I love Berlin, and in the late 1990s I wrote a very brief item in the Atlantic's travel section with some reasons why. (Link here; the item in its terse totality is after the jump.) At the time I wrote, I hadn't been back to Berlin since its reunification, and I worried that its smoky, feverishly-doomed evocative nature might have disappeared along with the Wall.
In several visits since then, I've found I had little reason for concern. The place is spiffed up and modernized, but it is still plenty noir! Yesterday it was Berlin as I imagined and remembered it: raw, overcast, pouring rain, the noontime sun very low in the sky as it headed toward twilight at 4:30 and pitch blackness at 5. As we walked through the rain and wind and blear on Unter den Linden, I was thinking: This is so atmospheric! My wife, the reality-based member of our household, was thinking and finally came out and said: This is so miserable!
So we ducked into the nearest dry structure, the Deutsches Historiches Museum. (The difference between visiting Europe and visiting Asia: any English speaker can guess what the name of this structure means. Its counterpart in China, which would be called something like 中国历史博物馆, is more of a stretch.)
This proved to be Berlinish serendipity. We spent several hours inside the museum, fascinated by, among many other things, a display of early-Nazi-era propaganda art. The guard told me to stop taking pictures only after I'd seen this Village of the Damned-style poster of a wholesome Aryan family.
The Atlantic has a gala new on-site recording "studio," which casual observers might confuse with "a regular office with acoustic foam stapled on some of the walls."* But it has a high-quality transmission line and works fine. While in the U.S. last week, I used it for a conversation with Dave Davies of the Philly Daily News, guest-hosting for Terry Gross on Fresh Air. It was broadcast today in America; link here.
Yes, the first part of the show is Jerry Seinfeld! I will listen to that now, and will not blame a soul (except my dad) for starting there.
* Tech update: I am informed by the Atlantic's tech high command that this is not in fact stapled on but attached with special acoustic foam glue. No half measures for us!
Executive hypercompensation: this time it's personal
So it appears that Stanley O'Neal will leave Merrill Lynch with > $160 million in stock options and other retirement benefits, after being paid nearly $50 million last year and immediately after the company reported a gigantic loss, based largely on sub-prime mortgage risks O'Neal had decided it should take on.
I know that markets are markets, that financiers go into finance because they like the dough, that compared with 99.9% of people on earth I myself am rich, and so on. But every now and then one of these sticks in the craw. For me, it's this one -- and probably because of the years-long struggle I have waged to get my retirement-style savings out of ML, where I put some of them 15 years ago and where the meter immediately started running on high and not very well disclosed fees.* You would think that a brokerage itself would not be too comfortable with so flagrant a reminder of how hefty its fees must be, if it can afford this kind of payout.
I also wasn't crazy about the news, during the 2004 election, that O'Neal had ginned up nearly $300,000 in donations to the Bush-Cheney campaign from Merrill Lynch employees -- you know, the people whose future and careers he controlled. I probably also would have objected if he had been pressuring his own people to give to Kerry-Edwards. In either case, the idea of my (steep) account fees supporting this kind political activity didn't sit well.
Enjoy the money, Mr. O'Neal. That's what it's all about.
* Where are they now? It would not be very hard to guess: a well-known low-fee, not-for-profit investment organization. Why is the fight still going on? Because ML tied some of the money up in annuities that I still must spend several years waiting out -- while the fee meter keeps turning over.
The Atlantic: we get results!
Congratulations to the Atlantic's own Liam Casey, founder and CEO of PCH China Solutions and protagonist of my recent article about the factory-land of Southern China, "China Makes, the World Takes." (Article is subscribers-only; this slide show, which contains some pictures of Casey, is free.) Last week he was named Ireland's "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young.* Well done, Liam.
Casey informs me that in the last day or two he has received a number of congratulatory messages from contractors and business associates. These are not just about the august E&Y award but also about a long, detailed report on Casey's company and the larger Shenzhen economy, which has just appeared in the local Guangzhou newspaper. It's all in Chinese; it is illustrated with elegant photos by Michael Christopher Brown; in fact it is written by me; and it is a word-for-word translation of our original article. China' cavalier approach to copyright and the whole notion of intellectual property: this time it's personal.**
* Can't-say-it-often-enough policy note: Casey, who grew up in Cork and has built his business in China, hoped to become an entrepreneur in America but was driven out by visa rules. As the article says:
At age 29 he arrived in Southern California and worked briefly for a trading company. He says he would be in America still—“Laguna, Newport Beach, ah, I luvved it”—but he could not get a green card or long-term work permit, and didn’t want to try to stay there under the radar.
** Many other times too. In the 1980s, I visited Beijing and had a meeting with some officials from the defense ministry. As a gracious gesture they presented me with a special leather-bound copy of a book in Chinese. Indeed it was my own book National Defense, which they had (without asking, etc) translated for use in the some of their courses. They thought I would appreciate a copy. I told them I was pleased to have it.
October 29, 2007
Maybe the dollar's stronger than we thought!
Or else they're taking pity on us.
Luggage-cart rental stand, Tegel Airport, Berlin, this afternoon:
So, if you want to rent a cart, you can pay: one Pound, one Euro, one Swiss Franc, or one shiny American quarter, which at today's rates means:
Brits pay ~ $2.06
Europeans in general pay ~ $1.44
Swiss pay ~ $1.16
And my wife and I paid $0.25 each for our two carts, delighted as we were to find two quarters wedged into our pockets after the redeye from the U.S., en route to our new home in Beijing.
Is this legacy pricing from the days when the dollar really was strong? A means-tested scheme, reflecting Europe's patronizing view toward the puny dollar of modern times and what Yanks can afford? An expression of karmic gratitude for the American role in defending Berlin through the long decades of the Cold War and the intense months of the Berlin Airlift, when planes full of supplies for hungry Berliners landed at this very Tegel airfield?*
Could be any of 'em. But -- oooops! Five minutes later it turns out that when you return the cart, you get back whatever coin you put in. So technically all the chart means is that the quarter is physically about the same size as the other, mightier coins. Still, in the era of the shrinking dollar, something about this chart sticks in your mind.
* Before anyone feels obliged to mention it: Yes, I know that Tegel was in the French sector of Berlin, while Tempelhof was the main airport in the American sector. But you get the point. Footnote update!!: Andrei Cherny, who has a book on the Berlin Airlift out next year, reminds me that the airport was in French-controlled territory but most of the airplanes were of course American. I guess this is why we don't hear so many references to "the vast French air force darkened the skies" in accounts of the post-war era...
October 23, 2007
Now this truly amazes me (Commentary magazine and AIPAC)
Yesterday I mentioned the parallels among the lobbying efforts and influence of three special interest groups, or "factions": the (mainly Orthodox) Armenian-Americans who pushed the Armenian Genocide resolution; the (mainly Catholic) Cuban-Americans who have pushed the US embargo of Cuba; and the (mainly Jewish) supporters of AIPAC who have been making a case for a military showdown with Iran.
Today Gabriel Schoenfeld of Commentary Magazine quotes only the part about AIPAC -- and then asks why I am singling out the Jews!?!?! "Why is this game played only one way, with America’s Jews the primary target?" (Full text after the jump)
Not much amazes me any more, but....
I wonder which is the more plausible interpretation: That the author heard I'd written something objectionable and attacked it without reading it? Or that he did read it -- and deliberately left out everything that didn't fit his case, including through artful cutting of quotes?
I took it for granted that Commentary wouldn't see the Iran issue the way I do, given their recent cover story on "The Case for Bombing Iran" etc. But wow, this makes me nostalgic for the comparative "honesty" of the Chinese state media I've been dealing with recently.
To the (large) extent that the Armenian-American lobby ginned up support for a pointless and destructive resolution condemning sins of the Ottoman Empire, it advanced its own causes at the expense of larger American interests. The people who did this are mainly from one ethnic group (Armenian-American) and of one religion (Christian, notably Armenian Apostolic or Armenian Orthodox).
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To the (huge and obvious) extent that the Cuban-American lobby has muscled the United States into its small-minded and punitive embargo of Castro's Cuba these last 45 years, it has advanced its own causes at the expense of larger American interests. The people who have done this are mainly from one ethnic group (Cuban-American) and of one religion (Christian, notably Roman Catholic).
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To the (ongoing) extent that AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself "America's Pro-Israel Lobby" -- is trying to legitimize a military showdown between the United States and Iran, it is advancing its own causes at the expense of larger American interests. The people who are doing this are not from one ethnic group in the conventional sense but are mainly of one religion (Jewish).
To observe these patterns, and warn against them (including the disastrous consequences of attacking Iran), is not to be anti-Armenian, anti-Orthodox, anti-Cuban, anti-Catholic, or anti-Semitic. Nor is it to deny that members of each lobby claim, and probably believe, that what they're recommending is best for America too. But in these cases they're wrong. And noting these groups' power and potential to distort policy mainly means recognizing that James Madison's warnings about the invidious effects of "faction"* apply beyond the 18th century in which he wrote.
* Federalist 10: "By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
October 21, 2007
Life really is unfair
In August of last year, after a month in China, I said that among the things I'd miss from my D.C. life -- apart from our friends, our house, our cat (below), etc -- was the towpath along the C&O Canal, one of the world's great places to go for a run.
Yesterday afternoon -- under blue skies, with a gentle breeze, in unseasonably balmy mid-70s temperatures* -- I went for a run again along the towpath. It was the first time I'd run outside in more than a year, after doing so three or four times per week through the previous three or four decades.
The impediments to outdoor recreation in China are not my point. The beauty, abundance, and taken-for-granted Arcadian glory of much of America is what, yet again, amazes and awes the visitor. No matter how fast China keeps developing or how high its stock markets or trade surpluses may soar, it is hard to imagine that anyone now alive in China will ever see such splendor in its own cities.
Of course, this is the way the Europeans may have consoled themselves as they watched America's rise.
Ever wonder what Chinese reforestation looks like?
Well, in case you did, here's the answer. At least, this is what it looked like last month in Gansu province, a very poor western part of the country that also contains some very beautifulscenery.
In less scenic parts of Gansu, including near the capital of Lanzhou, hillsides were long ago stripped of trees and shrubs so they could be turned into little terraced farming plots or grazing areas for sheep. Many then eroded and turned into pure wasteland. That's where the trees are going back in.
It appears to work this way: local farmers are paid to girdle the hillsides with row after row of little foot-wide terraces. They plant trees on each terrace. Somehow they must get water to the trees (it's a dry region). On a few hillsides, we saw thickets of saplings 8 or 10 feet tall, which looked like they would survive. Most hillsides look like the ones below (and after the jump).
Now you know.
(Scale note: the baby trees in this first shot are about three feet tall; they're shown on a very small hill.)
This is not my usual beat nor my usual way of operating, but: on this visit to the U.S. I feel obliged to note, in solidarity with Andrew Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias of the Atlantic (among others), that I hope senators will vote No on the nomination of Michael Mukasey as attorney general.
Here's the reason: The Administration has proven that it cannot be given the benefit of the doubt on questions of civil liberties, expansion of executive powers, or the conversion of its open-ended, ill-defined, decades-long state of "war" into an excuse for permanent, abusive, often secret changes in the balance of rights and powers that is America's greatest constitutional achievement.
On crucial points, Mukasey's second-day testimony amounted to a request that he and the Administration be trusted to do the right thing. Nothing against him personally, but the time for trust has passed. Unless Mukasey explicitly repudiates the most abusive parts of his predecessor's (and his President's) record, the Senate would be negligent and reckless to approve him.
A specific point: the "waterboarding" outrage. As is now becoming famous, Mukasey said this, when asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse whether waterboarding was constitutional:
“I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” Mr. Mukasey replied. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”
Either way you slice it, this answer alone is grounds for rejecting Mukasey. If he really doesn't "know what is involved" in the technique, he is unacceptably lazy or ill-informed. Any citizen can learn about this technique with a few minutes on the computer.* Any nominee for Attorney General in 2007 who has not taken the time to inform himself fits the pattern of ignorant incuriosity we can no longer afford at the highest levels.
You've heard about the gala feature-packed 150th Anniversary issue of the Atlantic Monthly! See it discussed, in real time and with exciting viewer call-ins, on C-Span's Washington Journal this coming Sunday morning, Oct 21, 9:15-10 am. (Assuming I can get up by then.)
October 18, 2007
Beijing-Shanghai, DC-Boston: compare and contrast
Three weeks ago my wife and I flew China Eastern from Beijing to Shanghai and, thanks to traffic miracles on both ends and the absence of the usual Beijing departure hold, made it door-to-door in about four hours.
Today I flew US Airlines from Washington to Boston, a more-or-less comparable route, in just about the same door-to-door time. One difference: Beijing-Shanghai is more than half again as far (576 nautical miles, vs. 343). Another: often I've been loaded onto a 747 for the Chinese route, versus the Airbus 319 that is standard for US Air. But here's the general compare/contrast rundown:
1) Cost: Roughly $150 advertised fare on China Eastern, vs $385 for USAir. Edge to the Chinese, especially considering that the trip is longer. On the other hand, given the 7- or 8- fold difference in national per capita income, the US fare is obviously more "affordable."
2) Amenities: No contest. China Eastern is way nicer. Hot meals on all flights -- standard choice is "rice" or "noodles," meaning a choice of the side dish that will accompany chicken, fish, etc. Plus, free beer. (Yes, Chinese beer, but still.) On USAir today, tiny pack of pretzels and a soft drink. On the other hand, the "seat pitch" in Chinese airplanes seems an inch or two shorter than even for US economy class, with that much less leg "room."
Two new items (but no resolution) on the Tom Wales case
Thomas Wales was, of course, the federal prosecutor who was murdered in his home in Seattle six years ago. The widespread assumption in Seattle's law enforcement community is that he was killed in revenge for a past prosecution, and by a person who strongly objected to Wales's very prominent role as a gun-safety advocate. (Background here, and in a Jeffrey Toobin article this summer here.)
Wales came into the national news this spring through testimony suggesting that the U.S. Attorney in Seattle, John McKay, had been fired by the Bush administration because he was trying too hard to solve the case. (To spell out the reasoning: if this was a gun-control killing, then, allegedly, the Administration didn't want to get on the wrong side of the gun lobby by looking too aggressively for the killer.)
This week, two amplifying bits of information from the Seattle press.
It turns out that quite a few sessions from last week's "Google Zeitgeist" conference are available via YouTube, here. The session that starts up when you hit that page is a conversation between Tom Brokaw, of NBC, and his friend Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and very much a non-digital-age guy. (Chouinard says that his fingers have never touched a keyboard.) Clip starts with a brief setup of their discussion, by me. The other interviews and clips are linked from that page.
October 16, 2007
What I was doing last week: interview with Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The Google founders, at the "Zeitgeist 2007" conference on the Google campus:
Just curious (re the Armenian Genocide vote)
Before leaving China, I hadn't heard about the House of Representatives' vote on a resolution condemning Turkey for the Armenian genocide of the World War I era.
Now that I've heard about it, I find that it leads naturally to this question:
Is America insane??????
To be more precise: have the Congressional Democratic leaders lost their minds in not finding a way to bottle up this destructive and self-righteously posturing measure?
Maybe they think that the U.S. has so many friends in the Islamic world, especially in countries bordering Iraq, that it should go out of its way to make new enemies?
Or -- and this is truly appalling possibility -- perhaps they think that America’s moral standing is so high at the moment that we will be admired and thanked worldwide for delivering condemnations of sins committed in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire?
The Atlantic’s 150th anniversary issue* is out, and my (obviously biased) view is that it’s great. This is a good illustration of the truth that some things look much better and more attractive on paper than on the computer screen. Typography, graphic design, and the whole ergonomics of in-print presentation have evolved over the last 500 or so years to suit the human eye and mind very well. (Yes, yes, I know about consumption of paper and so on.) If you get the issue you won’t regret it.
I remember, from elementary school, seeing my mom and dad get the 100th anniversary issue of the Atlantic in the mail and read it at home. They read it to us squirmy kids too -- I think there were stories by Ernest Hemingway and Thornton Wilder, and a poem by Robert Frost. Also something by James Thurber, which is where my dad, a humorist, would have started.
After seven months away from Washington, very little about the city looks objectively different. Main exception: self-scan checkout machines in the Giant grocery store and the CVS. Where did these things come from? I feel like some shtetl or boondocks character trying to figure out how the newfangled contraptions work. Worse: like the first George Bush staring in puzzlement at the supermarket bar-code reader before the 1992 campaign
But naturally we see the unchanged city differently, Via Wi-Fi cadged from a local Shlotzky’s sandwich shop, the first round of emotions:
1) Once again, the beauty, wealth, polish, finished-ness, natural abundance, cleanliness, order, consumer choice, etc of America’s polished cities is just stupefying. Yes, this was a clear and perfect autumn afternoon in a prosperous capital. Still: my wife and I walked into a run-of-the-mill drug store and stood for a moment, stunned: there was a wider array of stuff on shelves within our immediate range of vision than we’d seen in months in Shanghai, the cosmopolitan pride of China.
Americans read so many reports about the dynamism of China’s industries and the skyscrapers of its big cities that they may begin to think there is some overall comparability between the two economies. No. There isn’t. Not to mention: at the friends’ house where we’re staying, we drank water… out of the tap!
2) Related point: it is tremendously exciting to see China developing all around us, and we’ll dive back in for another long stint by the end of this month. But I had a glimpse as to why it can be wearing. In four hours on Sunday afternoon, I did a series of things I have always liked to do and that just aren’t possible while “on assignment.” I went for a run outside, in the sunshine and clear, breathable air. I bought and read the fat Sunday copies of good newspapers. I went into a wonderful book store. I watched a pro football game on in real time. (Redskins receivers other than the excellent Chris Cooley: you’ve got to hold onto the ball!) I had a very good beer, Hop Devil, from Victory Brewing Company, without worrying where or whether I’d be able to find another. And I talked to friends and family without waiting till the middle of the night.
Obviously: it’s a tremendous, historic privilege to have a role in and a view on China like the ones that we now do. But this helped clarify why a privilege isn’t the same as a picnic.
3) Manners-in-public point: my first domestic-US flight in a while was on Saturday, San Francisco to DC. I watched carefully to see: no one got up into the aisle until the little chime sounded to show that the plane had stopped. Here is a picture of a recent flight on Shanghai Airlines.* I took this picture while the plane was still on the runway, slowing toward a halt perhaps 20 seconds after touching down. The flight attendants were yelling in Mandarin, “Sit down! sit down!” but…
4) Tech point: Wow! The internet is fast when it doesn't have to go through the Great Firewall.
[Another installment shortly....]
* If you look carefully you see a foreigner in the picture. As noted earlier, sooner or later you have to do things the local way.
October 13, 2007
About self-righteousness and Al Gore
I am old enough... well, there are many ways to end that sentence, but for now: I am old enough to remember, from my school years, the disdainful reaction in my home town to the news that Martin Luther King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
The reaction was, of course, racial at its root. This was a majority-white, minority-Hispanic small town with very few black residents, which went for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election that same fall.
But the stated form of the objection concerned not King's race but his obnoxiousness as a man. He was a windbag. He was pompous and self-dramatizing, He was holier than thou. Plus, he had started getting involved where he didn't belong, in raising questions about the Vietnam War. Through the rest of Martin Luther King's life, the father of my best home-town friend always went out of his way to refer sneeringly to "Martin Luther Nobel."
As is the case now with some similar complaints about Al Gore, the criticisms weren't about nothing.
Through odd circumstances, I ended up introducing Al Gore at a technology-world conference 36 hours before the Peace Prize news was announced, and then seeing him from the back of the room at his post-award appearance this morning in Palo Alto (below). Three quick points:
1) Whatever he must be feeling inside, Gore's statement was as non triumphalist-sounding as imaginable. He said that the recognition was all the more significant because he had the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; that he hoped this would help get out the message about a planetary emergency; that he would go to Oslo on behalf of the thousands of people who had been working on this issue for years; etc. He allowed himself not one displayed note of "I told you so." Update: Yes, of course I understand the Uriah Heepish concept of "ostentatious modesty." But in real time, and in the circumstances, it was an impressive statement.
Of course I agree with Andrew Sullivan that ruling out ineffective, self-righteous, needlessly bellicose, or simply stupid steps in dealing with Burma should not mean: Hey, let's do nothing at all!
As with North Korea, as with Iran, as with anything important, it's a matter of knocking off the bombast and posturing -- about pre-emptive air strikes in the case of Iran, about Olympic boycotts in the case of China and Burma -- and using our brains, that neglected tool in Bush-era foreign policy, to figure out where we might most effectively apply pressure. Ingloriously, but realistically, for Burma this will probably involve some scheme to buy the generals' way into exile, before they have further chance to slaughter more of their own people.
So in solidarity with Andrew: slogans and hollow threats, No. Continued pressure to enlist the Chinese, the Indians, the ASEAN countries, and others toward removal of the junta, Yes.
Asian hyperdevelopment: this time, it's personal!
On a happiness-per-hour basis, the nicest place my family has lived was Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for two years in the late 1980s. There were many reasons, but among them was our house.
It was a two-story colonial style bungalow from the 1920s: whitewashed walls, red-tiled roof, iron grates over the windows but no glass. Birds flew straight through the house in the day time – fat blue kingfishers, mynas, some neon-yellow species – on their way from the mango tree in the front yard to the papaya tree on the side. Sometimes bats flew through at night. Our young kids raised rabbits in the back yard. The cobra also somewhere in the back, finally trapped by the city’s Jabatan Snake, or Snake Department, didn’t bother the bunnies or us. The civet cat that nested in our eaves was a more serious challenge, because of its incredible stench.
After two years, we all had memorized the prayer calls from the nearby mosque. We slept under mosquito nets, and on weekends we watched race horses thunder round a bend in the large, turf race course in the center of the city. Our house was separated from the track only by a privet hedge, and as they rounded the bend during a race the horses were so close their sweat nearly hit us when it flew off.
By the 1990s that race course had become the site of what were then the tallest buildings in the world, the twin Petronas Towers. That whole huge oval area is now the site of a vast modern development – condos, restaurants, department stores more elegant than any I have seen in Shanghai, a lake with fountains plus a new rubberized running path.
Yet miraculously, our house remained. Most of its front yard became a 8-lane freeway into a parking lot. When I visited two years ago, I was foolishly pleased to see that what was originally a rubber-planter's bungalow, and was for two years our house, had become the Malaysian Writers Union HQ. A few days ago, before a quick trip to Kuala Lumpur, I checked Google Earth again – and it was still there!
The first Google Earth image is a close up of our former yard and environs:
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(In this first picture: our house is the red roof just below the yellow pin. The first seven lanes of the eight-line road below constituted our back yard, where the cobra and the rabbits lived. The last lane was, literally, the lane we lived on, Lorong Kuda – “Horse Lane.” The filled parking lot now to the left of our house was the far bend of the race course. The low-rise buildings above our house, around a pool, used to be the stables where more than a hundred horses lived. Boy, did they attract mosquitoes!
Two more pictures follow: a wider-angle view of the area, and then a panorama toward the Petronas Towers (flattened out in this view, but you can guess what's going on by the shadows):
... If I had been vociferously, prominently, moralistically, and disastrously wrong on the major foreign-policy issue of the time -- that is, if I had been all-out in favor of invading Iraq and had been withering in my dismissal of those not man enough to support that step or who said "what's the rush?" -- then I might, conceivably, be a little hesitant before striking similar cocksure poses about new issues as they came up.
But apparently this is just me. Because there is an emerging overlap between those who were 100% sure about the need to invade Iraq, and the certain success of that endeavor, and those who are 100% sure about the need to teach China a lesson about its coddling of the Burmese junta, and the moral righteousness of getting tough with the Chinese.
The generals who tyrannize Burma are indeed terrible. By my lights (and as I was saying back in "axis of evil" days), they are at least as great a menace to their own people as Saddam Hussein was to his, though it's hard to cook up any scenario in which they menace the world.
But the direness of a situation is not a reason to become blind to its its practicalities -- as happened with Iraq (Shiites? Sunnis? Kurds? Who cares!) and is happening with China and Burma now. It's a reason to understand the realities more thoroughly.
In Burma's case, this would mean being sure we had answered questions like: how much leverage, exactly, does China have over the brutal generals? What other countries -- India? Singapore? Thailand? Their neighbors in the region who chose to welcome Burma as a member of ASEAN? -- should be part of a coordinated anti-junta effort? Which approach -- ultimata in public, consultation in private -- is most likely to get the Chinese to do what they can? Etc. Again, think how nice it would have been if people had spent more time before the Iraq invasion asking comparable questions about what we were stepping into there.
But as I say, this may be just me.
October 7, 2007
Oh, great
Five minutes after the movers show up, to collect all the goods from our Shanghai apartment for shipment to Beijing, I see, via my Atlanticcolleagues, this new report on the most- and least-livable among 72 of the world's major cities.
The good news for my wife and me is that we're leaving city #71, the next-to-worst!
The bad news ...
5 Worst:
68. Bangkok
69. Guangzhou
70. Mumbai
71. Shanghai
72. Beijing
But, hey, life's not just about livability. It's pretty interesting here.
October 6, 2007
Already getting nostalgic...
Eighteen hours or so to go in our Life In Shanghai (moving to Beijing, after trip to the U.S.) and already thinking we'll miss X, Y, and Z. Shanghai, unexpectedly, seems to be a more interesting place to live in than to visit. The big obvious sites (museum, Bund*, Pudong skyscrapers) are fine, but the little everyday crannies are better.
Some day, I'll collect a list of the interesting crannies. One of our favorites: the under-appreciated Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre, in the French Concession. 100% guaranteed to hold the interest of anyone who spends an hour or two there.
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* Local lore update: Virtually all Western visitors pronounce this word as if it were drawn from the German word Bund, with a longish U sound almost as if it rhymed with "spoon." In fact, it's an Indian and/or Persian word for "embankment," which is what the Shanghai Bund is, and it's pronounced with an "uh" sound, like the last part of "cummerbund," which has the same origin. Or so I believe! More info here, scroll down to "cummerbund."
Olympic air-quality: the experts speak
Caijing magazine is an indispensable Chinese publication, conveniently now with an English-language website. Its name, 财经, means economics and finance. Its editor, Hu Shuli, is one of the most influential women in China. She and her staff well understand that the one part of the Chinese media with considerable latitude to expose and reveal is the business press. They have consistently used a lot of the operating room this allows them.*
In the latest issue: news on the ever-tantalizing "can Beijing possibly clear up its air before the Olympics?" question. (Previously on this theme: here, here, here, here, and, in more encouraging mode, here.) The magazine interviews Zhao Fengtong, vice mayor of Beijing with responsibility for traffic and related issues. The Asian Wall Street Journal has an English version of the full interview (subscribers only) -- Caijing's English site has only a summary.
Why is your flight so late? Finally, the explanation
An excellent analysis, by Patrick Smith in his latest "Ask the Pilot" column in Salon, is the most realistic description of the air-travel mess I've seen in the general press (if that term applies to Salon).
You should read the whole thing, but mainly: the culprit is not unusually stormy weather, aggravated (or not) by climate change. It's not antiquated air traffic control, though antiquated it certainly is. It's not a plague of little private planes.
Instead it's the collision of two big and contradictory facts: one is that the U.S. is short of runways in big-city airports, and isn't building any more. (Do you want another airport by your house? I do, but that's me.)
If, in your life, you have a chance to see in person Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project Ensemble, do so. And do whatever it takes to get tickets close enough that you can see the musicians interact, smiling and nodding and keeping an eagle eye on each other as they keep time on amazingly fast and intricate pieces with no conductor. This is instant reaction after three of the most memorable hours I have spent at a live event, in our waning days in Shanghai.
Boycott the Olympics? There's no point in hollow threats
Three days ago, Fred Hiatt, who runs the Washington Post's editorial page, published a column about China's tolerance and support for the brutal junta in Burma. Its action point was this:
And here's something else I would do: Tell China that, as far as the United States is concerned, it can have its Olympic Games or it can have its regime in Burma. It can't have both.
I thought that was a bad and shallow idea -- and I say that even having some awareness, from trips to Burma over the last 19 years, how dark the situation there is. (The day after George Bush's 2002 State of the Union address identifying Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the axis of evil, I said on a radio interview: if he is serious, he should have added Burma.)
At the invitation of the paper's "Post Global" feature, I laid out some of the reasons I think an ultimatum is foolish strategy. The text of that argument comes after the jump; the Post Global feature itself is here.
I didn't say there something else I think: that the idea of taking a brave, clear stand on China and Burma, and waving away as mere details any thought about the consequences, is reminiscent of the Post editorial page's relentlessly pro-war stance in the year leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Then the editorial page, under Hiatt, was impatient with any suggestion that we should wait, that we should think hard about the consequences of an occupation, that we should be very careful before launching a discretionary war. All of that was for wimps.
The tone of the Post's editorials was not the major factor, but was a factor, in cowing people in DC who might have objected to the rush to war. I've got nothing against Hiatt personally, whom I like; but I do have something against his page's pro-war tone in those days. I mention it because, again, I think there is a similarity in the "don't bother me with details, goddammit" tone.
Thanks to a member of the more-and-more-excellent WSJ family for the tip.
October 3, 2007
Boiled-frog contest update
Thanks for the entries I have received directly, in response to the call for some actually-true metaphor we can use in place of the "throw a frog into a pot of boiling water..." cliche, which is memorable but false. Entries via posts and comments on Matthew Yglesias's and Brian Beutler's sites qualify too.
Winners announced in a couple of days, and then I'll lug a bottle of choice Chinese wine back with me on an upcoming US visit (and will somehow get it to the winner). If you've got another suggestion - for the frog metaphor, I mean, not the prize -- send it now.
Rudy, come to China! You'd fit right in.
I gather that Americans are in a snit about Rudy Giuliani's cell-phone manners.
From Shanghai I say: what's the big deal?
At restaurants here, everyone's mobile phone is out on the table, next to the chopsticks. (except for the ones being yelled into between bites). There's perfect coverage in subways and elevators, so the (yelling) conversations need never stop. Also at business meetings and in museums. And during lectures, when -- four times now in my presence -- the speaker stops to take a call mid-speech. The first two times I rolled my eyes, then noticed I was the only one doing so. Now, like everyone else in the crowd, I make a quick call myself.
Come, Rudy! Come home! I've said it before, and more than once: forget this campaign nonsense. Come to where you really belong! They'd appreciate you here.
More al-Dura: What the Israeli PM's office is saying
According to this new article in Haaretz, the Israeli Prime Minister's office is out-and-out saying that the death of Mohammed al-Dura was staged. Lead of the Haaretz story:
The September 2000 death of Palestinian child Mohammed Al-Dura in the Gaza Strip was staged by a Gaza cameraman, Government Press Office (GPO) Director Daniel Seaman said yesterday.
Seaman made the comments in an official letter, representing the Prime Minister's Office, in response to demands he strip France 2 journalists of their GPO credentials. France 2 had broadcast the original footage of Al-Dura's death on September 30, 2000, the second day of the Second Intifada.
The story does not reveal the basis of this conclusion; nonetheless, the announcement isnews. As the story says about the official position until now:
In recent years Israel has avoided relating to the incident, mostly because of the Foreign Ministry's recommendation that renewed handling of the affair would not help Israel's image in any case. In 2005, five years after the shooting, the Prime Minister's Bureau refused Seaman's proposal to publish an official stance denying responsibility for Al-Dura's death.
This is a story worth following, especially with the unfolding legal developments in Paris (explained in Haaretz). Thanks to Moshe Alamaro for this lead.
Background on al-Dura: important web sites, pro and con
Richard Landes, of Boston University, is (to my knowledge) the leading advocate of the idea that the death of Mohammed al-Dura was an elaborately-staged hoax. His blog TheAugeanStables is full of references, updates, videos, forensic reports, and other links supporting his argument that this was in its entirety a "Pallywood" production (Hollywood + Palestine, get it???). A related blog is here, and Natan Sharansky's essay about the latest twists in the case is here.
Charles Enderlin, the long-time Jerusalem correspondent for the TV network France 2* has his own running commentary, in French, at the France 2 blog site. He is a central figure in the story because his initial reports established the idea that the boy Mohammed had been killed by Israeli soldiers. The Landes camp believes that the scenes in his report were staged, and they have pushed relentlessly for release of the full footage France 2 shot that day. Enderlin and France 2 have refused. As any of these blogs will explain in detail, several trials in France have ensued.
My general experience in life makes me skeptical that large-scale conspiracies can be pulled off -- and kept secret for seven years, which is how long it has been since the original event. So based on what I have personally seen (not having devoted myself to the story for the last few years), I am not ready to say: Yes, for sure, this was a huge, big-lie, blood-libel, conspiratorial hoax. But Landes et al seem more fervent about turning up all available evidence and getting to the bottom of things than their antagonists do, which tells me something.
* Yesterday I incorrectly wrote this out "France Deux."
October 2, 2007
News on the al-Dura front: Israeli finding that it was staged
Four and a half years ago -- during the first weeks of the Iraq war, in fact -- I was in Israel learning about the case of Mohammed al-Dura. He was the young Palestinian boy who, according to worldwide press acccounts, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as his father desperately tried to shield him, near the Netzarim crossing in Gaza:
(Mohammed al-Dura instants before his death -- as conveyed in worldwide news reports and memorialized, like a Pieta, in stamps, posters, and even statues in many Arab countries.)
Thanks mainly to evidence I was shown by Nahum Shahaf of Tel Aviv, a scientist who has devoted years to investigating the case, I ended up arguing in my article that the "official" version of the event could not be true. Based on the known locations of the boy, his father, the Israeli Defense Force troops in the area, and various barriers, walls, and other impediments, the IDF soldiers simply could not have shot the child in the way most news accounts said they had done.
