By Jon Herskovitz

The end of the Bush administration will likely bring an end to one of my favourite guilty pleasures of reporting on North Korea, which is the verbal battle between Washington and Pyongyang. Prickly North Korea will undoubtedly fire rhetorical volleys at Barack Obama’s team but it may be hard to match the vitriolic language it has levelled at the administration of outgoing President George W. Bush, which in North Korean parlance is “a bunch of tricksters and political imbeciles who are the center of a plot breeding fraud and swindle”.

The Bush administration came into office pledging to take a tough line toward Pyongyang to force it to end its nuclear weapons programme, stop threatening its neighbours with ballistic missiles and halt human rights abuses that are regarded as some of the worst in the world. North Korea bristles at any criticism of its leaders or its communist system. It unleashed its first insults directed at Bush weeks into his presidency in 2001, after his team labelled the North a dangerous state.   

In 2002, Bush bracketed the communist state of Kim Jong-il with Iran and pre-war Iraq as being part of an axis of evil. Later that year, according to Newsweek magazine, Bush astonished a meeting of Republican senators by launching a vivid personal attack on the North Korean leader. Newsweek quoted Bush as saying: “He’s starving his own people, and imprisoning intellectuals in a Gulag the size of Houston.” It said the president had called Kim a “pygmy” and compared him to a “spoiled child at a dinner table”.

The North shot back and called the United States an “empire of evil”. U.S. officials then called the North “an outpost of tyranny” and “a criminal state”.

The North welcomed Bush’s second term by saying his administration was “stuffed with Cold War hotshots”.

North Korea did not fire off any insults specifically directed at Christopher Hill, the main Bush point man for nuclear negotiations. Pyongyang can show restraint when it feels it is being treated as a serious country.

A list of top insults the North has directed at the Bush team will follow. It seems the last insult hurled at Bush came a few weeks ago. This was after an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at Bush at a news conference in Baghdad. http://www.reuters.com/article/mediaNews/idUSLF8894820081215. The North’s cabinet newspaper said in an article that Bush looked like “a chicken soaked in the rain” at the lectern.

But anyway, here it is — a list (in no particular order) of some of the North’s greatest verbal swipes at the Bush team. And for anyone who wants to experience the fiery language of the North’s propaganda machine, I would recommend the “random insult generator” of this web site http://www.nk-news.net/index.php.

North Korean insults of Bush:

1/ Bush is a hooligan bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country.

2/ He is a half-baked man in terms of morality and a philistine.

3/ No one can expect to hear reasonable words from Bush, once a cowboy at a ranch in Texas.

4/ His remarks often stun audience as they reveal his utter ignorance.

5/ Bush is an incompetent and rude president who is senseless and ignorant.

6/ He does not know even elementary diplomatic etiquette and lacks diplomatic ability.

North Korean insults of Vice President Dick Cheney:

7/ Cheney is hated as the most cruel monster and blood-thirsty beast.

8/ He has drenched various parts of the world in blood.

9/ Cheney is a mentally deranged person steeped in the inveterate enmity towards the system in the DPRK (North Korea).

North Korean insults of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

10/ Rice is bereft of any political logic.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari says he would be ready to commit to a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, in what would be a dramatic overturning of Pakistan's nuclear policy. Pakistan has traditionally seen its nuclear weapons as neutralising Indian superiority in conventional warfare, and refused to follow India's example of declaring a no first use policy after both countries conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

Zardari was speaking via satellite from Islamabad to a conference organised by the Hindustan Times when he was asked whether he was willing to make an assurance that Pakistan would not be the first to use nuclear weapons.

"Most certainly," the newspaper quoted him as saying.  "I can assure you that Pakistan will not be the first country ever to use (nuclear weapons). I hope that things never come to a stage where we have to even think about using nuclear weapons (against India). Personally, I have always been against the very concept of nuclear weapons," he said.

So what is the Pakistan Army going to make of that? It has always seen itself as the ultimate guarantor of Pakistan's survival, and nuclear weapons are an essential part of the country's arsenal should its very  existence come under threat.

And will Zardari's suggestion turn out to come with conditions that would be unacceptable to India? According to the Hindustan Times, "Zardari mooted in the same breath some kind of regional cooperation for a non-nuclear South Asia".  That does not look likely to find many immediate takers in India, given that its nuclear weapons were developed as much as a defence against China as against Pakistan, and that it has just reached a nuclear deal with the United States effectively giving it recognition as a nuclear-armed state.

Zardari's late wife, Benazir Bhutto, had championed Pakistan's nuclear programme, which was started by her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s -- India tested its first nuclear device in 1974. Have times changed so much for Pakistan that Zardari is willing to turn his back on this? Or is he just looking for the right words to set the tone for improved ties with India?

(Reuters file photo of Pakistani missile test)

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski would appreciate it if Russia would stop threatening his country with nuclear annihilation — or at least limit its threats to once a month.

“It is not a friendly thing to do, and we have asked them to do it no more than once a month. But as the Atlantic alliance we have nukes too,” Sikorski told an audience at Columbia University this week.

He said there is a great need for NATO to get back to basics so that it can provide a bigger check against a resurgent Russia. NATO should hold more war games and make its “traditional security guarantees credible again. NATO needs to recover its role, not just as an alliance but as a military organization,” Sikorski said.

It was also just pure coincidence, Sikorski assured the audience, that very soon after Russia invaded Georgia, Warsaw and Washington signed an agreement to allow the United States to place parts of its controversial missile shield inside Poland. The missile shield drew  a salvo of furious threats from Moscow.  Poland, Sikorski said, does not want a confrontation with Russia, and asked Moscow to tone it down a bit.

Click here [Play]
to listen to Sikorski’s comments.

Photo: Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski (R) shakes hands with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov at the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw September 11, 2008.

Scientists said they simply didn’t know what surprises might emerge when they started up the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest and most complex machine which until Wednesday lay benignly in its underground home on the outskirts of Geneva. 
                                                                                                            
Perhaps crashing together millions of particles at close to the speed of light would replicate the conditions just after the Big Bang that created the universe.           

Perhaps the high-energy collisions, which will generate temperatures more than 100,000 times than the heart
of the sun, would lay to rest an unproven theory of physics.

And maybe, just maybe, the largest scientific experiment in human history would produce some anti-matter, or miniature black holes that would quickly disappear

“The most exciting result would be something we don’t expect,” British physicist Stephen Hawking said on the eve of the tightly sealed machine’s start-up, echoing his scientific peers who bubbled over with enthusiasm about the prospect of finally cracking more of the universe’s mysteries once data starts spewing from the physics playground at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.  

But not everyone likes surprises.                                

For non-scientists, the scale and ambition of the 10-billion Swiss franc ($9 billion) project seem unnerving.  The possibility of creating black holes simply sound scary.   

Many people allow themselves to ask, are there limits to what science should seek to find out?  Will this experiment result in the end of the world as we know it, or even bring about the end of the world?   

Millions of people — myself included — were first introduced to CERN reading “Angels and Demons,” the prequel to “The Da Vinci Code,” in which bad guys try to steal anti-matter from the ultra-modern research centre to destroy the Vatican. 

But the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider on Wednesday proceeded without the drama or adrenaline of a Dan Brown novel.  Project director Lyn Evans even wore jeans and running shoes  for the occasion.  

So without a Big Bang of a start, we all may have to sit back with another book and wait to see what mysteries particle physics eventually beholds.  

The people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were celebrating on Tuesday after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree recognising the independence of the two regions. 

Western leaders responded with harsh words. U.S. President George W. Bush said it increased world tensions and Britain called for “the widest possible coalition against Russian aggression in Georgia,” where the two regions lie. 

But what can the West do to punish Russia or discourage it from any similar acts in the future? 

Military action has never been a realistic option since Russia sent tanks and troops to halt Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia. United Nations sanctions are also out of the question because Russia ihas the right of veto on the U.N. Security Council.

Major powers are also reluctant to do anything that might encourage Moscow to withdraw its help with U.N. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme and transit support for NATO forces in Afghanistan. 

Retaliation could involve Russian membership of the big international clubs: excluding Russia from the Group of Eight (G8) top industrial democracies or blocking its bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). 

But any action will be carried out with the nagging thought at the back of Western leaders’ minds - Moscow is no longer the economic basket-case of Soviet times and, riding a tide of petrodollars from soaring oil prices, western Europe depends on Russian oil and gas.

Russian leaders have signalled they are not troubled by the Western reaction, partly because the Kremlin sees strong public support at home for its actions in Georgia and in the stand-off with the West, and partly because of the wealth it now has from its natural resources.

When NATO suspended activities with Russia, Moscow responded with a shrug of the shoulders, saying it was also freezing activities with the defence alliance. Moscow also plans to halt visits by senior NATO officials and joint military exercises with the alliance.

The European Union could, in theory, send in peacekeepers or break off talks with Russia over a wide-ranging strategic partnership, or even announce economic sanctions such as curbing existing trade arrangements. Moscow has shown no sign of concern over this - such moves would risk Moscow cutting energy supplies to Europe.

“Nothing scares us, including the prospect of a Cold War, but we don’t want it,” Medvedev said on Monday. “In this situation, everything depends on the position of our partners.”            

Does Russia have the upper hand? Perhaps. But despite the talk about a Cold War, there are also reasons to believe it is not about to start and that conflict can be contained.

Moscow’s confidence and strength rests largely on high prices for energy and other natural resources and it is still a far cry from the military force it was in Soviet times. Moscow also no longer controls large swathes of eastern and central Europe and no longer has the huge influence it once enjoyed in other parts of the world. The Kremlin is also likely to be concerned about investment flows into Russia, which ratings agency Fitch says could be affected by the rising tensions. 

Mikhail Kasyanov, a former Russian prime minister turned Kremlin opponent, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying Moscow’s decision was “one more step towards the self-isolation of the Russian Federation from the international community.”

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov believes isolation is not looming for Russia: ”I don’t believe this should really be a doomsday scenario. I believe common sense should prevail.” 

In the late 1990s, not long after pro-reform politician Mohammad Khatami swept to a landslide victory in the Iranian presidential elections, some Western observers started wondering if this was the step that would herald a collapse of the Islamic Republic — rather like the Soviet Union tumbled on Mikhail Gorbachev’s watch a decade earlier.

It was early days for me observing Iran. But an acquaintance of mine offered some analysis. Iran is not communist Europe. It is still a young revolution, he told me (at a time when it was
turning 20). There are still plenty of Iranians willing to die for the cause. Don’t expect it to come crashing down, he said.

It turns out he was right. After Khatami’s two terms, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to office in 2005. It is hard to think of a man more dedicated to Iran’s revolutionary cause. To be fair, it may have been his extravagant economic promises that played a bigger part in winning him the vote than his ideological credentials. But whatever the reason for swinging the election in his favour, the result is very much with us.

Why does this matter now? Well, there are people apparently working to try and drive the Islamic Republic into oblivion. According to Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker, those in the White House are at the top of the list.

So the question is: does what my acquaintance told me in the late 1990s hold true 10 years later? In a country where opinion polls are notoriously inaccurate — or simply don’t exist — judging popular opinion is a mug’s game. But an anecdote may give at least one aspect of the story.

Farhad Rahimi, in his 30s, is a member of the voluntary Basij militia. Speaking at a time when double-digit inflation was biting into his taxi driver’s salary, he was still a fervent supporter of Ahmadinejad’s policy of sharing out Iran’s oil wealth more fairly. He could list a few of what he said were the president’s mistakes.

But he’d seen transformations in villages, he told me, even if he and others in Tehran were seeing few of the benefits. He still lives with his mum and dad because he can’t afford a home of his own. Rahimi was not preaching to me. He was speaking calmly and cogently — and surprisingly openly — to a Western reporter.

The Basijis, like Rahimi, see themselves as the bastions of revolutionary values, the true loyalists. If young women’s Islamic veils are not properly covering their hair, a Basij
patrol may confront her. When Bam earthquake struck in 2003, Basijis were on the frontline digging out survivors — or, sadly, mostly corpses. Analysts say core Basij activists may number a million but some say total membership could be 12 million or more. That’s a lot of people voluntarily signing up in a country of 70 million or so.

Journalists are fond of anecdotes. All too many of them involve taxi drivers. Such vignettes never give the full picture. But colourful detail combined with the broader figures surely give pause for thought and, at least, are factors for careful discussion on where Iran is heading. I’m going to ask my acquaintance for his view.

There is a running joke among Western journalists, diplomats and other foreigners based in Iran who have the task of trying to understand what is going on behind the scenes: the longer you stay here, the more opaque Iranian policy making becomes.

It may be said lightheartedly, but it contains more than a grain of truth. The longer you spend trying to peel back the layers of the Iranian establishment to understand what the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is thinking, the more layers you discover.

And, frankly, as a Westerner — and even for Iranian journalists — there’s a very real limit to how many layers you are ever going to penetrate.

But penetrate you must because it’s Khamenei’s thinking that is the key.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the most public — and often most worrying to Western capitals — voice out there. But he is just one of the layers. One constituency contributing towards consensus. When national decisions are taken, however, Khamenei will be behind them.

So determining Iran’s nuclear policy, the most sensitive of issues in the Islamic Republic, often seems to present more questions than answers. Does Iran want negotiations that will end the standoff with the West? Or is talking just a way to buy time to master nuclear technology? Has the establishment calculated that it can survive military strikes on its nuclear facilities? Or is it looking for the “red line” so it can pull back from the brink at the last minute? And, perhaps, one of the more worrying questions is: does the Islamic Republic know where that “red line” to prevent military action really is?

There are analysts who look at Washington and say, after more than a quarter of century without an embassy in Tehran, the U.S. ability to understand Iranian policy calculations has been deeply eroded. But the same too can be said of Iran, which under the shah was — Israel aside — Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East but now is a sworn enemy. Set together, the possibility that both sides will end up talking past each other is real.

Some analysts also describe a big gap between a U.S. policy approach that tends to want straight talking and the Iranian preference for pondering its path in drawn out negotiations. The stereotype again may not be so far from reality: the cowboy with his six-shooter versus the carpet seller in the bazaar working out a price over endless cups of tea.

So now, six world powers — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — have again offered a range of incentives, such as state-of-the-art civilian nuclear power technology and trade benefits, if Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment (Enrichment is the real worry to Western capitals because, despite Iran’s denials, they fear the process will be used to make nuclear bomb material not fuel for power plants).

We’ve been here before. The deal is not so very different from one offered in 2006, and which was roundly rejected by Iran. Some Western diplomats chatter that senior Iranian officials have been making more positive noises. Others are more sceptical. But everyone is wary of predicting which way it will go. And with good reason. It’s those layers, you see. To change the metaphor, what most of us following Iran are able to learn about the Islamic Republic’s decision-making are the outer ripples from a stone that has been thrown into a pond. What that stone looks like is well below the surface.

George W Bush’s final tour of Europe as president of the United States has so far been curiously uneventful and curiously familiar. More discussion of Iran, more talk of tougher sanctions if the Islamic republic refuses to stop enriching uranium and another warning that ‘all options’ are on the table to ensure it falls into line.

But despite three rounds of sanctions by the U.N. Security Council, Iran has refused to cooperate. Instead it has set about protecting assets at risk from such measures, for example by withdrawing funds from European banks.

In a televised speech on Wednesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Bush “era” had ended and promised that Iran’s foes would not be able to “harm even a centimetre” of its territory.

In the next few days, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana plans to present a revised package of political and economic incentives for Iran to give up enrichment. It is similar to an offer made in 2006 that was rejected.

Is there any more pressure Bush can bring to bear on Iran before he steps down in January? Would a United States government grappling with soaring energy bills want to take any action against the world’s fourth biggest crude exporter that would push the oil price higher still?