Manufactured failure #6: the wrapup

"I am known for having had a pretty consistent focus on human rights in my work as a journalist [JF note: this is very true], so the comments that will follow should not in any way suggest that I believe in a de-emphasis in human rights with regard to China.... But the problem with the way the press has covered this is there's a kind of implicit premise [that...] is misleading, I think. Maybe disingenuous is even a better word, because it seems to suggest that if Obama had pulled a Khrushchev and banged his shoe on the table on these issues and really jumped up and down and made a lot of noise, then this would have achieved a markedly different result for the better. I don't think there's any evidence of that. It may have made certain people in this society feel better about themselves, but if the goal is changing behaviors in China or obtaining political or diplomatic results with China, I think the evidence is the contrary."

2) From the U.S. government official who has appeared twice before, these final comments on the trip and its consequences:

On atmospheric payoffs of the trip:

"Two of the press conferences, in Japan and South Korea, both began with the same elements. In Japan, Prime Minister Hatoyama got up and gushed that "my friend Barack calls me 'Yukio.'" Then the Korean press conference began with [president] Lee Myung-bak saying, 'We have become close friends.' That says something. Those are not just routine polite words. It meant that Obama is profoundly popular in those countries.  Hatoyama's poll numbers are high but dropping, Lee Myung-bak has been embattled, though recovering. But both saw it as enormously important in terms of their own agenda to be identified with Barack Obama. In my mind, the personal popularity and respect for him is a strategic asset. And not one that gets you results in a day. If you have foreign leaders who see their own fate tied up with Obama, that becomes a chip you can draw on. If you need a last minute shift on climate change, they do not want to separate from Barack Obama. Everyone wants to be his best friend."

"Here are the things we tried to do. Number one, he made a robust statement in Shanghai. Number two, have that reach as many tens of millions of Chinese as possible. You can argue about the degree of success, but the message got out. They had a chance to see him in a setting no Chinese had seen before. And beyond that was to be explicit and direct in the private meetings about the importance of our values and the effect on our relations. And then we put in references in the press conference statement to Tibet and the Dalai Lama, and the importance of rule of law, freedom of expression, protection of the rights of minorities, which was an obvious reference to the Uighurs and Tibetans. We went straight to Tibet in the statement, saying that we consider it part of China and urge direct negotiations with the Dalai Lama."

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #6: the wrapup" »

Manufactured failure #5: views from China

"In your series, you touched on the Shanghai town hall, quoting from President Obama's opening and his response to the Twitter/Great Firewall question, and gave voice to a White House insider as to the power of his words and their likely reach inside China. There's been some buzz among western journalists about how the town hall "reached no one".

"I've been monitoring the China internet in the wake of the town hall and, based on my observations of these things over the years I'm very much leaning toward the White House insider's view -- that the reach was vast and deep, in the many millions or tens of millions, though not necessarily entirely positive. But the comment from President Obama that I think will have the most impact inside the firewall was not the one about US principles that you quoted in your followups. It was this one:

'Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time.  I think people naturally are -- when they're in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that's irresponsible, or -- but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear. It forces me to examine what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States.'

"Wow! As a resident of China for two decades and a Mandarin-speaking China-watcher for three decades, I can say without any doubt that those words will resonate far more deeply -- and potentially more "subversively" or "destabilizingly" -- than any overt thumb-in-the-eye hectoring that any foreigner or foreign leader might muster, in public or private. Those words are ***precisely*** the kind that Zhongnanhai [Chinese term equivalent to "the Kremlin"] fears the most, and rightly so."

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #5: views from China" »

Manufactured failure #4: more on Obama's trip

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #4: more on Obama's trip" »

Manufactured failure #3: insider's view of the Obama trip

"I don't care if someone criticizes us, I just would like it to be accurate and in context. I fear I am learning that is not the skill of some in the White House Press corps. They are experts on horse races, and so that is the way everything is cast."

"In thinking about the trip, the things we were trying to accomplish were all basically long term things. We were not looking for 'deliverables' or one-day stories. You've now got eight or nine countries among the G20 that are Asia-Pacific countries. The historic shift of power and influence from West to East is reflected in that number.

"Obama is very focused on global issues, things like climate change, financial imbalances, non proliferation, energy issues. We saw all the countries on this trip as players on those global issues. Of course China is important in particular, but also Korea and Japan and the ASEAN countries. So we saw this as a way of developing relationships that would be helpful to us as we tackled these issues coming down the road. 

"We've got Copenhagen [climate talk] coming up in mid-December. We have Iran heading increasingly likely toward Plan B rather than Plan A, pressure rather than inducements. North Korea. And the Copenhagen session is very far from a done deal. The countries we dealt with are all key players here. And on the economic side, you've got the whole issue of rebalancing the global agenda. None of those is something where you come out of a meeting and say Eureka. They're all part of a long process and a long game.

"The other thing we had in mind, which has to do with the whole "rising China" phenomenon: we wanted to solidify the relationship with China. To show them that we're not going to have a fluctuating policy. That we know what we're doing, and understand that we are dealing from a position of strength. And at the same time, to all our traditional allies [Japan, Korea, etc], we wanted to reinforce their sense of comfort that our relationship with China won't be at their expense."

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #3: insider's view of the Obama trip" »

Manufactured failure #2: the press, Obama, Asia

"In almost every analysis of the trip, Chinese officials were portrayed as optimistic and newly emboldened to stand up to American interests and Obama was cast in the role of the meek debtor, standing with hat in hand. The line is that little was achieved and Obama was stifled, literally by state television and figuratively by the Chinese upper hand in the power dynamic."

"I find that the Washington reporters tend to be typically the most subject to this instant scorekeeping. This is part of the game of Washington reporting. They're at the bleeding edge of this phenomenon that I think is distressing in terms of the approach of the press to serious questions. Everything is shot through this prism of short-term political calculation as opposed to thinking seriously about stuff. You can't be an expert on every question, and so you're part of the Washington press corps and if you're really good and really diligent, you're going to be expert maybe in a few things and one of those things might not be China."

"Even through a veil of censorship and propaganda, the Chinese people managed a clearer view of Obama's visit than the US media did."

"Washington's ambassador to Beijing hit out on Friday at negative US media coverage of President Barack Obama's visit to China, saying it failed to take into account important progress on many issues...

"The trip was the top news story in China, drawing strong interest from the mainland public who, surveys suggest, are largely positive in their view of the American president.

"However, much of the US media coverage was strongly negative, accusing Obama of failing to gain concessions on key issues such as Iran's nuclear programme and climate change, as well as being weak on human rights."

"I attended all those meetings that President Obama had with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao," Huntsman said, referring to the Chinese president and premier. "I've got to say some of the reporting I saw afterward was off the mark. I saw sweeping comments about things that apparently weren't talked about, when they were discussed in great detail in the meetings," he said.

Manufactured failure: press coverage of Obama in Asia

"President Barack Obama's first visit to China on 16 November will produce positive rhetoric, but achieve little on a range of issues from North Korea to economic rebalancing. Washington and Beijing will continue to highlight areas of mutual cooperation and interests, but domestic political agendas will pose serious constraints on the extent of near-term progress....

"Little to be expected on economic rebalancing and trade... Obama will likely raise the currency issue as part of a broader economic rebalancing framework. But the Chinese will continue to reject greater emphasis on the rebalancing issue, because Beijing interprets it as Washington shifting more of the blame on China for the global recession....

"No bilateral agreement will be reached on emissions reduction targets that might precipitate an ambitious global climate change treaty next month in Copenhagen. Obama's more modest task is to prevent China from aligning too closely with the G77 developing country bloc in global negotiations, although he has limited bargaining chips to encourage cooperation from China." [emphasis mine]

"President Barack Obama's first visit to China met the modest expectations set by the White House, making some progress on creating a more expansive relationship and on clean energy and climate change cooperation...Obama appears to have effectively reassured Beijing that the US does not intend to contain China's rise, creating a framework for mutual assurance that could augur a more mature relationship in the longer term.

"The US-China presidential summit involved a genuine attempt by both sides to push toward closer cooperation -- producing a robust joint statement that highlighted a range of common interests. In particular, Obama's first visit to China saw deliverables on clean energy and climate change cooperation, as expected. By dampening Copenhagen expectations in Singapore, Obama avoided a potential collision with China at next month's meeting... But Chinese domestic politics prevented Beijing from publicly discussing contentious issues such as currency and economic rebalancing during the trip...

"While policy disagreements and trade frictions will continue in the near term, Obama took an important step with a very public reassurance for Beijing that the US does not seek to contain China's rise. Beijing's receptiveness to this appeal indicates the intent of both countries to reduce the mutual distrust that has colored aspects of the relationship -- from currency, military engagement, and Taiwan to human rights and climate change. The Obama administration's more public approach, if successful, can promote longer term stability by engaging China on a broad range of issues within the context of a more mature and pragmatic relationship -- and in preventing specific, contentious issues from defining the relationship."

I hate to keep picking on the WaPo...

The detail worth noticing:

More on Mao, Lincoln, the lamas, etc

"Thank you for pointing out the strange logic of the foreign ministry spokesman in this bizarre lecture to President Obama. I have been living in the U.S. for twenty years and as a citizen for the last ten, but i often can't help feel ashamed often by remarks like these.

"I know I shouldn't, but I lived my first 26 years in this great country [China] after all. What a shame it is represented by such cynical officials. I say cynical because I think they often know better than what they say. They say it that way because it is not only safe but potentially profitable politically. They don't really care about the effect of their remarks globally. Their audience is inside the ministry and the government. I once had lunch with [a very prominent government official], while he was [in an important position] in the Washington embassy. He said when he wrote reports to the ministry, he needed to know what the ministry's opinion was so he would not be too out of line.

"Maybe this is true for all bureaucracies, but it is practiced to such a degree for so long in China that it is one of its most deep-rooted diseases. Reading the histories of Qing and Republic of China, once sees many examples of how officials often opted for the politically safe path at the expense of national interests. Today, one also sees the same practice in dealing with tough political issues such as ethnic tension. Because harsh measures and blaming the "splittists" is always safe and potentially rewarding for their careers, they become the only chosen policy options, even when that create more problems for the county in the future and draw international scolding."

The other shoe drops at Caijing

Press deadline detail (updated)

The Washington Post that was sitting alongside it had a story about the likely result in the vote, and a little box saying that the vote had happened too late to be covered in the paper.
 

No major point here: just interesting that the newspaper of politics, the newspaper of Washington, apparently has an earlier deadline for events in the capital than the out of town paper does. May just have been a fluke and signifying nothing, but mildly a surprise.

UPDATE: Thanks to reader J.M., I see that the Post's ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, has recently commented on the effect of earlier deadlines at the Post. Unfortunate effect that he highlights: gap between the quality and polish of articles on the web site and those that make it into the paper. Alexander said:

"[A reader] put his finger on a primary cause [of grammar errors]: tighter deadlines. It's the same problem I wrote about last week in explaining why up to 185,000 Post readers were no longer getting late game coverage of the World Series, the Redskins' Monday night game or the Wizards' exciting season opening victory in Dallas.

"The need to cut costs forced The Post to close its College Park printing facility some months ago and consolidate operations at its other printing plant in Springfield. That, coupled with the need to deliver papers to subscribers who now begin their commutes earlier due to worsening traffic congestion, has resulted in deadlines being moved forward."

The meaninglessness of shootings

A very good question

"How can the MSM (what's left of it) not "get" that disappointment in Obama over "lack of change" is precisely the object of the GOP in blocking change?  Does no one remember Newt Gingrich and the GOP strategy from 1992 to 1994, which actually worked?  How can the GOP steal second and third in one play AGAIN and not get nailed this time?  I want to scream.  In any sensible society, instead of disappointment in Obama there would be intense anger at the GOP, and they'd be forced to knock it off." 

Now this is what I call thought leadership

National advertising campaign for The Australian newspaper, October, 2009 (billboard in Sydney, Circular Quay, today).

From an Airbus captain, about recent flight errors

"I just thought you might like to know that while the airplane overflying Minneapolis received major headlines, the Delta airplane which landed on a taxiway in Atlanta earlier this week received minimal coverage. As you can imagine the taxiway landing is much more of a close call (that is a greater chance of casualties) than overflying an airport at altitude. As I've come to expect from the press there is no perspective on the relative danger of either incident. Somewhat similar to focusing on shark attacks while we kill approximately 40,000 every year on our roads.

"As an A-320 captain I don't mean to throw stones at either crew (there but for the grace of God...)... As to the Atlanta taxiway incident there were multiple factors including a long overnight flight, a sick check airman who was in the back, and a change of runway inside the marker [well into the plane's final descent, shortly before landing] to a runway without approach lighting... But it is interesting that one incident is totally ignored while the other gets major media play."

On the Fox News / White House dispute

A Rorschach test on Afghanistan

"The United States was born of our ancestors' nationalistic resentment of a foreign power whose troops we saw as occupiers, not protectors. The British never fathomed our basic grievance -- this was our land, not theirs! -- so the more they cracked down, the more they empowered the American insurgency....

"We have been similarly oblivious to the strength of nationalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly among the 40 million Pashtuns who live on both sides of the border there. That's one reason the additional 21,000 troops that President Obama ordered to Afghanistan earlier this year haven't helped achieve stability, and it's difficult to see why 40,000 more would help either."

"During 10 days spent in Afghanistan at the invitation of Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, I observed that a difficult task has been further complicated by the checkered results of the Afghan election. But what seems to be conspicuously absent from the conversation in the United States is the realization that Afghanistan's corruption problem, like its security problem, can be best addressed by additional troops.

"Given what I saw and heard on my visit, I believe it is indeed possible to get Afghanistan's politicos to do a better job -- you just have to watch them closely.... Poor governance is an argument for, not against, a troop surge. "

Continue reading "A Rorschach test on Afghanistan" »

I love the English-language Chinese press (chap. 17,825)

Continue reading "I love the English-language Chinese press (chap. 17,825)" »

This is good news

Festival of links, part 1

"Calorie labeling could result in changes that do not rely primarily on alterations in consumers' food choices. Menu labeling regulations may encourage chain restaurants to offer more nutritious or otherwise improved menu offerings, which could be profoundly influential. [italics Kummer's] Public health experts have shown that creating "default" incentives to improve well-being is essential to improving public health. By indirectly influencing restaurants to offer more lower-calorie items, menu labeling regulations could help encourage such default options for consumers."

"Yuppie avatar Starbucks immediately changed its default milk from whole to 2 percent, so it wouldn't have to admit that a Frappuccino could amount to practically as many calories as you should eat in a whole day... Just this week, [a NYC official] told me... Burger King began a new ad campaign telling how customers could eat a full meal for 650 calories or less. McDonalds took .7 ounces and 70 calories out of its standard portion of french fries. Dunkin Donuts introduced an egg-white breakfast. KFC put grilled skinless chicken on its menu--not something anyone expected to see at KFC."

The speech Obama won't ace (plus, WaPo gaffe followup)

Don't these people have The Google?

"The Nobel Committee's decision is especially puzzling given that a better alternative was readily apparent.... A posthumous award for Neda, as the avatar of a democratic movement in Iran, would have recognized the sacrifices that movement has made and encouraged its struggle in a dark hour."

Press items roundup

Beijing, 3am

Update on McCaughey and tobacco

 "I wrote back to Lindsay Craig asking which of these options the Manhattan Institute was saying:

"A: The Rolling Stone contention that tobacco companies collaborated with Ms. McCaughey and M.I. is totally false; there was no such contact or collaboration.

"B: We are confident that Ms. McCaughey's opinions were not influenced by tobacco companies, even though she may have worked with them.

"Her immediate response:
"A.   Betsy never worked with Phillip Morris." 

A nice offhand allusion in the NYT

"China's government at times resembles an exasperated parent trying to rein in a pack of rebellious children. Its edicts are persistently flouted by censor-dodging Internet users, wayward local officials and rioting Uighurs."

Manhattan Institute replies (re McCaughey and tobacco lobby) UPDATED

"Below is a letter to the editor of Rolling Stone from Lawrence Mone, president, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

"In his article "The Lie Machine," Tim Dickenson asserts that former Manhattan Institute scholar Betsy McCaughey's work was influenced by Phillip Morris.  This conclusion is false.  Betsy McCaughey wrote two articles for the Wall Street Journal on the Clinton Health Care plan and an additional article for the New Republic which was solicited by its publisher.  At no time were her ideas influenced or controlled by anyone but the author herself."

"A: The Rolling Stone contention that tobacco companies collaborated with Ms. McCaughey and M.I. is totally false; there was no such contact or collaboration.

"B: We are confident that Ms. McCaughey's opinions were not influenced by tobacco companies, even though she may have worked with them.

"A.   Betsy never worked with Phillip Morris." 

One crucial B. McCaughey update

"What has not been reported until now is that McCaughey's writing was influenced by Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton's health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company's strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to "work on the development of favorable pieces" with "friendly contacts in the media." The memo, prepared by a Philip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:

' "Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan." '

"McCaughey did not respond to Rolling Stone's request for an interview."

Maybe there is another side to this story, but if unrebutted it is damning.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, Besuboru dept

"The Japanese love besuboru, reflecting the phonetic phenomenon of lallation, reversing "r" and "l." "

FT, Economist, and me

"But the idiocy of the whole idea [of tariffs and protectionism] can be understood with a simple thought experiment, which I haven't seen used elsewhere.

"If tariffs are such a good economic idea, then why stop at national boundaries? If they make everyone richer, why not have customs posts between New York and New Jersey? Cars entering and leaving the Lincoln tunnel would have to pay, on top of the toll, a surcharge on all the goods they contain. Why not, indeed, make New York and New Jersey self-sufficient in all their needs, making all their own cars, growing all their own food etc?"

Reactions on Chinese tires

"WSJA(9/15) Heard On The Street: Tires, Chickens, Common Sense
   (From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA)
   By Andrew Peaple
"Fought over the likes of bras and bananas, trade wars always give off a whiff of the absurd.

"With a measure of good sense, a spat between the U.S. and China involving tires and chickens won't devolve into a trade war as well."

"I was a senior International Trade consultant with 2 major firms in China 2003-2007.   Approximately one third of the over 100 projects I managed during that four year period involved assisting foreign companies (US, EU, some Japanese) in defending themselves against either investigations by, or anti-competitive practices perpetrated by, the Chinese Customs authorities. 

"I believe that I can safely say that without fail, each project of this type that I was involved in was predicated by a distortion or willful misunderstanding of both Chinese and WTO/WCO trade law and operational norms by the Customs authorities.  Nor were these actions limited to provincial backwaters (though the most egregious did take place there); many of our projects involved Shanghai or Beijing Customs entry ports.  Practices such as demanding improper HTS classification of goods (HTS classification determines applicable duty rate) or arbitrary valuation of goods (the Customs declared value upon which duty and VAT are assessed) are practiced daily throughout the country and cost foreign companies substantial amounts.

"I very seldom see this issue addressed in any article concerning China trade and thought I would bring it to your attention."

Continue reading "Reactions on Chinese tires" »

I love this on so many levels

Harmonic convergence dept: frogs, China Daily, etc

The editorial is about universities in Australia making things "hot" (get it?? ho-ho!) for international transfer students, including those from China. Great headline too:

Well done all around. Let's learn from Asia! Thanks to numerous informants.

Why the China Daily will always be my favorite newspaper

Festival of updates #7: NYT hit-and-miss

Three updates: Hudson River, "false claims," origins of Iraq

The right kind of college rankings

Will it never end? McCaughey v. Ezekiel Emanuel

1) Betsy McCaughey !
2) Rep. Michele Bachman (look her up) !!
3) Sarah Palin !!!
4) Lyndon LaRouche !!!!

"Largely quoting his past writings out of context this summer, Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, labeled Dr. Emanuel a "deadly doctor" who believes health care should be "reserved for the nondisabled" -- a false assertion that Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, repeated on the House floor."

"Largely quoting his past writings out of context this summer, Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, labeled Dr. Emanuel a "deadly doctor" who believes health care should be "reserved for the nondisabled" -- a false assertion that Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, repeated on the House floor.

"Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has asserted that Dr. Emanuel's "Orwellian" approach to health care would "refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm and the disabled who have less economic potential," accusations similarly made by the political provocateur Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr."

Today's McCaughey, euthanasia, and general falsehood update

Cleese's character is armed with all that one could ask for: keen wit, boundless vocabulary, perfect presence of mind, and all the facts on his side. And yet, even he can be played to a draw by a liar who maintains a sufficiently unshakable facade of conviction.

Another absurdity in the argument of Betsy McCaughey is her claim that there is something wrong with doctors having to follow a patient's wishes as expressed in a living will.  There are two major problems here: 1) People can always change their living will, just as they can change their will at any point.  The later living will supercedes the later one. So if a person makes a living will when healthy and sees things differently when ill, the sick person can express different wishes in the new living will.  2) Why shouldn't doctors have to respect people's wishes on end-of-life care? I have heard countless stories of living wills being ignored.  The provision on living wills is effectively an implementation provision, providing for accountability and for the wishes of the patient to be respected.

I'm surprised you didn't mention this.  McCaughy's twisted logic is basically that after you draft a living will it will be enforced ruthlessly by doctors seeking to up their quality rating even if you personally object.  Backing her up is an anecdote about her apparently hearing a woman telling her to hurry up and help as a doctor suffocated her with a pillow or something.  Her point is that, by rewarding adherence, we're making doctors stick with the patient's initial stated intent.  However, if you're conscious you can amend, annul, or otherwise do whatever you want with your will, living or otherwise, at any time you want.  If you're conscious enough to tell someone not to pull the plug, you haven't triggered your living will yet.

Continue reading "Today's McCaughey, euthanasia, and general falsehood update" »

Revisiting McCaughey-v-Stewart

...I disagree that talking over Jon Stewart the way people do in appearances on Fox News is an effective tactic for the guest. It might be better than some of the other options, but it backfires for a weird reason, one that might be harder to see if you don't watch the show regularly.



From its inception in 1997, the distinguishing shtick that makes the show unique is a type of edited interview segment in which the show's "reporters" interview obscure and completely crazy people. The subjects have received some local press attention for doing something bizarre and they're desperate for media attention. The reporters pretend to be mainstream press rather than comedians, and they use a deadpan style that allows the interviewees to provide most of the humor. What struck me about the McCaughey interview, and the recent interview of Orly Taitz by Stephen Colbert, was that Stewart and Colbert are clearly adapting the "crazy person" interview techniques to their live in-studio host interviews with guests that don't agree with them.



The normal host interviews vary a lot but they are always a two-way conversation with some socially well-adjusted give and take. In these two recent interviews, as the guest acts more unstoppable and enthusiastic unhinged when discussing "their" topic, the interview slides into the familiar "crazy person" style. That's a cue for the show's regular audience to frame the discussion and the interviewee in a very different way.


I expect you are very right about this being an interview that will be studied by right wing operatives for some time to come. However, I feel like you overlooked a couple important pieces which may make this scenario unrepeatable (particularly if those at the Daily Show are paying attention).

Continue reading "Revisiting McCaughey-v-Stewart" »

McCaughey on the Daily Show

Ferguson, Obama, Felix the Cat -- and Pluto

Dear Paul and James,

As you both took exception to my comparison of the President with Felix the Cat, my favorite cartoon character, implying it was racist and recommending I consult Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., I have now done so. He has taken the trouble to consult others in the field of African-American Studies, including our colleague Lawrence D. Bobo, the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, and has written to me as follows:

"None of us thought of Felix as black, unlike some of the racially-questionable caricatures Disney used.  Felix's blackness, like Mickey's and Minnie's, was like a suit of clothes, not a skin color. ... You are safe on this one."

As he has made clear, you are free to publish this on your blogs. I hope that you will, and that you will also add an apology to me for the imputation of racism as well as, in Paul's case, the gratuitous and puerile accusation of "whining" (i.e., defending myself against a slur). I remain of the view that you took this line to avoid engaging with my central points that President Obama's administration has no visible plan for stabilizing the finances of the federal government even over ten years, and that Congress will likely impede whatever steps he may take in this direction.

Yours,

Niall Ferguson.

One more on the selling of "death panels"

"I'm not sure if it has been pointed out yet, but the whole "Death Panel" bullshit is especially ironic given that the ability of insurance companies to grant/deny access to healthcare is effectively a death panel. Can't afford a plan? Tough luck. Not eligible for whatever reason? Tough luck."

Why the "death panel" claim is working

Your last blog post sure was depressing: not that you could be wrong, but that the new media ecosystem still doesn't have the tools to keep lunacies like McCaughey's "death panels" from becoming part of the political debate.

That said, if you're familiar with Chip & Dan Heath's book "Made To Stick" (www.madetostick.com), you can see that the death panel idea is probably too "sticky" to be debunked, defused, and delegitimized.  In their view, the six key principles behind sticky ideas (like the NYC sewer alligators, or the kidney thieves that drug you and leave you in an ice-filled bathtub [or boiled frogs, JF note]) are:

- simplicity
- unexpectedness
- concreteness
- credibility
- emotions
- stories

The death panel story contains virtually all of these elements.  It's a simple, concrete concept that anyone can picture.  It's certainly unexpected, it stirs emotions, and it's easy to tell -- or make up -- stories.  (My grandma has Parkinson's, and I won't have a government bureaucrat telling me she's got to die!") 

It's true that to a rational, dispassionate listener the idea of a death panel does strain the bounds of credibility.  However, the complexity of health care reform, the sheer size of the legislation, and the history of bizarre government policies that have been twisted by special interests, does leave room in the imagination for, well, the incredible.

So, to your point: does the new media ecosystem have a greater ability to stop charlatans?  Clearly yes.  But I wonder if any ecosystem could have stopped such a "sticky" idea.

Continue reading "Why the "death panel" claim is working" »

The NYT says "false." Good.

I was wrong

Even more on GDP, economics, and "rational insanity"

More on GDP, airplanes (updated)

"Those of us who fly through this airspace are responsible for seeing and avoiding each other. There are no air traffic controllers serving as traffic cops here.

"And before you get yourself all spun up about this (I am talkin' to you Sen. Schumer! [and the NPR guy]), before this tragic crash there has never been a mid air collision like this in New York City.

"Over the years, many thousands of airplane and helicopters have successfully and safely plied their way through this corridor of airspace wherein the responsibility for collision avoidance rests entirely in the cockpit.

"And the real truth is it makes flying in the New York City airspace safer - because all the aircraft who fly in this zone are not taxing already maxed out air traffic controllers.

"If tour helicopters had to check in with ATC every time they alighted with a load of tourists, the system would bog down in a hurry.

"It is NOT the Wild West up there... It is a busy place with a lot of traffic and you have to pay attention all the time. But that's New York for you. When two cars collide in Midtown Manhattan, do we instantly insist the traffic laws be changed?"

I'm with him.

UPDATE: I am also with my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg, here, in his life-extension maxim of "never take a helicopter ride for fun." I love airplanes and aviation; in the three China-based years that I've been away from flying I've actively missed the "aerial view," the particular perspective you get on the world from a few thousand feet up; like everyone who has thought seriously about flying, I know it brings risks. But helicopters are to me a different matter. If you've studied aerodynamics, you know that airplanes "want to stay in the air" -- if the engine fails, they turn into gliders, not plummeting objects. Helicopters "want to fall out of the air" -- yes, despite the limited ability to "autorotate" and avoid a direct plummet. I respect people who fly them, which is harder than flying airplanes. But I keep a respectful distance.

"Black, and very, very lucky."

President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just over six months in the world's biggest and toughest job.

Three news updates: GDP, airplanes, health politics

I completely agree with the observations you and [Steven] Pearlstein make about the Republican positioning on the health care debate.  I also agree with Steven's statement  that "Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off."  However, that does not translate into automatic agreement on the plan as proposed--a presumption that the advocates of the current health care bill would have us accept as true.

Continue reading "Three news updates: GDP, airplanes, health politics" »

Let's mark this moment in the health debate as it happens

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems....

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

Pretty soon I will lay off the "As a Rip van Winkle returnee to your country, what I notice is...." approach. But I have to say that it is striking to come back -- from the world of controlled media and not-always-accurate "official truth" in China -- and see the world's most mature democracy, informed by the world's dominant media system, at a time of perceived economic crisis and under brand new political leadership, getting tied up by manufactured misinformation. No matter what party you belong to, you can't think this is a sign of health for the Republic.

Second day reaction on the Hudson River air crash

A demur to my former Atlantic colleague Ross Douthat

Col. Timothy Reese on Iraq

Climate pushback #2 (of 2)

After the jump, excerpts from a few more readers with thoughts to add, in response to this and this, about the notorious famed "hockey stick" chart and the general state of the climate-change debate.

 I'll let these speak for themselves -- and also let them wrap up the discussion in this space for the time being.

But a note about a point that could use re-assertion What attracted me to Richard Muller's book "Physics for Future Presidents" and still does, despite varied complaints about parts of its argument, is that it tries to do something that too few experts and specialists bother with. It attempts to explain the way scientists approach complex issues of public policy. How they weigh evidence. What they're skeptical of and convinced by. How they think about data that never perfectly fits -- and how they try to discern general trends even when particular details are messy. I was using this in contrast to a George Will column breezily asserting that a decade of flat temperatures (a claim that itself is disputed, to put it mildly) said something significant about longer-term climactic trends.

How many other experts even try to do this? Explaining their manner of thinking -- which is more valuable than their judgment on any particular point? Rather than simply asserting that they are right on the basis of their expertise. Historians Richard Neustadt and Ernest May -- both unfortunately now dead, both men I admired greatly when taking their classes -- notably did so in their book Thinking in Time, which tried to explain how historical analogies could inform --  mislead. I have not yet read Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think, but the title is certainly promising in this sense. I have read The Art and Science of Politics, by Harold Varmus, and it's a fine example of this approach. Atul Gawande's justly celebrated New Yorker report (on why medical costs were so much higher in one Texas city than another) was great because he applied his knowledge as a physician to explain how other doctors did their work. The Galbraiths -- John Kenneth, and now his son James, especially with Predator State -- earned the suspicion (and envy) of many fellow economists by trying to explain what was right and wrong about economic reasoning to lay readers. To avoid the risk of offending by omission, I'll stop here (rather than talking about lawyers, engineers, biologists, teachers, etc.

The entire purpose of Richard Muller's book was to convey how people trained in the hard sciences make their way through the contradictory signals from the real political world. That is worth noting, no matter what you think about his view on the "hockey stick."

Reader comments after the jump.

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Continue reading "Climate pushback #2 (of 2)" »

Climate pushback #1A, via Brad DeLong

Climate pushback #1, from Al Gore's office and others

Continue reading "Climate pushback #1, from Al Gore's office and others" »

Well, I have a new favorite newspaper

My general policy is: if something is already On The Internet, no need for me to mention it too, unless it is in some cranny where many people might overlook  it. But the artistry here forces an exception to the policy. After the jump, an early indication of the Onion's prowess in the "learning from China" field.

UPDATE: It is worth going to the Opinion page, as illustrated below, and clicking on the "Internet allows free exchange" story.


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Continue reading "Well, I have a new favorite newspaper" »

Update on Antarctic ice and global warming

"An example of distortion is the melting of the Antarctic ice -- something that actually contradicts the global warming model but is presented as if it verifies them."

Compare-and-contrast reading on climate change

"When New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called upon 'young Americans' to 'get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon,' another columnist, Mark Steyn, responded: 'If you're 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you're graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade.'

"Which could explain why the Mall does not reverberate with youthful clamors about carbon. And why, regarding climate change, the U.S. government, rushing to impose unilateral cap-and-trade burdens on the sagging U.S. economy, looks increasingly like someone who bought a closetful of platform shoes and bell-bottom slacks just as disco was dying."

"An example of distortion is the melting of the Antarctic ice -- something that actually contradicts the global warming model but is presented as if it verifies them. Exaggeration includes the attribution of Hurricane Katrina to global warming, even though there is no scientific evidence that they are related.  Cherry picking is the process of selecting data that verify the global-warming hypothesis but ignoring data that contradict it."

Two articles from Counterpunch (updated)

As press commentators have generally spun it, the Detroit story has been a simplistic  morality tale of "incompetent executives," "lazy workers," and "intransigent unions." Detroit in other words has richly deserved its fate and, in the opinion of many of the more callous observers, the sooner it is put out of its misery the better.
          

The real story is a complex one in which the American auto industry has often been more sinned against than sinning.         

Weekend Xinjiang / Uighur / 愤青 update, #2

"Have you noticed the reaction in Turkey?  Here's what appeared in today's two big papers.

"The nationalist Hurriyet reported the riot "has claimed the lives of hundreds of ethnic Uighur Turks." The other big daily reports the released breakdown of the death toll but as background reported the retaliatory attacks by Han against Uighurs but did not mention Uighur attacks against Han. And the Prime Minister stepped in to declare that the riot was "almost genocide."

"I'm amazed that despite the free flow of information, open parts of the world can still live in different universes.  A reader in London will read an article in The Times about the "butchered" Han family while on the same day a Turkish reader will read about the massacre of Uighurs."

"To be frank, I'm astonished to see such a big post [the "Han Chinese only"] sign, explicit, yet cold. If I were a Uighur that could read Chinese, I would have felt so insulted. Last time, one of my Canadian friends told me he that when he traveled in Austria, he saw an advertisement to let room saying "no Jewish or Northern Italians" (I forgot the original German word he used that actually means people from Northern Italy.) My Canadian friend was obviously very much annoyed by that advertisement. So was I. Then I had worsening impression of Austria after that.

"Anyway, thanks a lot for giving me more insights in the situations in Xinjiang. I've never been there personally. The fact that I, being a native Chinese, rely on this source of information to understand Xinjiang, is funny, though. The Chinese media should have done better job. I don't know whether you have heard of Phoenix TV, a mandarin TV station. They have good reputation for giving objective and insight reports on different issues. [Agree]

"Are you from US? I heard in US, there is a law that guarantees the proportion of employees from different ethnic groups hired by each employer should resemble that of the whole society. Is it true?"

"And, because the problem is bigger, discrimination against minority (and favoritism toward minority, as adding grade points to minority for "Gao Kao" [the nationwide university admissions exam]) is not actually that unique, or big, a problem.

Continue reading "Weekend Xinjiang / Uighur / 愤青 update, #2" »

Weekend Xinjiang / Uighur / 愤青 update, #1

"You discussed Chinese people's "tone of response to outside criticism" in recent posts. I agree that many Chinese people do not react well to outside criticisms, and that's certainly something worth their self-reflection. But around this particular event-time, it would be helpful to put these people's emotions within the context of many foreign media's portraits of the unrest in Xinjiang:

"1. Initial western media reports tend to gave readers/viewers the impression that most of the dead must have been Uighur demonstrators killed in police gunfire (this might have been most western journalists' assumption, as Christian Science Monitor's Peter Ford conceded). And when it was later discovered that actually most of the dead were Han Chinese (often murdered brutally), many western media reports only mentioned this crucial fact in passing (often buried deep in the middle of their reports), or simply ignored it (e.g., NBC's July 10th Nightly News). The impact of such portraits on the public opinion in the West is clear: numerous people on Twitter, perhaps the majority of the commentators in the first couple of days, condemned the perceived Chinese police's slaughtering or even genocide of Uighurs. Wouldn't an ordinary Chinese person get emotional over such media portraits and the resulted public perception?  

Continue reading "Weekend Xinjiang / Uighur / 愤青 update, #1" »

More on "No Uighurs"

I came cross your website and read the article "No Uighurs Need Apply" written by Shannon Kirwin [ie, quoting S.K.], hinting the unfair treatment of Uighurs by Han. It showed how ignorant she and your web editors are, because you don't even know that Muslims don't touch any pork while Hans do. In addition it'd be a humiliation and insult to Muslims if you ask them to work in Han kitchens. I think it's typical that you Westerners are so unfairly to spread twisted information around the world, while smiling to your local Han friends.

Cornucopia of updates #7: Great Firewall

More on Chinese lack of interest in Iran

"I think it's good to keep in mind that Chinese folks tend to have a certain antediluvian sense of detachment when it comes to foreign affairs, sort of almost pre-war British John Bull-esque isolationist vintage. They just don't care particularly about what happens in foreign countries. They really couldn't give a whistle if a foreign country is communist or democratic or whatever. They just want to be left alone to make their wages and buy their house and cars.

"And I think that detachment is probably much more powerful than any silly, heavy-handed government innuendo and propaganda, at the end of the day. Everyone paid more attention to Europe and America, that's true, but Europe and America are important and rich and to be emulated in their wealth; toward the developing world, the feeling is sort of a disinterested bemusement from the average man-in-the-street.

"So I think the best way to view the Iran coverage in China is, frankly, to ignore it. Government press might have (really stupid) agendas to pursue in relation to this, fighting the colour revolutions and so on, but the average man couldn't care less. And it's quite exactly the same thing when that clown Hugo Chavez is feted in the Chinese press; he's viewed more as a curiosity than as some glorious David, hero of the Developing World-cum-Israelites.

"And I personally think that, for China at least, this is not an unhealthy attitude. Splendid (Sino-)Isolation ought be cause for relief for the rest of the world.

"....Another thing I forgot, and this is I think how someone used to describe the pre-war British, is that the Chinese generally find foreigners funny. Not serious, not genuinely dangerous, not heroic and considerable (as an European might for MLK, or an American for Thatcher or both for Mandala), but nice and funny in a harmless sort of way."

Iran in China

Sigh, out of range again

Me [my friend]: Do you know what that huge round thing protruding on the top of the main CCTV building is?
Producer: What?
Me: It looks like either a misshaped radar or a helicopter landing pad...
Producer: Why are you asking?
Me: Just curious.
Producer: Well, don't be curious. You know it's a very sensitive period here at CCTV, because of Fang Jing's "spy-gate" incident. Don't ask such sensitive questions.
Me: Why is it sensitive? That huge thing is right there on the very top of your landmark. Everyone could see it, even from far away. You've never thought about what it is? Nobody asks about it?
Producer: No... No one. Seriously, stop asking about it!

About the internet, the Atlantic, and Iran

Last two about June 4

Today [several days ago], a few other foreigners and I were looking at an MSNBC retrospective (miraculously, not blocked) of the important day that happened recently, and just of reveling in the amazing photos and videos with lots of "wows" and stunned silences. 

A 23-year old Chinese girl we know very well was sitting next to us and peered over, and said, "What's that?  What's going on?"  We tried to dissuade her; since in many ways it's not in her or our best interest for her to see, but she forced herself into our huddle and was looking, and noticed all the Chinese people wearing headbands, the blood, the violence, the shouting at the police, and so on.  So she started asking, shocked by the fact that this had to be somewhere in her homeland, "What is this!? What's going on!? Who are these people?!  Where is this?!"  She was just awestruck and horrified.
 
So we told her the whole story from the W perspective, making diplomatic but honest allowances since most of us don't truly believe that "things" are generally that bad at all; certainly not here and now.  But she just listened to us, staring at the videos and pictures, and none of us could see her face, which was bowed intently at the computer screen and veiled by her long hair.  All of a sudden, she started weeping.  Just weeping.  She had had no idea that it had ever happened. 
 
It can be really hard to live here, but it's something like this that makes me love this country and these people, especially here in my city of residence.  Where others might see darkness, sadness and ignorance, it's often possible to see hope, beauty in the struggle, and real, unedited life.

 I am currently living in Shanghai, a recent US college graduate and English teacher (born in '84). I have a Chinese girlfriend (born in '89), and since we began dating some months back I have mentioned TAM to her a few times.

Continue reading "Last two about June 4" »

June 4 report #1: Beijing (long)

We were tourists and took many many photos, even asking the plainclothed police who were keeping their eye on us to take one or two. We didn't get hassled; in fact, aside from the ridiculous numbers of cops, obvious and otherwise, there seemed to be no difference from when I was there two weeks ago, showing friends around. Time: 8am. Persons: myself, another Chinese-American, and two white guys. Just wanted to add that data point to your blog, especially in light of the note of caution you posted.

I went to the square at noontime, expecting to see pretty much what we saw last night: the square off limits, people walking along the roadside or staring at the flag and Mao's giant portrait.

Continue reading "June 4 report #1: Beijing (long)" »

June 4 news coverage update

If you want to compare speculation with analysis...

Personally, I favor another scenario, equally speculative: Perhaps the North Koreans have stepped up their war rhetoric and war preparations because China wants them to do so. I can't prove that this was the case--no one else can prove any of his theories about North Korea, in fact--but I can look at the evidence...

North Korea is a puppet state, and the Chinese are the puppeteers. They could end this farce tomorrow. If they haven't done so yet, there must be a reason.

Lost memory of June 4, update #1

Chinese government is embarassed by the incident 20 years ago. It is never a glorious thing to shoot at your own citizens. So it keeps silent on the issue.

But I don't think this is the main reason to students' indifference. There are plenty of resources about this on the internet. This is a staple topic in Chinese internet discussion forums, usually with great vehemence on both pro and anti government sides. The main reason I think is there was not really any support among general population for overthrowing of communist government even back in 1989. There was not any strike. (If there had been a general strike, the communist government would probably have fallen).

The general population watched the events unfolding in Beijing before June 4th warily but also with amusement. Unlike the participants in the demonstration, for the "silent majority", the events happening in those few months are far from the defining event in their lives. It is no great surprise people in China don't attach much importance to them.

And for most of young people, they don't have a lot of grievances against the government. People have lots of personal freedom as long as they don't touch politics. As for those political-minded, the communist party is always eager to recruit them. There are ample economic opportunities to absorb their mind and energy. They don't identify with the students 20 years ago the same way young people in US don't identify themselves with protesters during the Vietnam War.
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Continue reading "Lost memory of June 4, update #1" »

Not death of newspapers but death of advertising

Among my friends, we've had this discussion before.  Here's what I said then, edited to fit addressing you directly:
*^*^*

The real problem is, advertising is dying. It's just pulling down newspapers along the way. Next up: TV, radio, and Google.

This is why I was warning anyone who would listen that traditional media's schadenfreude when the internet bubble popped in 2001 was probably misplaced. Because the reason it popped was one finally had the metrics to show Advertising Doesn't Work. Google has forestalled the inevitable by doing the Net equivalent of the "tiny little ads" schtick of a decade or two back, but I think they see the writing on the wall, which is why they keep trying so desperately to find something, anything, other than search that'll make money....

Continue reading "Not death of newspapers but death of advertising" »

Wrapup on papers, Craigslist, etc

Hearst, were he living as a 'Rupert Murdoch' of today, would own Craigslist by now, would have an industrywide micropayment system, would have recruited legions of readers as hyper-local bloggers, and otherwise employed the tools and resources of our day to advance his cause just as he brought cartoons, drawings, and later photographs and color to his readers in his. 

My wife owns a boutique real estate agency in Sydney, Australia.  Every Thursday she'd have to submit the ads for her properties to the Sydney Morning Herald who had a monopoly on real estate advertising -- pre internet.  The likelihood of the desired ad appearing in print, in the desired location, on the desired day was about 60%.  (Imagine her customers looking through the ads for their house and not finding it!) The service was arrogant as well as unreliable and my wife wouldn't mind seeing the SMH go up in flames.  On the news side, the SMH is now about splashing electronic ads right in the middle of a story I might be reading: equally arrogant! This feels very much like a fat monopoly that will be overtaken by something better.

I used to be a print subscriber to the SMH; when their internet site caught up and I upgraded to a decent LCD monitor, it was easier to read online without having to consume and recycle a broadsheet containing 90% unconsumed waste.  I am a news junkie and I seriously worry about losing access to good journalism.  However, I am willing to pay a few cents per story per day and I am sure that somehow, someday, someone will find a way to aggregate my pennies with everyone else's to give good journalists a good living.

It seems to me there is a huge advertising hole that newspapers could fill when they are ready to move past the blame game and start thinking more creatively.

Continue reading "Wrapup on papers, Craigslist, etc " »

More on Google, Craigslist, and who's killing newspapers

It's not at all about blame-casting. It's about proper diagnosis for treatment and recovery. If papers are critically ill from classified revenue woes (Craigslist, eBay, informal email, ...) but they falsely self-diagnose as being sick from over exposure in Google News, then they'll end up closing their borders by withdrawing from news aggregation sites at Google, Yahoo, MSN, and elsewhere. That won't hurt Internet companies [like Google] at all, but it will leave publishers with fewer new visitors, less online monetization opportunities, and still obliviously infected with disappearing classified revenues. They will get sick faster, and journalism as democracy's conscience will weaken. That will hurt every other company, every citizen, and nearly every country. 

The only blame belongs to the publishers. Craigslist, like all startups, was originally funded with pennies on the dollar compared with what media empires spend. It still is! Craigslist has not been bought/co-opted/copied by any of the major publishers even though doing so would have been a natural idea. Readers are moving online but publishers act as though they will go there only if dragged rather than racing to their only life saving destination. News is valuable, but you can no longer get it in printed form as it is hours old by the time you get your paper -- CNN and online news sites had it hours ago! Analysis is worth waiting for, but that is what magazines like The Atlantic are all about. Newspapers will never be about selling your old BBQ again. Ads at random, scattered between unrelated stories, are not part of the future of shopping. 

These are the issues for papers to agonize about; to wring their hands about; and maybe even to beg money to solve. Unfortunately, they've been copying the ideas and technologies invented and introduced by William Randolph Hearst for so long that they forgot his example of how to innovate for the modern day. Hearst, were he living as a 'Rupert Murdoch' of today, would own Craigslist by now, would have an industrywide micropayment system, would have recruited legions of readers as hyper-local bloggers, and otherwise employed the tools and resources of our day to advance his cause just as he brought cartoons, drawings, and later photographs and color to his readers in his.

Who exactly is killing the press

PR updates: NPR, Stanford Review, WNYC, plus NYT Mag

In case you've been wondering about Macau

"If a president of most companies we know were to stand up in public, after having recently posted a solid rise in quarterly earnings amid a bearish economic environment, and announce he is looking to cut nearly a quarter of his workforce, his audience might be forgiven a gasp of astonishment. Not when that president runs the Las Vegas Sands Corp.

"This week, the company's recently installed president, Mike Leven, announced in Las Vegas that he was going to cut another 3,000 to 4,000 jobs at the Macau subsidiary, taking the total workforce to around 13,000-14,000 from its current level of around 17,500, and down from a high that once scraped the 20,000 mark. This is despite the fact that the Venetian Macao posted a 10 per cent rise in first-quarter EBITDA and continues to hoover up the city's visitor market... Job cuts and the redrawing of organization charts seem to have become routine at Macau's most profitable gaming concessionaire as it struggles under the weight of a massive debt load.

"Needless to say, the Venetian Macao is not a happy camp for an expatriate to be in at the moment. Given that locals are protected by divine right to employment in an election year, every Filipino, Nepalese, Malaysian, Singaporean and, yes, American and Australian that walks the floors of LVS's Macau properties can be forgiven their long faces...

"A black joke doing the rounds yesterday was that all of these cuts could be made without having to go beneath the vice-president level."

Not sure exactly which Chinese people Paul Krugman met...

"Each time I raised the issue during my visit, I was met with outraged declarations that it was unfair to expect China to limit its use of fossil fuels. After all, they declared, the West faced no similar constraints during its development; while China may be the world's largest source of carbon-dioxide emissions, its per-capita emissions are still far below American levels; and anyway, the great bulk of the global warming that has already happened is due not to China but to the past carbon emissions of today's wealthy nations. And they're right...But that unfairness doesn't change the fact that letting China match the West's past profligacy would doom the Earth as we know it."

Nonfiction writing class: how it should be done

"Unknown to most people, much of the gold that had supposedly flown into France was actually sitting in London. Bullion was so heavy -- a seventeen-inch cube weighs about a ton -- that instead of shipping crates of it across hundreds of miles from one country to another and paying high insurance costs, central banks had taken to 'earmarking' the metal, that is, keeping it in the same vault but simply re-registering its ownership. Thus the decline in Britain's gold reserves and their accumulation in France and the United States was accomplished by a group of men descending into the vaults of the Bank of England, loading some bars of bullion onto a low wooden truck with small rubber tires, trundling them thirty feet across the room to the other wall, and offloading them, though not before attaching some white name tags indicating that the gold now belonged to the Banque de France or the Federal Reserve Bank. That the world was being subjected to a progressively tightening squeeze on credit just because there happened to be too much gold on one side of the vault and not enough on the other provoked Lord d'Abernon, Britain's ambassador to Germany after the war [WW I] and now [1930s] an elder statesman-economist, to exclaim, 'This depression is the stupidest and most gratuitous in history.' "

One more on China, India, and the Western media

I was pleasantly surprised to read the email you published from an overseas Chinese citizen who thinks the western media treats China unfairly and that he would like to see China being treated the way India gets treated.  As an Indian who lives in the US, I have many many Indian friends who complain that the media here only talks about the poverty in India, that they emphasize only what's wrong with the country and not what's going right with it, that they talk only of the poor and not of the middle class.  Etc, etc.  

I think both these complaints -- the Chinese and the Indian -- are, in some sense, two sides of the same coin.

Continue reading "One more on China, India, and the Western media" »

PR wizardry on display

Mea culpa

That tricky old language barrier (China, Tibet, and France)

More on Obama, exceptionalism, and impromptu speaking

I think two other moments were even more 'remarkable' than the one that caught your attention (though it is, too):
 
1) In response to the provocative Major [Garrett] of Fox News who asked about Afghan laws that supposedly endorsed spousal rape and other dubious practices, I found that Obama walked confidently between the moral imperatives that the questioner presented so blithely and the primacy of the post 9/11 mission and the complex and uncomfortable realities in which the United States and NATO are currently operating.
 
2) Perhaps it was a setup, but I thought the question to the audience about US journalists getting questions from the other heads of state was a sly move... though I won't hide my lack of surprise (nor my glee) when he used Sarko as a target.

Continue reading "More on Obama, exceptionalism, and impromptu speaking" »

This is puerile, but it made me laugh

Obama on exceptionalism

A fourth point about the Obama press conference

Three-sentence instant reaction to Obama press conference

Correction: Chinese coal mine deaths

So if China's rise is not undone by the risks that have been evident for years--pollution, water shortage, corruption, the widening rich-poor social gap, safety standards so primitive that on average more than 250 people die each day in coal-mine accidents--might China prove vulnerable to Soviet-style discontent born of a slowing economy?...
My guess is No. [And on to the main argument of the article.]

Interviewing tips from a novelist

"I'm sure that Miaoshan's mother will be comforted to hear of your grief and that you have come to offer solace to her daughter's fiance."

Siang's cheeks reddened, but she said nothing.

Hulan [the cop] let the silence stretch out. She was in no hurry, and the longer she kept quiet, the sooner these two would wish to fill the void. Siang noiselessly etched a groove in the dirt with the edge of her tennis shoe, while Tsai Bing [the man] looked around nervously. Finally he said, 'I didn't see Miaoshan so much anymore...'"

This actually is suprising (Cramer/Stewart followup)

It's true: Jon Stewart has become Edward R. Murrow (updated)

In fairness...

Prior to Keynes, the economy was held to be self-correcting. The only cure for a recession was to let wages and prices fall to their natural level. The prevailing attitude, as Paul Krugman writes in his recently re-issued book The Return of Depression Economics, was "a sort of moralistic fatalism." Keynes upended the orthodoxy in a way that was every bit as dramatic as Galileo challenging geocentrism. He insisted that recessions are not a natural process, or the invisible hand's righteous judgment against our sins, but a simple failure of consumer demand.

When people worry about losing their jobs, they sensibly cut back on their spending. But that decision, in turn, reduces demand for goods and services, which results in reduced income or lost jobs for other workers. Keynes called this phenomenon "the paradox of thrift": what makes sense for individuals turns into a disaster for society as a whole. The recession was therefore a failure of collective action that required government action. Government needed to encourage spending by reducing interest rates or, failing that, to inject spending into the economy directly by deliberately running temporary budget deficits.

The end for Freeman

The genesis of that crisis is that we have lost perspective on what the criteria for selecting and approving government officials ought to be. Financial trivia, minutiae from people's personal lives and political litmus tests have grown in importance while character, experience, intelligence, creativity and wisdom have fallen by the wayside. Ridiculous threshold obstacles stand alongside obscene ones and when taken with the relentless personal attacks associated with high level jobs in Washington -- the low pay, and the extreme difficulty of getting anything done -- we are seeing even those selected for senior jobs turn away in droves. We are at a moment of not one but an extraordinary array of great crises and challenges for America and we are effectively keeping the people we need most out of the positions we most need filled. 

The result [of problems described above] is not a government of people without conflicts of interest or troubling ties, rather it is a government full of people whose conflicts and ties are with groups powerful enough to protect them. This among other reasons is why I, as a Jew with a memory, was so opposed to the attacks on Freeman. But for the record, the most compelling reason I found for believing Chas Freeman would have been a superb Chairman of the National Intelligence Council was one that seldom came up in all the articles I read. I actually know him.

Two brief media notes about Tibet

Own worst enemy, Tomorrow Square edition

Better news out of the midwest: Mischke back in business

美国欢迎您!

Chinese viewers' guide to the Oscars! (updated)

My wife and I watched the Oscars on CCTV6 last night and Spielberg indeed had his entire appearance cut. You can hear his voice for about 1 second, but the whole introduction of nominees is very crudely cut out of the show. Sean Penn also had a few cuts to his speech

Further points on McCaughey

Q: Will the health IT director have any influence on the decisions doctors and patients can make together about tests and treatment?
A: Absolutely not. This position's function is to make sure that doctors and other health care providers use good, secure technologies as they change their record-keeping systems from paper to computers.

Actually, the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology is not even new. President George W. Bush created the office by Executive Order a number of years ago. The bill simply codifies the office and gives it a specific job.

Let's stop this before it goes any further

One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective....Hospitals and doctors that are not "meaningful users" of the new system will face penalties.  "Meaningful user" isn't defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose "more stringent measures of meaningful use over time" (511, 518, 540-541) 

Continue reading "Let's stop this before it goes any further" »

Just to round out the CCTV fire theme

Update on Chinese coverage of dam/earthquake connection

Foreign Media Stir Up Trouble, Speculate "Sichuan Earthquake was Man-Made"

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

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

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

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

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。

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

Continue reading "A little more on the Chinese censorship of Obama's speech" »

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

Will $6 billion solve the Chinese PR problem?

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.

Oh, never mind (NYT.com blackout dept)

Atlantic readers: once again ahead of the news!

I had no idea that many of those oil paintings that hang in hotel rooms and starter homes across America are actually produced by just one Chinese village, Dafen, north of Hong Kong. And I had no idea that Dafen's artist colony -- the world's leading center for mass-produced artwork and knockoffs of masterpieces -- had been devastated by the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble. I should have, though.

Last words on NYT.com block in China

What's curious to me - in fact, what's astounding to me - is that the Chinese authorities either haven't picked up on this phenomenon, or they don't care. Instead, they are doing what Chinese officials always do: focusing their attention on the entity with the most prestige. Quite honestly, I think most Chinese officials would have a hard time believing that the rather rag-tag unwashed mass of (for the most part) young, male, poorly compensated bloggers could actually drive news coverage.

NYTimes.com in China: Sunday morning update

Tech followups on NYTimes.com blockage in China (updated)

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

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

Continue reading "Tech followups on NYTimes.com blockage in China (updated)" »

Poll among readers in China: is NYTimes.com now blocked?

Coda (for now) to the Mischke saga

Continue reading "Coda (for now) to the Mischke saga" »

Zut alors! C'est une blague!

Harping on the RMB

Continue reading "Harping on the RMB" »

Boy, do I feel old (chapter 2,895)

Who says there are no good jobs left in journalism?

How it should be done: Terry Gross with Bill Ayers

A fascinating document about the internet and "public opinion" in China

1. A bad thing happens somewhere in China (such as police brutality, government malfeasance, a forced eviction, a coal mine disaster, etc).

2. The local government suppresses all information.

3. All media reports are censored.  (But if it wasn't reported in traditional media, there are other alternatives now on the Internet.)

4. The victims begin a petitioning process up the hierarchy in order to seek justice.  The road is long and hard, and nothing ever comes out of it.

5. The Internet forums/blogs rushed to report on the case.  But within approximately 48 hours, all traces of information are erased by order of the authorities.  (Thus, one of the excitements of my blogging activity was to find and translate that information within this time window.)

6. Western media catch wind of the incident, and follow through.  This creates an international scandal.

7. Senior Chinese officials take notice, and corrective actions are taken.

Continue reading "A fascinating document about the internet and "public opinion" in China" »

Back to business, and back to China: Why we love the English-language Chinese press (cont.)

Proof that John McCain has reached the "acceptance" stage

An essay by someone who has never worked in a political campaign (updated)

There is something odd -- and dare I say novel -- in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics.

The reformed structure means that it is essential for reporters and bureau chiefs to ensure that copy filed to the news desk is clean...

Three colleagues

The widely held view among security experts is that this airport spending is largely for show. Strengthened cockpit doors and a flying public that knows what happened on 9/11 mean that commercial airliners are highly unlikely to be used again as targeted flying bombs. "The inspection process is mostly security theater, to make people feel safe about flying," says John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State and the author of a forthcoming book about the security-industrial complex.

Jackal with a human face (updated)

Last word on my "ignore the DJIA" crusade

Continue reading "Last word on my "ignore the DJIA" crusade" »

I wish we emphasized some other measures

A day of conciliation

The 28th Amendment to the Constitution (draft form)

A comment that dumbfounds me

Those of us who know and admire Joe Biden were happy that a big national audience got to see him at his best -- a sentimental, smart, decent and generous guy.

But he was no better than Palin. She appeared cool as a cucumber, comfortable with her talking points and unrattled by anything that was thrown at her.

I've added the emphasis, my way of conveying a reaction of WHAT???????????!!!!!?????? Such an assessment can be true only if you have decided to assess debate performance on one factor alone, perky self-assurance, and to assign no weight whatsoever to such items as logic, responsiveness to questions, clarity in explaining views, factual knowledge, sentence by sentence coherence, and so on.

As everyone else including me has observed, Palin managed to pass her own particular test in this debate -- which was to improve on her alarmingly ill-informed and paralyzed appearances with Katie Couric. Biden's test was to "do well" in the normal, not the making-special-allowances, sense of that term. Each passed the respective test, but that doesn't mean there was no difference in how they performed.

In his famous 1960s book Paper Lion, George Plimpton described the thrill of running a few plays as quarterback during a Detroit Lions scrimmage. He rightly considered himself a  success simply because he didn't get pulverized. That he avoided being killed by the opposing linemen was indeed impressive, but it didn't mean that they were "no better" at what they did.

The title of one of Plimpton's other books, about what happened when he got to pitch to several major league batters, gets across the idea of the different standards being applied to his appearances in pro sports lineups  -- and to Palin's performance in the debate. It was called Out of My League.

The main thing I will say about the Veep debate in real time

Something you don't see every day (Chinese leadership dept)

ZAKARIA: There is another sense in which we are interdependent. China is the largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills. By some accounts, you hold almost $1 trillion of it. It makes Americans - some Americans - uneasy. Can you reassure them that China would never use this status as a weapon in some form?

WEN (voice of interpreter): As I said, we believe that the U.S. real economy is still solidly based, particularly in the high-tech industries and the basic industries.

Now, something has gone wrong in the virtual economy. But if this problem is properly addressed, then it is still possible to stabilize the economy in this country....

Of course, we are concerned about the safety and security of Chinese money here. But we believe that the United States is a credible country, and particularly at such difficult times, China has reached out to the United States.

Worst self-inflicted campaign move ever?

• The senator with (understandably) one of the lowest actual-attendance rates at the Capitol in the last two years, and who has played little role in crafting legislation recently, suddenly needs to be nowhere but Washington -- exactly now?
  
  
• The candidate whose strongest claim to office is his experience, mastery, and understanding of foreign policy, cannot handle a debate on that topic, against a rookie, when he has other things on his mind?
  
  
• The candidate who wants to quash any suspicion that he is not quick enough, not vigorous enough, or not multi-tasking enough to handle a job that poses a new challenge every minute, is essentially asking for everyone to take things a little slower so he can concentrate?
  
  
• The candidate whose first response to the financial crisis was to propose firing the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and whose second response was to run ads linking his opponent (hazily) to former Fannie Mae officials (before news came out that his own campaign manager was still on the Freddie Mac payroll), now wants us to believe that statesmanship and love of country govern his every move on this issue?
  
  
• The most famously stoic candidate of recent times is willing to have it look as if he's running away from a confrontation while he's behind.
  

Continue reading "Worst self-inflicted campaign move ever?" »

More about "My First Kill"

A controlled experiment: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin

Too much Olympics? Try 'Ace in the Hole'

Saying something nice about CCTV

More on Chauvinism. medals, and Olympic TV

If you're going to rely on CCTV to bring you your Olympics, you've got to care about the Chinese teams. ...

Instead of [NBC's] soft-focus profiles, what you get from CCTV is raw, one-sided footage. Predictably, the cameras were trained exclusively on the Chinese gymnasts. During the early rotations, when the Chinese unexpectedly found themselves in fifth place, CCTV broadcast little or no footage of the teams in first, second, third, and fourth. ....

It was a reminder that, at the end of the day, [CCTV] is still a large cog in a giant propaganda machine. NBC is patriotic because patriotism sells; CCTV is patriotic because patriotism is the law.

Medals: Only gold count!  Contrary to internal propaganda regarding the country not being in a quest for gold, that is all that is being counted.... They want the most gold medals - nothing else matters.  Locals are frustrated that Yahoo! ranks country performance based on total medals [instead of gold medals]...That would make Michael Phelps something like number 4 as a country as of right now.

UPDATE: More on the medal-count wars here.

More on Chengdu and collectivism

Brooks' column: "If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim."

Liberman: "First of all, it wasn't a representative sample of Americans, it was undergraduates in a psychology course at the University of Michigan; and second, it wasn't Chinese, it was undergraduates in a psychology course at Kyoto University in Japan; and third, it wasn't a fish tank, it was 10 20-second animated vignettes of underwater scenes; and fourth, the Americans didn't mention the "focal fish" more often than the Japanese, they mentioned them less often."

Wednesday morning Olympics

David Brooks from Chengdu: my lord

If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.

These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.

Continue reading "David Brooks from Chengdu: my lord" »

Tuesday Olympic Notes - cont

Continue reading "Tuesday Olympic Notes - cont" »

Non-Olympics, non-China: check out Josh Green's memo haul

"Chauvinism" and Olympic TV

Unfortunate NYT lapse in Beijing

The owner of the Xinjiang Kashgar Restaurant near the main Olympic venue said he shut down Tuesday [of last week] after repeated visits from officials who cited health concerns. He said several other Muslim restaurants nearby had received similar visits. The owner, a Uighur, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear that he would be further harassed by the authorities. 

Our American media landscape

I turn on the TV in America, and in the first ten minutes I see...

More on Malaysia, Tibet

The last time Malaysian democrat Anwar Ibrahim was prosecuted on a trumped-up sodomy charge, we wrote that the government's "crude measures will exact a heavy price in terms of lost credibility." Ten years later, Malaysia's current political leaders should take note.

Probably no one will notice this outside the Blue State liberal elite...

Getting this off my chest about the Olympics

This is very long, but for-the-record:

First, a reminder: I think that it will be best for China, the world, the athletes, the spectators, and the Olympic Movement itself if the Beijing games come off as a big success. No one will benefit if China feels disappointed or under-appreciated about how these years of work ultimately pay off.

Also: as I can’t say often enough, I am a Friend of the Chinese People!

And: I’ll be here in August. I want to have a good time when the Games begin.

But I am getting a bad feeling about the buildup to these events. It’s not just the air— I do still believe that last-minute measures will make it acceptable by Games time. (Reasoning and quotes in this article. Also, I'm out of Beijing till the start of July -- giving it a chance!) And it’s not about a lot of the transportation infrastructure, although crucial subway lines that are supposed to be running before visitors arrive still have mounds of fresh construction dirt around some entryways. I am confident that they will handling passengers by the time they're needed for the Games.

Rather I’m puzzled by a series of deliberate and inadvertent decisions that, if you didn’t know better, you might think were designed to turn the whole spectacle into a source of friction rather than pride for China. None of these steps is news on its own. Collectively the pattern is discouraging, and puzzling too.

Some are clearly inadvertent.

Continue reading "Getting this off my chest about the Olympics" »

Tim Russert

It is of course precisely the vitality and at-the-center-ness of Tim Russert that makes his sudden death so shocking. I am very sorry for his family.

Like many other people in political journalism, I have had differences with him over the years about his particular concept of "tough" questioning and the effect it had, because of his great influence, on politicians and the DC journalistic culture. Such issues are for another day.

What I liked and admired most about him as a journalist and human being was his sense of permanent child-like wonder, which is in fact the essence of this business. Reporters never quite think of themselves as grownups, because they're always so excited about the next thing they get to see or the next puzzle they get to figure out. Rather, if people don't feel this way, they find some other line of work.

Even he ascended past the level where he would routinely be called a "reporter," Tim Russert always retained that sense of openness and curiosity about what he'd learn in the next interview or see at the next event. In turn this made him seem un-stuffy to people who knew him only from TV, and approachable when you dealt with him in person. I am sorry that his weekly CNBC/MSNBC interview show was not as well-known as Meet the Press, because it showed more of his open, omni-interested nature than some of the Sunday morning inquisitions did. Still, the overwhelming reaction to his death shows that his essential character came through. This is sad news.

Jim Webb as "Confederate"

I am on record as liking and admiring Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, and also hoping that he stays in the Senate rather than joins the Obama ticket as VP.

But I am underwhelmed by the latest "revelation" about him: that he has expressed sympathy and respect for Confederate soldiers, including many of his forbears. (FWIW: Such of my relatives as were then in America lived in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and fought on the Union side. Many were killed.)

First, this is hardly a secret or news. The dignity of ordinary Confederate troops and their battlefield leaders, as opposed to the evil of the southern slaveholding system, was a major theme in Webb's widely-noted and generally-praised book Born Fighting, published four years ago.

In addition to that book, the main documentary proof of Webb's "problem" is a speech at the Confederate war memorial in 1990. That memorial, by the way, is in Arlington National Cemetery -- not in Richmond, Charleston, Natchez, etc. His speech contained a passage addressed to white descendants of the Confederate army that is hard to imagine coming from, say, David Duke:

The last twenty five years in this country have shown again and again that, despite the regrettable and well-publicized turmoil of the Civil Rights years, those Americans of African ancestry are the people with whom our [Southern whites'] history in this country most closely intertwines, whose struggles in an odd but compelling way most resemble our own, and whose rights as full citizens we above all should celebrate and insist upon....

Continue reading "Jim Webb as "Confederate"" »

Worst moment of TV commentary (that I can think of at the moment)

Gloria Borger just now on CNN, reading credulously from a Hillary-supporter email saying that this "needed to be her night" and thus it was OK for her to perform the way she did.

Best moment: Jeffrey Toobin's instant, unscripted, "What are you TALKING ABOUT???" response, saying that except for the "deranged narcissism of the Clintons" the point would be that she had lost and Obama had won and it was time for her to step aside. That was "hard" on her, but elections are hard. It was no picnic for Bob Dole or George HW Bush or Paul Tsongas or Jerry Brown when Bill Clinton beat them, either, but that is life and they didn't try to stay on stage. This last part is me talking, but it's what Toobin implied.

Of course, CNN is the only source of real-time U.S. commentary available here, so my pool of possible worst-remark candidates is restricted.

Praising a neocon! (updated)

I am limited, to put it mildly, in my admiration for neocons and the blessings they have brought to America and the world.

But to give credit where it is due: just now on BBC's HARDtalk program, Robert Kagan -- he of the "Mars vs. Venus" description of virile America versus weakling Europe -- did an admirable job of handling the interviewer Stephen Sackur. Sackur's specialty has become the haughty-sounding "Surely it's preposterous to suggest.." school of bullying interrogation. Often this involves hopping around from theme to theme, the continuity provided mainly by the superior tone.

Kagan, who is now a McCain advisor, dealt with this act as well as I've seen done, calling Sackur out on each of the logical jumps. Bonus point to him for admitting (in roughly these words) that the war in Iraq had "hurt America's image, largely deservedly." The BBC's internet video of the show, here, gave me an error message saying it's not available in China. (I saw it on actual TV.) If it works where you are and you'd like to see someone stand his ground, check it out.

UPDATE: Word from the US is that this clip is available only in the UK. Sorry! But surely it's preposterous to suggest that the BBC can indefinitely bottle up its shows. Will pass on any word I get about other sources.

BETTER UPDATE: Gavin Sheridan points out that while the BBC's own iPlayer is UK-only, a number of shows, including the one I'm talking about, are available on its normal web site. So here it is, Mars, Venus, HARDtalk, and all.

Who could ever have seen this coming? (Macau dept)

In an article last week that is now behind the WSJ's subscriber wall, two reporters whom I mercifully won't name say that US-based "gaming" companies like Las Vegas Sands and Wynn are starting to have problems in Macau. Heart of the story:

Even as the U.S. operators pour billions into the market, they are struggling to overcome an unforeseen obstacle: the growing power of local middlemen in determined where big-spending, so-called VIP players spend their money

"Unforeseen"? The few prescient geniuses who happened to anticipate this problem included, let's see.... every single person I interviewed about the Macau situation in the spring and summer of last year, for this article in the Atlantic. There is even an authoritative academic study of the phenomenon, here. "Stanley Ho’s four-decade monopoly on all casino business might seem the strangest part of Macau’s economic structure," my story said, referring to the local Mr. Big. "It was not: That distinction has belonged to the related system of VIP rooms, which has also been the foundation of Macau’s gambling economy—and which poses the greatest challenge to Macau’s ability to come into sync with international norms."

If the big U.S. companies really have been blindsided by the VIP phenomenon, maybe customers have a better chance in Vegas casinos than they thought. Maybe "the house" is not really that sharp.

Credit to the pioneers (updated twice)

All journalism involves simplification and compression. Otherwise a story could never end and would always be longer than the event it describes, to take all perspectives into account. Even our chronicles in the Atlantic involve serious last-minute cutting -- believe it or not!

Thus Fareed Zakaria's latest column in Newsweek, which as usual I agree with, has to leave out certain details to get to the main point. The main point: that there is such a thing as exaggerated fear of terrorism, and that U.S. politics shows ample and self-destructive illustrations of it.

Certain details necessarily left out of this column but that should remain on the record: the pioneering role of scholars like John Mueller (of Ohio State), Benjamin H. Friedman (of MIT -- not the economist Benjamin M. Friedman of Harvard), Ian Lustick (of Penn), Veronique de Rugy (now of George Mason U's Mercatus Center), and others in arguing from the start that the United States needed to be careful about doing too much, too cumbersomely, in its attempt to "protect" itself against every risk. My chronicle of their activities and arguments was in a 2006 Atlantic cover story, "Declaring Victory."

This was not so safe or comfortable an argument to make back, say, in 2004 when Benjamin Friedman began doing so. Such efforts are worth remembering.

Update: The security expert Bruce Schneier also deserves a place on the list of "sane when everyone else was going berserk" honorees. For instance, the issue of his "Crypto-Gram" newsletter that came out immediately after the 9/11 attacks said this:

Airline security measures are primarily designed to give the appearance of good security rather than the actuality. This makes sense, once you realize that the airlines' goal isn't so much to make the planes hard to hijack, as to make the passengers willing to fly. Of course airlines would prefer it if all their flights were perfectly safe, but actual hijackings and bombings are rare events and they know it.

This is not to say that all airport security is useless, and that we'd be better off doing nothing. All security measures have benefits, and all have costs: money, inconvenience, etc. I would like to see some rational analysis of the costs and benefits, so we can get the most security for the resources we have.

Some of Schneier's more recent thoughts here. Thanks to Jay Ackroyd for this reminder.

Update #2: Fareed Zakaria himself was also writing some "let's get a grip here" articles fairly early on, for instance this in 2004. (This previous post concerns a similar earlier battle.) And, this front page story in Monday's New York Times illustrates how far in the brainless auto-pilot direction Homeland "Security" policy has gone. It's much as foreseen in pop fiction.

Earthquake update #2: Media

Three days ago I mentioned this report from the Pew representative in Beijing (Deborah Fallows, who is also my wife) about Chinese media play on the earthquake.

Here is her followup report on Pew's site, about Chinese TV and internet coverage through the three-minute national period of mourning today.

What was John McCain thinking?

An advantage of being in the US again for a few days: seeing shows in real time, specifically SNL just now. What on earth was John McCain thinking, in agreeing to do a SNL spot 35 minutes into the show? The run-into-the-ground "joke" line was, "I am older than anyone can possibly believe. Hardee-har! I am so incredibly old!" Jeesh. He came across as a good sport, but, well, old. Everyone has seen SNL items that could be used as campaign ads. This is the only one I can think of where a candidate intentionally produced something that could be used as an attack ad on himself.

My immediate reaction while watching it is: if the Democrats ever move past their current intra-party bloodletting,the election might not turn out to be that close.

Pew blog on Chinese media coverage of earthquake

I am out of China for a few more days. While away I have seen this report on the Pew Research Center site, from the head of the Pew Research Internet Project's China operation, on what she is seeing about the earthquake on Chinese TV and reading on the internet.

(Disclosure: the author is my wife.)

Earthquake coverage on Chinese TV

Most of the channels on the (state controlled) CCTV are running the normal game shows, Olympic warmups (especially torch-relay updates), teen music shows, etc. But the CCTV-1 news channel is having all-out coverage of the earthquake in Sichuan province. Brief cultural notes:

- The coverage included a long segment of premier Wen Jiabao reading a speech about his deep concern for the people of Sichuan, from aboard an airplane en route to the disaster scene. Background: after the country was paralyzed by unexpected snow storms in February, the leadership was criticized for a Katrina-like slowness in dealing with the problem. Prominent coverage now of the main officials responding immediately to this disaster.

- News channels from Taiwan, which we are watching in alternation with the mainland coverage on CCTV, have extensive video footage from Chengdu, estimates of casualties, etc. So far no on-scene video footage that I've seen on CCTV-1, and no casualty figures. (The state news agency, Xinhua, is saying that 7600 people, or more, may have died.) Channel-surfing, we see that the German, Japanese, and Korean networks are also running Chengdu footage. It could have been on CCTV when I wasn't watching, but it's certainly not featured. CCTV is mainly running telephone interviews with correspondents in Sichuan and talking-head analyses in the studio. Possible background: controlling coverage within China until being sure exactly how the story should be presented. (Update: just saw a 20-second video clip from Chengdu on CCTV.)

- To help place this disaster: it is in almost exactly the same area I described in this article about the Wolong Panda Reserve, northwest of Chengdu, and this slide show about the reserve. A long, twisty road from Chengdu to Wolong, which had been undergoing years of reconstruction, passes right through the earthquake area. I assume it could be a long time before it is restored to even its perilous previous condition.

Good luck to all in Sichuan, including Dr. Tang Chunxiang and his colleagues in Wolong.

Evil in Burma

I have not said anything about the disaster in Burma, because I haven't had anything to say beyond "It's a disaster." And, that people should call the country Burma -- as the Bush Administration, Senators Clinton, McCain*, and Obama, and the Washington Post do -- rather than Myanmar, the term chosen by its junta and now accepted by CNN, NPR, and the New York Times.

My wife and I have been to Burma several times over the last twenty years. The first time was in the summer of 1988, around the time of the August 8 uprising and subsequent bloody repression of monks and students. The most recent was a little more than a year ago, a few days before another bloody round of repression. Like almost everyone who has been in the country, we have viewed its regime as a peculiarly pre-modern and backward form of evil. It does not seems capable of thoroughly-organized evil and repression, as in the old Soviet system. Rather it displays a benighted, superstitious, and almost unthinking indifference to whether its people suffer and die.

A minor illustration would be the decision that effectively bankrupted many Burmese people and helped bring on riots 20 years ago. This was the out of the blue decree that most denominations of Burmese currency, except those in "lucky" denominations like 45 and 90 kyat, would be valueless. The major illustration is of course its refusal to allow relief workers from around the world to spare tens of thousands of Burmese people disease and likely death in the wake of the cyclone.

Unfortunately, saying that the regime is evil doesn't automatically indicate how to help its unfortunate people. Invasions -- even for humanitarian purposes -- should be a very last resort. And without spelling out the whole reasoning, the U.S. is not in a great position now to be organizing an international invasion force, no matter how noble the cause. As the international frustrations of the last week have suggested, the main option is the unsatisfying one of putting together as much pressure from as many sources as possible, including China**, to force the regime away from its outrageous refusal to allow aid workers in.

(*About McCain: if it really is true that he has given a major convention role to a lobbyist who represented the Burmese junta, McCain needs to dump that person forthwith -- or be pilloried for not doing so every day between now and the election. Update: I see that the lobbyist, Doug Goodyear, has just quit the convention job. Next, maybe giving back the $300,000+ the generals paid him, to a human rights group? **About China: the latest outrage by the Burmese generals should not become the latest reason to threaten China with an Olympic boycott or disruption. The Chinese government has some influence over the Burmese regime -- but just some. It is better to make China part of the solution to this problem, by pointing out that a regime's refusal to save its own people is the strongest possible reason for an exception in China's "non-interference with other sovereign states" doctrine.)

A year ago, during the time of riots and crackdowns, I posted several pictures of what Rangoon looked like just before the fighting began. Here and after the jump, a few other pictures from that time.

_________

1: Village on the Irrawaddy delta, south of Rangoon, showing why a storm surge would do such damage. (Click for larger version that shows pagoda):

Continue reading "Evil in Burma" »

The bright side #4: Why I've missed the (English-language) Chinese press

May 1 edition, China Daily, state-controlled voice to the outside world:

Headline, in case you can't read it: "Happiness abounds as country cheers." (Click on photo for larger version.) Lead paragraph: "Across the country, people yesterday celebrated the 100-day countdown to the Olympics." Picture is of Tibetan university students in Lhasa rejoicing.

There are serious aspects to the enormous gap between Chinese and international coverage of the Olympics, Tibet, etc -- but for another time. For now it's great to see these publications in top form.

Most important item in Sunday's NYT

This Sunday's New York Times -- fat, varied, making me wonder how I got anything done on the weekends in America when I routinely had all this to read -- had lots of interesting stuff in it. But the most important item was the op-ed by Elizabeth Edwards called "Bowling 1, Health Care 0."

It's one of the rare expressions in print of a sentiment anyone who has covered politics has heard expressed privately countless times. Or at least that I've heard repeatedly when interviewing politicians about how they do their work. This is the politician's frustration with the behavior of the campaign press -- but not for the obvious reason.

The obvious complaint, easily dismissed by reporters, is that press coverage is biased against or "too tough on" this or that candidate. Reporters tell themselves: Hey, we're tough on everybody. You're not strong enough to take it, maybe you should find a different line of work.

The more heartfelt and bitter complaint is about the way press coverage seems biased not against any particular candidate but against the entire process of politics, in the sense that politics includes the public effort to resolve difficult issues. (Medical care, climate change, banking crises, military priorities, etc.) For twenty years I have heard this from frustrated politicians -- Gary Hart, Newt Gingrich, Jimmy Carter, Dick Gephardt, Bill Clinton, they may not share a lot of views but they are as one in this frustration. What galls all of them is the way that the incentives created by most coverage bring out the very worst in most politicians, and discourage them from even bothering to try the harder, more "responsible" path. No one says that press incentives turn potential Abraham Lincolns into real-world Tom DeLays. But the incentives push in that direction rather than the reverse.

Active politicians rarely dare say this in public, since they know the same reporters and commentators will be there to talk about them tomorrow and the next day and from then on. For reasons personal (health) and political (husband out of the race), Elizabeth Edwards no longer has to hold anything back. After the jump, a sample of what she said:

Continue reading "Most important item in Sunday's NYT" »

Looking on the bright side #1: SECDEF Gates

Issues have come and gone over this last month, and they'll have to enter history without my imprimatur. But I will try in the next while to work back through a few of them, using the "if you can't say something nice..." standard*. I intend to mention a few technological, political, and other developments that deserve more attention or praise than they seem to have received.

As a start: the two speeches early this week by the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, about what he thinks is wrong with the culture of the professional military.

Gates starts out miles ahead simply by not being the man he replaced at the Pentagon, the odious Donald Rumsfeld. And even though Gates has implemented essentially the same Administration policy and administered the same gigantic budget that Rumsfeld left him, he has defended and explained his policies in ways suggesting that he has noticed, thought about, and attempted to address opposing views. This is in contrast to the haughty sneering-away of opposition so familiar from the Rumsfeld days.

In back-to-back speeches this Monday to the Air Force leadership at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and then to the Army leadership at West Point, Gates revived what had always been the best part of Rumsfeld's approach in the Pentagon. This was a willingness to challenge the cautious, yes-man aspects of today's professional military culture. Rumsfeld gave all such questioning a bad name by his contemptuous disregard for professional military judgment in the runup to the Iraq war. But Gates still had a point -- and he made it in a surprising way.

Continue reading "Looking on the bright side #1: SECDEF Gates" »

This horrible "debate"

As mentioned earlier, family concerns (my father) have trumped other concerns for quite a while. Among various consequences, and in the cosmic sense a trivial one, is the list of items building up that I am looking for a chance to weigh in on -- should that chance coincide with my being near an internet connection.

Future items range from U.S. policy toward the Beijing Olympics, to Windows Vista and Mac and Google news, to frog-related and air taxi-related developments, to other themes. Concerning a potential US boycott of part or all of the Olympics, I'm looking for the chance to explain why Jimmy Carter, GW Bush, and WJ Clinton are right on this issue, and John McCain, Barack Obama, and HR Clinton are wrong. Off-hand I can't think of any other controversial issue in which you can place Bush and Carter on the same side.

And some day I will at least look at the couple thousand emails now backed up in the system. Sorry if one of them is yours.

I want to use this moment at the computer to address the unspeakable ABC bear-baiting debate last night. I haven't read what anyone has said about this -- except for Tom Shales of the Washington Post. He said that what Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos did last night was "shoddy and despicable." I completely agree and add only these grace notes:

--- From the often-harrumphing Gibson, this is no big surprise. But from Stephanopoulos??? Who earlier in his career was a message/press/legislative man for Dick Gephardt and of course played a more visible version of that role during Bill Clinton's rise - what the hell is this????

I like and respect Stephanopoulos, and part of what I respect about him is the way he usually conducts his TV interviews. But I also remember dealing with him back in the early Clinton days, he in his role as campaign guy and me in my role as reporter. He understands thoroughly and in his bones what is wrong with the kind of mindless, substance-free gotcha questioning he and Gibson wasted their time on last night. I know he understands it because I've heard him shame journalists who were applying the same tactics to Bill Clinton back in the day. What was he thinking? What kind of pressure had been applied to him?

--- After the jump, a passage from my 1996 Atlantic article "Why Americans Hate the Media," itself excerpted from my book Breaking the News, which bears on exactly this kind of mindless "what about the flag pin?" haranguing. To summarize what this passage says: Political reporters think they are being "tough" when they take a borderline-impolite (or worse) tone and try to trap people in some provable if ultimately-meaningless contradiction. But while members of the electorate often find these gaffes diverting in a pro-wrestling sense, whenever they have their own chance to ask "tough" questions they ask the candidates about things that will affect the voters' lives. These are generally questions of war, peace, economics, etc. Again, George S. lived through the phenomenon the excerpt below describes, though he was on the other side. That he would now be in gotcha mode is depressing, to put it mildly.

--- Whatever else happens the next time we choose a president, there has got to be a better way to see candidates operate under pressure than the grotesque system that has metastasized during this electoral cycle. It makes candidates into mere props for bullying anchormen-narcissists. It does no one except the anchormen any good. I mentioned earlier the oddity of Jimmy Carter and GW Bush finding common cause about China policy. Maybe the RNC and the DNC can join hands in freeing political debate from the destructive grip of the networks. And if they can't do that, maybe we should just go all the way and have the candidates compete eating pails full of maggots on Fear Factor. That's the logical extension of where we're headed.

Article except after the jump. Then, again off line for a while.
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Continue reading "This horrible "debate"" »

Recent items about info-control, #3

I mentioned recently that the Chinese propaganda apparatus was surprisingly old fashioned, compared with most other aspects of life in contemporary China.

Well, the headline language is becoming more up to date. Front page of Thursday's China Daily (have to say it every time: official voice to the outside world).

The "hype" involved is the idea that the government is encouraging Han Chinese to flood into Tibet, to take economic opportunities from Tibetans and dilute the Tibet-ness of the place.

Hype aside, my impression is that it is hard for people outside China to appreciate how strong and unified is the view on "the Chinese street" about the rights and wrongs of the Tibetan tragedy. From this internal perspective, Tibet has always, obviously, and indisputably been an integral part of China. And just as obviously and indisputably, through 50-plus years the people of Han China have sacrificed time, treasure, and manpower to bring Tibetans out of the feudal age and into modernity. And the thanks they get is.... this destructive outburst?

Americans might consider this blasphemous, but I think the prevailing Chinese view is about as dominant here as was the view on "the American street" about the rights and wrongs of 9/11. In all this is the potential for trouble between China and the outside world, not to mention the trouble for Tibet.

Update: This story by Howard French in today's NYT very well describes the gulf between Chinese and outside perspectives on Tibet, the Dalai Lama, and "splittism."

Joe Conason, "Crossing the Line"

I mentioned several days ago that I was surprised to see -- ok, "disgusted" was the term -- that Hillary Clinton's campaign spokesman had emailed reporters an article from the American Spectator accusing one of Barack Obama's advisors of being an anti-Semite.

This was surprising because the Spectator had, during Bill Clinton's term of office, relentlessly accused him and his wife of crimes starting with the death of Vince Foster and moving downward from there.

It also struck me as simple malice, a try-anything attempt to injure someone near Obama with the false but always damaging claim that he was bigoted.

I see now that Joe Conason, in Salon, has had a similar strongly negative reaction to the same episode. This strikes me as a very significant reaction; if I were in the Clinton organization I would take his article very seriously indeed.

Conason is a formidable reporter in general. But in particular, anyone familiar with what The American Spectator's name implied in the 1990s remembers how redoubtable and relentless Joe Conason was in rebutting its spurious attacks on both Clintons. He and my long-time friend Gene Lyons even wrote a book, The Hunting of the President, about the Spectator-Starr-Scaife crusade to do whatever it took to bring the Clintons down. If this Joe Conason now thinks that the Hillary Clinton campaign is the one doing the disreputable attacking, that means something. His article's final words:

This incident offers Hillary Clinton an opportunity to consider how she wants this campaign to end. If she beats the odds and wins, this kind of behavior will taint her victory. And if she loses, as seems more likely now, is this how she wants her historic campaign to be remembered?

Recent items about Chinese info-control (#1 in a series)

Intensely in the midst of "real" work at the moment, so just a quick mention of one of a thicket of recent illustrations of a larger point. The larger point, as often argued in the magazine, is that daily life in most of China is less controlled and more freewheeling and chaotic than Westerners would usually guess. But there are clear, controlled, no-nonsense exceptions, among which the general field of information (media, internet, schooling) ranks high.

Today's illustration: maps. I contend that overall "map-mindedness" in China differs from the typical Western approach, but that's for another time. Finding useful maps here, in Chinese or English, can be tricky because roads, buildings, and landmarks are changing so fast. But there's also the official outlook that geographic information isn't something you want to fall into just anybody's hands. Thus this announcement yesterday that unauthorized online mapping services would be shut down:

China cracks down on illegal online map services to protect state security

"...Some websites publish sensitive or confidential geographical information, which might leak state secrets and threaten national security," [a Central Government official] said.

He said those websites would be closed down.

In a way I can understand what they're worried about. For instance, Google Earth makes something absolutely plain and obvious that I don't see on normal maps of Beijing: that there is gigantic airfield on the west side of the city, just outside the 4th Ring Road.* And I'm reading a novel whose plot turns on the discovery, via satellite photos, of unauthorized activity in Tibet. My point at the moment is simply the frequent reminders of the tension between China's opening in many ways and its attempt to bottle up some kinds of information.

--
* This site, originally pointed out to me by Joe Reckford, is "Beijing Western Suburb airport," 北京西郊机场, apparently used for travel by top officials and as a military base. Here is a Xinhua photo of Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, and eventual president of China Li Xiannian at the airfield 45 years ago.

'Declaring Victory'

Mark Danner's new article assessing the Bush-era "War on Terror" is very much worth reading. (A sample after the jump.) It is one of a rapidly-increasing number of good essays, speeches, and policy proposals looking at how the U.S. went wrong after 9/11 -- and not just in Iraq -- and how the next administration can start correcting the long string of previous mistakes.

This discussion needs to become more widespread, intense, and practical. John McCain is a vastly more admirable person than George W. Bush, but his strategy for Iraq and national security in general is an extension of Bush-Cheney. If and when the Democratic party moves past its current fratricide, it needs to make a big push here, not just for election purposes but so it can do something in 2009 if given the chance.

As the discussion continues, I immodestly offer this link to "Declaring Victory," the Atlantic story I wrote a year and a half ago on ways out of the War on Terror trap. As we near the end of the intellectual paralysis and policy rigidity of the Bush-Cheney years, some of the ideas people described to me back then seem, at least to me, all the more relevant.

Continue reading "'Declaring Victory'" »

Fresh from Kenya: a breakthrough on boiled frogs

THE STORY IS TOLD OF HOW an adventurous young frog struggled hard to climb into a pot of water. After a few false starts, he finally managed and had a nice time, enjoying the swim.

But the pot's owner came, proceeded to light a fire, and placed the pot on it. When the water started warming, the frog found the conditions even better.

But soon, conditions inside the pot became unbearable and the frog decided to jump out. But upon seeing the fire below, he stopped dead on his tracks. He was trapped in a dilemma of his own making. The water was killing him slowly, but the fire would kill him instantly.

As we seek answers on how the dispute over the 2007 presidential results could have triggered such wanton killings, we might ask ourselves how we got trapped in a dilemma of our own making....

Political writers, politicians: let John Mbaria be an example unto one and all. (Thanks to Nicholas Wadhams of Nairobi for this tip.)

This is disgusting (Clintons, McPeak, American Spectator)

Watching from 12 time zones away, I've tried to stay out of campaign blow-by-blow.

But if, as I assume is true based on Marc Ambinder's report, the Hillary Clinton campaign is circulating a hit job from the American Spectator, this is simply disgusting. (Marc has just confirmed to me that indeed the article came in an on-the-record email from Phil Singer, the Clinton campaign spokesman.)

That the Clinton family would dignify the American Spectator, of all publications, is astonishing to anyone who was alive in the 1990s.

That they would bless this attempt to paint Merrill McPeak as an anti-Semite is grotesque.

I doubt that the author of the hit job ever bothered to speak with or interview McPeak. I have done so many times, during and after his days as Air Force chief of staff (which he was during the first Gulf War). People can agree or disagree with McPeak's foreign policy or his record at the Pentagon -- but that's not what we're talking about here. Any attempt to fish out a quote that will banish him as a bigot is exactly as fair and accurate as depicting Bill Clinton as being personally a racist based on his "fairy tale" and "Jesse Jackson" comments around the time of the South Carolina primary. I say this having heard McPeak lay out his views, starting while the Gulf War was underway 17 years ago, about how to maintain general stability, US interests, and Israeli security in the Middle East.

McPeak may have gone too far in saying that Bill Clinton's earlier comments (that it would be "a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country" -- namely, Hillary Clinton and John McCain) amounted to "McCarthyism." But that's a pretty fair description of this latest round. I don't like attempts to stifle argument when they occur in China, and I don't like this in the United States.

I can easily believe that the Spectator would publish such an article. That the Clinton team would circulate it I'm still trying to deal with.

I keep being re-surprised...

... at how tin-eared and antique the Chinese propaganda apparatus is, compared with the way most other things seem and feel in the country.

Today's illustration: front page of China Daily, official voice to the outside world. Story at top left, about lighting of Olympic flame, contains not one word about protesters who disrupted the ceremony in Greece. (Local Chinese TV coverage also cut away at that instant.) Story at top right, today's update on the Tibet saga, is about the unified outrage of China's web population over Western news distortions. Eg,

"A video clip titled 'Tibet was, is, and always will be part of China' became an instant hit after it was posted on YouTube on March 15. [Hmmm. As I remembered it, the Great Firewall was blocking YouTube around that time.]... The 7-minute clip then lists indisputable historical facts to prove that Tibet has long been an inalienable part of China."

As an indication of what the majority of Chinese people have been taught about the Tibet issue, the story is indeed useful. What is weird is its attempt to sell the "if we don't mention it, it didn't happen" version of reality to outside, English-language readers who have other sources of information on the topic.

Meanwhile, a microscopic story at the very bottom of the front page (picture after jump), right next to the Hooters-Beijing ad, notes that shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell by 4.49% yesterday. To be fair, it is linked to a longer story inside.

Continue reading "I keep being re-surprised..." »

And you thought the Clinton-Obama race was exciting....

The incumbent team of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao has come out on top in the voting at the National People's Congress, winning a second five-year term! Today's front page:

Essay question: In what basic way did these NPC elections resemble the Democrats' presidential primary in Michigan two months ago, and what does this suggest about the way globalization is bringing us all together?

The Atlantic's motto (cont.): Today's news three years ago

Just one last reminder, this one prompted by the Bear Stearns news and the collapse of Asian stock markets around me as I type, of the Atlantic's "Countdown to a Meltdown" cover story, by me, from the summer of 2005.

The point of steering readers toward the article once more is its attempt to explain, while it was going on, the origins of the credit bubble whose collapse is now causing problems.

Some "predictions" in this fictional history are looking pretty shaky now -- for instance, the assumption that the first black American with a serious chance at the presidency would be a four-star Army general running as a Republican. (Our 45th president in this scenario, the "Desert Eagle," becomes a hero by leading the raid that captures Osama bin Laden just before the 2012 elections.) But some of the other predictions, about the spread of panic from the real estate markets to the international financial system.....

A very good documentary series

(Updated below.)

This month BBC World TV is running a series of short documentaries on China. My wife and I have seen only two of them so far -- one about a little place called White Horse Village that is being demolished to make room for a modern development, another about a year in the life of several public school students, some cramming hard for university entrance exams and others just trying to get by while their parents are a thousand miles away in factory jobs.

If they're aired where you are, they are worth seeing. (Series schedule here. I gather that several of the films have been broadcast before.) They capture some amazing moments -- a bright young high school senior from the boondocks as she learns the scores on the entrance exam that will change her life, a beleaguered rural mother nearly suffering a breakdown when her callous mother-in-law won't help her, a nouveau-riche land developer cavorting with his family while the people he's evicting despair. Most of all, they show what China outside Beijing or Shanghai looks like, in a way TV news rarely does.

Why these are being broadcast with no interference I can't say. In a similar development, unlike yesterday, today both CNN and the BBC, along with the French, German, and Japanese news stations, are broadcasting Lhasa footage without being censored. On the other hand, my experience confirms Danwei's report that YouTube is now blacked out.

Real time update: Whoops! I wrote this yesterday morning, and one minute before it was scheduled to appear -- that is, right now -- I heard in the background a third documentary in the series. In it correspondent Juliana Liu reported on a visit to her hometown of Changsha, capital of Hunan province, and her talk with a colorful local millionaire: the air-conditioning magnate, aviator, and environmentalist Zhang Yue. Who would have guessed -- his campus includes a gilded pyramid and a replica of the palace of Versailles!

Small world. This picture of Versailles-in-Changsha is not from the film but from our story on Mr. Zhang early last year. Maybe this film was shot long before that (though its credit screen said 2008). Further demonstration of our motto. The Atlantic Monthly: today's news one year ago.

Tibet info-flow update

As of Saturday night, March 15, China time, in Beijing:

- The screen goes black on CNN one second after any report about the situation in Lhasa begins;

- Similar coverage on BBC World TV has, oddly, come through unmolested -- though BBC has often been blacked out in the past. This evening I saw footage on BBC of riots in Lhasa, cars being burned, accusations of attacks on monks, and so on;

- CCTV coverage (that's state-run China Central TV) has included at least one brief mention we saw, similar to those in the papers previously discussed here, saying that small groups of hooligans have attacked soldiers in Lhasa but that things are under control.

- Just about every blog, web site, or online news source I've tried for info about Tibet has been blocked by the Great Firewall, using one of the techniques I discussed in this article. The URLs for those sites -- say, NYTimes.com -- aren't permanently black-listed or blocked. But when the GFW's filtering system sees troublesome words in the actual content of the page you're reading -- and let's assume the words Tibet, Lhasa, and Dalai Lama now all qualify -- it breaks the connection and interrupts all attempts to go back to the site for certain period of time. So far, my VPN has gotten me around this barrier. But, as discussed in the article, avoiding the Great Firewall is enough of a chore and an expense that most Chinese citizens don't bother. I imagine some people in Tibet are bothering now.

A little more on news play in China

Following on this item earlier:

Front page of today's China Daily, the government's English-language presentation to the world. This is on Saturday, March 15, when news outlets elsewhere are leading with the Tibet news:

You can click on the photo for a larger version, but you're still likely to miss the Tibet news, which is in the very bottom left corner of the paper under the headline "Dalai Lama Behind Sabotage." In its entirety it reads as follows:

Continue reading "A little more on news play in China" »

In case you're wondering how this is playing in China...

.... here is the current front page of the People's Daily website, in Chinese. The English-language site, here, has different stories with different emphases.

Both the Chinese and the English pages may have changed by the time you see them, but as I look on Saturday morning, March 15, China time, the Chinese page is playing the Tibet story as secondary news, just at the bottom of the opening screen. You can find it with these characters for Tibetan Autonomous Region -- 西藏自治区 -- and the story itself is here. The gist, according to me, is that responsible authorities say that a small number of hooligans and saboteurs are creating disruptions in Lhasa.

The English-language story is played higher on the opening page and with the headline, "Tibet Regional Government: Sabotage in Lhasa masterminded by Dalai clique."

As mentioned earlier, no one outside the region can really know yet what is going on or where it will lead.

My new homeland security hero: Gov. Brian Schweitzer (MT)

Listen to this item from Friday evening's All Things Considered and realize, in amazement, how long it has been since we have heard a public figure talk plain common sense about the "theater of security" and 'fraidy-cat authoritarianism of TSA-era America.

The speaker is Brian Schweitzer, elected governor of Montana in 2004. (A Democrat.) Good for him.

Point for later discussion: Right now I'd say that the biggest single difference between life as an American in China in the 2000s, versus my family's life as Americans in Japan and Malaysia for four years in the 1980s, is internet streaming audio. It's still a big nuisance to see U.S. television broadcasts in anything like real time -- or at all, given that the slowness of the Chinese internet makes streaming video difficult. But to listen to the NPR morning and evening shows live, with time zones reversed -- Morning Edition live at our dinner time, All Things Considered in the morning -- that is an enormous difference in connected-ness. We had email even back in those old days! Not Skype, of course, which rivals streaming audio in importance (and obviously is a variant of the same technology.) For now, glad that this phenomenon brought me the Schweitzer interview.

Shorter version of "right wing bloggers and China" point

As discussed previously here:

The same people -- same individuals, same organizations, same publications, same blog sites - that ginned up a war with Iraq, and that have supported ginning up a war with Iran, are settling in for a longer term confrontation with China.

These people need to be judged on their track record. And compared with a confrontation with Iraq or Iran, a military showdown with China would be 10 times as unnecessary and 100 times as stupid.

More on Clinton, Obama, and the OODA loop

Updated, below:

About two weeks ago I mentioned Chuck Spinney's analysis of the Clinton-Obama race, from the perspective of "Fourth Generation Warfare" and the famous John Boyd "OODA Loop." (Details on those concepts in the original post.)

The payoff of his argument, made shortly after Obama's Maryland-Virginia-DC sweep, was that Hillary Clinton could still win -- but that she could no longer win "well." That is, the terms of any possible victory over Obama had narrowed in a way that would compromise her ability to win the general election if nominated or to govern if sworn in. This was to Obama's credit, in showing how he had maneuvered her into that position. But it was a problem for the party, if Clinton finally did win on these Pyrrhic terms.

In making his point Spinney quoted a Washington Post column by Michael Gerson on "Hillary's Unappealing Path," written just after the Potomac primaries. It said:

"Though it is increasingly unlikely, Clinton may still have a path to the nomination -- and what a path it is. She merely has to puncture the balloon of Democratic idealism; sully the character of a good man; feed racial tensions within her party; then eke out a win with the support of unelected superdelegates and appeals, thwarting the hopes of millions of new voters who would see an inspiring young man defeated by backroom arm-twisting and arcane party rules."

Gerson is obviously not rooting for the Democrats, but his analysis, like Spinney's, has stood up.

Continue reading "More on Clinton, Obama, and the OODA loop" »

Jeez louise department (China and right-wing bloggers)

Late last night China time, joining in via Skype on an institution I had not been aware of before: a "Bloggers Roundtable" phone call from the Pentagon, discussing the newly released report on Chinese military power. I don't know who else is on the phone call, except for two officials who were supposed to be identified as "a Defense official." OK.

About the report, nothing to say until I have looked at it more closely. About other questions from other people, not my place to characterize them -- tempting as it is to give verbatim the tendentious line of argument / "questioning" from one right wing blogger in particular. But since this same guy (whose boss I have repeatedly mocked) has made it his business to mischaracterize what I said, let me take the unwise step of trying to set a blog record straight.

Continue reading "Jeez louise department (China and right-wing bloggers)" »

On plagiarism

The "plagiarism" flap over Barack Obama is bogus and overstated. It makes me think worse about whoever is pushing this complaint, rather than about Obama himself.

Continue reading "On plagiarism" »

Pot:kettle department (NYT op-ed division)

The Times's newest columnist, being brutally frank about the unwillingness to draw careful distinctions, and the lack of exposure to bracing market forces, among the leftist commentariat:

And, if I may say so, the quality of thought of the Democrats’ academic and media supporters — a permanent and, as it were, pensioned opposition — seems to me to have deteriorated as Orwell would have predicted.

We all delude ourselves about ourselves. But I wonder if Bill Kristol can imagine how this line -- criticizing scholars for a descent into hackdom, and for being comfortably ensconced in sinecures -- will strike many of his readers.

We criticize because we love

First boiled frogs, now basic math. I hate to keep wondering whether the NYT Op-Ed page employs fact checkers, but it's impossible not to wonder after passages like this. From this morning's Gail Collins column:

Most people have never been to a caucus, even if their state happens to have them. In Washington, the caucuses last Saturday drew a little more than 1 percent of the registered voters.

Those wacky caucuses! But wait a minute....

As a former Seattle resident I recall that Washington state has six or seven million people. After investing 0.75 seconds in internet research time I see that a little over half of them, let's say 3.75 million, are registered to vote.

One percent of 3.75 million is 37,500 people. Now, let's think back to reports of those caucuses. All the stories talked about "record breaking turnout" and "unexpected crowds." Some 20,000 people had crammed in to a pre-caucus Obama rally in Seattle -- with thousands more outside, and presumably thousands of others in the rest of the state also supporting Obama, or Clinton, or McCain, or Huckabee. And among all of them, only 37,500 show up?

And... It turns out that four years ago, the Democrats alone had 100,000 people for their much less dramatic and consequential caucuses. By all reports, highly publicized on caucus day, at least twice as many turned out for the Democrats this year. But somehow, according to the Times, only one-sixth that many people showed up for both parties???

And... I hear from friends and local news reports that the Democratic caucuses in just one Seattle-area legislative district attracted 18,000 people. (This detail from a story with the typical headline, "Turnout Shatters Record.") So, that district accounted for half the total for both parties across the entire state????

Obviously something went wrong here. Let's say the Democrats had maybe 200,000 at their caucuses, and the Republicans mabe half that many. That would be 300,000 total. Not enough to legitimize what is in fact a wacky caucus system. Not enough to prove that people of every class and background were involved. But different by nearly an order of magnitude from what our paper of record reports, in a factoid that will no doubt be picked up and considered "true".

What's the explanation? (And, by the way, I wish that some other NYT columnist had committed this howler, since I am a fan of Gail Collins' columns.) Maybe the "too good to check" instinct when coming across a tantalizing statistic? I don't know. But if we're looking for job-creation opportunities in America, how about for common-sense checkers?

___
Update: Mystery may be solved! The number of precinct delegates chosen at the caucuses, who in turn vote for the state delegates to the national party convention, was in fact close to the magic 1% figure. An understandable mixup, perhaps -- unless you apply the "can this figure possibly be true??" common sense test.

Dispatch from the WA state caucuses: it wasn't about the ground game

A reader who lives in Washington state and strongly supports Obama sends this report about the caucus activity two days ago, which of course led to a landslide Obama win.

As Clinton loses caucus states, she keeps saying they favor Obama, and so does the press. The press in particular says that the caucuses reward greater organization. Whether or not that is so, and whether or not Obama is better organized than Clinton, the fact is that NEITHER candidate was that well organized for the WA caucuses (see my note below), and I suspect Obama was not for Maine.

The dispatch goes on to say that the point is not at all to belittle Obama's organizers. Rather, it's this: that at least in Washington, the contest appeared to have moved beyond the strict get-out-the-vote, nuts-and-bolts marshaling of resources, attrition-style warfare and onto some different level. (I have removed a few personally identifying details from the note):

Continue reading "Dispatch from the WA state caucuses: it wasn't about the ground game" »

Correct link for "Better than Free" essay by Kevin Kelly

The previous item, about how organizations might be able to sell the same information they are giving away via the internet, had the wrong link to Kevin Kelly's valuable "Better than Free" essay. Here is the right link -- also now fixed in original item.

A very good essay about the economics of "free" info on the internet

(Updated to fix bad link.)
The Atlantic -- which was early to the idea of making its content available free on the internet, then went to a subscriber-only model, and now has come back -- is one of many publications wrestling with the question of how, exactly, you sell something you are simultaneously giving away.

One of the best accounts I've seen of why our current approach might make sense -- and more generally, of why individuals and organizations may still be able to do well selling information they're also offering free -- is this one, from Kevin Kelly, on his "The Technium" blog. His analysis does ring true to me, and it clarifies some possibilities I've heard discussed mainly in hazy terms.

Everyone knows that the world demand for sophisticated, rapid, reliable information and analysis can only keep rising -- and everyone also knows that the traditional models of paying for such information are in trouble, with newspapers being the most obvious case. Ten years from now, or twenty, or some time, a new way of paying for the information will have evolved. I found this essay useful in pointing toward some potential paths of evolution.

(Thanks to Paul Holbrook, of the Zoot users' forum on Yahoo, for this tip.)

Fun with datelines from the NYT (updated)

(Update below) Traveling during the Barack-Hillary debate, so no thoughts on that until I see a replay. But this passage from today's NYT, perused during an endless session on US Air, certainly caught my eye:

REDLANDS, Calif. — The most trenchant symbol of the California presidential primary can be found on an isolated stretch of Interstate 15, smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. There, affixed to an old trailer, is possibly the largest candidate billboard in the entire state, and it is for the Republican fringe candidate, Ron Paul.

Why did I notice?

1) Redlands is where I grew up and where my dad still lives, and it doesn't get that much national ink. So, great!

2) Redlands is not "smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert." To put this in terms that might resonate with the NYT copy desk, this would be like saying: White Plains is smack in the middle of the Adirondacks. More or less in the same part of the country? Yes. In the middle of? Not hardly.

3) Interstate 10 passes through Redlands. Interstate 15? Unt-uh -- at its closest point 15 or 20 miles away.

Maybe the writer was talking about some other place? Fine. But (not that I want to look a hometown gifthorse in the mouth), why this dateline?

On to weighter matters another time.

Update: Fellow son-of-Redlands Brian Beutler observed the same phenomenon on his blog.

Seriously, wasn't sloppiness about datelines one of the complaints about the NYT during the wild and woolly days of Howell Raines? I'm sure what happened in this case was the following: the Ron Paul sign in question was probably someplace on I-15 en route to Barstow, which is in the middle of the Mojave Desert and which is the heartland of Paul-type libertarian/survivalist sentiment. And for the Times's purposes, it was no doubt all close enough to fit under a 40-miles-away dateline. On the other hand: Bill Keller, the NYT's editor, went to college right in this same area and presumably would have known better if he had seen the story. That's all on this subject.

Mitch Kapor on spreadsheets, Magellan, etc

Yesterday, a NYT tech column suggested that Mitch Kapor of Lotus was responsible for the fundamental innovation of the spreadsheet.

Today I said, quoting Dottie Hall, that actually Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston had invented the spreadsheet, with VisiCalc for the Apple II -- but Kapor had brought it to the PC world with Lotus 1-2-3.

Kapor writes to say that's wrong too!

As long as we're beating a dead frog, let me add my two Linden dollars*: Bill Gross was responsible for Lotus Magellan, not me. I had nothing to do with it.

Also, "and while he (me, that is) can be credited with introducing the spreadsheet for the PC," is not true either. Both VisiCalc and MultiPlan were available when the IBM PC shipped in October 1981. 1-2-3 didn't hit the market until January 1983.

As for Bill Gross: I've written a whole string of articles lauding him for the programs he has created. The only one of these articles I can find online right now is this. from my own days as a NYT tech columnist.** Gross was also the force behind a program I have praised so often I should be on its payroll, X1. (To spell it out: I'm not, and I paid for my copy of X1.) I had assumed that as Kapor was institutionally responsible for Lotus Magellan, but he should know.

And as for spreadsheet genealogy, I have already received so many accounts of how this happened that I have decided to quote only Kapor's for the moment, since the rest have so many variations on points large and small.

____
* For those embarrassed to ask: Linden dollars are the currency of Second Life.

** Back in my day as NYT tech columnist, the paper ran a correction when I made a mistake. I'm just saying.....

For the record, two (interesting!) boiled-frog updates

Both referring to yesterday's shock-horror revelation that the NYT, Oxford Univ, and a skilled tech writer had combined to repeat a cruel bit of misinformation.

1) My friend Dottie Hall, a veteran of Microsoft, Symantec, Eclipse Aviation, and other ventures, points out in her blog that the boiled frog story was not the only canard in the NYT article. The column, by G. Paschal Zachary, also said this:

Businesses crave a sweet spot: where the line is drawn in favor of the innovator. The late Akio Morita, founder of Sony, talked about satisfying appetites that people didn’t even know they had. He achieved such a feat with the Sony Walkman, the music player introduced in 1979. While at the Lotus Development Corporation, [Mitch] Kapor created another such “killer app,” or application: the spreadsheet for the PC.

Mitch Kapor is a wonderful guy, creator of such truly innovative programs as Agenda and Magellan during his years at Lotus and in recent years hard at work on the innovative Chandler project. And while he can be credited with introducing the spreadsheet for the PC, namely Lotus 1-2-3, that was less a break through than the real innovation of creating the spreadsheet itself. All honor for this latter achievement lies (as Dottie Hall points out) with Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, who invented VisiCalc for the Apple II.

2) Reader Gregory Sokoloff points out a version of the boiled-frog story that, if we called it boiled-salaryman, might actually be true. He lived in Japan when I did, in the late 1980s, and reports:

You may remember that the most common form of bath in homes was of a design not found in the West. The bath would first be filled with cold water, then a natural gas heater would be lit and the water would slowly circulate from the bath into the heater and then back into the bath, much like a heated swimming pool. The recirculation was achieved simply through convection without any pump, and thus the device was very, very quiet. Apparently, people commonly would get into their baths when the water was tepid, fall asleep, and then wake up with serious burns requiring treatment in a hospital. I don't know if there were deaths. Of course, only one who has lived in Japan can fully appreciate how sleepy and inebriated many Japanese are by the time they take a bath after rounds in the local bars (the best named one where I lived was the "Salaryman Daigaku" ["Salaryman University"]).

I may be repeating an urban myth here, but a good friend of mine their swore she witnessed the aftermath of such an incident.

So, consistent with my emphasis on the scientific approach to tall tales, I hereby request that henceforth people begin the cliched story thus: "Throw a salaryman into a boiling hot bath, and he'll scramble right out. But put a salaryman in a nice comfy tub, and....."

You really do learn something by reading the paper

And what I learned from today's New York Times is that tomorrow the Atlantic will remove the firewall that for years has applied to most articles in the print magazine and our very extensive archives.

Hmmm! The Atlantic, believe it or not, has been a serial innovator and pioneer in the web area. Back in the dimly-remembered mid-1990s it was one of the first non-tech magazines even to have a web site and to put much of its content online free. A few years ago it changed to the firewall / subscribers only model. Now, with the centrality of the web to the kinds of discussions we hope to provoke, this latest change, which should certainly continue the expansion of the site's influence and audience.

It will also do something that I think will be of even greater long-term importance:

The Atlantic Monthly, as we have pointed out oh, once or twice in the last while, is now 150 years old. In fact, working toward 151.

There is a phenomenal amount of fascinating and historically important material in our archives from those 150+ years. Not all of it is available online. (If you have seen the bookcases full of back volumes, you know what a gigantic challenge the mere scanning and OCR-ing will be.) Some of the highlights have been collected by Robert Vare and Daniel Smith in their superb recent 150th Anniversary anthology.

But a lot of unexplored material is available, and searchable, in the archives, and this will be an important journalistic, academic, and historic resource. Once again, a new era begins.

(I no longer have to say, "Subscribers Only" about some articles. Still -- subscribe! The timeless story of media-and-technology is that as new "delivery vehicles" arrive, they create additional forms of receiving information; eliminate a few old forms, like the cuneiform tablet; but mainly expand the range of choices people have by leaving most old forms in place. Despite television, we still have radio; despite radio and television and the internet, we still have books; despite email we still have phone calls; and for quite a while despite the internet we will still have something physically like a book or magazine, just because there are so many times and places where it's the best way to see what you want to look at. Eg: On my latest 13-hour plane flight, some of passengers mainly used laptops or iPods. Virtually all had some kind of book or magazine. Magazine content, words and pictures alike, looks far far better in real magazines -- though the web version is indispensable.)

In any case, another new beginning as of tomorrow.

Nagl, Russert, and crises of institutional culture

Two very important articles:

1) Tom Ricks's story in the Washington Post revealing that Lt.Col John Nagl is leaving the Army to join a new DC think tank.

I am partial to Nagl, whom I know somewhat and like very much, and whom I interviewed, along with Lewis Sorley and Conrad Crane, two years ago on the Charlie Rose show. Indeed many reporters know and like him, and he has been a kind of media darling: subject of a (very good) cover-story profile by Peter Maass in the New York Times Magazine four years ago; author of a well-received book about the timeliest of military topics, counter-insurgency strategy; and one of the driving forces behind the new Army/Marine Corps "Counterinsurgency Field Manual," the same document whose existence is so often cited as one of general David Petraeus's great accomplishments. (Petraeus and Marine Corps general James Mattis sponsored the overall effort.) Nagl had been a Rhodes scholar and, like Petraeus (Princeton PhD) before him, has been a very prominent example of the media-savvy scholar-warrior.

Continue reading "Nagl, Russert, and crises of institutional culture" »

New Hampshire, from Beijing

1) From a distance, it is no surprise that Hillary Clinton apparently got a big boost from women voters. It's more surprising (if this is what the results end up showing) that she didn't have a larger margin among women who made up their minds in the last few days. She really was ganged-up on after Iowa, in a way that should have brought out the chivalry --rather, the decency -- in at least some men and the solidarity in many women. Also, if "the media" largely doing the ganging-up had been one of the candidates on the ballot, I suspect its popularity would have been below Tom Tancredo's.

2) As Andrew Sullivan immediately noted, John Edwards really did give the very same post-vote speech this week that he did last week in Iowa. Weird. Same real-world anecdotes he had delivered in a thousand living rooms in Iowa and New Hampshire and that he used on TV five days ago. Same apparent lack of recognition that this was one of his scarce opportunities to reach tens of millions of people live and unfiltered. Main difference: the (inaccurate) claim that last week he had congratulated Barack Obama on his win and this week he was congratulating Hillary Clinton. He quite notably did not mention Obama last week.

Continue reading "New Hampshire, from Beijing" »

The NYT introduces a wordsmith

Wow.

Suppose you had just received one of the most important opportunities in opinion journalism: a regular op-ed column in the New York Times. Suppose it was all the more important because it gave you a base in what would normally be considered enemy territory, right there alongside Paul Krugman and Frank Rich and the NYT's own editorials. Suppose your debut column came at a moment of peak political excitement, with the surprise of the Iowa caucuses just behind us and the New Hampshire primaries one day away.

In those circumstances, would this be the best you could come up with for the very first paragraphs of your very first column? It is what the new NYT columnist William Kristol has offered to introduce himself:

Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you.

But gratitude for sparing us a third Clinton term only goes so far. Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat. Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.

I'm saying nothing about the content here. Indeed the subject -- how the GOP should run against Barack Obama -- is one on which readers would want to hear a well-connected Republican's views.

I am talking instead about the breathtaking banality of expression.

Continue reading "The NYT introduces a wordsmith" »

The FCC decision is bad news

The battle over media "cross-ownership" rules -- allowing local newspapers to own local TV and radio stations, and vice versa -- appeared to have been fought, and resolved, four years ago. I described the battle back then, and the stakes, in an Atlantic cover story called "The Age of Murdoch." At the time, the three Republicans on the FCC, led by chairman Michael Powell (Colin's son) voted in favor of the liberalization. The two Democrats, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, voted against. The liberalization went through, but it was so unpopular and so sloppy in its reasoning that the Congress and courts effectively countermanded it.

The FCC chairman now, Kevin Martin, was the newest White House appointee to the commission back then. I know, from reporting that story, that Michael Powell was badmouthed in leaks from the Administration for handling the whole issue so messily -- and ultimately to so little effect. (Side note; what other father-son team has as much to regret about its service in a single administration as Colin and Michael Powell do about their service under GW Bush?) Now Martin is the force behind the new effort to loosen cross-ownership rules. Nothing against him, but I hope his experience turns out to be the same as Powell's. Adelstein and Copps are still there, and to their credit once again voted No.

Changing the ownership rules was a bad idea four years ago, and it's a bad idea now. Full case in the article. Summary point is: no matter what you think is wrong with the media, corporate concentration won't make things better. Further discussion from the Media Access Project here.

Generally I look down on headlines with puns

because generally they're such a lazy way out. One example of a million: recently I saw a story about the sub-prime loan mess with the headline, "Can this mortgage be saved?" This was a "witty" turn on the old advice column "Can this marriage be saved?" Hardee-har! And I'm looking at one from a restaurant guide, about a Japanese place: "The seaweed is always greener." Please.

But these two, from recent issues of the Wall Street Journal (Asia edition -- don't know if they were used in the U.S.) seemed to reflect some actual effort. Cleverness, even! Especially the one at the bottom.

Media problems in two countries: Part I, China

Two weeks ago I mentioned the difference that a VPN from WiTopia.net had made in my internet life in China. (VPN details below.*)

A few days later, a Chinese blogger named Ruan Yifeng mentioned my report on his own blog, and went on to discuss other ways Chinese users could deal with the internet filters collectively known as the Great FireWall (GFW). The original Chinese version of his post is here; a translation by the indispensable Roland Soong** of Hong Kong, on his ZonaEuropa/ESWN blog, is here; just for the hell of it, an auto-translated version via Google's online translation tools is here. It's very interesting to compare this with Soong's native-speaker, hand-crafted version.

Two days ago, Ruan Yifeng said that he had been reported to the authorities for putting such subversive information on the internet. (Original Chinese version here; Roland Soong's translation here; Google auto-translate version here.) From the ESWN version:

I just found out today that someone had just reported my "Methods of bypassing the Great Firewall of China" to the China Internet Illegal and Harmful Information Reporting Center.
I cannot help but say: Fuck, what a stupid jerk! No wonder someone said: When there is a shameless, disgusting government, there will necessarily be shameless, disgusting people.

(The auto-translate version of the second sentence is: "I really could not contain himself: damn, really such a SB!")

Ruan Yifeng says that Baidu (China's leading search engine, with a huge lead here over Google) has already filtered out his site, and "it is a matter of time when government filtering occurs." His whole saga is very much worth reading at Soong's site, for what it says about control on expression in China -- and the spirit of those trying to work their way around it. For instance, Ruan Yifeng directs his real fury not at the censors who implement the GFW but at the Chinese fellow citizen who informed on him:

"It is the existence of people like you that makes people despair about this country."

Continue reading "Media problems in two countries: Part I, China" »

Thankfulness is great, but what is the NYT thinking?

The Thanksgiving-day lead editorial from the New York Times, mindful of the difficulties many of its readers may have had in traveling to join their loved ones, praised President Bush for his wise and timely efforts to provide "Congestion Relief":

President Bush’s announcement this week of measures to reduce air traffic congestion was welcome news, especially his decision to open military air lanes along the Eastern Seaboard to commercial planes from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to the Sunday after. The administration deserves credit for not ignoring the mess...

Not to violate the spirit of Thanksgiving, but: are you kidding me???

First, military airspace is at best a minor factor in holiday air-traffic congestion. The worst air traffic congestion is around New York City. As mentioned earlier, there's not much military airspace there to begin with. Chapter-and-verse details after the jump. Anyone who has ever looked at an aviation chart knows this. (I know about it from flying small airplanes on the East Coast over the past ten years.)

Second, controllers already can open up the military airspace during peak holiday travel periods. See this blog by former controller Don Brown for more. To be clear about this: the new order gives controllers a power they already have and have used for years.

Third, the decision did nothing at all about the real problem: too many flights scheduled to take off or land at the same time from a limited number of runways.

So this decision has made, and will make, no difference in holiday travel congestion. Zero. This weekend's traffic will flow well, or poorly, depending on weather, and unanticipated screw-ups, and many other factors. But it will have nothing to do with this plan.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful not to have to wonder what kind of research went into a lead editorial like this.

Continue reading "Thankfulness is great, but what is the NYT thinking?" »

Thanksgiving Day overseas (occasional series)

Thanksgiving Day overseas is always good and bad.

Good: bonding with other expat Yanks over our shared secret national ritual. Foreigners know about the 4th of July but are always a little hazy about the point of Thanksgiving and when exactly it is.
Bad: just another Thursday for everyone else. No NFL on TV.

Last year: a very nice turkey dinner with others of our tribe in our apartment in Shanghai. This year: our apartment building in Beijing is thoughtfully having an evening turkey dinner, advertised this way: "See you in your scariest costume & display your creativity in the Pumpkin Carving Competition." Hmmmm.

But to start the list of things to be thankful for: the English-language state-controlled Chinese media! Life would be duller without it. For instance, today's front-page story about the problems caused by the Three Gorges Dam.

Perhaps the predictions they have in mind are those in the Book of Revelations, about the End of Days? It's a possibility.

In any case happy Jour de Merci Donnant!

About that plan to "speed up" Thanksgiving air travel

Sorry to ring in the Thanksgiving travel week on a discouraging note, but: the plan announced with fanfare from the White House last week, to reduce airline delays by opening up military airspace, is preposterous. It will not make the slightest difference in airline delays or the general neuralgia of Thanksgiving travel. You think the media were gullible about Administration claims five years ago? Gee, it's good to see that that will never happen again....

What's wrong with this plan?

1) Military airspace is not that big a factor in NYC area or BOS-WASH corridor travel, which is where the worst of the delays originate. The FAA has a great little website, here, which shows you the status of "special use airspace" (including military space) pretty much in real time. Here is how it looked mid-afternoon Friday EST last week -- a busy travel time!

It's not worth explaining all the details here, but the main point is: there aren't that many "special use" areas near the big East Coast airports. If New York City were where Camp Lejeune is, in North Carolina, then military airspace might be an issue.* But, umm, it's not. The NY-area special airspace that looks biggest -- the brown thing off Long Island, which says ZNY (meaning that its airspace is controlled by "New York Center") -- is a "warning area," which differs from those off-limits to airliners and is way out over the ocean anyway.

Continue reading "About that plan to "speed up" Thanksgiving air travel" »

Two important documents about Iraq

1) From the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, the paper "Dereliction of Duty Redux?" by Frank Hoffman, a retired Marine officer and long-time military scholar, whom I know.

The paper's title refers, of course, to Col. H.R. McMaster's book from the 1990s Dereliction of Duty, which argued that the uniformed military leadership in the Vietnam era finally betrayed the military and the country by not more forcefully opposing policies in Vietnam it knew to be doomed. The book was extremely influential within today's officer corps -- and since McMaster himself, a youngish West Point grad when he wrote it, has been centrally involved in combat operations in Iraq (and now is part of Gen. David Petraeus's team), it has become a cliched joke that soon there will be "McMaster's McMaster" -- that is, some young officer who describes how even the person who saw what happened to the military in Vietnam was caught by a repetition of many of the same patterns.

Frank Hoffmann's essay goes into the similarities and differences in the military leadership's performance in Vietnam and Iraq -- and in particular the warring "narratives" inside the military about who will take the blame for what has gone wrong this time:

The nation’s leadership, civilian and military, need to come to grips with the emerging “stab in the back” thesis in the armed services and better define the social compact and code of conduct that governs the overall relationship between the masters of policy and the dedicated servants we ask to carry it out. Our collective failure to address the torn fabric and weave a stronger and more enduring relationship will only allow a sore to fester and ultimately undermine the nation’s security.

The essay is not not long and very much worth reading in its entirety.

2) A paper last week from the Pew Research Center* giving data to back up the general impression that Americans are thinking and talking less about the Iraq war than they did even a few months ago, and that the American media are paying less attention to the war. There's evidence in the paper for both sides of the chicken-and-egg question: less coverage because people don't care, or people don't care because of less coverage. Either way, here is the result:

Again the whole report is worth looking at.

* My wife works for the Pew Internet Project, which is part of Pew Research.

Are foreigners dissing China by noticing the smog?

After the jump are parts of an intriguing note from Shelly Kraicer of Beijing. He is a Canadian writer and film-festival programmer, based in China for the last four years, who runs a web site on Chinese film, ChineseCinema.org I don't know him personally.

His note is in response to my repeated ."sky is falling" screeds about the disaster of air quality in Beijing nine months before the Olympics. (Note: today, November 16, was a pretty nice day.)

His note raises a question I can't do more than acknowledge at the moment: whether the Western focus on environmental catastrophe in China is, in some way, part of a long process of belittling the Chinese. He recounts the comments of a Chinese media friend:

...who pointed out that the focus on pollution before the Olympics is a phenomenon of the typical inability of the Western press to focus on more than one idea at a time, when they're thinking of China (if at all). ... Now the big idea, Olympics branch, is Pollution Disaster! She pointed out that Athens' big Olympic story was Preparation DIsaster! But since, here, things seem to be generally on schedule, that story is unavailable. So the foul air story is its replacement. I think that what she's describing has an all too predictable undercurrent of looking down from lofty developed Western heights to squalid undeveloped Third World depths ("tut tut, of course they just can't get it right, the way we know we could").

At a strictly logical level, I know that these things are true:

* I personally hope the Olympics turn out to be a big success for China. I'm convinced that the general public here sees them, or has been led to see them, as an occasion of pride for China as a whole, not just "the regime." It would be better for everyone if China ends up feeling happy and successful in its efforts than if it feels embarrassed or, worse, disrespected.

* I genuinely view environmental carnage as Problem Number One for China itself, and as the biggest problem posed by China for the rest of the world. Fewer Chinese people feel as strongly about this because, I think, fewer of them have seen how it is elsewhere.

* And I think that to raise alarms about the air and water in China is fundamentally supportive of the people of China rather than in any way dismissive of them. After all, they are the ones who breathe this air their whole lives.

But I know that more than strict logic is involved in these questions. The note, below, is worth thinking about.

Continue reading "Are foreigners dissing China by noticing the smog?" »

The Atlantic: we get results!

Congratulations to the Atlantic's own Liam Casey, founder and CEO of PCH China Solutions and protagonist of my recent article about the factory-land of Southern China, "China Makes, the World Takes." (Article is subscribers-only; this slide show, which contains some pictures of Casey, is free.) Last week he was named Ireland's "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young.* Well done, Liam.

Casey informs me that in the last day or two he has received a number of congratulatory messages from contractors and business associates. These are not just about the august E&Y award but also about a long, detailed report on Casey's company and the larger Shenzhen economy, which has just appeared in the local Guangzhou newspaper. It's all in Chinese; it is illustrated with elegant photos by Michael Christopher Brown; in fact it is written by me; and it is a word-for-word translation of our original article. China' cavalier approach to copyright and the whole notion of intellectual property: this time it's personal.**

* Can't-say-it-often-enough policy note: Casey, who grew up in Cork and has built his business in China, hoped to become an entrepreneur in America but was driven out by visa rules. As the article says:

At age 29 he arrived in Southern California and worked briefly for a trading company. He says he would be in America still—“Laguna, Newport Beach, ah, I luvved it”—but he could not get a green card or long-term work permit, and didn’t want to try to stay there under the radar.

** Many other times too. In the 1980s, I visited Beijing and had a meeting with some officials from the defense ministry. As a gracious gesture they presented me with a special leather-bound copy of a book in Chinese. Indeed it was my own book National Defense, which they had (without asking, etc) translated for use in the some of their courses. They thought I would appreciate a copy. I told them I was pleased to have it.

Now this truly amazes me (Commentary magazine and AIPAC)

Yesterday I mentioned the parallels among the lobbying efforts and influence of three special interest groups, or "factions": the (mainly Orthodox) Armenian-Americans who pushed the Armenian Genocide resolution; the (mainly Catholic) Cuban-Americans who have pushed the US embargo of Cuba; and the (mainly Jewish) supporters of AIPAC who have been making a case for a military showdown with Iran.

Today Gabriel Schoenfeld of Commentary Magazine quotes only the part about AIPAC -- and then asks why I am singling out the Jews!?!?! "Why is this game played only one way, with America’s Jews the primary target?" (Full text after the jump)

Not much amazes me any more, but....

I wonder which is the more plausible interpretation: That the author heard I'd written something objectionable and attacked it without reading it? Or that he did read it -- and deliberately left out everything that didn't fit his case, including through artful cutting of quotes?

I took it for granted that Commentary wouldn't see the Iran issue the way I do, given their recent cover story on "The Case for Bombing Iran" etc. But wow, this makes me nostalgic for the comparative "honesty" of the Chinese state media I've been dealing with recently.

Continue reading "Now this truly amazes me (Commentary magazine and AIPAC)" »

Happy 150th Birthday, Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic’s 150th anniversary issue* is out, and my (obviously biased) view is that it’s great. This is a good illustration of the truth that some things look much better and more attractive on paper than on the computer screen. Typography, graphic design, and the whole ergonomics of in-print presentation have evolved over the last 500 or so years to suit the human eye and mind very well. (Yes, yes, I know about consumption of paper and so on.) If you get the issue you won’t regret it.

I remember, from elementary school, seeing my mom and dad get the 100th anniversary issue of the Atlantic in the mail and read it at home. They read it to us squirmy kids too -- I think there were stories by Ernest Hemingway and Thornton Wilder, and a poem by Robert Frost. Also something by James Thurber, which is where my dad, a humorist, would have started.

Continue reading "Happy 150th Birthday, Atlantic Monthly" »

Gore laureatus

Through odd circumstances, I ended up introducing Al Gore at a technology-world conference 36 hours before the Peace Prize news was announced, and then seeing him from the back of the room at his post-award appearance this morning in Palo Alto (below). Three quick points:

1) Whatever he must be feeling inside, Gore's statement was as non triumphalist-sounding as imaginable. He said that the recognition was all the more significant because he had the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; that he hoped this would help get out the message about a planetary emergency; that he would go to Oslo on behalf of the thousands of people who had been working on this issue for years; etc. He allowed himself not one displayed note of "I told you so." Update: Yes, of course I understand the Uriah Heepish concept of "ostentatious modesty." But in real time, and in the circumstances, it was an impressive statement.

Continue reading "Gore laureatus" »

Why we need the Simpsons

From the latest episode:

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Thanks to a member of the more-and-more-excellent WSJ family for the tip.

Background on al-Dura: important web sites, pro and con

Richard Landes, of Boston University, is (to my knowledge) the leading advocate of the idea that the death of Mohammed al-Dura was an elaborately-staged hoax. His blog TheAugeanStables is full of references, updates, videos, forensic reports, and other links supporting his argument that this was in its entirety a "Pallywood" production (Hollywood + Palestine, get it???). A related blog is here, and Natan Sharansky's essay about the latest twists in the case is here.

Charles Enderlin, the long-time Jerusalem correspondent for the TV network France 2* has his own running commentary, in French, at the France 2 blog site. He is a central figure in the story because his initial reports established the idea that the boy Mohammed had been killed by Israeli soldiers. The Landes camp believes that the scenes in his report were staged, and they have pushed relentlessly for release of the full footage France 2 shot that day. Enderlin and France 2 have refused. As any of these blogs will explain in detail, several trials in France have ensued.

My general experience in life makes me skeptical that large-scale conspiracies can be pulled off -- and kept secret for seven years, which is how long it has been since the original event. So based on what I have personally seen (not having devoted myself to the story for the last few years), I am not ready to say: Yes, for sure, this was a huge, big-lie, blood-libel, conspiratorial hoax. But Landes et al seem more fervent about turning up all available evidence and getting to the bottom of things than their antagonists do, which tells me something.

* Yesterday I incorrectly wrote this out "France Deux."

News on the al-Dura front: Israeli finding that it was staged

Four and a half years ago -- during the first weeks of the Iraq war, in fact -- I was in Israel learning about the case of Mohammed al-Dura. He was the young Palestinian boy who, according to worldwide press acccounts, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as his father desperately tried to shield him, near the Netzarim crossing in Gaza:

(Mohammed al-Dura instants before his death -- as conveyed in worldwide news reports and memorialized, like a Pieta, in stamps, posters, and even statues in many Arab countries.)

Thanks mainly to evidence I was shown by Nahum Shahaf of Tel Aviv, a scientist who has devoted years to investigating the case, I ended up arguing in my article that the "official" version of the event could not be true. Based on the known locations of the boy, his father, the Israeli Defense Force troops in the area, and various barriers, walls, and other impediments, the IDF soldiers simply could not have shot the child in the way most news accounts said they had done.

Continue reading "News on the al-Dura front: Israeli finding that it was staged" »

Yet more on CNN, Burma,and Myanmar

Perhaps I was unfair to single out CNN for its relentless insistence on the name Myanmar rather than Burma. Lamentably, the New York Times is doing the same thing (for instance, here). The Economist is bizarrely schizophrenic on the question. Its latest cover boldly says, "Burma's Saffron Revolution," but in the accompanying lead story all references are to Myanmar. Good for the Washington Post, which on its front page goes unashamedly with Burma, as does virtually all of the British media (BBC, Times, Guardian, Telegraph) except for the inexplicable Economist.

I suppose CNN sticks in my craw because they were the first media outlet in which I'd noticed such ostentatiously PC-sounding Myanmar-ization, especially in their arm's-length treatment of G.W. Bush's speech about "Burma." And just now they nonchalantly introduced comments "on Myanmar" from Archibishop Desmond Tutu, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a Burmese democracy advocate, and America's own Condoleezza Rice, only to have each of them begin, "The problem in Burma is" or "The people of Burma hope..." Take a hint, CNN and NYT!

One more thought experiment, on the argument that Burma is a "colonial" name: If a country changes its name in the process of becoming independent, no problem. Today's Ghana had been the Gold Coast as a British colony; when it became independent 50 years ago, it became Ghana too. New country; new name. But suppose a junta took over Mexico tomorrow and said that henceforth the world must call the country Atzlan. (Or, to choose a country with a name more obviously traceable to the colonial era, the Dominican Republican, or the Philippines.) It's not a new country; it's just a new regime, and there would be no need to oblige them, just there is no need to dignify the brutal Burmese generals

For once, I'm with Bush on a language issue: it's Burma, not Myanmar

I'm watching CNN in Beijing, which keeps tut-tutting President Bush for saying "Burma," rather than "Myanmar," in his just-completed UN speech, as if this were merely another of his gaffes.

I'm with Bush. For nearly twenty years, since first visiting the country during the violent protests in 1988, I've followed arguments about the twists and turns of what to call the country in Burmese. The complications mainly involve what the various names say about the relations between the Burmese people proper and other ethnic groups within the nation.

But when it comes to referring to the nation in English, there's little debate. Myanmar is the name invented 18 years ago by the benighted junta, known as SLORC* back then and the State Peace and Development Council now, when it seized power through force. When Westerners say "Myanmar," they're not being culturally respectful to the people of a beautiful but oppressed nation. (We don't call China Zhongguo or Germany Deutschland just because the locals do.) They're bowing to the whims of the generals who still imprison Aung San Suu Kyi.

There is no reason to humor them. Say Burma, as George Bush did. And CNN, grow some backbone when it comes to terminology!
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* "State Law and Order Restoration Council."

Update: Thanks to my Atlantic colleague Graeme Wood, I learn that I am agreeing here not merely with George W. Bush but, it seems, even with John Derbyshire! Sort of....

Man from Mars perspective on tonight's speeches

Suppose you were interested in American politics and America's policy toward Iraq, but for quite some time you had not seen the major U.S. figures explaining themselves and reacting in real time.

(Why hadn't you seen them? Details below.*)

Suppose that, like most people in China, you had seen none of the countless Rep-Dem U.S. candidate debates of recent months (not on TV here); nor any of the live Petraeus-Crocker hearings (same problem); nor many on-the-stump clips of the major candidates' current presentations. Yes, you've read accounts of what everyone has said, and followed all the post-game analysis. But it's different to see the people.

Just now CNN International did run Bush's latest speech; plus the Larry King followup with candidates Obama, Giuliani, Edwards, and McCain; plus an Anderson Cooper followup from Iraq. So what do you notice if you haven't seen these people in action in a long time?

- Bush: no surprises. At this point you buy the argument or you don't. Simply as performance, this struck me as being in the higher end of Bush's range. No stumblings over words, none of the familiar, maddening habit of emphasizing "hard" words as if proud he had forced them out. Fewer of the insultingly oversimplified versions of his claims -- "we must fight them there so we don't fight them here." Instead, his arguments were phrased as if the Administration had some idea of what the main counter-argument would be. Bush was sobered but looked less rattled than he has in many of his previous "we are at a crucial moment" speeches about Iraq.

- Democrats: How long has John Edwards been sounding like this? Wow!

Continue reading "Man from Mars perspective on tonight's speeches" »

Update/correction on previous CNN item

For oddball tech reasons, I am unable to update the previous CNN item without breaking all existing links to it. So I'll add the new info this way.

The original item said:

* Michael Ware, usually a very, very tough critic of U.S. policy, narrates a perilous drive through Baghdad and refers maybe 50 times to "al Qaeda" threatening to attack him or Iraqi civilians.

Actually Ware's drive was deep into al Anbar. (Anderson Cooper was narrating the drive to the Baghdad airport -- I'm pretty sure.) Sorry for that misrecollection. The real point concerned Ware's repeated references -- and Cooper's, and those of everyone else during the hour or so of CNN coverage I saw -- to "al Qaeda" (along with Iran) as the adversary in Iraq.

Not "al Qaeda in Iraq," as President Bush himself is typically careful to say. Not "AQI," as the U.S. military typically puts it on its charts and PowerPoints. From CNN it was plain old "al Qaeda."

To U.S. viewers, plain old "al Qaeda" is the organization that attacked America six years ago. I don't see CNN consistently enough to be sure when they began applying this term to fighters within Iraq -- or whether it's a phenomenon of more than this one show. But on the basis of its unvarying use by a number of correspondents on this one show, I would have to assume that the change in terminology reflects a shift in "house style," as we in the media biz call it. Michael Ware himself, whom I don't know but do admire, has been the very opposite of a patsy for the Administration in his reporting from Iraq.

So why the change in CNN labeling? It's a mystery to me.

Golden Oldies: the world is not flat

This in a sense old news, since the academic review I'm about to mention was officially published a few months ago, and a working version was available a year before that and was discussed at many economic sites. But it is so much worth reading that, on the off chance some people might not have come across the March, 2007 edition of Journal of Economic Literature, let me heartily recommend: "A Flat World, A Level Playing Field, a Small World After All, or None of the Above?" by Edward Leamer of UCLA. (An abstract, from the Journal's subscriber-only site, is here. An authorized full text PDF, from a UCLA site, here.)

Leamer's topic is of course Thomas Friedman's ubiquitous The World Is Flat. I have known and liked Friedman personally for years. As an opinion-shaper, he can only inspire awe -- even, or especially, when you disagree, as I obviously have about Iraq. But the flat-world concept has bothered me from the beginning, since in my view and experience it is so imprecise a version of what is going on economically these days. This would not shock Friedman: I tried to indicate as much when we appeared together on the Charlie Rose show last year.*

But I have not seen anything that put the case against flatness as clearly as Leamer's very, very long review does. Usually I am grateful to be a journalist and not a professor. We can be clear; they have to hem and haw. A paper like this shows what professors are for.**

(Notes and excerpt from the review after the jump.)

Continue reading "Golden Oldies: the world is not flat" »

Why we love the (English language) Chinese media, cont.

I'm feeling more harmonious already. Also, wondering whether The Onion is aware of a source of future talent.

Pigs fly, water flows uphill, and...

... the WSJ runs an editorial I agree with. It's this one on mis-reaction and over-reaction to the Chinese toy recalls. Eg, about the magnet problem that is responsible for the highest volume of recent recalls:

This is not the fault of the Chinese manufacturers that made the toys. It seems to be the fault of the engineers who designed them and would have been a hazard even if the toys had been manufactured in the U.S.

As mentioned earlier, China has lots and lots of problems, and manufacturers here take lots and lots of shortcuts -- unless foreign outsourcers insist on higher standards. It weakens the case against the real dangers, the ones that clearly are Chinese companies' fault, to mix them up with ones that aren't.

(Nagging little thought: I'll take this at face value as a moment of reasonableness on the WSJ ed-page's part -- which after all hews to the page's tradition in including attacks on Congressional Democrats and regulation in general. I'll assume it's not the beginning of a new Master Narrative of the WSJ under Rupert Murdoch: discouraging hostile talk about China in any form. Nah, let's stick to the positive view. On its own, the editorial makes sense, which is something!)

Michael Gerson, columnist (updated)

Let me stay out of the fray over Michael Gerson's behavior in the White House. On the one hand, when I worked with Gerson ten years ago (after hiring him at US News, and liking and respecting him there), he did not behave in anything resembling the way described in Matthew Scully's article. On the other, circumstances were different, and Scully certainly has a lot of names, dates, places, and quotes on his side.

Instead let me reinforce a point made recently by Matthew Yglesias, Brian Beutler*, and others about Gerson's fundamental miscasting in his new role as regular newspaper columnist. There are two big problems Gerson will have to surmount if he wants to succeed.

Continue reading "Michael Gerson, columnist (updated)" »

How to keep an idiot busy: use chiasmus!

We know and love the hoary jokes on this theme: You write "How to keep an idiot busy (please turn over)" on both sides of a card, or send people to an animated site like this.

My nominee, from an otherwise very interesting new Wall Street Journal story (subscribers only) about tensions between China and Japan:

Keeping the peace has benefits for both sides. Japan's top trading partner is China, and China is Japan's No. 3, after the European Union and the United States.

There is a certain "I'm my own grandpa" charm to this passage, in addition to its ability to keep anyone busy for hours trying to figure it out. And it's delightful to speculate about where it came from.

Continue reading "How to keep an idiot busy: use chiasmus!" »

One last word on these Chinese censorship stories

Recently I've mentioned a run of ham-handed media control efforts by the information ministry here. They're mainly related to the Olympics, and they're mainly efforts to keep up an all-good-news premise.

All along I've felt like adding a balancing note that is obvious on scene but probably isn't in the United States. (Or, reinforcing an argument I made earlier.) The reason I've called these efforts clumsy and misguided is not simply that they backfire so badly in affecting Western perceptions of China. It's also that, in a way not so apparent from outside China, they're unrepresentative of the way most life, most of the time, seems here.

Continue reading "One last word on these Chinese censorship stories" »

One year to go until 08/08/08!

Today was Olympic Countdown day in China, with the opening ceremonies in Beijing scheduled for one year from tonight. Eight -- ba -- is the luckiest Chinese number, so the games will begin on 08/08/08, at 8 pm. Auspicious enough for me!

Two items of media interest from the festivities:

* CNN International began its report talking about what is obviously the main deal-breaking threat to the Olympics: the air. The correspondent had gotten far enough into the story to say, "Some foreign athletes fear..." and then the screen went blank for the next two minutes or so. The same PR wizards who were at the satellite cut-off switch yesterday were apparently at work again today.

* As part of its extensive coverage today, the (state-controlled, English-language, China's-face-to-the-world) China Daily had a lead editorial that mentioned every possible threat to the game -- except the one that matters:

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Continue reading "One year to go until 08/08/08!" »

There are a lot of smart people in China...

... but not many of them seem to work for the state propaganda apparatus.

I know there is constant Western talk about the cunning Chinese image-manipulation machine and how slyly it is currying favor worldwide. The concept in American minds seems to be of an information campaign guided by the spirit of the old commissar Zhou Enlai. Westerners found it so charming that Zhou could make jokes in French that they tended to forget that he was about as tender-hearted as Mao himself. And now -- ah, the clever Chinese are pulling it off again!

if you're actually exposed to the info-machine day by day, the image that occurs is not the suave Zhou but instead Scott McClellan, flop-sweating his way through an agonizing White House press conference.

Continue reading "There are a lot of smart people in China..." »

Reading comprehension quiz: China, media, Murdoch

Study the picture below for as long as you like, before answering two reading-comprehension questions after the jump. It shows two papers that arrived on the same day here in Shanghai. The one at the top is the state-controlled China Daily. The one at the bottom is the Asian edition of the not-yet-Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal.

_

Now, the quiz:

Continue reading "Reading comprehension quiz: China, media, Murdoch" »

Last word on "two-class" ownership structure

At least the last word here -- at least unless something new and interesting turns up. It's not just newspapers, or Google, or the Ford Motor Company, or a slew of other firms where a family or group of founders want to retain disproportionate control. After the jump, details from a reader in Ohio about a successful real estate firm in Cleveland and its use of the technique.

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"Two-class" corporate ownership structure: not just for media dinosaurs any more!

Several readers have pointed out something I am aware of and should have mentioned: The "two-class" system of share ownership that I claim is crucial to the quality of America's best newspapers (and that is at the heart of the struggle for control of the Wall Street Journal), is not unique to battered old news organizations.

It also is built into the structure of America's shiniest new corporate champion: Google,* which of course has played more than a small role in making newspapers as battered as they are.** The shares Google sells the public are "Class A" common stock, with one vote per share. Google's founders and other executives hold "Class B" stock, with 10 votes per share, which of course gives them disproportionate control over the company's policies.

In fact, the "Letter from the Founders" that Larry Page and Sergey Brin issued before the Google IPO three years ago has a fascinating passage on just this point. Full text after the jump, one significant highlight here:

The New York Times Company, The Washington Post Company and Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, all have similar dual class ownership structures . Media observers have pointed out that dual class ownership has allowed these companies to concentrate on their core, long term interest in serious news coverage, despite fluctuations in quarterly results. Berkshire Hathaway has implemented a dual class structure for similar reasons. From the point of view of long term success in advancing a company's core values, we believe this structure has clearly been an advantage... [Emphasis added]

Continue reading ""Two-class" corporate ownership structure: not just for media dinosaurs any more!" »

The eternal verities of press criticism

My thanks to my Atlantic-blog colleague Matthew Yglesias (plus others) for referring back to my 1996 cover story in the Atlantic, Why Americans Hate the Media. Three pentimenti:

* The related American Prospect piece that M. Yglesias also mentions, which is oddly listed on the Prospect site as having come out in 2002, was in fact published in March, 1999 -- while Bill Clinton's enemies were still smiting him about (his idiocy involving) Monica Lewinsky. I remember so clearly because I wrote it during "personal time" while working on the Word product-design team at Microsoft in the first half of 1999.

* On evergreenness in general: several times I have considered revisiting the whole what's-wrong-with-the-press question and have instead plugged on with other topics -- Iraq policy, China -- for reasons that boil down to: what's the point? The problems with the media are the same as I tried to describe 11 years ago -- just worse, and with new technology. But there's always tomorrow...

* That Atlantic cover story was in fact an excerpt from my book Breaking the News. And anyone who would like to read the pitch in its full glory need only click here.

Moving the Bancroft/Murdoch choice to the moral level

The fundamental problem with today's American press is a mismatch between its economic basis and its public function.

As laid out here at length, and as is obvious as soon as you think about it, the press has cultural, social, and political effects beyond the purely commercial. But its managers are being forced to make decisions on the same focused quarterly-returns basis that guides choices at Merrill Lynch or General Motors. Sometimes those pressures for maximized return (and rising stock price) make news organizations more efficient. But in general they weaken or destroy the parts of news systems that affect people in any role other than as shareholders - that is, as readers, viewers, voters, citizens.

The point is not to rehash that argument. It is to say that the "two-class" shareholding structure that undergirds America's three best newspapers (the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal) was explicitly designed to permit decisions to be made for non-economic reasons. If you want management to concentrate strictly on raising the share price, you don't need any special ownership structure. Financial markets will insist on that anyway. The only justification for "Class B" shares giving special voting power to the Sulzberger family at the Times, the Graham family at the Post, and the Bancroft family at the Journal is the assumption that the families will weigh other factors in deciding how the news operation should be run.

Thus the future of these news organization rests on the hope that the later generations who inherit controlling shares will acknowledge the concept of "enough" money. If they want the most money possible out of their inheritance, they'll eventually view the newspaper as just another asset -- and destroy it. (See the tragedies of the Chandler family of Los Angeles, the Bingham family of Louisville, etc.) If no amount of money can be "enough" -- if, to be plain, people who are already rich are greedy to be richer still -- they debase institutions on which the rest of us depend.

All this is prelude to recommending a very strong post earlier this month from Dean Starkman, a former WSJ reporter who now writes "The Audit" for the Columbia Journalism Review. He is moralistic, in a convincing way, about "What the Bancrofts Owe Dow Jones."

Continue reading "Moving the Bancroft/Murdoch choice to the moral level" »

Why we love the (English language) Chinese media

Today's reason: no confusing mixed messages!

Hmmm, what would be the right word for a rate of economic growth so fast that it's almost unsafe, so fast... .that it might even damage your skin? What is that word I'm looking for..

Why can't Murdoch just buy (and dismantle) the WSJ ed page?

I hate to say anything bad about the Wall Street Journal on the day when, it appears, the Bancroft family has decided to view one of the world's great newspapers as "just another asset" to be liquidated to Rupert Murdoch.

So perhaps the Journal's editorial page is trying to soften the blow and prevent golden-age nostalgia by reminding us that it has no standards at all.

Continue reading "Why can't Murdoch just buy (and dismantle) the WSJ ed page?" »

Bancroft family: seriously, don't sell to Murdoch

The Bancroft family, which controls the Wall Street Journal, has now decided to listen to Rupert Murdoch’s pitch to buy the newspaper. OK, listen. But please, God, don’t sell.

The tragedy of late 20th century American journalism, in a nutshell, is its conversion from a special kind of business to just another business.

Continue reading "Bancroft family: seriously, don't sell to Murdoch" »

Good article: Hillary Clinton was right about health care

There is counter-intuitive, and then there is really counterintuitive: advancing an argument so hard to believe that, well, it’s hard for people to believe you. Congratulations to Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic for pulling off an exercise in the latter category: making the case that Hillary Clinton’s original health care plan, far from being a serious mistake that must be explained away (like, say, an enthusiastic vote in favor of the Iraq war), in fact reflects well on her prescience and judgment.

As Cohn notes, I made a similar case in this magazine twelve years ago. Journalistic insider-style complications abound here, in Anthony Powellish rococo fashion, so let me mention them:

Continue reading "Good article: Hillary Clinton was right about health care" »

Why we love the Chinese press

Today’s front-page English-language headlines, from the (state-controlled) China Daily and Shanghai Daily:

Why we love them:

Continue reading "Why we love the Chinese press" »

O copy editor, where art thou?

Here is something that is common knowledge in the publishing business but that few “normal” readers know: that the average article in a good magazine is much, much more carefully edited than almost any book. Yes, books can last forever while magazines go away after a week or month. But in a high-end magazine – like, well, the Atlantic, or the New Yorker, or the New York Review of Books, or one of a dozen others that invest in good copy editors and fact checkers – you’re far less likely to find typos, grammar errors, careless repetitions and contradictions, or simple made-up facts than you'll find in books.

For example: during a recent voyage-of-the-damned style long-haul overnight air trip, from Bangalore to Shanghai via Kuala Lumpur, I decided to read a book about aviation.

Continue reading "O copy editor, where art thou?" »

A new home on the web

Welcome to the new, expanded Atlantic web site!

This coming week, a revamped version of The Atlantic Online will be unveiled. Our magazine, the oldest in the country, was also one of the first to have a full-fledged web presence. The Atlantic Monthly is beginning its 151st year of operation, and TheAtlantic.com is in its 15th year.

This new version will feature online contributions – ok, blogs – by various staff members. I'll be one of them, and the occasional entries I've been making at JamesFallows.com will move here. The full new address is http://JamesFallows.TheAtlantic.com. Over the next week or two, the entries, archives, and links from my existing site will migrate here. (The "Monthly Archive" links, to the right, are connected to existing archives; for the moment, the "Categories" links connect only to new entries on this site.) Eventually – following the model of the big brother of our staff sites, AndrewSullivan.com, which recently shifted its enormous presence to AndrewSullivan.TheAtlantic.com – my old site's home address will automatically be redirected to this one.

The only switch we apparently can't do automatically is RSS feeds. Anyone who would like to re-up can click here to create a new RSS feed. Sorry we can't make this happen on its own. Life is cruel.

I'm proud to have written for The Atlantic since 1975, when I was a free-lancer in Austin (while my wife was in grad school at the University of Texas), and even prouder to have been on its staff for all but three of the years since 1979. Most of what I've done, and will continue to do, is "normal" writing for the "real" magazine. But, especially while based in China, I plan to augment that with pictures and dispatches for our web site, plus entries more suitable for this medium than for the magazine itself. I'm guessing that I will post entries about 1/100th as often as the other big-time bloggers assembled here, but I figure: any more might exhaust our readers, and certainly would exhaust me.

Sincere thanks for your interest in the magazine, and in our site.

David Halberstam

The news of David Halberstam's death is a surprisingly shocking blow. In general, a man's passing at age 73 cannot seem wholly unnatural or out of sequence. But it was hard to think of Halberstam as being as anything but young. He was as full of ambition and energy and enthusiasm and spark as anyone I know, of any age.

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Sun-Times vs China update (re Va Tech shooting)

The Chicago Sun-Times has altered the story by Michael Sneed mentioned in the previous post. Now there is an "explanation" about earlier suspicions pointing toward a Chinese suspect, rather than a Korean:

Continue reading "Sun-Times vs China update (re Va Tech shooting)" »

Virginia Tech shooting: one American woman terrifies China

It was Tuesday night China time when the authorities in Blacksburg, Virginia, identified the gunman as a young Korean. For the previous 12 hours, the worst traits in the Chinese media had been brought out by an even-worse lapse by part of the U.S. media. One -- and as far as I can tell, only one -- journalist in the U.S. identified the killer publicly and quickly as a student from China who had recently been given his visa in Shanghai. During the long night after the shooting U.S. time, which was daytime Tuesday in China, that report was picked up -- surprise! -- by Fox news and a few smaller U.S. outlets, and, via web news sites, it quickly made its way to China.

What the Chinese media did next was bad in a predictable way.

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Colbert-ology, or what you know if you've seen the show live..

... as I did, a couple of hours ago, for what will be broadcast a couple of hours from now.

* Extremely nice-seeming guy (out of persona), which is another way of saying: phenomenal acting job the instant the in-persona segments begin.

* Larger and sturdier-seeming guy in person than on TV, reversing the normal "gee, you look different in person" effect. The normal rule is that famous people look smaller in real life than you're expecting, with a few obvious exceptions

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Congressional hearings update: welcome back, C-Span

As mentioned previously here and here, Congressional committee hearings are the most interesting and usually the most important parts of what the House and Senate do. But until now they have been nearly impossible to observe if you didn't queue up that morning outside the hearing room in Washington, if C-Span didn't choose that particular session to cover, or if you didn't tune into C-Span (or set the TiVo) between 1:45am and 3:20am when the hearing was being shown. All that is about to change.

The main players in this process have been Carl Malamud, who has been forcing the issue; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to whom Malamud recently delivered his "unsolicited report" explaining how webcasts of hearings could be made available in a standardized, searchable, downloadable form; and of course C-Span, which has recently done something very admirable.

Continue reading "Congressional hearings update: welcome back, C-Span" »

'Declaring Victory' on free part of Atlantic site

The National Magazine Awards are a highly quirky part of journalistic culture, but magazines naturally embrace any good news they offer and scratch their heads at the nuttyness of it all when the results are disappointing -- I mean, "surprising." Meaning no disrespect to anyone, it was, umm, surprising last year when ESPN: The Magazine beat The New Yorker in the "General Excellence" category.

This year's crop of finalists was just announced, and the news the Atlantic will embrace is that we are in the finals in three categories, including my "Declaring Victory" article for the "Public Interest" award. The Atlantic's web site has, for now, made its nominated entries (and many past winners) freely available, not just for subscribers. My article, from September 2006, is here.

Observer vs. Economist, or Yanks vs Redcoats yet again

The fraternity of American journalists who have dared speak irreverently of The Economist in public has just grown by 25%:

Previous members were: Michael Lewis (soon after Liar's Poker); Richard Stengel (in his pre editor-of-Time days); "Humphrey Greddon" (not in Zuleika Dobson but in yesteryear's Spy, under what must have been a pseudonym, and if I were a New York guy I'd know who the writer really was); and me, 15+ years ago. We now welcome to the club Tom Scocca of the Observer, on the strength of this offering, which (disclosure) refers back to other members, especially Stengel and me.

The 1991 Washington Post article of mine that Scocca mentions is here, and the updated intro to it is here.

If I've lost track of other people who meet the eligibility standards, sorry! And, by the way, the people I've come to know from The Economist are actually very nice. You can't help admiring the feat they have pulled off.

The boiled-frog myth: hey, really, knock it off!

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is scientifically impressive, politically important, and no doubt personally redemptive for Gore himself, who has endured an injustice that would leave most people screaming all day every day. Plus, it's an Oscar winner! But as noted several months ago, the movie also contains one moment of pure ignoramus-hood: the perpetuation of the boiled-frog myth. ("Put a frog in a pot of boiling water and he'll jump right out, but just raise the temperature slowly and he'll let himself be cooked." In reality the situation is more like: "Put a frog in a pot of boiling water and he'll be scalded to death, but give him a chance to escape when the slowly-warming water gets uncomfortable, and he will hop right out.")

Comes now The Economist, to give Gore (and countless other speech-makers) company.

Continue reading "The boiled-frog myth: hey, really, knock it off!" »

Market Crash Day in Shanghai

As I write it is Wednesday morning in Shanghai. Last evening, on Tuesday night, my wife and I went to dinner at a local Thai restaurant with three foreign friends, two young Americans and a European. It was 7pm here, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange had already closed after its 9% drop. It was 6am in New York, and the markets there had not yet opened for what would become the 400-plus point drop in the Dow.

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The surprising anti-war message of '24'

Jane Mayer's article about the casually pro-torture message of '24' has gotten a lot of attention, and with reason. It's a wonderful piece of journalism that makes an important point.

But here's a less obvious side of '24' -- or, perhaps, a generally-forgotten one, just because of the passage of years.

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Thank you, Martha Raddatz

At yesterday's news conference, Martha Raddatz of ABC finally got to ask President Bush directly the question that has been obvious since he first announced his "surge" policy one month ago. Ignore the first sentence of her question and look at what comes after that:

Q Mr. President, do you agree with the National Intelligence Estimate that we are now in a civil war in Iraq? And, also, you talk about victory, that you have to have victory in Iraq; it would be catastrophic if we didn't. You said again today that the enemy would come here, and yet you say it's not an open-ended commitment. How do you square those things?

Of course Bush didn't answer.

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Homage where homage is due: Charles Peters

David Ignatius of the Washington Post has a very nice column of tribute to Charles Peters, my original employer in the magazine world and, for me and a large number of other people in journalism, something like Chairman Mao without the starvation and mass terror. That is, an inspirational and consequential figure whose doctrine had its oddities and whose personal habits did too, but whose influence can't be ignored. Fortunately Charlie's influence, unlike the Chairman's, was overwhelmingly to the good.

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Note to Newseum: Don't make the "death car" mistake

I am a fan of The Newseum, a museum of the news business that operated in the late 1990s in Arlington, Virginia and will soon open its gala new site on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Its CEO, Charles Overby, is a nice man who has been generous to me.

But if what I have heard is true, the Newseum is about to make a mistake. It involves the Don Bolles "death car."

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Archive: "Tough but fair" article about The Economist Magazine, from 1991

"The Economics of the Colonial Cringe," published in the Washington Post's Outlook section on October 6, 1991, now in archives section, here. (Posting is largely for my own convenience, since it's not otherwise available online.) Main update: In the 15 years since have met and become friends with a number of Economist editors, who are generally wonderful folk! One is now a close colleague at work. Still.....

Improbable but true: James Webb-James Fallows joint article on the draft

I had known Jim Webb for about a year, and had worked for the Atlantic for about the same amount of time, when I proposed to him early in 1980 that we jointly undertake a project for the magazine. The results, published for the first time on the Atlantic's web site, are here (Webb's article) and here (mine); the back story follows.

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How Gary Cooper can save us (from Mayor Daley, among others)

Here are the four ways we'll know that Americans are regaining their sanity about "Homeland Security"

1) When some politician has the guts to stop using the hideous term Homeland Security, or "Homeland" itself.

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Good item in Slate on Cory Lidle, with one crucial error

Slate's "hot documents" feature has an informative item about the sad Cory Lidle crash. (Disclosure: "hot documents" was created, and most of the time is written, by my close friend Tim Noah, although not this item.) Unfortunately the item has one innocent but major error of logic, or of understanding how airplanes work.

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What's wrong with academia, chapter 972

A friend sent me a recent blog post. The (lengthy) relevant portion begins this way:

In the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly, the magazine's national correspondent James Fallows suggests that it is time for the United States to declare victory since the U.S "is succeeding in its struggle against terrorism." When he wrote his article, Fallows was obviously not aware of a National Intelligence Estimate that in April 2006 pinpointed the war in Iraq as "a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat..." He may have written a different piece. While President Bush and others in his administration underline the successes in the "war on terrorism," the intelligence community paints a far less rosy picture. As the Washington Post reported today, "the battlefronts intelligence analysts depict are far more impenetrable and difficult, if not impossible, to combat with the standard tools of warfare."

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The strange case of Muhamed al-Durah (updated)

Three and a half years ago, during the invasion of Iraq, I was not there but in Israel, reporting for this story in the Atlantic. It concerned whether al-Durah, the famous Palestinian child martyr of the Second Intifada, had in fact been killed by Israeli forces, or indeed whether he had been killed at all. (More, and update, below.)

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