"This is a strange thing to occur in what is called a civilized country.''

In 1949, the civil war in China drew to a close as Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) forces retreated to the island of Taiwan, leaving Mao Zedong and the Communist party in control of the country that the U.N. would later officially recognize, and continues to officially recognize, as the only legitimate Chinese state.

As a child, I was taught, both through the nationalism acquired from being born and raised in America, as well as a good deal of KMT propaganda passed down to me by my parents, which was of course passed down to them by the KMT in Taiwan, that communism and Communists were evil.  From that viewpoint, China was something of a quagmire; on one hand, I loved China, if for no other reason than because I was Chinese.  On the other hand, China, after six thousand years of continuous civilization, after several millennia of glorious history (not the kind referred to on the backs of disposable chopsticks sleeves), was ultimately being ruled by evil.  I think more than once my cousin and I enacted fantasy war scenarios where the great armies of Taiwan, who in our imaginary games flew American planes, defeated the evil Communists and made things right - China, after all, was good, and the only good form of government in the Cold War world was democracy.

I still wondered, though, how China could fall to the Communists, especially given that they were on America's side during World War II.  I never had a problem accepting that China was weak for a period of time, and being American, had no problem with America being the most powerful nation in the world.  But how could America allow the Communists to win in 1949 - a mere four years following the conclusion of World War II - with so much power at their fingertips?

One big reason, I read last night on Wikipedia, was our government's failure to heed the calls of our foremost experts on China at the time.  Known as the "China Hands," these men saw the changes in China as they were occurring, and correctly assessed the relative popularity and strength of the Communists compared to the KMT.  Given this fact, it would be in America's best interests to work with the Communists somehow, which could at least give China some incentive not to diametrically align with Stalin and the Soviet Union.

However, this view was not supported by the ambassador to China at the time, who had the diplomats espousing this view recalled from service.  Furthermore, once the Communists did gain the upper hand and expel the KMT, the China Hands were simultaneously slandered as pro-Communist for having believed that the Communist Party in China was more popular and impressive than the KMT, and blamed for the "loss" of China to the Communists.  It seems odd that one could acknowledge the clarity of view these men had in understanding that the Communists were the stronger party, while at the same time claiming that the Communists' subsequent victory was their fault.  However, McCarthyism being the prevailing trend of the times, this logical flaw was not garner much attention.

Over twenty years later, with McCarthyism long dead, and as China re-opened its doors to foreign relations with the U.S., the China Hands were invited to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whose chairman remarked:

''It is a very strange turn of fate that you gentlemen, who reported honestly about conditions, were so persecuted because you were honest about it. This is a strange thing to occur in what is called a civilized country.''

Finally, an interesting quote from a book written by one of the China Hands, John Paton Davies, which I have not yet read:

"The truth of the matter is that China has been since the fall of the Empire a huge and seductive practical joke. The Western businessmen, missionaries and educators who had tried to modernize and Christianize it failed. The Japanese militarists who tried to conquer it failed. The American government, which tried to democratize and unify it, failed. The Soviet rulers who tried to insinuate control over it failed. Chiang failed. Mao failed.''

Maybe I'm Wrong To Be Such a Pessimist

The deserts of Africa apparently receive "700 times more energy per year than all human kind is using."

Hooray for $8/gal

Americans should be celebrating rather than shuddering over the arrival of $4-a-gallon gasoline. We lived on cheap gas too long, failed to innovate and now face the consequences of competing for a finite resource amid fast-expanding global demand.

Maybe expensive gas isn't so bad if it is the impetus that weans us off our dependence on oil and breaks up our infatuation with the Middle East. Chris Pummer gives an optimistic spin to rising gas prices...

Hollywood could make this movie!

Came across this on angryasianman.com: a movie idea so steeped in white supremacy that Hollywood might actually make it.

It reminds me of Paul Mooney's segment on Chappelle's Show where he reviews The Last Samurai. "I mean Hollywood is crazy, The Last Samurai starring... Tom Cruise? He's the last samurai? Give me a break, that movie was offensive, I mean Hollywood is crazy. First they had The Mexican with Brad Pitt and now they have The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. Well I've written a film, maybe they'll produce my film. The Last N*gger On Earth starring Tom Hanks, how about that."

- - - -

BAO PHI'S IDEAS FOR RACIST HOLLYWOOD 5: IMMORTAL KICKBOXER

Tagline: When you know your fate, high kick. When you don't... high kick anyway.

THE PITCH: Spencer Whidmore is just your average middle-class white Blockbuster clerk with an affinity for anime, Johnny To films, and pad thai from that greasy spoon around the block. But when a mysterious stranger returns a damaged copy of Tony Jaa's Ong Bak late and forgets to pay the $1.50 re-stocking fee, Spencer chases him down the block, tugs on his shoulder and is knocked out when the stranger (cameo by Chuck Norris) mistakes him for a mugger and spin-kicks him in the head.

Spencer wakes up to find that he has magically been transported back in time to Thailand, where a cruel warlord named Jo Jafar is oppressing the good, hardworking, pious, humble, communal, defenseless Thai peasants in the kingdom. Spencer is shocked to learn that, at this point in time in Thailand's history, kickboxing has not yet been invented--but the Thai shamans and holy men whisper of a prophecy: a savior will come deliver the good people of Thailand from their oppressors and teach them the martial arts.

Conveniently, an emasculinated Asian male buddy named Toofo befriends Spencer for no reason--and as they are cornered in the jungle by Thai ruffians, in a flurry of martial arts mayhem Spencer discovers that HE is the storied hero that the Thai people have been waiting for, that he is the great teacher who brought Thai kickboxing to the Thai people: he is no longer Spencer Whidmore, he is the IMMORTAL KICKBOXER.

At first, Spencer revels in his new and wholly un-earned skill in kickboxing, showing off for the locals and enjoying his white saviour celebrity status. But then, when his emasculinated sidekick Toofo returns home to his village without Spencer and is killed in an ambush by thugs, Spencer throws his arms to the heavens over the body of his humble brown friend and screams "WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" He has paid a terrible price to learn that brown men must die so that great white men can learn responsibility.

ABOUT THE FILM: The producer of the film claims that there were no qualified Asian actors to be in this film, so they picked a random white guy with no experience for the role and asked Josh Whedon to write in the time traveling plot. When asked about whether or not people would be offended by the issue of appropriation, the producer replied, "well, my best friend is Thai and he took some kickboxing lessons, and he loved the idea and says race is not an issue, so I don't think anyone will have a problem with it."

Need Energy

http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/11/01/oil-prices-1861-today-real-vs-nominal_flash.html?feed=rss_popstories

Besides education (and urban dance styles), another topic that always intrigues me is energy.

Fossil fuels - oil, coal, and natural gas to name a few - are not renewable, and it is possible that the time may have come where beyond which products based on oil may never drop again. They may go down a dollar here and there, but the overal trend may be that prices will go up, up, up and up, until there is no more.

This phenomenon, based on the current state of the world, is inevitable. Demand for oil grows everywhere as the American lifestyle spreads. Who knew fifteen years ago that kids in the heart of communist China would be collecting Air Jordans?

Along with the ability to be collecting Air Jordans would have to be an underlying economy competitive in the global market. The average Mauritanian, who right now is having trouble just getting enough to eat, has no capacity to be collecting designer shoes. But the economy of urban centers in China frees time leisure time and spending cash for those who have found success - for some, enough cash to have globally competitive purchasing power, enough to afford the same luxuries as Americans, the wealthiest people in the wealthiest nation on Earth.

The basis of these competitive nations is oil. The amount of productivity unleashed by burning oil to run our machines and our factories, our cars and trucks and airplanes... well, I don't have any figures for it, but as far as I've read, the sheer amount of energy we harvest from burning oil is unrivaled by any other source - nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, or solar. At this point, there is nothing that can replace the amount of energy we would no longer be able to get once oil is gone.

In other words, our lifestyle HAS to change. The question is not if it will change, but when it will change, and how.

Fortunately for most everyone reading this, we are Americans or are gainfully employed in America. At the top of the food chain, whatever happens will likely affect us the least out of all the world's people, and whatever transitions there are will likely be the smoothest for us.

Countries like Mauritania are already feeling the effects of highly-priced oil in ways that are not little or what I imagine anyone there would consider smooth: the price of grains, which are rising with the price of oil, is reaching a breaking point where as a nation, Mauritania cannot import enough food at low enough prices to feed its own people.

Basic supply and demand explains it. If there are two ways to buy something, people will choose the cheaper option. Something a lot of people buy - fuel - comes in several options, one based on oil, the other based on grain. Until now, biofuels have been far more expensive than the equivalent amount of oil; however, oil prices have risen to the point that more and more people are willing to spend their money on biofuels instead. More money on biofuels means more grain used to produce biofuels; more grain to produce biofuels means less grain to eat. Less grain to eat means grain gets more expensive.

Mauritania produces only 30% of its own food - the rest must be imported. But its people are poor - when you can sell grain to Europe for $5 (not a real price), why would you choose to sell it to Mauritania for $4? Maybe because you have a good heart, and many grain producers do - but what if Maritanians could only buy for $3, or $1, or for only pennies?

What's the solution to all this? I don't know. What I do know is that people much smarter than me are working on it, and I hope they come through. I also have the added security of being American, where what Mauritanians are going through is so far removed from my sphere of consciousness that I don't have to think about it if I don't want to. But it would be good to make people aware; it would make me happy to see people understanding that this is a problem, and that we don't have a ready solution. Change must happen; hopefully we do change before it's too late.

the NAFTA spat

So Bill Clinton was in my hometown, Roanoke Rapids, NC, doing some politicking and trying to pander votes from a community that has been economically stagnant that last few decades. Here are some of his words:

"We can bring manufacturing back to America now," Clinton said on an outdoor stage, with the now-closed mill that was featured in the 1979 Sally Field movie "Norma Rae" looming behind him. "But we have to have a commitment."

During the event, Bill wisely did not mention his previous support of NAFTA, which he pushed through Congress during his presidency, and which along with other free trade agreements, have led to the offshore movement of blue collar manufacturing jobs from places like Roanoke Rapids to places like China and Mexico. If he had done so, he would have discovered a strong, visceral reaction to NAFTA that can be found in any region that has lost out in the globalization game. A recent poll published in the Wall Street Journal showed that Democrats in Ohio disapprove of NAFTA by a 59-13 margin.

Playing to the discontent of voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio, Hillary has repeatedly said that she would consider a renegotiation of NAFTA and claimed to have a history of opposing NAFTA when her husband was in office. Not surprisingly, White House records show that when Hillary Clinton was first lady, she attended several meetings designed to build congressional support for NAFTA. Obama is guilty of waffling on NAFTA too.

The bottom line is, despite bashing free trade in cities like Roanoke Rapids where thousands of blue-collar manufacturing jobs have been lost, neither Obama or Hillary would dare touch NAFTA once in office because free trade is good for our economy:

"... U.S. imports from Mexico have risen sharply since 1993, from $48 billion to $216 billion in 2006. But U.S. exports to Mexico have tripled in the same period, from $52 billion to $156 billion. In 2007, according to the Department of Commerce (PDF), trade with Mexico—America's second-largest trading partner—accounted for less than 10 percent of the trade deficit." ...from "Making sense of the Clinton/Obama NAFTA spat." @slate.com

Globalization and free trade has always been win-win for the US economy, so all the NAFTA bashing we've been seeing is really moot. I was expecting a more honest political discourse this election season, especially with "Straight Talk Express" heading up the GOP. However after reading the following McCain quip, I've realized were in for another "silly season" in politics.

"One of our greatest assets in Afghanistan are our Canadian friends. We need our Canadian friends, and we need their continued support in Afghanistan," McCain said. "So what do we do? The two Democratic candidates for president say they're going to unilaterally abrogate NAFTA. "How do you think the Canadian people are going to react to that?" McCain said.

So, his discombobulated logic here is that we shouldn't renegotiate NAFTA because we need Canada's support in Afghanistan - (all 5000 or so of the token force they have there.)

Living On A Prayer by an 11 year old Korean kid

OK, this kid is amazing. He has more.

"This approach effectively exposes the War on Drugs for what it really is, a war on poor people."

"What we hear from conservatives all the time is that criminals deserve harsh sentences, because they've committed crimes. They should not expect anything else, and if they didn't want to be in jail they shouldn't have committed the crime in the first place. But this harsh stance melts into an accommodating one as soon as the lawbreakers wear suits and carry briefcases. A simpler way to say this is that they get soft as soon as the lawbreakers start to look like them."

http://halfricanrevolution.blogspot.com/2008/04/our-two-tiered-legal-system.html

Don't Mess with White Women

Two suspects have been detained by police in the Eve Carson case, Demario James Atwater and Lawrence Alvin Lovett, Jr.



Lovett was also charged with the murder of Abhijit Mahato, a Dook graduate student found dead in his apartment on January 19th.

There is an obvious disparity in the amount of press coverage and attention paid to these two murder cases that happened less than two months apart, both in the same metro area, and both were students at well-known four-year universities.

One difference comes to mind:



Simply put, one is an attractive white female, and one is a minority. Messing with the first kind is guaranteed to land you in a boatload of trouble. Messing with the second... well... it happens.

"How come they never found Biggie and Tupac's murderers, but they could arrest O.J. the next day" (Dave Chappelle)

I'm not saying Carson did not deserve the attention she got - I'm glad all the various police and government agencies mobilized so quickly and nabbed 2/2 suspects in case with no initial leads in about a week. But makes me wonder if Mahato's case received anywhere near the same level of service from government or support from the community.

Hope

MoveOn.org has moved to endorse Obama.

Stephen Colbert roasts George Bush

Have you guys seen this? The funny part is really the Stephen Colbert speech & stuff. Oh, man! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879&q=owner%3Acspan

What are your reactions?

oil poster

Here's an interesting poster about the world's consumption of oil all throughout time. http://www.oilposter.org/posterlarge-x.html

Crazy UNC Rampage

You guys probably already heard about the incident at UNC on Friday at the Pit. But how do you label it?

http://www.ibiblio.org/wunc_archives/news/index.php?p=445

Power of the courts

Bush's has pushed through his nominees for the Supreme Court, and with Sam Alito, the court is seen as possibly overturning the decision of Roe vs. Wade to at least some extent. What really interested me is the notion that the Supreme Court is like a "back-door" to establishing laws. It is (perhaps ?) easier to bring a case through the court system and have the SC issue its intepretation, which is binding, than having legislators pass or amend laws. Examples for this are Brown vs. Board of Education during Segregation, or Roe vs. Wade when there may not have been enough popular support for women's reproductive rights. This notion was alluded to in a way during Bush's SC nomination process such as 'restoring the court to its constitutional origins' and the SC is 'overstepping its bounds' as a 'rogue court'.

Reading this expert from To Kill a Mockingbird makes me think, though, that the Supreme Court's "power" acting as it has is nothing beyond its mandate.

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal - there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States of the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal."
(Finch defending Tom Robinson)

What do you think the future of the court will be? do you think there will be any chance of the SC making a ruling on same-sex marriage as has been done in Canada and Spain? And randomly, what are your thoughts on restrictions on abortion?

Occam's Razor and Bob

Phil got me thinking about my agnosticism the other day. Occam's Razor & Bob's Corollary are commonly invoked in atheist arguments; I've provided short spiels on both below. I've started looking for arguments against both; if you know of any feel free to post them.


Occam's Razor is a logical principle that holds that one should should not make more assumptions than is needed. In other words, the best explanations are the simplest ones. E.g. if we were modeling a few datapoints on a graph, it would make sense to find the simplest curve that encompasses them all, rather than some convoluted curve that fits the data just as well.

Occam's Razor is often invoked by the atheist argument that we can explain everything without introducing metaphysical concepts such as God; bringing God into the picture adds unnecessary complexity.


Bob's Corollary

The more powerful the entity, the less likely it is to exist.
-Bob

Explanations that attribute 'everything' to the existance of a God are suspect because they are untestable. E.g. If I had a scientific test for the existance of God like a litmus slip that turned red to indicate that God did not exist and the slip showed red, this result could be explained away by arguing "God changed the rules so now red means God exists".

Strong theories make testable predictions that have proven true time after time. A theory that invokes an all-powerful God that can change the laws of universe at any moment escapes falsibility. So, in other words Bob's Corollary says that theories that rely on omnipotent beings are weakened by the fact they potentially can never be refuted.

Red Ink

The White House has just released the budget for 2007. If approved by Congress, this budget would increase defense spending by 6.9%, cut money from healthcare, education, and the environment all while adding another $354 billion to the U.S. debt. (NPR analysis).

At the end of FY2000, the U.S. debt - the accumulation of the deficit spending of all previous 42 U.S. Presidents - was $5,674,178,209,886.86. Today it is $8,195,544,127,376.07. Bush took office with a budget surplus and a forecast of a cumulative 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. In just 6 years, the party of tax cuts and balanced budgets, under the steady leadership of President number 43 has added 45% to the Ú.S. national debt.

(from a MetaFilter post by threeblindmice)

My take on the debt is that it is bad because it is financed mostly by foreign nations like China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc... As these are our potential rivals/enemies, they may find reason in the future to stop financing our debt and could wreck our economy by selling off their US bond holdings.

The debt is possibly good if our borrowed money is invested wisely. Since much of our budget is dedicated to waging war, the future economic success or failure of America in part seems to hinge on whether or wars in Iraq & Afgahnistan pay off (by giving us control of the energy resources in the Middle East I presume).

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Kung Hei Fat Choy for the Cantonese speakers, and for Vietnamese, happy Tet!

Let us hail in the Year of the Dog with longevity, prosperity, peace and happiness, and hope that we have rid ourselves of all ghosts and evil spirits.


On another note, I was out partying last night in Chapel Hill until 7am, sorry I didn't have time to get in touch with most of the people here. It makes me a little sad that I haven't made any friends up in Richmond as great as you all or the other friends I hung out with this weekend, but things can always change.

Happy Lunar New Year

What's wrong with our country?

The 50 Most Loathsome Americans. Amusing stuff, here's a preview:

5. Tom Delay

Charges: A politician so horrible, his prior career as an exterminator constitutes fratricide. Smiled for his mug shot like it was a campaign poster. Asked three young Katrina evacuees, “Now tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?” One of an elite handful of white Americans still engaged in the time-honored tradition of screwing over Indians. Responding to a request he extinguish his cigar in a restaurant in accordance with federal regulations, Delay replied, “I AM the federal government.” Claimed that there was “no fat left to cut” from the federal budget to offset New Orleans reconstruction costs. So arrogant in abuse of power that he doesn’t even take time to construct plausible lies.

Exhibit A: Explaining his failure to enlist during Vietnam: “So many minority youths had volunteered…that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.”

Sentence: Bashed to death with hammer.

censorship

Microsoft is now shutting down blogs (written in Chinese) on its Microsoft Network (MSN) blogging service that are critical of the Chinese government. This isn't the first time that Microsoft's compliance to China's policies has been in the news. If this is the first time you've heard of this, here's a quick rundown: in the past few years, the complicity of Microsoft and other US companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Cisco with the Chinese Communist Party in helping them to construct the "Great Firewall of China" has made possible the censorship of Internet sites and searches related to 'freedom', 'human rights', or 'democracy' within China.

What's worrying about this latest incident is that the censorship is 'global' and not limited to within China. The sites MSN now censors are being taken down from their servers and not merely firewalled by the Chinese government. For example, had I originally created 'An Unnamed Syposium' on MSN and one of us published the words "Tibetian Independence" or "Falun Dong", our blog would shortly thereafter be deleted off MSN's server because of their compliance to China's wishes; (this is also assuming we knew and were blogging in Chinese).

It's not illegal for Microsoft or any other private company to censor a blog that they operate; however this censorship, though limited to Chinese blogs, still seems to reek of evilness... or maybe it doesn't? Do you believe that Microsoft and other American companies' complicity in China's political censorship is wrong?

What's in a name?

Lisen to this story about the 1898 Race Riot in Wilmington, NC.

So it's one thing that this is the only overthrow of an elected government in US history. It's another thing that White people did it at a time and place when Blacks were prosperous and influential. What do you make of one of the words used to describe the actions of the riot instigators -- "terrorist"? Fair/unfair? Weird? Appropriate?