There are a lot of candidates for the
Stones of the Week award: Dean, Cindy Sheehan (honorary), etc. Here are a couple of candidates you may have missed:
Prof. Hellman and Pres. Roh.
This Hellman guy is either completely nuts or carries his stones around in a wheel barrow. He takes a bunch of academics to North Korea to show Bushco how to negotiate. He is my nominee for Stones of the Week. However, as you can see, South Korean President Roh is still in the running, for his put-down of the Presnint of the United States and Former Leader of the Free World. Read on, from the Seattle Times
UW professor holds North Korea talks
While official negotiations have been stalled since last June, veteran East Asia professor Donald Hellmann visited North Korea for three days last week to conduct what he called the first international academic conference ever held there.
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"Our policy regarding North Korea has simply not worked,"...
MORE BELOW THE JUMP
"I wanted to do by example what I thought ought to be done: to assemble people from the negotiating parties and get their views on the table."
Hellmann, 70... directs the UW's Institute for International Policy... more than 20 scholars from the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea met in a North Korean mountain resort not far from the South Korean border...
the North Koreans listened in on the proceedings.
Dealing with North Korea, a rogue state with a collapsed economy led by paranoid dictator, he said, calls for skilled leadership, not name-calling.
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Bush, who three years ago called North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran, changed his tone recently, referring to the North Korean leader as "Mr." Kim Jong Il.
Here the writer seems to give credit to Bush; I am inclined to think that Bush actually used the term Mr. not as an expression of respect but as one of contempt/challenge; as in "you better watch, out, Mister, or we'll knock yer block off." To me this interpretation is much more in keeping with Bush's style than reading it as some subtle term of respect for Kim Jong Il. Duh?
Now, to Pres. Roh of South Korea: more subtle, but definitely large cajones.

The recent meeting between Bush and Roh was, if you read between the lines, brief and tense. Slam bam, photo op, and then spin. MSN told it this way:
"This was Mr Roh's second visit to the US, and his fourth meeting with Mr Bush. Marcus Noland, seniorfellow at the Institute for International Economics, said: "South Korea has the third largest number of troops in Iraq, yet there are no public meetings, just a closed door meeting and a lunch. It is almost a surreptitious meeting..."It has certainly been less than the red carpet."
Bushco, of course tried to make it seem that Bush had put Roh back on the straight and narrow. Roh was obviously not gonna be a party to a bunch of BS, and informed the press that negotiation, not insults or war, was gonna solve the Korean problem. Even ABC News got the drift:
South Korea's President Roh Moo-Hyun has advised US President George W. Bush to be more conciliatory in his dealings with North Korea.
The South Korean President was particularly candid....it was in this unlikely atmosphere that President Bush recommitted to diplomacy as the only way of persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
Roh even backed Bush down with a snarky question, for which he is nominated for Stones of the Week:
After his remarks to reporters, Roh turned to Bush, seated beside him, and posed a question: "How do you feel, Mr. President? Wouldn't you agree that the alliance is strong?"
"I would say the alliance is very strong, Mr. President," Bush responded. "And I want to thank you for your frank assessment of the situation on the peninsula."
All in all, this week has provided some real reinforcement of the idea that Bushco is going about things in the wrong way, and that he has virtually no support from the Asian community. Some elements in Japan may be agitated, but neither they nor Poland are likely to line up behind Bush to participate in a military solution to a problem which at its heart is political and economic solutions.
Kudos to the Prof and the Pres who spoke truth to power.