effectively sidelined the Korean Workers Party as the centre of authority, making the military the priority of the party, the state and the economy.

This is where the rational interest of denuclearisation, reduction of tension and peace on the Korean peninsula faces a conflict of interests with those of the Korean People's Army.  Kim Jong Un will know that if he significantly reduces the economic commitment of the state to the military he risks the military taking over.

So he has TWO choices, assuming that ignoring the military isn't an option.

1.  Don't demilitarise at all.  Re-enter the familiar cycle of detente, with rhetoric of peace.  Conduct no more nuclear tests, even allow unprecedented levels of inspection of the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site (which is already destroyed) and seek a lowering or ending of economic sanctions. It will not dismantle its existing arsenal, but it will buy time for trade and investment.  It will demand that the US withdraw from south Korea before anything else happens (despite claims to the contrary) and after a period of a year or two of more trade, the cycle of sanctions and threats will recommence.

2.  Corporatise the military.  Sign a peace treaty, get US assurances of non-aggression, but retain WMDs and a formidable defence capability, but redirect the defence sector's activity more towards trade and the (black) economy.  Let the army run businesses, allow limited foreign investment in factories and infrastructure and become rich.   The military can then be part of a pseudo-capitalist reform programme that enriches those within it, enables it to upgrade its own equipment and grow the economy.  This will also mean that the current elite can enrich themselves through a mild form of liberalisation and capitalism.  Think China in the 1970s, but don't go too far down that path.

For as long as the Kim clan lead, the Kim Il Sung myth needs to be sustained.  That means that the big lies of the regime must be protected.  North Koreans can't know that their brethren in the south live with a level of prosperity AND freedom that they could hardly imagine.  So don't expect very much loosening of trade and travel between north and south.  South Koreans will be able to visit very carefully managed resorts (and be expected to spend a lot of hard currency), but north Koreans wont be travelling.   The tight control on media, movement of people and information will have to be maintained, otherwise it risks the broad mass of the population who are neither in the military nor the elite, asking questions and demanding to live more like south Koreans.  They'll want the houses, the clothes, the electrical goods, the cars, the freedom.  All of that will bring down the DPRK, particularly if the military split.  

So what do I think will happen?

I think there will be a lot of talk.  I think the US will demand, as a bare minimum, full inspection and verification of the dismantling of the DPRK's nuclear arsenal and concrete steps to build confidence between the sides.  That could mean allowing unrestricted family reunifications across the border,  greater travel from the south to the north, trade and investment, and allowing cultural and sporting exchanges.

However, the DPRK only wants three things: the US to withdraw from south Korea, a guarantee to not be attacked and an end to economic sanctions.  It can't afford to open up, so it is stuck.  

By no means should Trump agree to US withdrawal from south Korea without a least full verifiable dismantling of the nuclear weapons programme, and ideally also chemical and biological weapons (if the DPRK opens those up then it will be a transformative change).  Although it could certainly agree to a non-aggression treaty based end to the war, it still needs to maintain deterrence against conventional attack.   However, what should not be neglected is the push for closer interaction between the Koreas at the personal level.  I'm far from convinced that Kim Jong Un is doing anything other than playing for time, cementing his reputation in the north and pushing to get economic sanctions eased to help enrich the elite of his regime (and encourage some investment.

He is stuck between the legacy of his grandfather (and father's) web of deceit and the military's position to overthrow him.  The China reform option isn't really there.  However, let's take the calming of tensions as a good thing and hope that it's an opportunity to break the regime open a bit more.  The more that happens, the better the chances for the millions north of the DMZ.

How to explain the hard-left's position on Syria

When a one-party state, led by a dictator, with a personality cult, who inherited his position from his father (who himself gained power by military coup), repeatedly uses chemical weapons against his opponents and the residents of areas governed by his opponents, you'd think there would be universal outrage and condemnation.  

But no.  Setting aside the regime itself and its foreign backer (Russia - which has used its airforce to quell dissent against the regime, with little apparent concern for civilian casualties), there have been two groups who tend to hold one (or even more than one) of three views of these events:

1.  The chemical attacks didn't happen (the "false flag" believers).  As such it was staged by one or more opposition groups, or the more ludicrous claims that it was a CIA, MI5, Israeli orchestrated charade.

2.  The chemical attacks did happen, but were undertaken either by an opposition group (which has no air power, given the Syrian Air Force is well equipped) or by the UK (says Russia), to discredit Assad and Russia.

3.  The chemical attacks did happen, but no one can prove it was the Assad regime, and besides any military action just "makes it worse", will "escalate conflict", will "benefit Jihadists", is "illegal", etc.

One group are non-interventionist libertarians, who at best simply oppose military action by governments on principle, unless it is for self-defence.  Some are conspiracy theory cranks who share a lot with the other group.  I'll discuss them all another day.  Suffice to say, while I respect high levels of scepticism over intervention, I am not a non-interventionist.  I think there is a considerable interest for us all, for those governments with some values of individual rights, rule of law and secular liberal democracy, to take steps to ensure that the treaty based commitment of state to not use chemical weapons, is enforced, with some urgency especially if that state is using it against civilians.  There is merit in arguments against such action, but this post is not about those arguments.

This is about the much larger and vocal "other lot", the so-called "peace" movement on the left.  It's view, as exemplified by the far-left hypocritical "Stop the War Coalition" in the UK, is fairly simple.  It opposes absolutely all Western military action of all kinds, and happily cheers on military, terrorist and other insurgency action by any entities confronting the West or its allies. Loud on US intervention, silent on Russia.  Most of the libertarian non-interventionists are fairly consistently opposed to both, but the far-left are much more obviously hypocritical.

With a Hat Tip to Dave Rich on Twitter I thought his explanation of the hard-left worldview of these events, alongside the Skripal poisoning and indeed many foreign policy issues is as applicable to the NZ Green Party as it is to the UK Labour Party, and to equivalent far-left movements in other countries. 

A short thread about what links Corbyn’s position on the Douma gassings, Skripal poisonings, Gaza violence and antisemitism in Labour. Seemingly unconnected events but a thread links Corbyn’s responses: his view of power /1

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

For Corbyn, Stop The War Coalition & others in their part of the left, all the problems of the world are due to the unequal distribution of power & wealth. Sort that out and war, poverty, terrorism, racism etc will all disappear /2

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

This is why he will never support any use of military force by the UK, US or any other Western country. They have power therefore it is not legitimate for them to use it. Instead they should give it up /3

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Corbyn in the Morning Star, 2004: “The wars of the 21st century are crude fights for oil or power and emanate from glittering boardrooms in Western capitals.” Iraq & Palestine show “all that is wrong with the world's power structures.” It’s that simple /4 pic.twitter.com/07zvktNefW

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Ideology, identity, culture, local power dynamics: all missing from this narrative of why wars happen, because it is all about the globally powerful exploiting & oppressing the powerless /5

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Unequivocally condemning Russia for Salisbury or Assad for Douma would involve taking the side of the powerful (UK & US) against the powerless (Russia & Assad). I know, the flaw in this ‘logic’ is so obvious a child would spot it. But that’s the thinking /6

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

It’s not pacifism. STWC supported the “resistance” in Iraq & Palestine when that resistance was definitely violent. Here’s STWC in Dec 2003 supporting “military struggle” against UK & US forces in Iraq and “armed struggle” in Palestine /7 pic.twitter.com/HP1Lrq9HkC

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

It’s not about Parliament or the UN either. Parliament supported the 2003 Iraq War. Afghanistan was invaded under the UN Charter. Does anyone seriously think Corbyn & STWC would drop their opposition if Parliament or the UN backed the Syria strikes? /8

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Israel is seen as part of the Western power network so its use of force can never be justified either. This is why Corbyn can be so certain he knows what is happening on the Gaza border. The powerful are shooting the powerless. Simple /9

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

But when Assad gasses Syrian children it doesn’t fit the paradigm so he calls for investigations, he condemns both sides, he talks in generalities about political solutions and diplomatic processes that don’t exist /10

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Similarly, a lot of people on the left don’t take antisemitism seriously because Jews are seen as wealthy and powerful. This means Jews can’t really experience racism, because racism is what you get when rich powerful white people oppress poor people of colour /11

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

The next step is thinking that because Jews are rich and powerful, they are part of networks of power in Western states & therefore Jews (not just Israel) are oppressors. Not everyone on the left takes this step – but it’s easy to find, especially if you call them “Zionists” /12

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

It’s a simple way of viewing the world: the West has all the power and everyone else has suffered from the West’s power. Follow that paradigm and you can work out what to think about any issue. It has the benefit of certainty but the drawback of being wrong. /End

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

70 years since VJ Day - a victory that was necessary and moral

I remember hearing the stories of the men who endured being POWs of Japan in World War 2. Growing up with TV series such as Tenko exposed me to a taste of the sadism and violence of imperial Japan.  So it is with some sadness to note that one of the primary narratives, from the so-called "liberal" left has been not remembering the brutality, fascism and racism of Japanese militarism, but demands for American apologies for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It's a small sign that culturally, the stories of the Burma Railway (which saw around 100,000 work as slave labour), the Nanking Massacre (at least 50,000 killed, 20,000 women and girls raped) and Japan's brutal occupation of almost all of east Asia from Korea to today's Indonesia, have such a low profile. You can be sure that China's modern tyrants and the two Koreas damn well make sure nobody forgets in their countries, as they don't need to exaggerate the genocidal approach Japan took to placing their lands under the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".  Perhaps it is because Western leftwing academics aren't excited when it isn't Europeans doing the invading and killing, as it doesn't fit the banal "only white people can be racist" narrative.   The so-called "peace" movement has no answer as to how the world should have responded to imperialist Japan, is it because it is less concerned with "peace" than it is with opposing Western civilisation, liberal democracy, freedom and capitalism, with a distinctly anti-European bent?

The endurance of those who fought militarist Japan is difficult to calculate.  There were Americans, Koreans (not Kim Il Sung after 1940 despite the complete fictional account he based his legitimacy on), Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, Nepalese and many others, and they were rolling back a regime that had at its centre a philosophy of:

- Racial supremacy:  The Japanese were the master race, all others were inferior.  Indeed, Koreans  and Manchurians were so inferior that chemical and biological weapons were tested on them (and yes the Allies took the research conclusions for their own purposes after the war).  

- Militaristic fascism:  Japanese imperial rule was based on the entire militarisation of society, with no sense of consultation or input from the governed.  All were subjects, all were to do as they were told and to operate effectively as slaves, for the Empire of Japan.  It was a complete totalitarian regime, and given the superiority of Japanese rulers, its subjects were deemed to be grateful for the mercy of the Emperor.

- Religious authenticity:  The rule of the Empire was deemed to come from the Emperor, who was the living embodiment of god.  That was absolute and not able to be questioned.

One measure of the human cost of Japanese imperialism is over 6 million deaths due to murder, under its occupation from 1937 to 1945 alone, but Japan's imperialism started in 1910 (with Western consent) in Korea and its invasion of China commenced in the early 1930s.  100,000 were massacred in Manila alone in early 1945.  The "Three Alls" policy applied to China after 1940 was to "kill all, burn all, loot all" in retaliation to Chinese resistance to the occupation.  Women and girls throughout the occupied territories, particularly in Korea, were kept as sex slaves (so-called "comfort women") to please the military.   Japanese newspapers even celebrated the "contest" between army officers as to who could kill 100 with a sword first.

Japan's militarist regime was the aggressor, but it also had the compliant and enthusiastic support of a people who did what they were told, who worshipped their Emperor and basked in the propaganda that told them how superior and special they are, and how lucky they were to have been chosen to lead Asia.  What dissent there was in Japan was not organised and on a minor scale.  Japan's dictators had the effective consent of its population to conquer.

So the defeat of Japan, unconditionally, was wholly moral and justified.  The use of nuclear weapons to accelerate that defeat and contribute towards it was also moral and justified.   The reason Japan had nuclear weapons applied to it was because it had invaded the United States, it had conquered and placed much of Asia under its brutal sadistic jackboot.  The moral culpability for the deaths inflicted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and indeed already by conventional bombing in Tokyo, Osaka and many other cities, was the Imperial Government of Japan, which was willing to continue murdering and killing innocents abroad and refusing to surrender in a war that it started.

No one can doubt the abject horror and suffering the two atomic bombs caused, the horror they inflicted undoubtedly contributed not only to them not being used in Korea by President Truman (against military advice), but also inadvertently creating the deterrent effect which remains to this day.  However, the justification for their use is not from those impacts, but because defeating a ruthless, sadistic and murderous tyranny justifies using weapons that minimise the casualties of your own population.   Better to use the atomic bombs than to suffer greater Allied casualties by ground invasion or not obtaining an unconditional defeat and complete withdrawal of Japan from Asia.

When a tyranny wages war against its neighbours, and brings death and destruction upon them, its victims cannot be constrained from inflicting defeat upon it, for fear of the inevitable deaths it causes upon the weakest who reside under that tyranny.  All tyrannies hope and expect that governments with less appetite for war than it, will weaken in the face of taking such unpalatable decisions.  These same tyrannies don't think twice of massacring others.  The children killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the responsibility of their parents - the same parents who remained in Japan, working and contributing towards a system that had been waging a sadistic expansionist war against its neighbours.

So yes, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, appallingly dreadful and unspeakably vile though they were, were a considered, reasonable military decision to seek to accelerate an end to a war that was the responsibility of the Empire of Japan.   The attacks on Japan were acts of self-defence, to remove a regime that until the last day of the war, insisted on retaining control over Japan, on taking responsibility for prosecuting war crimes itself, and essentially no change in government.   It took the evidence of the nuclear attacks to force Japan to surrender with only one condition - that the Emperor would be protected.  That was one condition that could, grudgingly, be accepted.  You don't need to imagine what the Empire of Japan would do when it defeated a country - for it did so many times - it enslaved the entire country under martial law, and engaged in forms of genocide.

Those who fought against Japan were heroes, they defeated one of the most malignantly evil regimes of the 20th century (albeit this has quite a long list), an expansionist racist tyranny that any "true" liberal would celebrate the defeat of, without question.

The hand-wringing about the atomic attacks may be understandable, given their historic significance. However, to talk of the suffering of those attacks outside the wider context of Japanese eliminationist racism and militarism, is disingenuous.  It smacks of cheap anti-Americanism.   There are questions that can be asked about how some Japanese war criminals were effectively excused and some Japanese atrocities were deliberately ignored after the war, and bigger questions about how Japan still hasn't effectively faced up to its history (but then neither has communist China).  

However there should be no questions about the victory over Japan.  Moreover, given the enormous assistance the West gave to Japan to rebuild, reject communism, become a friend and until recently become the second biggest economy in the world (with a standard of living to match),  and be a functioning, vibrant liberal democracy,  the picture painted of an evil USA engaging in mass murder of Japanese civilians unjustifiably, seems selective indeed.   Now if only Japan's leaders could start treating their wartime history like German leaders treat theirs.   

North Korea's internet shutdown? So?

Whilst much of the media has parroted reports that the "DPRK's internet has been shut down", few actually specified the source for this, nor did they explain how meaningless this is without the explanation that 99.99% of the population has absolutely no internet access.

You see the DPRK's internet connection is restricted to a privileged subset of the ruling elite.   Virtually none of the DPRK's population outside Pyongyang and the Chinese border town of Sinuiju is even aware of the Internet.   A tiny proportion of the population has PCs, and the extent to which they are interconnected, it is through Kyangmyong - the local intranet which largely exists to distribute government material and approved content.  

So,  the consequences for almost everyone in the country are nil.  The consequences for a fraction of the ruling party and army elite are inconvenience.  

The authority for this is also not a DPRK source.  The Korean Central News Agency is a source for the news that the DPRK wants to present to the world, but domestically its content is quite different. Domestically, there is no awareness of the internet, although reports about Kyangmyong exist to demonstrate how technically adept the country is.  However, NKNews.Org has reported that there appears to have been a compromise of the country's external connections, although this isn't hard to do:

North Korea’s connection to the internet is relatively fragile, indicating that it would not take a particularly sophisticated attack to knock the DPRK offline.

“There’s nothing clearly evident which points to U.S. involvement … there has been talk amongst the [non-government-aligned] hacking classes of reprisals,” Frank Feinstein NK News chief technical officer said.

“This sort of thing could be pulled off by a collective or handful of individuals, rather than a state power very easily,” Feinstein added.

So a technically unsophisticated dictatorship with very few connections to the outside world,  for a system that serve the Kim family, and the top echelons of the party and military, was weakened.  

I've seen no reports noting that its brethren in the south, one of the world's most connected country's, could easily undertake such an attack.   

The real story is that the DPRK is under almost constant internet shutdown.  It is the world's least connected country, not due to poverty, but because of deliberate government policy.

Closing down its international connections, which it appears to have used to attack systems in other countries, and which are largely reserved to an elite that actively prevents the free speech and information it offers from reaching almost anyone else, is not a bad result.

The petulant man-child running the place, aping his sophisticated grand fraudster grandfather, is trying to flex his muscles to show to the military - the real source of power and threat to power - that he is up to the job.   Embarrassing a Japanese corporation in the USA over a film that pokes fun at him would have a been a top job for the Pyongyang hackers.  

In truth, he runs a country where he can't expose too many skilled young computer technicians to the technology that it can't easily access (due to sanctions) or the internet, or else they will find out a little too much about the lies told to them through school and the media - without rewarding them all very handsomely indeed, or keeping the under draconian control.

That's not a formula for building ICT capabilities to seriously take on south Korea or the USA, set aside companies that are weak in the computer security.   It should not be difficult to confine the child's ambitions.   China, on the other hand, is another story.

Does Russel Norman want Israel to disappear?

It's not clear, after all Russel Norman could just have been too quick to use the wrong language here but look at this:

"Palestine"...

...not Gaza (which Israel did withdraw from and Hamas subsequently used as a base to attack Israel - i.e. not occupied territories - the internationally recognised land of the state of Israel).  

.. not "the occupied territories" (which still respects a two state solution)...

but "Palestine", which implies the end of the state of Israel completely.  It is the Hamas solution.   Russel is wanting Israel to withdraw and disband according to that tweet.

but then this is contradictory:

So it looks like he accepts a state of Israel here, but how can we be sure?  His tone is so one-sided as to be virulently anti-Israel.  It's so evasive of the facts.

Israel withdrew from Gaza, completely.  

It dismantled Jewish settlements in their entirety, it told the Palestinians they could govern their own affairs. So they elected Hamas, which vowed to destroy Israel and institute an Islamist theocracy (and has not held an election since).  Hamas started shooting rockets into Israel, supplied by Iran (completely ignored in all of the "America arms Israel" rhetoric).  Israel imposed a blockade to stop the rockets getting into Gaza.

Forgotten Posts from the Past : "Peace" supporting politicians are hypocrites

More missile tests and nope- nothing from the usual suspects.

Guess it is ok for the murderers of rape victims, secularists, homosexuals, and the advocates of complete integration of religious and state, who enforce with violence laws demanding women and men dress how they want, who fund and train suicide bombers - to have missiles, and weapons capable of destroying a country they want destroyed.

Not those evil Americans with separation of church and state, civil rights for women, homosexuals, atheists and those of any religion, the right to dress pretty much as you want - so no need to protest.

"Peace movement"? Well I think that's been shown up for what it isn't.

The "peace movement" is a fraud, as it is more than happy to turn a blind eye to states acquiring aggressive military capability if they are opposed by the West and its allies.

The "peace movement" is fundamentally anti-Western, anti-capitalist and is a tired vestige from the Cold War, as it then was a Soviet backed front that was led by hardline Marxist-Leninists gleaning wider support from the naive, well-meaning and good-natured, for a strategy of disarming the relatively free world.

You see it in protests against attacks on Gaza that are silent on Gaza attacks on Israel.

Peace, unless of course, it is fighting against governments they don't like very much.   You can be sure that if there ever was a WMD attack on Israel, Israel would get the blame, although Israel wouldn't hesitate to respond in kind - and the hypocrites would cry foul.

Crimea matters, for all sorts of reasons

I don't know what has appalled me more - Putin's cynical opportunistic land-grab of Crimea, the almost complete abrogation of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Guarantees for Ukraine by the UK and US, or the extent of leftwing and rightwing moral relativism about the whole thing.

I started by writing an article about how Crimea is what happens when isolationists are in charge.  However, the reaction of much of the public is not just the isolationism that has been bred by the left (the "the West is evil as as bad as anyone else" brigade) and the right ("we're safe, they aren't coming for us, just our friends, who we can ignore"), but the moral relativism attached to what is going on.

In this age of competing media, it is easy to turn on Kremlin propaganda in English from Russia Today, and for critics of the status quo on left and right to cynically dismiss reports from the plurality of Western media sources as propaganda, but it's naive and delusional.  What is going on in Ukraine is old-fashioned power politics, because Vladimir Putin has sniffed weakness from the West and knows it will do little - as long as Barack Obama is in power, David Cameron remains beholden to the appeasement loving Liberal Democrats and the Germans remain paralysed by their own history.

So let's first knock out some of the lazy assertions, promoted by Putin's regime:

Why is the peace movement so quiet about Korea?

North Korea threatens to start a war with the United States, threatens with bellicose rhetoric to attack with nuclear weapons, to wipe out the enemy.

What do you get from the so-called "peace" movement and the political parties which so rabidly go on about nuclear weapons?

Nothing.

The Green Party is completely silent about north Korea.  Just imagine if it were the United States, or even the UK or France threatening to attack another country.   Just imagine if any nuclear weapons state was happily and gleefully testing nuclear weapons, to show off that it shouldn't be messed with.

The leftwing blogs similarly have largely little to say.  The Standard ignores it.  Real estate agent Martyn Bradbury's outlet ignores it. Idiot Savant ignores it.  

Tim Selwyn thinks that the regular US/ROK military exercises are a "provocation", as if close allies facing a proven holder of all types of WMDs shouldn't make a show of strength as a deterrent.   In fact he just wants New Zealand to not be involved, even though New Zealand fought bravely with the UN-led forces in the Korean War to defeat north Korea's attack on south Korea.  He appears to grant moral equivalency to US and DPRK forces, while criticising the DPRK for being crazy, he doesn't think it is "ok" to support a close ally and major trading partner, the ROK, in deterring Pyongyang.  His rabid anti-Americanism gets in the way of him supporting New Zealand willing to oppose one of the worst dictatorships in modern history.   

Internationally, Greenpeace is silent.

I don't believe most on the left support the DPRK, for it would be akin to supporting the Khmer Rouge, Mao, Stalin or Hitler.  The regime is reprehensible, and commits acts against its own citizens that are sheer horror.   Find another regime that imprisons small children in gulags for the political crimes of their family.

Yet it is that sheer horror that should unite them in opposition to the regime.  There should be protests outside DPRK embassies, there should be peace marches, there should be effigies of Kim Jong Un burnt in the streets.

But nothing.  Surely the left aren't sympathetic to this slave state?

No, I am sure most are not, but they are fickle because the DPRK wants to take on the great Satan - the USA.   So it doesn't really matter if warmongering dictators threaten to attack US targets, for the so-called peace movement presumably thinks they are "fair game".

What happens if the bluff is real?  What happens if there is an attack, will the left claim it is ok for the US to respond?  What if a north Korean nuclear, chemical or biological warhead is released on south Korea?  Will the left/peace movement believe it is ok to respond in kind to utterly destroy north Korea's military capability?

I doubt it.

Why so neutral in the face of unspeakable evil?  Most on the left and in the peace movement accept it was right to fight Nazism.

Why is it not acceptable to deter totalitarian socialism, and to fight it when it attacks?

Is it just because hatred for the United States is stronger than anything?

Just some kind of democracy, not freedom, not peace for Egypt

That's what the Greens want for Egypt.

Well you'd think that if you believe the Green Party official blogger "Toad" with its comments, after I called for secular liberal democracy in Egypt that doesn't wage war with its neighbours.   This was the response (10.19PM 4 February):

@Libertyscott 9:58 PM

I will welcome an open free secular liberal democracy in Egypt, as long as it does not wage war against its neighbours directly or by proxy through terror.

How about just a “democracy”, without the qualifications. Not necessarily secular, not necessarily liberal (I suspect you probably mean libertarian). You know, one where the people decide!

And if the people of Egypt (as determined by genuinely democratic process) want to wage war, that is their democratic right.

But I would counsel anyone anywhere, including in Egypt, that war should be a last resort in resolving international disputes and should be engaged in only in response to serious human rights violations.

Read that again "not necessarily secular" so a theocracy is "ok" for the Greens?  OK if a religion takes charge and the only thing you can vote for is whatever shade of religion is ok?  Who'd have thought!! The Greens think religious based government is ok, better than dictatorship, though you might wonder what the real difference actually is when one sees Iran.

Not necessarily liberal?  Really?  Presumably the Greens don't mean "people's democracy" where a single party represents the "people", like North Korea.  Surely not, although the Greens have more than a couple of MPs who have been sympathetic to such regimes in the past.  Do they mean "third world democracy"? A patronising self serving justification of dictatorship based on traditional values that means societies are unified, not competitive, and work together in a grass roots party.  Like Zanu-PF likes to think itself as being.  No, surely not.   It has to just be Toad being ignorant of what "liberal democracy" means.

However it is clear freedom isn't important as long as people get to vote.

Moreover, Egyptians are allowed to wage war as a democratic right.  I thought the Greens believed in peace, and the UN Charter.  Hardly very peace loving is it?  On top of that war should only be in response to serious human rights violations.  On that basis Britain should not have declared war on Germany because it invaded Poland (but when?), but presumably the US could have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq if only to improve human rights.

However, we know what this is code for.  Egypt could invade Israel, because of human rights violations committed against Palestinians.  That would be ok.  As would Hamas setting up an Islamist democratic theocracy in the Palestinian Territories. 

Peace?  No the Greens think a theocratic democracy can vote to wage war, but only to address serious human rights concerns in another country.   Quite what a theocracy knows of rights would be a fascinating question.   It's simpler than that, the Greens have never believed in freedom, have no real belief in secular liberal western style democracy and so their belief in human rights is vacuous. 

For the rights of those who don't belong to the religion of a theocracy by definition will be neglected.   However, far more sinister, is the belief that as a last resort, democratic theocracies can wage war, but not in self defence, but rather to remedy "human rights".

Remembrance Day

Lest we forget.

Obama Nobel Peace Prize?

Yes, Reuters states Obama has won it.

For what? You might ask. Have tensions with Iran eased? Has he improved the situation in Iraq? Have the Taliban been defeated? Has North Korea agreed to stop calling for seas of blood in South Korea and Japan? Has Russia stopped seeking to dominate its neighbours? Has the risk of Islamist terrorism dramatically reduced? Has the Arab-Israeli conflict lessened? Has Sudan stopped oppressing the people of Darfur?

Well given the Nobel committee gave it to Al Gore two years ago, one can see the value of this prize deteriorating rapidly (although Martti Ahtisaari was deserving last year).

The list of all Nobel winners is here on Wikipedia.

Of those, surely the deserving ones are the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, John Hume and David Trimble, Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk, Sadat and Begin, Lech Walesa and Norman Borlaug (not an exhaustive list).

However, Barack Obama?

Surely, even his greatest enthusiasts would struggle to say anything substantive has been achieved in a matter of months.

UPDATE: Benedict Brogan at the Daily Telegraph is damning.

"President Obama remains the barely man of world politics, barely a senator now barely a president, yet in the land of the Euro-weenies (copyright PJ O’Rourke) the great and the good remain in his thrall. To reward him for a blank results sheet, to inflate him when he has no achievements to his name, makes a mockery of what, let’s face it, is an already fairly discredited process (remember Rigoberta Menchu in 1992? Ha!). That’s not the point. What this does is accelerate the elevation of President Obama to a comedy confection, which he does not deserve, and gives his critics yet another bat to whack him with."

Even the usually pro-Obama Guardian online poll is 2 to 1 against him winning it.

Sri Lanka poisoned by nationalism

Tamil protestors have been out in force in London for several weeks. I said to one that the tragic support of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) meant I saw both sides as equally in the wrong. However, none of this takes away from the humanitarian disaster that this war has seen inflicted on Tamils and the Sinhalese. The apparent ceasefire by the LTTE may hopefully see an end to the killing, but it wont resolve the underlying sore - the malignancy of nationalism on both sides.

The LTTE is a terrorist organisation that maintained a gangster "state" in the north of Sri Lanka for years. It's own tactics which included, until recently, child soldiers as well as bombing civilian targets have badly hurt the cause of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The LTTE, with shades of Hamas, happily has used civilians as human shields. However, which most Tamils support a cause which is based on resisting the nationalist chauvinism of the Buddhist Sinhalese, there is a darker side to this resistance. It is based not on promoting a Sri Lanka where the state is blind to nationality, but on separatism. To resist bigotry and nationalism by promoting your own nationalism by murderous means is not claiming the moral highground. For Tamils to start to claim that, they need to condemn and reject the LTTE, and demand equality under the law and before the law in Sri Lanka. After all, Tamils in India have little appetite for separatism, as India itself is not ethnically or religiously defined.

However, while Wikipedia has lists of attacks by the LTTE, it also has them of the Sri Lankan military. There is little doubt that the Sri Lankan military is far from innocent in this conflict. Its own application of severe censorship on reporting the war means its own antics will be hidden. Sinhalese paramilitary have assisted the Sri Lankan government in attacking Tamil areas. China too has helped armed the Sri Lankan government, demonstrating its willingness to turn a back while its customers kill.

So it looks like the Sri Lankan government will win, but for the conflict to truly be over, Tamils must no longer fear that government - which means it should be open, which means removing restrictions on the media - it should seek transparency and reconciliation, acknowledging what wrong has been done, so Sri Lanka as a whole can start to put this conflict behind it. Tamils and Sinhalese both have to admit people in their communities have assaulted, murdered and destroyed, and the will must be to live side by side.

However, whilst too many in Sri Lankan politics pander to Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, they will continue to see Tamils as the "other", a group that deserve nothing, instead of treating all those in Sri Lanka as individuals. Sri Lanka has tremendous potential in tourism, and in enjoying a share of India's economic revival.

It can only do it best if the religious, nationalist and Marxist elements of Sri Lanka's politics can be eschewed. Yes, Sri Lanka, start treating each other as individuals, not as Tamils, Sinhalese, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever.

The sad filthy fury of the Red Army in Berlin

"A Woman in Berlin" is a film to be released early next year about the experiences of women raped by Red Army soldiers as Nazi Germany fell. According to the Daily Telegraph:

"An estimated two million women faced savage, multiple attacks which would start with the spine-chilling words – 'Frau, Komm'. The film is based on "Anonymous," an autobiographical account originally published by a German journalist and editor in the 1950s, describing her experiences between April and June 1945...Most have hidden their agony and shame since those terrible days in 1945 when girls as young as seven and grandmothers as old as 90 were attacked by legions of drunken, depraved and diseased soldiers. Women were raped on their death beds, pregnant women raped hours before they were due to give birth. Some women were raped by 30 men one after another and day after day. "I can smell them now," said Ingeborg Bullert, now 83, but 20 when the soldiers came for her in her bomb cellar in Berlin."

It is clear the atrocities of that era remain to be uncovered, but sadly it is unlikely that the current Russian government is likely to countenance any denegration of the great myth that the Red Army "liberated" Berlin. For it would be justice if those who committed such crimes could be brought to trial. Sadly it almost certainly is not to be.

At last a peace protest against Russia in NZ!

Good on Mary Wareham and the Aotearoa New Zealand Cluster Munition Coalition which is going to be delivering a protest letter to the Russian Embassy in Karori.

Yes it is a protest about a particular type of weapon being used (and I recall Billy Connolly making fun of those upset about weapons of mass destruction but not so fussed about conventional weapons - because it matters when you're dead from them!) BUT it is more than what the Greens have said or indeed any other peace campaigners.

Surely the next step is to call for Russia to withdraw its advance into Georgia and for Georgia to guarantee the fair treatment of civilians in South Ossetia. Or even to condemn Russia for talking about striking Poland?

Peace movement protests against Russian imperialism

Yes noticed those in the free West? Me neither.

While the Daily Telegraph reporting that Russia is moving more troops into Georgia, essentially ignoring the French brokered ceasefire which Russia "pledged to implement" and which Georgia signed, it is becoming clear Moscow is prepared to lie and do as it wishes in what it sees as its sphere of influence. Russia is clearly uninterested in respecting Georgia's borders - it knows that it is highly unlikely that the West would intervene on the side of Georgia.

President Bush said: "Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation," Which also followed the US and Poland agreeing to extend the US anti-missile shield to that country.

Russia subsequently threatened a nuclear strike on Poland with the Russian deputy chief of staff General Anatoly Nogovitsyn saying, according to the Daily Telegraph "By hosting these, Poland is making itself a target. This is 100 per cent certain. It becomes a target for attack. Such targets are destroyed as a first priority."

Oh and back to the main point - there have been anti war protests, in Russia AGAINST the government. The liberal Yabloko party's youth wing held them according to the St Petersburg Times. Good for them, very brave.

Funny how more Russians can protest their own government than the leftwing anti-American peace movements in the USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Funny how none of them march against Russia, burning Russian flags, calling for Russia out of Georgia, calling for no threat to Poland. Shows your how much the peace movement cares for peace - isn't that right Green Party?

United States murderers, Japanese victims?

Idiot Savant has cracked open the bottle of anti-Americanism again with his dismissal of the Hiroshima nuclear attack as an act of murder:

“the United States murdered between 90,000 and 140,000 Japanese civilians when they destroyed the city of Hirsohima with a primitive atomic weapon. It was a war crime of the first magnitude, but no-one has ever been punished for it. Instead, those responsible were decorated and hailed as heroes.” (sic)

Of course, this was an unprovoked attack. The Empire of Japan had long been a peace loving nation, which respect the territorial integrity, human rights and the peaceful right of its neighbours to co-exist. Its government was recognised as such.

The Empire of Japan behaved impeccably, so there is no reason for Idiot Savant to mention the 200,000 massacred by Japan in Nanking, and a minimum of 3 million Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians during its imperial period through the 1930s to 1945.

After all, no reason for him to commemorate those murders is there? No post on 13 December to commemorate the fall of Nanking. No, he couldn’t be anti-American now could he?

He wouldn’t mention the over 3,000 killed by medical experiments and biological warfare experiments now. No. He wouldn’t mention that as recent as May 1945 Japan was still taking US POWs to be used in vivisection experiments. No. Japan was simply a victim.

Japan used chemical and biological weapons against Chinese forces and civilians, but no Idiot Savant wont commemorate that and condemn Japan’s murders annually. Japan was simply a victim.

Japan killed 100,000 civil and military POWs building the Burma railway, with up to 10 million Chinese civilians engaged in slave labour, and at least 4 million in Java in what is now Indonesia. No, Japan was simply a victim.

At least 50,000 women primarily from Korea and China, but also women from all of the Japanese imperial conquests were raped as “comfort women” for Japanese soldier. No, don’t see Idiot Savant talking about Japan's state policy of raping and enslaving women, Japan was simply a victim.

So. The United States entered the war against a racist, militarist murdering state, which engaged on a blood thirsty and sadistic rampage through Asia. Japan’s government encouraged and almost compelled young men to sacrifice their lives for the Empire, and when it conquered it treated the civilians and prisoners of war as less than animals. The USA sacrificed over 400,000 of its young men and women to defeat this barbaric regime as well as the despicably evil Nazi Germany.

So was Hiroshima a war crime? No.

Responsibility for the civilian deaths in Japan lies clearly and unequivocably with the Japanese government. The Japanese government waged war against the United States and the whole of Asia. It could, at any point, have surrendered unconditionally, and spared its people – civilian and military - the ongoing death and destruction that war brought upon them. War started by the Japanese government.

The Cairo Declaration in 1943, made by Churchill, Roosevelt and Chiang Kai Shek called for Japan’s unconditional surrender, the return of all of China back to Chinese control and free and independent Korea. It called on Japan to surrender or face “unrelenting military pressure”.

On 26 July 1945 it was made perfectly clear to the Japanese government in the Potsdam Declaration, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, that it should surrender or face “the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland”. On 31 July Emperor Hirohito affirmed that Japan was to be defended at “all costs”.

The United States had a choice. Undertake a land invasion at considerable cost to itself, and lengthening the war, or release the greatest weapon available at the time. It chose to end the war, quickly, at the cost of two cities.

It was a decision not taken lightly, and one that saw Truman refuse subsequently to use nuclear weapons in Korea (when that may have made a considerable difference). Yes, it was indiscriminate, yes the results were horrendous and horrible – indeed perhaps sufficient to contribute towards the fact nuclear weapons have not been used since, but to consider the bombing in isolation of context is disgraceful, despicable and betrays the ultimate responsibility. It also betrays that, by and large, Japanese civilians happily went along with the war effort, offered no resistance and little interest in overthrowing its government, which was spilling rivers of blood across Asia.

The bombs would not have been dropped had Japan surrendered or not even engaged in its imperialist war of genocide and slavery.

Idiot Savant is right to note the sheer awfulness of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. However his refusal to consider the context, to acknowledge Japan was to blame for the continuation of the war, for the murder of many millions of others, and in SPITE of that, the Allies rebuilt, rehabilitated and changed Japan into a modern liberal democratic state, is just pure narrow minded bigotry against the United States.

He doesn’t commemorate those who died under the atrocities committed by Japan’s sadistic regime – only those who died who at best were exposed to risk by Japan’s vile imperialist government, and at worst who happily obeyed their brutal, racist government as it spilt blood across Asia.

It is tired old Marxist anti-Americanism, in which even the deeds and victims of the most vile and blood thirsty regimes can be ignored. What is the psychological process of denial one must go through to treat US military action after many efforts to end a war peacefully, as murderous and unjustified, whereas the most heinous sadistic actions of its enemies are not really worth giving much attention to? Let alone the victims.

The price of freedom over the price of peace

Rick Barker, Minister of Veteran Affairs, is making a speech this Sunday, to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean War.

Now this is all very well and good. He talks briefly about the war, describing it as "a military peace enforcement intervention". It was, in fact, an action to repel the North Koreans from South Korea as invaders who were committed to abolishing the Republic of Korea government. "Peace enforcement" undermines what it was, a brutal war on the front line of the Cold War battling one of the first attempts by the communist bloc for expansionism (as North Korea had been given the nod by the USSR to invade).

He will commemorate the veterans, rightly so. Does some minor politicking which is probably inevitable. However what gets me is that he doesn't grasp the moral imperative of this war - this was a battle against tyranny. He calls it "the price of peace", I call it the price of freedom.

North Korea was already at the time a communist dictatorship in the mould of Stalin, China had fallen communist the year before and was threatening to overrun Taiwan. The strategy was simple, the weak (though authoritarian) South Korea government would be quickly overwhelmed (South Korea was largely a poor peasant country at the time, North Korea the well developed industrial centre) defeated and then Japan would be surrounded on three sides by communist influences.

North Korea was thwarted by the US and its allies because Douglas Macarthur landed at Inchon, cutting off the North Korean troops which had invaded almost all of South Korea, and so they were rolled back to the 38th parallel, and then the war went from being simply rolling back the invasion, to destroying the North Korean menace. This saw US/UN forces go as far as the Yalu River, but the topography and weather were against them, and Mao feared the US would invade China. So China poured in hundreds of thousands of troops to defend North Korea. China rolled back the UN forces to the 38th parallel once more.

So the war lasted two years moving the frontline a few miles back and forth.

New Zealand contributed bravely to defending South Korea from the evil Stalinist dictatorship to the North. There were two choices facing NZ (and the US and the other UN countries that participated in the Police Action):
- You could choose peace (which would literally mean just letting Korea go communist and then deter an attack on Japan, hopefully!); or
- You could choose freedom (which means ensuring North Korea does not take South Korea).

Had peace been chosen, the Republic of Korea may not exist today. Also to those who say the Syngman Rhee regime in Seoul wasn't free, they are right, but compared to Kim Il Sung, it was significantly more open and liberal -and since the late 1980s South Korea has been a thriving open liberal democracy, which puts the North Korean prison state in stark contrast. New Zealand veterans from the Korean War helped ensure that would be, and deterred the risk of an attack on Japan.

So while Rick Barker is doing the right thing remembering and celebrating the veterans of the Korean War, they were not fighting for peace first and foremost, although the end of the war was certainly a goal. That goal was meaningless without it being a fight against communism and for the more free alternative at the time. Had the primary objective not been to contain and keep South Korea free from Stalinism, then peace would've been easy - simply surrender.

Iran sabre rattles

According to the BBC, Iran has test fired nine missiles, including a new missile with the capability of hitting Tel Aviv. Is Iran trying to provoke or trying to deter? This wont deter, it will scare - and scared Israel is more likely to strike. Ahmadinejad may want war, because he isn't very bright. However, I doubt that many in Iran are happy about this move.

I fully expect the so-called "peace movement" to hold instantaneous protests at Iranian embassies, burning Iranian flags and calling for Iran to stop threatening its neighbours. Look forward to seeing some protest in Roseneath in Wellington for example.

Wont happen though will it?

The so-called "peace" movement never ever protests against militarism by anti-Western states, like Iran, North Korea or Russia. Yes remember those protests? The so-called "peace" movement is uninterested in peace, only surrender and disarmament.

It will be exceedingly dangerous if there is an attack on Iran in self defence - but given the choice between that and a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, it is no choice at all. Since 1979 Iran has been consistently the most pernicious influence in the Middle East, providing financial, military and spiritual succour to terrorists there and elsewhere (the IRA included at one time). It is a thoroughly vile and despotic regime. The preference has to be that Iran backs off, Ahmadinejad is displaced, it opens up its facilities for inspection and it backs off from its Islamist imperialism.