Atheism: Sleep in on Sunday mornings

This slogan comes from a campaign in Britain (actually from a failed spin-off in Australia) of advertising about atheism to counter religious groups' advertisements. According to the article, it hasn't set off much controversy, which I think is a definite contrast to how much dissent there would be to such a campaign in the US. There is so much social context in religion and perception of religion. For my final exam, I did interviews based on topics discussed in class. There was one unit on supersitition and belief, and for some reason, one girl ended up talking about religion. She said in Chinese society there is a lot of pressure not to believe. Obviously this social pressure functions in the complete opposite way that social pressure in the US works. It is something I had never really considered.

I've been thinking more about the topic of religion lately after my student's comments and watching Religulous - a Bill Mayer movie about the ridiculousness of religion. I will write more about the movie (which I actually didn't like too much despite some amusing moments and general agreement with many of his ideas) another time.

The lost art of writing

David Brooks' latest column in the New York Times begins like this:

Everything becomes a shorter version of itself. Essays become op-eds. Op-eds become blog posts. Blog posts become Twitter tweets. The Sidney Awards stand athwart technology, yelling stop. They are awarded every year to some of the best examples of long-form journalism and thought.

I do realize the irony of writing about this in a blog post (at least it is not on twitter...), but for someone who is not a journalist, there are obvious benefits to blogging - more than one person can read my thoughts (whether anyone would actually want to is a totally different story). These lines seemed particularly salient to me because of the book I have been reading recently - Team of Rivals, about Abraham Lincoln's life, politics, and rivals. This book has been providing me with a much needed refresher history course and a glimpse of the political genius that was Lincoln. Yet, something that has stood out to me is how much history of this period derives from hand-written letters between leading figures (and their wives) of the time. It makes me somewhat sad to think that the history of today will be derived from e-mail. While e-mail serves many purposes, it lacks the beauty and weight that often is intrinsically present in written letters. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic and a traditionalist, but I don't see that as a bad thing.

言论自由 Freedom of speech in China

Ever since my first class while studying abroad at Peking University a few years ago, I have been amazed by how much freedom of speech there is in China. There are of course limits, most noticeably if you are publishing something in book, article, or blog form, and I've written recently about the limits of academic freedom. But otherwise, if you're not speaking in a public setting, you can say pretty much anything you want.

The original surprising incident for me was that our first class topic in an international relations class at PKU was the 1989 Tiananmen protests. Of course, it was a class taught in English of mostly foreigners, with a few Chinese students thrown in, and I'm pretty sure the professor, who received his phd in the US, chose the topic intentionally to destroy all previous notions we had about freedom of expression in China. He certainly succeeded. One of the Chinese IR majors in the class said that they did discuss this incident in her Chinese classes as well.

The recent incident was at my university's new years/end of the semester party. The opening act (Chinese parties are basically a combination of a variety show and banquet) was someone who did imitations of the top two leaders in China, as well as the previous top two leaders. At first I thought he was just going to poke fun at the school's leaders because I was under the belief that publicly making fun of the top leaders was unacceptable (of course, many people do so in private conversations and online). Granted, he didn't compare Hu Jintao to a monkey and his imitations were very very mild by Daily Show or Colbert Report standards, but there were parts I found funny and even more parts the Chinese teachers found funny. Still, this goes what most Westerners think of when they think of freedom of speech and China.

Update on the New York Times

Beginning today, I seem to be able to fully access the NYTimes again. There's been some theorizing about why it was blocked around the Internet, with a lot being written by James Fallows, who knows a lot about how Chinese online censorship works. However, I stand by my hypothesis. The other articles mentioned as possibilities by Fallows are really mild in comparison to the assertion in the below article that the attacks in Kashgar were not of a terrorist nature. Another possibility given by one of his friends, which I originally thought was possible is:

I suspect that while the reason behind this blocking is not yet clear, the process--and thereby the motivation--might be a bit less obscure. That is, given that consensus drives policy decisions here, it is very likely that different parts of the bureaucracy weighed in and officials each had a gripe with the NYT coverage of some or another issue. Collectively, they were able to push through a directive to block it.

The people here overseeing foreign journalists also know that there will soon be a new contingent manning the desks of the NYT bureau here. Those officials want to send a clear signal that they expect more positive ("objective") coverage of China.

However, given that the site is now working, I don't think this is a good explanation. I couldn't find a link on any Times pages to the article about the Kashgar attacks today - meaning it is too old - so I'm guessing that they just waited until said link went away. Though still just a theory.

The reason why the Chinese government suddenly started blocking the new york times

In both my trips to China, the New York Times has always been available. Occasionally, like after the Lhasa incident last year, individual articles would be blocked. But now, the Chinese government has deemed it sufficiently dangerous for me to read articles about cooking or op-eds about the Obama transition thanks to the following article (re-printed in defiance of the great firewall - I am more than a little pissed about this complete blocking; i read the Times daily):

2 Uighurs Sentenced to Death for West China Police Assault

By Edward Wong

BEIJING — A court in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang has sentenced two men to death for an attack in August that killed 17 paramilitary officers, according to a report on Wednesday by Xinhua, the state news agency. The assault was one of the deadliest against security forces since at least the 1990s.

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Photographs from a foreign tourist appeared to cast some doubt on the official account of the events in the Kashgar attack.

The court determined that the men, who were sentenced in the attack on Aug. 4 in the remote oasis town of Kashgar, were trying to “sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games that began Aug. 8,” Xinhua reported. The men, Abdurahman Azat, 33, and Kurbanjan Hemit, 28, are ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people. Some Uighurs advocate independence in Xinjiang and resent what they call discriminatory policies put in place by the ruling ethnic Han Chinese.

Most, if not all, of the paramilitary officers killed or wounded on Aug. 4 were Han Chinese.

The Intermediate People’s Court of Kashgar sentenced the men for “intentional homicide and illegally producing guns, ammunition and explosives,” Xinhua reported.

Chinese officials said the day after the attack that the men, a taxi driver and a vegetable vendor, had rammed a truck into a group of about 70 officers from the People’s Armed Police who were out for morning exercises and had then attacked the officers with machetes and homemade explosives. At the time, the authorities said 16 officers were killed and 16 others injured. The attackers were arrested, the authorities said.

The assault was the first and deadliest of four in Xinjiang in August for which officials blamed Uighur separatists. The violence killed at least 23 security officers and one civilian, according to official tallies.

In interviews in September, three foreign tourists who were in the Barony Hotel, across the street from the site of the assault, gave details of the attack to The New York Times that appeared at odds with aspects of the official version. The tourists confirmed that the truck plowed into the officers, leaving many dead and injured. But they said they did not hear multiple explosions afterward.

Furthermore, they said they saw paramilitary officers using machetes to attack what appeared to be other men with the same green security uniforms. The men with the machetes mingled freely with other officers afterward, the tourists said.

The Xinhua report on Wednesday provided more details of the assault to back up the earlier official version. The report said that the two men, armed with guns, explosives, knives and axes, drove a heavy truck that they had stolen to the site of the assault at 6 a.m. and waited for the officers to emerge from their compound. About 8 a.m., Mr. Azat drove the truck into the officers when they came out for their exercises, killing 15 and wounding 13, Xinhua reported.

When the truck turned over, he detonated explosives to kill another person, according to Xinhua.

At the same time, the Xinhua account said, Mr. Hemit tossed explosives toward the gate of the security compound and brandished a knife at the police officers who had been felled by the truck. Mr. Hemit killed one officer and wounded another, Xinhua said.

One of the foreign tourists, a man who provided photos of the assault to two Western news organizations, said in September that he had seen a severely injured man tumble out of the driver’s seat after the truck rammed the officers. The driver crawled around and did not appear to be in any condition to carry out further attacks, the tourist said.

The Xinhua report did not give any details on what kind of evidence was reviewed by the court in Kashgar during the trial of the two men. It also did not mention the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a shadowy organization that Chinese officials have long cited as the main separatist threat in Xinjiang. The day after the assault, the party secretary of Kashgar, Shi Dagang, told reporters that it appeared that the two men were members of that group.

Blowback

As they say, hindsight is 20/20. A New York Times article is saying that Pakistani intelligence has been supporting Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that carried out the horrific attacks in Mumbai. What the article forgets to mention is where ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) picked up the habit of independently aiding/funding outside groups, often times without direct approval from the government. This began during the 1980s when the US used to use ISI as a method for funneling funds and other forms of support to Afghan guerrilla groups fighting the Soviet invasion. Other ramifications of these same actions and, more importantly, abandonment of Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal, also led to the rise of the Taliban and its subsequent harboring of Al-Qaeda.

Unintended, negative future consequences of present political actions are often referred to as "blowback." One of the quintessential examples of blowback is the 1979 Iranian revolution, which has root causes of the 1950s CIA-led coup, which overthrew a democratically elected leader and returned the very undemocratic Shah to power. Blowback and unintended consequences seem to be hitting the US pretty hard recently, and while I am in no way saying that any of it is deserved, these incidents should at least be a clear sign that we need to consider long-term consequences of US foreign policy endeavers.

In today's world, there has to be some sort of method for analyzing possible future ramifications for present actions. And to some extent at least, this is possible. State Department research before the Iraq War rather correctly predicted some of the disastrous outcomes caused by that invasion (not that it did us much good). Hopefully Obama's government will make a more concerted effort to consider long-term effects, even though it has been an American tradition not to.

Proposition 8

Yesterday was a good day for Democrats/liberals, no matter what Karl Rove had to say about the state of the country's political leanings. Barack Obama was elected president, and the Democrats made huge gains in both the House and the Senate. The one major disappointment was Proposition 8, a ballot proposition in California that would change the state constitution to ban gay marriage. These propositions have popped up all over the country and passed, however California was supposed to be different.

Thanks to huge sums of money spent by those supporting the proposition as well as general prejudice, it passed. When thinking about this, I realized what the biggest problem is. Civil rights, an idea so ingrained in the fabric of our country's history, should not be put to a popular vote. Essential rights are guaranteed in our constitution - in the bill of rights and the 14h Amendment. In the Civil Rights movement, the Supreme Court played an essential role in upholding these rights for African Americans. In the states, courts have also played a role in upholding marriage rights for homosexuals, but they are also being overruled by the above-mentioned ballot measures, which have been writing intolerance into state constitutions.

There is a reason why it is so difficult to amend our federal constitution - because there are many elements essential to the fabric of our democracy - including equal rights - that should not be allowed to be changed easily. In this light, I call on the Supreme Court to take on the issue of marriage rights (or at least the right to civil unions), just as it took on the issue of equal rights for African-Americans 50+ years ago. This is the only way to guarantee that such rights are upheld and that the states stop infringing upon them.

Faith in my country again

At 11pm EST, exactly noon Beijing time, Barack Obama was declared the next president of the US. As Thomas Friedman wrote in a NYTimes editorial,

"Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward: Everything really is possible in America."

I have faith in my country again. Though the difficult part is just beginning for Obama. He has ridden to election on people's hopes, and he will most likely end up letting a lot of people down. He has so many constraints - chaos in Iraq, a financial crisis, huge budget deficits. Sure it is an opportunity for greatness, but that greatness will have to come through compromise and sacrifice. Still, I have hope for the future.

Interesting articles

Two very good, but kind of long (so I'm not posting the whole thing) articles below:

There is a Silver Lining
I had forgotten how great Fareed Zakaria was until I saw him on Colbert. This article is about how the financial crisis will hopefully teach Americans (both citizens and government) to adopt responsible spending habits.

Farmer in Chief
A very long but worth it article by Michael Pollan about agriculture and food policy in the US and how it is costly, unsustainable, and unhealthy.

On a totally different note, the Phillies won the first game of the World Series! Three more wins and the '08 Phils will be the heroes of a championship starved city that hasn't won a championship since before I was born. How I wish I were back home where I could watch the games. Even if the Phils don't win this year, they've had a great season.

McCain competitive in Pennsylvania?

At least his campaign thinks so.

I tend to highly doubt this claim. Pennsylvania has becoming more and more blue in recent elections, and I think the campaign he is running and his choice of a running mate will not play well in the crucial Philly suburbs mentioned in the article. The NYTimes argues that it is very possible that he is just running out of places to campaign, which could easily be true.

I'm going to predict that Pennsylvania votes solidly Democrat in this election. But either way, make sure you vote!