Contrasts

One thing that's irked me a bit of late is the unselfconsciously positive coverage of the rebels.

The same images that are taken to be "negative" in other contexts (I'm thinking especially of Palestine), such as young men shouldering missile launchers and even younger boys playing on wrecked tanks and flashing victory signs---are suddenly "good" in Libya. On NPR a few nights ago, they interviewed someone whose brother had driven a truck of propane tanks through the gate to a Libyan army base, killing himself but blasting an opening for others to use to attack. The brother was treated as an unqualified hero.

I want to be clear. My problem isn't so much that the rebels are treated as heroes---I find them heroic myself, on the whole. Or that Palestinian violence is treated with skepticism. Violence should always be treated with skepticism. Rather, I find it disturbing that the news media's sympathies, it's circle of what it treats as heroic and what it treats as deserving of suspicion or, worse, as pathological, is so determined by prevailing foreign policy opinion in the U.S.

Libya

I'm conflicted about the prospect of a no fly zone over Libya. Leaving aside the hypocrisy of the U.S. pursuing such a policy while it tacitly supports Saudi Arabia's suppression of protesters in Bahrain---which is irrelevant as far as Libyans are concerned---what does it mean to take sides in a Civil War? A "no fly zone," after all, requires at least the destruction of air bases and anti-aircraft installations before it can commence. It's war.

But.. that said, it is immensely gratifying to see that this U.S. administration takes it for granted that any decision to enforce a no fly zone must be preceded by Chapter VII resolution from the UN Security Council and that key regional players, importantly the Arab League, not NATO, need to be on board first. This is an important step toward getting basic norms of multilateralism and obedience of international law back into the bloodstream of U.S. foreign policy.

Mine tragedies, again

Two mine accidents occurred last week, both in predictable places: Shanxi, China and West Virginia, U.S.A. One of the tragedies, the one in the People's Republic, ended in something of a "miracle," with 115 miners rescued---but still dozens dead. Some good articles on both include an interview in the Global Times with Dave Feickert, the New Zealander who was recently given a friendship award by the Chinese government for his work to reduce mining accidents; a piece in Daily Kos about Massey Energy's wanton disregard for safety; and a comparison between the U.S. and Chinese experiences in In These Times.

Breaking the blockade

I'm glad China is managing to break the Gaza blockade with everyday necessities, though this article is a little strange.

Is it an ad for the quality of "Made in China" goods? A critique of the blockade?

Maybe if China would speak up about the human catastrophe that Israel has imposed on Gaza, rather than focusing their Security Council activism on blocking pressure on Iran...

Tire tariffs

America's recent decision to impose tariffs on Chinese tire imports isn't as clean-cut of an issue as either its supporters or detractors make it out to be.

First of all, there is nothing inherently "good" or "bad" about tariffs, protectionism, free trade or any other buzzwords of the moment. As Korean economist Ha Joon Chang has amply demonstrated, on their ascent to power, every major industrial state (yes, including Britain) protected key markets and opened them, tightly guarded intellectual property rights and wantonly violated them, and welcomed FDI and restricted it.

The winners and losers in each trade dispute vary, but it would take a market fundamentalists of a utopian variety to argue with a straight face that under absolute free trade "everyone is a winner." A little like some peppy grade school teacher saying that in sports everyone wins because it makes everyone healthy and fills everyone with team spirit. Really? Even the guy who hates to play sports? Or the one who broke his leg? Maybe a bad analogy...

Back to the dispute at hand... some criticize the Obama administration's penalties as "political." As those who make such criticisms tend to make an ostentatious show of noting that few (if any) tire companies supported the tariffs, it is clear that the heart of their argument is this: captains of industry are legitimate actors in trade decisions and not by any means "political," but unions, specifically the United Steel Workers, are not. Unions---and voters more generally---are just interest groups, goes the logic, the sort of folks who are "pandered" to by venal politicians.

On the Chinese side, there's a fair case, too, though. Many in the P.R.C. were rightly angered by the concessions that former Premier Zhu Rongji made to get China into the WTO in the 1990s, concessions that came from a Clinton administration that bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia around the same time. It is precisely these special conditions that allow the Obama administration to hit China on tires (and steel pipes and other stuff)... but not hit similar "dumping" by other countries.

Young Chinese nationalists do their countrymen a better service by fighting imbalanced treaties---as their forebears during the May Fourth Movement did 90 years ago---than they do by whining about media coverage or defending Chinese colonial policies toward ethnic minorities.

So, where do I fall? Fair to protect your workers (on both sides). Nothing right or wrong inherently about protecting this or not protecting that industry. But unequal treaties are lame.

Burma refugees

We don't have all the information we need--and it's disconcerting that journalists have been turned away from the areas affected--but it seems that China has been handling the stream of refugees from Burma very well. If this is indeed the case, it could serve as a new model for China's relations with its more troubled neighbors: focusing on human needs, on the immediacy of suffering brought on by war, human rights abuses, crime, and environmental devastation, as much as settling old border disputes (as important as that is), building security frameworks like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and reassuring small-time elites.

Un-reconstructed colonialists debate constitutional details on PBS in support of a coup and the abrogation of sections of the Honduran constitution

So, former ambassador Roger F. Noriega is on PBS right now saying that there is a virtually unanimous consensus in Honduras that Zelaya needed to be ousted... unanimous among politicians. Then, he says that the OAS should not only back off its criticisms of the first coup in the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War (if you don't count the last Mexican election), but should also answer for allowing the governments in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua to come to power or something like that. And that we should stand by Hondurans (again, the unanimous politicians, presumably, not the people out protesting in the streets) in preserving "democracy" there.

Meanwhile, after accusing Zelaya of violating the constitution, the interim coup government has eliminated whole sections of the constitution, namely the right to protest, freedom in one's home from unwarranted search, seizure and arrest, freedom of association, guarantees of rights of due process while under arrest, and freedom of transit in the country.

Why is the media presenting this as a fifty-fifty equation?

Sure, the right wing should be able to make its arguments. But it should do so with a common understanding, as there is in the case of the rigged Iranian elections, that they have other interests at stake, namely undermining a leftist resurgence in Latin America, preserving exclusive political systems in the region centered around a small, landholding elite, and dashing the hopes of workers and farmers for a different order. If it's clear that that's what they want, and not some abstract constitutional principle that their fascist buddies are in the midst of trampling, then they can say all they want as far as I'm concerned...

The New Left--what a relief

Popular online forums give the impression that ideology in China is sharply divided between "liberals" who champion political liberties but uncritically praise the U.S. and free markets, on the one hand, and, on the other, "leftists" (more accurately described as populist nationalists or fascists) who lash out at foreign critics, while maintaining an ambiguous stance on social justice, waffling from social darwinism ("the weak must suffer for China to get ahead") to outrage at the arrogant rich.

It is therefore refreshing to read the essays of Chinese thinkers who espouse a more true leftism, with nuanced views of the country's socialist past, salvaging successes from the Mao era like rural health care but not whitewashing the brutality of the Cultural Revolution; concerned about the corrosive effects of commercialism and social stratification; and driven by a real passion for democracy--but adamant that democracy must be truly popularly based, not a game for the well-educated.

Wang Hui, the editor of Du Shu, in particular, makes powerful arguments. He describes as self-serving those liberals who champion freedom of speech and rule of law but seem unexcited about local elections and positively hostile to the idea of greater democracy on factory floors.

Wang is clear that markets are not "natural" but the result of decisions, ultimately enforced with guns: "All-out marketization in China did not originate from spontaneous exchange but from acts of violence--state repression of protest." The protest Wang refers to is, of course, the one that resulted in the June 4, 1989 crackdown, violence which, according to him, not only crushed the Tiananmen students' campaign for democracy but also ordinary people's resistance to price reforms (reforms pushed, incidentally, by Zhao Ziyang, who ultimately lost power because of his unwillingness to back martial law against the protesters).

Not content to keep things on a domestic scale, Wang continues:

... the Open Door policies of Deng Xiaoping demanded a much deeper insertion of China into the world market. How did that happen? A key step in the process was China's invasion of Vietnam in 1978--the first war of aggression by the PRC after 1949. The only reason for this otherwise senseless attack on a small neighbor was Deng's desire for a new relationship with the United States. The invasion was offered as a political gift to Washington, and became China's entrance ticket to the world system. Here too violence was the precondition of a new economic order.

I don't know that there's any consensus that a desire to please the U.S. was "the only reason" for Deng Xiaoping's decision. China waited until after it had resumed diplomatic ties with Washington before it launched the invasion, suggesting that Beijing was actually worried that America would not support the violence--but then, I'm no expert on these things.

However, I admire Wang's stubborn humanism, with his insistence that liberalism doesn't offer an easy ticket out of China's dilemmas and that authoritarianism and unfairness must be dealt with together and are equal challenges.

Again, I can't recommend Chaohua Wang's collection One China Many Paths (from which the quotes above come) enough! It places Wang Hui alongside thoughtful liberals like Zhu Xueqin, who acknowledge the dangers of China's rising inequality, as well as people like Gan Yang, who argues for national elections as a means of creating national cohesion and checking local despots. The book is a good survey of debates from the 1990s to early 2000s---and a good corrective to the blues one can get reading too many blogs.

Iran and Tiananmen

Obama's cautious approach to the Iranian protests, refusing to "meddle" in the election but voicing concern about violence against demonstrators, makes sense for the reason that he gave at a press conference today: a more assertive stance is "not productive given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations...."

However, looking ahead, Obama would do well to remember another piece of US foreign policy history, namely America's relationship with China in the months and years immediately following the Tiananmen massacre.

In 1989, Bush the elder did not allude to past US intrigues as a reason for a less forceful stance on the events of June 4. In fact, he didn't really do any explaining. He simply at once condemned the crackdown and assured China (privately, via Brent Scowcrowft, at first) that relations, while bumpy, would continue more or less the same.

This double-message is praised in foreign policy circles as the perfect balance of principle and realism, but it led to a zig-zag, confused few years of Sino-US relations. Bill Clinton bluffed that he would tie trade with the P.R.C. to human rights progress, then flipped over to the other extreme and rammed through PNTR.

The effect was to make clear that America only deals with rights when it has less pressing matters on its mind (something Hillary Clinton reiterated recently on her first trip to China as Secretary of State).

Chinese dissidents abroad are brave but their prescriptions often seem out of touch with reality at home. Not so Yang Jianli's advice last year. In an interview with Foreign Policy, he said:

Many people wrongly assume that pressuring the Chinese government on human rights triggers ill will toward Americans on the part of ordinary Chinese citizens. In fact, it is the United States’ constant seesawing that reinforces the popular belief that Americans only act for their own material gain. The lofty statements followed by inaction have led the Chinese people to conclude that some American politicians, scholars, and businesspeople are hypocrites. Their self-imposed censorship when dealing with the Chinese government is disappointing. I have never opposed trading with China, but I cannot support a policy that is so wholly inconsistent.

Obama would do well to heed Yang's words when approaching Iran in the months and years to come. Not "meddling" is fine, whether literally or rhetorically, and there's no reason to cut dialogue entirely with the Iranian government if the current movement fails. But the U.S. should continue to be clear with the Iranian people about what calculations it is making and it should continue to speak clearly about its own ideals and not pipe up or quiet down depending on the winds of war and money. It should also be ready to make some sacrifices for democracy in Tehran.

UPDATE: The more I think about it, the more I think Obama should begin doing more.

In-depth reporting

I've often felt that the problem with foreign journalists in China is not that they have an agenda (as Chinese right-wing / nationalist, ahem, "left wing" netizens claim), but that they just don't have a lot depth and go for cookie cutter stories. Custer at ChinaGeeks makes this point well in regards to newspapers' constant comparisons of any protest in China to Tiananmen. Part of the issue, I think, is that reporters don't stay in the P.R.C. (or anywhere) long.

I remember meeting a photographer who was taking a language program with me in Beijing in 2006 who had just been transferred there from reporting on Iraq. She was sure she'd be headed elsewhere in a bit over a year. How could she find much to photograph beyond the obvious? I expect she delivered a number of shots of police in front of the Forbidden City trying to cover her lens with their gloves. Or chic young people walking past police. Or old buildings contrasted with a racy ad.

Each reporter / photographer goes for the big arc---"China's no longer like it was under Mao! Believe it or not, it's gone capitalist, but it's still authoritarian! Who would have guessed?"---for a year, then, if they are there longer, they start to get into the details. But before they're too far into the details, they're gone.

Blogger Michael Anti is trying to change this, but for Chinese reporting on the world, not the other way around. His website Zhongheng Zhoukan or "Far and Wide Journal" has reporting from Chinese stationed around the world (countries are organized by their flags on the main page).

Anti told Danwei, "My intention was to organize an independent professional analysis group consisting of journalists, scholars, columnists and students, who will continue to research on a single country, area or topic for years. Every week, we publish online a collection of their political analyses. It's a kind of civil think-tank on international politics. We offer Chinese media readers an alternative option from lazy translation or nationalist propaganda."

Communities

The picture above was taken from Cardozo High School, looking out over Washington, DC, this evening. The view is much cooler than what my camera phone captured.

Up the hill, you can see layer upon layer of the individual, quirky row houses that define the city, while to the east the new convention center, a (largely successful) attempt at economic rejuvenation via corporate blahhh, pops up out of the skyline. To the west, the Washington Monument rises---state power and glory. The dome of congress, to the east again, brings up images of urban decay from a decade ago: power lines, a lone smokestack and broken roofs with the old dome rising behind them, like a "decline of the West" reverse of the old-versus-new snapshots people love to take of Shanghai skyscrapers rising from quaint lanes.

It seems like an enormous challenge to create a community out of all this, one that pulls off an opportunity structure dynamic enough to invite the input (and challenges) of new demographic groups, that generates enough wealth to feel like it has some momentum, and that moves toward the end point of absolute equality without losing vernacular beauty.

A couple articles over the past few weeks highlight the difficulties of keeping all these plates spinning. The NY Times has a depressing piece on the betrayals of India's traditional Communist Party in West Bengal in its pursuit of growth. And an article by The New Yorker compares the competing visions of egalitarianism born out of Smyrna, Tennessee's Nissan plant, on the one hand, with its "team" feel and management eating in the company cafeteria, and the UAW-negotiated labor relations that built Detroit, on the other.

May Day

May Day is upon us and, with the global economic crisis reminding everyone who didn't know it already that Wall Street excess isn't a soft, win-win engine of growth, the streets have been especially lively this year. See BBC's video of protests in Turkey, the Philippines, Germany and Russia here.

Few remember that the holiday was originally designated by the Second International as, in part, a day of remembrance for the Hay Market martyrs, anarchists who were tried and hanged largely for their political beliefs after a bomb was thrown at police by an unknown individual during a peaceful protest in Hay Market Square in Chicago in 1886.

The protest in Hay Market Square had been called in response to police shootings during a previous rally outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co's factory. That rally, in turn, grew out of a nationwide mobilization for an eight-hour day. Wikipedia has the full chronology here.

Though it seems a little silly, I am particularly impressed by the mustaches and beards of those radicals of times gone by (see the photo above). Their facial hair speaks---at least I think---to their close association with their time and place, a contrast with some radicals today who make a point of distinguishing themselves from their milieu. Orwell had some choice words over half a century ago on this subject:

The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white- collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting....

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured 'Socialists', as who should say,'Red Indians'. He was probably right--the I.L.P. were holding their
summer school at Letchworth.

I'm not on board with all of Orwell's stereotypes ("Quakers" and "feminists" and "Red Indians" don't seem particularly wacky to me). And making fun of counterculture has gone a bit too far nowadays, with jokes about the 60s and 70s covering over the serious questions raised by communes, anti-war and anti-nuclear advocacy, drug experimentation, etc. But Orwell, a socialist himself, had a point.

Wonderful news

The FMLN has won El Salvador's vote. The victory was deferred a couple decades. And it grates to read old, 1980s U.S. war criminals now taking credit for the country's democratic transition after they backed up the killers of three U.S. nuns, at least a thousand farmers in El Mozote, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and countless others. But so it goes and it's incredible to see El Salvador show where its heart has always been.

Bring in Barghouti

If they could get Barghouti back in there... from the Huffington Post:

Marwan Barghouti is the most popular Palestinian leader since Yasser Arafat. He has spent the last seven years in an Israeli prison after being convicted of playing a role in attacks that killed four Israelis and a Greek monk.

A lifetime member of President Mahmoud Abbas' venerable and corruption-riddled Fatah movement, Barghouti is seen as perhaps the group's best chance to restore its eroded credibility. Many Palestinians _ and some Israelis _ see him as the only figure capable of bridging the myriad rifts among Palestinians and leading them toward their long elusive dream of statehood.

Barghouti is a secularist who works with Islamists. He supports negotiations with Israel, speaks fluent Hebrew and has Israeli friends, but he built his reputation through anti-Israel diatribes during the second Palestinian uprising.

I don't profess to being an expert on any of these things, but this man has always impressed me. It seems that Israel has kept him under lock and key precisely because he WOULD make a good negotiating partner. Israel will probably never come to an internal consensus that it is ready for a serious peace effort, but maybe having Barghouti on the scene will force things forward.

Cluster bombs

There is mounting evidence of cluster bombs being used by the IDF on Palestinians. This is far, far beyond the pale, especially in Gaza, one of the most crowded places in the world. As Gideon Levy writes, "Nobody is coming to the rescue - of Gaza or even of the remnants of humanity and Israeli democracy."

Gaza (updated)

Israel has crossed the line again.  Yes, every nation has a right to defend itself.  But the IDF's raining down of death upon an occupied people, besides being a blatant violation of the Geneva conventions and plenty of other international laws, is about as  effective a form of self-defense as the death rained on Sderot by Hamas on a much smaller scale.  There is a precedent for this brutal foolishness:  the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which only strengthened Hezbollah, by most accounts.  

Yet, there seem to be few options for reversing events in any permanent way.  The Palestinians have a right to resist, including by force, of course.   However, while miring down an Israeli ground invasion (should it come) with street fighting might end this particular assault, it won't stop future bombing raids.   If anything, it will just lock in a new pattern. Hamas will be practically bound to go on the offensive, as will, in turn, Israel and so on.

Appealing to Israel can only go so far, too---the country tuned out world public opinion long ago.  And now, in particular, it has turned inward, into its own politics, with an extraordinary degree of self-reflection and courage in some instances, but inward nonetheless.  Indeed, one explanation for the carnage of the last few days is the need of Olmert-Livni-Barak triumvirate to look tough before the upcoming Israeli elections (see Jonathan Cook's detailed analysis at Electronic Intifada).  

At the risk of sounding American-centric, peace with justice has to start in the United States. As Israel's main ally, America has the most leverage over Israel and, equally importantly, as the country furthest out of sync with the rest of the world on the Middle East conflict, it has the most room to grow---grow in its understanding of the situation, grow in its engagement, and grow in its generosity of heart.

Citing polls showing that an overwhelming majority of Americans already "favor taking neither side," Salon's Glenn Greenwald bemoans the fact that "no mainstream politician would dare express the view that 70 percent of Americans support."  Greenwald goes on:

Americans shouldn't be in the position of endlessly debating Israel's security situation and its endless religious and territorial conflicts with its neighbors.  That should be for Israeli citizens to do, not for Americans.  But that distinction -- between the U.S. and Israel -- barely exists because our political leaders have all but eliminated it, and have thus imposed on U.S. citizens responsibility for the acts of Israel.

But this is simplifying things.  There's a massive wellspring of support for Israel in the States at a popular level, whether it is reflected in a given poll or not.  Tracing images of Israel in American political discourse back to the early, post-revolutionary period (when, of course, Israel did not even exist as a state), Walter Russell Meade recently wrote in Foreign Affairs:

Both religious and nonreligious Americans have looked to the Hebrew Scriptures for an example of a people set apart by their mission and called to a world-changing destiny.... 

This mythic understanding of the United States' nature and destiny is one of the most powerful and enduring elements in American culture and thought. As the ancient Hebrews did, many Americans today believe that they bear a revelation that is ultimately not just for them but also for the whole world; they have often considered themselves God's new Israel. One of the many consequences of this presumed kinship is that many Americans think it is both right and proper for one chosen people to support another....

The United States and Israel also have in common their status as "settler states" -- countries formed by peoples who came to control their current lands after displacing the original populations.....

In the United States, a pro-Israel foreign policy does not represent the triumph of a small lobby over the public will. It represents the power of public opinion to shape foreign policy in the face of concerns by foreign policy professionals.

If we are to force Israel back from abusing its outsized military power and, ultimately, from its own self-destruction, we have to start among American citizens, not fighting AIPAC or persuading Harry Reid... or even Barack Obama.  

UPDATE: Haaretz has a good piece on rivalries within the Israeli leadership in regards to the atrocities of the past few days.

UPDATE II: Check out the Wikipedia entry for the Fourth Geneva Convention, which concerns treatment of occupied civilians.

Thoughts on a few topics

I haven't posted in ages.  So much has happened.  

I've been horrified, like everyone else, by the global financial crisis---but also delighted by headlines in major business journals about capitalism being at a turning point. This is crazy stuff! I remember how radical socialists in college would hand out papers with editorials demanding that the government nationalize the banking sector...  done, sort of.

How China rides this storm out will be interesting. I am worried that the country's belated efforts to strengthen implementation of its environmental and labor regulations and to reform its tattered social safety net will be pushed aside by short-term thinkers who advocate getting the worst parts of the export sector back online as a solution to slowing growth.   

In other words, rather than continue to lay the basis for more domestic consumption---and, ideally, lower Gini coefficients---southern manufacturers may get a boost in the form of tax benefits and lax labor law enforcement (the new implementation guidelines for the Labor Contract Law have been somewhat of a disappointment, watering down the original legislation).  Efforts at creating an integrated social security network, where migrant workers can bring their benefits back to their home provinces, will go on the back burner.  And the whole thing will have to start over.

China was a level-headed player during the previous East Asian financial crisis. But I think more than level-headed-ness is needed now.  These times require a comprehensive vision of what a fair, prosperous future will look like.  And, unfortunately, neither the U.S. nor China nor even the EU seem at the right place politically to conceive such a vision.

Tangentially---I'm trying to get caught up on topics, so I'm throwing them all together in one post---I've been going back and forth with myself about China's recent announcement of a semi-land-reform for farmers.  Perhaps readers can give me their opinions?  

On the one hand, as I have stated before, I am nervous about land being bought and sold before there's a strong rural (and, importantly, periurban) court system in place.   It just seems like a recipe for dispossesion and proletarianization possibly worse than the government land seizures of today.  

Yu Jianrong makes a typically nuanced but forceful argument for a balanced approach that is focused on farmers' agency in an interview translated by Danwei.  I'd like to hear more of what he has to say.

Finally, on an entirely unrelated topic, I'm glad to see that Americans have not been thrown off course by the McCain campaigns increasingly desperate attempts to make the election about race.  It shows that people can be serious when they want to.

Thailand and Bolivia

Like many people, I am naturally sympathetic to protest movements.  I like the speeches, the camaraderie, and, especially, the feeling of politics out in the open, not behind closed doors---the closed doors of power, but also the closed doors of our own homes, where we stew over newspapers and computers, not knowing who else shares our thoughts. 

However, in the past month I've been profoundly at odds with two protest movements in particular: the opposition movement in Thailand and the secessionist movement in Bolivia. 

The New York Times summed up the campaign of the Thai People's Alliance for Democracy (P.A.D.) against Prime Minister Samak Sundarajev well with the headline "Power of the People Fights Democracy in Thai Protests" (note the absence of the word "for").  The political camps in this latest flash point are contradictory to say the least, but one thing is clear: a powerful contingent of the opposition does not believe in one person, one vote, because such a system gives the rural majority "too much" of a voice.  

Why shouldn't Thailand's rural majority have a voice?  Why, indeed, shouldn't they have the biggest voice?  Their votes, it is said by P.A.D. supporters, can be bought.  What does that mean?  In at least one conversation I've had with an opposition supporter, at a discussion in New York organized around the last coup, "buying votes" was taken to include providing the rural masses with healthcare, as the deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra did.  In other words, responding to the needs of the poor and then receiving the votes of the poor is sketchy, outside the natural order of things, inherently corrupt.

That's not to say that Thaksin couldn't be a thug when he wanted or that he wasn't, in fact, corrupt.  His anti-drug crackdown was unnecessarily brutal.  And anyone turned off by Berlusconi's marriage of media tycoon-ery and politics in Italy will see striking parallels with the Thaksin TV empire's fuzzy borders with his administration.  But the picture of, as the Times says, "haves and have-nots, with the haves rising up against the poorer classes" is disgusting.  

It reminds me of a nineteenth century book called Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants or Civilization and Barbarism By D.F. Sarmiento that I had to read for a Latin American history class in college.  In the book, the civilized capital of Argentina is contrasted by Sarmiento with the "barbaric" interior, from which "tyrants" and cowboys and Indians spring.  As in Thailand's case, the rural-based "tyrants" of the Argentine book are indeed less than admirable, trampling on the law with abandon. But the bankruptcy of Argentina's Europeanized elite, with whom Sarmiento proudly identifies, is even more apparent.

Which brings me to Bolivia.  There, in Santa Cruz but also elsewhere, we see a bourgeoisie remarkably similar to that of Chile before 1973: disdainful, fearful of change---and ready for the U.S. to intervene, practically begging for the Yankees to sweep in.  And it seems that America has done just that, if Evo Morales' recent expulsion of Ambassador Goldberg for meddling is any sign.    

Thankfully, Latin America seems to have rallied around Morales, a leader worthy not only of support but also real admiration.  Brazil in particular has shown courage in speaking up, shelving for now the benefits that have come with being Bush's "good" left-leaning government on the continent.  In fact, this is not the first time that Lula has stepped up for Bolivia when it has been in need.  In a February interview in Monthly Review, Bolivian VP Garcia said that support from Brazil, along with the support of other countries like Chile and Argentina, held back the tide of "extremists."

It is this sort of solidarity, but also sense of purpose, that Southeast Asia needs in order to preserve its democratic gains, put elites in their place (which by rights should be toward the back of the line), move beyond a superficial populism---like that epitomized by Thaksin---and begin to achieve real fairness.

In fairness...

I have been fuming more and more over Chinese nationalist screeds at the bottom of news articles and blog posts--you know, the long diatribes about how Tibetans are ungrateful for the civilization brought to them by their masters, about how people should stop criticizing China about Darfur or Zimbabwe because, well, China had it rough once, too, just like Africa, about how because other countries share certain of China's problems those problems aren't actually problems,  etc, etc.  

But then I turned on MSNBC today and watched the talking heads on "Race for the White House" debate whether or not Obama's admitting in Berlin, every so gently and briefly, that the U.S. has faults might hurt him politically.  

Why might saying something so patently obvious hurt him?  Well, as the panelists rightly noted, many Americans don't like politicians or celebrities currying favor abroad--or appearing to curry favor abroad--by saying bad things about the U.S. of A:

David Gregory:  "Eugene Robinson, is this the message that Americans want to hear Obama delivering overseas, not in this country, but going to a foreign capital ...

There's not the same wounded pride here that you sometimes hear in China, but there is the same sense of not talking to stuffy foreigners about something that's our business.  If there's not the same wounded-ness it's because there's a tad more bluster.

It reminds me of a friend who said that in some ways China and America are more alike than America and Europe.  Now, I don't mean to let Europeans off the hook (their attitude to the U.S. tends to be similar to Northeastern Americans' attitude toward Southerners: "Well, since we're clearly not as bad as them, we have no problems--not on race, not on religion, not on nothing").  But it's true, I think, that what frustrates Americans and Chinese about each other is not some vast cultural gulf but that we're so remarkably similar.

Australia returning to Asia?

New Australian PM Kevin Rudd is a welcome change. From BBC:

The last asylum seekers have left Australia's detention camp on Nauru, putting an end to the controversial "Pacific Solution" immigration policy.

Maybe Australia will now really begin to think again about what it means to be part of Asia---not in terms of meetings with the leaders of different countries and fanciful talk of some sort of grand democracy alliance (with India and Japan), but as just another country in the region.

Australia is a white settler country, like the U.S. or Canada (though arguably with a stronger indigenous movement), and it is a continent in its own right. But it is also an increasingly diverse society and is tied to the same issues affecting Indonesia, Vietnam, China...