Gaddafi accused of cluster bombing Misrata

Gaddafi has been accused by HRW of cluster bombing Misrata. Really nasty stuff.

And---not to shift the blame at a moment like this---but the obvious cruelty of the way the bombs are being used right now is a good reminder that the U.S. should sign and ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions (as should Israel, China, Russia and other holdouts).

When cluster bombs have been used elsewhere, such as by Israel in Lebanon and by the U.S. in Aghanistan, the results have been devastating for civilians. No battlefield advantage justifies this.

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.

Stupid response to Wikileaks

China needed a good excuse on censorship. The United States provided that excuse when it went after Wikileaks, showing that liberal democracies, if powerful enough, will also not hesitate to shut down internet gadflies. Of course, hypocrisy by the U.S. does not undo China's obligations. But it makes the argument of rights activists that much harder.

Wikileaks is now banned from the Library of Congress computers. The site's temporary host, Amazon.com, has been pressured (successfully) to drop it. Funding for Wikileaks via Paypal and even Swiss banks has been cut off.

Beijing must be sighing a big sigh of relief.

Back again

I haven't posted things here in quite some time. So, this is partially just a test of whether anyone reads the blog anymore!

In the past month, I've started school again and am hoping I can use Old Tales Retold to force myself to keep better track of goings on in China amid all the other stuff cluttering my head.

So... random comments on two bits of China news:

One, while I more or less supported Obama's tire tariffs a while back (or at least I think I did... check the old posts), I really can't justify the United Steelworkers' demand of action against China for subsidizing green technology.

The USW are incredibly forward-thinking in general when it comes to international solidarity. During the Vale Inco strike in Sudbury, Canada, steelworkers reached out to union brothers and sisters in places as far-flung as Brazil, Mozambique and Indonesia. Earlier this year, the USW signed an innovative deal with a group of Chinese wind energy companies "to create long-term, good-paying, green American jobs."

But the new trade complaint, as a friend pointed out to me, essentially makes the argument that governments should not invest in green energy, at least not "too" much. Instead of attacking China for not meeting WTO rules, the USW should be forcing the U.S. government to invest more. No need to carry water for neo-liberalism.

And... (unrelated) comment number two: what's with this new anti-Japan stuff?

Sure, I get that the detention of the Chinese boat captain pisses people off. That sort of thing pisses people off anywhere in the world, rightly or wrongly.

However, leaving aside the overall debate about whether China is pushed around by or is itself pushing domestic nationalism, I think, as Han Han has argued, this case in particular seems more about Beijing looking for a distraction than anything else. Just a gut response.

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.

Google

What struck me most about the whole Google-China thing was the surprise some people expressed that the e-mail addresses of human rights activists were being hacked at all. I mean, how many of the activists thought for a minute that their accounts were safe? No one who does that kind of work trusts their phones, their computers, anything (see, for example, Marquand's story about journalists' experiences with hacking in China).

Google should get a lot of credit, but not for saying enough is enough to a particularly egregious problem that the company alone had been suffering in silence. They should get credit for finally stating something blindingly obvious, for finally acting as if something everyone else had put up with for ages was not, actually, normal.

The sharpness of China's reaction---Google's decision was on the cover of the Chinese-language, paper edition of the nationalist Global Times the next day; the English-language China Daily followed with a deceptive "point-counterpoint"-style piece on Google the next day, if I recall correctly---was surprising for me. But maybe it shouldn't have been. Stating the obvious is sometimes a big deal.

Obama at one

Reading over the contributions in The Nation's special issue on "Obama at One," a few things stuck out. One was that exaggerated expressions of love for Obama and exaggerated disappointment in Obama similarly miss the point: it's not about one person. But the left's fall-back lesson, namely that you need outside movements to pressure even a good president to do good, is also incomplete.

Yes, the activism needs to go on. However, to put a twist on Malcolm X's most famous statement, I would argue: "By any means necessary---even boring, institutional ones." Progressives need to achieve a better marriage of protests and community activism, on the one hand, and of an effective governance strategy and savvy spin-meistering, on the other. The right gets it. We don't, at least not entirely.

We shouldn't be afraid of dirtying ourselves with a sustained commitment to effective inside politics, just as we've always embraced the limits of civil and uncivil disobedience. But ours---like the rights---must be an inside politics aimed at achieving concrete goals, not just treading water like the Clintons. And achieving those goals not under the noses of the American people but with their full knowledge and support.

More on the G-20

On the other hand, here's an interesting take on the G-20 protests from Pittsburgh labor historian Charles McCollester. He recalls earlier protests in the city that descended into violence. And he describes the varied reactions of residents to today's demonstrators.

McCollester also argues that the Pittsburgh leadership doesn't want green manufacturing because it doesn't want manufacturing, period. It wants to continue to be "green" more through an absence--of industry and a troublesome working class--than through starting anything new.

G-20 protests

I've had fantasies elsewhere on this blog of teabaggers getting their comeuppance from rowdies of our own with fists and I've just barely held myself back from rooting for anti-racist rioters in Lund, Sweden.

I'm also disappointed by the media's unwillingness to take anarchists seriously. If students and professors in my international affairs classes were comfortable with the idea of states weakening and CEOs replacing or at least joining elected governments as the big players on the world state, what's so outlandish about horizontal, non-state structures that serve local, long-term needs, not short-term profits? Such a system existed in the Middle Ages, after all, when guilds controlled cities and princes had to ask permission to enter.

But the self-centered-ness of some of the G20 protesters is hard to escape. In their videos, posted at G-finity and elsewhere, the police are dehumanized from the get-go and are fought in an almost ritualistic manner, despite officers' working class roots. Local residents sympathetic to the anarchists are interviewed, but mostly as a sort of loyal workers' chorus. Sort of like, "See? They like us!"

I know that this grassroots support for anarchists can be genuine. At an anti-death penalty rally in Columbus, Ohio many years ago, the family of the condemned man in question spoke movingly afterward, away from the main event, about the support they had felt from those "masked bandits" (or some phrase to that effect). Leftists---not just anarchists, but the ISO and Socialist Alternative activists known from campus campaigns---often put down real, productive roots in urban communities. This dynamic was hinted at in a superficial way during the Reverend Wright controversy last year.

Nonetheless, there's a forced feeling to the thing in Pittsburgh, at least the marches with black banners and trash cans. As if it's time to search for a new mode of resistance.

Palin in Hong Kong!

Sarah Palin stunned Hong Kong with her BRILLIANT analysis of the global financial crisis and Sino-US relations the other day.

Not only that, she brought COMPLEX issues down to earth, down to "Main Street, USA," as she repeatedly put it, before a crowd of businesspeople carefully screened for pesky journalists (but not carefully enough--the AP slipped through). I mean, only a "Main Street" person would care about such a PRESSING, ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATING issue as intellectual property rights, right? Or eliminating capital gains taxes and estate taxes for the wealthy?

And Palin showed a knack for Daoist mental puzzles with her claim that only the unbridled market could fix problems in the long run and that government meddling caused the financial crisis. Deepening the puzzle into a sort of puzzle within a puzzle, she singled out one kind of meddling for particular rebuke, namely the sort of government action that, well, left the market unbridled. As Palin said, because the government intervened to not intervene in housing markets in particular, "Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks." Damn socialism! Death panels!

Amid all this heady discussion, though, some of which, I must admit, went over my head, as it did over the heads of some attendees, who, heads exploding with new ideas, walked out, Palin touched on one issue that left me genuinely puzzled. This was the issue of, as she put it so eloquently, "the protest of... Chinese workers throughout the country," which, she said, along with the protests of Tibetans and Uighurs, "rightfully makes a lot of people nervous."

Her focus on workers was, of course, no surprise. She highlighted Joe the Plumber during the campaign, remember (OK, maybe he qualifies more as "petit bourgeoisie" or "would-be-petit-bourgeoisie-if-he-can-ever-buy-that-business"). Republicans, moreover, have a proud tradition of staunch support for the rights of working people---in other countries.

But Chinese workers, as Palin must know, are protesting against market policies that have shut down their plants. In some cases, they are quite explicitly calling for more government intervention in their workplaces, in the form of wage and hour law enforcement, of all things, or the investigation of occupational illnesses.

Surely, by Palin's logic, China's workers are clearly in the wrong.

More on tires

I'd like to add to my previous post. Some, like Adam Bobrow, have responded to Obama's tire tariffs with considerably more nuance than the critics I mentioned earlier. They have done so from a perspective of a "comprehensive" approach to trade liberalization, one that tries to make the loss of certain industries in the U.S. and elsewhere more palatable through job retraining programs, improved social safety nets, etc. Basically, Jagdish Bhagwati's line (a loyal Democrat, by the way).

But these people miss a crucial point: old-fashioned, nuts and bolts industry is good to have in ANY country, not just the "developing world." Every state will, naturally, find a different mix of sectors most suitable to its conditions. However, manufacturing, through its bringing together of large groups of people in one place, through its job stability, and through the satisfaction and pride it brings by creating something concrete, builds communities in a way that no "service" employer---whether a fast food restaurant, a call center or a hair salon, a white collar consulting this or that, a do-good NGO or whatever---ever will.

Obama's action against an "import surge" (not "dumping," as I wrongly implied in the previous post) may be procedurally just---the P.R.C. agreed to the U.S. retaining its Section 421 provisions when it joined the WTO. And it may also be substantively unjust to Chinese workers. But is also only fair to American tire employees and to hopes for a healthy nation on this side of the Pacific.

It's bridging these two fairnesses, of course, that is the biggest obstacle to solidarity between U.S. and Chinese workers.

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.

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...

More democratic now or then?

I've been reading Anita Chan, Richard Madsen and Jonathan Unger's expanded edition of Chen Village Under Mao and Deng. Throughout, I've been struck by how incredibly participatory governance in rural areas was during the Mao era.

Of course, it was a participation driven by the great tidal waves waves of mass campaigns, each of which left behind new victims in addition to the pitiful villagers of "bad" class backgrounds, who were hauled out and made to pay for their pre-revolutionary crimes again and again and again with every movement. And freedom of opinion, while unleashed in a devastating way during the Cultural Revolution, was on the whole much more restricted than today. The book vividly depicts the fatigue that constant mobilization created in ordinary people, a fatigue that ultimately overwhelmed their faith in the Party in many instances.

But compared to the unaccountable rural officials, opaque finances and land battles one reads of every week these days in the Chinese press and in books like Zhongguo nongmin diaocha or the research of Yu Jianrong, the battles of Maoism seem remarkably evenly fought, with leaders rising and falling, agricultural brigades and teams forming the centers of lively debates, and farmers jumping on evidence of corruption.

Those aren't particularly original insights, I suppose, but they've pushed me beyond my skepticism of calls for further privatization of land to think about what kind of arrangement, exactly, would be best for China's farmers. Yes, village elections should be strengthened (and matched by livelier People's Congress elections at the township level, as well as direct elections for township chiefs). But how to ensure that production, too, is guarded by laobaixing?

ALSO: On an unrelated topic, I haven't read the whole of the Washington Post's take on the battle over healthcare reform within the Democratic Party, but I must say---and, again, this isn't fair having not read the whole article---that the opening strengthens charges that the paper tends to see everything as a beltway power battle in need of "moderate" compromises, rather than as real issues. I mean, really? Baucus and health reform groups should be natural allies and are hurt by silly efforts by "outsiders" to impact legislation? Huh?

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.

New rules for courts re: mass incidents

China has just asked courts to help prevent protests. On the face of it, this seems like another outrage in a long stream of reversals of progress on rule of law by the new, Wang Shengjun-led Supreme People's Court. And that's how a Forbes article sees the situation:

According to the internal handbook of the Chinese communist government, China's legal system is defined as its exclusive tool to safeguard one-party rule. This week, to make this clearer to potential troublemakers, Beijing asked courts across the country to help curb rising workers' protests.

But it's not clear that Forbes is entirely right. I don't mean they're wrong. I mean the facts just aren't all in yet.

Specifically, the new rules call for a) tracking trends in labor disputes, b) thinking about the broader social consequences of cases involving big companies, c) more mediation and d) more coordination with local governments.

There's nothing wrong that I can think of with item "a". Presumably plenty of countries' courts take note of patterns in the cases they receive. But "b" could both mean adopting measures, as the American government has (though not through court rules), to tide over weakened but "too big to fail" corporations or... it could mean protecting companies from workers' cases if it seems like those cases could spread. As China Daily says:

In Fujian and Guangdong provinces, recent disputes over such issues involved hundreds of workers dragging companies to court.

"It is very important to handle such cases carefully as some large enterprises have divisional companies across the country. Court decisions in one place might lead to mass incidents in other places," Liu told China Daily.

Item "c" is also troubling. Neighborhood mediation committees in particular, which are used to sorting out domestic disputes and the like, are ill-equipped to handle labor law questions and liable to simply split the difference between employers and employees.

Finally..."d" does give pause rule-of-law-wise. Not sure what it would mean in practice, though.

"You want my vote, I want yours"

The last few moments of this video are beautiful. Specter is going on about different jobs he's brought to Pennsylvania and people keep interrupting him about the Employee Free Choice Act. As TPM reports:

"You want my vote, I want yours," heckled one of the activists....

"I understand your job's on the line," Specter told the crowd, which shouted back, "your job's on the line!"

The point is not that Specter is a complete scoundrel and that he's getting his comeuppance---he's not a scoundrel, really. It's that labor is finally asking politicians for a straight answer: do they support a conscious, assertive working class or do they just want to create jobs and pay lip service to a dying movement? It's moving.

U.S. imprisonment of journalists

As Iran releases U.S. journalist Roxana Saberi from prison, Glen Greenwald makes some strong points about American imprisonment of journalists:

Saberi's release is good news, as her conviction occurred as part of extremely dubious charges and unreliable judicial procedures in Iran.... But imprisoning journalists -- without charges or trials of any kind -- was and continues to be a staple of America's "war on terror," and that has provoked virtually no objections from America's journalists who, notably, instead seized on Saberi's plight in Iran to demonstrate their claimed commitment to defending persecuted journalists....

Beginning in 2001, the U.S. held Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj for six years in Guantanamo with no trial of any kind, and spent most of that time interrogating him not about Terrorism, but about Al Jazeera. For virtually the entire time, the due-process-less, six-year-long imprisonment of this journalist by the U.S. produced almost no coverage -- let alone any outcry -- from America's establishment media, other than some columns by Nicholas Kristof (though, for years, al-Haj's imprisonment was a major media story in the Muslim world)....

... the U.S. continues to imprison Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer for Reuters, even though an Iraqi court last December -- more than five months ago -- found that there was no evidence to justify his detention and ordered him released. The U.S. -- over the objections of the CPJ, Reporters Without Borders and Reuters -- refused to recognize the validity of that Iraqi court order and announced it would continue to keep him imprisoned....

A Nexis search for "Roxana Saberi" reveals 2,201 mentions in press reports, virtually all of them in the last two months regarding her arrest by Iran. By stark contrast, a search for "Ibrahim Jassam"... produces a grand total of 71 mentions.

Internal propaganda

When I was last in Beijing, I noticed the same glowing, digital ads projected inside subway tunnels that appear out of the darkness as you enter and exit some stations in Washington, DC. Michael Zhao has a piece on the phenomenon in Forbes magazine that explains how the human eye "animates" a string images, how a company called Beijing Topflash Media is pushing this stuff, etc. All interesting. But I was most struck at the time by the content of the advertisements.

As further proof that the main target of Beijing's rhetoric on Tibet is not the outside world but the Chinese people, the ads were all for a new production of the People's Daily website devoted exclusively to Tibet, Zhongguo Xizang Wang. They weren't very stylish ads--no animation, at least not any that I remember. But they drove the thing home. Upon returning to the States, I looked for Zhongguo Xizang Wang.

I found it; it is here.

And it is much more sophisticated than any of the clumsy pronouncements China makes to the outside world about the T.A.R. The site has heartwarming stories on Chinese young people volunteering in Tibetan schools, a section on Tibetan culture (dancing, of course), articles on concerns in France that H.H. the Dalai Lama's visit there will strain Sino-French relations, and, last but not least, a book corner that highlights a series of conspiracy / history / drama books that I saw everywhere in Chinese airport bookstores: Xizang Mima ("The Tibet Code").

In comparison, updates on the Chinese Embassy's website in DC come across propagandistic and flat, full of quotes from foreign folks in support of Chinese policy, like the sections in Chinese and Vietnamese museums highlighting gifts from abroad. It is as if the Embassy posts don't receive any real effort, like they were just put there to show someone that they had been put up. Which is the point.

While China would like to change hearts and minds abroad, its purpose in exposing "the Dalai clique" to the world is mostly to seem consistent to home audiences. Boring? Yes, but fiercely the same. Sticking up for the nation in hostile settings. Sticking up by being its same, old, boring self.

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.