See you in a week

There are so many things I'd find interesting to talk about at the moment, from the latest inside dope on security theater as reported by the people who have to carry it out, to the Most Valuable Player awards for software and hardware in the last year (and updates on Offline Gmail and Windows 7), to the best replacement for the boiled frog cliche, to, yes, The Economy. Plus, the view in China at the dawn of what is both the Year of the Ox (牛) and the year of the Obama (奥巴马, the last character meaning "horse" but there just for phonetic reasons since it is pronounced ma). And so on. Including, yes, a further comment on the Inaugural Address, which will be yellowing in the National Archives by the time I type out my promised wrapup.

But because of a long-anticipated series of family and personal obligations that lie immediately ahead, some pleasant and others merely unavoidable, I will be off line for most of the next week or so. Details as relevant later on.

If this were back in my Japan days, I would sign off with じゃまた, ja mata, my favorite Japanese "see you" phrase that is the functional equivalent of Ciao!  Instead I'll use my current favorite Chinese counterpart, 慢走 -- man zou, literally "walk slow" but conceptually like "take it easy" in all senses of the term. It's often said by shopkeepers or restaurant staff as patrons leave the building. To the extent the Atlantic is a hybrid of friendly specialty store and lively cafe, it therefore applies here.

慢走 to all for now.

This better be worth it!

The thriller novel Typhoon, which I tried in vain to track down while I was in China (the tale of this quixotic search, thrilling enough in itself, is laid out here , here, and here), is now on hand, shipped by Amazon Canada to Washington DC. It is shown below, in pillowed presentation mode appropriate to the difficulty of finding it.



That leaves two associated mysteries to figure out. One: since the word "China" does not appear on the front or back cover of the book, and since the cover illustration of Hong Kong might at worst seem to suggest a natural-disaster weather story, how could the Chinese customs officials have figured out that this was a "sensitive" book that they had to intercept -- if that is indeed what happened to it?

The other mystery, of course: is it any good? Stay tuned.

Oops!

Have deleted previous entry for now (Fantasy Football highlights). Apparently it's CGIed or otherwise faked or enhanced. If you want to see the video in question, it's here. Sorry, late night. But what I've seen of real athletes' skills up close made me want to believe...  This is why good magazines have fact checkers.  I secretly still hope it's real.

Offline Gmail: instant user report

From Mark Supanich, this first-hand answer to the questions I was speculating about moments ago:

I just installed it on my account, and the downloaded Google Gears app informed me that "based on my email volume" it would be storing 3 months worth of emails on my local hard drive. It wasn't clear from the notation if it would be doing that for each browser I access gmail from. There was no option or information (even on the help page) to choose how far back it cached emails on my computer, nor any info on if it would constantly update to clean messages older than three months from the cache. It did note however, that any message in my Inbox, no matter how old would be cached, and that spam and items in the trash would not be cached.

OK, total of two minutes taken away from "real" work! Turning off email account for next 12 hours or so. Thanks for the clarification.

Big news on the personal tech front (assuming it works)

If this really works, it transforms the world of email -- and may be the step that will finally liberate me from Outlook and its gigantic, touchy PST files: offline access for Gmail. Report in the official Google Enterprise blog here. Early report from Network World that alerted me to the development here.

I have, alas, enough real-world, late-on-deadline, day-job writing ahead of me in the next 24 hours that I don't even have time to check this out and see how it works. There will be much more to say later on about what this means for "cloud computing," for desktop apps (like Outlook), for Google's plans, and all the rest. And I certainly will try to get it applied before my next long plane trip not long from now.

For the moment it is sufficient to say: Check this out!

Update: An initial "wait a minute, how will this really work?" second thought. For all of Gmail really to be available and searchable offline, the entire cache of old messages would obviously have to be stored on your own hard disk. That's now a maximum 7+ gigs per regular Gmail account. More if you've bought extra storage. Do I really want to have all of that on my laptop -- which is the main place where offline access matters? From a couple of Gmail accounts? And Google's "Gears" system of offline sync, already in use with Google Docs, seems to create a separate cache for each browser you use it with. So you could wind up with one 7GB cache for Firefox, and one for Chrome, and...  Will there be a way to choose how far back you'd like the sync to run?
 
Back to "real" work -- I'll worry about all this later. 

A project I'm proud of

Attentive viewers of this site and readers of the latest issue of the magazine will have noticed ads for a new series of DVD's called On the Frontlines: Doing Business in China. Here is the back story.

I have a certain forelock-tugging reluctance to sell, sell, sell when it comes to my own personal products and projects. Just ask my publishers! But about team efforts I feel no such diffidence. On the contrary: I think this magazine is great, and I'll say so as often as I can to anyone I can. And I think that this video series, which is the product of many peoples' labor and creativity, is very, very good and worth a serious look.

A video journalist named Bob Schapiro, with his associates Dovar Chen and others, had worked for years getting on-camera interviews with many Chinese officials, industrialists, workers, analysts, etc about the current situation of the country. About two years ago I met them in Shanghai, when they were continuing their reporting and I was one of their B-roll interviewees. 

Later, as they put the series together, I saw some of the early cuts and was genuinely impressed with what they'd been able to see and record and present on screen. I happily accepted an offer to be involved in further shaping of the series and to be one of the on-camera hosts (along with the young journalist and performer Emily Chang). Joe Nocera, my long-time friend from the Washington Monthly and Texas Monthly who is now the king of the business journalists, eventually joined the project to provide talk-show type analysis after each segment, in on-camera discussions with me.

What I particularly like about the series is that it shows people, places, and things -- inside factories, inside Chinese companies, workers from remote areas -- that are hard for most Westerners to see, and that finally leave a different impression if you actually see them as opposed to reading about them (even in the best magazines). It also shows you a little bit of the hosts: mainly, you're seeing real Chinese people in action.
 
This is very much a team effort. I'll have more to say about it periodically. The Atlantic is a partner in presenting it, and I have the same enthusiasm for it as for other projects under our label. The main site is here; a few previews and trailers are here.  If you enter a "member code" Atl-Fallows there is a $50 discount. What a deal! Seriously, I learned things about parts of China I hadn't seen by working on the project, and I think others will find it informative too.
 

Adjusting a mistuned policy: what a thought! (Public diplomacy with China dept)

In talking about Timothy Geithner's warnings on Chinese "currency manipulation" several days ago, my main criticism involved proportion.

Yes, the dollar/RMB exchange rate is one important element of US-Chinese interactions. But even if we're talking only about economic issues, it is not (in my view) the most important among them. And as soon as we think about the vast range of political, strategic, scientific, cultural and other ways in which the two countries will affect each other, it falls far down the list. I bet that from later historians' perspectives, whether the two countries can successfully grapple with climate/environmental/energy issues will matter most about their dealings in these next few years.

So why would the Administration choose to kick things off by talking about currency wars -- and nothing else?

Two positive developments today. One is a column by Rebecca MacKinnon which lays out very clearly why it is worth thinking about proportion and public opinion even in China, where the media are still heavily controlled and no national policy is subject to popular vote. She has a lot to say, in the form of a "Dear President Obama"-style open letter, but here's the gist:

if you really want to take U.S.-China relations to a new strategic level that rises above the day-to-day issues, you need to find new ways to engage the Chinese people themselves -- not just their government....The point is that while these people are not citizens of a democracy, they are by no means an undifferentiated mass of brainwashed drones.

The other is a set of comments to reporters by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (first time I have typed those five words), in which she provided exactly the proportion missing in earlier remarks. The gist here, via Centrist Vector:

Continue reading "Adjusting a mistuned policy: what a thought! (Public diplomacy with China dept)" »

John Updike

When a figure of this stature passes, it may seem presumptuous for his mere readers to say that they are saddened by the news. But I suppose it would be worse to say nothing, and this is sad news indeed. That fact that most startled me in the first death notices is that he was "only" 76 -- startling to me because he has been a central cultural figure during virtually all of my conscious life, which covers a pretty long time. My entire freshman class in college was made to "read and discuss" Updike's early book The Centaur. Then, it seemed like part of the American canon. Now I realize that he'd written it only a few years earlier, when he was barely 30.

I'm sure everyone else will mention this, but his conversation about Barack Obama (with Sam Tanenhaus of the NYTBR) only three months ago, here [bad link fixed], is a marvelous brief moment. And some of his Atlantic oeuvre is here. It's customary to say that someone will be missed. In Updike's case it's more important that he will be remembered.

One small step for transparency

I believe I was the first person in the "general" press -- and if not, then among the first two or three* -- to notice that the one part of greater Washington DC that was obscured from view in Google Earth was not the CIA headquarters or the Pentagon or the White House itself, but rather... Dick Cheney's house, or as it is more formally called, the Naval Observatory grounds.  Here's how the Vice Presidential compound looked on Google Earth until very recently.



Now, as several sources (eg here) have noted, the Vice President's official house is being treated like other sensitive structures in DC -- or Beijing or Moscow or Paris or Tokyo or Baghdad. That is: as worthy of protection on the ground, but not of being airbrushed out of recognition in a fashion worthy of the old Soviet era (or of today's "security theater"). I noticed this last night when checking neighborhood maps in Google Earth. It is by a steady accumulation of these small changes that we'll appreciate how much there is to undo after the past eight years.
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* Maureen Dowd did a widely-cited column on the blurring in December, 2005. Earlier that year, in tech columns for the NYT's business section in April and then again in May, I noted the odd blurriness of Cheney's house. I say this just for the record -- and have moved the mention to a footnote in keeping with footnote-scale significance.

Who says newspapers print only bad news?

Now I have a scientific explanation for why I am the most "mentally healthy" person you will ever meet. And I am particularly proud to have foreseen this medical discovery fifteen years ago. Coffee was making me smart even then.

Next up on our nation's research agenda: the crucial coffee/beer synergy for the ultimate in mental and physical health.

And a sign that my higher reasoning and priority-setting powers are still intact will be my likely absence from this space for the next several days. I need to finish -- what is that term, again? -- oh, yes, an actual "article."

'On Point' interview with Tom Ashbrook

Twenty-plus years ago, Tom Ashbrook and I were both in Japan, reporting on its ups and eventual downs. He did so for the Boston Globe, I for an outstanding literary-political monthly founded in 1857. He has since been a high-tech entrepreneur, author of a book (which I really liked) about that high-tech adventure, and now a successful WBUR/NPR radio host. I was on his On Point program today, talking about, in part, a compare-and-contrast between Japan and China plus other topics. Webcast here.

I fear that the Tom Waits-like effects on my voice of 30+ months of breathing l'air Chinois are becoming more evident each time I open my mouth. Oh well. Finally I have an excuse to start smoking.*
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* Just a little joke. The one thing my parents said they absolutely, completely, unconditionally would not allow would be for their kids to smoke. My dad brought up this point one evening after he had, by chance, spent the entire day at the office telling one patient after another that the cough they'd been having or that tickle in their throat was actually lung- or throat-cancer. And he was a normal internist, not an oncologist! It impressed me.

Security theater: now in improved, online version (updated x2)

Yesterday I mentioned the toy industry's patriotic attempt to build proper security consciousness into the kiddies. (I also like the detail that this was no doubt made in some factory in southern China, by workers who had yet another reason to marvel at the consumer tastes of their foreign customers. UPDATE: Who wudda thunk!? It turns out that Playmobil toys are mostly made in Europe, with only a few from China. Sorry for mistaken assumption.) Here, again, is the Playmobil item as offered on Amazon:



Thanks to many correspondents I learn that this item has been around for several years and has attracted a lot of customer reviews and comments. If you start with this one you'll get the idea. BONUS UPDATE: The last word that need ever be said about the Playmobil TSA set appears to have been said several years ago! By Daniel Solove here.

Also, and even more patriotic and heartening, I learn that there is an online Airport Security game! You play the role of a TSA screener, pulling prohibited items out of purses and backpacks -- and trying to keep up with changing lists of what's allowed and what's taboo.



Someday they'll put this stuff in museums about our era. (Thanks to Allen Knutson and Carl Malamud.)

Beijing Birthday in NYC, Boston, DC

I have gone out of my way to mention (eg here and here) how much I have enjoyed and learned from Howie Snyder's hour-long documentary My Beijing Birthday. The premise sounds a little odd -- Chinese-speaking guy from Brooklyn goes to stand-up comedy school in Beijing with little Chinese kids -- but it is engrossing and instructive.

It's not yet in general release, but showings are coming up on the East Coast on these days: January 29-30 in New York, Feb 2-4 in Boston, Feb 6 in Washington DC.

Times, places, and details after the jump. Very much worth checking out.

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Continue reading "Beijing Birthday in NYC, Boston, DC" »

Today's Security Theater update

Previously on the Security Theater concept here, here, here, and here, for starters.

1) From the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, or AOPA, a pro-small plane aviation lobbying group (of which I'm a member),  indication that the Obama administration's general freeze on last-minute Bush regulations and diktats might stop implementation of one of the stupidest, least defensible, most purely theatric "security" measures, the creation of a permanent Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ, over Washington DC. Yes, the Guantanamo orders are more important. But this could be significant too.

2) Conference summary, with video and links, from Cato's conference just before the inauguration on "Shaping the Obama Administration's Counterterrorism Strategy." Wide-ranging, useful to hear as the Obama team considers what, if anything, is worth preserving from the Bush "global war on terror." Useful complementary essay here.

3) Yesterday I drive to DC National Airport for the first time in more than a year and see the same big neon sign I remember so unfondly from days gone by.  Security Threat Level: Orange.

Really, what is the point of this? 99.9% of the people who look at it don't even see it any more, since it's just part of the "boy who cried wolf" ignorable background. Anyone who does think about it has to wonder: is there a threat to the entire country? Just to Washington? Is there new information? Is there anything different I'm supposed to do? Does this sign have any purpose other than to make me just a little bit more fearful and a little bit more accepting of anything done in the name of "security"?

Yes, there are serious ongoing genuine threats to the safety of people in this country and many others, and we need to support all shrewd, effective measures to deter them. But does it occur to no one in the government that we do terrorists' work for them by making our own population cower all the time, rather than to be brave in the face of danger? Taking his lead from President Reagan, President Obama can say: "Transportation Security Administration, Tear Down This Sign!"

4) Someone has finally seen how security theater can become part of our economic stimulus plan. Playmobil is offering new action toys:

 

I grew up playing with little toy Army men who refought Gettysburg and Okinawa. My kids grew up with Star Wars action figures. Isn't it heartwarming to think of today's kids growing up with toy TSA security screeners! (Thanks to Gavin Bradley for this tip.)
 

Broader point about Geithner, Obama, China, and "manipulation"

Here's what increasingly bothers me about the recent flap over Timothy Geithner's "currency manipulation" criticism of China. I am showing this in "extract" format below not because I am quoting someone else because I am quoting the thought that has been running around in my head:

Because Barack Obama has been so knowing-sounding and aware of complexities on so many issues, it's natural to assume that he and his team will display the same sophistication when it comes to dealing with China. But in reality, virtually nothing that the President or his appointees has said or done on the subject has shown much sophistication at all. I made this point at various stages in the campaign. But as time goes on you inevitably start wondering: If these people are so smart, when will they get around to acting smart about the country whose cooperation they need more than any other's to avoid true financial catastrophe?

Now, the reasoning behind that assertion:

- During the campaign, Obama did not (to my knowledge) give a speech about relations with China, unlike his major addresses on his European tour or his speech about Israel when at AIPAC. Fine: it wasn't a big, direct in the campaign.  What he did say was pretty much confined to "I won't buy poisonous Christmas toys for my kids" in early campaign debates. Meanwhile, his web site did have an all-points China policy, noting the various ways in which the countries cooperate and compete.

- Since the election, there has been one indirect but important signal of the new Administration thinking creatively about how to handle China. That is the nomination of Steven Chu as energy secretary.This was significant not because Chu's parents were immigrants from China (though that was huge and celebrated news inside China) but instead because in recent years Chu has been deeply involved in efforts to work out US-Chinese collaboration on environmental and climate-change issues. Anyone who has thought about this problem understands that if America and China are not both seriously committed to dealing with this issue, it's not going to be dealt with.

- The all-star economic team we're relying on to avoid true financial/economic catastrophe will need to work with China on just about every aspect of this plan. China has been the main buyer of Treasury notes (as you might possibly have heard). It has its own domestic economic emergency to deal with, and the tools it chooses in responding to that crisis will either ease or aggravate other countries' problems.

- Yet what is the most famous thing we've heard about China from any member of the Administration since the time the transition began? This, as reported in the China Daily:

As I argued here recently, China's management of the RMB's value (as opposed to the huffy and hyperbolic term "manipulation") is one part of the economic snarl that the US, China, Europeans, and others need to contend with. And it could become a more important and more dangerous part, if the Chinese authorities decide for their own reasons that they will try to push the RMB's value back down again, after letting it rise for years. (For details, here.)

But at the moment the exchange rate is not the most important element of US-China relations, even the financial aspect of those relations. And it most certainly is not the only element in US-China relations, which is the impression the Chinese readership and leadership could get from recent Obama Administration signals. This would be as if the only thing Obama had said about Mexico so far was, "Stop flooding us with illegal immigrants."  It may seem unsporting, but it's worth pointing out that the reason Geithner's tax problems are being overlooked is that his expertise is thought to be so necessary in dealing with China among others.

So where does this lead? Mainly to a hope that the Administration will start recognizing all the different elements of this important relationship -- good and bad, financial and otherwise, business and academic, scientific and purely personal, ones where the US needs to adjust its policy (after the Bush years) and ones where China does too.

There are lots and lots of areas where Chinese government policies deserve criticism. (For a recent example, ridiculous censorship policies.) But there are many other where it deserves support -- and most of all there are areas where the US simply needs China's cooperation for its own and the world's survival. So: less gum-flapping about "manipulation," and more serious recognition of the thousand other issues where, no joke, the two countries really do need each other. Save the harsh criticism for the questions that really deserve it.

JFK Library event, Boston, January 25

On Sunday, January 25 (tomorrow as I write), I will be at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston for a Kennedy Library Forum presentation moderated by Dr. Lincoln Chen, at 2pm. Discussion about China, my recent book, Presidential speeches, and so on. Information here. See you there.

Un-$%&%ing-believable! (China's censoring of Obama's speech, cont.)

I mentioned yesterday that even though the censors at China's CCTV apparently panicked in real time, and cut off coverage of Barack Obama's inaugural address when he started talking about "dissent" and "communism," the editors of People's Daily, with more time and calm to reflect, had provided a full, translated version of the speech -- including this touchy passage:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

(Reminder: China is still officially ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, even though much of its economy runs on wide-open market principles.)

I just got a note from Donald Clarke, a law professor at George Washington University in DC, acting on a tip from David Kelly, of the China Research Center at University of Technology Sydney, asking whether I was certain about the link I had provided, here. Because he had checked the People's Daily version -- and he didn't see any mention of the struggle against communism.

So I went back and checked -- and he's right! The same link to the same page with the same official translation of Obama's speech is virtually the same as the original, except that someone carefully removed the word "communism."  ("Dissent" is still in there.) Here's the play by play:

1) Sentence in Obama's speech:

"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions."

2) Version in People's Daily yesterday, which (as best I can judge) is a pretty faithful rendering of Obama's statement. I should note that I directly cut-and-pasted this from the PD site, as an indication that it actually was there at some point:

回想起先辈们从容地面对法西斯主义和共产主义的时候，并不仅靠导弹和坦克，还靠强健的联盟和持久的信念

3) Same sentence from the same translation at the same site today, with no notice of any change:

回想起先辈们从容地面对法西斯主义的时候，并不仅靠导弹和坦克，还靠强健的联盟和持久的信念。

And what's the difference? The disappearance of these five characters, 和共产主义, meaning "and communism." So now Obama talks only about the victory over fascism and about no other foe.

Which in turn means: in calm deliberation, after initially deciding the Chinese readership could stand to hear an American president talk about struggles over fascism and communism, the editors went back a day later, altered the translation, and gave no indication that they were doing so. (Update. Alternative hypothesis suggested to me: someone at PD "accidentally did the right thing" by translating the whole speech; then this "error" was corrected as soon as people in charge realized what had happened.)

If I had the time right now to call up the internet way-back machine and get the version of People's Daily from yesterday, I could prove that 24 hours ago it included the now-missing five characters. But, again, the indirect proof is that the part I quoted yesterday was cut-and-pasted directly from what the People's Daily was showing at the time.

To repeat: un-$#$#()&$-believable -- in the insecurity, the hamhandedness, and the immaturity this reveals. 

Take my wife - please!

Anyone who knows anything whatsoever about China can stop reading here.
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OK, now that the rest of us are alone, here's a hint about a lame but popular Henny Youngman-style joke you may be exposed to and perhaps puzzled by in coming days.

The new Chinese year begins on January 26. My own wife, still in Beijing (and to whom this item's headline very definitely does not apply -- I miss you!), reports that the deafening and insanity-inducing joyous and celebratory firecracker explosions are already underway.

The current year is the Year of the Rat, and the coming one is the Year of the Ox (or cow or bull or what have you.) No matter what it's called in English, in Chinese the bovine animal in question is written 牛 and pronounced niu.

Thus if you get cards or emails from your Chinese friends saying "Happy Niu Year!" you can join in the hearty laughter at a good bilingual pun. This is a little tip in the interests of cross-national harmony and fellow feeling.  新年快乐 to one and all.

Trouble in the software business: this time, it's serious!

Via my friend Bruce Williams, an accomplished aviator, flight instructor, and technology guy,  I hear that the first-ever, 5000-person cuts Microsoft has just announced in its work force include the team responsible for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Williams himself, who was a major figure on that team across six versions of the program over 15 years, presented the news on his website under the headline: The End of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Sigh. Further reflection the news here and here.

Of course there are other flight simulators. I've always loved X-Plane, even before its creator, Austin Meyer, started flying a real-world Cirrus airplane (fancier version of the kind I used to own). Still, there was something magical about even the earliest versions of Flight Simulator, with the familiar opening shot of a little plane ready to take off from the sadly now defunct Meigs Field in Chicago. At this fascinating site you can see screen shots from those embryonic versions, which provide a startling reminder of how much imagination you needed to apply when using the earliest computer games:
 
 

(See if you can detect any change in graphics in the intervening years: below is a screen shot of Flight Sim X, via Tom Bukowski at Smugmug.com:)

for

I don't mean to make light of real pain and hardship caused by software layoffs and those in all other industries. But the end of the FS era is poignant enough on its own to deserve a mention.

Interesting extra twist on "censoring" Obama in China

As noted several times earlier (here and here), the CCTV authorities in charge of the live broadcast of Barack Obama's inaugural address apparently got flustered when they started hearing him talk about "dissent" and "confronting communism," and cut away from live coverage.

Now (thanks to several friends who have pointed this out), the official People's Daily has carried a Chinese translation of the speech that includes even the "sensitive" parts. Chinese version here.

I am not capable of judging the refinement of this translation. But I can see that it carries the two passages that caused problems for the broadcasters. Details after the jump.

Moral? First, as mentioned so many times before here and in the Atlantic, the uncertainty about what will be allowed or forbidden is itself an important control tool. If you never know when you might be crossing the line, you end up being extra-careful (which may have been the mentality of the people inside CCTV).  Second, and also familiar to readers here, this is a reminder that China itself and even the ruling Chinese Communist Party is full of countless contradictory views, factional and ideological differences, individuals who see things their own way, etc.

And, finally, something about the difficulties this kind of ruling system has in making decisions quickly, before checking what the "proper" response is supposed to be. I won't bother with a long list of similar examples, but I'm struck that while Chinese business and many Chinese individuals are amazing fast-reacting and adaptable, the political structure is much less so.

Explication de texte below.
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Continue reading "Interesting extra twist on "censoring" Obama in China" »

Might as well make this an all-Geithner day

Usually journalists are in the position of being told that they have lamentably "oversimplified" or "hyped" their discussion of topics -- and told this by the real policy experts in academia or think tanks or specialized government agencies. Often enough, the accusation is true. Part of journalism's basic function is to explain, in simpler (and often necessarily less nuanced) terms, what the real experts are trying to say. If they do that well enough, they can reach people who would never sit still for the full, rococo, expert version and give them a better understanding of important ideas and problems than they would otherwise have.

But now we've got a situation where a journalist (moi-meme) is listening to a renowned expert and wondering, Can he possibly believe that things are as simple and bald as what he's just said?

The expert in question is our old friend Timothy Geithner, who when he was not being grilled about his tax problems today was saying (in his written answer to questions) that China is "manipulating" its currency. Oh my. Where do we start with this.

- That the Chinese government manages the value of the RMB against the US dollar and other currencies is not an accusation but an observation of universally-accepted plain fact. Until about three years ago, the RMB's value was flat-out pegged against that of the dollar, at a rate of just over 8:1.  Was that "manipulation"? Yes, in the same sense that the yen was for years "manipulated" at a steady rate against the dollar, or perhaps in the sense that the US "manipulates" its national borders by controlling them. Here's the basic pattern of the dollar's value against the RMB from mid-2003 to mid 2008 (via Yahoo Finance), with the  big change to a "managed float" happening in the middle of 2005. It went from more than 8 RMB to a dollar, to less than 7, during this period:


(Update note: There is no Y-axis scale on the left side of this chart, because I couldn't find a chart with a scale at the time. But as noted above, the chart shows a decline from about 8.2 RMB/$1 to about 6.8/1 -- so the dollar lost about 1/5th of its value against the RMB, not 90% as this truncated chart might suggest. Still, the main point is the change from the absolute peg of the pre-2005 years to the managed float since then.)

So, to the completely obvious extent that the Chinese government was manipulating (ie, fixing) the value of the RMB before 2005, they're manipulating it less now. Obviously they are preventing it from rising as fast as it would in an entirely uncontrolled market exchange, but again that's hardly secret from anyone on earth.

- Is the Chinese suppression of the RMB's value a fundamental reason Americans don't sell more goods there? It makes a difference but -- as I argued at very great length in this article two years ago, it's nothing close to being the main reason. Wage rates, Chinese infrastructure, US fiscal patterns, and a lot of other factors play a huge part. Details too exhaustive to go into here.

- Is the Chinese determination to control the RMB's value within a set band an important factor in current world financial patterns? In this article I argued that it was, but in the non-obvious way of directing the fruits of China's labor disproportionately into foreign investment rather than higher living standings for its own people. That is, "manipulating" the currency has been an important part of subsidizing US living standards in recent years. Details in the piece.

- Could a Chinese government attempt to protect its own recently-ravaged manufacturing work force by pushing the RMB's value back down -- after many years of letting it drift higher -- cause problems for the rest of the world? Yes indeed -- as explained in this very valuable post by the  Beijing-based financial authority Michael Pettis. So they should be strongly discouraged from doing so.

- Do we think that the Chinese authorities who have put some $2 trillion into US assets will respond blandly to being labeled manipulators -- or to a policy that would effectively devalue the investments they've already made here? If Americans think that, they're naive -- in my view, based on this interview with a man at the center of Chinese decision making.

I lack the energy to go any further down this list, and this is enough to make the point. These are just a tiny few of the factors that go into any US government consideration of how the RMB/dollar relationship affects the economies of both countries. And to boil it down to the bald assertion that "China is manipulating its currency" ignores, vulgarizes, and misconstrues a lot more than it clarifies.

Oh well. My personal pledge: as many cheery things as possible to say about our future Treasury Secretary from this point on. We all have a stake in his success -- including the "manipulative" Chinese!

A little more on the Chinese censorship of Obama's speech

Maybe it's the jet lag. Maybe it's the culture shock of being back in DC for the first time in a year. Maybe it's my inborn crabbiness. Whatever the source, I find myself more more incredulous with each passing hour that Chinese media authorities could have thought it as necessary or smart to censor live coverage of an event being watched intently in every other corner of the world: the inaugural address of America's first black president and current champion orator.

I have been trying to think: in what other country might this occur? Burma, perhaps. North Korea, no doubt. Perhaps other tinhorn states. But a real, important, powerful, rich country that in many ways (eg, finance) is America's most important partner? It is almost literally incredible.

It's all the more surprising because of something that might not be obvious to the average US viewer. I have met a lot of Chinese people in the last few years, in lots of stations of life. Big shots, farmers, dissidents, factory workers, party bosses. And I cannot think of a single one of them who would have been put off his or her feed by hearing a new American president talk about the virtues of dissent or America's struggle against Communism. Even if they don't agree with those sentiments themselves (and many would agree), all of them know that this is the way  Americans talk and think. How on earth could it seem threatening to hear an American president talk about basic American beliefs?

Here is the "there must be an explanation" explanation. As I tried to explain in this recent article in the Atlantic, the people in charge of China's propaganda apparatus are among the least worldly and most rigid-minded people in the entire country, with absolutely the least feel for how people in other countries might react or think. So apparently some of these ignoramuses considered it a good and prudent idea to cut off Obama -- even if the vast majority of their fellow citizens would consider such paranoia to be extreme and bizarre. Also, within a part of the government where orthodoxy is everything, an official takes no risks by being too hard-line, but could get in trouble by being too permissive. Still; it is an incident whose importance may grow as time goes on. They couldn't even stand to hear Barack Obama speak!

After the jump, in the same spirit as the previous post, a couple of interesting reactions on this theme from people in and around China.  Maybe this will all make sense to me when I catch up on my sleep.
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Last words on the Geithner SE Tax issue

After the jump, samples from a surprisingly strong stream of reader mail about a comment earlier today on whether our Treasury Secretary-designate made an innocent error, or did something more, in neglecting to pay part of his federal taxes for several years. Summary of my view: I think he should be confirmed, since dealing with the economic crisis matters more than anything else. But that doesn't mean that I believe his tax story.

Mail has run approximately 3-to-1 in favor of this interpretation -- which is to say, against Geithner's explanation. (With most but not all people saying they think he should still take office, and soon.) Paragon of fairness that I am, I include samples from three posts on "I'm not buying it" side and two on the "innocent oversight" side. After that, let's move on to coping with the emergency.
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A word about Timothy Geithner

I recognize that dealing with the world financial/economic crisis is the most important next thing the Obama Administration has to do. Without detailed knowledge, I am willing to accept that Geithner is a crucially well-prepared member of the team that will help in this effort -- and that getting the right team is a first-order national priority. I don't know him, but friends who do know him like and respect him. Fine.

I also think that it is sensible to move past the Zoe Baird / Kimba Woods era (look it up) when any tax irregularity of any sort could be taken as an absolute bar, in itself, to service in any position subject to confirmation. Some standard of reasonable judgment has to be applied here.

So by the standard of what the country needs right now, I would probably vote for Geithner's confirmation as Treasury Secretary, if I were in a position to do so.

But I do not believe, and will never believe, that his failure to pay his own self-employment tax while at the IMF was an "oversight" or a "mistake." I have many many friends who have worked for this and similar organizations. I have myself over the years juggled the complexities of what is self-employment income and what is W-2 income and how to handle income from non-US sources  -- and I have a lot less financial acumen than any Treasury Secretary aspirant should and must have. (Though I also use Turbo Tax!) Not a single person I have known from the IMF or similar bodies, not a one, believes that Geithner could have "overlooked" his need to pay US self-employment tax. When I have received similar income from international sources, the need was obvious even to me -- and I wasn't receiving and signing all the forms to the same effect Geithner would have gotten from the IMF. I could go on with details but I'll just say: if this were a situation more average Americans had experienced personally, he would not dare make his "mistake" excuse because everyone would say, "Are you kidding me???"

So we're back to a judgment call. I accept the argument that he is a necessary part of what has to be the best possible team America can assemble at this moment. But I don't like the fact that he is obviously dissembling on this point, and that he obviously was not playing it straight over a long period of years.
 

Marker for later comment: Chinese censorship of Obama's speech

During 48+ hours on US soil during this visit, I've had several flashes of the realization that I have been more affected by the preceding 2.5 years in China than I thought. For instance: if I were still sitting watching CCTV in Beijing, I would have taken it for granted if certain live dispatches from the US or Europe suddenly disappeared from the screen, because an interviewee had unexpectedly made a "sensitive" point.

But from within the US on this trip, I realize that it's actually quite incredible that Chinese broadcast authorities-- representing the world's most populous nation, the one whose relations with the U.S. will make a huge difference to the entire world's future, the country that presented itself to all other countries as a full, major, mature power with its Olympic games -- would pull the plug on live coverage of Barack Obama's inaugural address just because Obama began talking about the virtues of dissent.

Obama apparently also erred by mentioning America's struggle against communism -- sensitive because, even though much of China seems more openly market-minded than the United States, it is still officially ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Account from Danwei.org here. My first reaction is, Jeeesh!! Can a big country really act in this tinhorn way? And my second reaction is the depressing realization that I would barely have noticed if I were still on scene.

More on the nuances of this shortly. In the meantime, this is connected to the phenomenon I discussed here. Also, read the comments on that Danwei site. (Plus this.) They bring it all back!

Not from the Atlantic, but worth reading all the same!

1) A very interesting collection of very short essays from the Washington Monthly, in which 19 writers and academics answer the question: what book do you really hope our new reader-president will take time to read? Disclosures: I am a proud alumnus of the Washington Monthly, and I have a brief item on the list. But I was surprised and impressed by the recommendations in general and in turn recommend that you read it.

2) An extensive "Oral History of the Bush White House," by Cullen Murphy and Todd Purdum, in the current issue of Vanity Fair. This is a timeline recreation of the last eight years -- not all the big moments and turning points, but a lot of them -- in the words of original participants. I read this two days ago on the flight from Beijing to Washington (don't worry, it only took 20 or 30 minutes of the 13 hours of reading time, with plenty left over to watch the Chinese pirate video of Pineapple Express) and was both riveted and newly shocked about our recent history. Several of my Atlantic Voices colleagues have already reported similar reactions.

If I had been shown this project with no names attached, I would have guessed immediately that Cullen Murphy was involved. During his twenty years as the Atlantic's managing editor, I worked with Cullen on dozens of articles. He had many inspired, favorite approaches, of which one of the most favorite was the careful recreation of "familiar" events, which usually led to surprising results. Two of my Iraq-policy articles -- Blind Into Baghdad, and Bush's Lost Year -- grew out of exactly this approach. This latest package shows the power of this simple idea.

When you're done with those two, return to our great Jan-Feb issue.

Update on the "smoothly functioning" inauguration

On his site, here, Brian Beutler* has a detailed and vivid description of the crowd-control "challenges" I mentioned recently. The story he tells is not funny at all -- and he and I would probably agree that it wasn't typical of the experience of most of the attendees, and that the mood of the throngs was overwhelmingly positive and cooperative. But I admit that I laughed at this part:

When I arrived at the entrance for silver-ticket holders, there was a "line" but it wasn't a line. There were no chains demarcating the line. When people arrived late, they often walked to the front of it. At times, this created huge problems for overwhelmed guards, who let packs of people into the screening area, many of whom hadn't waited, some of whom, I'm sure, had no tickets at all.

If I'd been there, I would have felt right at home. This is how all lines operate in China! Sometime I plan to do a detailed analysis of that seemingly-contradictory but nonetheless omnipresent Chinese phenomenon, the "wedge-shaped line." (Yes, I know this occurs in other cultures too.) If my wife, who after the years in Shanghai and Beijing has 101% gone native in line-management behavior, had been there, should could have steered all of us right up onto the swearing-in stand.
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* Of Redlands, Ca; we stick together.

One other thing you missed by not being there yesterday:

First-hand knowledge that widespread newspaper claims (like this one) that crowd-control and logistics for the enormous inaugural event went "smoothly" or "well" were incomplete, to say the least.

As I mentioned yesterday, people headed for the vast "no ticket" zones on much of the Mall got in with relatively little trouble (and no security checks, which made sense given how far away they/we were from the Capitol itself). But getting out was a different matter -- and could have been quite dangerous were it not for the good humor and cooperation of nearly everyone in the crowd. People in my zone pushed by the thousands toward what they thought would be exits but in fact were absolute dead-ends, closed off by newly-erected cyclone fences guarded by police and National Guardsmen on the other side.

Probably those temporary fences would have given way before the people piling into them were literally crushed, but it was a bad situation for which there was absolutely no -- zero -- supervision or guidance from police, park attendants, volunteers, etc. (Comments from police boiled down to "Do not enter! Do not cross this line!" etc. In fairness, they probably had no idea of what was happening and where we were supposed to go.)

I was taller than most people in the crowd so could generally see around me rather than having that terrifying feeling of blind drift. But I did have the unhappy feeling of being carried along by simple crowd movement in directions I didn't intend. As reported yesterday, people like the one below, who climbed into trees or atop Porta-Potties to see where the exits were, eased what could have been a nasty situation. Bear in mind that there were limitless thousands of people behind me as I took this shot, all pushing forward toward what no one realized was a fenced-off barrier. The guy on the Porta-Potty is discovering that there's no way out in the direction people are heading. He and others turned and started shouting that to people -- and the tide moved, eventually, off to the left.



People who did have tickets often ran into the opposite problem -- simply never getting anywhere near the action. Michael Tomasky's comment in the Guardian sums up the situation very well.  (He also did a great instant-analysis of  the speech.)

So: it was a great and historic occasion; a very strong speech, as I'll eventually elaborate;  a reverent and caring and fellow-citizens feeling among the throngs; and all of that. But flawlessly planned and handled it was not. The Obama campaign appears to have been a marvel of foresight and organization. So, on the whole, has the transition been. Let's hope that the Obama Administration is more like its campaign than like its inaugural day.
 

Very late night inauguration points

Still early for the First Family, who have several more inaugural balls to go, but late for a mere citizen after his quota of evening events -- capped by the pleasure of seeing a Metro car jammed at 1:00am with people in every station of life and mode of dress, from tuxedos and evening gowns to greasy night-shift overalls.

1) More on the speech itself tomorrow, but here is a point to bear in mind. Several of Barack Obama's big rhetorical performances have been recognized as hits from the minute he stepped off the stage. His 2004 Democratic convention speech is one example. His Philadelphia speech on race, which quelled the Rev. Wright controversy last spring, is another.

In many other cases, especially late in the campaign, the red-hots among his supporters thought he had "underperformed" or been "just so-so" immediately after an event, only to see the days-later and weeks-later reaction to the performance turn much more positive. The clearest example was his first debate with John McCain, where supporters thought he had missed chances to go in for the kill -- but over time it was clear that he had established his steady, gravitas-worthy persona.

I think his inaugural speech will be in this second category. Now that I have a chance to look at some blog-world commentary, I see that some is underwhelmed, as after the first debate. I think that the speech was in fact very well-pitched to this moment in history and the messages Obama wants and needs to send. That is, both artful and useful. More detail tomorrow.

2) As I may have mentioned from time to time, I view the Reagan-onward tic of closing all presidential speeches with "God bless America" as just a tic. That is,  a substitute for doing what FDR, TR, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and all pre-Reagan American presidents had done: namely, find a "real" way to end a speech. Here is interesting proof that it is a tic. The prepared version of Obama's inaugural address - here, among other sources -- does not include those words at the end. But the transcription of what he actually said -- here -- confirms what we all heard, that he tacked them on at the end.

When he had time to think about the shape of the speech, Obama, as a writer and thinker, realized that he had a strong close without those cliched words. In real time, he threw them in, as any of us (including me) might throw in "you know" or "I mean" when answering a question.  Let me say that again: when he had time to think about it, Obama the literary craftsman thought better of it.

3) In keeping with earlier testimony to the basic good will of the crowd -- as I witnessed it as one of the 2 million or so (my crowd here) -- the "boos" when George Bush or Dick Cheney appeared on the screen seemed almost perfunctory. People felt they had to do it, but their hearts weren't in it. To me, the most spontaneous-sounding and surprising cheers were for (a) Colin Powell, and (b) Jimmy Carter, and the most spontaneous surplus-hostility boos were for ... Joe Lieberman.  Just reporting on my part of the crowd.

4) I gather that my experience with inauguration security -- easy to get in, tough to get out -- was not the same for people who, unlike me, had real tickets to the inauguration and weren't just standing among the hordes on the mall. (Eg here and here.) More on this later too.

More evidence of changing times

Left: the Washington Metro card design that had been used for years and years, from a fare card I still had in my wallet from when we left DC in the summer of 2006. Right: the card being sold by Metro ticket machines now.
 


Surprising similarity between Beijing and Washington, which I had a chance to reflect on while gritting my teeth in long lines in front of the ticket machines yesterday: in neither capital do out of towners have a clue about how to buy tickets from the machine.This was a big nuisance for Beijing during the Olympics and a big nuisance for DC right now. But each city will survive.

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PS for DC-ites: Why does the new farecard have the odd starting value of $5.45? Because I had an old card to trade in with 45 cents on it, and the only US bill I had handy at the trade-in machine was a $5. 

PPS for Beijing-ites: Draw no worrisome conclusion from the displacement of the pandas. Everyone still loves them.

What did you miss by not being there?

For another time, after I thaw out, actual thoughts about the speech and other surprises. (Chief Justice Roberts's bobble of the oath; the incredible body-chemistry among the former presidents, with Bill Clinton embracing George H.W. Bush and then barely acknowledging Jimmy Carter as he passed by -- or so it looked on the Jumbotron; the inevitably forlorn sight of the presidential helicopter -- usually called Marine One, but maybe not in this case since it was carrying former President George W. Bush -- as it circled the Mall on the way out to Andrews Air Force Base for the trip home; the very strange stress patterns in parts of Pastor Rick Warren's invocation, especially involving the names of the Obama daughters; the fact that planes kept taking off from National Airport throughout the ceremonies; etc. )

For now, a few illustrations of what you would have seen if, along with me and my friends the Fabrikants and Schells, and a million or two other people, you were out among the masses on the Mall.

Inauguration Days seem always to be extremely cold. Just before Jimmy Carter's inauguration, I remember seeing National Guardsmen using jackhammers and flamethrowers to get ice sheets off the sidewalks. It was just above freezing today, and not too windy. But obviously it has been cold recently in DC:




Early word was to go easy on the hydration because of a potential Porta-Potty shortage. No problem! You could have guzzled gallons before showing up (shot below around 9:30am -- all those little blue and white structures are what you think they are).



Crowd listening to the speech, in front of the Washington Monument (click for detail). What you don't see in background of this shot is the planes taking off from National Airport.
 

Logistics better than expected getting into the event; surprisingly bad on the way out. A potentially nasty moment occurred here, with many tens of thousands of people pushing toward what they thought was an exit, but which was in fact barricaded on three sides. Crowd pressure has just pushed down one section of cyclone fence in the shot below. Hundreds of people storm through before very much non-amused policemen stop the flow and repair the fence. Then those who thought they'd reached freedom were trapped in a forbidden zone (where those buses are).
 

Part of the crowd whose body pressure was pushing toward that fence.
 

American ingenuity and spontaneous self-organization to solve the problem: some crowd members climbed on top of the Porta-Potties to see where the exit point was. It turned out to be many hundreds of yards away, but they steered their fellow citizens toward safety and redirected the crowd flow. (No policemen or other volunteers offering any guidance on where to head.) But the buoyant mood of the day prevailed and, apart from the one fence-breach, an amazingly harmonious event.



And finally: I give up.

Reading assignment before Obama's speech

Full text of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech from 1963 (here and many other places). Everyone knows how that speech ends. Not that many have ever read, or now remember, the first two thirds of the speech that built up to the famous close. Here's a guess that it might be an important complement to hearing Barack Obama's inaugural address three hours from now. And even if not, it's too impressive a piece of thought and rhetoric not to revisit every so often.

More after the event, plus compare-and-contrast reports on this past 24 hours in DC (after the PEK-IAD longhaul) versus other inaugural ceremonies I've seen here over the years -- just about all of them, by the way, in colder weather than today's.

Keep hope alive

Good news travels fast around the world. A few minutes ago a woman watching US TV called my sister-in-law in Rome, who quickly emailed the information to me here on the wee-hours watch in Beijing:

My friend Helen just called to tell me that "God Bless America" has been substituted out!  She was watching Obama starting on his train ride to DC, and he gave a nice inspired speech. And at the end, using the same [august] intonation, he said instead, " I love you guys" !!

Conceivably over time we would grow tired of this phrase, too -- though you can imagine Obama delivering it with a twinkle in his eye, rather than with the super-earnestness that typically encases the cliched "God Bless America" rhetorical close. But any presidential speech that ends with any words other than GBA is a step toward mental and linguistic freedom. Perhaps Obama really is aiming for greatness.

In conclusion I have only this to say: I love you guys too.

Two quick followups about the airplane in the Hudson

1) As mentioned yesterday, the captain of the airplane -- the one you can identify in the cockpit because he or she is in the lefthand seat, and the one you can identify in the terminal because (usually) he'll have four stripes on the epaulet or uniform sleeve rather than three for the first officer - is getting deserved credit for handling the situation with such coolheaded competence.

But, as mentioned in passing at the end of the previous note, he's not the only one who deserves praise. Another reason US airline travel is so safe is that flight crews -- typically, the two people in the cockpit plus the rest of the staff in the cabin, plus dispatchers and others on the ground -- are so systematically trained to support each other, work together, and check or offset each other's errors. Along with the cabin attendants and the New York rescue crews, the first officer, Jeff Skiles, undoubtedly played an important part in getting the airplane down safely and deserves celebration. The safe outcome involved good luck -- the time of day, the nearness of potential rescuers, the absence of congested river traffic at that moment -- but it was mainly attributable to an extremely high level of well-trained professional performance by all involved. That is why it is fine to consider it "heroic" rather than "miraculous."  People did what they were trained to do, very very well.

2) I noted the silly error in an initial NYT report saying that "airliners are not meant to glide." Aerodynamically, every airplane is designed to glide - that is, descend gradually and under control even without engine power, rather than plummeting straight down if the engine stops. I mentioned that all pilots routinely practice gliding as part of  "engine-out" drills. Several readers pointed out the more obvious illustration: virtually every airplane of any size glides down to the runway when it comes in to land.* Airline passengers can notice this by hearing the dramatic cutback in engine noise and power when the airplane is on its final approach. Yes, there is a difference between gliding toward a landing at "idle power," with the throttle pulled all the way back -- versus gliding with dead engines, with no power to call on for final adjustments or if conditions change. Still, gliding is normal, not an emergency in itself.
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* Shorthand for the underlying explanation here. An aircraft's "total energy" is the combination of its airspeed and its altitude. When sitting on the ramp, a plane has total energy of zero. While in flight. it can trade one form of energy for another: with no adjustment in engine power, it will speed up if it descends, trading altitude for velocity. Or, again with no change in engine power, it can make the opposite trade off: climbing higher into the air, but at a lower speed.  Because gravity is always trying to pull the airplane down, and because wind resistance (drag) is always trying to slow the airplane down, the engine must be running to keep the airplane in "straight and level" flight -- that is, with a constant speed and altitude.

The process of landing the airplane involves steadily reducing the plane's total energy - its airspeed plus altitude -- toward their lowest possible level by the instant of touchdown. As the airplane descends toward the airport, it will naturally speed up -- unless power is reduced at the same time. Mile by mile and then foot by foot, the pilot manages the plane's speed, altitude, and power -- toward the ideal of having it reach its lowest possible flying speed (stall speed) when its wheels are just above the runway's surface. There are variations for different kinds of aircraft, which land with different amounts of power and different margins of speed above their absolute minimum flying speed, but this is fundamentally why typical flights end in a glide.

Most impressive nomination yet, IMHO

In several previous dispatches (here, here, and here) I emphasized what good news it was that Barack Obama had chosen Steven Chu as his new Secretary of Energy. I based this on Chu's own reputation and record:

 Because he is an eminent physicist, Chu's very presence in the job would hearten proponents of more emphasis on pure science. Because he has devoted his attention in recent years to the technological advances and the international cooperation necessary to deal with climate issues, he would both symbolize the important of this challenge and potentially lead the Administration's efforts. There were many other virtues of this choice.

I said all this without having any idea of the kind of team that would surround Chu at DoE. But if this report, on Al Kamen's Washington Post site is correct, he has made an inspired choice for his Deputy Secretary and closest working associate. This is Susan F. Tierney, of Boston.

She has been a leader in energy, environmental, and climate-change issues for decades, in academia, government, and business. Her bipartisan bona fides are such that she was appointed a commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities by Governor Mike Dukakis, and then Secretary of Environmental Affairs by Governor William Weld. She was an assistant secretary at DoE during Bill Clinton's first term, and since then has worked as a consultant at the Analysis Group and served on countless national and international commissions dealing with energy, environmental, and climate issues. She is an honest a person as you will find in public life, and is a skilled manager. Assuming Kamen's report is correct, this is another superb choice.

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I am not an expert on energy or climate issues, but about Tierney's character and temperament I feel very confident in my assessments. I have known her as long as any person on earth has, since I was just under two years old when she arrived in the household as my little sister. Her mother and father would be extremely proud; her sister and two brothers, plus her husband and two sons and many others, are proud enough to make up. Really, her only failing is that she has never, once, given me any inside info of any sort on any topic that she has been working on. Sisters!

In case you were wondering, about that airplane in the Hudson

Yes, it is right to view the pilot, CB Sullenberger, as a hero for the mental composure and technical skill he showed after he (reportedly) lost power in both engines.* Plus to celebrate the combination of luck and teamwork by aircrew and rescuers that allowed everyone aboard to get out of the airplane alive.

During my days of amateur piloting, I was always amazed by the rigor and discipline of professional airline crews. Every two years, those of us in the amateur business were required to go through Biennial Flight Reviews in which you'd fly with an instructor who would simulate various problems to see how you'd react. ("OK, you've just lost power, tell me where you're going to land." Or, when you're ten feet above the ground preparing to land, "A deer just stepped onto the runway - GO AROUND [abort the landing] now!") Many amateur fliers choose to get, or are required by insurance companies to get, "recurrent training" every six or twelve months.

But airline crews are drilled and tested and measured again and again and again, without letup, throughout their working careers. In their full-motion simulators, they're trained to respond to every disaster, and combination of disasters, that might possibly befall an airliner. Loss of power just as the airplane is taking off. Engine fire at low altitude. (Contrary to general assumption, problems at low altitudes are usually more dangerous than ones high altitude,  since you have less time to deal with them before the airplane hits the ground.) Hydraulic failure along with the fire. Plus, being in the middle of a thunderstorm. And so on.

Some professional pilots are "smart" in the normal sense; some are not. Some are likable and admirable; some are bores or boors. But all of them are made to develop and maintain reflex-like responses to these emergencies. They are also forced to think through the decisions they would make if faced by disasters they will probably never encounter through their whole flying careers.

Why is riding a commercial airliner in the US statistically about the safest way you can spend your time? Partly it's because of the advanced, powerful, and multiply-redundant nature of the machinery, and because of the regulatory standards to which it's held. But the airlines' extraordinarily safe record also says something about the skill, responsibility, and judgment of (most) people flying the craft. As it happens, nearly all flights are routine, and it becomes tempting to think of their crews as glorified bus drivers. But they're conditioned to think, at every stage of every flight, What would I do if XXX went wrong, right now?

And birds? Birds are a much more serious worry for people flying airplanes than you would think, no matter the size of the plane. Obviously it's bad for the bird when it hits a hard metal or composite structure at hundreds of miles an hour. But it's surprisingly bad for the plane too. This detail in a recent NYT story rang true to me: "The impact of a 12 pound bird hitting a plane traveling at 150 miles per hour is equal to that of a 1,000 pound weight dropped from a height of 10 feet, according to experts on bird strikes."

Coastal airports are often near water; most airports are surrounded by a lot of grass; the combination means that flocks of birds often assemble where they can do themselves and the airplanes real harm. At an airport in Maryland I once aborted a takeoff in a small propeller plane -- the only time I've had to do so -- because, out of nowhere, dozens of Canada geese suddenly appeared in front of me. It's all too common, when approaching airports near water, to have to concentrate on flocks of seagulls (or crows, even away from water) in hopes that they will, by the very last instant, get out of the way and allow you to land.

And ditching in water? This is something that very few amateur or professional pilots have ever practiced for real.

To deal with an extremely serious problem -- failure of both engines, at least as now reported; to consider various options (on to Teterboro? back to LGA? what about the water?) while the plane is inevitably descending and each passing second narrows your choices; to decide on and commit to a course of action; and then to carry it out flawlessly .. all this deserves admiration, study, and thanks. So, yes, he's a hero. And one of several who emerged that day.

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* And not to react in the somewhat grudging spirit of an initial report on the NYT site:

In a few weeks, a close comparison of radar tapes and cockpit audiotapes will establish where the plane was when that clipped, urgent conversation took place, and other investigators will try to figure out why this one plane, flying through some of the world's most congested airspace, was the only one to report a bird problem. [Perhaps because it was the only one that was hit???] The twin-engine plane is supposed to be able to fly on one engine.  But from early indications, it appears the pilot handled the emergency river landing with aplomb and avoided major injuries.

This story also said, as an aside, "Airliners are not meant to glide, although occasionally they have to." In fact, every airplane is designed to be able to glide, and controlling them in a glide, without power, is something that everyone routinely practices (as part of an "engine-out" drill.) 

Last words on pitying Bush

(At least before his really-final farewell speech in a few hours, which I won't see because I'll be at a factory in the boondocks of Beijing.)

About GW Bush's last press conference as president (previously here, here, and here), a reader says:

President Bush's goodbye conference ... made me think of how I identify his waning days. The official White House website has a video of President Bush giving a tour of the Oval Office. Throughout the video, President Bush makes mistakes and starts over, expecting the mistakes to be edited out of the video. But they weren't. The video makes me feel pity for him, much the same way people have felt pity for him after his press conference: not for what he did say, but for what he was trying to say. At the end of the day, he's still just a man as much as you and I are, and for the first time in the eight years of his presidency, I saw him as human.

The 8-minute video is here, shot in 2006. More background here. Judge for yourself.

Year end pensees: more on security

OK, we're already 4% of the way into the new year of 2009. But there are still 10 or 11 days left in the current Chinese Year of the Earthen Rat, before we welcome the auspicious Year of the Golden Ox. So if I hurry I can get through my list of topics worthy of year end wrap-up. (Previously here, here,  here and here.) This time, on security:

- Most important remaining symbolic change: getting rid of the abhorrently un-American, odiously Teutono/Soviet term "Homeland Security," and replacing it with something less Gestapo-sounding. Here is one suggestion: "Civil Security." The Integrative Center for [groan] Homeland Security at Texas A&M has a video on its site in which the director, David McIntyre, argues that "civil security" is both a better concept and a better name. Video is a little over seven minutes long, "civil society" discussion is in last minute and a half. Entire site worth inspecting.



- Latest evidence of the primacy of "security theater" over real security: this assessment of how many lives the U.S. can save and how much havoc it can prevent for each million dollars the TSA spends on air marshals -- versus using the money to harden cockpit doors or take other steps. About air marshals the study says:

An assessment of the Federal Air Marshal Service suggests that the annual cost is $180 million per life saved. This is greatly in excess of the regulatory safety goal of $1-$10 million per life saved. As such, the air marshal program would seem to fail a cost-benefit analysis.

More about TSA security theater on an ongoing basis from the Reason Foundation's Airport Policy and Security newsletter, from Bruce Schneier passim, and of course from the Atlantic's loci classici, here and here.
 
- Security theater takes a holiday in Beijing. Until just before the Olympics, there was no bag-check before you went into a subway station. Then airport-style bag-screening machines were installed at all the stations -- and six months later they are still there. They constitute an imperfect security shield, to put it mildly. Passengers themselves aren't checked at all, so you could get onto the subway with anything you wanted packed under a gigantic winter overcoat.(Picture below shows my standard Beijing winter attire, minus the mufflers, sweaters, big hat, long underwear, etc.)

 
(Illustration from AntiqueMapsandPrints.com )

Now, and heart-warmingly, the people running the system act as if they know it's just for show.  Of the last 20 or so trips I've made on the subway, I've skipped putting my bag through the machine about half the times. Once it was because the security station was unattended; twice, because the person who was supposed to look at the x-ray screen was sleeping. The rest, because the attendants just waved me on or didn't give me a second glance. Everyone involved is acting as if this has become a nice public-employment project.

- My own personal act of (legal) Don't Tread on Me-ism, for when I move back to the US and resurrect my flying career. This article, by Dave Hirschman on the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) site, describes the change in the flying environment in Washington over these past seven years. Essentially it's become illegal for most anything except airliners or police helicopters to fly within about 30 miles of the capital - roughly as if cars and trucks could no longer operate anywhere in downtown DC. ( More here and here.) That's perfectly normal in China, where you practically never see flying craft except at big airports. For the US, it's a change. There is an exception, which involves going through Secret Service screening to obtain the right to fly as "close" to the seat of government as College Park, Maryland, whose very nice little historic airport is barely staying in business. As a little symbolic assertion of freedom, I'll go through the screening process when I get back.

(Further on pointless "security" measures involving small airplanes here, here, here, and here. For another time, full explanation of why these won't work.)

There is one more security theme that I'll also save for a separate post. It has to do with the potentially destructive and dangerous conception of "security" that President Bush harped on in his final press conference. Will try to do that while I can still refer to him as "the President" rather than "former President" GW Bush.

Bush, by Eugene O'Neill

While watching our 43rd president's final press conference two days ago, I noted in real time, here and here, that I felt the first flickers of empathy for a man whose effect on America and the world I have relentlessly deplored. (Try this, for a sample, a  story the Atlantic had the guts to put on its cover just before the 2004 election that I'm still proud of.)

I got a fair amount of "how dare you feel sorry for this guy?" response -- but also one note that conveyed a reaction I wish I had captured at the time. In fairness, this came in two days after the press conference, and I was writing in the wee hours in Beijing with a Yanjing beer in hand while Bush was on the air. Still, I thought it impressive. It is from David Carr, not the NYT writer of that name, from North Carolina:

I too thought the final Bush press conference was a remarkable performance; if an actor were to memorize and replicate it, it would seem like something out of Eugene O'Neill, staged in a barroom, and we might feel pity.  The inept man without words realizes that he cannot say what he must say: an admission of failures across the board, a realization that his pipe dreams were deadly, an understanding that his nation and the world now hold him in low esteem and wish him gone.  And not to be able to say these things is to remain their captive forever.  But there is no expiation for Mr. Bush, and that is the objective tragedy. How can he live without awareness?  He also must see how much Barack Obama is his opposite, how much he is admired and welcomed to the office, so unlike the stolen Bush arrival in 2000.  It's a remarkable achievement for Mr. Bush:  every moment of his presidency is touched with a shame that cannot be bathed away.  I think he will disappear; I cannot see any post-presidential role he could fulfill without the full recollection of that shame.

Will $6 billion solve the Chinese PR problem?

I've written several times, in this article and and this book and various posts like this and this, about the strange difficulty Chinese institutions face when dealing with the outside world. Individual Chinese people get along very well overseas, at least in my experience. But companies and public institutions often act as if they have no clue about how foreigners think, reason, or react. The twin symbols of this difficulty are signs and brochures rendered into an "English" no foreigner can make sense of, and the official agitprop statements, from "jackal in a Buddhist monk's robes" to "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" that undermine rather than advance their intended cause.

My job is not to help Chinese organizations advance their intended causes. But it doesn't help anybody, as I argue in the book and article, if China's clumsy public diplomacy makes the country seem more menacing, opaque, hyper-controlled, and overall bad than it really is. For another time: how different the experience of living and traveling here is from what you'd expect by just reading about the place, and generally how much better.

Thus my fascination with the much examined news this week that the Chinese authorities plan to spend 45 billion RMB, or well over $6 billion, on a new effort to explain China to the world. The original stories were in the (non-government-controlled) South China Morning Post, of Hong Kong. They're for subscribers only, so I won't link to them. (By the way, for about $1 per week, a SCMP subscription is a bargain for people interested in China.) An account in the ZhongnanhaiBlog site has many details. It also has a bracing critique of the whole idea that money is the main cause of the government's difficulties in explaining itself. Cam MacMurchy of the ZhongnanhaiBlog says:

The problem isn't lack of TV channels or media outlets that present China's case to foreigners, it's the lack of any media outlets that present China's case well.  If Xinhua's new TV endeavor is run in the same manner CCTV is, with the same group of life-long communist party members in bad suits calling the shots, it will be doomed to failure.  In fact, I'd go one step further:  any mainland Chinese run media outlet will be taken less seriously as long as general media controls are in place.

The post also contains (rare) good news for English-speaking journalists: these Chinese media outlets are going on a hiring spree! At least someone is sure to benefit from this plan.

Penultimate words on 'Typhoon'

What have we learned from this episode? (Background, about the difficulty of tracking down a book with possibly "sensitive" anti-Chinese content, here and here.)

1. I argued earlier that the disappearance of a copy of this book in the Chinese mail was more likely inadvertence or error than anything else. That's my default explanation for most of what happens in life, and most of what happens in China. But I got this contrary testimony from an official of a large international manufacturing firm, who is based in Shenzhen:

As for the book Typhoon, I am almost positive it was the customs people who took it.  I used to order books online from Hong Kong and shipped to me in Shenzhen.  Sometimes the shipment never arrived even though the store assured me it was shipped.  A few times they made another shipment that also never made it to me.  The coincidence is the shipments were 'lost' any time a book with some type of negative China history or thought was being discussed (i.e a book written in the west about the Boxer Rebellion).

I think what happens is the customs people open the box, have basic English so understand a little about the book's topic, then decide it might be controversial and seize the shipment.  Since they don't want any arguments they don't bother to notify anyone.  Just <poof> and it's gone.

Could be! As with other kinds of Chinese control mechanisms, the uncertainty about what's happening makes the controls weirdly all the more effective. (For how this works with the Internet, here.)

2. Why this book, from this author? From Kevin Chambers, of the West Peavine blog, a hypothesis that it has to do with this article, by the book's author in the Guardian last year, about Chinese-Uighur tensions. I say: Maybe. Both this hypothesis and the previous one assume that Chinese customs officials are busily reading the English-language press and matching "sensitive" views to incoming shipments. But, again, it's possible.

3. About why some used books are on the market for prices from $75 to $247.87, this hypothesis from Tim Rossiter:

I've been listing used CDs on Amazon recently. I've found that there are some CDs that Amazon doesn't have in stock, yet are not rare by any means. If Amazon doesn't stock it and no one has listed a used one, someone will come along and list a used one for a ridiculous price to see if anyone bites. I think some of the larger used CD dealers may even have this kind of pricing automated.

My guess is that you're seeing the same type of thing with your book.

I've learned time and again over these last two and a half years in China not to rule out any explanation. Any or all of these theories could be true.

As advertised, these will be the penultimate words on the topic from me. For-real final words after I've actually read the book.

Mr. Solter

In discussing the deaths of my parents I've mentioned that people who pour themselves into one small community or local cause "deserve" more recognition from the world at large than they often get. I realize that applying this principle fully would mean talking about billions of people who have lived worthy lives. But since another example has just come up I will mention it.

If you write me from EarthLink, here's why I won't write back

I've got nothing at all against EarthLink, its managers, or its general business reputation. On the contrary: it seems an admirable company.

But I've come to dread getting any email with an @earthlink.net return address, and here's why: If I go to the bother of hitting Ctl-R (in Outlook) and sending a response, I know that I'll then be put to several rounds of further bother, because of EarthLink's annoying and narcissistic (and optional) "challenge-response" anti-spam system.

I previously complained about this in the Atlantic. The system works by keeping a "white list" of approved email senders. If someone writes in from any non-white address, EarthLink's filter bounces back a note to the effect of, "Who the hell are you?" You then have to fill out forms or interpret cryptic characters to prove you're a real person, not an e-bot, so that your message may be granted a writ of certiorari for consideration by the recipient. After the jump, samples of two such messages I have received in the last hour.

I get a lot of mail from people who write in about articles in the magazine or posts on this site. Mail comes in via the "Email" button you see to your right on this screen. If I write back, I do so from one of my normal email accounts. Very rarely is that address already entered on an EarthLink sender's white list. So the resulting cycle is: you write me on EarthLink; I take the time to write back; then Earthlink sends me an annoying message and asks me to do more work (like decoding the text in the box below, taken from an actual Earthlink challenge screen) before it deigns to disturb the sanctity of your inbox.



Why do I consider this narcissistic? Because it assumes that the other person's time and tranquility are more valuable than mine.

Yes, spam is an issue. Yes, my situation is different from some other people's, in that a significant share of email is with "first-time" correspondents who are writing in cold to the magazine, rather than an established group of friends. Still: if someone writes to me without previous "white listing," I don't like having to petition for the privilege to respond.

So, I remain happy to hear from EarthLink users, as from all others. But as a matter of policy I will no longer reply to messages from that domain -- unless you tell me that you've disabled challenge-response!  Samples of what makes me crabby below.
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Continue reading "If you write me from EarthLink, here's why I won't write back" »

'Typhoon' mystery partly explained

Thanks to all who wrote in with suggestions about why the elusive book Typhoon had apparently vanished into a black hole rather than reaching me in China, and what I might do about that. Among the things I have learned in the last few hours are:

- It's on sale at the moment at the Hong Kong Book Centre on Des Voeux Road;

- It's will be available six weeks from now, as a £7.99* paperback, direct from Penguin Books in the UK;

- It can be found in various overpriced hardcover versions, and not-yet-available paperbacks, via this Bookfinder site (and some others);

- Amazon.de will have the German paperback edition late next month too (hardback out of stock);

- It's been selling well in hardcover at Filigranes, a leading bookstore in Brussels;

- Large-print and audio editions are available from this site in England, for £17.95 and up; and (in addition to other reports)...

- It's in stock, and cheaper than any of the alternative in-stock sources, from Amazon.ca in Canada, for the equivalent of $18.62 USD.

So what have we learned here? That it doesn't make sense to try to have books shipped to China (expensive and uncertain). That Amazon.ca is probably the way to go, unless I want to wait six weeks. And that -- while I am grateful for many offers from people to mule the thing in on their next visit to Beijing -- it makes most sense to order one and have it shipped from Canada to the US, then pick it up on my next trip not too long from now.

Also, a consensus hypothesis that the UK hardcover publishers sold more books than they expected; that they didn't have a further press run -- especially as paperback date drew near; and that they have been lethargic about producing a US edition. What I learned when working in the White House decades ago is that blunder, misunderstanding, or miscalculation is usually the explanation for things, as opposed to hyper-sophisticated secret plans. That's probably why this book is so hard to find, as opposed to a deliberate suppression scheme.

What's left to the realm of mystery: whether the book I originally ordered just got lost or was detained; why the publishers didn't try to sell more hardbacks after the initial batch sold out; and why on earth the used copies on Amazon are listed at $75 up to $247.87.

Most important mystery: whether after all this, the damned book will be any good. At least I can count on being able to answer this question at some point.

Sincere thanks to all who volunteered their tips, info, and help.
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* Yes, since previous post on this topic have found the right symbols for Pound and Euro.

Refining the point about GW Bush's final press conference

I mentioned a few minutes ago, while GW Bush's final press conference was underway, that the president seemed unusually "self-aware."

That's not quite right. On matters of policy, he revealed himself to be as isolated and out of touch as his critics (including me) would have assumed all along. Two illustrations: he hotly challenged the premise of one question that his policies had made America less prestigious and respected around the world, saying that was just the view of some "elites" and other pantywaists in part of Europe. Go to China! he said. They still respect us there. Yes, sort of. As I've written many times in the Atlantic, China does not seem in any deep way "anti-American," and they generally think US-China relations are good. But no thinking person has the slightest doubt that the Iraq, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib policies, in particular, have hurt America's image badly here as they have in most other places. To say what the President did indicates how carefully he has been protected from any unfiltered feedback from the real world.

So too with his wistful, regretful-sounding comments about the "harsh tone" in Washington DC. He was completely believable in saying that he hoped things would go better for Barack Obama. But does he recall the name Karl Rove? Does he remember which Vice President told a U.S. Senator from the other party to fuck off, on the Senate floor?  There is no point refighting these wars. I'm simply saying: the very sincerity of the President's comments indicated how isolated he has been, or what he has chosen to forget.

Nonetheless: I think even people who oppose the Bush Administrations policies would find it somewhat harder to dislike him viscerally after this performance -- rather than getting angrier the more they see him, as with most of his appearances over these last eight years. The self-awareness I mentioned was purely on a personal level. Even though he defended his tax cuts and his other policies and even the execution of the Katrina response, everything in his posture, expression, and body language -- even his emphasis on the word defeat in talking about the 2008 results -- indicated that he has taken in the fact that things have not gone well.

It is true, he can hardly express himself in anything resembling sentences. But he displayed none of the little moue of pride when he got out a tricky name or a big word, a tic very familiar from his past speeches. To me, he helped rather than hurt himself with this last performance. And to recognize what an achievement this is: think how it would be to hear a valedictory hour's worth of Dick Cheney.

I didn't think I could empathize for even a second with GW Bush...

...but for at least the first fifteen minutes of his final press conference still underway, I did. I think it is because the internalized sense of defeat and unease was so patent that any human being would have at least an initial impulse of feeling sorry for him. More, he seemed to have dropped any of the masks he normally wears, and seemed to be expressing his real thoughts, emotions, and feelings, at least for a while. And his comments about Obama had not a trace of snark or edge.

The switch was thrown when someone asked him about tax cuts and he gave a little standard speech. But this is the first time I can remember when I could imagine why people who knew him earlier in his career considered him "likable," or at least appealingly self-aware. 

More later.

A marketing mystery I cannot understand

This is a small thing, but intriguing (to me) because of the various strands it potentially connects. Background:

This past June, I heard about a new spy thriller called Typhoon, by the well-established UK writer Charles Cumming. It was set in China, so I put it into my "here's another way to learn about the country" mental in-basket. Its fictional time frame was the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. Since that was the real-world time frame in which I then lived, it moved up on my mental  "books I should read soon" list.



Better still, the plot apparently involved something I'd been reading and thinking about, and which was an important ongoing theme in internal Chinese news coverage: the possibility of separatist or disruptive activities by the Muslim Uighur population of China's far-northwestern Xinjiang region. The Chinese press portrayed this as the main "terrorist" threat to the Olympics, justifying tight security measures. In the novel, apparently the CIA was working with the Uighurs to stir things up. Hmmmm!

Could I buy this at a book store in Beijing? Not likely -- less for censorship reasons than because of the limited number of books that ever make their way here. So I checked online. I didn't find it from any of the normal US sources. But it was being published in England first, and Amazon.co.uk had it in stock.

I ordered a copy: 9.99 pounds for the book, 7.98 pounds for postage, and that when the pound was worth about $2. Part of the cost of expatriation. Order confirmed, book shipped to Beijing. And then... it never arrived.

Amazon.uk said it had indeed sent the book. The Royal Mail tracing service seemed to confirm that fact. Yet on the Chinese end, nothing got here. Hmmm again. But this is not so unusual with mail in and out of China. Things just get lost

Amazon.uk issued a full refund. Gracious of them. And I thought, I'll get this the next time I travel to the outside world.

So I went to America that autumn -- and still didn't find the book in any US stores or sites. Had no trips planned to England, so didn't try to pick it up there. For family reasons, kept going back to the US every few weeks. Kept checking. Never saw it.

Today I thought: let's find this book! And now I see it in stock on the Amazon.uk site for 42 pounds (ok, 41.99) and two copies on the main US Amazon site for either $75 or $247.87. What the hell???

I'm almost curious enough to buy the book at these inflated prices to get a clue about what is going on. Almost. But I can't help wondering why this book's marketing history is so odd.

Why, despite generally positive comments and reviews, has it seemingly vanished from circulation? Why, unlike numerous other books by the same author, did it never successfully cross the Atlantic to be published in the US? Why on earth are re-sellers now offering it for 4x to 10x its original price? None of this makes apparent sense.

I am very skeptical that mailroom censors would have kept the book from reaching me in Beijing. Far more obviously "sensitive" printed matter - in English - comes into the country every day. I had been reading the highly controversial Jon Halliday-Jung Chang Mao biography on one interminable Newark-Beijing flight. I absentmindedly kept it in my hand as I walked through the customs and immigration gates in Beijing. No one gave it a second glance. (General point: the authorities don't really care what non-Chinese citizens are reading in languages other than Chinese. More here.) Casual screwup is the more likely explanation.

But the book's fate in the English-language markets is puzzling to me. Has it been, in some way, suppressed? Did US or UK officials somehow signal that it would make trouble if left on the market? That's hard to imagine, but other explanations seem farfetched too. If anyone has the book and can offer a hypothesis, I'd be glad to hear it. And I'll buy it from you on my next trip home, for something less than $247.87.

Presidential rhetoric evolves toward its perfect form

From today's NYT, an account of a dry run of next week's swearing-in ceremonies. An African-American soldier built roughly like Barack Obama, Army Staff Sgt. Derrick Brooks, stood in as the "Faux-Bama" as the participants walked through the planned movements on the stage. These included his inaugural address:

Mr. Faux-Bama's entire inaugural speech consisted of six words: "My fellow Americans," he said. "God bless America."

Noooooooohhhh!

By chance, I was standing in the crowd (teleported from Beijing) watching the run through, as a C-SPAN crowd shot reveals:

 

Thanks to many readers who wrote in to make sure I knew about the ceremony. Later, a compare-and-contrast exercise between those two modern imperatives of Presidential comportment: the "God Bless America" sign-off and the American-flag pin in the lapel. The similarities are obvious, but there are some interesting differences.

On Gaza, strategy, and tactics

Five days ago I mentioned that I did not know enough about Gaza to have a detailed or nuanced judgment about the immediate circumstances of the Israeli effort against Hamas.

But I have seen, read, reported, thought, and written enough over the years about the strategy-tactics tension in many realms, from politics to business to technology to war planning, to recognize a situation in which short-term tactical victories may lead to long-term strategic defeat. This is how the Gaza operation looked early on, and how it looks more starkly with every passing day. Gee, if only there were a popular saying that conveyed the idea that you could win many battles and still lose the war.

Now someone who knows a lot about the details and nuances of Middle East conflict has stated this concern in blunt and authoritative terms. I am referring of course to Anthony Cordesman of CSIS, he of the unending flow of detailed papers on the military balance in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere. Two days ago he issued an analysis called "The War in Gaza: Tactical Gains, Strategic Defeat?" In light of his argument, the question-mark in the title seems superfluous, or merely polite:

The growing human tragedy in Gaza is steadily raising more serious questions as to whether the kind of tactical gains that Israel now reports are worth the suffering involved....  This raises a question that every Israeli and its supporters now needs to ask. What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting?

 I won't quote further from his analysis, which is short enough to be read easily in its entirety and long enough to make a reasonable case. Please go see for yourself. But I will quote the way it ends:

As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved.

Just kill me now (updated: no, not so fast)

"Enya's New Album Celebrates Winter"

The aptly titled And Winter Came... explores themes of the season and the passing of time.

"It has to do with that reflective time of year," Enya says of the title. "The spring, summer, is quite a hectic time for people in their lives, but then it comes to autumn, and to winter, and you can't but help think back to the year that was, and then hopefully looking forward to the year that is approaching."

From an NPR report that includes samples of new Enya songs like "My! My! Time Flies!" Harold Arlen, * Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Oscar Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, eat your hearts out in awe and envy of such word-magic artistry.

(*Erratum: Arlen wrong for this list, since he was a composer only; the rest wrote lyrics only or -- like Enya! -- both words and music. Thanks to MF for the reminder.)

UPDATE: To end on a more positive note, which is of course always my goal, in this same current weekend in which it's carrying the Enya story, NPR also has a wonderful 56-minute session of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with John Pizzarelli, the guitarist / singer / bandleader who, as McPartland says in her notes, has "an ultra-cool style that's both modern and rooted in the jazz tradition." The whole program is strong and ends with a rendition of Route 66 that suffers only by comparison with the spectacular version Pizzarelli performed on his Dear Mr. Cole album.

That great version can be found as the fifth song listed here, on Rhapsody, available to Rhapsody subscribers or for visitors on a free trial. Or, you could buy the CD!

See, isn't that more uplifting?

Sorry to hear Obama talking this way

This may be a small thing, but:

I hate, hate, hate the lazy modern presidential habit of ending all major addresses with the phrase "And God bless the United States of America" or simply "God bless America."

I love the Irving Berlin song. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. But a little chunk is hacked away from the national brain each time a president gets out of a speech not with a thought or original phrase but with this mindless pablum. This has become the political equivalent of "Have a nice day!"

Isn't this how presidents have always talked? God, no. You didn't get it from George Washington. You didn't get it from Abraham Lincoln, either in the hands-down winner as Greatest Inaugural Address Ever, his second or in that work of political haiku, Gettysburg Address. You didn't hear it from FDR.

Many of these titans spoke of God -- but when they did so, it was with some actual thought-content. For instance, from the close of Lincoln's Second Inaugural:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
  With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...

As I know first-hand, you didn't hear this from probably the most sincerely religious president of recent times, Jimmy Carter. To choose an example of a speech I was not involved in, his "crisis of confidence" speech in the summer of 1979 -- often called the "malaise" speech, though he did not use that word -- touched on spiritual issues but ended this way:

I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God's help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

But then Ronald Reagan began using the phrase to mean "The speech is over now," and ever since then politicians have seemed afraid not to tack it on, perhaps out of fear that we'll have the aural equivalent of phantom-limb pain if we don't hear the familiar words.

Apparently Obama began sliding down this slope early last year, but in most of the speeches I heard he ended with a composed thought, not a cliche. (I must not have listened all the way to the end of his otherwise-perfect election night speech in Grant Park.) But just now, groan, he ended his economic-stimulus speech, at George Mason University, in this same lame way. Can there be hope for the inaugural?

You are better than this, Mr. President-Elect. Your speechwriter, though more wizened than some who have held the job, presumably still has the vim to come up with a good closing line -- even one involving God. For example, this from John Kennedy's inaugural, six months before Obama was born:

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

All I have left to say is... nah, to hell with further thought. God Bless America

I thought it got easier to breathe back there in August!

As attentive readers may recall, the air in Beijing through the six months before the Olympic games was almost unbelievably horrible. Lest we forget: this was the view out my window in mid-June, which was not that different from how it had been day upon day through the spring and early summer.



But even as I was wheezing my way around town and truly getting depressed by no view of sun and sky (and being told by a doctor that I should stop smoking, when I'd never started), I was reporting in the Atlantic on plans to get things cleaned up by the time of the Olympics. The first two days of the Games looked pretty bleak -- but then a line of thunderstorms moved through, and the air looked far better, and the environmental threat to the Games was averted.

Since then, the air in Beijing has seemed better -- not all of the time, God knows, but more than before. How much of the improvement is due to factories being shut down because of the recession? (They must have been running 40 hours a day in the spring, given how bad things were then.) How much because of typically strong late-fall winds blowing in from the northwest? How much an actual long-term change? I don't know.

But, courtesy of a tip from an engineer at NASA, here is new evidence that all the anti-pollution steps taken because of the Olympics really did make a difference in air-quality measures in August -- and, it seems, some of the time since then.

The NASA map below will make more sense if you read the full report, here. Highlight version: the deep red west of Shanghai and north of Hong Kong (where Shenzhen and Dongguan are), plus through the central coal-and-factory belt in places like Shanxi province, is a bad sign. The light green around Beijing is relatively good! (The red zone on the coast just east of Beijing is the city of Tianjin.)

Fresh Air update, concluding family comments

Webcast of yesterday's interview on Fresh Air available online here.

After we'd discussed the People's Bank of China, RMB/$ exchange rates, the "financial balance of terror" between China and the US, and similar worthy topics, Terry Gross asked me in the closing moments about the deaths of my parents. Specifically, why I'd written on this site about my father's death two months ago today. (My mother died unexpectedly, and relatively young, in her sleep nearly five years ago.)

I didn't know she would ask this but in retrospect am glad that she did. As I fumbled to explain in real time, part of my instinct in making a private matter public was the sense that people with the virtues of my parents -- talented, loving, curious, hopeful people who poured their heart and effort into the betterment of their small community and the well-being of their family -- deserve more celebration than they typically get, precisely because they have chosen not to operate on a broad public stage. My parents were very well known in our home town but unknown outside of it. It gave me heart to think that people who had never encountered them might hear something about the lives they led.
 
As my siblings have taken turns cleaning out our dad's house, they have come across hundreds of pictures that none of us had ever seen before. Parents are always old to their children. When parents have lived to an objectively advanced age and then physically run down, as my dad did, it is startling to be reminded how vigorous and, yes, beautiful they had once been. My mom and dad's youth is what we are discovering after their deaths.

Thus, and as the real end to this commemorative series, three pictures I had never seen while my parents were living, part of a huge collection that my brother-in-law Bryan Neider is digitizing from old, brittle prints. The first are of my parents in the late 1940s, around the time of their wedding when she was 20 and he was 23. (His wedding ring is visible in the second shot.) Then, one of the rare pictures of my dad in which he's not smiling. Here he is wearing his game face, as the four-quarters, every-play offensive and defensive lineman known as Tiger Jim. These are people we never knew and are meeting now.

Geoghegan-for-Congress update and linkfest

(Earlier post and background here)

Official campaign website here.

Donation site here.

Via ChicagoReader.com, a rundown on the many other candidates, their positions, and their prospects, here.

"Robert Bartley is spinning in his grave" encomium by Thomas Frank on today's WSJ's op-ed page here.

Update: Kathy Geier, another Chicago friend of Geoghegan's has an eloquent profile/endorsement here.

On Gaza

Several of my Atlantic colleagues have explained why they are not writing more frequently about this ongoing war.

My explanation is simpler, and is the opposite of Jeffrey Goldberg's. He says, in effect, that he knows too much about the situation. I know too little. I spent the first weeks of the Iraq war in Haifa and Tel Aviv, mainly working on this article (about the Mohammed al-Dura case, which of course took place in Gaza), and I was at Camp David with Jimmy Carter's entourage when he brokered the Sadat-Begin agreements of 1978. But I understand enough about the politics of the Middle East to recognize that I don't understand enough.

The one relevant thing I do know concerns a repeated source of tragedy in foreign-policy decision making. That is the reluctance to ask, before irrevocable decisions, "And what happens then?" For instance: so we depose Saddam Hussein. What happens then? This question is all the harder to ask when the step in question feels so good. Crushing Saddam. Or, punishing Hamas.

I can imagine the Gaza ground war "working" from Israel's perspective in the short term. The obvious question is, What happens then? I find it very difficult to imagine a sequence of events that leaves Israel -- or anyone -- better off one year from now, or ten.

If I thought the people making Israel's choices were stupid, I could tell myself that they hadn't properly weighed the consequences. But I don't think they're stupid. Instead I think that, like the people who rushed the U.S. into war in Iraq, they are reckless and unwise and will therefore hurt their country. Along with hurting a lot of others.

Brief media notes

For the record:

Interview about Chinese economy and my new Postcards book, Saturday All Things Considered, here.

Excerpt from the book in the indispensable Danwei.org, here.

Fresh Air interview, recorded in the unconscious 3am zone in Beijing, scheduled for broadcast today, link as available.

Previously: Q-and-A with Kate Merkel-Hess of The China Beat, here.

Pancasila buffs only: all things Indonesia update

I had no idea how many readers know about, care about, and have forcefully-expressed opinions about Indonesia! After the jump, specimen reactions on two main points (in response to earlier posts here, here, and here).

One concerns whether Indonesians of all varieties, and not just members of the Muslim majority, are enthusiastic about the ascent to glory of former Jakarta resident Barack Obama. One reader, whom I quoted earlier, said it was a sectarian matter: Muslims loved him, Indonesian Christians and other non-Muslims didn't. Many, many readers have written in to disagree; in fact, everyone I heard from saw it differently. I quote a sample letter below.

The other has to do with the airport tax that surprised me. The theme of many correspondents was: you don't know the half of it! I include a letter concerning the "fiskal tax," a steep levy imposed not on foreign tourists, who are generally richer than Indonesian citizens, but on Indonesians thinking of going overseas.

This is a one-time only update: fight it out among yourselves from here on!

I should probably also say that, ever since my initial visit to Indonesia in 1981, while my wife's parents were working there, I have been enchanted by the place. In the current Atlantic I mention the indelible memory of my wife's and my very first moments in the country, when as soon as the airplane's doors opened on the tarmac we could smell the kretek cigarettes and hear the tones of gamelan. We've been to many parts of the country and always look forward to the next visit there. When I mentioned the incident of penny-ante bribery I encountered at the airport, it was mainly out of surprise that something taken for granted 20 years ago could still be found. Even when this was a lot more prevalent and the Suharto regime was boundlessly corrupt, it didn't make Indonesia a bad or unlovable place.

Here, a short sample of gamelan, which I never get tired of listening to. Once, in Java, we saw a gamelan gong being forged  and bought one to take home.  The music is this video, by a skillful but obviously non-Indonesian ensemble, starts 45 seconds into the nine-plus minute clip. (For some less traditional but very seductive gamelan, try this; for a more traditional and very energetic music-and-dance performance, here.) After the jump, some recent mail.
 

Continue reading "Pancasila buffs only: all things Indonesia update" »

It never ends

It is 4am in Beijing as I type. For good and sufficient reason*, I had to be at a radio studio downtown from 2:30 to 3:30am. When that session was over I went out on the street to find a cab. It is so, umm, crisp in Beijing that I went out with knit cap pulled down practically to my eyebrows, muffler wrapped from my neck up to bottom of my eyes, plus assorted huge overcoats, gloves, thermal underwear, etc. Speak to me not of the joys of winter.

Find a taxi; climb into the front seat, the comradely thing to do in Australia and China alike. Pull off my knit cap and undo the muffler. Driver turns to me, starts to chuckle, and gives a little salute.

No, this is not the Obama-honoring salute I encountered so recently in (balmy) Indonesia. No, not at all. Zongtong Bushi!  "President Bush!" Hardee har har. As mentioned previously, to most citizens of China I am apparently indistinguishable from Xiao Bushi, "Little Bush."  I do not reply, "Chairman Mao!" or "President Hu!"

Instead I collect myself and make a pun: Wo bushi Bushi! I'm not Bush! It does no good. He salutes again as I get out of the cab.
 
Somehow I hope this is good for the soul.
_____
* Taping of Fresh Air interview, presumably for broadcast on Tuesday.

UPDATE: Via Tim Dorsett, a reminder that he more likely was saying Bushi zongtong, Bushi zongtong, Bushi zongtong than the opposite word order. But when he said them over and over, I could hear it either way!

Tibetan glaciers: impressive videos

The most obvious environmental problem in China is air pollution, as I have from time to time -- OK, maybe five million times -- mentioned in this space.  But environmental experts consistently stress that the most consequential problems are the related issues of CO2 output, climate change, and water supply. (On Chinese environmental issues in general, here is one article by me and one very valuable blog site.) 

The Asia Society's "China Green" project has just posted a riveting and sobering series of videos on how climate change is affecting the once-vast glacier fields of the Tibetan Plateau that are in turn the source of nearly all the major rivers of Asia: Yellow and Yangtze in China, Mekong and Salween in Southeast Asia, Brahmaputra and Ganges in India, Indus in Pakistan, and others. This is an introductory three-minute trailer:



There is a lot more, and a lot that's more dramatic, at the project's main site, here. I recommend spending a minute with the interactive opening-page splash shot, which allows you to run your mouse over a photo of Mt. Everest and watch how its surrounding glaciers have changed from 1921 to 2008.

This past August, during the Beijing Olympics, Michael Zhao of the Asia Society posted a wonderful series of daily shots of air-quality conditions in Beijing in the months leading up to the Games. They showed, among other things, the minimal correlation between what was officially a "blue sky day" and how the sky really looked. (The photo-chronicle is ongoing.) Zhao has also put together the Glacier project and really is demonstrating the potential of online video to dramatize public issues everyone "knows about" but has a hard time visualizing. Making these issues vivid is a necessary though not sufficient step to getting something done about them.

UPDATE: Have swapped a version with English subtitles for the previous Chinese-subtitled trailer. Ever considerate!

Tom Geoghegan for Congress

Two years ago, I said I was making an exception to the "no active involvement in politics" stance I had maintained through my previous decades of journalistic life. (After leaving a one-time stint in politics in the Jimmy Carter years.) That exception was to support my friend Jim Webb's then-improbable run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia.

Here is exception number two: Tom Geoghegan for Congress. He will be running in the special election for the seat Rahm Emanuel is vacating to become White House chief of staff. This seat, representing the 5th District in Illinois, has a colorful lineage, to put it mildly. Emanuel's predecessor was Gov-for-the-moment Rod Blagojevich. Earlier, for 36 years, the 5th was Dan Rostenkowski's base, before his unfortunate indictment and imprisonment on fraud charges. Tom would continue the tradition of having a difficult-to-spell last name. It's Irish and is pronounced Gay-gan.

 
(Photo from LaborBeat.org)

The basic background on Tom Geoghegan is here, written by his Chicago friend Rick Perlstein. Having been a friend of Geoghegan's for most of my life, I couldn't be more enthusiastic about his deciding to run.

To the extent Tom is known publicly, it's mainly because of his books, like Which Side Are You On?, The Secret Lives of Citizens, and In America's Courts. These really are masterful and original pieces of thinking and writing, which most writers would be content with as their entire contribution to the human endeavor during the period Tom has turned them out. Which Side, which was published in 1991, begins this way:

'Organized labor.' Say those words, and your heart sinks. I am a labor lawyer, and my heart sinks. Dumb, stupid organized labor: this is my cause.

The remarkable thing is that in Geoghegan's case writing has been a sideline. Day by day for several decades he has been a lawyer in a small Chicago law firm representing steel workers, truckers, nurses, and other employees whose travails are the reality covered by abstractions like "the polarization of America" and "the disappearing middle class." Geoghegan's skills as a writer and an intellectual are assets but in themselves might not recommend him for a Congressional job. His consistent and canny record of organizing, representing, and defending people who are the natural Democratic (and American) base is the relevant point.

The people of Chicago would have to look elsewhere for Blago-style ethics entertainment. Tom Geoghegan is honest and almost ascetic. Because it's an important part of his makeup, I mention too that he is a serious, Jesuit-trained Catholic.

Not living in the 5th district, I can't vote for Tom Geoghegan. But I can give him money, and just did, via his online donation site here. The campaign's mail address is Geoghegan for Congress; PO Box 1145 Chicago IL 60690. Email is GeogheganForCongress @ gmail.com

The race will be wide open, and I have no idea now what Tom's chances might be. It's a winner-take-all, no-runoff contest. I do know that the Congress would be better if Tom Geoghegan were part of it. Check out his record and see what you think.

NOTE: Several typos now cleaned up in what was originally a very late-night post -- including, unfortunately, a mistyped email address for writing to the Geoghegan campaign. The name is hard to spell, but not THAT hard.
 

Maybe Fox News has come to Indonesia?

On New Year's Day I mentioned an Indonesian military policeman's heartening response when he heard that my wife and I were Americans -- not Australians, as he had assumed. I also mentioned the traces of the top-to-bottom corruption of Indonesia in the old Suharto era that can be seen even in its spiffy new airports these days.
 
From reader Aaron Connelly, of Georgetown U., this amplification and reality check.

It seems the government must have upped the departure tax since I left in late November, when it was a mere 5,000 rupiah. [For me, it was 150,000.] I suspect this is related to the 20% decline in the value of rupiah vis-a-vis the dollar since October. If it is, this might be a land speed record for an Indonesian government policy change.

I also wanted to spoil your excitement, just slightly, with regard to the Indonesian airport official's enthusiasm for the President-elect. It is likely that this gentleman was either "orang sekular," ["secular person'] or a Muslim. While I was in Jakarta and Yogyakarta for the three months leading up to our elections, opinions on Barack Obama were very neatly divided along sectarian lines: Muslims and secular Indonesians [the great majority] were generally enthusiastic; Christians were uniformly pessimistic or wary of Obama.

When asked why, Christian Indonesians would tell me that they believed Obama was a Muslim, or that they were suspicious because their Muslim friends or coworkers were "too excited" about Obama. I was always surprised to turn on TVRI [the national network] week to week and hear another "investigative report" on Obama's Muslim school days. Unlike in the American press, in the Indonesian newsmedia the "Obama was a secret Muslim" accusations were never off-limits, though there they were treated as a much more cheerful sort of intrigue than they were by the Jerome Corsis back in the States. Muslim Indonesians were fascinated by the possibility, even if they ultimately doubted the substance of the argument.

The effect of this sort of coverage, however, in the context of Indonesia's sometimes tense sectarian politics, was to turn off Indonesian Christians to the President-elect. Asking natives of North Sulawesi and Flores about American politics in Jakarta, I learned to settle in for a long diatribe against Obama, our "Muslim Senator," and for a very strangely impassioned, wholly superficial defense of the virtues of John McCain. It was amusing at first, frustrating and tiresome by the end of my time there-- because it says nothing positive about the direction of sectarian politics in Indonesia.

In a followup note, Connelly said he wanted to make clear that when referring to Indonesian Christians he was talking about that country's counterpart to America's "low information voters" -- people who followed US politics hazily if at all. He did not mean the very sophisticated cadre of Christians in think tanks, academia, etc.

In any case it makes you wonder whether the anti-Obama Indonesians found this information on their own, or whether instead Roger Ailes has quietly reached a new target audience.

An old era continues...

(Following the cheery "new era" report here.)

When traveling in Indonesia in the early 1980s, I used to marvel at the way the high-level mega- corruption of the Suharto family had filtered down to every level of life. The airports were somehow the most impressive example, since you assume them to be connected to international standards. In those days, the Garuda Airlines agent at the Jakarta airport might sorrowfully announce that your reservation had been canceled - until a bunch of Rupiah notes, passed discreetly across the  counter, made the bookings re-appear. Bags suddenly became "overweight" and impossible to fit onto the airplane, only to slim back down to an acceptable poundage  through the same person-to-person magic.

On this promising first day of 2009, my wife and I walk into a vast modern-looking Indonesian airport. After we've been through all the check-in rigmarole, we are directed upstairs to the departure gates. At the top of the stairs we find - surprise! - a departure-tax toll booth, where each departee must pay 150,000 Indonesian Rupiahs (about $13.75) in cash.

Old-fashioned element #1 in this set up: forking over cash, rather than building it into the ticket price as in most of the world. In the old days, this was prevalent everywhere. Now it's rare. #2: no noticeable previous mention of this fee within the airport or from the airlines, so that unless you happen to have kept 300,000Rp on you for sentimental reasons, you're stuck, as every other foreign traveler we observed was.  #3: other currencies accepted, but at punitive rates (eg,  $17 US dollars - or 170 Chinese RMB, the only cash we had on us, which is equivalent to $25).   #4: no ATMs in this part of the airport, but plenty of little money changing booths offering similar punitive rates. The tax collectors helpfully steer each flummoxed foreigner toward these booths.

Oh well.

But the real continuity with days of yore was #5, the solution to the problem. I had seen an ATM outside the airport. I asked a uniformed security guard if I could go out to withdraw Rupiahs there, at a more reasonable rate than from the money changers. He pointed to the big sign that said, "No one may leave the airport after check in." Tidak boleh. No can do.

Then he leaned closer and said, "Boss, I help you, you help me!"  I said Boleh! - "can do!" - and slipped out the door he opened for me. I walked the few feet to the ATM, got my 300,000 Rupiahs for departure tax -- and a little more for whatever you would call lagniappe in Indonesian. Back in the door, a Happy New Year greeting to the guard with a discreet money-passing handshake, and on to the plane. It was as if we'd never been away.

A new era begins....

11 am Indonesia time, January 1, 2009. Present our boarding passes to uniformed military police supervising the entrance to an international airport in Indonesia, for first of several connecting flights back to Beijing. For reasons that will be evident after the next posting, I'm not naming the airport.

"Where you from? Australians?" one of the policemen asks. It is the most likely guess for people who look like us in this part of the world. Amerika Syarikat, I reply - "the United States." We used to live in Malaysia, and after our struggles with Mandarin the Malaysian/Indonesian language feels practically like our native tongue.

The officer pulls himself up to attention and with a huge smile gives us a snappy military salute. "America - very good!" he said. He lowers the salute and says "Barack Obama!!" with a big thumbs up.

It's been a while...

(Yes, yes, Obama is a particular favorite in Indonesia because his childhood years in Jakarta make him seem a local boy made good. Still, this is not the spontaneous reaction to the name "America" that traveling Yanks have gotten used to in recent years.)