Howard W. French (http://www.howardwfrench.com)

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A Continent for the Taking

Africa first captivated New York Times journalist Howard W. French more than twenty-five years ago, but his knowledge of and passion for the continent has the depth of a lifetime association. His experiences there awakened him as nothing before to… read more

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Commentary & Reviews · Interviews

Less than a day after the African Union imposed sanctions demanding
a return to constitutional legality in Togo, Faure Gnassingbe
stepped down from the presidential post he had assumed after the
death of his father Gnassingbe Eyadema three weeks ago. Virtually
unanimous condemnation was followed by sanctions from Togo’s West
African neighbors and from the continent-wide organization. This
sent the unmistakable message, in the words of one commentator’s
headline, that there would be “no business as usual for Baby
Eyadema.”

Presidential elections have been promised within two months. As
opposition protesters in Lome clashed with police over the weekend,
however, it was clear that the coming period is unlikely to provide
an easy transition to democracy. While Gnassingbe handed over
interim authority to a newly chosen speaker of the national
assembly, Abass Bonfoh, critics demanded that the post be occupied
by the former speaker Fambare Ouattara Natchaba, as stipulated in
the constitution.

Both the regional West African organization ECOWAS and the African
Union are planning to play an active role in this transitional
period. But their capacity to be effective will depend on whether
there is scope for Togolese citizens and civil society
organizations, as well as political parties, to build a climate for
change that does not descend into political violence. There are
also large Togolese communities living outside the country, both
political exiles and other migrants, who are actively debating
their country’s future.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the February 25 press release
from the African Union announcing sanctions (now suspended) and a
February 19 position paper from a large coalition of civil society
and diaspora organizations. The paper includes contact information
for the National Congress of the Civil Society (CNSC-Togo) and the
Togolese Diaspora for Democracy and Development (DIASTODE), as well
as other websites (primarily in French) for additional information.

For links to background information, including a country profile
and timeline from the BBC, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/togo.php

Ongoing news updates from allafrica.com and IRIN are available at
http://www.africafocus.org/country/togo_news.php
and
http://www.africafocus.org/country/togo_irin.php

The commentary cited above, “No Business as Usual for Baby
Eyadema,” is from the Pan-African Postcard by Tajudeen Abdul-
Raheem, General Secretary of the Pan-African Movement and co-
director of Justice Africa. It is available at
http://www.justiceafrica.org/postcard.htm, as well as on
http://www.pambazuka.org

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Many thanks to those subscribers who have recently sent in
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And a reminder to others that this free service depends on those
among you who are able and willing to support it. See
http://www.africafocus.org/support.php for details.

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AU Condemns ‘Military Coup’, Suspends Togo

African Union (Addis Ababa)

Press Release By Peace and Security Council

February 25, 2005

Addis Ababa

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU), at
its twenty-fifth meeting, held on 25 February 2005, adopted the
following decision on the situation in Togo.

Council,

1. Reiterates AU’s strong condemnation of the military coup d’état
which took place in Togo and the constitutional modifications
intended to legally window dress the coup d’état, as well as its
rejection of any election that would be organized under the
conditions enunciated by the de facto authorities in Togo;

2. Demands the return to constitutional legality, which entails the
resignation of Mr. Faure Gnassingbé and the respect of the
provisions of the Togolese Constitution regarding the succession of
power;

3. Confirms the suspension of de facto authorities in Togo and
their representatives from participation in the activities of all
the organs of the African Union until such a time when
constitutional legality is restored in the country and requests the
Commission to ensure the scrupulous implementation of this measure;

4. Endorses the sanctions imposed by ECOWAS on the de facto
authorities in Togo and requests all Member States to scrupulously
implement these sanctions;

5. Mandates ECOWAS, in close coordination with the current Chairman
of the AU and the Chairperson of the Commission, to take all such
measures as it deems necessary to restore constitutional legality
in Togo within the shortest time;

6. Requests the Chairperson of the Commission to formally contact
the United Nations Secretary General and Security Council, the
European Union (EU), the International Organisation of la
Francophonie (OIF) and the other AU partners to lend their
unflinching support to the sanctions imposed by ECOWAS and the
initiatives of African leaders aimed at resolving the crisis
resulting from the coup d’état that took place in Togo;

7. Encourages the AU Commission and the ECOWAS Executive
Secretariat to agree on a mechanism for monitoring strict
compliance with the sanctions against de facto authorities in Togo
and to determine the political measures that need to be taken to
backstop the stabilization and reconciliation process in Togo once
constitutional legality is re-established, including more
specifically the holding of free, fair and all inclusive elections.
In this respect, Council stresses the primacy of the rule of law
and the need for the political leaders of Togo to agree on a
consensual management of the transitional period;

8. Decides to remain seized of the situation and to re-examine it
in light of new developments and the decisions that may be taken by
the de facto authorities in Togo.

*************************************************************

Position Paper of the Togolese Civil Society and Diaspora
Organizations’ on the Political Crisis in Togo

(http://www.diastode.org, February, 2005)

February 19, 2005

The death of Gnassingbe Eyadema on February 5th, 2005, after 38
years in power is a real opportunity for a democratic transition in
Togo. The internal civil society and Diaspora organizations are
mobilized, with the whole population of the country in order to use
efficiently this opportunity. But the decision by the Army to put
in power Faure Gnassingbé, in violation of the national
constitution is an unacceptable situation.

The National Congress of the Civil society and the Togolese
Diaspora for Democracy and Development, in the face of this
situation, called for a general mobilization of the Togolese
society and appealed for support of the international community.

The Current Situation in Togo

Three decades of dictatorship and fifteen years of unsuccessful use
of almost every traditional popular peaceful actions and strategies
for political change have severely exhausted the Togolese
populations and radicalized their attitude to the Eyadema regime.
The death of Eyadema offers a unique opportunity for a long lasting
solution of the political crisis that has paralyzed Togo for almost
four decades and has excluded it from the international community
for over ten years now.

The vast mobilization of the civil society and the Diaspora is
meant to attract the attention of the national and international
community, as well as of the heirs of dictator Eyadema that time
has come for a radical and sustainable resolution of the political
crisis and for an effective ending of dictatorial rule in Togo.

In order to consolidate their illegal power, Faure Gnassingbe and
his accomplices declared a state of emergency, sent out the
military to occupy public spaces, intimidate the populations and
prevent them from uprising and demonstrating. As a consequence, all
the demonstrations that have been organized during the last week
have been impeded or cracked down by the military; the most
remarkable use of the army was that of Saturday February 12th which
killed six civil society activists and wounded hundreds.

Another alarming fact is that the RPT party has started
distributing weapons to its private paramilitary groups and
militiamen commonly known as the death squadrons. The most probable
purpose of this act is to prepare their militia for the execution
of a mass murder plan against the democratic organizations that
will not wait too long: As the international community may well
see; and; drawing lessons from what happened in Rwanda and other
civil war zones of Africa; the situation in Togo is rapidly
deteriorating and may be expected to worsen within days.

Faure Gnassingbe and his junta’s lack of respect for the African
Union, the ECOWAS and the entire international community has
reinforced and justified the Togolese people’s radical rejection of
him and those who want to impose him as the next president of Togo.
As almost every traditional means of political resistance used by
the pro-democracy people’s organizations have failed in face of the
illegal government, one may fear that they be brought to reach/opt
for armed resistance, which is also recognized by article 150 of
our constitution. The Togolese people’s thirst for freedom and
democracy has been repressed to such a degree that leaves them no
other choices than radical positions; for they have come to the
conclusion that only an armed resistance can force Eyadema’s regime
to yield power to the people.

We highly value and appreciate the leading role that the African
Union, ECOWAS and the Nigerian government are playing in the
international condemnation and pressure against the illegal
government, and hope that this will continue under the form of a
military intervention to reestablish constitutional order, should
the illegal government maintain its strategy of terror, human
rights abuses, violation of democratic principles, and their
disrespect for international institutions. By violently repressing
popular pressure for a return to the constitution for a worthwhile
transition, the putsch by Faure Gnassingbe and his aides has
brought the political tension to its highest point since the 1992
general strike.

The Position of the Civil Society and the Diaspora

The internal and external civil society of Togo are not involved in
the power dispute. All they want is a quick and sustainable return
of their country to normality that provides a safe environment for
social, political, and economic life in which fair elections will
be organized, with an army and security force that respects the
constitution and truly protects the population in a stable and
prosperous country within a peaceful West-Africa.

In the face of the acute crisis generated by the coup perpetrated
by Faure Gnassingbe, backed by his group of military supporters,
and their defiant attitude vis-à-vis the national and international
communities, the Togolese people and the African community are
before a series of crucial challenges that have to be dealt with
promptly and efficiently:

1- Convince the authors of the brute coup which constitutes an
insult to Africa and to democracy to reverse and free the way to a
legitimate succession to the late president Eyadema.

2- Protect the Togolese citizens and the West African region from
bloodshed and social unrest induced by the strategy of terror used
by the putchists in their attempt to strangle any protest and the
probable military rebellion it will inevitably pave the way for as
the only alternative mean of opposition.

3- Reform and build a renewed, professional and republican National
Army freed from tribalism, the syndrome of electoral hijacking and
from lack of professionalism.

4- Create an environment for political, economic and social
stability through a legitimate interim government who will favor a
sustainable good governance through an open and fair electoral
system.

5- Implement national reconciliation and forgiveness of all
political crimes perpetrated during the late Eyadema’s regime while
at the same time enforce justice by prosecuting the instigators and
leaders of the killings and the illegal militias as well as their
neocolonial relays and advisors since 4 February 2005, date of the
coup.

The actual situation in Togo, with a putschistic regime
implementing a strategy of terror, defiant of the African community
and leaders and who tries by all means to buy as much time as
possible through diplomatic masquerades, are far from enabling an
effective tackling of the challenges mentioned above by the
national community alone.

It is the reason why the CNSC and DIASTODE, believe that the
West-African, the African and the International communities should
be more involved in the resolution of the crisis and accompany Togo
in facing those 5 challenges through:

1- The use of diplomacy for 15 days from the day of the coup to
convince the coup authors to renounce their action

2- If after 15 days time the illegal government does not renounce
power and keep on killing peaceful demonstrators and implementing
the terror strategy, we believe the only efficient dissuasive and
bloodless means will remain an African Union Military Mission
aiming at securing the premises for a legitimate government,
protecting the civilian population and encouraging the loyal
military personnel to joint the people’s side.

3- Reform and modernize the National Army with the assistance of
the above-mentioned African Union Military Mission, so as to ensure
that the army will not interfere in the electoral process and will
improve in professionalism

4- Establish a National Unity Interim Government comprising all
main political groups including the former ruling party; with the
aim of facilitating the holding of free and fair general elections
organized by a United Nation’s Electoral Mission in Togo and
supervised by ECOWAS, the AU and the EU. The interim government,
whose members should renounce running for upcoming elections,
should be backed by an Interim Parliament inclusive of all
political tendencies.

5- Implement a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission backed
by an African Union Political Support Mission in Togo. However, the
authors of all political crimes perpetrated after 4 February 2005
and their national and international accomplices should be brought
before the relevant national and international tribunals.

Our Organizations

The Togolese civil society is formed by both organizations and
social movements from the country and the Diaspora. This duality is
due to the fact that many activists of the civil society,
persecuted by the regime have been forced into exile. The most
important alliance of non partisan democrats in Togo is formed by
the National Congress of the Civil Society (CNSC-Togo) and the
Togolese Diaspora for Democracy and Development (DIASTODE). For
several years, the two organizations are co-operating for
democratic change in Togo. Their commitment in the social
mobilization facing the new political situation is decisive.

1) The CNSC-Togo

Founded in June 2002, the National Congress of the Civil Society is
a network of NGOs, community development associations, trade
unions, women coalitions, religious groups, students organizations,
etc dedicated to democracy, human rights and development. Since
then, CNSC has taken a leading role in the civic commitment for
democracy. More than 150 organizations are affiliated to the CNSC.

Since its creation, the CNSC has initiated various actions
regarding citizen mobilization for the political change.

- June 2002 May 2003: National Program for citizen mobilization;

- March 2003: International Colloquium on the political crisis in
Togo (Dakar, Senegal);

- June 2003: creation of the CONEL, an Independent National Council
for the Monitoring of the June 2003 presidential elections;

- Since January 2004: civil society’s participation in the
political dialogue;

- January-February 2004: Meeting of the internal civil society and
the Diaspora in Porto Novo, Benin, to elaborate and launch
“Alternative Togo,” a Program for the commitment of the Togolese in
the country and in the Diaspora for a sustainable solution to the
ever drifting political crisis.

2) DIASTODE

The Togolese Diaspora for Democracy and Development was created in
1992 in Hull-Canada, in order to coordinate the Togolese Diaspora
groups. DIASTODE includes organizations from various countries
where the community is important, such as Germany, France, Canada,
USA, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Italy,
Spain, United Kingdom, Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, South Africa,
etc.

DIASTODE has organized several activities, involving the Togolese
Diaspora in the democratization process in Togo.

- Publication of the document, “Pourquoi Eyadema doit partir” (Why
Eyadema must quit power);

- Advocacy and diplomatic actions in favor of the democratic
process in Togo;

- Colloquia, conferences and open discussions on the political
situation in Togo;

- Financial and judicial support for persecuted journalists,
scholars at risk; and human rights activists.

- Financial and logistic support to the CONEL, the Independent
National Council for the Monitoring of the June 2003 presidential
elections

- Financial support to internal civil society congress, for the
implementation of various initiatives toward political change;

- Information and communication of the Togolese and international
opinion.

Since 2003, DIASTODE and CNSC have engaged in common programs for
an effective citizens’ participation in the democratization
process.

Additional References

Valuable information and supporting evidence on the situation in
Togo can be found on the following web sites:

http://www.diastode.org
http://www.togodebout.com
http://www.letogolais.com
http://www.icilome.com
http://www.togoforum.com
http://www.ablodeblibo-togo.com
http://www.amnesty.org
http://www.fidh.org
http://www.afp.fr

Posted at 10:23 PM · Comments (0)

Take the following as a health warning. I’ve spent the last month in
South Africa, but I was not reporting from there. I was in the country
on a writing break, with my ears and eyes open, but without ever using
my notebook in anger. What I picked up were impressions, rather than a
firm, detailed analysis. I know, as the nerds like to say, that the
plural of anecdote is not data - and what I have very much falls into
the former category. That’s the disclaimer. Here’s the unscientific
conclusion: I was disappointed.

I fall into the generation for whom apartheid was the dominant
international cause of our youth. If baby-boomers were galvanised by
Vietnam, then those who came of age in the 1980s were inspired by the
campaign to transform South Africa. Even if we were not manning the
24-hour picket at Trafalgar Square, apartheid formed a kind of backdrop
to the times. Cry Freedom was on at the movies, Free Nelson Mandela was
the anthem at every college disco. What Thatcherism was at home,
apartheid was abroad: the issue of the age.

That was nearly two decades ago. I assumed that a trip in the winter of
2005 would be to a wholly different country, with apartheid and all its
works a bad, fading memory. That’s where I was wrong.

Of course, and as everyone knows, the formal structures of that dreaded
system have long gone. The country is ruled by its second black
president; “Whites Only” signs are to be found behind glass in a museum
and nowhere else.

And yet, the rainbow nation, the “new South Africa” so constantly
invoked and effectively publicised, proved elusive. What I found, during
what one scholar calls the “banal encounters” of day-to-day life, was a
set-up remarkably like the one I had imagined back when I was a student
shaking a bucket for the anti-apartheid movement.

If you saw a smart car, its driver was white. If you saw a smart house,
its owner was white. Its cleaner and gardener were black. This was not
“many” or “most”. This was all. After a while, I made a little wager
with myself. Would I see, at any point in nearly four weeks in the
country, a white person serving a black person? I looked hard - at
restaurants, at petrol stations, in bars, in shops, in banks. I never
saw it. Not once. I looked at magazine covers and window-displays in
clothing stores. White, white, white. Occasionally, there would be a
token black face, usually very light-skinned.

I would ask white South Africans I met about this. Sometimes they would
be defensive, insisting that Britain or America were not much better.
It’s true: photo displays at Gap or Marks & Spencer might also have just
one or two black faces. The difference is, Britain has a non-white
population that accounts for no more than 7% of the whole. In the US,
African-Americans make up about 13% of the population. Yet three in four
South Africans are black. Looking around, you’d have thought the reverse
was true: that this was a white country, with a small, tolerated black
minority.

Others would tell me that I needed to get out more and they were surely
right. I did not travel much beyond Cape Town and I am ready to believe
that other cities - with Johannesburg the chief example - are advancing
much more rapidly. Nevertheless, it was striking to see how often,
outside the realms of formal politics, power and privilege remained in
white hands.

Cape Town itself was a shock. It is stunningly beautiful, a city framed
by mountains, two oceans and big, blue skies. All around were people
having relaxed, unending fun. It was not just the tourists: local
people, too, seemed to treat the city as a playground. When they weren’t
surfing or hang-gliding, they were sunbathing or heading off for a round
of golf. During the daytime, the cafes would be full, made noisy with
local accents: people with time on their hands and money in their
pockets. White people to be precise - their tables cleaned, their cars
watched, their shirts ironed, their coffee brewed by black people, most
of them paid a pittance.

Ah, but this is not apartheid, I would be told. It is an economic,
rather than a racial divide - the same gap between rich and poor one
might find in any country. Is California so different, where affluent
whites are pampered by Hispanic maids, janitors and valet parkers? Is
Britain so much better?

Well, yes. Because while economic and racial dividing lines often map on
to each other elsewhere in the world, in South Africa they seemed all
but identical, entrenched by a long political history that makes
movement across the divide punishingly difficult. I know there is a
white working class in the country and that, conversely, a few black
entrepreneurs are now emerging. But the overwhelming picture is of a
society where the goodies are still hoarded by one group - and withheld
from everyone else.

The government is doing its best, with a Black Economic Empowerment
programme designed to spread the spoils more fairly. That has run into
trouble though, with accusations that the chief beneficiaries have
tended to be friends of the ruling elite, shutting out the majority of
black South Africans. (On this point, one of the loudest critics has
been the president’s own brother, Moeletsi Mbeki.)

Nor is it encouraging that the African National Congress seems to have
developed a thin skin when it comes to criticism. While I was there,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was locked in a very public row with the ruling
party. He accused the president of surrounding himself with yes-men,
rewarding only sycophancy and punishing dissent. Mbeki shot back,
questioning Tutu’s respect for the truth and his right to speak about
internal ANC matters when he is not a member. Later, the party branded
Tutu an “icon” of whites, as if he were no longer an authentic black
leader. It does not amount to a full case of Mugabe syndrome, far from
it. But these are uncomfortable warning signs.

Of course, any fair account has to recognise, as a just-published state
of the nation survey does, that South Africa has made enormous strides
in the 11 years since apartheid. The country did not descend into civil
war, and it is more peaceful and more prosperous than the sceptics ever
predicted.

Nevertheless, my experience has forced me to think again about the pace
of political change. While I was in South Africa, Nelson Mandela marked
the 15th anniversary of his release from jail. I remember watching that
moment on television along with the rest of the world. I thought then
that the end of apartheid would bring an end to the crude inequality
that made blacks the servants of whites. A decade and a half later and
it has not. Change, I realise, is glacially slow. As Paul Foot wrote in
his last book, revolutions do not take hours or weeks but many years -
and sometimes even longe

Posted at 10:21 PM · Comments (0)

This is a fascinating conversation about the strategic future from the January/February 2005 Foreign Policy magazine…

Is China more interested in money than missiles? Will the United States seek to contain China as it once contained the Soviet Union? Zbigniew Brzezinski and John Mearsheimer go head-to-head on whether these two great powers are destined to fight it out.

Make Money, Not War - By Zbigniew Brzezinski

Today in East Asia, China is rising—peacefully so far. For understandable reasons, China harbors resentment and even humiliation about some chapters of its history. Nationalism is an important force, and there are serious grievances regarding external issues, notably Taiwan. But conflict is not inevitable or even likely. China’s leadership is not inclined to challenge the United States militarily, and its focus remains on economic development and winning acceptance as a great power.

China is preoccupied, and almost fascinated, with the trajectory of its own ascent. When I met with the top leadership not long ago, what struck me was the frequency with which I was asked for predictions about the next 15 or 20 years. Not long ago, the Chinese Politburo invited two distinguished, Western-trained professors to a special meeting. Their task was to analyze nine major powers since the 15th century to see why they rose and fell. It’s an interesting exercise for the top leadership of a massive and complex country.

This focus on the experience of past great powers could lead to the conclusion that the iron laws of political theory and history point to some inevitable collision or conflict. But there are other political realities. In the next five years, China will host several events that will restrain the conduct of its foreign policy. The 2008 Olympic Games is the most important, of course. The scale of the economic and psychological investment in the Beijing games is staggering. My expectation is that they will be magnificently organized. And make no mistake, China intends to win at the Olympics. A second date is 2010, when China will hold the World Expo in Shanghai. Successfully organizing these international gatherings is important to China and suggests that a cautious foreign policy will prevail.

More broadly, China is determined to sustain its economic growth. A confrontational foreign policy could disrupt that growth, harm hundreds of millions of Chinese, and threaten the Communist Party’s hold on power. China’s leadership appears rational, calculating, and conscious not only of China’s rise but also of its continued weakness.

There will be inevitable frictions as China’s regional role increases and as a Chinese “sphere of influence” develops. U.S. power may recede gradually in the coming years, and the unavoidable decline in Japan’s influence will heighten the sense of China’s regional preeminence. But to have a real collision, China needs a military that is capable of going toe-to-toe with the United States. At the strategic level, China maintains a posture of minimum deterrence. Forty years after acquiring nuclear-weapons technology, China has just 24 ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. Even beyond the realm of strategic warfare, a country must have the capacity to attain its political objectives before it will engage in limited war. It is hard to envisage how China could promote its objectives when it is acutely vulnerable to a blockade and isolation enforced by the United States. In a conflict, Chinese maritime trade would stop entirely. The flow of oil would cease, and the Chinese economy would be paralyzed.

I have the sense that the Chinese are cautious about Taiwan, their fierce talk notwithstanding. Last March, a Communist Party magazine noted that “we have basically contained the overt threat of Taiwanese independence since [President] Chen [Shuibian] took office, avoiding a worst-case scenario and maintaining the status of Taiwan as part of China.” A public opinion poll taken in Beijing at the same time found that 58 percent thought military action was unnecessary. Only 15 percent supported military action to “liberate” Taiwan.

Of course, stability today does not ensure peace tomorrow. If China were to succumb to internal violence, for example, all bets are off.

If sociopolitical tensions or social inequality becomes unmanageable, the leadership might be tempted to exploit nationalist passions. But the small possibility of this type of catastrophe does not weaken my belief that we can avoid the negative consequences that often accompany the rise of new powers. China is clearly assimilating into the international system. Its leadership appears to realize that attempting to dislodge the United States would be futile, and that the cautious spread of Chinese influence is the surest path to global preeminence.

Better to Be Godzilla than Bambi - By John J. Mearsheimer

China cannot rise peacefully, and if it continues its dramatic economic growth over the next few decades, the United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war. Most of China’s neighbors, including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, and Vietnam, will likely join with the United States to contain China’s power.

To predict the future in Asia, one needs a theory that explains how rising powers are likely to act and how other states will react to them. My theory of international politics says that the mightiest states attempt to establish hegemony in their own region while making sure that no rival great power dominates another region. The ultimate goal of every great power is to maximize its share of world power and eventually dominate the system.

The international system has several defining characteristics. The main actors are states that operate in anarchy—which simply means that there is no higher authority above them. All great powers have some offensive military capability, which means that they can hurt each other. Finally, no state can know the future intentions of other states with certainty. The best way to survive in such a system is to be as powerful as possible, relative to potential rivals. The mightier a state is, the less likely it is that another state will attack it.

The great powers do not merely strive to be the strongest great power, although that is a welcome outcome. Their ultimate aim is to be the hegemon—the only great power in the system. But it is almost impossible for any state to achieve global hegemony in the modern world, because it is too hard to project and sustain power around the globe. Even the United States is a regional but not a global hegemon. The best outcome that a state can hope for is to dominate its own backyard.

States that gain regional hegemony have a further aim: to prevent other geographical areas from being dominated by other great powers. Regional hegemons, in other words, do not want peer competitors. Instead, they want to keep other regions divided among several great powers so that these states will compete with each other. In 1991, shortly after the Cold War ended, the first Bush administration boldly stated that the United States was now the most powerful state in the world and planned to remain so. That same message appeared in the famous National Security Strategy issued by the second Bush administration in September 2002. This document’s stance on preemptive war generated harsh criticism, but hardly a word of protest greeted the assertion that the United States should check rising powers and maintain its commanding position in the global balance of power.

China is likely to try to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. Specifically, China will strive to maximize the power gap between itself and its neighbors, especially Japan and Russia, and to ensure that no state in Asia can threaten it.

It is unlikely that China will go on a rampage and conquer other Asian countries. Instead, China will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries, much the way the United States does in the Americas. An increasingly powerful China is also likely to try to push the United States out of Asia, much the way the United States pushed the European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere. Not incidentally, gaining regional hegemony is probably the only way that China will get back Taiwan.

Why should we expect China to act differently than the United States? U.S. policymakers, after all, react harshly when other great powers send military forces into the Western Hemisphere. These foreign forces are invariably seen as a potential threat to American security. Are the Chinese more principled, more ethical, less nationalistic, or less concerned about their survival than Westerners? They are none of these things, which is why China is likely to imitate the United States and attempt to become a regional hegemon. China’s leadership and people remember what happened in the last century, when Japan was powerful and China was weak. In the anarchic world of international politics, it is better to be Godzilla than Bambi.

It is clear from the historical record how American policymakers will react if China attempts to dominate Asia. The United States does not tolerate peer competitors. As it demonstrated in the 20th century, it is determined to remain the world’s only regional hegemon. Therefore, the United States will seek to contain China and ultimately weaken it to the point where it is no longer capable of dominating Asia. In essence, the United States is likely to behave toward China much the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Nukes Change Everything - Zbigniew Brzezinski responds.

As an occasional scholar, I am impressed by the power of theory. But theory—at least in international relations—is essentially retrospective. When something happens that does not fit the theory, it gets revised. And I suspect that will happen in the U.S.-China relationship.

We live in a very different world than the one in which hegemonic powers could go to war without erasing each other as societies. The nuclear age has altered power politics in a way that was already evident in the U.S.-Soviet competition. The avoidance of direct conflict in that standoff owed much to weaponry that makes the total elimination of societies part of the escalating dynamic of war. It tells you something that the Chinese are not trying to acquire the military capabilities to take on the United States.

How great powers behave is not predetermined. If the Germans and the Japanese had not conducted themselves the way they did, their regimes might not have been destroyed. Germany was not required to adopt the policy it did in 1914 (indeed, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck followed a very different path). The Japanese in 1941 could have directed their expansionism toward Russia rather than Britain and the United States. For its part, the Chinese leadership appears much more flexible and sophisticated than many previous aspirants to great power status.

Showing the United States the Door - John J. Mearsheimer responds.

The dichotomy that you raised between theory and political reality is an important one. The reason that we have to privilege theory over political reality is that we cannot know what political reality is going to look like in the year 2025. You mentioned that you traveled to China recently and talked to Chinese leaders who appear to be much more prudent about Taiwan than the conventional wisdom has it. That may be true, but it’s largely irrelevant. The key issue is, What are the Chinese leaders and people going to think about Taiwan in 2025? We have no way of knowing. So today’s political realities get washed out of the equation, and what really matters is the theory that one employs to predict the future.

You also argue that China’s desire for continued economic growth makes conflict with the United States unlikely. One of the principal reasons that China has been so successful economically over the past 20 years is that it has not picked a fight with the United States. But that logic should have applied to Germany before World War I and to Germany and Japan before World War II. By 1939, the German economy was growing strongly, yet Hitler started World War II. Japan started conflict in Asia despite its impressive economic growth. Clearly there are factors that sometimes override economic considerations and cause great powers to start wars—even when it hurts them economically.

It is also true that China does not have the military wherewithal to take on the United States. That’s absolutely correct—for now. But again, what we are talking about is the situation in 2025 or 2030, when China has the military muscle to take on the United States. What happens then, when China has a much larger gross national product and a much more formidable military than it has today? The history of great powers offers a straightforward answer: China will try to push the Americans out of Asia and dominate the region. And if it succeeds, it will be in an ideal situation to deal with Taiwan.

America’s Staying Power - Zbigniew Brzezinski responds.

How can China push the United States out of East Asia? Or, more pointedly, how can China push the United States out of Japan? And if the United States were somehow pushed out of Japan or decided to leave on its own, what would the Japanese do? Japan has an impressive military program and, in a matter of months, it could have a significant nuclear deterrent. Frankly, I doubt that China could push the United States out of Asia. But even if it could, I don’t think it would want to live with the consequences: a powerful, nationalistic, and nuclear-armed Japan.

Of course, tensions over Taiwan are the most worrisome strategic danger. But any Chinese military planner has to take into account the likelihood that even if China could overrun Taiwan, the United States would enter the conflict. That prospect vitiates any political calculus justifying a military operation until and unless the United States is out of the picture. And the United States will not be out of the picture for a long, long time.

It’s Not a Pretty Picture - John J. Mearsheimer responds.

If the Chinese are smart, they will not pick a fight over Taiwan now. This is not the time. What they should do is concentrate on building their economy to the point where it is bigger than the U.S. economy. Then they can translate that economic strength into military might and create a situation where they are in a position to dictate terms to states in the region and to give the United States all sorts of trouble.

From China’s point of view, it would be ideal to dominate Asia, and for Brazil, Argentina, or Mexico to became a great power and force the United States to concentrate on its own region. The great advantage the United States has at the moment is that no state in the Western Hemisphere can threaten its survival or security interests. So the United States is free to roam the world causing trouble in other people’s backyards. Other states, including China of course, have a vested interest in causing trouble in the United States’ backyard to keep it focused there. The picture I have painted is not a pretty one. I wish I could tell a more optimistic story about the future, but international politics is a nasty and dangerous business. No amount of good will can ameliorate the intense security competition that will set in as an aspiring hegemon appears in Asia.

Zbigniew Brzezinski is a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison distinguished service professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he codirects the Program in International Security Policy. He is the author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).

Posted at 1:17 AM · Comments (0)

When a once-in-a-century natural disaster swept away the lives of more than 100,000 poor Asians last December, the developed world opened its hearts and its checkbooks. Yet when it comes to Africa, where hundreds of thousands of poor men, women and children die needlessly each year from preventable diseases, or unnatural disasters like civil wars, much of the developed world seems to have a heart of stone.
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Not every African state is failing. Most are not. But the continent’s most troubled regions - including Somalia and Sudan in the east, Congo in the center, Zimbabwe in the south and Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone in the west - challenge not only our common humanity, but global security as well. The lethal combination of corrupt or destructive leaders, porous and unmonitored borders and rootless or hopeless young men has made some of these regions incubators of international terrorism and contagious diseases like AIDS. Others are sanctuaries for swindlers and drug traffickers whose victims can be found throughout the world.

In many of these places, poverty and unemployment and the desperation they spawn leave young men vulnerable to the lure of terrorist organizations, which, beyond offering two meals a day, also provide a target to vent their anger at rich societies, which they are led to believe view them with condescension and treat them with contempt. Training camps for Islamic extremists are now thought to be sprouting like anthills on the savanna.

“America is committed not only to the campaign against terrorism in a military sense, but the campaign against poverty, the campaign against illiteracy and ignorance.” Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that. Well, America launched its war on terror after Sept. 11, but did not bother to look at some of the deeper causes of global instability. This country is going to spend more than $400 billion on the military this year, and another $100 billion or so for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that amount is never going to buy Americans peace if the government continues to spend an anemic $16 billion - the Pentagon budget is 25 times that size - in foreign aid that addresses the plight of the poorest of the world’s poor.
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For decades, most Americans either have preferred not to hear about these problems, or, blanching at the scope of the human tragedy, have thrown up their hands. But in terms of the kind of money the West thinks nothing of spending, on such things as sports and entertainment extravaganzas, not to speak of defense budgets, meeting many of Africa’s most urgent needs seems shockingly affordable. What has been missing is the political will.

This year, there is a real chance of scrounging up, and then mobilizing, this political will. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has stood resolutely by President Bush at Mr. Blair’s own political peril through the war in Iraq, has staked Britain’s presidency of the Group of 8 industrial nations this year on tackling poverty in Africa. Mr. Blair wants his ally, Mr. Bush, to stand beside him at the coming G-8 summit meeting at Gleneagles in Scotland this July. After the G-8 meeting there will be a United Nations summit meeting in New York in September, where the world’s leaders will examine progress made toward reaching the Millennium Development Goals of cutting global poverty in half by 2015. Chief among those goals was that developed countries like America, Britain and France would work toward giving 0.7 percent of their national incomes for development aid for poor countries.

If the progress made so far is any guide, it is going to be a short meeting. While Britain is about halfway to the goal, at 0.34 percent, and France is at 0.41 percent, America remains near rock bottom, at 0.18 percent. Undoubtedly, President Bush will point to his Millennium Challenge Account when he attends the summit meeting. He will be correct in saying that his administration has given more annually in foreign aid than the Clinton administration in sheer dollars. His Millennium Challenge Account was supposed to increase United States assistance to poor countries that are committed to policies promoting development. This is a worthy endeavor, but it has three big problems.
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First, neither the administration nor Congress has come anywhere close to financing the program fully. Second, the program, announced back in 2002, has yet to disburse a single dollar.

Most important, relying mostly on programs like the Millennium Challenge Account, which tie foreign aid to good governance, condemns millions of Africans who have dreadful governments (Liberia, Congo, Ivory Coast) or no government (Somalia) to die. No donor nation is, or should be, willing to direct money to despotic, thieving or incompetent governments likely to misspend it or divert it to the personal bank accounts of their leaders. Strict international criteria of political accountability, financial transparency and development-friendly social and economic policies need to be established and enforced, not just by outside donors but by prominent and influential African leaders, like South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki.

Help for people living under governments that fail these criteria will have to be channeled mainly through international and nongovernmental organizations. Bypassed governments will not like this, but they cannot be allowed to stand in the way of outside help to the victims of their misrule. It is not the fault of Africa’s millions of refugees that warring armies have burned their villages and fields and driven them into unsafe and disease-ridden camps, like those in the Darfur region of Sudan. And no fair-minded person would blame the victims of callous and destructive governments, like Zimbabwe’s, for the economic and social misery they create.

In the next few months, Mr. Bush could take a giant step towards altering the way the world views America by joining Mr. Blair in pushing for more help in Africa. It’s past time; the continent is dying. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is anything but, some 1,000 people die every day of preventable diseases like malaria and diarrhea. That’s the equivalent of a tsunami every five months, in that one country alone. Throughout the continent of Africa, thousands of people die needlessly every day from diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
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One hundred years ago, before we had the medical know-how to eradicate these illnesses, this might have been acceptable. But we are the first generation able to afford to end poverty and the diseases it spawns. It’s past time we step up to the plate. We are all responsible for choosing to view the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia as more deserving of our help than the malaria victims in Africa. Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who heads the United Nations’ Millennium Development Project to end global poverty, rightly takes issue with the press in his book “The End of Poverty”: “Every morning,” Mr. Sachs writes, “our newspapers could report, ‘More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.’ “

So, on this page, we’d like to make a first step.

Yesterday, more than 20,000 people perished of extreme poverty.

Posted at 10:17 PM · Comments (0)

This from a student named Jesse at Wesleyan University. Connect your wallets to your hearts.

I thought you would want to know about a project put together by a bunch of Wesleyan University seniors to raise money for the victims of the genocide in Darfur.  “ASAP: the Afrobeat Sudan Aid Project” is a compilation of mostly modern-day Afrobeat tracks (except for a classic Tony Allen track featuring Fela himself!) by artists from around the globe, who all donated their material to the project, which was sponsored initially by non-profit TrueMajority.org (founded by Ben Cohen).  The project has already raised over $100,000 for an Oxfam-affiliated charity based locally in Darfur to assist refugees with food, water, medicine, and shelter. You can order the CD online from the website: www.modiba.net.

Posted at 1:01 AM · Comments (0)

This is, unsurprisingly given the source, really incisive commentary on music from a genius.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times

IT was one of the coldest days of the winter and the guitarist Pat Metheny was only a few minutes late, but he had called ahead. When he arrived at our meeting place, a small recording studio within Right Track Studios in Midtown Manhattan, he arranged his stuff on the couch - including some musical scores - and sat down in a swivel chair before the 96-channel console. Mr. Metheny grew up in the rural Midwest but seems Californian: he has the inner glow. He had no socks on and looked comfortable.

“Basically, it’s impossible,” he said flatly, and smiled. “My taste, my general connection to music, I mean, you know, it just, I mean, even now, I think it just can’t be done.”

My proposal was that we listen together to a few pieces of music (not his) that affected him strongly. It could be any music: the point wasn’t desert-island endorsements or a strict autobiography of influence; it was to talk about how music works. I had defined “a few” as three, or even one long piece, like a whole record. But Mr. Metheny took the challenge seriously.

“For me to say I’m going to build a case that describes something, under the guise of, you know, three songs - it actually shuts me down a little bit,” he said, seeming pained. “The whole idea of style and genre is actually something I’ve willfully resisted from the very early stage. So if I pick this and then I pick that, it creates these two pillars. But I think I know what you’re looking for, which has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”

He began to warm up. “I don’t think too much about stuff like this, and it’s been kind of a musical psychoanalysis. Most musicians are occasionally asked to put together their 10 favorite albums, but you’re looking for the undercurrents to it all.”

“You’ve got it perfectly,” I said.

He produced a disc, onto which he had burned six pieces of music. “Well, then, let’s start with Sonny Rollins and Paul Bley.”

Dealing with great jazz improvisers often means dealing with masters of certainty: people who for most of their lives have been trusting their impulses to make things up on the spot. Mr. Metheny, 51, extends that certainty to talking, exhaustively, about music - both in specifics and at a conceptual or historical remove.

He is ecumenical and opinionated, practical and quite idealistic, a cheery defender of his own causes. Although he is a jazz musician at the core and is generally thought of as such, he does not believe his purpose in life is to further the cause of the guitar in jazz, or even of jazz itself.

On the telephone before we met, I had asked him whether he would be talking about a lot of guitarists.

“The guitar for me is a translation device,” he answered. “It’s not a goal. And in some ways jazz isn’t a destination for me. For me, jazz is a vehicle that takes you to the true destination - a musical one that describes all kinds of stuff about the human condition and the way music works.”

…

Sonny and Hawkins

In 1963 Sonny Rollins made a fascinatingly tense record with his saxophone-playing role model, Coleman Hawkins. Called “Sonny Meets Hawk!,” the recording had an almost transparently psychological subtext: Mr. Rollins wasn’t trying to best or outsmart Hawkins so much as to be very, very himself, with all possible eccentricities, in the face of his idol’s magnificence.

“He was a young guy at the time,” Mr. Metheny marveled, listening to Mr. Rollins’s emphatic, darting lines in “All the Things You Are,” harmonically at odds with Hawkins’s, on the opening chorus. “That feeling is such a great feeling - like ‘I can play anything, and it’s all good.’ Not to analyze it, but Hawk was kind of like his father. And it’s like Sonny’s saying, “yeah, but … .”

What especially attracts Mr. Metheny to the track, though, is Paul Bley’s piano solo. It is made of elegant, flowing phrases that dance in and around the tonality and the melody of the song; it builds momentum and becomes carried away with itself. Mr. Metheny calls the solo “the shot heard ‘round the world,” in terms of its aftereffects in subsequent jazz, especially through Keith Jarrett. He describes Mr. Bley’s solo as having an “inevitability.”

“His relationship to time,” Mr. Metheny said, “is the best sort of pushing and pulling; wrestling with it and at the same time, phrase by phrase, making these interesting connections between bass and drums, making it seem like it’s a little bit on top, and then now it’s a little bit behind.” (He held an index finger straight up, and moved it slightly to the right and left, like a bubble in a carpenter’s level, or an electronic tuning meter.)

“But there’s also this X factor,” he continued. “It’s the sense of each thing leading very naturally to the next thing. He’s letting each idea go to its own natural conclusion. He’s reconciling that with a form, of course, that we all know very well. And he’s following the harmony, but he’s not. It just feels like, ‘Why didn’t anybody else do that before?’ “

There is a plainspokenness, a kind of folkish natural feeling, to Bley’s lines and his harmony, I added. Is the idea of “inevitability” related to that?

“Well, for me,” he answered, “let’s keep jazz as folk music. Let’s not make jazz classical music. Let’s keep it as street music, as people’s everyday-life music. Let’s see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they’re living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around. It’s a cliché, but it’s such a valuable one: something that is the most personal becomes the most universal.”

A Lasting Impression

Next we hear “Seven Steps to Heaven” by Miles Davis, performed live by the Davis Quintet - including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams - in 1964. It is fast and confident, even in its improvised coda; Williams’s drum solo crackles like gunfire, and Davis’s solo is coolly imperious.

“This is the first record I ever got,” Mr. Metheny said, as a prologue. “I got this when I was 11. My older brother Mike, who’s a great trumpet player, had a couple of friends who were starting to get interested in jazz. He brought this record home. I always hear ‘jazz is something you really have to learn about, and you develop a taste for it, and da da da,’ that whole rap. But for me, as an 11-year-old, within 30 seconds of hearing this record” - he snapped his fingers - “I was down for life.”

We listened to it silently. “They were really rushing,” Mr. Metheny said when it finished - meaning the tempo was too fast.

“I know Herbie really well, and I knew Tony very well, too, and I’ve talked with them about what was actually going down that night. They thought it was one of the worst gigs they’d ever done. But I was listening to Tony here. The same way the Bley thing opened up this universe - well, Tony, too. It’s such an incredibly fresh way of thinking of time. It sums up so much of what that period was. The world was about to shift.”

Mr. Metheny redirected his thoughts. “What I was going to talk about is Miles’s solo. It’s this completely invented language that happens to line up perfectly with all the things we now have quantified in jazz, in terms of its language and grammar. It wasn’t quantified then, as it is now, that if you see this kind of chord, you’re going to play this set of notes. This is not an easy tune. It’s not like playing on a blues. It moves around a couple of keys, then a bridge, does a weird move that you’ve got to deal with. He deals with it in such an abstract, hip way. It’s melody, and it has this whole thing of glue - the way ideas are connected with other ideas on a phrase-by-phrase basis.”

Davis had to slow down his imagination to a much calmer tempo than the song’s, I suggested, to imply so much swing in each note and phrase.

Mr. Metheny took a deep breath. “Yeah. You know, that word swing is almost a political buzzword. To me, in the language I’m using here, that’s the glue I’m talking about. The connection of ideas.

“But there’s another way that music connects: with who the person is, the time he’s living in, how he’s able to manifest a sound that represents all that. To me, that’s swing, and it doesn’t have anything to do with jazz.” (His accent renders the word “jee-azz.”)

“Swing is kind of this quality? It exists in human interaction. In the way somebody talks and moves. I find its resonance in architecture, and literature.”

Acting?

“Yeah, acting. And refrigerator repair.”

A Pioneer of Bossa Nova

Mr. Metheny’s popularity jumped to a much higher level in 1979 with his record “American Garage.” For about 15 years afterward, he toured almost constantly, with no roots other than an apartment in Boston that kept the rain off of his answering machine. Now he lives in an Upper West Side high rise, with his French-Moroccan wife, Latifa, and their two young sons, Jeff Kaiis and Nicolas Djakeem.

For a few years during that touring period, he spent a lot of time in Brazil and got to know Antonio Carlos Jobim before the great composer died in 1994. (The influence of Brazilian music on Mr. Metheny, rather than the reverse, is an often-disputed point.) Mr. Metheny wanted to hear “Passarim,” a three-and-a-half minute condensed masterpiece from Jobim’s last album whose words protest environmental pollution; it appears on the CD of the same name in English and Portuguese, and we listened to the Portuguese version.

Mr. Metheny smiled as the music started. “It’s so much more than a tune. This is really like composition. Especially that little bit.” He backed up the disc to where the chorus of female voices, made up of Jobim’s friends and family members, repeated lines over descending and shifting harmony.

Jobim’s catarrhal voice re-entered. “See, you could call this part the bridge,” Mr. Metheny observed, “except that it keeps spinning off into this other stuff, kind of like in ‘Desafinado.’ It should end there, after he’s finished, but it doesn’t, and it goes into this whole other thing. Then it keeps modulating into these different keys.”

The music suddenly shifted from bossa to waltz time. “This is so advanced,” he said. “The beauty of the harmony - major triads moving down throughout this whole thing, with different kinds of voices. Plus, all that glue, melodic glue: it never stops, from the first note to the end. Where are we now? We’re almost two minutes into the track, and nothing has repeated yet. I mean, that’s advanced the way Paul Bley is advanced. There’s a connection there.”

It works because Jobim’s ideas are complete within themselves, I suggest, and he wills them to fit together, regardless of traditional ideas of structure.

“Yeah,” Mr. Metheny agrees. “It’s like when you first wake up in the morning and you don’t really think about what you’re doing, and maybe you write your best stuff. You’re not in the way. When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them.”

Bringing the Music to Life

After Bley, his hallowed supernova - and then issues of rhythm, melody, harmony and extended composition - Mr. Metheny wanted to talk about touch. He put on Bach’s Fugue No. 22 in B-Flat minor, from the pianist Glenn Gould’s 1965 recording of “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” Book I, and read along from the score.

“B-flat minor, the saddest of all keys,” Mr. Metheny said, at the end. “The main reason I picked this was the way he was able to invoke this almost lyrical, vocal, singing quality from an instrument that doesn’t involve breath. We all have the same mandate, in a way: we try to communicate the kinds of phrases that would be believable if somebody were singing them.”

Part of the reason that some people resist jazz guitar-playing, Mr. Metheny said, is because guitar players don’t convey that sense of breath. “Saxophonists have a very wide dynamic range. They’re dealing with a ratio of about that” - he spread his hands to indicate a foot. “With guitar we have a ratio of about this” - he spread his thumb and index finger to indicate about four inches - “in terms of what we can do with our touch.”

Mr. Metheny talked about how Gould made phrases of music come almost physically alive. “No two notes are ever the same volume. With the guitar, you really have to model in your mind this wider thing; you’re trying to create the illusion of a bigger dynamic range. The guy who defined that, on guitar, was Jim Hall, who opened up five or six degrees of dynamics on both sides by picking softer. He could then make certain things jump out a little bit more.”

Making Every Moment Count

Two hours into the marathon session, Mr. Metheny seemed as fresh as when he came in. Preferring to continue without a break, he produced a snack and kept talking. Near the end, we got around to his favorite guitar solo of all time: Wes Montgomery’s chorus and a half on “If You Could See Me Now,” from “Smokin’ at the Half Note,” recorded in 1965 by the Wynton Kelly Trio with Wes Montgomery.

As a young musician, Mr. Metheny did everything he could to sound like Montgomery, including playing without a pick and improvising parallel lines an octave apart. “But when I was 14 or 15,” he said, “I realized that what I was doing was really disrespectful because that wasn’t me, that was him. I grew up in Lee’s Summit, Mo. I didn’t grow up in New York City. I’m white; I’m not black. I’m from a little town where you couldn’t help but hear country music, and I loved it. I always wanted to address those things with certain notes, qualities of chords, kinds of voice-leading.”

He cued the solo. We listened once, then listened again while he talked.

“This is such an incredibly strong melodic opening,” he said, during the first four bars of the solo, before Montgomery moves into triplet patterns in bars five through eight. “And also, that first phrase is pretty full, like a full speaking voice, but then he’s really soft here. It’s almost like Glenn Gould; every note’s a different volume.”

In the second chorus, the band starts to swing harder, and Montgomery plays powerful, earthy phrases in the second A section. “Then there’s the blues factor in all of this, too, which he just tucks in there,” Mr. Metheny said.

Toward the end of each section, Montgomery forecast the beginning of the next part, building some tension; each time, Mr. Metheny was ecstatic. “He’s starting a new thing, setting it up. And now, look at this” - during the second chorus - “just quarter notes. He gets two or three levels above the time, and then gets right back in the pocket.”

“It’s really hard to play a short solo,” Mr. Metheny said when the track ended. “Like an eight-bar solo. Every single thing about it has to count. And that’s like Bach, almost.”

Posted at 11:21 PM · Comments (0)

Over the last 50 years, we in the west have enjoyed unparalleled economic growth. We have better homes, cars, holidays, jobs, education and above all health. According to standard economic theory, this should have made us happier. But surveys show otherwise. When Britons or Americans are asked how happy they are, they report no improvement over the last 50 years. More people suffer from depression, and crime—another indicator of dissatisfaction—is also much higher.

These facts challenge many of the priorities we have set ourselves both as societies and as individuals. The truth is that we are in a situation previously unknown to man. When most people exist near the breadline, material progress does indeed make them happier. People in the rich world (above, say, $20,000 a head per year) are happier than people in poorer countries, and people in poor countries do become happier as they become richer. But when material discomfort has been banished, extra income becomes much less important than our relationships with each other: with family, with friends and in the community. The danger is that we sacrifice relationships too much in pursuit of higher income.

The desire to be happy is central to our nature. And, following the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, I want a society in which people are as happy as possible and in which each person’s happiness counts equally. That should be the philosophy for our age, the guide for public policy and for individual action. And it should come to replace the intense individualism which has failed to make us happier.

Utilitarianism has, however, been out of fashion for several generations, partly because of the belief that happiness was too unfathomable. In recent years, that has begun to change. The “science” of happiness, which has emerged in the US in the last 20 years, supports the idea that happiness is an objective dimension of experience. (One of its fathers, Daniel Kahneman, won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics.) At every instant we feel good or bad, on a scale that runs from misery to bliss. Our feeling good or bad is affected by many factors, running from physical comfort to our inner sense of meaning. What matters is the totality of our happiness over months and years, not just passing pleasures. The new science may enable us to measure this and try to explain it.

To measure happiness, we can ask a person how happy he is, or we can ask his friends or independent investigators. These reports yield similar results. The breakthrough has been in neuroscience. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin has identified an area in the left front of the brain where good feelings are experienced, and another in the right front where bad feelings are experienced. Activity in these brain areas alters sharply when people have good or bad experiences. Those who describe themselves as happy are more active on the left side than unhappy people, and less active on the right side. So the old behaviourist idea that we cannot know how other people feel is now under attack.

The challenge is to work out what this means for political priorities in free societies like ours. If we accept that governments can and should aim to maximise happiness, rather than simply income, how might this affect specific choices in public policy?

We must start by establishing the key factors affecting a person’s happiness. Family and personal life come top in every study, and work and community life rank high. Health and freedom are also crucial, and money counts too, but in a very specific way.

I will start with money—or more specifically with income tax policy. In any society, richer people are happier than poor people. Yet as a western country becomes richer, its people overall do not become happier. The reason for this is that over time our standards and expectations rise to meet our income. A Gallup poll has asked Americans each year: “What is the smallest amount of money a family of four needs to get along in this community?” The sums mentioned rise in line with average incomes. Since people are always comparing their incomes with what others have, or with what they are used to, they only feel better off if they move up relative to the norm.

This process can have counterproductive effects. I have an incentive to work and earn more: it will make me happier. So do other members of society, who also care about their relative standard of life. Since society as a whole cannot raise its position relative to itself, the effort which its members devote to that end could be said to be a waste—the balance between leisure and work has been shifted “inefficiently” towards work.

To reinforce the case, let me recast it in terms of status, which may derive as much from the earning of income as the spending of it. People work, in part at least, to improve their status. But status is a system of ranking: one, two, three and so on. So if one person improves his status, someone else loses an equal amount. It is a zero-sum game: private life sacrificed in order to increase status is a waste from the point of view of society as a whole. That is why the rat race is so destructive: we lose family life and peace of mind in pursuing something whose total cannot be altered.

Or so we would—if we had no income taxes. But income taxes discourage work. Most economists consider this a disadvantage. They say that when someone pays £100 in taxes, it hurts more than that—it has an “excess burden”—because of the distortion away from work. But without taxes there would be an inefficient distortion towards work. So taxes up to a certain level can help to improve the work-life balance of citizens and thus increase the overall sense of wellbeing in a society. They operate like a tax on pollution. When I earn more and adopt a more expensive lifestyle, this puts pressure on others to keep up—my action raises the norm and makes them less satisfied with what they have. I am like the factory owner who pours out his soot on to the neighbours’ laundry. And the classic economic remedy for pollution is to make the polluter pay.

People sometimes object to this argument on the grounds that it is pandering to envy or preventing self-improvement. It is true that such measures do reduce some kinds of freedom. But we cannot just wish away the pervasiveness of status comparisons; the desire for status is wired into our genes. Studies of monkeys show how it works: when a male monkey is moved from a group where he is top into a group where his status is lower, his brain experiences a sharp fall in serotonin—the neurotransmitter most clearly associated with happiness. So if the human status race is dysfunctional—from the point of view of the overall happiness in society—it makes sense to reduce freedom a small amount through taxation policy.

Those who want to cut taxes should explain why they think we should work harder and sacrifice our family and community life in pursuit of a zero-sum status race. They may say that hard work is good for the consumer. But workers are the same people as consumers. There is no point killing ourselves at work in the interest of ourselves as consumers.

And there is another consideration: if we work harder and raise our standard of living, we first appreciate it but then we get used to it. Research shows that people do not adequately foresee this process of habituation, or fully realise that once they have experienced a superior lifestyle they will feel they have to continue it. They will in effect become addicted to it. Once again, the standard economic approach to addictive spending is to tax it.

These are arguments for taxation not as a way to raise money, but in order to restrain activity which is polluting and addictive, and to help to maintain a sensible work-life balance. This should become part of the social democratic case against income tax cuts. There is also the issue of equity. The main argument for redistribution has always been that an extra pound gives less extra happiness to a rich person than a poor person. Until recently this was pure speculation; survey evidence now confirms its truth.

How else can we dampen the impact of the rat race? We have to start from human nature as it is, but we can also affect values and behaviour through the signals our institutions send out. An explicit focus on happiness would change attitudes to many aspects of policy, including in education and training, regional policy and performance-related pay.

In one sense, what people most want is respect. They seek economic status because it brings respect. But we can increase or decrease the weight we give to status. In an increasingly competitive, meritocratic society, life will become tougher for people in the bottom half of the ability range unless we develop broader criteria for respect. We should respect people who co-operate with others at no gain to themselves, and who show skill and effort at whatever level. That is why it is so important to enable everyone to develop a skill. In Britain, this means ensuring that all young people can take up an apprenticeship if they wish, so that those who have not enjoyed academic success at school can experience professional pride and avoid starting adult life believing themselves to be failures.

Equally, we should be sceptical of institutions which give greater weight to rank, such as performance-related pay (PRP). The idea of PRP is that by paying people for what they achieve, we provide the best possible system of incentives. Where we can measure people’s achievement accurately, we should pay them for it—people like travelling salesmen, foreign exchange dealers, or racehorse jockeys. And where achievement depends on a team effort, we should reward the team, provided their performance can be unambiguously measured.

But management gurus are often after something more: they want a year by year alignment between individual pay and individual performance. The problem is that in most jobs there is no objective measure of individual performance, so people must in effect be evaluated against their peers. Even if the scores purport to be objective rather than relative, most people know how many are in each grade. The effect is to put them into a ranking. If everybody agreed about the rankings, it would not be that bad. But studies have shown quite low correlations between one evaluator’s rankings and another’s. So a lot of self-respect (and often very little pay) is being attached to an uncertain ranking process that fundamentally alters the relationship of co-operation between an employee and his boss, and between an employee and his peers.

Some comparisons between people are inevitable, since hierarchy is necessary and unavoidable. Some people get promoted and others do not. Moreover, those who get promoted must be paid more, since they are talented and the employer wishes to attract talent. So pay is important at key moments as a way of affecting people’s decisions about occupations or in choosing between employers. Fortunately, promotions and moves between employers are still relatively infrequent for most people. In everyday working life, relative pay rates are not usually uppermost in their thoughts. PRP changes all that.

Economists and politicians tend to assume that when financial motives for performance are increased, other motives remain the same. But that is not so, as this example shows. At a childcare centre in Israel, parents were often late to pick up their children, so fines were introduced for lateness. The result was a surprise: more people were late. They now saw being late as something they were entitled to do as long as they paid for it; the fine became a price.

The professional ethic should be cherished. If we do not cultivate it, we may not even improve performance, let alone produce workers who enjoy their work. Financial incentives have useful effects on the careers people choose, and the employers they choose to work for. But once someone has joined an organisation, peer respect is also a powerful motivator. We should exploit this motivation. Instead, government over the last 30 years has demoralised workers by constantly appealing to motives which they consider to be “lower.”

If we want a happier society, we should focus most on the experiences which people value for their intrinsic worth and not because other people have them—above all, on relationships in the family, at work and in the community. It seems likely that the extra comforts we now enjoy have increased our happiness somewhat, but that deteriorating relationships have made us less happy. What should social policy try to achieve, notwithstanding its limited leverage over private life? Here are some examples.

Divorce and broken homes are ever more common. Research shows that the children of broken homes are more prone to depression in adulthood. To protect children, the state should act to try to make family life more manageable, through better school hours, flexible hours at work, means-tested childcare, and maternity and paternity leave. Parenting classes should also be compulsory in the school curriculum and an automatic part of antenatal care.

Unemployment is as bad an experience as divorce, as research shows. It offends our need to be needed. So low unemployment should be a major objective. Our government has done well, through sensible policies of welfare to work which have avoided generating inflationary pressures. Good policy has also halved unemployment in Denmark and Holland. But Germany and, above all, France, have been slow to adopt these policies. Poor policies towards the unemployed and bad wage policies are causing high European unemployment. Job security is not the main issue.

Job security is something people want, and reasonable protection is something a rich society can afford to provide. The same is true of good working conditions, if stress is not to drive many weaker souls into inactivity and dependence on the state. It is absurd to argue that globalisation has reduced our ability to provide a civilised life for our workers. On the contrary, it has increased it—provided that pay rises only in line with productivity.

The rise in crime between 1950 and 1980 is the most striking demonstration that economic growth does not automatically increase social harmony. This rise occurred in every advanced country except Japan, and its causes are not completely understood.

Posted at 11:03 PM · Comments (0)

They were once a strong, proud, race living fulfilled lives in small and great monarchies strewn across the continent. Oblivious to other worlds, they tilled the ground, hunted beasts for food and fun, fished on brooks and rivers and seas, and tended cattle down lush pastures. They fought internecine battles, conquered kingdoms with bows and arrows, with swords and spears.

In the evenings, children gathered to listen to stories and folklores in the moonlight. Millions dwelt in mud or plank-built huts with thatched roofs, patronised witch doctors, grew old and died or got killed by strange, herb-defying ailments. Many were they that lived and died by the sword, metamorphosing into deities and myths to be later worshipped by succeeding generations.
For the African, this was life. One that existed solely for them. It was a time the land was populated by its owners, when the people lived as they deemed fit. There were neither white skins (except the albinos) nor machines. No ambitious trips to Mars or the moon, no fear of a sudden Armageddon via a nuclear warhead. Such a time so graphically depicted by the Nigerian storyteller, Elechi Amadi, in his classic novel, The Concubine.

But that wasn’t destined to last forever. For the white man came with his Bible, and soon, his gun. And Africa has never been the same again.

This journey of Africa- from that initial visit of the Portuguese in the late 1490s, which culminated in centuries of a most ignominious slave trade, through the continent’s eventual capture and release (?) by Europe, to the decades of pillage in the hands of its own sons- is what Howard French passionately takes us through in his new book, A Continent For The Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa.

French, a long-time correspondent of the New York Times in West and Central Africa, employed his several years as a reporter covering much of Africa’s most volatile recent past, to lay bare the promises and frustrations of an immensely fertile land tragically devoured by its own, a swarm of locusts egged on by an applauding West that would always turn the other way after its real goals have been achieved. A continent of great minds whose recent history is painfully replete with bitter pictures of strife, of diseases and death, of famine and drought, of weed-smoking kid soldiers wielding rifles down the streets of Monrovia. Gory pictures of brothers butchering brothers, of avaricious military despots and pot-bellied civilian dictators. Pictures of gloom and doom, of penury and despair, and a tomorrow clouded by palpable haze.

Indeed, as you turn each page of Howard French’s book, the words of that late Senegalese bard, David Diop, reverberating in the depths of your soul.
Africa, tell me Africa
Is this your back that is bent
This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation
This back trembling with red scars
And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun
But a grave voice answers me
Impetuous child that tree, young and strong
That tree over there
Splendidly alone amidst white and faded flowers
That is your Africa springing up anew
Springing up patiently, obstinately
Whose fruit bit by bit acquires
The bitter taste of liberty.
Diop had prophesied a life of bliss for Africa and its peoples after the long years of colonialism. Unfortunately, decades after all of Africa have been liberated from Europe, genuine liberty eludes its peoples, millions of whom are ruled with an iron fist by their countries’ civilian dictators.
But French, an African-American, would not just do a reporter’s diary of his 25 years’ romance with the Dark Continent. He gets himself involved in the continent’s plight. And apparently unable to keep containing those deep emotions long bottled up in his mind and notebook, he releases his fury on Europe and America. These countries, he claims, have always seen Africa as a mere huge dice on their ludo board, a gigantic plaything that could always serve whatever purpose that suits their minds. He queries America’s role in the plunder of the continent and it’s support for greedy dictators, especially during the cold war. He wonders why Washington would always look the other way while the Idi Amins, Mobutu Sese Sekos, Charles Taylors and Sani Abachas of this world were killing and maiming and looting, leaving their poor countrymen and women to suffer the consequences?

But this might be understandable. French is himself a black American, and his great grandfathers were born and raised in Africa, long before the vast continent was sliced and shared by Europe, and its best men and women shipped across the seas into bondage on sugarcane plantations in the Americas. And apart from living and working in Africa, French is married to an African. It then becomes more comprehensible that he appears, not as a mere, apathetic narrator of events, but as one fully involved, a man well situated at the epicenter of the perennially unfolding African tragedy.

And so French criss-crosses the continent, taking us with him into the streets of Lagos and Abuja in Nigeria. We follow him into Charles Taylor’s Liberia, into Mali, into the two Congos. He involves us, the readers, in his experiences in the power play and high-wire politics of the mid-1990s in Abacha’s Nigeria, in the Ebola plague in the Congo, in the Liberian civil war, in Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, He writes of poverty and hunger owing to decades of misrule, and of the people’s desperation for survival by whatever means.

In 1994, Nigeria was at a boiling point, and the journalist, who had only recently been posted to Abidjan as New York Times Correspondent in West Africa, had rushed to the country. What he met on arrival at the airport, and in his trips around the world’s most populated black nation, was however different from what had been on ground a decade earlier. He says it all on pages 26 and 27:

“Corruption had eaten away at everything here since that bygone era of pride and optimism. Most would say the rot had started under the elected government of Shehu Shagari, who was overthrown in a military coup in 1983, and things had gotten steadily worse under a succession of bemedaled generals.

“Nigeria had become one of Africa’s most tragic stories, as if a great family franchise had been run into the ground by decadent nephews prematurely handed the reins of management. The callow nephews in this tale were army generals, and like King Midas in reverse, the officers who had run the country for the last decade had debased everything they had touched, starting of course with politics, which they had turned into a contest of self-enrichment. The leader who ran the country in the mid-1990s, General Sani Abacha, stood out even in this crowd.”

Indeed, General Sani Abacha, who in November 1993 forced his way into the State House in Nigeria, had in 1994 become something akin to a motion picture monster to his countrymen. At the peak of his five-year tyranny, the diminutive, dark-goggled dictator without a middle name had either decreed the assassination of his perceived political foes, or had hurled them into jail. In his dungeon were, among others, Moshood Abiola, winner of the 1993 presidential elections, General Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler (now president) accused by Abacha of plotting to sack his regime, Shehu Yar’Adua, and all the popular members of the human rights community. Ken Saro Wiwa had been hanged, Kudirat Abiola and many others had been shot dead in a Lagos Street, and a thick, palpable dread filled the firmament.

French painstakingly takes us through the absurd political dance-drama of those days of gloom, up till Abacha’s mysterious death in June 1998 of a heart condition aggravated, reports said, by an all-out orgy with a couple of sluts imported from India.

But then, Abacha didn’t create those clouds that threatened Nigeria’s very existence. The garlands for such, many argue, should naturally be draped round the copious neck of the country’s former ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida. He it was who annulled the 1993 Presidential elections and nearly pushed his country into the abyss. Abacha, echo those voices, merely benefited from that treasonable venture.

Sadly, the people’s hopes that a democratic regime would put a balm on their battered lives are daily being punctured by the supposedly democratic government of General Olusegun Obasanjo. Blessed with a haughty mien and the fury of a typhoon, Obasanjo rules the land more like a medieval emperor. The president carries himself with a presumptuous, almost megalomaniac air, apparently seeing himself as the best gift Providence ever bequeathed to the country next to crude oil. In several fits of raw, uncontrollable ire, he has ordered the destruction of whole communities, verbally assaulted clergymen and single-handedly annulled an election meant to produce a king for his village.

And already, Babangida, whose action nearly led to the country’s collapse, is seeking a comeback in 2007. Arrayed behind him is a clan of clowns led by that disgraced ex-general, Mr Abdulkareem Adisa whom many insist would have had a more fulfilling career as an Elizabethan court jester.

French tells of his meetings with some notable Nigerians, including Baba Gana Kingibe, who would have been Abiola’s deputy, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Newswatch’s Ray Ekpu, Kudirat Abiola, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, among others. He writes of his trips to several volatile parts of the country. The author tells a story of political intrigues and power play, of treachery in high places, of dashed hopes and a country sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines.

But Abacha’s “Giant of Africa” was not the only country on the boil. A systematic carnage had gradually reduced Liberia, that once promising country founded by freed slaves from America in 1821, into a land of living ghosts. Enter Charles Taylor, described in The New York Times by Robert Rodberg, director of the Program on Interstate Conflict at the Kennedy School of Harvard University, as one of the more colorful thugs of West Africa’s recent past.

Having lived in the forest from where he waged war against the repressive regime of the marijuana-loving illiterate soldier, Samuel Doe, Taylor forced himself into world consciousness as a fiend who fed minors with dope and sent them to their death on the battlefield. Indeed, as commander-in-chief of a mostly under-aged, drug-addicted youth guerilla army, Taylor had waged a war not only against Doe’s government, but against any perceived threat to his ambition to rule Liberia. On the road to Monrovia, where he would later rule as President, this brutish ‘gentleman’ who stole his country’s as well as Sierra Leone’s diamond to prosecute his warfare, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his countrymen as well as foreigners to book a passage to the Presidential Palace. Among his victims were two Nigerian journalists, Tayo Awotusin and Krees Imodibe whose murder Taylor ordered because of Nigeria’s role in ECOMOG.
Ironically, Taylor, on Interpol’s wanted list for committing crimes against humanity, now lives in opulence in Nigeria, shielded from justice by President Obasanjo against the wishes of the free world.

Interestingly, Taylor’s one-time ally and Liberia’s former warlord, Prince Yormie Johnson was also offered refuge by Nigeria, a country that is fast becoming a safe haven for modern day Hitlers. Many would remember Johnson as Doe’s nemesis on September 10, 1990. Like a possessed demon straight out of hell, Johnson presided over Doe’s systematic slaughter, supervising his men as Doe’s ears, hands, legs etc were gradually sliced off even as the cameras beamed the despot’s long, agonizing death to the world.

French, in his book, captures Taylor’s grand entrance into Monrovia and his first press conference where he laboured hard to justify his war. “We must take a moment to thank God, for this popular, people’s uprising was, in reality, God’s war”, said Taylor.

Unable to stomach the glaring blasphemy, an angry French had queried the warlord: “Isn’t it outrageous for someone who has drugged small boys, given them guns and trained them to kill to call this God’s war? How dare you call the destruction of your country in this manner and the killing of two hundred thousand people God’s war?”
But Mr Taylor had replied with a calmness quite alien to many of his ilk: “I just believe in the destiny of man being controlled by God, and wars, whether man-made or what, are directed by a force. And so when I say it is God’s war, God has his own way of restoring the land, and he will restore it after this war.”

Another real tragedy for Africa in the last decade was Mobutu Sese Seko, the late grandiose ruler of the former Zaire. Mobutu’s story strikes a chord with those of his fellow travelers in tyranny. A former soldier in the Congo, the man named Joseph-Desire Mobutu seized power in 1965 and was ‘elected’ president in 1970. Donning a fake toga of an enforcer of cultural awareness, he changed his country’s name to Zaire, forced Europeans out of the country and rechristened himself Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Wa Za Banga (The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake).

A sick soul plagued with prostate cancer since 1962, Mobutu’s countrymen would discover soon after he stole power in 1965 that he also suffered from another malady: chronic kleptomania. The Leopard, as Mobutu was known, did little for his country but much for himself, looting his nation’s wealth and fortifying his personal fortune to an incredible tune of four billion dollars as far back as 1984.

In May 1997, a rebel group, led by Laurent Kabila was closing in on Kinshasha. Mobutu, ravaged by a deadly mix of cancer and the people’s odium, had little strength to counter the insurrection. The Great Man fled to Morocco, where he died like a dog four months later, booking a speedy, one-way passage to hell.
French takes us through the streets of Kinshasha, just as he does with the Ebola epidemic of the neighboring Congo-Brazzaville, describing Mobutu’s final fall and the rise of Laurent Kabila. His vivid account of the chaos that descended on the country would later win him the Overseas Press Club of America’s award for the best newspaper interpretation of foreign affairs.

Some might query French’s rationale for blaming the West for much of Africa’s woes. Such people would argue that the continent’s rulers should take most of the blame. French‘s position, in his book, is that the West has always aligned with African despots in order to achieve certain goals. If the West had taken a more decisive stand against these demons in human form, perhaps Africa would have risen beyond its present stagnant state.

Yet others might argue that the author doesn’t really proffer any solutions to Africa’s leadership problems. He however cites examples of certain African leaders who guided their countries through the democratic path. President Alpha Oumar Konare of Mali is singled out as a flourishing flower amidst a cluster of thorns. The lesson here is clear. Africa’s sun will never shine until its leaders have eschewed their desperation for power and greed for their country’s wealth, and begin to relate to their people like fellow humans.

Laced with various quotes and references, with 16 photo pages and a map, A Continent For The Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa in its 280 pages is a rewarding excursion into Africa’s recent past. Indeed, this book published by Alfred A. Knopf and sold for $25 is a rich guide for anyone with a remote interest in that continent’s checkered history. And in the unlikely event that the reader quarrels with French’s submissions in his book, the reader definitely won’t have any quarrels with his breezy style, his lucid presentation, his easy-to-grasp, free-flowing prose.
Even then, as one digests the last pages of this book, one just can’t expunge the nagging question off ones mind: will this Black Giant ever cease to totter?

Posted at 10:53 PM · Comments (0)

29 October 2004

Happy 40th birthday Zambia

On 24 October, a few of us had the privilege to join the government and people of Zambia as they celebrated the 40th anniversary of the independence of this sister African country. We undertook this journey north of the Zambezi as a labour of love.

During our days of struggle against the apartheid system, Zambia provided a second home to many of our people. Throughout the long years of our struggle, its citizens daily demonstrated their readiness to stand with us until freedom was won. This principled position in favour of peace, democracy and non-racism in our country, imposed many sacrifices on the Zambian people, including loss of life and subversion of its economy.

Even before independence in 1964, the Zambian liberation movement, led by Kenneth Kaunda, and originally constituted by the Northern Rhodesia African National Congress, had acted in solidarity with our own African National Congress. It received, protected and helped to transport to the then Tanganyika of Julius Nyerere the very first combatants of Umkhonto we Sizwe, who left our country from 1961 onwards, to train in Africa and elsewhere in the world as our people’s soldiers for liberation.

Subsequently, and for more than 20 years, Zambia hosted the external headquarters of our movement, the ANC. It was from its capital city, Lusaka, that in 1990 we flew back to our own country, in a Zambia Airways plane lent to us by President Kaunda and his government, to begin the process of negotiations and finally end the long years of exile and the even longer years of white minority domination. Even as we left this second home to return to our native land, we knew that the bonds of virtual kinship between us and the Zambian people would never be broken.

When we spoke during the 40th anniversary festivities, we also conveyed profound thanks to the Zambian people on behalf of the peoples of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola. This was because Zambia had played a pivotal role in the struggle for the liberation of these sister peoples and fellow combatants, as it had done with regard to ours.

It was therefore very moving to see among the honoured guests of the President of Zambia, Levy Mwanawasa, the first President of independent Zambia, and outstanding African statesman and patriot, Dr Kenneth David Kaunda - KK - the very first recipient of our esteemed Order of the Companions of O.R. Tambo, who had educated his people to accept the struggle for the total liberation of Africa as their own.

In his presence, surrounded by the happy celebratory mood so evident on the faces of the Zambian people, we could not but wish that two of KK’s comrades and close friends, Julius Mwalimu Nyerere and Oliver Tambo, could have been among the celebrants, mixing freely with the hero people of Zambia.

Two striking messages stood out among the sentiments the Zambian people communicated about the meaning to them of their 40 years of freedom from colonialism.

One of these was the repeated passionate reference to the gift of peace that Zambia had enjoyed in its four decades of freedom, even as the then colonisers and oppressors worked hard to impose the war on Zambia they were waging against those they had colonised and subjected to apartheid domination.

Even those in their twenties, born long after their country gained its freedom, gave thanks that free Zambia had been spared the pain of civil war and conflicts generated by military dictatorship brought about by coups d’ etat.

Those of the older generation who had fought for Zambia’s independence also spoke about the humiliation and indignity that colonial domination had imposed on the Zambian people. They spoke of 40 years during which their people had experienced a life free of the humiliation and indignity of racial superiority and oppression, and of the immeasurable value that attaches to the recovery of the dignity of the African masses.

Four decades of familiarity with the experience of domestic peace and human dignity had not bred contempt for these extraordinary gifts! Time has not dulled the sensitivity of the people of Zambia to the fundamental importance of the objectives of peace and human dignity for themselves and for all Africans.

None of us, pampered guests of the Zambian government and people, could fail to hear what these masses conveyed instinctively - that they are proudly Zambian and African, regardless of the problems they continue to experience, of poverty and underdevelopment.

Two of our white compatriots, Peter and Beverly Pickford, have just published an outstanding book that affirms an almost unfathomable love for Africa and celebrates the true and complex sense of humanness that the African humanity to which they belong - integrated within its habitat -spontaneously, and without reserve, bestows as a priceless gift to itself and all other human beings, everywhere. The principal character in the book is the African soul.

The book is entitled ‘Forever Africa: A Journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco’. In vivid photographs and moving words it tells of the year-long overland journey the Pickfords took, travelling from the confluence of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans at the southern tip of Africa, to the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, where it washes the African coast at Tangiers in Morocco.

Early one morning, in the fading darkness before sunrise, Peter Pickford sat alone next to a dying campfire along the Gomoti Channel within the Okavango Delta, in northern Botswana, contemplating the inevitability of death and therefore his ultimate and final separation from everything that defined his being - Africa. He has written: “It would be well, I mused to myself, that when your time is called, it should be a good time. A time like this. For each person it would be different, their good time, but this was mine. I was alone, not lonely, but where being alone makes the whole world, all of life, pivot around your own senses. There is peace in it, and you must be silent and try not to think too much, but rather to feel and let yourself drift in it. It makes me happy, not to smile, but that gut happy contentment when for that while, you and the earth and the water and the trees and the stillness are all bound in one. Life in that moment is perfect.”

If death came at the moment when you and the African earth and the water and the trees and the stillness are all bound in one, it would not be death. It would be an expression of the contentment that the life that would not die, even after death, would be perfect, because to be African is to understand that even after death, the African soul would be guaranteed a place where it and the earth and the water and the trees and the stillness would all be bound in one. Like John Donne, Peter Pickford, an African, tells the world and mortality itself - death be not proud!

An earlier commentary by the Pickfords in the same book, which refers to the fact of their having been “born into one of the last strongholds of colonialism in Africa and lived in a privileged state of which, by default, (their lives) were made”, says:

“To regard the platform of one’s life as the platform of absolute truth is to wear blinkers so tight that the light of the world passes as a shadow before you. In Africa, it is so pervasive an affliction that the continent’s richness and potential remain hidden not only to the outside world but to us who live here (in Africa).

“This affliction of blinkered perceptions is contagious, so that, in the low turning of the wheel of Africa’s history from kingdoms, civilisations and tribalism to colonial rule and then back to self-government, the world has in a singularly successful indoctrination released on our continent the most destructive force of all: Africans themselves blinded to their own virtue.”

Happily, the Zambians seemed to break out of this mould, repeatedly reaffirming Zambia’s and Africa’s richness and potential. Perhaps this was because for 40 years, they had escaped the terrible afflictions described in another 2004 book about Africa.

This book is entitled ‘A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa’. The author is an African American journalist, Howard W. French, who worked in Africa over many years, reporting for the New York Times. Writing about Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) during the years of Mobutu, he says:

“Policemen, like soldiers, went unpaid, so they took their guns and badges as licences to steal. Mobutu himself had openly sanctioned behaviour like this, once telling his unpaid army to ‘live off the land’.Theft had become the modus operandi for the entire country.Many Zairans shrugged off their degeneration, saying that things had been pretty much this way since the time of its colonisation by Belgium, and in fact, this little bit of folk wisdom wasn’t far off the mark.”

He also wrote about decay in Abacha’s Nigeria, saying: “Nigeria had become one of Africa’s most tragic stories, as if a great family franchise had been run into the ground by decadent nephews prematurely handed the reigns of management. The callow nephews in this tale were army generals, and like Midas in reverse, the officers who had run the country for the last decade had debased everything they touched, starting, of course, with politics, which they had turned into a contest of self-enrichment.”

Far worse than all this, he writes about the obscenities of the Liberian civil war, at one stage mentioning Prince Johnson, one of the rebel leaders who participated in the violent campaign that overthrew the military regime of Samuel Doe.

“Johnson’s murder of Doe on September 10, 1990, gruesome, drawn out and filmed in a herky-jerky cinema verité style, would become one of the signal events of West Africa’s post-independence history. As men sliced off Doe’s ears, kicked him and stabbed him, Johnson repeatedly demanded that Doe provide the numbers of the Swiss bank accounts to which Doe, in the long tradition of African dictators, had been sending off the money he stole from the treasury.

“A barely literate master sergeant, Doe had disembowelled his predecessor, William Tolbert, in a 1980 coup and summarily executed twelve senior government officials on a Monrovia beach.An awful, matching bookend for the end of the decade, the videotaped dismemberment of Doe confirmed for shocked West Africans that their politics were undergoing a hideous transformation, from the gentle venality they were long accustomed to, into a horror show of almost biblical cruelty. Few could have imagined though, that far worse was still to come.”

None of these accurate reports represent what the Pickfords described as “blinkered perceptions” of Africa. They constitute the counterpoint that inspired the people of Zambia so passionately to reaffirm their commitment to peace and respect for the dignity of the peoples of Africa.

In turn, the vision that inspires the Zambians gives the Pickfords and Howard French the possibility to reject “blinkered perceptions” of Africa, confident that ours is a continent of hope.

Howard French has written: “In the months after the fall of the Berlin wall, I occasionally tried to persuade colleagues in the press to cast the changes under way in Africa in the same epochal light that Europe was now bathing in. Africa’s dictators had been supported for decades by East and West, and were often handpicked by outside powers. Their misrule had placed the continent in the deep hole it now found itself in, not some congenital incapacity for modern governance, as decades of shallow analyses about Big Men and ‘ancient tribal animosities’ often insinuated.

“Amid talk of a ‘peace dividend’ at the end of the Cold War, I argued that the West had every bit as much of a moral obligation to try to undo some of the damage we had wrought in Africa as it did to help the Eastern Europeans. Needless to say, my arguments were ignored.

“For Europeans, Africa has always been an irresistible ‘other’. This may sound like a tautology, but that does nothing to diminish the truth. Like the indelible taint of original sin, the problem with Africa in the mind of Westerners is that it is Africa.”

Fortunate not to be imprisoned by “blinkered perceptions” of Africa, Howard French says of his book: “My aim is to help remind those who yearn to know and understand the continent better, and indeed Africans themselves, of the continent’s many cultural strengths; my own discovery of them kept me going through otherwise depressing times, injecting relief in a tableau of terrible bleakness. Therein lies a genuine source of hope for Africa’s nearly 800 million people and for the Africans of the future.”

During August, the BBC World Service published the results of a survey it had carried out in a number of African countries. The survey found that “While the rest of the world might view Africa as a continent plagued by civil wars and official corruption, and individual countries as bankrupt states with starving populations ravaged by HIV/AIDS - the Africans surveyed see themselves quite differently.

“Africans are generally positive about their lives, and they are proud to be African. Pan Africanism with a strong local flavour dominates the way people see themselves, other countries and the world.There is evidence of a strong feeling of ‘Africanness’ and a pride of being an African. There is patriotism towards one’s country and the continent.”

And so it turns out that, after all, the Zambians, the Pickfords and Howard French represent the authentic voice of Africa, the voice of the millions of Africans who have refused to be “blinded to their own virtue”, influenced by a “singularly successful indoctrination released on our continent”.

Peter Pickford says he has “wander(ed) through Africa finding value and wonder in what many, in the past and still today, view as a hopeless continent with, at best, some engaging landscapes with a few quaint features. And I have been astounded by their blindness.

“I love my land for all that it is to me and for all that I see in it. There is always in Africa something to pierce the sense-numbing attributes of a comfortable life and there is much to be said for feeling alive.

“Africa has thrown off the staid and proper ways the erstwhile colonialists would have had it display. It wears a bright shirt, shoots from the hip and bursts into song and dance, not because it is right or proper, but because it is what is in the heart.”

Posted at 10:41 PM · Comments (0)

BOSTON One thousand years before Pericles and the golden age of Athens, the Chinese were weaving silk, casting in bronze and carving objects of beauty out of jade. Some of the world’s greatest poetry was written in China when Alexander the Great was a toddler. In 240 B.C., Chinese astronomers noted the passage of Halley’s Comet, something that would not be done in the West for another millennium.
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Thus I was bemused by Donald Rumsfeld’s recent comments that China was a country “we hope and pray enters the civilized world in an orderly way.”
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A Pentagon spokesman, in a role similar to the fellow who follows the circus elephant with a shovel, jumped in quickly to explain that the secretary of defense did not mean to suggest that China was not a civilized country, only that it had been an inward-looking country that was now emerging as a global actor. True enough, but increasingly, it seems, “civilized” actors are those who play roles written for them by the Bush administration.
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It was the expansion of China’s military power that prompted Rumsfeld’s remark. The Chinese military budget has doubled in recent years. The Chinese Navy is pushing out from coastal waters into the blue oceans. It may, Rumsfeld told Congress, overtake the U.S. Navy in a decade.
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Rumsfeld is paid to concern himself with such matters. A shift in the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait would be destabilizing, and this is an era in which the U.S. Navy will cease to grow, and may shrink, due to the all-consuming expense of Rumsfeld’s war in Iraq.
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But China is too big for the Bush administration to bully. A nuclear power and a permanent member of the Security Council, China can both defend itself and hinder many things the United States would like to do. Europe may soon end a long-term embargo on arms sales to China, a move Washington opposes.
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At the moment, the United States is desperate to get China’s help in rescuing the Bush administration’s failed policies towards North Korea - a policy that Harvard’s Graham Allison calls “neither carrot nor stick.” Although China is not thrilled to see a nuclear-powered North Korea, it is deeply suspicious of the U.S. “axis of evil” policies and does not wish to destabilize North Korea with sanctions at America’s bidding.
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The modern era of Sino-American relationships began when President Richard Nixon went to China and reversed a generation of hostility. Nixon did not let China’s dictatorial ways stand in the way of a move that obviously benefited the United States. This administration, however, seems to take the view expressed by Vice President Dick Cheney that the United States doesn’t “negotiate with evil; we defeat it.” Therefore we won’t talk to North Korea.
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The Bush administration came to power with a belligerent attitude towards China. Conservatives said China would no longer be coddled and should be treated as a dangerous rival.
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But after 9/11, Beijing immediately offered its support in the war against terrorists, and one of the best aspects of Bush’s post-9/11 policies was that unnecessary quarrels with China were put aside.
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Now, in George W. Bush’s second term, we have Donald Rumsfeld making ill-considered remarks about China, a country he soon hopes to visit.
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And when CIA Director Porter Goss recently warned Congress of China’s growing military power, he left out any conciliatory remarks about China’s help against terrorism, its help with North Korea, and its continuing use of peaceful economic means to extend its influence - remarks that always used to accompany CIA briefs about growing Chinese military might.
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There are three truths about China’s future: Nothing is going to stand in the way of China becoming a world economic power. China’s military power will also grow expediently in the Western Pacific and perhaps beyond. And China is in a period of transition.
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The United States can either recognize these truths and treat China with respect and understanding during this transition, helping to move China toward democracy, or it can confront China - not a wise decision for the long run and ludicrous in the short run since Iraq has taken so many cards out of America’s hand.

Posted at 8:49 PM · Comments (0)

After just two trips to Shanghai, I’ve already developed a first-day routine that I’m sure I’ll stick to on future visits: As soon as I drop my bags at the hotel, I head directly for one of the rooftop bars and restaurants lining the Bund, the city’s famous riverfront boulevard and the best place from which to assess Shanghai’s sometimes daring, sometimes schizophrenic attempts to balance Chinese urbanism and outside influence.

One particularly good spot is the broad terrace of the New Heights restaurant, atop a former bank at the southern end of the Bund. Stretching north from there in a gentle crescent are the lavish neoclassical buildings that suggest Shanghai’s reign in the 1920s and ’30s as one of the most cosmopolitan and hedonistic cities in the world.

Across the broad Huangpu River and its floating traffic, meanwhile, loom the glittering, soaring skyscrapers of Pudong, site of Shanghai’s spectacular growth in the last decade. So many new towers have been built in Pudong that the land itself, covered as recently as 15 years ago mostly by farms, has begun to sink a couple of inches a year beneath the collective architectural weight.

There is no view in the world quite like it. The skylines of Hong Kong and Rio may be perched on the edge of more dramatic natural locations. European capitals may have deeper collections of architectural masterpieces. But only in Shanghai can you see unfettered 21st century ambition facing off as dramatically against the early 20th century version.

It’s like getting to watch Stanford White debate Rem Koolhaas. In China. With a drink in your hand.

If you’re thinking there is nothing essentially Chinese about that view, you’re right. But as I was reminded last month when I returned for a weeklong architectural pilgrimage, Shanghai’s great appeal has always been its energetic mixing of cultures, with plenty of Occident to go with the Orient. Centuries after Beijing and the other cultural capitals in China had been fully developed, Shanghai was still a sleepy fishing village on the country’s southern coast. It had a natural port and an advantageous location near the South China Sea, but it wasn’t until the arrival of large numbers of British soldiers and traders in the 1830s and 1840s — followed by the French and later the Japanese — that the city began to expand beyond its modest, walled center and take its current shape.

Those foreign powers divided part of the city into districts, or “concessions,” that retain distinct personalities. The French concession, for example, west of the old walled city, features tranquil avenues lined with leafy plane trees and antiques shops and terminating in carefully laid-out parks.

The foreign occupation was painful and exploitative for the locals, to be sure. But architecturally, the influx of foreign residents — and capital — led to some of the earliest and most successful examples of international design anywhere in the world.

A good example is the dense fabric of apartment blocks, known as lilong, that blanketed the city in the first decades of the 20th century. These buildings used as a template the low-slung apartment blocks connected by narrow alleyways that were common throughout China. But they also showed signs of European influence.

The result was a housing type unique to Shanghai: low-rise apartment buildings that looked Western on the outside but inside faced shared courtyards and allowed several generations to live together (or at least adjacent to one another). Walking through one of those apartment blocks hidden behind the shops and office buildings on Huai Hai Road, I saw not just clothes but a side of beef hanging to dry from buildings with Tudor-style ornament.

Indeed, although the most important buildings in Shanghai, new and old, have a Western look — and generally were designed by Western architects — their personalities are inevitably transformed by having been built, and occupied, here. The Bund, for example, tells a distinctly Shanghainese story, even if the pageant is played out in Western costume: how its grand buildings were commissioned by colonists and built by locals, who were then banned from their interiors; how they fell into disrepair after the Communists came to power in 1949; and how they’ve been rehabilitated since China was reopened to foreign investment in the 1980s.

As the skyscrapers crowding Pudong attest, Shanghai is in the middle of one of the biggest building booms in history. Even the statistics on that growth are staggering. In the last two decades, more than 5,000 buildings 15 stories or taller have gone up in the city. For much of the 1990s, by one estimate, three-quarters of all the construction cranes in the world were operating in China, and more than a quarter of the global total was in Shanghai alone.

It is a boom marked by superlatives: the tallest building in the world (the World Financial Center, now under construction in Pudong, which ,its architect, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, claims will pass Petronas Towers in Kuala Limpur for the honor). The fastest train (a maglev connection to the new Pudong International Airport, about a 40-minute drive from downtown, that hits 267 mph and is a kind of test run for a future high-speed Beijing-Shanghai rail link). The highest hotel (the Grand Hyatt, floors 53 through 87 of Pudong’s Jin Mao Tower).

That growth, which has pushed Shanghai’s population to about 16 million and sent its perimeter sprawling ever outward, has created a city that pulses with energy, optimism and ambition — and has made it a destination for design aficionados around the world.

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Pudong’s potential

There is no better place to gawk at that ambition than the wide avenues of Pudong, where — like Houston in the 1980s — there seems to be a gigantic, gleaming new building rising every week. For a while, these were strictly office towers and hotels, but Shanghai leaders have lately been thinking of Pudong as a cultural magnet too. The new Oriental Arts Center, an orchid-shaped collection of concert halls by the French architect Paul Andreu — who also designed Pudong airport and an opera house under construction in Beijing — is the loudest announcement yet of that evolving sense of Pudong’s potential. Oversized and under-detailed, it sits next to a science museum along a gargantuan traffic circle mostly empty of traffic.

Back across the river, in the traditional city center, Shanghai’s renaissance has come at the expense of its older architectural fabric. Every block, I seemed to pass at least one demolition site, where construction workers climbed over huge piles of crushed concrete and twisted rebar.

The most prominent victims have been the lilong apartments, many of which have been knocked down to make way for elevated highways, office towers and hotels, their residents exiled to high-rise apartments on the outskirts. A critic would have to be in a charitable mood to find anything good to say about many of the buildings that have gone up in their place, with their pink stucco and mirrored glass. In many cases, the result is hollow, expedient kitsch, suggesting the kind of respect for architectural history more typical of Las Vegas than old Europe.

But amid the neon and the construction dust are exceptional architectural jewels from several eras, including our own. Only a city as open to freewheeling architecture as Shanghai, for example, could have produced the 88-story Jin Mao Tower, designed by the American firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and completed in 1999. Elsewhere in the world, the firm’s architects have been following current Modernist-revival fashion and stripping their skyscrapers entirely of historical ornament, producing spare — and sometimes dull — boxes in glass and steel.

But in Shanghai, they knew their clients would prefer, even insist on, some Chinese elements, so they covered Jin Mao’s tapering tower with narrow horizontal bands of metallic ornament that suggest the upturned roofs of pagoda architecture. Perhaps because it wasn’t constrained by the current architectural convention ruling America and Europe, the building, sleek and richly detailed at the same time, is one of the best skyscrapers built anywhere in the last decade. It is good enough, in fact, to make me reexamine my own preference for the purity of Modernist towers. At this scale, there is something to be said for the visual rhythm that restrained, well-executed ornament can provide.

Much of Shanghai’s older architecture is first-rate. In what used to be the walled city center, the 400-year-old Yu Yuan Gardens offer a respite from the bustle of the city (if not from its tour guides), with meandering paths and open-air pavilions with intricate wooden and stone detailing. So does the Huxinting Teahouse, a charming building with a steep pagoda-style roof that sits in the middle of a pond just outside the garden gates. In both places, you can get a sense of what Shanghai must have looked like before the Japanese, English and French arrived, although a nearby Starbucks now gives the teahouse some competition.

In the old French concession just a short walk west of Yu Yuan, dozens of villas are tucked away behind high gates. Many were carved up over the years into multifamily dwellings, but a few remain in good shape, including the ornate Moller Villa, completed in 1936 and now a sleepy hotel that opens onto a broad lawn. (When the weather is good, the cafe is worth a visit.) The villa’s history is typical of Shanghai’s older landmarks: After 1949, it was commandeered to be the headquarters of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League, then converted into a hotel in 2001. Another highlight is a gorgeous three-story residence designed by the German firm of Becker and Baedeker that is now part of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, whose grounds are usually open during the day.

The real discovery for me on my most recent trip was the work of Ladislaus Hudec, a multitalented architect who studied in Budapest, Hungary, before coming to Shanghai in 1918. Perhaps 10 of his buildings remain, most notably the Park Hotel, a brooding design that mixes Gothic and Art Deco elements and overlooks the open spaces of People’s Square, once a racetrack but now home to the Shanghai Museum and the Shanghai Grand Theater. The 22-story Park was the tallest building in Asia when it opened in 1934 and remained Shanghai’s highest into the ’80s.

Another Hudec design worth seeking out is a streamlined Corbusian-style villa on Tongren Road that was built for a wealthy entrepreneur. It could use a renovation, but the fact that a nightclub (Mint) and a restaurant (Mandarin Sky) have recently opened inside means tourists can see the interior for the first time in its history. I had what struck me as a quintessentially Shanghai experience (at least for an architecture critic) one evening at Mint, leaning over the DJ booth to check out a bit of applied ornament, which looked to be original, on one of the pink-painted walls.

In other parts of the city, thankfully, a fledgling preservation movement has begun to take root. Mostly, the renovation of attractive old buildings has been undertaken by foreign investors and architects; that was the case with two of the glitziest addresses on the riverfront. At Three on the Bund, Michael Graves’ restoration cost $50 million and has provided space for an Armani store, the city’s most upscale contemporary art gallery and a restaurant run by French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Up the street at No. 18, a building designed in the early 1920s by the British firm of Palmer and Turner for the Chartered Bank of India was renovated recently, partly by Italian craftsmen flown here to clean the details on its ornate facade, behind which are pricey restaurants and a Cartier store. To house a popular nouvelle-Japanese restaurant called Shintori, an old warehouse, hidden away under an elevated highway, was turned into a stunning two-story atrium. The China Daily described the interior as “Zen modernist,” but on the night I visited it was too packed with young locals to feel very calm.

In a few recent cases, government officials have begun to show an encouraging interest in preservation, if only because they realize that a main part of Shanghai’s appeal for foreigners — investors and tourists alike — is its diverse historical architecture. The best-known example of this trend is, undoubtedly, the commercial development known as Xintiandi, between the heart of the French concession and the old walled city. The attractive gray-brick buildings on the site were slated for demolition but were saved because, as it happens, they were adjacent to the site of a 1921 meeting — which included a young Mao Tse-tung — of what became the Chinese Communist Party.

When the government decided it wanted to turn the spot of that meeting into a museum, it made sense to preserve some of the neighboring buildings as well, to provide some architectural context. The American firm of Wood & Zapata, working with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was hired to convert about two square blocks of buildings into upscale shops and restaurants.

The project involved more reconstruction than you might guess, which makes it less a pure case of preservation than some of its champions (mostly editors and writers at American and European design magazines) have suggested. But it is frequently packed with wealthy locals and foreigners, and that success has opened the eyes of developers and public officials to the financial possibilities of restoring older buildings. “Clients ask me all the time, talking about retail projects, ‘Can you Xintiandi it?’ ” said Christopher Choa, an American-born architect who works in Shanghai for the multinational firm HLW. “It’s become a verb,” he said with a laugh.

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A fitting ending

On my last night in town, after a dinner at Shintori, two friends took me to see what surely qualifies as the most inventive restoration project in the city. This is a private club called the Yong Foo Elite, tucked away on a pretty street in the French concession.

The club fills an entire compound, really, centered on a 1930s villa that once held the British Consulate. The interior has been impeccably restored, its cracked, dark-stained wood now gleaming and the central garden beautifully landscaped. But what makes it pitch perfect is the effortless way it mixes elements of Western and Eastern design: Chinese lanterns, for example, hanging from a magnolia tree and illuminating the neoclassical details of the villa’s facade.

If it makes sense to begin a visit to Shanghai at a rooftop bar along the Bund, it seemed nearly perfect to end one at the Yong Foo Elite. Where luxurious colonial privilege was once enforced, that luxury has now been put — with aplomb but also unabashed, almost startling confidence — in the service of making money. Lots of it.

Posted at 10:19 AM · Comments (0)

For Immediate Release
January 18, 2005

McKinney-Whetstone, French win 2005 BCALA Literary Awards

BOSTON - The Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) today announced Diane McKinney-Whetstone as the winner of the 2005 BCALA Literary Award for fiction, and Howard French as the winner for nonfiction. The announcement came as part of the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Boston, January 14-19. 

The awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African American authors published in 2004, including the work of a first novelist, and a citation for Outstanding Contribution to Publishing. The recipients will receive the awards during the 2005 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, June 23-29.

McKinney-Whetstone won for her book, “Leaving Cecil Street” (William Morrow).  Three fiction honor book winners also were selected: “Robbing Peter,” by Kia DuPree (Prism Pages), “Some People, Some Other Place” by J. California Cooper, (Doubleday) and “The Blackbird Papers” by Ian Smith (Doubleday).

Set in the late 1960s at the onset of a new era in African American consciousness, “Leaving Cecil Street” tells the memorable story of a working-class family in a Philadelphia neighborhood. Burgeoning friendships, disintegrating family bonds and frustrated ambitions intertwine to weave a tale rife with complexity. The author’s well-defined characters and evocative settings make this work all the more compelling. McKinney-Whetstone teaches fiction writing at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Debut novel “Robbing Peter” is a heartbreaking story of three families united by fatherlessness, unconditional love and hard lessons learned. The setting is a graphic depiction of reality in urban life that emotionally follows the lives of three women from different walks of life. A twist at the end connects them all. DuPree is a native Washingtonian who teaches English at Hampton University.

“Some People, Some Other Place,” tells the story of Eula Too from the omniscient perspective of her unborn child. In Eula’s pursuit of a third-generation dream of a life in Chicago, she is raped, beaten and left by the road only to be rescued, befriended and employed by a rich proprietor of an upscale brothel. Cooper examines themes of loyalty, class division, friendship and narcissistic manipulation by weaving a marvelous story of several families who end up on Dream Street. Cooper resides in California.

“The Blackbird Papers” is an intriguing and suspenseful debut novel. Intertwining themes of racism, hate crimes, academic elitism and natural deception are unraveled as FBI agent Sterling Bledsoe delves into the mystery of his brother’s death. Dr. Smith lives in New York City.

French led the nonfiction category with “A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa” (Alfred A. Knopf). Two Honor Book winners also were selected: “Wrestling With the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press” by Melba Joyce Boyd (Columbia University Press), and “Black Titan: A. G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire” (One World) by Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Gardner.

“A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa” is a poignant and compassionate description of the natural phenomena and political policies that have set the stage for both tragedy and triumph on the continent. French’s astute commentary and deep knowledge of Africa’s history provide readers with a better understanding of Africa’s injustices while highlighting the extraordinary efforts of political leaders and ordinary citizens to rise above them. A native of Washington, D.C., French currently lives in Shanghai.

“Wrestling With the Muse” is a thorough and well-written biography of a poet, civil rights activist, librarian - Broadside Press founder and publisher Dudley Randall. Boyd, who was privy to Randall’s dreams, successes, shortcomings and bouts of depression, intermingles Randall’s poetry with various events in his life. Randall chose Boyd to write his biography prior to his death. She is a professor of Africana Studies at Wayne State University.

In “Black Titan,” Gaston’s nieces Jenkins and Hines chronicle the life of this savvy businessman and self-made millionaire. In addition to describing Gaston’s successful ventures, the book highlights his warmth and generosity to his business associates and colleagues to encourage the achievement of financial success. Gaston, who died at the age of 103, was one of the wealthiest Black men in America. Jenkins lives in Winchester, Va., and her daughter, Hines, lives in New York City.

The recipient of the First Novelist Award is Delores Phillips for “The Darkest Child” (Soho). This debut novel explores one Black family’s oppressive situation in a small Georgia town in 1958. Poverty, killings, injuries and child abuse at the hands of the mother are some of the cruelties the family endures. Tangy Mae, the darkest-skinned child in a family of 10 children, dreams of getting an education and leaving Georgia. This intense work graphically depicts an unimaginable familial existence. Delores Phillips is employed as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital in Cleveland.

For excellence in scholarship, the BCALA Literary Awards Committee presents the Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation to Lucy Anne Hurston and the estate of Zora Neale Hurston for “Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston” (Doubleday). This thorough and unique biography of the great writer is complete with transcripts of some of her works, as well as a CD featuring excerpts from interviews and folk songs sung by Hurston. The work outlines the author’s strength, hardships and adversities throughout her life, showing evidence of her pioneering and adventurous spirit. Lucy Anne Hurston, Zora’s niece, lives in Bloomfield, Conn., and teaches sociology at Manchester Community College. The Zora Neale Hurston estate is in New York City.

Members of the BCALA Literary Awards Jury are: Chair John S. Page, University of the District of Columbia; Vice-Chair Virginia Dowsing Toliver, Washington University; Gladys Smiley Bell, Hampton University; Tracie D. Hall, ALA Office for Diversity and the Spectrum Initiative; Phyllis W. Jackson, Georgia Perimeter College, Decatur Campus; Karen Lemmons, Howe Elementary School; and Joel White, Forsyth (N.C.) County Public Library.
For more information on the BCALA Literary Awards, please visit www.bcala.org.

Posted at 11:22 PM · Comments (0)

In 1981, six years before her death, Marguerite Yourcenar became the first woman ever inducted into the Academie Francaise, and that weighty honor has been hanging around the neck of her reputation ever since. Every book jacket, every review, speaks of it. But that wasn’t all that set her apart from other mid-century writers. She was an extremely isolated artist. A Frenchwoman, she spent most of her adult life in the United States, on Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine, where, to isolate her further, she lived with a woman. Her background, too, made her seem different. She came from the minor nobility and didn’t hide it. Most of the people who knew her, even friends, addressed her not as Marguerite but as Madame. Add to that the fact that she wrote not in English but in her native French, and in a style that was often magisterial, in an old-fashioned, classical way. (People compared her to Racine. This was at a time when we were getting Bellow and Roth.) Add, moreover, that though she was a novelist, she was not primarily a realist, that she never mastered dialogue, that her books were ruminative, philosophical. Add, finally, that her greatest novel, “Memoirs of Hadrian” (1951)-which Farrar, Straus & Giroux will reissue this spring as part of its new FSG Classics series-was a fictionalized autobiography of a Roman emperor, and it comes as no surprise that nearly every essay on Yourcenar speaks of her work as “marmoreal” or “lapidary.”

Actually, some of Yourcenar’s prose is marmoreal, but not so that you can’t get through it. Also, it is beautiful. What made her remarkable, however, was not so much her style as the quality of her mind. Loftiness served her well as an artist: she was able to dispense love and justice, heat and cold in equal parts. Above all, her high sense of herself gave her the strength to take on a great topic: time. Time was an obsession with her immediate predecessors in European fiction, but whereas those novelists showed us modern people altered-made thoughtful, made tragic-by time’s erasures, she erased the erasures, took us back to Rome in the second century or, in her other famous novel, “The Abyss” (1968), to Flanders in the sixteenth century, and with an almost eerie accuracy. Yourcenar regarded the average historical novel as “merely a more or less successful costume ball.” Truly to recapture an earlier time, she said, required years of research, together with a mystical act of identification. She performed both, and wrought a kind of trans-historical miracle. If you want to know what “ancient Roman” really means, in terms of war and religion and love and parties, read “Memoirs of Hadrian.”

This doesn’t mean that Yourcenar, in her novels, conquered the problem of time. All she overcame was the idea that this was the special burden of the modern period. Human beings didn’t become history-haunted after the First World War, Yourcenar says. They were always that way.

The child of a Belgian mother, Fernande de Cartier de Marchienne, and a French father, Michel-Rene Cleenewerck de Crayencour, Yourcenar was born in Brussels in June of 1903. Years later, she reconstructed the events of that morning. “The pretty room,” she said, “looked like the scene of a crime.” Michel was screaming at the doctor, calling him a butcher. The housemaids hurried about, gathering up the bloodied sheets and also the afterbirth, which they took down to the kitchen and stuffed into the coal fire. (Yourcenar has a kind of mania for anti-sentimentality. It is hard to imagine another writer describing the burning of her own afterbirth.) Ten days later, Fernande was dead. The new baby lay squalling in a silk-lined crib.

…

Always given to understatement, Yourcenar later played down the affection between herself and her father. (“No doubt there was a strong attachment, as there is when one is raising a puppy.”) But Michel clearly loved her, the more, no doubt, since she was his only relative who had not loudly deplored the fact that he was gambling away the family fortune. They eventually moved to the South of France and, in 1920, settled in Monte Carlo, where Michel could be closer to the baccarat tables. There, in the words of the Yourcenar scholar Joan E. Howard, the two became “partners in crime.” They read aloud together, passing the book back and forth: Homer (in Greek), Virgil (in Latin), Ibsen, Nietzsche, Saint-Simon, Tolstoy. In his early years, Michel had tried his hand at literature: some verse, the beginnings of a novel. Now, as he watched Marguerite doing the same-by her early twenties, she was writing all the time-he urged her on. One happy night, they worked out a nom de plume for her, an approximate anagram of Crayencour. Then he wrote to publishers, under her new name, to peddle her writings. He paid for the publication of her first two books (both poetry). He also gave her the first chapter of his abandoned novel and told her to rework it and publish it as her own, which she did. Entitled “The First Evening,” it is the story of a joyless wedding night, and the couple in question may have been based on Michel and Fernande. This was a very intimate and unconventional collaboration. In 1929, shortly before Yourcenar’s first novel was published, Michel died. She was twenty-five. She said she cried and then almost forgot him for thirty years. He left her next to nothing-he was bankrupt by 1925-but she had a small legacy from her mother that she figured would give her ten years of freedom if she spent it carefully.

She passed those years partly in what she called “dissipation”-that is, a little drinking and a lot of sex, some with men, mostly with women.The rest of the time she wrote. In her old age, she said that everything she ever produced was already fixed in her mind by the time she was twenty. In any case, she now laid down her method. First, many of her narratives were set in the past. Second, they often involved towering passions compacted into tight, steel-band forms. That’s the reason for the comparison to Racine, but a closer reference point is Gide, whose austere recits influenced almost every writer of her generation. She continued to embrace anti-sentimentality; indeed, she showed a fondness for brutality. And those traits, together with her highly controlled prose, encouraged reviewers to say-as they would say throughout her life-that she wrote like a man.

…

Then, one afternoon in 1937, when she was thirty-three, she was sitting in a hotel bar in Paris talking with a friend about Coleridge when a woman from another table came over and told them they were all wrong about Coleridge. The woman was Grace Frick, an American English professor, almost exactly Yourcenar’s age. The next morning, Frick invited Yourcenar to come up and see the pretty birds outside her hotel-room window. Later that year, Yourcenar sailed to the United States to spend the winter in New Haven with Frick, who was starting a dissertation at Yale. In the spring, she returned to France with a decision to make. She was still in love with Fraigneau; meanwhile, Frick was madly in love with her, and it was nice, finally, to be the loved one. She sat down and wrote a savage little novel, “Coup de Grace,” about a group of young people involved in the civil war in the Baltics after the Russian Revolution. At the center of the book is a love triangle. The narrator, Erick, an elegant Prussian fighting on the side of the White Russians-and a dead ringer for Fraigneau-is in love with his co-adjutant, Conrad; Conrad’s sister, Sophie, is in love with Erick, and throws herself at him every chance she gets. (At one point, as Erick is prying Sophie off of himself, he compares her clinging limbs to the suctioned arms of a starfish.) Finally, Sophie abandons the White Russian cause and defects to the Red Army. Soon afterward, her division is captured by Erick and his men. In a military execution, he shoots her-in the face.

This was Yourcenar’s most autobiographical novel, which doesn’t mean that it’s easy to figure out, in real-life terms, who shot whom. Roughly, one can say that Fraigneau killed Yourcenar by not loving her, and now-as the title of the book, with its pun on Frick’s name, tells us-she’s going to kill him, or her passion for him. Soon after “Coup de Grace” came out, in 1939, Yourcenar returned to the United States, where for the next forty years Frick would be her companion, her translator, her household manager, and her shield against the world-possibly the most complete literary wife in the annals of art.

As Yourcenar explained it later, she had planned only to try out another winter with Grace, but the Second World War intervened, and by the time it was over she had decided to stay. (She became an American citizen in 1947.) When she was old, she said that her passion for Grace exhausted itself after two years. But Grace’s passion lasted, and perhaps Yourcenar could not turn her back on that, or on the domestic comforts it provided. But there was another reason for not returning to her life in France. Its bottom, her literary career, had dropped out. Horribly, mysteriously, Yourcenar stopped writing when she arrived in the United States. For more than a decade, she published almost nothing. She and Grace lived mainly in Hartford, to be near Grace’s work, first at Hartford Junior College, then at Connecticut College. Soon Yourcenar, too, began teaching, commuting to Sarah Lawrence, just outside New York City, where she gave courses in French and Italian. By all accounts, she was despondent. She had died to herself.

Before she left Europe, Yourcenar had deposited a trunk in storage at a hotel in Lausanne. She had been trying for years to get it back, and one day in 1949 it arrived. Opening it, she looked first for some valuables, but they had vanished. All that was left was a bunch of old papers. She pulled her chair up to the fireplace and started pitching things in. Then she came upon the drafts of a novel about Hadrian that she had begun when she was twenty-one and had later put aside. At the sight of those pages, she said, her mind more or less exploded. It is hard to understand how she managed to produce “Memoirs of Hadrian” in two years. In a bibliographical note appended to the novel, it takes her seventeen pages to list the sources she consulted (mostly at Yale) in order to make her account factually correct: ancient texts by the score; histories in English, French, and German; treatises on archeology, on numismatics. Then, there was the matter of writing the book, but she said that she composed it in a state of “controlled delirium.” She recalled a train trip she took at the time:

Closed inside my compartment as if in a cubicle of some Egyptian tomb, I worked late into the night between New York and Chicago; then all the next day, in the restaurant of a Chicago station where I awaited a train blocked by storms and snow; then again until dawn, alone in the observation car of a Santa Fe limited, surrounded by black spurs of the Colorado mountains, and by the eternal pattern of the stars. Thus were written at a single impulsion the passages on food, love, sleep, and the knowledge of men. I can hardly recall a day spent with more ardor, or more lucid nights.

Clearly, she was simply ready to write this novel, as she had not been at twenty-one. She herself said that the crux was time: “There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty.” She was forty-five when she went back to Hadrian.

As the book opens, Hadrian is sixty, and dying. His life, he says, seems to him “a shapeless mass,” but in this memoir, written as a letter to his adopted grandson, Marcus Aurelius, he will try to make some sense of it. The son of a Roman official, he grows up on a dusty estate in his native Spain. At sixteen, he is sent to study in Athens, and there he falls permanently in love with Greece, “the only culture,” he says, “which has once for all separated itself from the monstrous, the shapeless, and the inert.” Time, he discovers, is not just the present; some matters are eternal. But he is young and wild. In the wars in Dacia (Romania), his bravery greatly impresses the emperor, Trajan, who is his cousin and guardian. He recalls with exhilaration the “Dacian footsoldiers whom I crushed under my horse’s hoofs.” Later, in Rome, he shows himself equally skilled as an administrator and as a courtier. He is careful to get as drunk as everyone else at Trajan’s parties. He longs to succeed Trajan as emperor.

There is a difficulty, however. Hadrian has come to hate Rome’s policy of conquest. Instead of subduing other peoples, he thinks, why not make treaties with them and let them be, relying on the exchange of goods and ideas to spread Rome’s laws? But he cannot voice these ideas. Trajan is an utterly convinced warmaker. Soon, this problem solves itself. Trajan dies, and Hadrian is made emperor, at the age of forty-one.

His sense of time now changes. The future is everything. He enacts a thousand reforms. He builds a bureaucracy. He outlaws forced labor, adjusts taxes, forbids execution by torture. Most important, he ends Rome’s wars on its neighboring peoples. He envisions an empire not of uniformity but of multiplicity. (Today, we call this multiculturalism.) “The tattooed black, the hairy German, the slender Greek, and the heavy Oriental”-he wants them all, and just as they are, in their peculiar clothes and with their strange gods, except that, in keeping with Roman rule, they will clean their streets, give good weight, enforce the law. The new Rome of Hadrian’s imagining was thus not so much an empire as a world. When the Greeks declared him a god, he thought-arrogantly, touchingly-that perhaps this wasn’t excessive. The gods ruled the world in the name of right. So did he.

That was the high noon of his life. Then, at the age of forty-eight, he met a Greek boy, Antinous, aged thirteen or fourteen, and for the first time in his life he fell headlong in love. Antinous was tender and artless. After the hunt, Hadrian says, he “would cast off his dagger and belt of gold, scattering his arrows at random to roll with the dogs on the leather divans.” Antinous, one suspects, was just the sort of blank little beauty (he only wanted to hunt; he never managed to learn Latin) that brilliance sometimes fastens on when it is tired of being brilliant. In any case, Hadrian, after seven years of midnight toil, found this patch of sunshine and was carried to mystic heights. He describes a “fire festival” his people staged in his honor:

I watched Rome ablaze. Those festive bonfires were surely as brilliant as the disastrous conflagrations lighted by Nero; they were almost as terrifying, too. Rome the crucible, but also the furnace, the boiling metal, the hammer, and the anvil as well, visible proof of the changes and repetitions of history, one place in the world where man will have most passionately lived… . These millions of lives past, present, and future, these structures newly arisen from ancient edifices and followed themselves by structures yet to be born, seemed to me to succeed each other in time like waves; by chance it was at my feet that night that this great surf swept to shore… . The massive reef in the distance, perceptible in the dark, that gigantic base of my tomb so newly begun on the banks of the Tiber, suggested to me no regret at the moment, no terror nor vain meditation upon the brevity of life.

He is ecstatic, prophetic-the master of time.

Time soon reminds him who the master is. Hadrian was a great sensualist, and whereas, for a while, he was happy to spend his nights with Antinous alone, he eventually drew the boy into more complicated revels, including women. Antinous, by then nineteen, may have sensed what time would do to his position with Hadrian. One night in Alexandria, he came to Hadrian in a robe “sheer as the skin of a fruit.” The next morning, he drowned himself in the Nile. Hadrian was shattered.

One last catastrophe awaited him. His idea that all of Rome’s peoples, while following their own customs, would nevertheless recognize Rome as an overarching authority was not endorsed by everyone, notably the Jews. Hadrian couldn’t understand the Jews: their insistence that their god was the only god, their barbarous custom of circumcision. He finally banned circumcision, and this, probably with other factors, provoked an insurrection. It took Hadrian and his army three years to put down the revolt, which they did savagely. Jerusalem was destroyed; the rabbis were executed; the rebels were sold into slavery. “Judea was struck from the map,” Hadrian writes. That was the beginning of his death. Though he was the one who did it, it broke his heart. His policy of peace lay in the dust.

Of all Yourcenar’s characters, Hadrian is the most admirable. He took everything in, liked everything: men, women, war, peace, Greece, Rome. He read endlessly. (Yourcenar reconstructed his library.) And he made combinations, compromises, with a goal of partial virtue, partial justice. He thought slavery was all right, but he outlawed the sale of slaves to gladiatorial schools. He accepted that women were inferior, but he gave them the right to inherit and bequeath property. He thought that men were no more prone to evil than to good, and that if he could induce them to try the good they might get in the habit. His mind was as large as his empire.

What would become of that empire after his death? This is the question that torments his last years. Near the end, he finds a bitter peace:

Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man’s periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time… . Some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality.

One token of that immortality is “Memoirs of Hadrian.” No other document takes us so deeply into the pre-Christian mind. This act of time-travel is part of what Yourcenar meant when she said one had to be forty in order to attempt certain books. Younger than that, this exemplary Judeo-Christian writer-who was a committed pacifist-could not have achieved the self-suppression required to describe her hero’s joy as he trampled the Dacian foot soldiers. Age gave her more than objectivity, however. She says in an afterword to the novel that in order to appreciate Hadrian’s struggle with time-the reversals, the accidents-she had to undergo the same struggles, among which her ten-year writing block no doubt figured heavily in her mind. “Hadrian” can be seen as her solution, the same one offered by Proust, whose work she loved. Art redeems us from time: in Hadrian’s case, by shaping his life into a meaningful curve (ambition to mastery to exaltation to disaster to reconciliation); in Yourcenar’s case, by enabling her to do that shaping, and in the process to write her first great novel, to save her own life.

But the salvation is not limited to the superstructure. It goes down to the diction, the grammar. In “Hadrian,” Yourcenar gathers not just the round-cheeked boys and the fire festivals but also the less glamorous materials-the tax abatements, the judicial reforms-into sentences that throb and glow like rising suns. This is more than beauty; it’s morals. If, to Hadrian and to Yourcenar, their lives seemed crazy or dull or just plain obliterated, these magnificent Latinate constructions, with their main clauses and their subordinate clauses-that is, with distinctions, with judgment-say the opposite.

“Hadrian” was Yourcenar’s first big success-it made her famous-and the momentum she generated for it lasted close to twenty years. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, she wrote some superb critical essays, several of them spinoffs from “Hadrian,” and gathered them in her collection “The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays” (1962). One striking feature of this book, and of her later critical writings, too, is the extent of her learning. Continuing the practice of her childhood, she read almost everything she could lay her hands on, and when she finished a book she liked, she would turn back to page 1 and read it over again. She went from Western literature to Asian literature. She taught herself new languages: a lot of Japanese, some German, Spanish, Portuguese, and modern Greek. This studiousness is reflected in her criticism. There seems to be almost nothing she doesn’t feel she can write about: Cavafy, Mishima, Selma Lagerlof, Michelangelo, the Venerable Bede, plus some people we haven’t heard of but whom she is rescuing for us. Of the major novelists of the twentieth century, including Joyce, she was probably the most erudite. The point of her critical writings, though, is not their show of knowledge. As with “Hadrian,” it is penetration-historical, moral-and the subject, again, is often time. In “The Dark Brain of Piranesi,” the best of her essays-it is one of the most profound critical studies of our period-we learn what the great eighteenth-century draftsman, trailblazing for Yourcenar in his thousand-odd etchings of the ruins of Rome, thought about time’s action on the supposedly eternal city…

Posted at 9:11 PM · Comments (0)

One chilly Friday morning last month, high-school teacher Noriyuki Ishida had probably the most stressful experience of his 35-year career.

News photo
Noriyuki Ishida

His paymasters, the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education, had summoned the geography instructor and four others to attend a two-hour “study course.” The official in charge kicked off with a lecture on the duties of a civil servant. Then he reeled off a list of punishments for those who stray from the straight and narrow.

That’s when Ishida, 58, felt everything got a bit strange.

The bureaucrat, he said, talked about what happens to public servants caught drunk driving, embezzling school funds or sexually harassing students — adding ominously that repeat offenders may not only be sacked, but they could lose their retirement bonus and have their pension reduced.

“It was very upsetting,” Ishida said.

Mind you, neither soft-spoken Ishida — a husband and father of two — nor any of the other teachers had been accused of any of those misdemeanors.

What they had done, last spring, was defy a Tokyo education board instruction issued in October 2003 ordering them to stand and face the national flag and sing the national anthem during school enrollment and graduation ceremonies.

As a result, Ishida, along with about 220 other Tokyo public-school teachers, was told that he would be ordered to attend a “study course.” Those who failed to comply would be “held responsible.”

However, those teachers who remained seated were protesting against what one legal expert has labeled “patriotism by force.” In addition, many experts believe the municipal order was a violation of Article 19 of the Constitution, which states: “Freedom of thought and conscience shall not be violated.”

Hence, while the somber anthem played, they ignored requests by school administrators to stand. The official reprimands and study courses that followed — the broadest punishment of teachers so far in Japan — were Tokyo’s way of letting them know that, as promised, they were being “held responsible.”

Emerging after two hours from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Education of Technology, the central Tokyo building where the course was held, the five teachers were met by a small crowd of supporters as a dozen or so municipal government “minders” and three police officers kept watch.

‘Abstract prattle’
Ishida had a hard time making sense of what had just happened. He found it peculiar that during a so-called study course — which he presumed would have included a discussion of the role of patriotism in education — the official in charge refused to even talk about the flag or anthem. And no time was allotted for questions from teachers.

“This was not a lecture worthy of making me spend half my day on it and miss my classes,” complained Ishida. “All for a bunch of abstract prattle lacking context.”

From the teachers’ perspective, the class was uncomfortably reminiscent of detention without charge — something hauntingly like Franz Kafka’s surrealistic 1925 novel “The Trial,” in which the protagonist is punished for some transgression, but never told what.

Naturally, the municipal government sees things in a different light. Asked why the courses never touched upon the teachers’ unwillingness to stand for the flag, the board responded it had only needed to address the act of disobeying an order, itself — the suggestion being that the flag and the anthem were beyond the scope of the proceedings.

For decades, many in Japan’s traditionally left-leaning teaching profession have opposed, as symbols of Japan’s militarist past, the Hinomaru (Sun) flag and the anthem, known as “Kimigayo” — whose original meaning was “Respectable You” or “Your Respectable Lease of Life,” but which was later interpreted to mean “His Majesty’s Reign.”

For decades, too, those teachers have been unable to resolve their differences with right-leaning administrators, such as the Tokyo education board, who argue that the symbols promote a healthy ethnic unity — as detailed in the following statement the Tokyo board e-mailed to The Japan Times:

“So that Japanese people may develop a sense of self-awareness and foster within themselves a love of country amid expanding globalization, and so that children and older students will grow up to be respected and trusted within the international community, it is vital that we cultivate a more proper recognition of the national flag and anthem together with a respectful bearing toward the two.”

Prior to Tokyo’s 2003 order, the standoff seldom came to a head. Sometimes teachers remained seated at school ceremonies, sometimes they stood. For every one who sang, many others lip-synched, just to keep up appearances. But few teachers worried about official rebuke.

Now, years after the 1999 enactment of a law making the Hinomaru and “Kimigayo” the official symbols of Japan (although the government cannot force individuals to respect them), and at a time when many sense an erosion of Japan’s postwar pacifism in favor of a stronger military, teachers around Japan report mounting pressure to follow the patriotic line in earnest — some of it from fellow teachers they fear will denounce them.

Abusing official power
Yet, many teachers in Tokyo — said to be a bastion of left-wing sentiment among teaching ranks — are digging in their heels.

On Dec. 1, seven high-school teachers sued nationalist Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara and members of his administration, accusing them of abusing official power by compelling them to stand and sing during the ceremonies.

The same day, a group of more than 100 university professors, lawyers and journalists filed a similar suit. This followed several other suits against the Tokyo government earlier in 2004 — all of which are still pending.

The study courses for people who had disobeyed the diktat, particularly those in the summer, were scenes of friction too.

According to 56-year-old English teacher Toru Kondo, who underwent his course in August and has joined in three suits against the Tokyo Metropolitan government, when the teachers were ordered write down their impressions of the course on a form, they saw it as a backhanded attempt at coerced repentance. Instead, they took the opportunity to vent their spleens.

“Sure, we wrote things down,” said Kondo. “We wrote that our punishment should be withdrawn. And we all wrote that it was absurd to be told to self-reflect when the courts had not yet decided our cases.”

Scholars see the clash as a test of how Japanese civil liberties stand up to times of social change — including plans to announce a new draft Constitution this November.

Hideo Shimizu, professor emeritus of constitutional law at the prestigious Aoyama Gakuin University, agreed with the teachers’ invocation of Article 19. He said that freedom of thought and conscience guarantees a citizen’s right to refrain from political expression — in this case, the singing of the anthem.

“As the [Tokyo board’s] punishment was clearly unconstitutional, I believe a judge would have to annul it,” said Shimizu.

But what if the courts decide against the teachers, and instead side with Ishihara’s reported view that the Hinomaru and “Kimigayo” present “a giant opportunity to ponder our ultimate responsibilities in a human society in which belonging to either a state or an ethnic group is inevitable”?

“People who oppose the anthem and flag will be ever more silenced. More than that, they will be forced to fall in line, to sing and stand against their own convictions,” said 82-year-old Shimizu, who can vividly recall his own days as a World War II conscript. “I think it would be one step closer to a totalitarian, fascist world.”

‘Bountiful independence’
The controversy also points to conflicting currents in Japanese education today. On the one hand, the Ministry of Education, Culture,Sports, Science and Technology has called for a shift from “uniformity and passivity to independence and creativity” as being key to Japan’s global competitiveness.

The Tokyo board of education has echoed the same theme. In a document it published last year titled “The Tokyo Municipal Plan for Educational Vision,” for example, it praised as “model people” those who “think and act for themselves, with bountiful independence and creativity.”

But geography teacher Ishida wonders whether he can both think for himself and keep his job.

“To be honest, I’m scared,” he said. “If I’m punished again, my salary drops. If it happens once again, it drops more. Any more times and I might be forced to quit.”

Another graduation ceremony is only weeks away, and as there is no sign of the Tokyo board relenting, it is make-your-mind-up time for Ishida and many fellow teachers.

“I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong, anything against the law. So even if I’m ordered again by my principal to stand, I probably won’t be able to do it,” he said. “If I do, it’ll be an admission that what I did last March was a mistake.”

Like many both within and beyond the world of education in Japan, Ishida is probably also wondering how many others will remain seated like him the next time their bosses expect them to stand for the ode to the Emperor, whose words — from a 10th-century anthology of poems — read:

Kimi ga yo wa
Chiyo ni yachiyo ni
Sazare ishi no
Iwao to nari te
Koke no musu made

This can be translated into English as:

Thousands of years of a happy lease of life (reign) be thine;
Live (Rule) on, my lord, till what are pebbles now
By age united to mighty rocks shall grow
Whose venerable sides the moss doth line.

Posted at 5:12 PM · Comments (0)

This space is intended for my sparse musings, emphasis on sparse. I am giving it over today to the link, below, to something I think is very important and hope that you will, too.
I am talking about mass death, no murder. Mass murder.
Nicholas Kristof has done more than any other journalist to draw attention to this tragedy, and for that he deserves endless credit. The best form of credit, though, is to take what is happening in Sudan seriously. To take action of some kind. Each and all.
Click to read more

Posted at 11:26 PM · Comments (1)

Armies of compassion

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts In an unprecedented act of defiance, the newly anointed president of the former French colony of Togo, Faure Gnassingbe, is clinging to power despite international condemnation. To stifle opposition, he has begun shutting down privately owned radio and TV stations on varying pretexts such as claims of “inciting revolt.”

In nearby Nigeria, the National Assembly has authorized President Olusegun Obasanjo to use his full powers, including military, to resolve the constitutional crisis. Obasanjo is the chairman of the African Union, which will not recognize governments that come to power by force.

The crisis raises a deeper concern about the role of the military in democratizing Africa. The time has come to rid Africa of oppressive armies and use military facilities and budgets to support social programs such as higher education.

The late Gnassingbe Eyadema led Africa’s first post-colonial coup and served as a role model for many young military leaders anxious to usurp power. As a result, much of Africa degenerated into misrule, oppression and economic decay.

Togo symbolizes the worst that could happen to Africa and is thus a test case for the future of the African Union. Condemnation is not enough. Swift action must be taken to rid the country of its military misadventures.

Existing military resources should be redirected to more productive use such as maintaining the country’s ailing infrastructure. Foreign support to Togo should be diverted to social programs as well.

Togo spends nearly 2 percent of its GDP on the military, amounting to nearly $32 million a year. The per capita income of the Togolese people is $270 a year.

Last year, students at the University of Loma went on strike for the nonpayment of the annual $1.6 million owed to them by the government. They said they had not been paid their stipend since 2001.

In the meantime, the university is supporting 14,000 students instead of the 6,000 students it was initially planned to hold. The trouble at the university is an indicator of the need to revamp the entire system of higher education to bring it in line with global aspirations.

Togo, like many other African countries, needs a population that is equipped in technical skills needed to solve practical problems. But resources are going into maintaining oppressive instruments such as the military. This means investing in more technical higher education. It will need to start revamping its curriculums and improving its teaching methods by creating linkages with the private sector. And above all, it must turn its attention to nurturing children.

There is a pioneering African example of the use of military facilities for development. In Rwanda, for example, the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management, is playing a key role in building a new cadre of technical and entrepreneurial personnel. Kigali Institute is also involved in practical projects in energy, food processing and transportation.

Rwanda is not alone in this league. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948 and used part of the saved resources to support higher education. Today the Costa Rican Army is made up of teachers, scientists and other productive members of the country.

Africa can also make better use of existing resources. There are persistent complaints of shortages of science teachers across the continent. If these countries were at war they would be mobilizing every able-bodied person into national defense.

Technological illiteracy demands similar measures. Every able-minded citizen should spend part of his or her time teaching and sharing their expertise. Political leaders should lead the way and replace public speeches with practical lessons on how to improve human welfare.

Improving educational infrastructure should be a priority public works program for African countries. The military should lead the way if it is to remain relevant to society.

The crisis in Togo has also opened up opportunities for Africa to rethink the role of its national armies. It is time to start using military resources in social programs. The first step is to turn African armies into “development corps” while strengthening the hand of the African Union as a peacekeeping and democratizing force.

(Calestous Juma is professor of international development at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a lead author of ‘‘Innovation: Applying Knowledge in Development,’’ a report of the UN Millennium Task Force. This article originally appeared in The Boston Globe.)

Posted at 5:37 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright 2005 The New York Times

Genocide in Darfur

A closer look at the four photos from a secret archive gathered by African Union monitors.

A Promise Unkept: Nicholas D. Kristof in Darfur

Through October 2004, the genocide in Sudan had killed 100,000, but little had been done to stop the crisis.

Photos don’t normally appear on this page. But it’s time for all of us to look squarely at the victims of our indifference.

These are just four photos in a secret archive of thousands of photos and reports that document the genocide under way in Darfur. The materials were gathered by African Union monitors, who are just about the only people able to travel widely in that part of Sudan.

This African Union archive is classified, but it was shared with me by someone who believes that Americans will be stirred if they can see the consequences of their complacency.

The photo at the upper left was taken in the village of Hamada on Jan. 15, right after a Sudanese government-backed militia, the janjaweed, attacked it and killed 107 people. One of them was this little boy. I’m not showing the photo of his older brother, about 5 years old, who lay beside him because the brother had been beaten so badly that nothing was left of his face. And alongside the two boys was the corpse of their mother.

The photo to the right shows the corpse of a man with an injured leg who was apparently unable to run away when the janjaweed militia attacked.

At the lower left is a man who fled barefoot and almost made it to this bush before he was shot dead.

Last is the skeleton of a man or woman whose wrists are still bound. The attackers pulled the person’s clothes down to the knees, presumably so the victim could be sexually abused before being killed. If the victim was a man, he was probably castrated; if a woman, she was probably raped.

There are thousands more of these photos. Many of them show attacks on children and are too horrific for a newspaper.

One wrenching photo in the archive shows the manacled hands of a teenager from the girls’ school in Suleia who was burned alive. It’s been common for the Sudanese militias to gang-rape teenage girls and then mutilate or kill them.

Another photo shows the body of a young girl, perhaps 10 years old, staring up from the ground where she was killed. Still another shows a man who was castrated and shot in the head.

This archive, including scores of reports by the monitors on the scene, underscores that this slaughter is waged by and with the support of the Sudanese government as it tries to clear the area of non-Arabs. Many of the photos show men in Sudanese Army uniforms pillaging and burning African villages. I hope the African Union will open its archive to demonstrate publicly just what is going on in Darfur.

The archive also includes an extraordinary document seized from a janjaweed official that apparently outlines genocidal policies. Dated last August, the document calls for the “execution of all directives from the president of the republic” and is directed to regional commanders and security officials.

“Change the demography of Darfur and make it void of African tribes,” the document urges. It encourages “killing, burning villages and farms, terrorizing people, confiscating property from members of African tribes and forcing them from Darfur.”

It’s worth being skeptical of any document because forgeries are possible. But the African Union believes this document to be authentic. I also consulted a variety of experts on Sudan and shared it with some of them, and the consensus was that it appears to be real.

Certainly there’s no doubt about the slaughter, although the numbers are fuzzy. A figure of 70,000 is sometimes stated as an estimated death toll, but that is simply a U.N. estimate for the deaths in one seven-month period from nonviolent causes. It’s hard to know the total mortality over two years of genocide, partly because the Sudanese government is blocking a U.N. team from going to Darfur and making such an estimate. But independent estimates exceed 220,000 - and the number is rising by about 10,000 per month.

So what can stop this genocide? At one level the answer is technical: sanctions against Sudan, a no-fly zone, a freeze of Sudanese officials’ assets, prosecution of the killers by the International Criminal Court, a team effort by African and Arab countries to pressure Sudan, and an international force of African troops with financing and logistical support from the West.

But that’s the narrow answer. What will really stop this genocide is indignation. Senator Paul Simon, who died in 2003, said after the Rwandan genocide, “If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different.”

The same is true this time. Web sites like www.darfurgenocide.org and www.savedarfur.org are trying to galvanize Americans, but the response has been pathetic.

I’m sorry for inflicting these horrific photos on you. But the real obscenity isn’t in printing pictures of dead babies - it’s in our passivity, which allows these people to be slaughtered.

During past genocides against Armenians, Jews and Cambodians, it was possible to claim that we didn’t fully know what was going on. This time, President Bush, Congress and the European Parliament have already declared genocide to be under way. And we have photos.

This time, we have no excu

Posted at 12:02 PM · Comments (0)

Seen online: From a Reuters news article about the sending of more Australian troops
to Iraq for the purpose of protecting Japanese SDF:

“Opinion polls showed Australians opposed sending the extra troops to Iraq. A telephone survey of 17,000 people by Channel Ten television found 71 percent opposed the deployment compared with 29 percent in favor. The 50 percent increase in Australian troop numbers in Iraq
follows the withdrawal of Dutch soldiers from the south of the troubled
country and Howard did not rule out sending more.”

A commentator’s wonderment:
“How absurd is it for a foreign country to send troops to another foreign country and then import other foreign troops in to guard them?
And when one foreign country decides to pull its troops out of the invaded country the remaining foreign country’s troops have to get
some other foreign country to come and guard their troops that nobody wants there in the first place?”

Posted at 12:50 AM · Comments (0)

TOKYO More than any other Japanese filmmaker, Jun Ichikawa seems intent on stressing the “Japanese-ness” in his stories. His characters are almost always restrained, well-behaved and unemotional. What displays of drama there are, are only alluded to in bits of dialogue and rarely played out in his lens.

The method was perfected in his fourth feature, “Tokyo Siblings” (1995), the story of a brother and his younger sister living together in their (long dead) parents’ home. The siblings’ quiet love for each other is described by a shot of two pairs of chopsticks laid out just so (a sure sign of harmony in the home) or the sight of the sister’s cotton summer dress (her brother’s favorite) drying in the breeze.

Every day, the sister buys fresh tofu for her brother and he comes home with her favorite fruits.

“I don’t think of these things as particularly Japanese,” Ichikawa said. “But I do have this tendency to avoid outright emotional demonstrations and raised voices, overt depictions of anger or sadness. If you care to call that Japanese, then I guess that’s what it is.

“When I was first filming ‘Tokyo Siblings,’ I told the actor and actress to be natural with each other, and what happened was that they sat at the table and looked into each other’s eyes,” he added. “I told them to stop it. No brother and sister would look at one another like that. They’ve been living together all their lives, they have an established routine, why was there a need to look at each other?”

That floored the pair because they had understood “Tokyo Siblings” to be a love story of sorts. How were they to express that with such little dialogue to help them? “I think they were uncomfortable with the silence, those frequent spaces of shared silence. But I think that’s a natural state for siblings or any long-term relationship. Why pretend otherwise? And then they realized it was okay to be cool about it, and we went on to make the movie.”

In Japan, Ichikawa’s works are most often compared to those of Yasujiro Ozu - that master creator of shared silences and precise, still-life frames in which every detail occupies a designated spot carefully selected by the director. Ozu was famed for reprimanding his cast for making the slightest, almost imperceptible movements not in the scenario. And though Ichikawa says he doesn’t go that far, he does acknowledge, “I demand a lot from my actors. At times maybe I push them too hard.”

His latest film, called “Tony Takitani,” is his 17th. His movies have been made at a pace of about one a year since his debut feature in 1987.

Undoubtedly one of the most prolific directors in Japan, Ichikawa didn’t have the overseas popularity of other Japanese directors until “Tony Takitani,” which won a special award at the Locarno Film Festival, finally put the 57-year old director’s name on the map.

“The journalists at the film festival told me they thought this was a very Japanese kind of film. I seem to draw out that response,” he said. “It’s true some of themes in the story are quite representative of contemporary Japan. But more than that, I was simply intrigued by the story and by the main character, Tony.”

The film opens with a voice-over narration: “Tony Takitani’s real name was really Tony Takitani.” It is based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, the widely translated writer whose most recent novel published in English is “Kafka on the Shore.”

“I’ve always loved his works with avid devotion,” Ichikawa said. “There’s just something about them that has a particular, striking poignancy.” To pay tribute to his favorite author, Ichikawa put special care in assembling his two-person main cast. The title role went to the stand-up comedian Issey Ogata, who is known for his darkly funny one-man shows.

Ogata’s inherent love of solitude and the astonishing range and versatility of his performances come to the fore in this story of a man seemingly born into loneliness.

Despite the cheery American name (bestowed by a G.I. who befriended his father), Tony spent most of his life enshrouded in gloom and utter solitude. His mother died shortly after he was born and his father was a jazz musician perpetually on tour. Ichikawa depicts Tony’s life as he matures from a child into a man in telling vignettes: A scene of the boy Tony eating dinner (alone) while the housekeeper (a middle-aged woman who only wants to go home as soon as possible) washes dishes with her back turned. Or Tony in arts college, explaining to an acquaintance how he broke up with a girlfriend in one rapid sentence (“It just didn’t work out”).

“Tony Takitani is so completely lonely he doesn’t realize just how lonely he is until he falls in love,” said Ichikawa, summing up the story. After hereaches middle age, Tony (now a successful illustrator) meets the woman who becomes his wife, and he awakens from his coma of solitude.

For the all-important role of Tony’s wife, Ichikawa chose the acclaimed actress Rie Miyazawa, whose fashion-model physique and sophisticated air fulfilled the necessary requirements: Tony’s wife was a woman addicted to luxury clothes. (“If she saw something beautiful, then that was it. She had to have it,” goes the narration.)

At first Tony is unfazed by what he sees as a minor idiosyncrasy and simply basks in marital bliss, until his wife’s addiction escalates and she wanders from boutique to boutique like a junkie looking for the next fix.

Ichikawa refrained from filming the wife’s shopping trips in an obvious way. We merely see her beautiful shoes (a different pair each time) clicking on the pavement outside the boutique and then receding from a voice coming from the doorway: “Thank you, come again!”

“I thought this was a neat idea,” Ichikawa said. “After all that talk about buying clothes, the audience couldn’t see what she was wearing; they could only imagine her in expensive ensembles. And she was all decked out, believe me. But I never filmed her whole person, just her feet.”

When we do see her clothes, rows and rows of them are hanging in the “clothing room” of Tony’s condominium, where the sheer number of outfits and shoes had prompted the couple to clear a separate room just to accommodate them.

Before turning to film, Ichikawa had made some of Japan’s most influential commercials.

“I started out later in life than other people,” he said. “I was a procrastinator, and it took me a long time to figure out where I was going. I graduated from my arts university a little later than my classmates. But starting late meant I was much less immune to the joys of finally getting to make things - commercials, clips, movies, whatever. The sheer joy and enthusiasm has never left me. To this day, I still love what I do.”

When asked whether the pace of releasing a film each year was taxing, Ichikawa took a long drag and vigorously said no. “Quite simply, I can’t think of myself not working. That is my normal state.” He added that the pace had perhaps been possible because of his dislike for strong passion and displays of exaggerated emotion. “It’s just not in me to deal with things like that. To me, those are unrealistic and fake.”

His words recall a scene from “Tony Takitani” when Tony, who dramatically loses his wife, sits in absolute stillness at his work desk and seems to radiate a sadness so acute it hurts to look at the screen.

Such is the kind of moment, unspoken, that Ichikawa’s audiences have come to expect from him. It has a resonance more effective than a thousand declarations.

Posted at 12:46 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times - Tuesday, February 22, 2005

On one more steaming day in Baghdad, word filtered out to the artillery regiment that some of the younger guys were not going to get to fly home for their promised rest-and-relaxation break. Soldiers fumed. They’d spent months of long hours in this crazy place, knowing that at any moment a homemade bomb might explode, a rocket-propelled grenade might land or an Iraqi child might spit at them.

But though they were armed to the teeth, they chose to respond with a different kind of weapon. They stepped outside and, of all things, began to rap.

“I started doing some of the most outlandish freestyle you can imagine,” Javorn Drummond, an army specialist from Wade, North Carolina, recalled. “We were just going off about how we do all the work, but we can’t go home. We didn’t care who could hear. We didn’t have to care. I’ll tell you, it felt good. At that time, they were killing us. We were working so hard we weren’t getting sleep.”

Moments like those, when service members turn to rap to express, and perhaps relieve, fear, aggression, resentment and exhaustion, have become a common part of life during nearly two years of war in Iraq.

“Rap is the one place,” Drummond said, “where you can get out your aggravation - your anger at the people who outrank you, your frustration at the Iraqi people who just didn’t understand what we were doing. You could get out everything.”

If rock ‘n’ roll - the sounds of Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and Creedence Clearwater Revival- was the music of American service members in Vietnam, rap may become the defining pulse for the war in Iraq. It has emerged as a rare realm where soldiers and marines, hardly known for talking about their feelings, are voicing the full range of their emotions and reactions to war. They rap about their resentment of the military hierarchy. But they also rap about their pride, their invincibility, fallen fellow soldiers, their disdain for the enemy and their determination to succeed.

Plenty of soldiers still listen to the twang of country music or the scream of heavy metal. Many, in fact, said that metal - and albums like Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” - helped psyche them up for combat as they roared across the desert in the very first days of conflict. But a great many say it was 50 Cent, Pastor Troy or Mystikal (himself a gulf war veteran) who kept them chugging along in trucks and Humvees - in one case, manning the Humvee machine gun - small headphone lines tucked away under Kevlar vests. They listened to get stirred up on the way to house raids, before guard duty assignments or simply when they awoke to another tedious day under that enormous sun.

The more than 1,450 American service members killed in Iraq have also left behind traces of hip-hop scattered in the memories. Sergeant Jack Bryant Jr., of Dale City, Virginia, who died Nov. 20 when a makeshift bomb blew up near his convoy in Iraq, had written rap, his father said recently. And Private First Class Curtis Wooten of Spanaway, Washington, who was killed Jan. 4 when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in Balad, had planned to go to school when he got home, his brother said, to become a producer in the hip-hop world.

As for the many soldiers who are writing and performing their own raps, their lyrics sample the lexicon of the war - the Sandbox, IEDs (improvised explosive devices), ICDC (the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) and Haji (the word many soldiers use derogatorily for the enemy) - and the wide scope of their feelings about it.

“There is a great potential for ambivalence in their words,” said Jeff Chang, author of a new book, “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.”

“That’s part of the ambivalence hip-hop has often carried. You hear two ideas in what they are saying here: an implicit critique of ‘what am I doing here?’ but at the same time, the idea of loyalty to your street soldiers, loyalty to your troops, loyalty to the guys you ride with.”

The music of Drummond and his colleagues in the 1st Armored Division’s 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery makes up much of the background sound in a documentary, “Gunner Palace,” about the experience of one group of ordinary soldiers in Iraq. The movie, directed by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, records the lives of 400 soldiers living in the palace of Saddam Hussein’s son Odai after the fall of Baghdad.

Rap might seem at odds with the conformity of military life, but Tucker, who served in the reserve in the 1980s, sees it as an extension of the cadence, or the calling-out songs to which troops run. And from the lyrics they write, it’s clear that some of these soldiers identify their role - urban guerrilla warriors fighting an unseen enemy - with that of the heroes of the genre. Even an organization for soldiers, USO, has responded: They sent Nappy Roots, Bubba Sparks, 50 Cent and G-Unit to perform for soldiers in Iraq, and Ludacris appeared at a giant welcome home for soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas.

“Rap has become another part of barracks culture,” Tucker said in a phone interview. “As far as soldiers go, rap is almost the perfect medium: They are able to say so much, to let off steam and also to have so many hidden meanings in what they say.”

One day in April 2004, Sergeant Nick Moncrief, who said he had felt close to death many times during his 14 months in Iraq, felt at least four bullets whiz past his face while he was guarding the perimeter of an area in Baghdad. “Those bullets were close to me the way you’re close when you’re getting ready to kiss a girl.”

‘Not long after that, he scribbled down a rap: “I noticed that my face is aging so quickly/Cuz I’ve seen more than your average man in his fifties/I’m 24 now/Got two kids and a wife/Having visions of them picturing me up out of they life.”…

Some soldiers described jotting down lyrics on scraps of paper at night, between power failures. They rapped to whatever beat they could find - a homemade CD on a boom box or just drumming on a Humvee. The soldiers joked that they could have even rapped to the beat of gunfire…

…Usually, violence was the inspiration. After a June 2003 shootout that left one man dead, Taylor wrote: “I can’t believe Iraqis are after me/It’s got to be a tragedy/The way these people bust and blast at me/Dear God, is this the way it has to be?”

For the entire article please see the link below.

Posted at 12:39 AM · Comments (0)

I’ve cut out the chest-thumping portions of this, which can be read in its entirety on the WSJ site. It was the sheer horror, not the competition between systems that most impressed me:

On Feb. 19, 1945, more than 110,000 Americans and 880 ships began their assault on a small volcanic island in the Pacific, in the climactic battle of the last year of World War II. For the next 36 days Iwo Jima would become the most populous seven-and-a-half square miles on the planet, as United States Marines and Japanese soldiers fought a battle that would test American resolve even more than D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge had, and that still symbolizes a free society’s willingness to make the sacrifice necessary to prevail over evil — a sacrifice as relevant today as it was 60 years ago.

The attack on Iwo Jima capped a two year island-hopping campaign which was as controversial with politicians and the press as any Rumsfeld strategy. Each amphibious assault had been bloodier than the last: at Tarawa, where 3,000 ill-prepared Marines fell taking an island of just three square miles; at Saipan, where Army troops performed so poorly two of their generals had to be fired; and Peleliu, where it took 10 weeks of fighting in 115 degree heat to root out the last Japanese defenders, at the cost of 6,000 soldiers and Marines.

Iwo Jima would be the first island of the Japanese homeland to be attacked. The Japanese had put in miles of tunnels and bunkers, with 361 artillery pieces, 65 heavy mortars, 33 large naval guns, and 21,000 defenders determined to fight to the death. Their motto was, “kill 10 of the enemy before dying.” American commanders expected 40% casualties on the first assault. “We have taken such losses before,” remarked the Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith, “and if we have to, we can do it again.”

Feb. 23, 1945: The price of freedom remains the same.

Even before the attack, the Navy’s bombardment of Iwo Jima cost more ships and men than it lost on D-Day, without making a significant dent in the Japanese defenses. Then, beginning at 9 a.m. on the 19th, Marines loaded down with 70 to 100 pounds of equipment each hit the beach, and immediately sank into the thick volcanic ash. They found themselves on a barren moonscape stripped of any cover or vegetation, where Japanese artillery could pound them with unrelenting fury. Scores of wounded Marines helplessly waiting to be evacuated off the beach were killed “with the greatest possible violence,” as veteran war reporter Robert Sherrod put it. Shells tore bodies in half and scattered arms and legs in all directions, while so much underground steam rose from the churned up soil the survivors broke up C-ration crates to sit on in order to keep from being scalded. Some 2,300 Marines were killed or wounded in the first 18 hours. It was, Sherrod said, “a nightmare in hell.”

And overlooking it all, rising 556 feet above the carnage, stood Mount Suribachi, where the Japanese could direct their fire along the entire beach. Taking Suribachi became the key to victory. It took four days of bloody fighting to reach the summit, and when Marines did, they planted an American flag. When it was replaced with a larger one, photographer Joe Rosenthal recorded the scene — the most famous photograph of World War II and the most enduring symbol of a modern democracy at war.

Yet, in the end, a symbol of what? Certainly not victory. The capture of Suribachi only marked the beginning of the battle for Iwo Jima , which dragged on for another month and cost nearly 26,000 men — all for an island whose future as a major air base never materialized. Forty men were in the platoon which raised the flag on Suribachi. Only four would survive the battle unhurt. Their company, E Company, Second Battalion, 28th Regiment, Fifth Marine Division, would suffer 75% casualties. Of the seven officers who led it into battle, only one was left when it was over.

But the Marines pushed on. Over the next agonizing weeks, they took the rest of the island yard by yard, bunker by bunker, cave by cave. They fought through places with names like “Bloody Gorge” and “The Meat Grinder.” They learned to take no prisoners in fighting a skilled and fanatical enemy who gave no quarter and expected none. Twenty out of every 21 Japanese defenders would die where they stood. One in three Marines on Iwo Jima would either be killed or wounded, including 19 of 24 battalion commanders.

Posted at 10:51 PM · Comments (1)

Copyright 2005 The New York Times. Published Feb. 21, 2005

For the first time, more blacks are coming to the United States from Africa than during the slave trade.

Since 1990, according to immigration figures, more have arrived voluntarily than the total who disembarked in chains before the United States outlawed international slave trafficking in 1807. More have been coming here annually - about 50,000 legal immigrants - than in any of the peak years of the middle passage across the Atlantic, and more have migrated here from Africa since 1990 than in nearly the entire preceding two centuries.

New York State draws the most; Nigeria and Ghana are among the top 20 sources of immigrants to New York City. But many have moved to metropolitan Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Houston. Pockets of refugees, especially Somalis, have found havens in Minnesota, Maine and Oregon.

The movement is still a trickle compared with the number of newcomers from Latin America and Asia, but it is already redefining what it means to be African-American. The steady decline in the percentage of African-Americans with ancestors who suffered directly through the middle passage and Jim Crow is also shaping the debate over affirmative action, diversity programs and other initiatives intended to redress the legacy of slavery.

In Africa, the flow is contributing to a brain drain. But at the same time, African-born residents of the United States are sharing their relative prosperity here by sending more than $1 billion annually back to their families and friends.

“Basically, people are coming to reclaim the wealth that’s been taken from their countries,” said Howard Dodson, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem, which has just inaugurated an exhibition, Web site and book, titled “In Motion,” to commemorate the African diaspora.

The influx has other potential implications, from recalibrating the largely monolithic way white America views blacks to raising concerns that American-born blacks will again be left behind.

“Historically, every immigrant group has jumped over American-born blacks,” said Eric Foner, the Columbia University historian. “The final irony would be if African immigrants did, too.”

The flow from Africa began in the 1970’s, mostly with refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia, and escalated in the 1990’s, when the number of black residents of the United States born in sub-Saharan Africa nearly tripled. Combined with the much larger flow of Caribbean blacks, the recent arrivals from Africa accounted for about 25 percent of black population growth in the United States over all during the decade. Nationally, the proportion of blacks who are foreign born rose to about 7.3 percent from 4.9 percent in the 1990’s. In New York City, about 1 in 3 blacks are foreign born.

According to the census, the proportion of black people living in the United States who describe themselves as African-born, while still small, more than doubled in the 1990’s, to 1.7 percent from about 0.8 percent, for a total estimated conservatively at more than 600,000. About 1.7 million United States residents identify their ancestry as sub-Saharan.

Those numbers reflect only legal immigrants, who have been arriving at the rate of about 50,000 a year, first mostly as refugees and students and more recently through family reunification and diversity visas. Many speak English, were raised in large cities and capitalist economies, live in families headed by married couples and are generally more highly educated and have higher-paying jobs than American-born blacks.

There is no official count of the many others who entered the country illegally or have overstayed their visas and who are likely to be less well off.

Kim Nichols, co-executive director of the African Services Committee, which directs newcomers to health care, housing and other services in the New York region, estimates that the number of illegal African immigrants dwarfs the legal ones. “We think it’s a multiple of at least four,” she said.

Africans’ reasons for coming echo the aspirations of earlier immigrants.

“Senegal became too small,” said Marie Lopy, who arrived as a student in 1996, worked as a bookkeeper in a restaurant and earned an associate degree in biology from the City University of New York.

After winning a place in an American immigration lottery that his secretary had entered for him in 1994, Daouda Ndiaye recalls being persuaded by his six children to leave Senegal, where he was working as a financial manager. “I said, ‘I’m 45, I’d have to build a whole new life, I’d have to go to school to learn English,’ ” he recalled. “They said, ‘We want you to go and we want you to send for us because there’s more opportunity in the U.S. than here.’ “

His wife and two of his children have joined him in the United States, where he has worked as a sporting goods store manager and is now a translator.

That the latest movement of black Africans arriving voluntarily surpasses the total who disembarked in chains before the United States outlawed international slave trafficking is a bit of a statistical anomaly. That total, most historians now agree, was about 500,000, with an annual peak of perhaps 30,000, compared with the millions overall who were sold into slavery from Africa. Many died aboard ship. Most were transported to the Caribbean and Brazil, where they were vulnerable to indigenous diseases and to the rigors of raising sugar cane, which was harder to cultivate than cotton or rice, the predominant crops on plantations in the United States, where the slave population was better able to survive and reproduce.

Moreover, black Africans represented a much higher proportion of the population then than they do today. In 1800, about 20 percent of the 5 million or so people in the United States were black. Among nearly 300 million Americans today, about 13 percent are black.

Still, with Europe increasingly inhospitable and much of Africa still suffering from the ravages of drought and the AIDS epidemic and the vagaries of economic mismanagement, the number migrating to the United States is growing - despite the reluctance of some Africans to come face to face with the effects of centuries of enduring discrimination.

In the 1960’s, 28,954 legal immigrants were admitted from all of Africa, a figure that rose geometrically to 80,779 in the 1970’s, 176,893 in the 1980’s and 354,939 in the 1990’s. In 2002, 60,269 were admitted, including 8,291 from Nigeria, 7,574 from Ethiopia, 4,537 from Somalia, 4,256 from Ghana and 3,207 from Kenya.

To many Americans, the most visible signs of the movement are the proliferation of African churches, mosques, hair-braiding salons, street vendors and supermarket deliverymen, the controversy over female genital mutilation and the election last year of Barack Obama, son of a native Kenyan, to the United States Senate from Illinois. Especially in New York City, the shooting deaths of two unarmed African immigrants, Amadou Diallo from Guinea in 1999 and Ousmane Zongo from Burkina Faso in 2003, come to mind.

Immigrants arrive with their own perceptions and expectations, from countries where blacks constitute a majority at every level of society, only to discover that whether they are professors or peddlers, they may be lumped together here by whites and even by American-born blacks.

“You have the positive impact that race is not seen to be an absolute definer of people’s opportunities,” Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, said, “but that begs the larger question of what does it mean to have a black skin in the United States.”

Agba Mangalabou, who arrived from Togo in 2002, recalls his surprise when he moved here from Europe. “In Germany, everyone knew I was African,” he said. “Here, nobody knows if I’m African or American.”…

… Ms. Lopy, who now works as a medical interpreter for the African Services Committee, describes herself as “African, first and foremost,” though the identity of her children will depend on whom she marries and where. “I’ll raise them to be African-something,” she said, “but ultimately they’ll define it for themselves.”..

…”As with European ethnics at the turn of the century,” Joseph J. Salvo, the director of the population division of the Department of City Planning, and Arun Peter Lobo, the deputy director, wrote recently, “ethnicity has been a powerful force in shaping black residential settlement in New York.”

Immigration may also shift some of the nation’s focus from racial distinctions to ethnic ones. “Certainly, South Africa showed us that minority status does not necessarily correlate to one’s position in society, but rather that power and its uses are the issues,” said Samuel K. Roberts of Columbia, a history professor who is also on the faculty of the university’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies. “That being said, increasingly distinguishing between black Americans and black Africans may produce conditions in which we will be less prone to think of a fictional construct of ‘race’ as the distinguishing factor among all of us in North America.”

How long might those distinctions last? “I guess one of the questions will have to be what happens in the next generation or two,” said Professor Foner of Columbia. “In America, marriage is the great solvent. Are they going to melt into the African-American population? Most likely yes.”

For the entire article, please click the link below.

Posted at 10:03 PM · Comments (0)

This almost might better have been called On Japan. Updike, once he gets going here, is very perceptive about the country’s belief systems.

Published Jan. 24, 2005 - Copyright The New Yorker

Haruki Murakami’s new novel, “Kafka on the Shore” (translated, from the Japanese, by Philip Gabriel; Knopf; $25.95), is a real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender. Spun out to four hundred and thirty-six pages, it seems more gripping than it has a right to be and less moving, perhaps, than the author wanted it to be. Murakami, born in 1949, ran a Tokyo jazz club before he became a published writer, with the novel “Hear the Wind Sing,” in 1979. Though his work abounds with references to contemporary American culture, especially its popular music, and though he details the banal quotidian with an amiable flatness reminiscent of Western youth and minimalist fiction in the hungover nineteen-seventies, his narratives are dreamlike, closer to the viscid surrealism of Kobo Abe than to the superheated but generally solid realism of Mishima and Tanizaki. We often cannot imagine, while reading “Kafka on the Shore,” what will come next, and our suspicion-reinforced by Murakami’s comments in interviews, such as the one in last summer’s Paris Review-is that the author did not always know, either.

Yet “Kafka on the Shore” has a schematic rigor in its execution. Alternate chapters relate the stories of two disparate but slowly converging heroes. The odd-numbered chapters serve up the first-person narrative of a fifteen-year-old runaway from his affluent, motherless home in Tokyo; his father is a world-renowned sculptor, Koichi Tamura, and the son has given himself the peculiar first name Kafka. He totes a carefully packed backpack and, in his head, talking in boldface, a scolding, exhorting alter ego called Crow-which is what Kafka means, or close to it, in Czech. The even-numbered chapters trace, beginning with a flurry of official documents, the life of a mentally defective sexagenarian, Satoru Nakata. He was one of sixteen fourth graders who, in 1944, while on a mushroom-gathering walk with their teacher, fell into a coma after an unexplained flash of silver in the sky. Nakata was the only one who didn’t wake up, unharmed, within a few hours; when he did wake up, several weeks later in a military hospital, he had lost his entire memory and, with it, the ability to read. He doesn’t know what Japan is or even recognize his parents’ faces. He is able, however, to learn to work in a shop producing handcrafted furniture, and when, upon the owner’s death, the factory disbands he supplements his government subsidy with a modest-paying sideline in finding lost cats, since along with his disabilities he has gained the rare ability to converse with cats. (Cats frequently figure in Murakami’s fiction, as delegates from another world; his jazz club was called Peter Cat.) One cat search leads Nakata to a house-that of the sculptor Koichi Tamura, in fact-where he is compelled to stab to death a malevolent apparition in the form of Johnnie Walker, from the whiskey label. Fleeing the bloody crime scene, Nakata hitches truck rides south to Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four major islands, where Kafka Tamura, as it happens, has recently arrived by bus.

Both the young man and the old, though independent and reclusive, have a knack of forming useful friendships. Kafka befriends Oshima, the androgynous, hemophiliac assistant at a small library where the boy can read all day and, eventually, bunk at night; Nakata in his winning simplicity finds a disciple in one of the truck drivers who give him a ride, the lower-class, hitherto unenlightened Hoshino, “with a ponytail, a pierced ear, and a Chunichi Dragons baseball team cap.” The double plot unfolds in cunningly but tenuously linked chapters. There is violence, comedy, sex-deep, transcendental, anatomically correct sex, oral and otherwise-and a bewildering overflow of possible meanings.

In a prefatory chapter, Crow promises Kafka a “violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm,” with “hot, red blood.” He assures him, and the expectant reader, “Once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through… . But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in.” At the center of this particular novelistic storm is the idea that our behavior in dreams can translate to live action; our dreams can be conduits back into waking reality. This notion, the learned Oshima tells Kafka, can be found in “The Tale of Genji,” the early-eleventhcentury Japanese classic by Lady Murasaki…

…From the inarguable truth of the second observation the possibility of one’s spirit leaving one’s body could be plausibly deduced in a prescientific, preelectric age when, Oshima points out, “the physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two.” In Murakami’s vision of our materialist, garishly illuminated age, however, the boundary between inner and outer darkness is traversed by grotesque figments borrowed from the world of commercial imagery: Johnnie Walker, with boots and top hat, manifests himself to the cat-loving simpleton Nakata as a mass murderer of stray felines, jocularly cutting open their furry abdomens and popping their still-beating hearts into his mouth, and Colonel Sanders, in his white suit and string tie, appears to Nakata’s companion, Hoshino, as a fast-talking pimp. The Colonel, questioned by the startled Hoshino about his nature, quotes another venerable text, Ueda Akinari’s “Tales of Moonlight and Rain”:

Shape I may take, converse I may, but neither god nor Buddha am I, rather an insensate being whose heart thus differs from that of man.

Later, with some exasperation, the Colonel tells Hoshino, “I’m a concept, get it? Con-cept!” Concept or whatever, he is a very adroit fixer when it comes to such supernatural hustles as handling the entrance stone to the spirit world, where the dead and the drastically detached live in the heart of the forest like writers at the MacDowell Colony-meals and housekeeping provided and other residents discreetly out of sight.

This novel quotes Goethe as decreeing, “Everything’s a metaphor.” But a Western reader expects the metaphors, or symbolic realities, to be-as in “The Faerie Queene,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and Goethe’s “Faust”-organized by certain polarities, in a magnetic field shaped by a central supernatural authority. No such authority controls the spooky carnival of “Kafka on the Shore.” To quote Colonel Sanders once more:

“Listen-God only exists in people’s minds. Especially in Japan, God’s always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person.”

In “Kafka on the Shore,” the skies unaccountably produce showers of sardines, mackerel, and leeches, and some unlucky people get stuck halfway in the spirit world and hence cast a faint shadow in this one. Japanese supernature, imported into contemporary America with animated cartoons, video games, and Yu-Gi-Oh cards, is luxuriant, lighthearted, and, by the standards of monotheism, undisciplined. The religious history of Japan since the introduction of Chinese culture in the fifth century A.D. and the arrival of Buddhism in the sixth has been a long lesson in the stubborn resilience and adaptability of the native cult of polytheistic nature worship called, to distinguish it from Buddhism, Shinto. Shinto, to quote the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “has no founder, no official sacred scriptures, in the strict sense, and no fixed dogma.” Nor does it offer, as atypically surviving kamikaze pilots have proudly pointed out, an afterlife. It is based on kami, a ubiquitous word sometimes translated as “gods” or “spirits” but meaning, finally, anything felt worthy of reverence. One of Shinto’s belated theorists, Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), defined kami as “anything whatsoever which was out of the ordinary.”

A tenacious adherence to Shinto in the Japanese countryside and among the masses has enabled it to coexist for a millennium and a half with Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, and to be subject to repeated revivals, most recently, from 1871 to 1945, as the official national religion and a powerful spiritual weapon in Japan’s imperialist wars. After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, Shinto, under the direction of the Allied occupation force, was disestablished, its holidays were curtailed, and the emperor’s divinity-based on the first emperor’s purported descent from the sun goddess-was renounced. But Shinto shrines remain, in the imperial precincts and in the countryside; its rites are performed, its paper wish-slips tied to bushes, its amulets sold to tourists Asian and Western. Shinto’s strong aesthetic component, a reverence toward materials and processes, continues to permeate the crafts and the arts. Kami exists not only in heavenly and earthly forces but in animals, birds, plants, and stones. Nakata and Hoshino spend hours trying to learn how to converse with a stone-to divine what the stone, at times easily lifted and at others heavy to the limits of a man’s strength, wants. Kami pervades Murakami’s world, in which, therefore, many Western readers will feel, a bit queasily, at sea, however many fragments of globalized Western culture-Goethe, Beethoven, Eichmann, Hegel, Coltrane, Schubert, Napoleon-bob from paragraph to paragraph.

The novel’s two heroes interact only in the realm of kami. Of their entwined narratives, the story of Kafka Tamura is more problematic, more curiously overloaded, than that of the holy fool Nakata, with its familiar elements of science fiction, quest, and ebullient heroics. As Hoshino remarks, “This is starting to feel like an Indiana Jones movie or something.” Return and release to the underworld of his childhood coma are the old man’s intelligible goals, for which he prepares with prodigious sessions of sleep. Less intelligibly, the “cool, tall, fifteen-year-old boy lugging a backpack and a bunch of obsessions” labors under an ill-defined Oedipal curse. He hates his father enough to dream of killing him, and to feel little sorrow when he is killed, but we never see the father, unless it is in the bizarre guise of Johnnie Walker, and know only that he was a famous artist and, as such, probably pretty egocentric. Kafka’s mother left home, with his older sister, when he was four years old, and when he encounters her in Shikoku it is in the form of a fifteen-year-old spirit projection of the library director, trim, prim, reserved Miss Saeki, who is over fifty. Miss Saeki and Kafka Tamura talk like this:

“We’re not metaphors.” “I know,” I say. “But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.” A faint smile comes to her as she looks up at me. “That’s the oddest pickup line I’ve ever heard.” “There’re a lot of odd things going on-but I feel like I’m slowly getting closer to the truth.” “Actually getting closer to a metaphorical truth? Or metaphorically getting closer to an actual truth? Or maybe they supplement each other?” “Either way, I don’t think I can stand the sadness I feel right now,” I tell her. “I feel the same way.”

Small wonder, as the teen-ager admits, that “the whole confused mess swirls around in my brain, and my head feels like it’s about to burst.” The Oedipus myth, shedding its fatal Greek gravity and the universality Freud gave it, just adds vapor to the mist of fancy and strangeness through which the young hero moves toward the unexceptional goal of growing up.

In the last pages, the novel asks that it be taken as a happily ending saga of maturation, of “a brand-new world” for a purged Kafka. But beneath his feverish, symbolically fraught adventures there is a subconscious pull almost equal to the pull of sex and vital growth: that of nothingness, of emptiness, of blissful blankness. Murakami is a tender painter of negative spaces. After his coma, Nakata “returned to this world with his mind wiped clean. The proverbial blank slate.” In his adulthood, “that bottomless world of darkness, that weighty silence and chaos, was an old friend, a part of him already.” Throughout this chronicle, Murakami describes his characters falling asleep as lovingly as he itemizes what they cook and eat. Refrigerated severed cat heads, like the severed human heads of Tanizaki’s tremendous novella “The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi,” have a lulling serenity, “staring out blankly at a point in space.” Making love to a woman, “you listen as the blank within her is filled.” Kafka Tamura says, “There’s a void inside me, a blank that is slowly expanding, devouring what’s left of who I am. I can hear it happening.” Heading into the forest, leaving all his backpacked defenses behind, he thinks triumphantly, “I head for the core of the labyrinth, giving myself up to the void.” Existence as something half empty-a mere skin on the essential void, a transitory shore-needs, for its celebration, a Japanese spiritual tact.

Posted at 7:06 PM · Comments (0)

The first inkling Yuko Tojo had of what really happened to her grandfather was when she was in fifth grade at school. Gripping her small white hands around her neck, the 65-year-old re-enacts the classroom scene of more than half a century ago when a boy stood on a chair before leaping to the ground with the cry: “Tojo hanged.”

The young girl looked up the strange word, kohshukei, in the dictionary and found a description next to the picture of a hooded man with a rope around his neck. “Then I knew the meaning,” she nods, releasing her grip to continue the dissection of her lamb fillet.

”Until then I had always believed he had died on the battleground,” she says, recalling her childhood fantasy about her grandfather, Japan’s prime minister in the second world war, who had in fact been executed for crimes against humanity. “My mother had always told me he had fought vigorously for his country and died.”

Nearly 60 years after the armies he marshalled perished on the battlefield or fled back to their devastated homeland, Hideki Tojo’s ghost is still stalking Asia. He is the most famous of 14 Class A war criminals enshrined - along with another 2.5 million war dead - at the Yasukuni shrine, a quiet sanctuary in central Tokyo that has become a rallying point for the Japanese right.

Since Junichiro Koizumi became prime minister four years ago, he has made a point of visiting the shrine each year, provoking outrage in China, which likens the gesture to bowing at the tomb of Adolf Hitler.

Yasukuni has become a dangerous flashpoint in Japan-China relations, already poisoned by history and suffering anew as the two Asian giants jostle for influence. Some Japanese politicians, including former prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, want to defuse the situation. They have urged the families of Class A war criminals to disenshrine their relatives’ souls from Yasukuni. (There are no bodies buried there.) In that way, the prime minister could honour Japan’s fallen soldiers without appearing to condone those who sent them on their suicidal mission.

Yuko Tojo, stalwart defender of her grandfather’s reputation, has chosen the Crown, a French restaurant overlooking the Imperial Palace, to discuss Tojo’s legacy. A tiny, straight-backed figure, dressed in a green woollen suit with large, gold-trimmed buttons, she arrives with bullet-train punctuality clutching a miniature trunk in eggshell blue. Prim and with an old world politeness, she reminds me of Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s straight-laced detective.

Almost as soon as she sits down, she starts disembowelling her little trunk, pulling out her grandfather’s memorabilia, including 161 postcards that Tojo sent to her father, then a young boy, from Europe. Next comes a ream of grainy photographs and a battered notebook, in which Tojo kept a neatly handwritten diary of his parental experiences…

”There is one entry describing how my grandfather would hide behind a chest and tie a piece of string to a candy bar,” she says as I thumb through the yellowing pages. “When the baby tried to grab it, he would pull it away.”…

After Japan’s surrender, Tojo was imprisoned, awaiting trial. “I was a girl so I wasn’t brought so often, but my brother, who is two years older, remembers sticking his hands through the bars and touching my grandfather’s hand.”…

… “It wasn’t a fair trial. It was the victors judging the defeated. To deem Hideki Tojo a villain would mean the war was bad and that all the soldiers who fought in the war were bad,” she says, sipping the fluffy haricot bean soup through pursed lips. “I want to review the war and the actions of the soldiers so that their deaths are not meaningless.”

But isn’t the point that their deaths were meaningless, I say. Tojo’s campaign was barbaric and led to the near-annihilation of Japan. “It’s true that precious lives were lost and that Japan lost the war. But they fought desperately hard and stood proud,” she says, her smile fading slightly. “As a result Japan is enjoying peace and an affluent life. I would be sorry to say they died in vain.”

We take to studying our main course intensely, before I venture to ask how exactly Japan’s aggressive expansionism, admittedly learned at the knee of the Great European Powers, brought about peace. “I think from the way you use the word ‘aggression’, your stance is totally different from mine,” she says after a silence broken by the sound of her knife clinking against the plate. “You are looking at this from the standpoint that Japan was an invader. I say it was a defensive war. Japan did not have resources.”

After a discussion of the Nanking massacre, accounts of which she refutes as Chinese fabrication, and my suggestion that being short of resources does not justify grabbing them, she says: “I wish you had a deeper understanding of what happened. Please make it clear in your article that we have very different standpoints.”

I switch to what suddenly seems like the less controversial subject of Yasukuni. “China has no business in this internal affair,” she pronounces, revealing her dislike for that country with a sideswipe at its plumbing arrangements. “The Americans and the British haven’t complained. It is only China who is whipping the souls of the dead.”

Japanese politicians too should know better than to talk of moving the souls. “Once a soul is enshrined, you can’t tear them into bits and take them from the shrine,” she says. “Once they are enshrined, whether they are generals or rank-and-file soldiers, they all become equal. They are all gods.”…

…At one point she puts a little packet on the white tablecloth a few inches from a strawberry parfait I have been eyeing. She opens it to reveal a small clump of her grandfather’s hair as well as his nail clippings - a parting gift he had prepared for his family before a bungled suicide attempt.

”He told his lawyer that he was living in shame because he failed to commit suicide,” she says. “His whole purpose of continuing to live was to avoid the prosecution of the emperor,” she adds, referring to his testimony - disputed by many historians - that the emperor was largely ignorant of the details of Japan’s disastrous war drive.

There’s an argument, I say, with a nervous back-glance at the imperial palace, that it would have been better if the emperor had been prosecuted. That way Japan might have made a cleaner break with its past. It seems ironic that Tojo, by being enshrined at Yasukuni, became a Shinto god, while Emperor Hirohito, as the price of US exoneration, gave up his divine status to become a mortal monarch.

”The emperor had wished for peace and had wanted to avoid war,” she replies, echoing the testimony her grandfather took to the grave.

All of Tojo’s relics are now safely back in their case. But, through her, his voice still ripples through the air.

For the complete article please see the link below.

Posted at 10:10 PM · Comments (0)

In the long and seemingly futile quest to build a better roach trap, researchers have identified the come-hither chemical of the female German cockroach and produced a synthetic version that makes males come running in fewer than nine seconds.

The search for the sex pheromone has been a top priority for cockroach scientists, but it has been an arduous process because the compound is emitted in very small quantities and is so fragile that it easily degrades during laboratory analysis.

The new synthetic version appears to work at least as well as the original, giving scientists hope that they might be able to shift the balance of power in the age-old contest between humans and cockroaches, creatures widely considered capable of surviving nuclear war.

“Chemists have been trying to get this pheromone for decades,” said Wendell Roelofs, a professor of insect biochemistry at Cornell University and one of the study’s authors.

The compound that lures males to their potential mates is so powerful that cockroaches near death from starvation will forgo peanut butter for a chance to copulate, said Coby Schal, a professor of entomology at North Carolina State University who co-authored the study, published Friday in the journal Science.

“Invariably, the male will choose the sex pheromone over the food, even though he may die on the way,” Schal said.

German cockroaches — half-inch long, light brown bugs with dark brown stripes — are the most prevalent roach species in the world. Widely reviled, they are responsible for spreading food poisoning, dysentery, cholera and other diseases and for triggering asthma in children.

U.S. consumers spend more than $1 billion each year to rid their homes of roaches and other pests, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. They barely make a dent in the cockroach population.

With a single female roach capable of producing as many as 2 million offspring a year, pest control experts know they have lifetime employment. The best they can do to control the pests is to use food as bait to lure them into traps or to catch them on a glue board if they happened to wander onto it.

The pheromone approach promises to be far more effective, said Greg Baumann, technical director for the National Pest Management Association, a trade group based in Fairfax, Va.

Posted at 1:05 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright 2005 The New York Times - Published Feb. 18, 2005

China Is Uneasy in Korean Role, Wary of U.S. Motives
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

SHANGHAI, Feb. 18 — The dispatch by China of a high-level envoy this weekend to persuade the North Koreans to return to talks on their nuclear weapons would seem to present it with an ideal opportunity. China’s economy is growing enormously, casting shadows in every direction.

Its fast-modernizing military has the attention of every power, regional or global. No other country, meanwhile, enjoys the kind of long, unbroken friendship that China has nurtured for over five decades with North Korea. In short, all the pieces would seem to be in place for Beijing to score its first big coup in global diplomacy, brokering an end to the nuclear threat on the Korean peninsula.

The only problem with this optimistic scenario is that it is shared by almost no one in China.

For now, the Chinese remain reluctant to take major diplomatic risks on North Korea, convinced that this longtime ally, a country that Chinese soldiers shed blood in large numbers to defend, will never turn against them. Analysts say that Beijing’s top priority is to maintain quiet on its frontier, and that it would take a more aggressive tack only if tensions between Washington and North Korea were to increase seriously.

Beyond such doubts, however, lingers an even more fundamental reason for the reluctance of China to take the lead in this crisis: its deepseated skepticism about the United States’ strategic designs in the region.

“If we cut off aid and the Koreas are unified on South Korean terms, that would be a big disaster for China,” one analyst said. “The U.S. would insist on basing its troops in the northern part of the peninsula, and China would have to consider that all of its efforts going back to the Korean War have been a waste.”

Other experts here look cynically on Washington’s insistence on Chinese leadership in the North Korean face-off, seeing it as part of a broader effort by the United States to entangle Beijing in a growing web of international arrangements, the better to limit Chinese influence.

A fresh example of the divisions between the United States and China was provided this week with confirmation that Tokyo is moving closer to Washington’s policy position that the status quo on Taiwan must be maintained. Chinese analysts often point out that having a friendly country tying up American troops on its northern border frees Beijing to focus its forces on other contingencies, notably the Taiwan question.

Meanwhile, most Chinese international security experts insist that the United States holds the two most important keys to resolving the North Korean problem: ending a state of hostility that dates from the earliest days of the cold war and providing tangible assurances to North Korea that Washington does not seek the government’s overthrow.

“Although many of our friends see it as a failing state, potentially one with nuclear weapons, China has a different view,” said Piao Jianyi, an expert in international relations at the Institute of Asia Pacific Studies in Beijing. “North Korea has a reforming economy that is very weak, but every year is getting better, and the regime is taking measures to reform its economy, so perhaps the U.S. should reconsider its approach.”

This widely held picture of a slowly, painfully reforming North Korea suggests a broad sympathy for North Korea among Chinese intellectuals and policy makers. For many, North Korea’s experience echoes China’s fitful reforms of a generation ago. “In the late 1960’s, China also had a lack of transparency,” Mr. Piao added. “It was also threatening to other countries and, as Westerners would say, it was an oppressive country. But one threatens others because one feels threatened, and in that perspective, you can better understand North Korea.”…

…But if caution remains the cornerstone of China’s policy toward North Korea, Beijing wants to keep up at least the appearance of being a responsible power and attentive to regional problems. Moreover, some voices here have begun to insist that traditional diplomatic approaches no longer meet its current interests…

…Shen Dingli, vice president of the International Relations Institute at Fudan University in Shanghai, said China’s priorities in the international face-off were clear: keeping North Korea from collapsing, and keeping American troops south of the 38th parallel, the line that divides the two Koreas. But he complained of Chinese timidity in limiting itself to a host’s role for the talks.

“China still does not have a mentality for leading the world, and has no reflexes for pushing the U.S. and North Korea to do something,” Mr. Shen said. “This crisis is a reminder that we must raise the level of our diplomacy quite a bit still. If China is not wary of the old passive approach to the world and doesn’t learn how to be more pushy, we will only have ourselves to blame.”

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Posted at 1:41 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright 2005 The Los Angeles Times - Published 2-18-05

TOKYO — At a mere 308 pounds, Asashoryu is not the biggest of the big-bellied men waddling around the dirt ring of this chilly sumo training stable, looking for someone to slam up against.

But he is definitely the baddest.

His opponents look like they were carved from mountains. But Asashoryu cuffs them in the ear and drops them to their knees. He drives his palm into their throats and they recoil. He picks them up by their belts and flings them, their legs flailing, out of the ring.

He toys with fellow wrestlers like a cat playing with a beach ball.

Asashoryu’s cream-colored, almost unblemished body is now the sun around which Japan’s national sport revolves. Just 24 and still a bit baby-faced, he has won six of the last seven major tournaments since 2003, dominating sumo the way Tiger Woods once did golf.

He is sumo’s only reigning yokozuna, top-ranked in a sport that never has more than four yokozuna at a time, a wrestler many call the best Japan has seen in the postwar era.

And he isn’t even Japanese.

Asashoryu’s real name is Dolgorsuren Dagvadorj, and he is Mongolian. Born into a family of wrestlers in the Central Asian country’s capital, Ulan Bator, he came to Japan after high school nearly eight years ago, a strong kid with a mean streak and dreams of sumo stardom. He adopted the name Asashoryu, which means Blue Dragon of the Morning, just as a wave of foreigners began shattering the cultural barrier that had long made sumo the most Japanese of sports.

The foreign invasion is revolutionizing sumo, a sport where massive men collide in a short explosion of violence that ends when one of them is thrown from the ring or touches the ground with any part of his body other than his feet.

Sumo may have had its ups and downs over its 1,500 years of recorded competition, but they have almost always been Japanese ups and downs. Legend has it that Japanese supremacy on its islands was established through a bout between gods, and the sport’s rituals provide links to Japan’s religious and militarist roots.

Now with its top ranks increasingly filled with wrestlers, or rikishi, from other countries, sumo finds itself adrift. Attendance is flagging. There is no obvious Japanese wrestler emerging to capture fans’ hearts and challenge the Mongolian’s hold.

“The Japanese are no good,” Asashoryu says derisively, morning practice over. He sits down cross-legged to lunch — a big lunch — on a tatami carpet.

“Japan’s economy developed and the people became weaker,” he says, elaborating by twitching his thumbs to simulate the sedentary habit of playing electronic games.

Asashoryu laughs, and he is joined by good-spirited nodding from even the Japanese wrestlers around the table. (The yokozuna is accustomed to having people laugh at his jokes.) By contrast, he says, his summers spent on the steppes of Mongolia, sleeping in a tent, herding sheep and riding horses, were just the stuff for nurturing the toughness sumo requires.

“The sumo world is a hard life,” he says, as other wrestlers dutifully replenish his plates of spaghetti and pork, tofu and rice (three bowls), an omelet and bottomless cups of tea.

Wrestlers must not only win tournaments to qualify as a yokozuna but must be accepted by sumo’s governors as being a man of exemplary character. The emphasis on cultural ritual and comportment means the sport has arguably more in common with a tea ceremony than baseball. A yokozuna not only performs a ceremonial role of chasing evil spirits from the ring before a fight but is also the master to an entourage of other rikishi.

Asashoryu is not sumo’s first foreign yokozuna. In 1992, 525-pound Hawaiian-born Chad Rowan, who fought under the name Akebono, became the first wrestler from outside Japan to attain the status. Akebono’s accomplishment was matched by a Samoan-Hawaiian of similar weight named Musashimaru, known to his family as Fiamalu Penitani, who became the second foreign yokozuna in 1999.

But the first foreigners were outsiders, renegades who scaled the walls as solo acts largely on the basis of their overwhelming size. By contrast, the current erosion of Japanese dominance has marked a revolution within the sport that began in the late 1990s. Faced with a sharp decline in the number of Japanese teenagers choosing to dedicate themselves to the rigid sumo lifestyle, the sport’s stable masters, or club owners, sent scouts across Asia and Europe in search of new talent.

Hundreds of aspiring rikishi came to Japan to see whether their raw skill and strength could earn them a place in the world’s only professional sumo circuit. For a sport with an increasingly global complexion, there is still only one place to perform: the birthplace and spiritual home of sumo. There are now 61 foreign rikishi in Japan among the more than 700 ranked wrestlers, including 37 Mongolians.

Sumo’s current cast hails from places that include Russia, Bulgaria, China, Estonia, Tonga and Brazil. Almost one in three places in the top division is occupied by a foreign wrestler. If there is anyone who threatens Asashoryu’s dominance it is Hakuho, another Mongolian, who at 19 has already become a crowd favorite in Japan.

Fans of sumo in Mongolia clamor for news of their countrymen’s success. But Japanese supporters are peeling away from sumo for more fashionable sports such as soccer, or hybrid forms of combat entertainment such as K-1, an extreme-fighting carnival that melds martial arts with street brawling. K-1 has even lured Akebono out of retirement and back into the ring (he has lost miserably in each of his six fights), and has recruited one of Asashoryu’s brothers, Sumiyabazar, to move to Japan and fight under the name Blue Wolf.

Meanwhile, the recently concluded New Year Grand Sumo Tournament, won again by Asashoryu, who went undefeated in 15 bouts, played to half-empty halls in Tokyo. Sumo magazine publishers say their circulation is half of what it was 10 years ago. Given those woes, you’d think the Japanese would be grateful for Asashoryu, whose success is a reminder that sumo is about technique, not just bulk. But Asashoryu has had a harder time winning Japanese hearts than his fights.

The Japanese have traditionally expected their yokozunas to show about as much emotion as a Noh theatrical mask — in other words, none. Champions are supposed to possess hinkaku: a sense of dignity and grace. That is why there is much muttering about Asashoryu’s very un-Japanese exuberance in the ring and his tendency to get into trouble outside it.

The purists don’t take kindly to his fist-pumping victory celebrations, or the way he glares at referees, or how he ends fights with an extra shove for emphasis to opponents already out of the ring. They resent that he uses his left hand instead of the traditional right when he throws salt into the dohyo, the ring, for the ritualized purification before a fight.

And they point to a series of incidents that has led some sumo fans and officials to openly question whether Asashoryu should be stripped of his yokozuna status. (Yokozunas are never demoted. If their ability starts to fade, they are expected to retire.)

There was his notorious disqualification in 2003 from a match for pulling the top knot — the carefully combed and pinned hair — of fellow Mongolian Kyokushuzan. Three days later, Asashoryu and Kyokushuzan resumed their argument when they began brawling at a bathhouse where they had been soaking together.

Then police had to be called to Asashoryu’s training stable last summer when neighbors reported hearing late-night drunken shouts and threats between the wrestler and his stable master — roughly the equivalent of Kobe Bryant taking it into the alley with Jerry Buss. Newspapers reported that fellow wrestlers had to hold Asashoryu back after the two men started scrapping over the division of spoils from the sale of media rights to the yokozuna’s wedding.

Finally, Asashoryu’s status as a foreigner received unwanted extra attention last fall when three of his Mongolian relatives who had come to Japan for his wedding stayed on afterward and found factory jobs without getting work permits. They were deported after being swept up in a police raid.

The Japanese press has feasted on such Asashoryu scandals. They nicknamed him “Genghis Khan” and “The Bully from Bator.”

“Of course the media make a fuss about me,” Asashoryu says, waving his troubles away. “It would be the same in America if a foreigner came in and became champion of one of your national sports.

“But the Japanese people are very generous. In the fighting world, it is important to show you are trying hard. I know if I try hard, the Japanese will accept me.”

Desire is not something Asashoryu lacks. Growing up in a family where his father and two older brothers were amateur wrestlers — his eldest brother carried the Mongolian flag into the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta — he was forced to struggle from an early age.

“I was the baby,” Asashoryu says. “We were poor, and my father was a strong figure; it was my dream to be like him. My older brother is 100 times stronger than I am. So I’ve always been very, very competitive.”

For the complete article please see the link below.

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For nearly half a century, Haitian journalist Aubelin Jolicoeur, who has died aged 80, cheerfully tried to convince the world that his country was better than its horrific image of political brutality and extreme poverty, that it was worth visiting and could be enjoyed.
His own image took a knock when Graham Greene immortalised him in his 1966 novel The Comedians as “Petit Pierre,” a dandyish bon vivant and probable spy for the murderous dictatorship of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his family.
But the tiny, animated boulevardier with bedroom eyes and posh English accent, who flounced about in a white suit and silk ascot twirling a gold-topped cane, thrived on the smear because it brought him the fame he craved. And, thanks also to his unctuous courting of other foreign celebrities, probably a shield against the whims of the mercurial dictator, whom he called his “father.”
He was introduced to Greene in Haiti by American writer Truman Capote in 1954 and the pair soon gravitated to the romantic, creaking Grand Hotel Oloffson, where Greene set his novel. For the next 40 years, Jolicoeur hobnobbed there, in the lingering ambiance of Haiti’s “belle époque,” with a world-class panoply of showbiz, literary and media glitterati.
He was delighted when they nicknamed him “Mr Haiti” for greeting them at the airport and gushingly writing them up in his newspaper column. He called himself “Haiti’s first public relations man.”
His counterpoint was useful to Papa Doc as the dictator grappled with international revulsion and boycotts of his regime. Jolicoeur showed the acceptable face of Haiti and the distinguished foreigners were charmed, despite the occasional body glimpsed on the airport road.
Vain, boastful, buffoonish and bending this way and that to the political winds, he was nevertheless an astute, cultivated and industrious journalist. Under the Duvaliers, he mostly stuck to chronicling the social and literary doings of the country’s political, cultural and business elite, laced with the obscure classical references once de rigueur for recognition by Haiti’s mannered upper class. He said Papa Doc liked him because “I write good French.”
But he disdained the “vulgar” regime of the dictator’s clueless son Jean-Claude, who took over as “president-for-life” in 1971, and eventually joined veiled press criticism that helped nudge the dynasty to its end.
He then became a more open political commentator, disgusted at the endless incompetence sinking the country into ever deeper poverty and political disorder. “There’s a thug inside every Haitian,” he liked to say. He thought Haitians were “not ready for democracy” and harshly criticised the recent excesses of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, with whom he was bitterly disappointed.
Jolicoeur was born in a cemetery (“among the spirits,” he joked) in the southern town of Jacmel when his mother went into premature labour. His father was a local coffee and cocoa trader. The young Aubelin hungrily learned French, the language of the ruling class, and it became his ticket to success as a journalist in the capital, Port-au-Prince, in days when being his shade of black was a clear social disadvantage.
The few minor political posts he accepted turned sour – press secretary to a fleeting general who rigged elections in 1957, four months as a post-Duvalier director of tourism and an even briefer tenure as deputy information minister that ended when he spat in anger at a crowd of strikers at the ministry.
His way with women was legendary. He greeted female guests at the Oloffson with poetic flourishes in his ringing voice and they gigglingly checked the next morning’s paper to see who had won the best encomium – brilliant, princess, sparkling, divine, breathtaking and other extravagances. Jolicoeur, whose name means “flirt” and who contrived to expire on St Valentine’s Day, had a dozen children by as many women, the last only a few years ago.
He was never rich like the upper class he fawned over or the marquises and counts who put him up on his occasional expeditions to Paris. He opened a small art gallery named after his then-wife Claire, a Canadian, and tried to wheedle tourists into buying the paintings but few did and he gave many away. For years he received a small stipend from Bollinger for mentioning their champagne in his columns. “Haitians are comedians,” he would say. “It’s all a show.”
When he was evicted from his rented house several years ago, he moved into a shabby hotel where he lived amid cardboard boxes of his memories and out of shame rarely ventured to the nearby Oloffson. His famous gold-topped cane was stolen and its replacement was only a silver one.
Enfeebled by Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer, his renowned flamboyance vanished and he spent his last years at a seaside hotel in his home town run by an old Duvalierist friend.

Aubelin Jolicoeur, journalist, born April 30 1924; died February 14 2005

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My reading table is not teetering, overstacked with recent arrivals after a bit of a lull in my Amazon orders. I’ve just finished Mr. China, of which I’ll say more soon in the Readings section. For now, suffice to say that it is not the indispensible China book; not even the indispensible China business book. It’s a breezy account of initiation into China and Chinese business by a young and once naive Brit, and as such, much of it reads like the countless other works one comes across in this genre: boilerplate and personal anecdotes in endless succession.
Here’s the list of other new titles on the book stand: The Asiatics, by Frederic Prokosh (see the previous Snippets entry. It’s been my bedtime reading for the last few days.); Red-Dirt Marijuana, and Other Tales, by Terry Southern (a very diverting lunch book); The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (Robert Lawrence Kuhn); Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (Suketu Mehta); The Crossing Cormac MCCARTHY); China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World; Bradley Martin’s new book on North Korea, and more, but I’ll stop here. There’s a fun piece on speed reading in the Snippets column for those who wonder how…

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Andrew Marr ‘swims’ through War and Peace once a year, while some readers can take in 6,000 words a minute. Helen Brown investigates the art of speed-reading.

Despite becoming the subject of more books than she probably ever read, it is Marilyn Monroe who most accurately expresses my ideal reading state. In the song Lazy, she invokes a luxuriously languid day in which she stretches out, yawning, under a “honey lake” of a sky, “With a great big valise full of books to read / Where it’s peaceful / And I’m quarantined… being laaaaaaaa-zzzyyyy.” And yet, for too many of us, reading has become a rushed affair.

No honey lake skies open up as we gobble down the latest John Grisham or Jonathan Franzen. Books must be polished off before we reach our train station, before the book club next meets, or before they are due back to the library. And there are so many prize-winning, shortlisted and shockingly-pipped-at-the-post masterpieces on which we are expected to have opinions that bibliophiles seem to exist in a perpetual state of guilt over what remains unread or partially digested.

But this isn’t a modern paranoia. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill’s contemporaries must have felt a similar pang when he claimed that he could read faster than he could turn pages. The American commentator HL Mencken boasted that he could breeze through a 250-page work within an hour, and it is said that Theodore Roosevelt somehow found time to devour two or three books a day while he was in office.

These people might have been regarded as freakishly fast readers had not a schoolteacher called Evelyn Wood “discovered” speed-reading shortly after the Second World War. Ever since, we have been bombarded with advertisements chiding us for not acquiring the revolutionary technique that could make Roosevelts of us all.

Wood was a student in Utah when she got the idea. She submitted an 80-page paper to her professor and watched in amazement as he read and graded it in under 10 minutes. His “untrained” reading rate was a dizzying 2,500 words per minute, although he could not explain how he did it. Over the next two years, Wood rooted out 50 people of all sorts of backgrounds and ages – from teenagers to an octogenarian – who could read at between 1,500 and 6,000 words per minute, and understand and remember what they had read. By studying their habits, she found that they absorbed more than one word at a time, seeing words in meaningful patterns as they guided their gaze smoothly down the page. Wood taught herself to speed-read by watching them, and in 1959 she opened the first Evelyn Wood Institute in Washington DC.

A Wood course begins by getting readers to follow words along the page by pointing at them, and gradually opening up the field of vision until the reader is taking in pages in widescreen. It sounds like an exercise undertaken by a character in John Irving’s novel A Prayer for Owen Meany. He is advised that “instead of following the elusive next word with my finger… I should highlight a spot on the page by reading through a hole cut in a piece of paper. It was a small rectangle, a window to read through; I moved the window over the page – it was a window that opened no higher than two to three lines. I read more comfortably than I had ever read with my finger; to this day I read through such a window.”

According to the Evelyn Wood Institute, the average person reads between 200 and 400 words a minute. “By at least tripling your reading speed,” it claims, “you would possess a much wider and more flexible range of reading rates and experience for the first time the thrill of dynamic comprehension. It is like watching a movie. As Mrs Wood said after reading a book set in the rain forests of Brazil, ‘It was, oh, so wonderful. I had no direct awareness of reading, but I could see the trees, smell the warm fragrances of the forest, feel the touch of the vines and leaves against my skin, hear those magnificent bird melodies. Reading this new way enables me to project myself into the experience, not just read about it.’ “

I am not sure that Wood’s comments add much credibility. She may have smelled the rainforest, but what was the book about? Did she gain any real grasp of plot, character, prose and theme, or did the ‘dynamic comprehension’ simply give her the flavour of a dish that would never nourish her more deeply? Her response to the South American novel reminds me of Woody Allen’s joke: “I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It involves Russia.”

In his Telegraph column last month, Andrew Marr blithely referred to his annual winter ritual of a “swim” through War and Peace. I hoped it was a joke. As the BBC’s political correspondent, Marr appears on our television sets most evenings, offering insight into the latest 250-page government report, or the polysyllabic findings of an independent inquiry. He also presents Radio 4’s Start the Week programme every Monday morning, on which he cheerily discusses books on politics, literature, science and philosophy with their authors. He also reviews new books for this newspaper. Surely the War and Peace ritual was a joke? It was not.

When I spoke to Marr, he was on his way back from the World Economic Forum in Davos with Tolstoy on his knee. “I just do read fast,” he says. “If I’m reading books where I’m already familiar with the argument, I’ll certainly concentrate more on the middle of the page than on the edges, but I do make an effort to read every page. Unless something has gone horribly wrong, then if somebody comes on Start the Week I will have read the book.”

He doesn’t think that speed-reading is especially virtuous, just a useful tool in his profession. He acknowledges different “gears” for different occasions and confesses that “the penalty for fast reading is quick forgetting. People say to me, ‘Gosh, you read so much, you must know so much,’ and I say, ‘Only up a point’.”

Professor John Stein of Oxford University’s Sensorimotor Control Lab and Dyslexia Unit agrees. “Most speed-read material isn’t committed to long-term memory,” he says, “unless there is some incentive to store that information. Temporary information – things like seven-digit phone numbers we only need for a morning – pass through the working memory.”

Slow readers can take comfort in the fact that there’s an awful lot of brain activity involved in the reading process. Stein explains that “it all happens in the cortical [top] part of the brain. You have an auditory system that needs to detect the different sounds and a visual system to detect the different forms of the letters. The visual side of things starts in the occipital [back] cortex, which moves forward to meet the auditory information that’s coded just in front of your ears in the temporal cortex. They meet at the angular gyrus.

“Speed-readers work by training their eyes to scan and pick up key words. They have a template in the mind of the visual structure of words they are looking for and they don’t read the other words. If you present them with a completely new passage on a subject about which they have no previous knowledge then they wouldn’t be much faster than you or I. It’s perhaps controversial of me to say this, but in my opinion they’re not really ‘reading’. They’re picking up the gist.”

The beautiful phrases Stein uses – “angular gyrus”, “occipital cortex”, “parietal lobe” – make me want to savour their sounds as I struggle to make scientific sense of them. I feel sorry for the world’s fastest reader, Howard Berg, who claims to scoff down 25,000wpm. That’s binge reading, surely?

Instead, I find myself envying those the psychoanalytical thinker James Strachey refers to as “sotto voce” readers, “persons who, though not reading aloud, always say every word to themselves as they go on”, forever hindered by “abortive movements of the tongue and lips”. As Mary Jacobus argues in Psychoanalysis and the Scene of Reading: “The `hindrance’ of an auditory imagination is an essential ingredient in poetic pleasure and even understanding.”

Simon Armitage seconds that. He says that, as a poet, he does read slowly, measuring words and syllables against each other, seeking musicality. “I think you get used to reading in the way you write. Poetry happens all over the place,” he says, “and as a poet I’m always wondering what to pinch.” For a literary type, Armitage doesn’t read many novels. “Only about 20 a year now,” he says, “and I always feel I don’t read them properly. I’m sure I skim.”

Those who have to read vast amounts of fiction find it a struggle. The MP Chris Smith, who chaired last year’s panel of Man Booker prize judges, found the experience “a nightmare”. “I’ve just whizzed through Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, which is a great thriller. But when the writing is really good, as it was for books we read last year, like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, then I really want to slow down and savour every word. The reading ate up my whole summer. I went on holiday, and while everybody else was out for lunch, seeing the sights and wandering the galleries, I was stuck in a hotel room with a suitcase of books.”

As Marr stresses, it is all about finding the right pace for the right situation. Peter Jacobs of Rapid Reading, who teaches speed-reading seminars for professionals, says that the skills he hones are designed only to help us navigate the vast tracts of information we have to deal with at work. His aim is to help us save time, avoid the junk of badly written documents and fish out the bits we need. He has also given seminars for librarians with a limited amount of time to choose which books to stock. “They should be able to make that choice in under a minute,” he says. “A bit of skimming and scanning – taking in samples of prose like pondwater.”

He talks to me about the fact that the tops of lower case letters tell us most of what we need to know. He says that if most readers can process one word at a time there’s no reason the eye can’t expand that to three or four. He also reminds me that many people had bad experiences of reading at school, and that fear of the written word prevents those people absorbing the information they need at speeds that would make them most effective. But he doesn’t believe skimming and scanning techniques should influence reading for pleasure.

“Mariella Frostrup wanted me to go on Radio 4 and speed-read War and Peace,” he sighs, “and Woody Allen was right. That’s just a joke.”

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SATSUMASENDAI, Kagoshima — A Shinto priest accused of indecent assault for massaging the breasts of a 15-year-old girl was found not guilty after a court here ruled that his act was a “religious activity.”

“There is room to accept that his act was a religious activity, and reasonable doubt in saying he possessed sexual intent,” Judge Atsushi Tomita said in handing down the ruling at the Sendai branch of the Kagoshima District Court on Wednesday.

Prosecutors had demanded that the 36-year-old priest, Ryoichi Sakamoto, be jailed for two years over his actions.

Sakamoto was arrested and charged with indecent assault after he touched the breasts and other body parts of the junior high school girl at a religious facility adjoining his home in October 2002 and December that year.

During the trial, Sakamoto admitted that he touched the body of the girl, but said it was “a religious activity in order to help her,” and maintained that he was not guilty.

In giving the ruling, Tomita acknowledged that Sakamoto had touched the breasts of the girl, but said of his actions, “(In the sect to which the defendant belongs) there are some cases in which the skin is touched directly, and one cannot say that this did not constitute a religious activity.”

Sakamoto has relieved at the ruling.

“I feel greatly relieved at the not-guilty ruling,” he said. “I would have liked the investigators to have taken a bit more care.”

Prosecutors said they would consider what response to take after examining the ruling. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Feb. 17, 2005)

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This week, I put down the books and visited the scene of a crime.

The crime occurred on the sixth floor of a brick-and-stone building sandwiched between a sausage factory and a parking garage. There, five years ago, behind grimy windows, Chinese women slaved for 11 hours a day, stitching garments for a subcontractor hired by Donna Karan International. The women received no bathroom breaks, no overtime pay, no sick days, no paid vacation, and no maternity leave. They were screamed at to “work faster” and paid “per piece”—earning wages that could only be called “living” if “living” means boiled water and rice. I didn’t see the actual factory—a burly security guard stood between me and the elevator and, by now, architectural, financial-planning, and travel services firms have supplanted it—but I craned my neck and got a look at the windows. I also daydreamed about a foray into real-estate development: The building’s gorgeous stone-work, terraces, and skyline and river views, it seemed, were easily convertible into multimillion-dollar lofts.

The sweatshop nightmare is one feared consequence of trade agreements that, in January, removed restrictions on how many apparel and textile products China can export to the United States. Now that the quotas are gone, the theory goes, greedy manufacturers will exploit slave-labor costs and illegal subsidies to make all textiles and clothes in Chinese factories. In so doing, they will eliminate the good textile jobs, the ones in America, where unionized employees earn middle-class wages and enjoy paid vacations, sick days, and other perks.

But is it that simple? The building I visited was on West 38th Street in midtown Manhattan, not in Shenzhen, and the miserable workers weren’t migrant Chinese peasants but immigrant Chinese and Latina women. The events took place in the late 1990s, before the quota rollbacks, and the American sweatshop workers were unionized—for all the good it did them. I have yet to see any apparel factories in China, but a New York clothing designer I spoke to said that the ones she had visited were “amazing”—clean, brightly lit, state-of-the-art facilities on large plots of land staffed by adult women, not kids—whereas the New York versions were “dark, dirty factories with a rice-cooker in the corner and shit all over the place.”

According to the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, a non-profit organization in the basement of the Brooklyn YMCA (where I knocked on a locked door and settled for a free copy of Sweatshop Nation), such dire conditions persist in New York. The newsletter described workers at a factory in Chinatown suing an employer for back-wages after enduring conditions so grueling that they had to send their babies back to China to be raised. In 1999, the Center for Economic and Social Rights estimated that 80 percent to 90 percent of the garment factories in Chinatown were sweatshops. Conditions have apparently improved since then—in part, perhaps, because so many of the jobs have left for China, et al.—but they are far from ideal.

For obvious reasons, elected officials in New York profess to be eager to improve matters. After leaving the former sweatshop building, I took the subway to City Hall. There, in a chandeliered room, beneath oil paintings of Civil-War-era men in epaulets, I listened to representatives from Mayor Bloomberg’s office, the city council, and non-profit organizations discuss the future of New York’s garment industry. One problem, everyone agreed, was overseas competition. Another problem was New York’s skyrocketing real-estate market, which was driving up rents and encouraging “illegal conversions” of manufacturing buildings into condos and lofts. The goal, the speakers agreed, was to preserve the “diversity” of New York’s economy by keeping apparel and textile manufacturing in the city and to improve wages and working conditions.

But these goals are often mutually exclusive—force expensive improvements and you’ll drive marginal manufacturers away (or, through subsidies, breed sluggish, lazy companies). Nationally, textile makers face an equally tricky dilemma. Citing explosive growth in China imports and devastating job losses, for example, the National Council of Textile Organizations is now begging the Bush administration to trigger the “safeguard” provisions of China’s trade agreements, which would create limits on the speed with which Chinese imports can take over the market and thereby ease the pressure on beleaguered U.S. textile manufacturers.

I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t heinous, human-rights-abusing sweatshops in China. There are. And China also subsidizes its textile and apparel industries to create jobs and suppresses its currency to keep exports cheap. Even so, the real reason our apparel and textile manufacturing jobs are moving to China (and elsewhere) is that they should. The free market is working the way it is supposed to: rewarding businesses supported by natural market demand—rapid, high-end apparel design and manufacturing in New York, for example—and forcing those that are no longer viable (mass-market manufacturing) to move, quit, or adapt. The process is painful, especially for those whose jobs and companies are eliminated but, on balance, it helps more than it hurts.

The root cause, moreover, has less to do with unfair trade practices and greedy companies than with us—the consumers. With some exceptions, we would rather pay less for our clothes than more, and moving production to China makes this possible. It also creates jobs in China, a benefit that, some might say, is as valuable as the creation (or preservation) of jobs here. The money we save on clothes is money we plow into other industries—media, entertainment, telecommunications, tourism, online retailing—all of which provide jobs that are often better than those lost in apparel and textiles. The New York economy might benefit from having businesses besides hedge funds, brokerage firms, and luxury condo developers, but we survived the loss of farming and trapping on the land that is now the Upper East Side, and we’ll survive the loss of garment manufacturing.

The third stop on my apparel-industry tour was an operational factory in Midtown, where a dozen middle-aged Chinese men and women worked in a cramped, sub-divided office the size of a Wall Street conference room. There was no screaming or threatening, and the workers seemed happy enough as they streamed out for lunch.

At a wooden table, amid heat pipes, fabric swatches, thread spools, and a clicking time-clock, the factory’s charming owner agreed that real-estate and overseas competition were a challenge but said that retaining talented employees was, too. Work in the fashion industry these days is sporadic, she said, and seamstresses often leave for steadier jobs at, for example, hotels. The big apparel companies have gone overseas, and even the small designers who remain are having a rough go of it. In the future, the owner suspected, she would simply offer high-end design and production consulting services and coordinate actual manufacturing in China. She didn’t seem depressed or outraged about this; rather, she seemed to regard it as a fact of life. And in free market capitalism—which, to bastardize Winston Churchill, is the worst economic system in the world except for all the others—this is just what it is.

Posted at 9:39 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright 2005 - The New York Times Published 2/16/05

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Feb. 11 - Listen, if you haven’t yet, to the great pop stars of Senegal: Youssou N’Dour, Cheikh Lo, Baaba Maal. You’ll adore what you hear and discover what they have in common, like the hustle and ping of their sound, etched with koras and horns. The other is what they sing about: transfixing passion, not for earthly lovers but for the holy men, marabouts, the Sufi saints of Islam. Theirs is a Higher Love, so high it’s out of sight.

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Among the saints’ names, one recurs, over and over: Sheikh Amadou Bamba, founder of the African Sufi movement known as the Mouride Way. And far from being out of sight, his white-robed, dark-skinned figure is visible everywhere in the modern city of Dakar: inside homes, shops, in public murals, in paintings and prints sold in markets, in amulets worn around the neck.

He’s also omnipresent now at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art here, in the traveling show “A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal.” Like Bamba himself, it’s out of the ordinary, an event. Its heady mix of materials - high and low, sacred and profane - is a joy to the eye. But more important, it introduces us to an art we don’t know, an Africa and an Islam we don’t know.

When I say “African art,” what do you think? Villages, carved masks, “primitive”? But Mouride art is cosmopolitan and modern, portrait painting and history painting, calligraphy and photography. How about “Islam”? Fundamentalist? Anti-Western? Dangerous? Well, there are many Islams, and Sufism, mystical and pacific, is one. The plan for living Bamba prescribed is based on tolerance, generosity and hard work, values most Americans treasure.

Bamba was born in Senegal in 1853 and became a spiritual leader and, by default, a potent political figure at the height of French colonialism. The French tried hard to make him disappear; they kept him under house arrest until his death in 1927.

But their efforts only intensified his charisma, which continues today, through a proliferation of images, almost all variations on the only known photograph of him, taken in 1913.

In it, he stands outdoors against the wooden walls of a mosque, squinting at the camera. He’s dressed in white, and his head is covered by a turbanlike shawl, one end obscuring the lower half of his face. So strong is the midday glare that his hands and right foot are lost in shadow. To the average Western viewer, their absence is an accident of photography. To the Mouride believer, it is proof of Bamba’s superhuman status: what need does a transcendent being have of hands and feet?

It is this attitude, the attitude of the believer - not of the art historian or the anthropologist or the sociologist - that prevails in the show, which has been organized by Allen F. Roberts, director of the James S. Coleman African Studies Center at the University of California, at Los Angeles, and Mary Nooter Roberts, deputy director of the U.C.L.A. Fowler Museum of Cultural History, where it originally appeared in a larger form.

Belief is in the air from the minute you enter the galleries and catch Mr. N’Dour’s sweet, high, ardent voice. “Do you hear me, Father Bamba?” he sings. And it takes visual form in panoramic photographs of a 600-foot-long mural painted by a Mouride street artist known as Papisto Boy…

For the complete article, please see the link below.

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AfricaFocus Bulletin
Feb 15, 2005 (050215)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Donations to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) operations
in Africa dropped by 21 percent in January 2005 compared to the
first month of 2004. Warning of an apparent ‘tsunami effect’
rippling across Africa, WFP executive director James Morris called
for new efforts to counter donor neglect of urgent humanitarian
needs on the continent.

In dramatic contrast to the rapid response from donors to UN agency
appeals for the Indian Ocean tsunami, the shortfall in response to
appeals for African emergencies, whether related to drought or
conflict, is growing rather than diminishing. UN officials and
others have expressed the hope that the generosity of response to
the tsunami could be extended to other areas. So far, however, the
principal effect seems to have been to intensify the humanitarian
“double standard” in which Africa comes last.

For example, the WFP current emergency operation to help Sudanese
refugees return home to southern Sudan and rebuild their lives this
year is funded at just 7 percent with a massive shortfall of US$279
million. And rations for Sudanese and other refugees in Ethiopia
have been slashed by 30 percent as a result of funding shortages.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts highlighting this issue
from a February 14 World Food Program news release and from a
recent statement to the United Nations Security Council by Jan
Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on UN humanitarian appeals and
donor response, see http://www.africafocus.org/docs04/wa0411.php
and http://www.africafocus.org/docs03/un0311.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++++++++

Tsunami Overshadows Aid for Africa’s Hungry

World Food Program http://www.wpf.org

News Release

14 February 2005

[excerpt: for full news release, with contact information for WPF,
see http://www.wpf.org]

Rome - With 22 million people in Africa desperately short of food,
the United Nations World Food Programme called today for the world
to respond to the continent’s hunger with the same commitment and
compassion shown recently towards the survivors of the Indian Ocean
tsunami.

Donations to WFP’s operations in Africa dropped by 21 percent in
January 2005 to US$24 million compared to US$29 million in the
first month of 2004. Globally, contributions to WFP’s work in
Africa represented just eight percent of the total received by the
agency, compared with 20 percent in January 2004.

“By responding so vigorously to the tsunami, the world admirably
demonstrated how much it cares for millions of people facing
extraordinary suffering,” said WFP Executive Director James Morris.

“The challenge we now face is to ensure that a ‘tsunami effect’
does not ripple across Africa, drawing funds away from humanitarian
operations there and adding Sudanese, Angolan and Liberian victims
to its toll. I’m sure that donors to the tsunami disaster will not
allow their generosity to be at the expense of hungry people in
Africa, however far from the global spotlight they are,” said
Morris.

The January contributions of US$24 million to WFP were for
operations to help feed 22 million people with critical needs in 22
countries. These include Lesotho and Angola in the south, the
Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa, Eritrea in the
northeast and war-ravaged Liberia and Cote D’Ivoire in the west.

…

Despite a welcome increase of $80 million in early February,
donations for Africa amount to just five percent of the US$1.9
billion needed by WFP to reach the most vulnerable and hungry
people there in 2005. Overall food needs in Africa represent two
thirds of WFP’s global requirements.

This stands in stark contrast to the almost full funding pledged
towards the UN’s tsunami appeal for US$977 million, launched in
January. The cost of assisting a tsunami survivor is estimated at
US$1.07 per person per day in 2005 under the joint UN appeal
compared with just US$0.16 per person for assistance in Africa.

For the 26 December tsunami, WFP appealed for food for up to two
million people and has received full funding for that at US$0.51
per person per day.

Overshadowed by news of the tsunami and the outpouring of
international assistance, the Sudanese government and Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement signed an agreement on 9 January to
end Africa’s longest-running civil war. Both sides to the conflict
have warned that the peace could still be lost if the international
community fails to help.

After donors have invested billions of dollars in humanitarian aid
for Sudan over the past three decades, WFP’s current emergency
operation to help people return home and rebuild their lives this
year is ironically funded at just 7 percent with a massive
shortfall of US$279 million.

Rations for Sudanese and other refugees in Ethiopia have been
slashed by 30 percent as a result of funding shortages.

In addition, in five countries across southern Africa, 5.6 million
people are struggling against the triple threat of HIV/AIDS, food
insecurity and their dwindling capacity to produce food. WFP has so
far received less than 10 percent of the contributions needed to
help them survive through 2007.

WFP was forced to cut rations for more than 2.8 million people in
southern Africa in the second half of 2004 because of a shortage of
funds. Many of those beneficiaries are living with HIV/AIDS and
many are children - those who can least afford to miss meals, and
for whom malnutrition can have irreversible consequences.

As stability returns to West Africa, there is an urgent need to
restore communities and secure peace after over a decade of war.
WFP’s operation in Liberia is suffering from serious shortfalls and
since June last year the agency has had to reduce rations for
hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced people. Many of
them would like to go home, but with their homes and farms
destroyed during the war, they will need food aid to tide them over
until they can produce enough food for themselves.

…

“Every child, no matter where they live, deserves the same care and
concern,” said Morris. “Whether they are in Sri Lanka and
Indonesia, or Uganda and Ethiopia, children urgently need our help.
I very much hope that the scale of support following the tsunami
bodes well for those in need in Africa too.”

…

********************************************************

Security Council Consultations:
Humanitarian Challenges in Africa

Statement by Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian
Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA)

27 Jan 2005

[excerpts: full statement available in Word format on OCHA website
http://ochaonline.un.org] …

Overview of Major Challenges

Despite all our efforts, the impact of the conflicts in Africa on
civilians is still as devastating as it has been for many months,
in some cases years. In December, fighting in Eastern DRC - in the
area around Kanyabayonga in North Kivu - led to the displacement of
more than 150,000 people, the evacuation of humanitarian workers,
and the suspension of supplementary feeding for about 1,300
children. MONUC’s deployment of a buffer force has allowed some of
the displaced to return, but this massive displacement within a few
days again showed the appalling levels of violence that is being
directed at civilians in this part of the DRC. It seems that few
combatants were actually killed or wounded during this incident.
The cumulative effect of the conflict in DRC on the civilian
population, however, is staggering: more than 3.8 million people
killed since 1998. This amounts to the toll of more than a dozen
Tsunamis. With an estimated 1,000 people dying in DRC every day,
most due to easily preventable and treatable illnesses, a death
toll of Tsunami proportions is reached about every six months.

In Darfur, the violence also continues, still forcing tens of
thousands to flee their villages and even their IDP camps in the
last two months. Last week, almost 10,000 fled a number of villages
in northern areas of South Darfur to seek safety and assistance in
Manawashi and Mershing. In one destroyed village alone, Hamada, it
appears that more than 100 civilians were killed, the majority of
them women and children. All sides are heavily armed, despite the
arms embargo imposed by this Council last July, and the fighting
may well escalate again. The high level of insecurity, particularly
in South and West Darfur, is severely limiting our ability to reach
hundreds of thousands of people who depend on our assistance to
survive. In December, WFP managed to reach 1.5 million people, a
significant achievement, but still 500,000 less than the target for
December. In January, they have reached about 900,000 so far, only
about 50 percent of their target. The access problems are resulting
in significant shortfalls in other critical sectors as well,
affecting several hundred thousand IDPs and host communities.

What we have been witnessing in Darfur, large parts of Somalia, the
Pool region of the Republic of Congo and several other
conflict-affected parts of the continent is a deadly combination:
insecurity, limited access, and massive humanitarian needs that
keep rising as we struggle to catch up.

Apart from conflict, recurrent droughts continue to take their toll
in the Horn of Africa. In Eritrea alone, some 2.2 million people
out of a total population of 3.8 million need food assistance, and
the maternal malnutrition rate of 53 percent is among the highest
in the world. Similarly, in Somalia and Ethiopia, successive
seasons of drought have led to loss of assets, livestock and severe
food insecurity in many parts of both countries.

Last, but by no means least, there are six million people in six
countries in Southern Africa who will be unable to meet their food
needs this year, primarily as result of the “triple threat” of food
insecurity, HIV/AIDS and weakened capacity for governance. Most
destructive is the impact of HIV/AIDS. Last year alone, AIDS caused
close to one million deaths in the region. In Southern Africa,
there are now four million orphans as a result of HIV/AIDS alone,
giving rise to the sad phenomenon of “child-headed households”,
left on their own, shunned by neighbors, often HIV-infected, with
no protection and little access to the basics for survival.

Varied Response by the International Community

Mr. President,

How the international community has responded to each of the
humanitarian crises in Africa varies greatly, resulting in gross
inequities that we must find new and more effective ways of
addressing. The chart we distributed shows the funding UN agencies
and NGOs received for each of the consolidated appeals in Africa
for 2004. The coverage ranges from less than 10 percent for
Zimbabwe and less than 40 percent for the Central African Republic
and Cote D’Ivoire, to around three quarters of the appeals met for
Sudan, Chad and Uganda. Without a doubt, the Security Council
helped galvanize the attention and funding we were able to generate
for the crises in Darfur and northern Uganda last year.

I would like to make two specific observations regarding these
figures. The first relates to the situations in Chad and Guinea,
two of the poorest countries in Africa, that have been hosting
large refugee populations. The international response to the needs
of the refugees by and large has been generous. But the political
and humanitarian impact on the two host countries and their
populations has been great, and severely neglected. For example,
vital projects in Guinea Forestiere aimed at economic recovery and
rehabilitation received no funding at all in 2004. Many agencies
have had similar difficulties trying to assist the host communities
in eastern Chad. This kind of imbalance is not only inequitable, it
is also a recipe for rising tension between refugees and host
communities, further instability in already fragile countries, and
potential threats to regional peace and security. We know from
bitter experience what the potential consequences are, so we need
to provide much greater assistance to those host countries and
communities, both in terms of humanitarian relief and political
engagement.

The second point relates to the funding levels for appeals in
several countries that have peacekeeping operations. It is very
troubling that in 2004 the appeals for Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire and
Liberia were all less than 50 percent funded (44, 34 and 48
percent, respectively). These countries are on the Council’s agenda
and do not easily fit into the “forgotten emergency” category, and
yet their appeals have been so severely underfunded. We know that
each of these countries is in a critical phase and could easily
slide back into conflict, joining the 44 percent of post-conflict
countries that do so. The underfunding of essential humanitarian
activities greatly exacerbates this risk, particularly when we are
unable to assist in the return and reintegration of IDPs and
refugees, or in the reintegration of former combatants. In Liberia,
only about 12,000 of the 500,000 IDPs, and a few thousand of the
360,000 refugees have returned so far. These numbers are expected
to multiply in 2005 and we will have to be ready to assist those
returning and their home communities. For the rehabilitation and
reintegration of former combatants, agencies in Liberia face a
funding shortfall of almost 60 million US dollars, leaving about
47,000 combatants outside the programme. As in so many other
countries emerging from conflict, they are the most restive and
violence-prone segment of the community, and pose a serious threat
to peace.

The international community is making huge investments in Liberia
and the other countries I mentioned. As Council members know well,
the peacekeeping operation in Liberia alone has an annual budget of
$820 million. But unless we also support the essential humanitarian
and recovery activities that help people return, ex-combatants
reintegrate, and give people hope for the future, these investments
are at risk, and costs can quickly multiply. We have to start
applying the bitter lessons we have learned, and make sure that all
parts of the international community pursue a more comprehensive
approach to these recurring challenges.

A very positive example has been the response of the international
community, led by this Council, in Sierra Leone. Over the last
three years close to 60,000 ex-combatants were disarmed,
demobilized and offered reintegration opportunities. A secure
environment throughout the country allowed essential public
services to resume, rehabilitation to take place at the community
level, and more than 500,000 refugees and IDPs to return. None of
these achievements would have been possible without the Security
Council’s leadership, and the sustained engagement and support of
regional partners and donors.

The same is true for the peace between North and South Sudan, which
followed the historic Security Council meeting in Nairobi and years
of intense international and regional mediation efforts. But we now
have to gear up quickly, with the early support of donors, to make
sure that we rise to the many humanitarian challenges that will
result from the peace agreement. Again, helping millions to return
and tens of thousands of combatants to reintegrate into society
will be crucial to consolidate the peace in South Sudan.

Opportunities for Peace and “Humanitarian Dividends”

Mr. President,

Let me now turn to some other encouraging developments,
particularly prospects for peace in two of the most intractable
conflicts in Africa. The humanitarian dividends that result from a
real prospect for a political settlement are almost always
immediate and substantial, and can quite literally be measured in
thousands of saved lives. Instead of running after increasing
levels of need while we have less and less access, needs start
stabilizing, levels of violence decrease, and humanitarian access
starts opening up. The recent progress made in Northern Uganda is
a case in point. Since I last briefed you about Northern Uganda in
October, the security environment has improved thanks largely to
the start of a dialogue between the Government and the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA). The level of violence is substantially lower
that in the past two years, and the number of IDPs has fallen from
1.6 to 1.3 million people.

The ongoing efforts provide the best opportunity in more than a
decade to bring the conflict to an end. …

The United Nations stands ready to do its part. When I met with
President Museveni in Kampala in early December, we agreed on an
overall framework of assistance, to be led by the UN, if and when
an agreement is reached with the LRA. The UN will continue to play
the lead role in providing humanitarian assistance to the affected
population in the north and planning for the possible return of
IDPs, as well as organize and support reintegration efforts for
child combatants and provide support for a reconciliation processes
among various sectors of society in northern Uganda.

Somalia is the other long-standing and almost forgotten
humanitarian emergency where we now have the best chance in many
years to make real progress. Humanitarian indicators in many parts
of Somalia are as bad as anywhere in Africa, as I could witness
first-hand during my visit in early December. Mortality rates in
some areas reach two per ten thousand per day and only one Somali
child out of five is in school. Securing access is a daily struggle
involving multiple negotiations with a variety of armed groups and
clans. Despite all these constraints, it is remarkable what aid
agencies have been able to achieve even with the limited funding
available, as the Secretary-General has been reporting to you on a
regular basis.

But I believe that the time is right for the international
community to make a major coordinated push towards peace and
stability in Somalia. We cannot afford to miss the opportunity
presented by the formation of Transitional Federal Government
(TFG), despite the daunting challenges it is facing and recent
setbacks. Again, the potential humanitarian dividends are great if
security and access are improved and even the most basic
administration and essential services are restored, after 14 years
without a central government.

I would strongly encourage the Security Council to continue and
intensify its engagement with Somalia. The Council can help
generate the kind of sustained and coordinated commitment of member
states that we need to have a chance to succeed. While the AU and
IGAD will be critical to this effort, they will need to work hand
in hand with the Council, not least to attract the maximum level of
financial and diplomatic support, particularly for the envisaged
deployment of an AU peace support mission to Somalia. …

Mr. President,

Allow me to conclude with two comments related to the Tsunami and
the unprecedented speed and generosity of the international
community’s response, including dozens of governments and private
contributions from hundreds of thousands of individuals around the
world.

First, as I have been saying since the very beginning of this
outpouring of assistance, we cannot allow any diversion of
assistance away from other humanitarian emergencies. …

Second, the response to the Tsunami has shown all of us what is
possible when there is a will. I remember sitting in this very room
last summer asking for five helicopters to help save thousands of
lives in Darfur. In the end, we had to hire helicopters
commercially as no member states were willing to provide them.
After the Tsunami, I also appealed for helicopters and, within
days, saw the deployment of several helicopters carriers. Likewise,
never in the history of UN appeals have we been able to cover more
than 70 percent of our requirements in less than one week. It took
until well into the fall of last year to reach a similar level for
Darfur, despite the international attention that crisis received.

Some may say that these situations are not comparable, and that we
will never be able to marshal this kind of response for protracted
armed conflicts in Africa. I believe that, at the very least, we
must try our hardest, be innovative, and quickly build on what we
have witnessed over the last four weeks. We owe that to the
millions of civilians in the crises I have talked about this
morning who are just as innocent, and need our help every bit as
much as the millions affected by the Tsunami.

Posted at 5:23 PM · Comments (0)

In the autumn of 2000, while working as a reporter in Bangkok, I was sent to Laos for a story. Since I knew I would be spending several days in the somnolent capital, Vientiane, I called an
acquaintance who lived there, a smart woman who I hoped might take a romantic interest in me. We met one evening and she suggested that we find one of the quaint stands overlooking the broad Mekong river and sip cold beers.

Unfortunately, the stands were hard to find. Jiang Zemin was in town, on the first state visit by a Chinese leader to Laos, and the government had replaced the stands with obsequious shrines praising China. Although Laos is a very poor country, no expense was spared. Banners were hung across the capital lauding Jiang, and endless banquets were held in his honour.

The story of Jiang’s visit had a happy ending for my friend and me. Instead of Mekong beers, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant, hit it off and started seeing each other; three years later we married. For many Laotians, Jiang’s visit was not so happy. Some owners of riverside stands never got their land back; China’s military aid helped to suppress the ethnic minorities of northern Laos, who were engaged in a low-level war with the security forces; and after Jiang pushed for an
opening of trade, Chinese businesses soon came to dominate the feeble Laotian economy.

When I told officials in Washington that China was becoming the dominant power in Laos, most were unconcerned. Some admitted that China had begun cultivating allies in the region, but assured me that America was still the leading power in Asia and that China could hardly steal a march on Uncle Sam.

And yet, across Asia, and not only in authoritarian nations like Laos but also in free societies and supposedly close friends of America, I have watched China win praise and awe previously reserved for the US. In 2000, Jiang made his first visit to Cambodia, a country that only a decade ago opposed China for its past support of the Khmer Rouge. Over 200,000 cheering schoolchildren welcomed Jiang’s motorcade. In early 2004, the Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced that he was overhauling foreign policy: the long-time US and British ally would now make China (and India) “the most important countries for Thailand’s diplomacy.” In 2004, China signed 24 new economic and political agreements with Burma, and it has invested so much in Mongolia that it is almost a Chinese satellite. India, which once fought a bloody border war with China, has established trade and security ties with Beijing. Russia has signed a treaty of friendship. Even South Korea, where US troops are stationed, now looks to China to broker a deal on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

Outside Asia, once-staunch US allies have started to bend to Beijing. When the new Chinese president Hu Jintao visited Australia in October 2003, he was allowed to address parliament, the first Asian leader to do so. The Australian government even blocked protests though they had been allowed for George W Bush’s visit the same week. The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, toured Europe in spring 2004, establishing common ground on a joint China-Europe space programme and the dangers of US adventurism. He also won wide support (including, probably, Britain’s) for lifting the arms embargo against Beijing.

While Washington hawks have focused on China’s potential military power, a different threat has emerged. For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, a nation is challenging US “soft power” the combination of economic vitality, intellectual heft, cultural pull, trade and diplomacy that, as much as military force, has made the US the pre-eminent force in the world. China cannot yet make films as consistently successful as Hollywood, produce companies like General Electric or challenge Foggy Bottom’s best (at least not in places America cares most about). But the game is on, and China is beginning to undermine US cultural, economic and diplomatic dominance. Unfortunately, Washington’s unilateralism and myopic focus on terrorism has given Beijing an opening.

To suggest that China could challenge America’s soft power would have seemed preposterous a decade ago. The Middle Kingdom was a developing nation still reeling from the shock of the Tiananmen massacre, with limited leverage in international affairs, a fear of alliances and a victim mentality. Few Chinese raised in the totalitarian Maoist state knew much about the outside world.

But much has changed in ten years. Though critics of China like myself worry that the country’s economic growth is built on shaky foundations, with excessive state-directed investment, for now its economy is booming. In 2004, China grew by 9.5 per cent. It vies with the US to be the world’s largest recipient of foreign direct investment, and it accounted for 16 per cent of all global growth in 2003. Exports rose from $20bn in 1980 to over $250bn two decades later. Within 15 years, China will probably be the world’s second largest economy. Today it runs a trade surplus of over $100bn with the US, and over $30bn with the EU, soon to be its biggest trading partner.

Dramatic construction work is in progress all over the country, not only in obvious places like Shanghai. On a recent trip to Xin-jiang, China’s vast western province, I watched new housing going up in Kashgar, a dusty city thousands of miles from Beijing. On the outskirts of Kashgar, a road into the desert is lined with new steel and glass buildings. Starbucks is endemic in the Middle Kingdom’s eastern cities. Jewel-encrusted mobile phones and tricked-out Bentleys are selling fast in Beijing.

This growth has created a new confidence among ordinary Chinese; many believe that the government has been correct to focus on economic rather than political liberalization. After Tiananmen there has been no anti-Mao campaign in China as there was an anti-Stalin campaign in Russia. This confidence convinces Chinese that their country should take a leading role in the world, even if it means challenging the US. The Asian affairs writer Daniel Snider reports that ordinary Chinese boast “about how Japan and South Korea now depend on selling their goods to China.”

Chinese strategists are advocating a “great power mentality” in foreign affairs.

In the past, state media, still the main source of information for most Chinese, rarely mentioned foreign policy. Today they constantly feature China’s successes abroad, and harp on the problems of the US. Papers like the People’s Daily run endless commentaries on America’s “failing” foreign policies from unfriendly sources, such as Arab newspapers. Historians appear in the press to discuss China’s imperial-era control of Vietnam, Korea and other parts of Asia. And as a 2002 report by the US congressional commission on China showed, official media often characterize the US as a “hegemon” or an “imperialist” even comparing it to Nazi Germany.

The booming economy has lured overseas Chinese back to China, including former Tiananmen dissidents who have traded their pro-democracy stances for power and wealth. Several former dissidents have become hi-tech entrepreneurs and have backed a code of internet self-censorship. Southeast Asia, where the ethnic Chinese minorities often dominate business, has been a prime target of Beijing’s charm offensive. Universities have increased places for southeast Asian Chinese students, “roots travel” for ethnic Chinese in the region is encouraged, and red tape has been slashed for tycoons like Robert Kuok of Malaysia, who have invested billions of dollars in the mainland….

Increasing numbers of Chinese are travelling abroad.

In 2003, 15m Chinese went overseas, nearly 50 per cent more than the year before to Europe, the US, Australia, Thailand and elsewhere. In Thailand, transvestite cabaret shows have begun catering to Mandarin speakers, and the Patpong sex district has added signs in Chinese. As they venture out, many Chinese are seeing that their biggest cities are beginning to rival Singapore or Hong Kong or Los Angeles, that their economic growth is feted around the world, that their money is wooed at fashion shops in Paris which now hire Mandarin-speaking assistants. But they also notice that they still are not treated equally. They are irritated that, unlike Japanese or British or American travellers, they have to obtain visas for many countries.

The combination of nationalism, economic growth and the luring back of former dissidents has paid off for the regime. Professors at Chinese universities report that their students are far less interested in liberal democracy and more nationalistic than they were a decade ago much prouder of their country and willing to consider using force to deal with its enemies. Chinese internet forums are overwhelmed with nationalist sentiment, often emanating from the richest and best educated sections of society.

According to Ying Ma, who worked for the US congressional commission on China, this nationalism often focuses on America: “Chinese increasingly view America as a bully thwarting the rise of their country’s international influence.” Although both incidents seemed to be accidents, the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and the 2001 spy plane incident did not help. After 9/11, many Chinese seemed to revel in America’s destruction. Polls taken at the time showed that 70 per cent of Chinese thought the US had brought the attacks upon itself.

Nevertheless, the strong economy and the death of the Deng Xiaoping generation of leaders has allowed a more sophisticated, university-educated generation of mandarins to emerge. This generation spent its formative years learning about US soft power and the role of image and skill, as well as force, in international politics. It has learned well. Chinese leaders now project a benign, sophisticated face. When Hu visited an Asia-Pacific summit in October 2003, he “pressed the flesh and used the soothing language of co-operation,” according to Panitan Wattanayagorn, an analyst based in Bangkok. By contrast, George W Bush “came in with heavy security and the old traditional style of a superpower demanding its way.” Hu has made similarly effective visits across the region. In Australia, he held an unscripted press conference, which Chinese leaders never used to do and which Bush refused to do there.

With a surging economy, an elite wanting a larger role in the world and resentful of the US, a more adroit political leadership and a global environment in which America has been distracted, China has its chance. The leadership realises that it cannot challenge the US military for decades China spends $20bn a year on defence compared to America’s $416bn budget, and does not yet have a blue water navy to speak of. Instead, Beijing is focusing on what it calls “comprehensive national power”: a combination of international prestige, diplomacy, economic power, cultural influence and, to a lesser extent, military force.

To build this comprehensive national power, China’s leaders have started projecting the idea of its “peaceful rise” a country growing into a pre-eminent power that, in contrast to the US, will never use its power to threaten others. Chinese leaders often refer to “certain outside countries” meaning America; that are not natural partners for Asia.”

Beijing has begun to use its economic weight to persuade nations, especially in Asia, that it is the natural leader of regional trade. Since it joined the WTO three years ago, China has aggressively cut restrictions on imports, contrasting its approach with that of a protectionist US. While America has stalled on trade pacts with several Asian states, and has given in to pressure from domestic farming and fishing interests to impose restrictions on Asian exporters, China has agreed to a free trade zone with ten countries in the region. It has also taken advantage of the US failure to agree a trade deal with New Zealand and concluded its own framework deal with Wellington.

At the same time, China is using direct aid to woo countries the US ignores. Since the US enforced sanctions against Burma in 1997, China has provided $3bn in military, economic and infrastructure aid. In the Pacific, Beijing finances Samoa’s government offices and Fiji’s sports stadiums. When Thailand, Laos and Cambodia were hit by the late-1990s Asian financial crisis, and the US was seen as backing the unpopular strategies of the IMF, China provided interest-free loans and other assistance. Indonesia’s economy has spluttered in recent years and China stepped in to help, loaning Jakarta some $400m. As Vietnam has battled the US over catfish exports and other trade issues, China has loaned the Vietnamese $150m, with a promise of larger amounts in the future.

Many top Chinese companies still have government links, which means that Beijing can get them to promote its interests overseas. It can also order many Chinese companies to invest in countries that it considers important, such as Brazil, now a major trading partner. When President Lula da Silva visited Beijing in May 2004, China invited 420 Brazilian business leaders to come with him, and used Chinese businessmen to woo them. When Chinese leaders attend political summits in southeast Asia, they sponsor large investment conferences. Few American businesspeople show up to these events.

For decades, China was suspicious of treaties. But since the mid-1990s, it has become an enthusiastic signer. Along with ten southeast Asian nations and 12 other countries, it has established a regional security initiative: the Asean Regional Forum. It has reached out to Japan, America’s closest ally in Asia, and Japan now imports more from China than the US. China often plays on anti-US sentiment, celebrating these agreements as victories over “unilateralism.” And Beijing no longer abstains from all UN resolutions; it now applies subtle pressure as America does. (It was probably Chinese pressure that caused the UN to stop Taiwanese officials from speaking to the UN Correspondents Association in the UN building recently.)

Beijing supports its regional influence-building by sending out first-rate young diplomats who are a far cry from its old-style bureaucrats. After a 20-year programme to upgrade its foreign service, Beijing now produces men and women fluent in local languages and history, skilful in making local contacts, and capable of presenting China as a natural partner, especially to countries like Korea and Singapore that have a strong Chinese cultural heritage. Today, it is the Chinese embassy in Burma or Laos or Thailand that often has the best information on local affairs, and US officials admit that China’s newer diplomats are matches for their own. “I know Chinese officials who can explain to me in detail about the splits among neoconservatives in the Bush administration,” one former US diplomat told me. Most notably, during the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, Beijing has portrayed itself to other Asian nations as a moderate force mediating between two crazed nations North Korea and America.

Learning from events like the World Economic Forum at Davos, China has increased its opportunities for informal diplomacy. It has set up the Boao Forum, an annual meeting to which Beijing invites a thousand business and political grandees from across Asia to network and discuss the region’s future. Chinese officials lead the forum, and constantly emphasise that Asian issues should be solved by Asia led by China. Few Americans, if any, are invited.

China cannot, of course, present nations with the vision of a free, rights-based political system and economy as the US can. But the American exemplar has been compromised by its recent unilateralism and apparent devaluation of human rights. The Chinese vision of a world in which there are several leading powers, and countries rarely intervene in each others’ affairs, appeals to many nations including Russia, India and Thailand which face serious human rights problems at home and chafe at US criticism and dominance. China, by contrast, does not lecture them on democracy or human rights.

Many members of the Chinese elite recognise that
this advocacy of “multipolarity” and “non-interference,” masks an aspiration to convert “comprehensive national power” into dominance, even military dominance of Asia. Beijing has not dropped its claims over the entire South China sea, and still refers to many parts of Asia as virtual Chinese possessions. In private, Chinese leaders admit that their goal is to build an empire in the region. And when it suits it China often acts unilaterally, as it has done by damming its part of the Mekong river despite protests that it has destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of Thais, Cambodians and Laotians who depend on its water….

….Not only leaders, but ordinary people increasingly see China as the benign, positive force that they once considered the US to be. In South Korea, polls show most people fear America more than North Korea, and South Koreans have embraced Chinese culture the New York Times reports that 30,000 are studying in China, one of the largest contingents of foreign students on the mainland. In Thailand, polls taken in late 2003 showed that 76 per cent of respondents considered China to be Thailand’s closest friend. Only 9 per cent picked the US. In Laos, Burma and parts of Cambodia, businessmen vote with their cash, making China’s renminbi de facto the region’s second reserve currency. New Chinese schools are springing up throughout southeast Asia and are even attracting some non-Chinese students. Throughout the region, once scorned ethnic Chinese communities are celebrated, with Chinese New Year being made a public holiday and politicians revealing their ethnic Chinese backgrounds. Mainland Chinese films not just Hong Kong productions like the action epic Hero are popular, as are Chinese pop stars, who dominate the airwaves in Thailand, the Philippines and other nations….

…As the world’s largest authoritarian nation, China is an example to developing countries across the globe, just as the US, at its best, is an example of democracy. Asian, African and Latin American leaders come to China to study its economic boom, growing cultural influence and partysystem. At home, many of these leaders trumpet China’s ability to blend economic growth and stability a stability accomplished in part by harsh repression. If China’s soft power grows, and its reach increases, more countries will choose this authoritarian model. And if China’s turn-a-blind-eye approach to foreign relations becomes more prevalent China dissented from the prevailing opinion in the UN security council to back sanctions against Sudan for the Darfur genocide the international system will be less able to stop catastrophic abuses. China’s global rise is a bad thing, and must be combated.

There is still time for Washington to fix its mistakes. Many of China’s neighbours still desire a US presence in Asia, and recognise that in the long run an authoritarian, neo-imperial China may be hazardous to their health. But the US should offer its friends more than just counterterrorism. Certainly, the war on terror is important. But it should not be the only subject the American president and his diplomats talk about overseas. The US should be able to do two things at one time to push for co-operation on counterterrorism while making progress on lowering trade barriers, opening new avenues for foreign investment and tackling issues on foreign leaders’ agendas. Washington must make more of an effort to partner rather than patronise.

America must continue to call China what it is and do whatever small things it can to help ordinary Chinese to change their government. As China expert Ross Terrill notes: “There is no way the US can please Beijing.” As long as the Chinese Communist party remains in power, the two states’ political systems will be mutually incompatible. But unless Washington wakes up soon, many more countries will be doing their best to please Beijing.

For the entire article, please see the link below.

Posted at 4:44 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright 2005 - The New York Times — Published 2/12/2005

GUIYANG, China - The warning hanging above a main street could not have been more blunt, its big white characters set off against a bright red banner promising to “firmly crack down on the criminal activity of drowning and other ways of brutally killing female babies.”

Just across the way, though, in equally large letters, the advertisement above a medical clinic promoted ultrasound tests, which have long been used in China to detect the sex of babies, as a prelude to aborting female fetuses. “I don’t know what happens elsewhere, but we don’t do gender tests here,” said a 48-year-old doctor who gave her name only as Li. “Our equipment can’t detect the sex before six months. The machine is too small.”

Beginning in January, this city enacted a pioneering ban on abortions after the 14th week of pregnancy, part of a campaign to address one of the world’s biggest gaps between male and female childbirths that, though piecemeal, is quickly gathering momentum across China. National laws already prohibit sonograms for gender detection, which becomes possible after the 14th week, but the law has been spottily enforced.

“The current situation has severely affected the city’s population and family planning work,” Luo Zhuyun, the city’s deputy mayor, said in a recent interview with the Guiyang Dushibao, a local newspaper. “It has also had a great impact on the local economy, the use of resources and the prospects for sustainable development. There is no time to delay.”

If anything, though, the experience of Guiyang reveals how difficult a task China faces in trying to fine-tune its 25-year-old “one-child policy,” one of the most ambitious social engineering measures ever attempted.

Judged against the goal of slowing the growth of China’s population, which is the world’s largest, the policy has been a great success. Chinese planners appear to have underestimated the urge of couples to have sons, though, a desire that drives many to desperate lengths. And a result has been a human and public health disaster, with the large-scale abortion of female fetuses and the routine killing or abandonment of baby girls.

Given the strength of this desire for male heirs, Guiyang’s bid to rein in its gender imbalance - 129 boys born for every 100 girls, and 147 to 100 for couples seeking second or third children - might seem doomed in advance. Gynecology clinics offering ultrasound tests do a flourishing business in this city, and are more common in many neighborhoods than convenience stores. Try as one may to find one, though, nary a doctor here acknowledges engaging in the practice of sex detection.

It was an unusually slow day for Dr. Wang Jin at his thriving, two-storefront clinic in Wangchengpo, a cluttered hillside neighborhood favored by rural migrants, where a dozen clinics compete for the ultrasound and abortion business. “Almost everyone wants to know the gender of their child,” Dr. Wang said, interrupting his hotpot pork lunch to speak with a visitor. “Out of 100 people, perhaps 90 ask. With migrant workers it is 100 percent.”

The doctor said he performed as many as 400 abortions a year in his crowded, crudely furnished clinic, where women disappear in shallow stalls behind skimpy blue curtains for examinations. It costs $17 for the basic service, or twice that amount for what Dr. Wang called a “painless abortion,” meaning one with anesthesia.

Dr. Wang, whose foot tapped nervously throughout a 45-minute conversation, said he performed the procedure for unmarried women who became pregnant and for women who, for job-related reasons, did not wish to have a child. But like every doctor spoken to here, he denied ever performing a selective-sex abortion for any patient, or for that matter, even performing a sonogram gender test for a woman. The most he would allow is that he is often asked.

Dr. Wang said that patients, who are usually aware that sonogram gender exams are proscribed, came in and asked bluntly, “How much money do you need?”

Although he steadfastly denied performing the tests, he implicitly acknowledged that the temptation for some would be too strong to suppress. “It’s impossible for regulations to stop abortion,” he said. “Most Chinese people are law abiding, but there are doctors who will be willing to do this, although very few.”

The next day, during an unannounced visit, a woman was found in the midst of an ultrasound test at the clinic. “What do you mean by asking do I prefer a boy or a girl?” said the patient, Wang Wanqing, who gave her age as 20, but looked considerably younger. “It makes no difference. My husband feels the same way.”

Yang Junchang, an expert in population studies at Guiyang University, praised the local initiative, but said the problem evaded quick fixes. “The reason people want a boy is because the level of economic development is low and the social security system is flawed,” Mr. Yang said. “A boy is a fortune and a resource to a family. People wanting a sex check in order to have a boy will certainly continue, and if Guiyang disallows it, they will go somewhere else.”

For the complete story, please see the link below.

Click to see pictures

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This boardwalk advertisement greets at least half a million passers-by every day on Nanjing Dong Lu, Shanghai’s premier commercial thoroughfare, where almost 40 years ago hordes of vigilant Red Guards waved Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book. It is promoting - what else - a new shopping mall.

And Shanghainese are indeed more than adoring, “after” and “in” this (shopping) world. Still growing at a dizzying 12% a year - to the cries of “unsustainable” by rows of economists in bad suits - conspicuous consumption in this greatest of Asian cities peppered with 40 mega-malls and counting, is the rule. So long live the consumer revolution. In the first Ferrari showroom, opened last summer, a “pedestrian” Maranello costs a mere US$475,000. At Giorgio Armani’s flagship Chinese store, facing the Bund, a Shanghainese-Milanese fusion explodes in silky minimalism. Even the jewelry design is sinified. Communist Party cadres aren’t hip to Armani yet, but anyway the Milan fashion icon has already cornered the luxury market. A man’s jacket costs only 10,000 yuan ($1,220) - more than the annual disposable income of a Shanghainese mid-level executive.

Smart Shanghainese chic, MTV-style, shopping till they drop in the mall row of Huaihai Road, week in and out, look as though they could be in Los Angeles, London, Bangkok or Sao Paulo. And if you’re in no mood to shop, the party forces you to. State holidays are longer - some a week long, like the upcoming Chinese New Year in early February, encouraging internal tourism. The six-day week enforced by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is no longer the norm. Power cuts, according to Shanghainese, always happen when the government transfers electricity from factories to malls. There’s an ongoing credit-card boom. And everybody still saves as much as 40% of his income. For the right product and the right marketing, the (polluted) Shanghainese sky is the limit. Talk about the latest, supreme object of desire, the LG G920 cell phone, retailing at 4,999 yuan ($609), is it.

But in a country where in 2003 (the latest data available) the average per capita disposable income in urban areas was 8,472 yuan ($1,033) a year, while for farmers it was only 2,622 yuan ($319) a year, who’s really climbing the Great Wall of shopping?

Middle classes unite
No less than 46.8% of Chinese now believe they belong to the middle class, according to a recent poll by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CAAS). This may be an illusion of success, but it is nonetheless relentlessly reinforced by the advertising industry in order to fuel mass consumption. Chinese TV is a notorious deluge of ads, occasionally interrupted by soap operas, news and sports. For Shanghainese serial shoppers, desire is indeed reality.

According to Li Chunling, a researcher at the CAAS/Sociology Institute, the Chinese middle class only materialized in the mid-1990s: she says the concept is a media-fabricated myth. Without a precise definition, many Chinese would arguably have doubts about placing themselves in this category. But certainly not the Shanghainese.

The CAAS research identified, as far as profession is concerned, five categories considered to be part of the middle class: Party cadres, business managers, chief executive officers in the private sector, qualified technicians and office staff. In terms of revenue, researchers selected people with a higher revenue than the average local monthly salary. This varies a lot from region to region. In Beijing, the average monthly salary is 10,000 yuan ($1,220), but it’s much lower in provincial cities. In terms of lifestyle and consumer preferences, researchers identified four groups of products, and attributed points to their ownership - from the indispensables (color TV, refrigerator and washing machine) to luxuries (computers, private cars).

Many in the Chinese press applied the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences criteria to the 2000 Chinese census and came up with only 2.8% of the Chinese population as middle class. So they started labeling serial shoppers as part of the “elite culture”. In big cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, too many malls, too many cars, too many insurance policies and too many holiday packages to Europe convey the impression of a middle-class bubble. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to Li Chunling of the Academy of Social Sciences: they may be few in relative numbers, but as they make their mark in big cities like Shanghai and are relentlessly glorified by the media, “the members of the middle class considerably influence the rest of the population with their lifestyle.”

The Chinese Business Executive Survey by Beijing-based CTR Market Research, the leading market research company in China in four big cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen - only reinforced the conclusions by the CAAS research. It polled 340,000 senior executives, owners of enterprises and heads of key departments - 41,7% of them, as expected, are based in Shanghai, 32.2% work in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and only 12.5% in foreign-owned companies. They work 10 hours a day on average. Apart from Mandarin, English is their primary language. Significantly, only 5.67% have an annual income of more than 200,000 yuan ($24,390), and only 2.14% an average annual income of more than 500,000 yuan ($60,975). The average annual income is 82,000 yuan ($10,000), while the average annual household income is 130,000 yuan ($15,853). Hardly enough to fill an Armani shopping bag.

The results also confirm the CAAS research in the sense that half of the executives say that advertisements “enhance their confidence” and influence their choice of brands. And once they find their favorite brand - which they want to reflect their social status - around 77% never change their minds, and they recommend the brand to others.

Xintiandi, the model unit
Popular housing, communist-style, was usually referred to as “model units”. Now welcome to the model unit for superpower China as a mega-shopping mall - but always under tight political grip, as the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping himself formulated after his visit to model Singapore in the late 1970s. Welcome to Xintiandi.

Xintiandi, which literally means “new earth and sky”, is two square blocks of shikumen - “stone gate” houses built in the 19th century along long tang, “narrow alleys”. From the 1850s to the 1940s, 60% of Shanghai was shikumen. In the shikumen, European townhouse architectural styles are in fusion with Yangtze River delta architecture. This translates into splendid communal living - common walls, courtyards, attached terraced houses. In 21st century China, shikumen had to become - what else - a shopping arcade.

The story of Xintiandi tells everything one needs to know about the ideal development model for all of China. Its main character is 56-year-old Vincent Lo, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Shui On Group. In Shanghai, as well as in Beijing, he is rightfully known as “the king of guanxi”. Without guanxi (connections) nothing gets done in China, as many a foreign enterprise had to find out at its own expense.

Lo had his eyes set on Shanghai in 1984, at a time when Pudong, on the other side of the Huangpu River, was nothing but rice fields. In an extraordinary book edited by the Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, amateur photographer Xu Xixian vividly documents the changes in the city. In a 1983 photo of Suzhou Creek, we only see a steel bridge, the Soviet Embassy building and a few barges. In 2004, behind the bridge, have mushroomed, as if by magic, the dozens of futuristic towers of glass and steel of futuristic Pudong.

When Lo got to Shanghai in the mid-1980s, he built a hotel for the local Communist Youth League. The hotel opened at the time of the Tiananmen Square student massacre in June 1989. The Youth League didn’t have the money to repay loans. Lo stuck with them - and the gamble paid off, as one of those with long memories was Han Zheng, the Youth League secretary who is now the mayor of Shanghai.

It was only through impeccable guanxi - Zheng, the current mayor, plus Xu Kuangdi, the former mayor, with whom he also did business - that Lo finally got the right to develop Xintiandi: a fabulous 50-hectare sprawl of prime land, including a two-hectare complex of chic restaurants, bars and boutiques. The whole project cost $170 million. Xintiandi even engulfed - also metaphorically - memorable 76 Xingya Road, the “Memorial Hall for the Site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China”, held in 1921 by Mao Zedong and his 12 colleagues. As market Leninism prevails, Mao memorabilia remains dutifully on sale at the memorial hall shop.

Ideologically, Xintiandi is also crucial because it is a living embodiment of recently retired former first comrade and president Jiang Zemin’s doctrine of the Three Represents. The Three Represents stated that the party could not only represent workers and peasants anymore - its traditional Marxist constituencies - but had also to represent “the interests of the vast majority of the population”, of “advanced productive forces and “advanced cultural forces”. Jiang meant, in other words, that to remain strong the party had to become more bourgeois. More middle class. More “Xintiandized”. According to Jiang, “the great door to Chinese Communist Party membership should be opened to all advanced elements of the Chinese people. If we do this we can solidify our party and we will face no dangers.” (The Three Represents, now enshrined in the Chinese constitution, says the Communist Party shall include capitalists and entrepreneurs within the its ranks, still a source of deep division because some say it widens the gap between rich and poor.)

Xintiandi is not only a radically designed mall cum entertainment center appealing to the Three Represents constituency - with such places as the Tou Ming Si Kao (TMSK) restaurant, creating what could be called the post-modern Tang Dynasty style. As a symbol of the new swinging Shanghai, Xintiandi is a fabulous marketing tool for the Shui On Group. Beijing party elders were delighted, as well as the Shanghai government, which promptly offered Lo the keys to develop the rest of the 50 hectares into luxury townhouses, office buildings and hotels. Shui On made a killing selling loads of $3,000-per-square-meter apartments.

The art deco Corporate Avenue office building is defined in its brochure as “in step with lifestyle fashion” - a killer mantra bound to seduce those thousands of executives in both the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Crowding the Rim (CTR) Asia-Pacific Research Center. It features, among other tenants, a fabulous spa, the BMW Lifestyle boutique and the Citing Wealth Management Center. Right beside it, there’s 88 Xintiandi, which started its life as an executive residence, turned out to be too expensive for the average business traveler and is now rebranded as a still prohibitively expensive hotel (one bedroom suite for $328 a night, plus 15% tax).

Xintiandi even spun off its own Xintiandi Saint Emillion 2000, “hand selected”, as the corporate literature insists, by none other than Bordeaux luminary Christian Moueix, the owner, among others, of the Chateau Petrus vineyard. Inevitably, such a success story like Xintiandi had to be cloned. The next one, Xihu Tiandi, will be in Hangzhou, southwest of Shanghai.

Lo’s and Shui On’s corporate coup de grace was to predict that China not only would be involved in a giant development boom in the east, also would have to invest massively inland. Ten years ago - and five years before Beijing launched its “Go West” campaign - Lo bought his first cement plant in ultra-polluted Chongqing, in Sichuan province. Shui On is now one of the top three cement producers in China. It did not hurt Lo to invest in faraway Chongqing, just as an old friend from Shanghai became the city’s vice mayor and another friend, a former minister, became Chongqing’s party secretary. This auspicious confluence of interests has generated another- what else - Xintiandi for Chongqing, bigger than the original in Shanghai. And the next Xintiandi-bound city will be Wuhan. Deng Xiaoping’s vision was to build a thousand Singapores in China. He would have been overjoyed with an additional thousand Xintiandis.

The wrecker’s ball
Xintiandi may be unique because redevelopment in this case is connected to historical protection. Almost 3,000 families living in this area of the former French concession had to be relocated. They seem to have been well compensated. But in the wrecker’s ball that is 21st-century Shanghai, that’s not always the case. Anonymous Shanghainese confirm that the confluence between local government and wealthy real estate developers, local or from the Chinese diaspora, usually holds no respect for property rights, no proper compensation for them and no negotiation or due process. Residents usually learn they are going to be thrown out by officials from the local council. They are told they cannot negotiate, are offered cash or a relocation somewhere to a drab mini-condo overlooking a viaduct, and given two or three months to vacate their premises. Families living in three-story houses may be offered something like $3,000, the price of one square meter in a new tower block. It’s take it or leave it.

The case of Zheng Enchong still resonates in Shanghai. He is a local lawyer who sued the city on behalf of 500 families that have been evicted. He lost, and his license was revoked. Then he was asked to be an adviser in another suit on behalf of more than 2,000 families. A few days after the case began, he was arrested in his own apartment by the Public Security Bureau, accused of fabricating tales of social unrest to foreign non-governmental organizations, tried in a closed court and sentenced to three years in jail.

On the other side of Xintiandi, across the Huangpu River, market Leninism at work can be observed in its full glory at the Shanghai Stock Exchange - located in the gleaming Pudong financial district, where 1,600 trading terminals surround a central trading floor. It’s virtually empty. The silence is almost sepulchral. No wonder. When hundreds of state-owned enterprises were privatized, Beijing in each case rarely sold more than a third of the shares. The Chinese government remains the main shareholder - and the business community is still its lackey.

Shanghainese businessmen insist - or rather pray to Confucius - that the city’s economy will not follow the lead of its slumbering stock market. They hope that the bubble of those $3,000-per-square-meter property prices and of the frenetic Great Wall of shopping will deflate, inevitably, but gradually. And they bet on non-stop prosperity, of course, to solve all of China’s problems - such as all those mountain ranges of bad debts.

As for Shanghai the city, the Shanghai Landscape Administration Bureau insists the authorities are now devoting “more energy to the promotion of a new round of landscape construction in a three-year action program”, and working hard to “form forestation networks composed of rings, corridors, gardens as well as forest”. As a result, they say, this “will make the sky bluer, the ground greener, the water cleaner and residences more comfortable”. Oh, and the malls fuller, of course.

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January 30, 2005 - Copyright The New York Times

HER arm locks like a robot’s, then pops from the shoulder, sending a wave through her body. Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” blares from a boombox in the Times Square subway station as a crowd of onlookers, heads bobbing, cheer on the performer.

The break dancer is female, which is unusual enough. Even more eye-opening is the fact that she is a 26-year-old Japanese woman with cornrows in Float Committee, the crew of young African-American men with whom she is performing on this day.

Her solo builds as she glides around the concrete floor, limbs electric, torso fluttering as if from some subterranean wind. In another instant, she is back in line with her crew, grinning and rocking to and fro as sweat pours down her face.

To her family in the city of Nagoya, she is Kumi Naito. In her New York life and in the break-dance world, she is simply Q, and a wild departure from the stereotype of the Japanese immigrant, or issei, that New Yorkers have known in the past: the salaryman from a Japanese corporation with a wife in tow.

Q also typifies how the Japanese immigrant of today - young, artistically inclined, open to risks and twice as likely to be female than male - differs from the bulk of immigrants to New York, who come to take advantage of the city’s economic opportunities.

These Big Apple Issei, as they could be called, are cultural refugees, drawn to New York’s creative clamor and in search of freedom for their spirits.

This was certainly true of Q, who is thrilled to be able to pursue her passion for dancing on the streets and in the city’s subway stations; she even tours the country and Europe with a professional company.

For her, this independence is everything. “I can’t imagine being in Japan,” she said. “I couldn’t break dance there.”A Place for Purple Hair

In the last two decades, thousands of young Japanese like Q have come to New York in search of the custom-tailored lifestyles that are hard to carve out in a homeland, where johshiki - traditional ways and morality - still exert a powerful influence. Such young people make up the majority of their fellow countrymen, or rather, countrywomen, living in the city.

Census data from 2000 show that 63 percent of the 16,516 foreign-born Japanese living in New York are women, and 64 percent are 20 to 39 years old. That percentage of young people is nearly 23 percentage points higher than it is for Chinese or Koreans, the two largest Asian immigrant groups in the city.

Hiroko Kazama, who is 42 and came to the city in 1987, said that young Japanese, especially artistic types, come to New York because they find that other American cities are too much like Japan. “Japanese society doesn’t have an understanding for art,” explained Ms. Kazama, who lives in the East Village and works for City Lore, an urban folklore center on East First Street. “Traditional art is accepted, but edgy art is not. Hair that’s red and purple is hard to accept. Young people are not comfortable with that.”

This is probably an understatement; young Japanese have ample cause for wanting out. As early as fourth grade, many are sent to jukus - cram schools - to begin preparing for the country’s highly competitive college entrance exams. A child’s mother packs up two bento boxes each morning, one for lunch and one for dinner. When the regular school day is over at 3, the children are off to jukus, where they work until 10 p.m.

University years often provide the only break in a rigid educational regimen, because students need only to do well on final exams to pass their classes. But the rigid life track continues once they graduate from a university or junior college. They are expected to get jobs, working as salarymen or O.L.’s - office ladies - where they stay, sometimes for a lifetime.

Japan has certainly benefited from this kind of rigor, and perhaps this is why, even with a shrinking population, the country is continually ranked among the top 10 nations in terms of gross domestic product. But for those who remain on the career track, the prospect of “finding your bliss” often becomes bleaker with each passing year. Koji Toyama, a photography major at Parsons School of Design who came to New York in 2000 and now lives in Williamsburg, put it simply: “Young people in Japan don’t care about the future.”

Women, especially, encounter stiff obstacles to forging their own path in Japan. Not only do they have a harder time developing professionally in a male-dominated society, they often face harsh judgments if they choose not to become a wife and mother at an early age.

“If you are an unmarried woman older than 25,” said Jun Takama, a 41-year-old who has lived in New York, mostly in Chelsea, since 1996, “people refer to you as Niju-go nichi sugita Kurisumasu keiki.” Translation: you’re a Christmas cake, because no one wants you after “25.”

Not wanting to be hemmed in by such conventional notions of how to live her life, Ms. Takama has remained in New York, where she finds it easier to pursue her personal and professional interests. She has worked as a hairstylist and wants to set up a cross-cultural consulting service for Japanese women coming to the city. When she spent a year as an O.L. at All Nippon Airways, in an office based at Kennedy Airport, she still felt confined by the strictures of Japan. Although she felt as if she performed better than some of her male colleagues, it seemed to her that they found it easier to move up.

Many men she worked with also treated her as if she barely existed, she said. When she arrived at work on a typical morning, for example, the men would already be ensconced in their Yomiuri or Asahi Shimbun newspapers.

“Good morning,” Ms. Takama trilled, imitating herself as the chipper O.L. arriving just in time to make coffee. “But the men only respond with a grunt.”

“When I got my hair cut short,” she added, “the only comment I got was ‘What are you trying to do, outdo us?’ “

The Language of Adaptation

Simply coming to New York, of course, doesn’t guarantee success, and the path to happiness here is as fraught with complications and pitfalls for young Japanese as for any immigrant. And though the first obstacle for many of them is the language barrier, learning English often helps them ease into the city’s multicultural stew, and in fact can be a ticket to self-discovery.

In English-language classrooms around the city, Big Apple Issei mix with Latin Americans, Africans, Europeans and other Asians. At many private language schools and those attached to universities, Japanese students typically make up about 30 percent of the student body.

Caitlin Morgan, assistant director of the English language studies department at the New School, has noticed the physical transformations that many Japanese undergo while they are studying English: they change hair colors, get tattoos, acquire multiple piercings, use hair extensions and grow dreadlocks.

Even without these extreme changes, the physical changes are visually dramatic. “The women especially,” she explained, “their voices seem to get deeper, they put on a little weight and become fitter, they use less makeup, they become a little realer.”

“These foreign explorers,” she added, “seem to have an intuitive understanding that in New York, there are rewards to taking creative risks and trying new things.”…

For the complete article, please see the link below.

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MEDIA MIX

Little progress on Japanese gender equality

By PHILIP BRASOR

Last weekend the Cabinet Office released the results of its latest gender-roles survey, which it has been carrying out irregularly since 1979. About 3,500 adult men and women offered their opinions about who should be in charge of the home and who should do the breadwinning. The results were reported by all the major newspapers, which concluded that Japanese society was becoming more accepting of the idea that it is alright for married women to work outside the home.

A closer look at the results reveals something less clear-cut, but there was a news story last week that put the issue in proper perspective.

On Feb. 1, enka singer Masako Mori was rushed to the hospital, where she was treated for what the tabloids initially called a drug overdose. Apparently, Mori had been under a lot of stress and was given medication to help her cope, but, for whatever reason, she took too much.

Further reports suggested reasons why Mori was so stressed. She has three sons, the oldest of whom is high-school age, and a husband to take care of. The husband, in fact, is Shinichi Mori, one of the most famous enka singers in Japan and a notorious man’s man. He divorced his first wife, actress Reiko Ohara, because, by her own admission, she wasn’t much of a homemaker.

Masako, who retired from singing when she married the much older Shinichi 20 years ago, raises her sons single-handedly, keeps house and takes care of her husband when he performs. As an only child, she also takes care of her own parents. What’s more, in the past couple of years she has been singing at her husband’s concerts, a significant sales-booster since in her heyday she was more popular than he was. Reportedly, she asked the doctor at the hospital if she could stay a couple of days longer because she didn’t want to go home.

Masako Mori is a traditional Japanese wife, happy to stand in Shinichi’s shadow. But now that she’s singing again, her life isn’t much different from that of any career woman with a husband and children. She’s a reality check to the survey, the purpose of which was to find out if people agreed with the statement, “Husbands should work outside the home while wives should protect the household.”

The loaded word “protect” identifies the sentence as an anachronism, and the wording obscures rather than clarifies the responses it evokes. Almost half of the respondents said they disagree with the statement, a higher percentage than those who said “no” the last time the survey was conducted in 2002, and more than double the percentage who disagreed in 1979.

This is deemed progress, but other survey results make you wonder. Sixty percent of the respondents said that both “ideally” and “in reality” men place higher priority on their jobs than on their family, while the percentage is significantly lower for women. What’s more, women are considered the keepers of the household coffers by an overwhelming majority.

The survey may show that the idea of women working outside the home is becoming more acceptable, but that doesn’t mean traditional gender roles are breaking down. If the survey proves anything, it’s that most people think that, in today’s economic climate, a family needs two incomes. Working wives are a necessity, not a sign of social progress.

In fact, quite a number of people in positions of authority have recently staged a successful backlash against attempts to dismantle conventional gender roles.

Last summer, the Tokyo Board of Education asked public schools to stop using the term “gender-free,” claiming that it ignored differences between boys and girls. As a policy adjective “gender-free” simply denotes an effort to treat boys and girls equally, and was originally adopted to get rid of the old idea that, when taking attendance in class, boys names should be called first. But some politicians took it to mean that boys and girls are to be treated “as the same,” and will be forced to do things like share locker rooms and undress together.

Last fall, Funabashi City Assemblyman Minoru Nakamura posted on his Web site an essay blasting certain women who advocate gender equality at the Funabashi Women’s Center, saying that these women have obviously been slighted by males or are married to “the worst men” in society. That’s the only explanation he can think of for why they condemn “male-centered society.” Though Nakamura finds these women “pitiable” (they tend to be “uglier” than other women their age, he added), he says they should not be allowed to use a taxpayer-funded facility to spread their loathsome opinions.

The essay has intimidated women who normally take advantage of, say, the center’s domestic violence counselor. Women’s groups have demanded that Nakamura remove the essay and apologize. So far, he’s only done the former, and the fact that the assembly has not condemned him even though the matter has come up at meetings indicates that his opinions aren’t necessarily repugnant to its members.

Maybe they don’t know that in 1985 Japan passed a bill that guaranteed employment equality between the sexes and in 1999 implemented The Basic Law for a Gender-equal Society. Local governments build Women’s Centers not because they want to help women realize genuine equality, but because they like building things. Several years ago Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, who has publicly denounced the notion of gender-free, did away with the Women’s Foundation that operated the Tokyo Women’s Plaza in Aoyama, which is now run by the city.

Whatever semantic baggage “gender-free” carries, it’s obvious that equality for women in Japan still has a way to go, and probably a lot farther than the Cabinet Office survey implies. Women are now expected not only to keep house and raise the kids by themselves, they’re also expected to help support the family financially. That’s not progress; it’s exploitation. Just ask Masako Mori.

The Japan Times: Feb. 13, 2005
(C) All rights reserved

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Jimmy Smith, Jazz organist extraordinaire, died last week. I was introduced to him first passively, hearing him at home as a child, played on my parents’ stereo, not knowing who he was. I have distinct memories of his music, starting with The Organ Grinder’s Swing, which made a huge impression on me already in my pre-teen days.
I “rediscovered” Jimmy as a college student visiting Africa for the first time, through a Ghanaian guy named Paani Laryea who lived in Abidjan and had a big jazz collection, Paani pulled out a new JS album, whose name I can’t remember, as if it was contraband. It was a slick, somewhat overproduced affair, but like everything he did on the B-3 Hammond organ, it swung, and it rocked, and it had a propulsive power that seemed almost to bespeak of possession.
Thanks to Paani, I began to raid the used LP bins of the record stores for other JS stuff. Nothing of his, however, surpasses the raw power of The Organ Grinder’s Swing, though, which you can sample through the NPR link below.

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Jolicoeur will be remembered by readers of Graham Greene’s The Comedians, as Petit Pierre: dandy, journalist, informer, man about town. I knew him as a regular at the bar and on the terrace of the Hotel Oloffson, where he could be counted on to make an appearance each night at cocktail hour, with cane in hand, dressed in a jacket, open-necked shirt and foulard.
More on this to come, as some deservedly colorful obits come in.

Décès d’Aubelin Jolicoeur, célèbre chroniqueur mondain haïtien
Posté le 15 février 2005

Le journaliste haïtien Aubelin Jolicoeur est décédé, le lundi 14 février, dans un centre hospitalier privé de la ville côtière de Jacmel, sud-est d’Haïti, a informé un proche du défunt sur une radio locale. Il avait 81 ans.

Chroniqueur mondain, Aubelin Jolicoeur a collaboré pendant plusieurs années, aux journaux Le Petit samedi soir, Le Matin, et jusqu’à sa mort au quotidien centenaire Le Nouvelliste. Il fut ministre de l’Information sous le gouvernement de Henri Namphy dans les années 1980.

Le célèbre journaliste est, sous le nom de Petit Pierre, le héros d’un livre de Jean Raspail, « un personnage romanesque avec des zones d’ombre certaines mais aussi des trésors de fidélité amicale. » Il a inspiré le personnage du même nom dans « Les Comédiens » de Graham Green.

Aubelin Jolicoeur a reçu dans son pays plusieurs distinctions pour son apport à la culture haïtienne. Il a longtemps vécu à l’hôtel Oloffson à Port-au-Prince. Il a également occupé la chambre près du manguier de l’hôtel Marabout à Pétion-Ville, dirigé pendant 40 ans par feue la chorégraphe Odette Latour Wiener. Il a habité jusqu’à sa mort une chambre à l’hôtel La Jacmélienne à Jacmel.

Posted at 10:39 PM · Comments (0)

One criticism of my “Where’s My $58 Million, Madame Wu?” column, in which I described the adventures of a 1990s China investment fund, was that, given the speed at which China is changing, the 1990s were equivalent to the Dark Ages. So let’s get up to date.

Foreign business in China follows two distinct strategies: export and domestic. The export strategy is to take advantage of China’s low-cost manufacturing capabilities by making products to sell elsewhere in the world. The domestic strategy, meanwhile, is to sell products and services to the 1.3 billion Chinese consumers (or rather, to the small minority who make more than a couple of dollars a day).

According to China, Inc., a (great) new book by Ted Fishman, China now draws more foreign investment capital than any other country ($53 billion in 2003). The half-trillion foreign dollars invested in China since 1979 have built an estimated one-third of the country’s current production capacity. A large chunk of this money, interestingly, has come from Chinese expatriates, some of whom fled the country during the Communist takeover.

The domestic strategy, selling to Chinese consumers, is challenging but often successful. Most of the country is still locked in unfathomable poverty—25 years of economic progress in rural Xiaogang, Fishman reports, have increased annual per capita income from $2.50 to $313—but China’s population is so huge that even a fraction of it represents an enormous market. For example, according to the Harvard Business Review, China is now adding 4 million to 6 million new cell phone subscribers per month. This statistic is mind-boggling. It means that, every year, China adds a new cell phone market about the size of Germany’s—and Germany is the third-largest cell phone market in the world. (No wonder handset manufacturers like Motorola are so jazzed about China.) Other products that foreign companies are selling include cars, soap, sneakers, shampoo, watches, soda, beer, noodles, hot water heaters, televisions, clothes, VCRs, film, coffee, courier services, cameras, and motorcycles.

Still, the most common foreign-business strategy in China is export. China’s manufacturing costs are so low that factories can undercut not only operations in the United States and Europe, but previous low-cost export platforms like the Philippines and Mexico. Because so many companies have now pitched camp in China, today’s manufacturers usually have two choices: follow or quit. As China’s economy has developed, moreover, its manufacturing capabilities have become increasingly sophisticated, allowing factories to climb the complexity ladder. In 1990, according to the Harvard Business Review, China led the world in the production only of textiles and televisions. By 2002, this dominance had extended to refrigerators, PCs, motorbikes, cigarette lighters, and cell phone handsets. What’s more, so many of China’s impoverished farmers and unemployed state workers need jobs that China’s production costs are likely to stay low for decades. Ted Fishman says that between 90 million and 300 million Chinese farmers have migrated to cities in recent years—a labor pool that, even at the midpoint of that range, exceeds the total workforce of the United States. Fishman also observes that, between 1998 and 2001, China’s state-run companies fired 21 million people, more workers than are employed by the entire U.S. manufacturing industry.

Of course, it is not just foreigners who have noticed China’s manufacturing supremacy. Chinese companies are also exporting hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of products each year (and they’re selling more than cigarette lighters and fireworks). For example, according to the Harvard Business Review, Pearl River Piano now owns more than 10 percent of the U.S. piano market; CIMC makes and sells most of the world’s shipping containers; Galanz supplies 40 percent of Europe’s microwave ovens; and Haier not only clubs Whirlpool, Siemens, Electrolux, and Matsushita in China’s domestic home-appliance market but is now invading the low end of the U.S. market as well (click here to buy a Haier countertop dishwasher). Furthermore, despite the soothing myth murmured by U.S. digerati (“We design it, they make it”), China’s high-tech industry is developing fast. By 2002 China’s digital switch and router leader, Huawei, owned 3 percent of the international router market—a beachhead gained by introducing products that cost 40 percent less than, say, Cisco’s.

In some areas, China’s advantages extend to the top of the food chain. One industry in which China could conceivably develop a sustainable advantage over foreign competitors, for example, is biotech. Here, U.S. regulatory policies and religion often act as a straitjacket: Now that President Bush has decreed that destroying embryos for stem-cell research is immoral, for example, federal stem-cell funding has been curtailed. China, meanwhile, has recognized that stem-cell research is an area in which the country could take the global lead. Thus, China has made it a national priority.

So, if the 1990s were the Dark Ages for doing business with China, this is a snapshot of what the opportunity looks like today. Based in part on this snapshot, I am ready to offer a preliminary answer to one of the two questions I posed at the outset of this series: Is the China business opportunity real enough that the next generation of gold-seekers should “go East”? Provided one construes “go East” to mean “learn Mandarin, develop guanxi, and be prepared to weather multiple economic and political storms over a multi-decade career,” the preliminary answer is “Yes.” I say “preliminary” because the next books on my reading list have titles like The Coming China Collapse.

Posted at 9:44 AM · Comments (0)

All Things Considered, February 12, 2005 · Author Ted C. Fishman says American consumers have saved far more by purchasing cheap Chinese-made goods than they have from Bush administration tax cuts. Fishman’s new book is China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Affects America and the World.

Please see the audio link below.

Posted at 11:30 PM · Comments (0)

By Nico Colombant
Abidjan
11 February 2005

In his first address, 39-year-old Faure Gnassingbe, Wednesday, spoke
eloquently about democratic reforms. He said he would pursue efforts
initiated by what he called the great father of the small
nation of Togo.

He invited opposition leaders to return from exile and begin
discussions on how to prepare successful elections.

The communications minister later explained these would not include a
presidential vote. Mr. Gnassingbe also declined to comment on
condemnations on his rise to power.

Hours later, the 15-nation Economic Community of West African states
threatened sanctions if Mr. Gnassingbe did not step down.

A Senegalese human rights lawyer, Ibrahima Kane, says he is surprised
at how quickly ECOWAS acted.

Mr. Kane says, “The fact that ECOWAS managed to have a meeting just
three or four days after Eyadema’s death, I think it’s a kind of
victory for those who really think that rule of law must run all West
African countries.”

ECOWAS also announced it would soon send a high-level delegation to
Togo’s capital, Lome, to force authorities to quickly organize new
presidential elections.

The constitution, until it was changed Sunday, called for a vote
within 60 days. The interim leader was supposed to be national
assembly speaker Fabare Tchaba, but he was replaced by Mr. Gnassingbe.

Mr. Kane says for once it seems the ECOWAS grouping is trying to force
one of its member countries to respect treaties it has signed.

Mr. Kane notes, “If West African heads of state follow what they’ve
decided in many, many treaties and protocols and I’m thinking of here
of the protocols on democracy and good governance adopted in December
2001 by ECOWAS. For me there is no doubt that if they use these
provisions the situation
will change very quickly.”

Togolese opposition movements greeted the move, saying ECOWAS was in
their words finally “escaping its cocoon.”

Later in the night, the mainly African organization of French-speaking
nations, often seen as friendly to hard-line governments, suspended
Togo from its group, saying the hand-over from father to son was
unacceptable.

This rounded off a week in which the 53-nation African Union also
called the move a coup, marking unprecedented condemnation by African
leaders on internal affairs of another country.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current head of the African
Union, led the charge, saying the era of coups was over. He said these
threatened regional security and prosperity.

Still the pressure, even though it has come quickly, has yet to
produce any results.

Togo’s main opposition leader, Gilchrist Olympio, is doubtful
diplomatic means alone can work. His father, Togo’s founding
president and independence leader, Sylvanus Olympio, was killed in a
coup led by Mr. Eyadema, then a 27-year-old army sergeant, in 1963.

“I think it’s an internal matter,” contends Mr. Olympio. “The army
ballooned from 350 at independence to reach 14-thousand now. It’s
always been a military dictatorship with a civilian face. You see,
the underpinning of the regime has always been the soldiers. So we
just have to wait and see.
Unless they find a solution, military to military in Togo, I don’t
think we can have any change.”

This has also led to questions about whether France, the former
colonial power, would intervene. Shortly after Mr. Eyadema’s death,
France put its troops in Togo and neighboring countries on high alert.

But asked this question on French television, Foreign Minister Michel
Barnier said the time of France acting as a policeman in Africa was
over.

He said France is calling for a peaceful return to constitutional
order and free and fair elections.

Still, in Africa, the former colonial power continues to have huge
bearing on unfolding events. In nearby Ivory Coast, the presence of
French peacekeepers has effectively divided that country in two and
left the north in the hands of rebels. In Sierra Leone, it was the
intervention of British soldiers that ended the civil war, after
months of ineffectual United Nations peacekeeping.

Initially in Togo, after Mr. Eyadema’s death and Mr. Gnassingbe’s
appointment, French President Jacques Chirac made a vague statement
saying he was a very close friend of Mr. Eyadema’s and that the French
government would help Togolese reunite through democratic reform.

The Senegalese human rights lawyer, Mr. Kane, says this raised
questions about France’s intentions.

Mr. Kane says, “In the beginning, the first statement made by the
French government was not very strong, but after hearing from other
countries, you know, very, very strong comments on what was going on
in Togo, they decided to change the mood. And I was listening to the
French minister of foreign affairs, and I think what he was saying is
right. So we have to respect the constitution of Togo. And now the
fact that Chirac had very good relationships with Eyadema is not
relevant for this particular issue.”

But besides Mr. Chirac, many other high-level French businessmen and
politicians have close ties with top Togolese civilian and army
leaders, leading an influential Internet chat group called the
European Movement for the Defense of Democracy in Africa to be
skeptical about whether
France is serious about seeking change in Togo.

In a statement this week, it said it believes France will initially
condemn, but several months later invite the new military head of
state to Paris with full honors.

Head of the Internet chat group, Christian Bailly-Grandvaux, says the
same thing happened in the Central African Republic in 2003, after a
coup led by General Francois Bozize.

He also doesn’t believe ECOWAS can really make a difference.

Commentary in African media says Togo could well mark a test case,
though, on whether African leaders can solve their own problems, even
superseding French influence.

They have been asked to take this approach outside the French zone of
influence too, in Sudan’s western Darfur region, to end fighting there.

The newspaper commentary says the test case in Togo, which has a small
population of just five million, could be an easier start. At the
speed at which events have been unfolding, an answer could come
quickly.

Posted at 11:22 PM · Comments (0)

Dec. 13 issue

Smart investors don’t like tall buildings. Too often a country has announced a plan to build the world’s highest structure in the midst of an economic boom, typically marking the heady peak of an investment cycle. Understandably, then, there was some concern recently when officials in the southern Chinese boomtown of Guang-zhou said they were aiming for the record books with plans to construct the world’s tallest tower.

The announcement underscores the point that China is experiencing the most staggering investment boom in recorded history. There have been other growth miracles over the past century, with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all registering similar increases in GDP over a 25-year period as China has done since 1978. But the scale of investment in China is unprecedented, with fixed investments now making up nearly half of GDP. (Among the other miracle economies, the high was 39 percent in 1991 by South Korea.) It’s all there to be seen, with 40 new airport terminals coming into operation over the past three years and a quarter of the world’s cranes now working on Chinese cities.

The fixed-investment frenzy has altered many equations in the global marketplace. China has become the largest consumer of many commodities, and the oil shock of the past year can be largely attributed to a “demand shock” from that country. The unexpectedly high Chinese demand also explains why the global economy has been remarkably resilient to the surge in crude prices. Both the price of oil and global economic growth have been reacting to the same dynamic—China’s strong growth.

China has been the largest contributor to global economic growth over the past five years in terms of purchasing-power parity (that is, adjusted for China’s under—valued currency). In fact, proxies for GDP growth, such as electricity consumption, suggest GDP growth probably averaged 11 to 12 percent over the past year. All this, however, seems unsustainable when put in a historical context.

In the late 1960s, when Japan’s per capita income level crossed the $1,000 threshold, as China’s did last year, its growth rate began to shift to a lower trajectory. In the early phases of development, the most powerful driver of growth is “convergence,” when reforms have a disproportionately large effect in spurring growth due to the low starting base and a high degree of inefficiency in the system. Reforms have led to a productivity boom in China over the past two decades, but the country has consumed a lot more capital than Japan ever did. While China pessimists are an endangered species these days, the few survivors continue to warn that too much money is chasing the China story without getting a reasonable return.

The hot money lands in the People’s Bank of China, which has been accumulating foreign-exchange reserves at a frightening pace of $10 billion a month over the past two years. The question is whether China will continue to rewrite the laws of development economics, or is about to enter a more mature growth phase, as Japan did in the 1970s.

There are intriguing parallels between Japan then and China today. Starting in the late 1960s the Japanese yen faced strong pressure to appreciate, which it resisted, leading to a huge surplus of liquidity in the system and a resultant inflation problem. Eventually Japan was forced to let the yen revalue, just as the economy faced the headwinds of soaring prices and more pollution-prevention regulations. These factors, combined with a natural exhaustion of high-return investment opportunities, led to a downward shift in Japan’s growth rate, from an average of more than 9 percent from 1955 to 1973 to about 4 percent in the subsequent 15 years.

Today most observers assume that China’s economy will expand at 8 percent for the foreseeable future. With significant inefficiencies still in the system and reform efforts continuing, the growth miracle is far from over. But even Chinese policymakers admit that the quality of growth is deteriorating. In the clearest sign of an overheating economy, inflation is rising rapidly even though many of the administered prices, such as those for diesel and gasoline, haven’t even been adjusted.

One of China’s big problems is that most input prices don’t reflect market reality. The price of money in China is distorted, with interest rates below inflation and the banking system in no shape to perform its lending function. The undervalued exchange rate and the resulting capital flow have led to a liquidity explosion. At 146 percent of GDP, China has the highest credit-to-GDP ratio of all major emerging markets.

The Chinese leadership likes to repeat that its main goal is stability, which in economic terms means steady growth of 8 percent and an inflation rate well south of 5 percent. This is a utopian goal that, again, no country has been able to achieve, including China in 25 years of reform. While real GDP growth in China has averaged more than 8 percent during that period, it has oscillated between 4 and 12 percent, —with the economy almost always slowing down sharply after a year of double-digit growth. Japan’s GDP growth rate in the 1960s had swings from 4 to 13 percent.

Stability is even harder to attain in China’s microeconomic climate. The economic structure is increasingly hybrid, with the state sector now accounting for half of GDP, down from 80 percent a decade ago. As China moves rapidly to a market system while most prices remain fixed, basic economics argues for greater volatility in growth. Further, an investment boom this extreme could well end in a slowdown in trend GDP growth. After all, can China build another 40 airports in the next three years, and won’t the higher input costs of skilled labor and commodities come to matter at some point?

There remains an aura of invincibility around China, based on the belief that policymakers can achieve any equilibrium they desire. All sorts of arguments are bandied about to support the widely held assumption that the country will continue to grow at supersonic speed. One of the more silly ones is that China needs to create 20 million new jobs a year to maintain social stability. Well, what country doesn’t aspire to create more jobs? Desire alone doesn’t ease the constraints to growth, the most prominent of which in China’s case is skilled labor. A high level of wage inflation and a rising inflow of skilled workers from places like Taiwan are signs that China’s overextended economy is facing labor shortages.

China needs to undertake decisive market reforms—such as revaluing the exchange rate—to rein in growth fever before the situation gets out of control. Focused leadership has been one of China’s main economic strengths in the reform years, with leaders from Deng Xiaoping to Zhu Rongji providing clear direction and acting firmly to keep the economy on track. But now the economic structure has morphed, making it more difficult for the traditional diktats to work. Moreover, the new leadership is still establishing authority over provincial leaders, who are used to operating only on the growth-at-any-cost mantra.

All of this indicates that stability will be elusive for China. More likely, economic variables such as growth, inflation and the exchange rate are going to witness much more volatility as China transitions to a more mature growth phase. The world will need to adjust to that reality rather than lazily assuming that the Chinese economy will steadily grow at the lucky number 8 every year.

Posted at 2:13 PM · Comments (0)

It’s widely acknowledged that the Japanese not only tend to look younger than people in the West, some think and behave that way too. After all, this is a nation fostered on kodomo bunka (kiddie culture), visible in everything from fashion to architecture.

For many years, kodomorashisa (childlike-ness) was considered a very good thing, and the highest praise for a man (regardless of age) was shonen-poi (like a little boy) and mujyaki (guileless). For women of course, itsumademo shojyo no yo (forever like a girl) was a virtue that far exceeded mere beauty or intelligence, and the yonareta onna (woman familiar with the ways of the world) was shunned as having lost her mukuna kanji (air of innocence). Maturity was for ok for wine, antiques and jeans — but the full-fledged Japanese adult was often made to feel taikutsu (boring), fukou (unhappy) and debu (fat).

In the past couple of years however, otona (adult) has become a sweeping marketing concept, especially among women. Otonappoi (adult-like), that once disdained phrase now heads the list of otokokara kikitai kotoba (words we want to hear from men) and the in-trend make-up technique has shifted from shojyogao (little girl face) to otonagao (adult face).

Females over 50, once described with the blanket term obachan (grandmas) are now referred to as sutekina otona (attractive adults) and increasingly, women say they value maturity in their male partners above all other traits. It looks like Japanese society is gearing up to face the oncoming koureika shakai (aged society) with an atypically pojitibu (positive) and otonappoi attitude. Good for us.

Personally, I welcome the whole trend, not just because I’ve reached the point where my mother calls me ii otona (old enough to know better) but also because Japanese society has never provided the kind of rosy childhood and youth so avidly depicted in popular culture: Anyone who has ever experienced their early teens in a public chuugaku (middle school) has experienced the suffocating sense of heisokukan (claustrophobia) that defines those three long years.

In high school, the imminent dark cloud of college entrance exams hangs in the air, and, though college can be raku (easy or fun), there’s always the threat of shuushoku ronin (being unable to find a job immediately after graduation), as well as the fear that one will have to spend the rest of one’s youth working the register in the neighborhood conbini (convenience store).

Many of us are secretly, hugely relieved that those years are over, that we made it over the hill and have now become free to reap the fruits of hard-earned adulthood. As my friend Tamami always likes to say: “Toshi totteru kara-tte naniyo. Wakai koro yoriwa iiyo! (So what if we’re old? It’s better than being young!)”

Indeed, there are many instances where the phrase otonani natte yokatta (I’m glad I’m grown up) seems highly appropriate. One of the greatest pleasures for the over-30 crowd is the practice of otona-gai (grown-up shopping). This can mean luxury brand shopping, buying a whole collection of something (like an entire set of Ryotaro Shiba historical novels, in limited edition hardcover) or that most otona of actions: making a purchase without inspecting the price tag.

There’s also the otona no koi (grown-up love), including furin (extra-marital affairs) or relationships that don’t set marriage as a goal, between adults who like to play it cool. Otona no deeto (grown-up dating) includes dining on low-calorie (a top priority for otona), high-priced fare in kakurega (hideaway) restaurants followed by romantic conversation over drinks in a hoteru no baa (hotel bar). All such experiences are tinged with otona no aji (grown-up flavor), the vaguely defined but enormously popular phrase which indicates sensations like nigasa (bitterness), honwakasa (subtle warmth) and osaeta amasa (restrained sweetness).

Interestingly, amid all this talk about what it means to be otona, the more burdensome aspects of adulthood such as sekinin (responsibility) and karada no otoroe (physical deterioration), never really come up. Perhaps the Japanese have a found a way to be adult with all the kinks out, or as one fashion magazine put it: “otona no oishii toko dake torou (let’s just take the delicious parts of adulthood)!” Is it true? Can we have achieved Otona Niravana? Or is such optimism just an immature delusion?

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Seoul — TO North Korea, diplomacy is another form of war. Under the leadership of Kim Jong Il, the Foreign Ministry has bullied the United Nations into submission and outwitted the United States into providing food aid - all the while developing a formidable nuclear arsenal.

This is, of course, the hard-line view of North Korea that prevails in some quarters in Washington. Yet it is also the official North Korean view of North Korea.

In the West, attention is almost exclusively focused on the official pronouncements released by Pyongyang’s Central News Agency - statements that, for all their strange rhetoric, strive to present North Korea as a misunderstood country eager for more normal relations with Washington. Last week’s announcement that North Korea has nuclear weapons, for example, said that while the country had “manufactured nukes for self-defense,” it still sought only “peaceful coexistence” with the United States.

But the propaganda dinned every day into the North Korean people is of a different order. School textbooks, wall posters, literary works: all celebrate a cynical “attack diplomacy” that makes a frightened and uncertain world dance to the drum of Kim Jong Il. Again and again, comic effect is derived from stories of stammering American and international officials trying to placate the relentless “warriors” of the Foreign Ministry. Washington’s refusal to follow through on veiled threats of military action is mocked as a failure of nerve.

The novel “Barrel of a Gun,” for example, released in 2003, is an official “historical” work about how Mr. Kim’s iron resolve forced the Clinton administration to its knees in 1998. “Excellency,” the American negotiator says at the end of the book, groveling shamelessly before his North Korean counterpart, “you are also a mighty superpower.”

“I like the sound of that,” the North Korean answers with a chuckle and a sharp look. Then he lays down the law. The Americans want to inspect some caves for evidence of a nuclear program? Perhaps a “visit” can be arranged - if 700,000 tons of food are first delivered in atonement for the “strangulatory” blockade of the country. (If you ever wondered why Pyongyang allows food aid to be distributed with the Stars and Stripes on the bags, there’s your answer.)…

Copyright 2005 - The New York Times (for the full article please see the link below)

Posted at 3:53 PM · Comments (0)

Stanley Baldwin’s bitter jibe that journalists enjoy “the privilege of the harlot down the ages—power without responsibility”—still resonates. One reason is certainly because we recognize that—alas!—we cannot live without journalism. We might sometimes imagine that it is merely the stuff we read in the newspapers every day, but actually journalism is a mode in which we think. It indelibly marks our first response to everything. It dominates television and surrounds us in the vast publishing industry of popularization. The scholar and the professional may escape it as they specialize, but the moment they step outside what they really know about, they enter the flow of popularized understanding like the rest of us.

This means that journalism is a problem at two levels. Baldwin’s jibe points to the profound idea that there is something essentially pathological about the whole activity that daily satisfies our often pointless curiosity about what is going on in the world. But there is a less extreme position that accords more with common sense: namely, that in our educated and democratic world, a great deal of information is indispensable, and journalism is the only way we can have it. Even here, however, large events such as the Iraq war of 2004 have caused many critics to judge that journalism has lost such integrity as it ever had and is being used to nudge us towards some version of right thinking. Journalism had slid, it has been suggested, into propaganda.

We thus have two theses to consider. The first is that journalism in itself is a pathological distortion of our civilization, and the second is that the perfectly respectable and certainly necessary trade of informing us about the world has lost its integrity and become, in some degree, a parody of truth—in a word, pathological. It is not entirely possible to separate these ideas, but let us take each in turn.

Journalism responds to the old Roman question: Quid novi?—What’s new? The question only makes sense against a background of: What’s old? The answer must be composed of things called “events,” and, as the etymology of eventus suggests, an event is something understood as the outcome of some earlier situation. Event-making is an art that turns familiar routines and facts into patterns having a certain uniqueness. Some people are better at it than others, but once the art has been learned, most people can do it to some extent. It is all a matter of scale: the Bible tells some stories in a few sentences, while writers of fiction can spin someone’s day into a long novel. Responding to stories is one way of conducting life, distinguishable from the times when we are responding to routines, sensations, classifications, or reflections. No life can avoid gossip, ritual, and response to overriding events such as war or famine, but most people, especially if they are illiterate, have hitherto been interested in little beyond what affects them directly. Journalism is the cultivation of concern for things that are for the most part remote from us.

The basic contrast is with religion, which is concerned with rituals and sermons revolving around beliefs about our eternal situation. Kierkegaard mistrusted journalism because he thought it would feed our love of the ephemeral, and he was no doubt right about this. Hegel remarked that in his time, newspapers were replacing morning prayer. Perhaps the earliest writer to regard our involvement with daily events as a pathology distracting us from the realities of the human condition was Pascal. As journalism in the contemporary world has extended its range, it has certainly taken in churchly events and concerned itself with the beliefs of different religions, but the very context of such news robs it of the superior status it has for believers, and diminishes religion to the same level as the vast miscellany of other human activities that are also being reported. Religions are composed of archetypes that have a status above the constant flow of ideas and news stories. We respond (or do not respond) to such archetypes in a reflective manner that determines how we view the world, but where journalism dominates our thoughts, reflectiveness is diluted by the passion for novelty. We move from an article on religion to one on fashion, sport, or public affairs. Like democracy, journalism is a manic equalizer.

Historically, journalism emerged from the specific interests of princes, merchants, and administrators. A prince needed to know something of foreign powers, and his ambassador sent him back reports, just as a merchant needed to know of profitable opportunities and conditions of trade. A universal institution such as the Papacy needed a constant flow of information. The Greeks, Romans, Chinese, etc. were great annalists, and Herodotus is credited, as the father of History, with creating prose literature out of an assemblage of contingencies, but the drive of most of these writers was precisely to get beyond contingency and find a broader explanatory structure.

Printing, of course, transformed everything, leading to the movement of power away from grand patrons towards educated city-dwellers. Large political issues were argued out in books, pamphlets, and broadsheets. The writings of diplomats and merchants were soon being supplemented by correspondents writing for a wider audience. It was the beginning of the end for arcana imperii. By the eighteenth century, the flow of material was so reliable that publishers could be sure of filling an annual, a monthly, and ultimately a weekly or daily issue. This was the first and basic mechanical principle by which we became accustomed to a regular flow of news. Other mechanisms soon emerged to help the editor fill his space—the anniversary, for example, in which nothing related the writer and his subject but an interval of time.

Deeper currents were at work. The modern Western world was based upon a close interest in and observation of the things going on around us. The marvels of science in important respects result from a simple propensity to measure things and discover laws relating these measurements. In the early modern period, the value of history, and also of reports of events, consisted in their being able to point a lesson or generate a moral or practical bit of wisdom. The meaning of an event was to be found in its outcome. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a painting by Tiepolo, dated 1745–1750, called (in a rather Heideggerian idiom) Time unveiling truth. The allegory is complex and the painting (to my eyes) not without grossness, but the broad idea captures something of how practical men came to understand wisdom. The contrast must be with the religious assumption that the essential truths of life have been revealed, but that the human world is dark and devious, and the connection between events is obscure. Here we have the view that time will tell whether we have been right or wrong to rely on someone. The interest of a contingency is precisely that it cannot be assimilated to a law. To follow the course of events over time is therefore to discover truth. And one possible implication of this view is that to come later is to know more truth.

Journalism thus emerges from deep currents in our civilization. It has roots in Greek and Roman experience, and, from the Middle Ages onwards, a passion to follow the actual events of the world seems to have continually grown. Prose literature and the novel were part of that development, and whole new areas of event-making came to be opened up. The narratives relating to kings, aristocrats, and saints were broadened to include a more general concern with individual life. In a religious idiom of life, such diurnal events were mere froth on the surface of the infinite. But as Kierkegaard saw, the ephemeral was coming to dominate our interests.

The steady diffusion of a journalistic interest in what is going on affects our consciousness of the world we live in. A nun has a different mind-set from a housewife, a philosopher from a man of affairs, but journalism equips them all with a generalized interest in the world. One dimension of how journalism affects the way we think is our propensity to become bored. Someone who is focussed on the novelty of events as they unfold in the newspapers is to that extent less reflective about the events to which he responds. The details of change crowd out the time and energy that would otherwise go into reflection. Religious people, philosophers, or scientists—people who are genuinely educated, we might say—will think about God, or Nature, or literature, and will find new things in quite exiguous materials, whereas the less educated become increasingly miserable without a continual flow of novelty, and since most of reality is repetition, the novelty is a function of triviality. People become, in a word, shallow. Here then is a new form of consciousness evolving under the spur of improving technology to the point where twenty-four-hour news and comment is available to us.

Journalistic consciousness is imperialistic. It invades every sphere of life and takes it over. Consider the world of scholarship, in which men and women dedicate themselves to exploring some area of reality in terms of a particular mode of inquiry—as historians, scientists, or literary scholars, for example. Scholarship is hard, focussed work, continually retracing its steps to check on its validity as scholarly discussion proceeds. It knows nothing of the urgency of the deadline. The scholars who practice this art are often pedantic and stuffy, and certainly impatient with those who think they can master the subject in question without a lengthy apprenticeship. And for centuries scholars used to defend themselves against the contempt of practical men for what is “academic” with an entrenched disdain for journalism and popularization. The Cambridge English don F. R. Leavis detested nothing so passionately as Sunday newspaper reviewing. The Oxford historian A. J. P. Taylor never got the chair to which his abilities entitled him because (so it is plausibly said) he brought scholarship low by writing for newspapers.

Might I perhaps focus the point a little more sharply with another British example? Early in 2004, Bernard Levin died. He had been a notable figure of London journalism, both witty and wide-ranging. Many friends remembered his often setting the table on a roar, but few could come up with examples adequate to exhibit his wit. And then Matthew Parris, himself perhaps the pre-eminent columnist of the day, wrote about this. The problem, he suggested, was something deep in the nature of journalism: its absolute dependence on the moment of writing. Good journalism gains some of its impact from responding to the mind of the moment, and that is precisely what cannot fully be captured at a later moment. And indeed, it is hard to read journalism critically without realizing the element of padding that goes into it.

The self-protective disdain of the scholar for the popularizer has now gone, or largely gone, and with its disappearance, journalism has been sloshing about in the world of scholarship. Scholars can now become popularizing celebrities without losing face, a further spread of the journalistic imperium. Worse, journalism has begun, by a curious conjunction of cultural tendencies, to invade the world of education. It has long been felt by teachers of subjects in the social sciences that a pupil’s reading of the newspaper is an important part of his or her education. And with the decline of discipline in schools, the teacher can no longer command that his charges must learn what he thinks is the next part of their education. He is forced to seduce them, by the guile of a popularizing involvement with their own interests. Journalism’s empire thus lies behind the rise of the impulse to make relevance the test of what is worth teaching in schools. A similar development is happening in universities as they expand to take in students with less native wits than before. Instead of the focus on method and discipline basic to education, many university courses have become interdisciplinary, which consists in focusing on some subject of broad popular interest, such as the environment, and investigating its problems in terms of a bit of science, a bit of history, a bit of practical wisdom, etc.

Journalistic consciousness, then, has spread into the wide field of the humanities and the social sciences. A journalist is the master of the gist of things, and gist is king of the world. The way it dominates contemporary politics might perhaps help to explain why in our time so much legislation has so frequently to be amended, corrected, and replaced.

Journalism may thus be taken as a systematic defiance of the Socratic maxim that wisdom consists in understanding one’s own ignorance. We who belong to the world of journalism know a great deal, and are proud of it, and sanctify such knowledgeability in quiz programs and a disdain for those who cannot tell in what century the Civil War happened, or how many states make up the U.S. Stanley Baldwin thought that journalists were prostitutes—but how can knowing a lot be thought to be the satisfaction of a kind of lust? The answer is that journalism satisfies curiosity, a distant relative of the “wonder” thought to be the source of philosophy and science. How then, one must repeat, can curiosity be a vice? The answer is that we are often curious about things that are none of our business. The malicious village gossip is the most curious creature on earth, and finds her successor in the “door-stopping” journalist and the paparazzo infesting the lives of famous people. Further, curiosity is one of those learned human responses that is dependent on what other people are interested in. In a shallow way, we can easily be influenced to take an interest in something merely because others are curious about it.

The most evidently vicious kind of curiosity is morbid. Plato recognized this in arguing that the mind was an arena of conflict rather than a Pythagorean harmony. In the Republic, Socrates tells the story of Leontius, son of Aglaion: “On his way up from the Piraeus outside the north wall, he noticed the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground with the executioner standing by them. He wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and tried to turn away. He struggled for some time and covered his eyes, but at last the desire was too much for him. Opening his eyes wide, he ran up to the bodies and cried, ‘There you are, curse you; feast yourselves on this lovely sight!’” Some modern press photography is remarkable, almost an art (that of sport for example), but much that we see in tabloid journalism would disgust us had our sensibilities not been corrupted by learning to enjoy the satisfaction of this particular version of lust—the lust to see and know things of no concern to us. As Pascal remarks: “More often than not, curiosity is merely vanity. We only want to know something in order to talk about it.”

Here then is another arena in which journalism has “colonized” our minds. The very availability of a rather illicit satisfaction has developed in us the very appetite itself. All of this is given some kind of ethical coloring in terms of the public’s right to know, and indeed, it would be impossible in the modern world to draw a consistent line between genuinely appropriate objects of our curiosity and the bits of knowledge generously thrown our way. Indiscriminate absorption of information is the way we live. But there is another side to this richness of information available to us about the world we live in. It is that an endless preoccupation with ourselves as subsumed under social categories—as pensioners or teenagers, married or single, heterosexual or homosexual, and so on—dilutes our consciousness, and our identity spills out in all directions. We lose the focus that belongs to real individuality. We meld into others, becoming part of a strange kind of informational collectivity.

Until the twentieth century, people did not much consider the category of journalism. Some of what we would now recognize as such was the writing of educated men in books and quarterlies, and some was popular report for the masses. Reporters and newspapermen had relatively little professional standing. One thinks of twentieth-century newspaperman, according to the image in The Front Page and other fictions, as hard-headed drunks working with green eyeshades as they subbed copy in large offices. These were men who thought that journalism reported and therefore reflected the world, and that (as C. P. Scott put it) “facts are sacred and comment is free.” They were empiricists who took the description of “reporter” seriously; they purported to “tell it as it was.” To use the old logical formulation, “twenty killed in earthquake” was true if, and only if, twenty people had been killed in the earthquake. But at some point in the twentieth century, a familiar type of social evolution occurred. Journalism became a “profession” (rather than just a trade), and succumbed to the culture of universities.

The new sophisticated journalist had picked up a little learning and knew that a news story cannot be a mere “reflection” of events, because every event is infinitely complex, susceptible of many descriptions, and therefore that its meaning depends on the prior selection of the reporter. Journalism was something constructed. This view thus reflected the then popular vogue for mechanical images of “construction” and “invention” in the humanities and social sciences. Here was a theory that transformed the life of your humble journalist. He, or she, was no longer a mere agent of transmission, transferring facts to print. The journalist became an actual creator of news. Journalists were not, indeed, quite the same as novelists, but some element of creativity was thought necessary to report even the least significant bit of news. It was in part this cast of mind that led to the explosion of signed reports and photographs of the contributors to newspapers, and of the proliferation of columns. The result was an immense vogue among young people for becoming journalists. It was for the most part clean regular work, allowing plenty of self-expression without accountability, and it required no vast input of learning, or indeed remarkable talent of any kind.

Up to a point, both the reflection and the construction views of journalism capture some of its real features. A little light epistemology might have been a pretty harmless addition to journalistic self-understanding had it not soon mutated into a kind of Salvationism. Quite how this mutation occurred is a very large question indeed, but it can best be understood in terms of a similar process happening in most of the professions in the second half of the twentieth century. Teachers came to think that, because they were custodians of the minds of the rising generation, they held the key to social progress. Spreading the right ideas in the classroom would diminish violence and prejudice in the next generation, so molding the attitudes of the young became at least as important as education itself. Similarly, lawyers sought to expand beyond the dry technicalities of the law in order to make society more just, and many a doctor embracing epidemiology was less concerned with curing his patients than with instructing them about a better lifestyle. The idea of social responsibility—that we are all the molders of our society—spread far and wide, even into the temples of profit. We may summarize this by saying that all of these professionals began to acquire the affectations of an elite possessed of saving knowledge. In the case of journalists, this encounter with epistemology turned into a form of political partisanship.

The issue was often expounded in terms of the concept of “bias.” In the game of bowls, a certain distortion (known as “bias”) tests the skill of the player, and metaphorically, the subjective element in the interpretation of an event might be described as “bias.” No one doubted that such subjectivity was a distortion, but it was generally held that truth could emerge from discussion and criticism. The new doctrine insisted—at its least sophisticated—that since no judgement was unbiased, any utterance was as good as any other. Any claim to neutrality was treated with particular scorn. Whereas a generation before, facts had been distinguished as the hard stuff of truth by contrast with values, which were merely the porous vehicles of feeling and preference, now facts themselves lost their claim to superiority. Cultural analysts dissolved truth into power, following the lead of Michel Foucault.

It is a familiar feature of the history of philosophy that skepticism’s partner is dogmatism. The dogmatism emerging from this particular bout of skepticism held that all cultures were equally valid, and that all utterances, as expressing opinion, were equal, at least in this fundamental respect. They could only be discriminated in terms of some sort of notional “correctness.”

The Salvationism in this doctrine consisted in the belief that in being skeptical of all universal claims, the journalist as critical thinker was revealing a sophistication superior to that of the average voter. The test of such critical sophistication was that the journalist held opinions liberated from the influence of his or her milieu, and the milieu was taken to include not merely class or nation, but European civilization itself. Journalists saw themselves as “free floating intellectuals” in a world of prejudice and superstition. This pleasing self-image was often complemented by the further opinion that the critical thinker had unmasked the hidden partisanship in our common belief that Western civilization was superior to other forms of life. This civilizational self-criticism commonly took a moral form, applying the higher moral abstractions (such as human rights, anti-imperialism, and racial equality) to European societies themselves, and projecting this criterion back down the ages in a massive indictment of our ancestors. Collective guilt was discovered to be the appropriate response to a great deal of Western conduct, ranging from the Crusades to Slavery and Apartheid. Some enthusiasts demanded official apologies, and some politicians (Tony Blair among them) gave them. Skeptical non-judgmentalism had strangely morphed into dogmatic condemnation, generating a strange kind of collective guilt, from which the critic could absolve himself by his very recognition of it.

The history of this process, in the universities (especially the universities) and journalism schools of the Western world, is of course immensely complicated, but without referring to it, one cannot begin to understand why our addiction to journalism is virtually inseparable from our dislike of it. The crudest way of formulating our dislike would be to say that the picture of the world presented in newspapers and television programs jars with our political opinions. The discontent is greater among those on “the right” than those on “the left” but both share it. And here the discontent must seem odd, because journalists pride themselves on covering, or trying to cover, all points of view. “Points of view” is, of course, a vulgarizing simplicity that can recognize only those for, and those against, some all-too-familiar opinion. We have all, no doubt, been amused by the absurdities of the television interviewer swinging back and forth between two opposing personages, putting in a mechanically extreme way the opposed opinion (suitably made extreme) to its opponent.

No one, I think, seriously believes that the academic sophistication that journalists have acquired helps them give a better account of the world. We are no better informed today than we were when reporters told us how it was. Indeed, all shades of opinion regard “the media” with deep suspicion as giving a biased account of reality. Some bold journalists embrace this universal unpopularity as proof of a perverse kind of integrity, but early in the twenty-first century, it is hard to resist the view that, indispensable as it is in modern democracies, journalism is an increasingly pathological influence on the way we live.

For all their affectations of the critical spirit, journalists are putty in the hands of the latest intellectual fashion. What they have to say is dangerously linked to the posture they intend to reveal in saying it. Their basic moral stance must be an unrelenting concern with truth, and it is in this sense that journalism reveals itself as an essentially Western practice. For it has often been observed that ours is a “truth-obsessed” civilization. By “truth” here, we mean something rather beyond mere correspondence with facts; we must incorporate in the word an element, harder to define, of integrity. A really good journalist needs a sturdy ballast of good sense and an almost scholarly revulsion from the quick and the glib in order to transcend the corruptions that have surfaced over the last century.

It would no doubt be perilous to think that all Victorian journalists were more serious than our contemporaries, but in writers like Bagehot and Leslie Stephen we have figures who worked on the frontiers of journalism and scholarship without losing their integrity. It may be merely that the temptations of cheap sensationalism were less at that period than they are now, or it may just be that they had more space.

It was, however, in the nineteenth century that literary realism took the form in which it became the guiding star of modern journalism. Novelists such as Dickens and Zola were certainly not the first to explore “low life,” but they extended the boundaries of social understanding in order to incorporate the experiences of socially insignificant people into the materials of drama, and also to reveal some of the realities—usually poverty, vice, and oppression—“behind” the facades of the time. The crucial ideas of this literary movement were those of journalists themselves—indeed both Dickens and Zola had been journalists in their time. The basic idea of literary realism is that life is a theater put on for show, and that reality is what you find when you go behind the scenes. Reality, in other words, is something concealed by those whose interest lies in concealment. The posture of the journalist is thus that of the investigator debunking institutions by exposing secrets.

This general theory clearly domesticates scandal and conspiracy as instruments of revelation. The custodians of ritual and authority are, of course, particularly vulnerable to criticism of this form. Their outward aspect is their essential point, and what lies behind them may well be banal, or worse. We have here a view of reality that cannot distinguish between those things whose inwardness has no bearing on their force, and those things where hypocrisy or dissimulation may be usefully revealed.

Journalism begins, then, in genuinely “sensational” events such as wars, earthquakes, and the rise and fall of governments, but it can multiply sensation by getting “behind” the events. Some social personages—royalty, politicians, actors, etc. —are worthy of note in themselves, but even better is to discover how they behave “behind the scenes.” Spontaneous irritation is thought to be more revealing than measured dignity, a little light lust than a policy of self-control. Recent philosophy has been strongly influenced by the so-called “philosophers of suspicion”—Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—but in journalism we find suspicion as the constitutive passion of an entire practice.

The rational basis of modern journalism, its claim to our attention as bringing us knowledge of the world, thus turns out to be the practice of revealing what other people want to hide from us. This is, of course, particularly true of what authority wants to hide. The First World War was a watershed in the growth of cynicism about authority. People came to think that the official account of almost anything was generally wrong. Here then we find the beginnings of the journalistic posture of indignation as the reporter demands “full disclosure” of whatever the public might be thought to have a right to know.

Such is the rational basis of journalism, but it is important never to ignore the passions it may be supposed to feed? Baldwin, as we have seen, thought it supplied the demand for a kind of lust almost as powerful as the sexual, and perhaps less linked to vigorous youth—the passion for scandal. What journalism most obviously supplies is “sensations” or small shocks of pleasurable surprise because something unexpected has happened, and the journalistic “story” itself may incorporate the contexts within which it was unexpected. But what if the small shock is the discovery of some change in the private life of someone celebrated? Here we would have a case of Pascal’s idle and pointless curiosity, the malice of the village gossip in earlier times writ large. Perhaps the best comment on this is Goethe’s “No man is a hero to his valet de chambre,” to which Hegel added: “not because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is a valet.”

It is in expressing this impulse towards psychological valetism, a lowering and demeaning passion, that journalism clearly loses any real contact with its immemorial mission to understand political realities, the mission of the ambassador writing to his prince.

As it has evolved, journalism has bent to conform to that universal passion of our civilization: entertainment. So far as most people up until quite recent times were concerned, amusements and entertainments were rare treats. This seriousness of workaday practicality may well have made church services more tolerable, and it certainly conduced to a more reflective cast of mind, for, as Pope remarked, “amusement is the happiness of those that cannot think.” In our time, however, radio, television, books, magazines, and a ubiquity of music have had the result that a quiet mind is a rare luxury for many people. Given that most of the information in our ever-expanding journalistic world is of no direct concern to us, it follows that the basic point of most journalism is to entertain. Just as freaks and bearded ladies amazed us in the past, so too do the remarkable private contortions of people we do not know arouse our wonder and astonishment today. This merger between journalism and entertainment is unmistakably evident in the way newspapers treat the news, and at a higher level it is replicated in the corporate expansion by which, for example, the same company may control film, television, and newspapers. And I am not, in saying this, hinting at corporate conspiracy. The corporate connections merely set the seal on a process that had long been bubbling up internally out of the developing dynamics of journalism itself.

We are all familiar with many of the corrupting devices of modern journalism—the hopeless addiction to pointless puns in headlines, the treating of politics as if it were a sports contest, the turning of rivalries into “rows” by talking up competition into conflict and hatred. In its pursuit of revelations, journalism has corrupted the servants and employees of famous people and made the vilest of crimes a paying proposition. But evident corruption is the least danger we face from journalism.

For how much “truth” can any human activity sustain? I am not here recommending a philosophy of Machiavellian deception, but merely pointing to the familiar fact that to act is to focus one’s understanding on the pros and cons of a project, with an inescapable loss of perspective. To act and to philosophize action are two separate and incompatible activities. One cannot do both at once. But the journalist takes up a posture notionally above the battle, and therefore thinks he has little difficulty avoiding the obvious peaks of partisanship with which he is familiar, so long as he can recognize them. Is he then, a kind of philosopher? If he is a passably honest journalist, he will give “left” and “right” more or less equal time, at least so long as he gets the difference right. He understands that there are two sides to a war, and may well parade his neutrality by giving extra mileage to our opponents. Accused of distortion, he takes satisfaction in his own consistency: he is not reporting conflict as a partisan, but as a neutral observer, though he would today be edgy about the term “neutral.” Here is indeed a kind of integrity, but it is integrity whose orientation depends on fluid and moving points.

But I repeat: how much truth can any human activity sustain? In religious activities, the point is ritual and feeling, not truth, and an insistence upon truth (as empirically understood) is a category error, and often a destructive one. With too much truth, the glory in war gets lost in the details of blood and body bags. Universities depend on finding themselves in a dark and obscure corner of social life largely free from social pressures. Were they to be forced to explain themselves partially or prematurely, they would sound foolish and pretentious, and scholarship would be diverted into righteousness. The ceaseless glare of light from journalism illuminates the dark places in our civilization—and sterilizes many of them. No doubt a significant part of this illumination may prevent evils and expose things that ought to be exposed, but it also takes some immemorial human activities to the brink of extinction.

Indeed, journalism exposes things that perhaps ought to be exposed, and prevents evils, but by that very token, it becomes a practical player in the world, and thus finds itself in contradiction with its own posture as a critic above the battles of partisans. In adopting a posture of oppositionality to everything powerful, established, pretentious, and superior, it embraces a kind of universal skepticism, perhaps indeed of nihilism. Some journalists can indeed sustain an opportunistic negativism about everything, but most cannot, and in fact a meta-moralistic addiction to tolerance, secularism, ecumenism, and anti-discrimination becomes evident as what one might initially call “the journalistic ideology.” To hold an opinion is to mortgage a certain amount of pleasure and pain to the turn of events. What confirms one’s opinion gives pleasure, what seems to refute it, pain.

The journalist, living amidst opinions, knows by instinct the pains of being caught out holding a vulnerable opinion. The first move in his professionalization, as it were, must therefore be to evacuate any position that might be explained by others as arising from his own interest: anything having to do with class, nationality, or civilization: all such inherited baggage must be abandoned by the journalist. The problem is that whoever abandons interests—which have about them a certain discussable reality, where compromise is possible—finds that his stock of opinions consists of abstract ideas. These will usually take an ethical form, and that impels them towards righteousness. Any such package of opinions is likely to irritate patriots and partisans of all kinds. The holder of such a position is usually enormously self-satisfied, because, having arrived there by the process of identifying extremes as things to be challenged and questioned, he fancies himself as having all the rationality of an Aristotelian mean. In fact, he has arrived at a form of Whiggery—

“A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of a drunkard’s eye.”
But as the sage in Yeats’s poem adds: “All’s Whiggery now.” For us, it’s all journalism.

It seems a vile thing to take so serious a view of the newspapers we read with pleasure every day, and the radio and television that entertain us endlessly, but it is no business of philosophers, any more than of journalists, to reinforce our lazy habits. All civilizations are built upon specific distortions of reality, and ours is particularly concerned with observing, measuring and responding to the discrete objects in terms of which we construe reality. Journalism is a development of this cast of mind, and may be contrasted with other possible worlds, in one version of which we might focus our attention upon what we conceive to be eternal things. Christian writers have been prominent in stigmatizing an interest in ephemera as a dissipation of spiritual energies. The very fact that the journalistic world can focus its attention on nothing for more than a few days at a time, forever seeking a new sensation, makes it clear that this judgment on journalism as one of the pathologies of our civilization should be taken seriously.

Change the focus, and we may take journalism as an inescapable development of our Western adventures into literacy and education for all, so that it becomes the mode by which we take our bearings in a rich and exciting world. Journalism now becomes a category of its own, alongside science and history, as something to be valued in its own terms. But what are its own terms? We cannot avoid discovering that these terms constantly change, partly in response to ideas about truth, such as reflection and construction, and partly in response to the demands that the customers of journalism make upon it. We have suggested that the terms of journalism conceal self-contradiction. A pseudo-philosophical commitment to evade partisanship turns at this level into a partisanship of its own. And not the least of the paradoxes we find in examining journalism is that this most Western of all practices should embrace so anti-Western a stance. The logical problem journalists face parallels that of liberals who embrace all lawful forms of freedom, only to be told that this apparent openness is itself a form of concealed partisanship. Liberalism and journalism, we might say, are virtually Siamese twins among the commitments of our civilization, and their fates are bound up together.

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BRUSSELS Understandably perhaps, the European powers that once ruled much of Africa prefer to recall the “civilization” they bestowed over the abuses they committed. Yet, as Belgium is now discovering, alternative versions of history can resurface unexpectedly. Forty-five years after the Belgian Congo won its independence, a remarkable exhibition here has set off a critical re-examination of Belgium’s record in its only African colony.

That the show, “Memory of Congo: The Colonial Era,” is organized by the Royal Museum of Central Africa is itself surprising. This sprawling neo-Classical palace in the Tervuren suburb of Brussels was constructed in 1897 with profits from Congo. And even as Congo tumbled through civil war, dictatorship and more civil war in the years since independence, the museum has remained a symbol of the good works that Belgium brought to its “model colony.”

Four years ago, though, the museum’s new director, Guido Gryseels, decided that the time had come for modernization, not only of the building, but also of its philosophy. Concretely, he felt the institution could no longer ignore the darker aspects of Belgium’s rule of Congo, notably the brutal period between 1885 and 1908 when, as the Congo Free State, the territory was run as the personal property of Belgium’s King Leopold II.

The timing of Gryseels’s initiative, though, was not accidental.

Although the atrocities committed by the Congo Free State were widely denounced in the early 20th century, Belgium chose to remember the more orderly colonial period from 1908 to 1960. Then, in 1999, Adam Hochschild’s “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa” appeared in translation in Belgium, and suddenly this forgotten story again became topical.

Hochschild’s headline message - that about 10 million people died during Leopold’s direct rule of Congo - was in fact challenged by some Belgian historians, but the book nonetheless raised questions about Belgium’s selective memory. It was in this context, then, that Gryseels formed a committee of Belgian and Congolese scientists and historians to carry out an in-depth study of Congo’s colonial experience to prepare for this exhibition.

Since “Memory of Congo” opened on Feb. 3, the public, press and television responses to the show suggest that Belgians may after all be willing to discover a different memory of Congo. “It’s what we intended,” Gryseels said. “We kick off with broad information, and then it’s up the public to pick up the debate. Some people have said we haven’t gone far enough in treating colonial violence, but for our museum this is revolutionary.”

Certainly, the exhibition aims to cover more than atrocities, if only to place the more unsavory episodes in a broad context. And this enables the museum to illustrate Belgium’s introduction of medicine, agriculture, education, railroads and mining, as well as Christianity, to Congo. It notes, for instance, that at the time of independence, 40 percent of Congolese were literate, a figure surpassed at the time in Africa only by South Africa.

But this is the story that Belgians already know. What is new is its treatment of the Congo Free State, where the scramble to extract rubber from the jungle led to widespread abuse of villagers and uncounted deaths from disease and at the hands of militias in the pay of rubber exporters. While few visual records survive, the show includes photographs of victims of hand amputations by militias and a painting, sarcastically titled “Civilization in Congo,” in which a colonialist witnesses the whipping of an African.

Easier to find are documents related to denunciations of the violence by Edmund Morel, a British shipping agent who in 1904 formed the Congo Reform Association, and Roger Casement, a British consul (executed by Britain for treason during World War I), who also exposed forced labor in Congo. Helped also by the publication of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” in 1899, this protest movement led Leopold to sell his African property to the Belgian government in 1908.

One wall text prepared by the committee of experts asks the question: “Genocide in the Congo?” It argues that the estimate of 10 million killed, first mentioned by Morel, cannot be confirmed because reliable figures are not available for a population dispersed over a vast area. And while the committee accepts that Congo’s population fell by at least 20 percent in the half-century after 1875 - a result of violence and disease - it also rejects the charge of genocide.

But the protests by Morel and others did prompt Leopold - who never set foot in Congo - to dispatch an inquiry commission, which reported that abuse was rampant. “The commission concluded that the state administration and the contracting companies were implicated in atrocities, as were numerous militias who terrorized the region,” the museum’s committee reports.

Perhaps more surprising to many Belgians, the show also casts the colonial period after 1908 in a less benign light. Forced labor, for instance, did not end until around 1930. The colonial administration left health and education to missionaries. Segregation, while officially denied, was widespread: in housing, transportation, schools and health clinics.

City maps displayed here, for instance, clearly identify white and African neighborhoods. From 1952, a few Congolese given “civil merit cards” enjoyed some privileges.

Meanwhile, the exhibition acknowledges, Belgium did not prepare the colony for independence: In 1960, Congo had only a tiny corps of university graduates and no experience in democracy. Within days of independence, chaos erupted, followed by Belgian and UN military intervention, the murder of the ousted Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba - with Belgian collusion - and civil war, until Mobutu Sese Seko seized power and began three decades of U.S.-backed, one-man rule in 1965.

Today’s continuing crisis in Congo, where ethnic and militia violence has taken tens of thousands of lives in the country’s east, is not addressed in the show, yet it has led some Congolese to view the colonial period more positively. “In the eyes of many Congolese, the colonial era now looks like a golden age,” said Isidore Ndaywel e Nziem, a Congolese historian and member of the committee of experts, “while Belgian opinion is going in the opposite direction and recognizing the crimes of the past.”

Still, Josette Shaje’a Tshiluila, the director of Congo’s national museums, welcomed Belgium’s willingness to exorcise its colonial past.

“There are things that happened and must be presented as such,” she said at the show’s opening. “It’s the start of a real dialogue. We have shown that this is part of our shared history.”

Gryseels said he was particularly pleased by the reaction of many former colonialists, who in the past have felt hurt by criticism of their work in Congo. “They are coming to accept that there are parts of our past that are not full of glory,” the museum director said, adding that he expected their views to be echoed during a seminar on colonial violence in Congo to be held here May 12 and 13. The exhibition closes Oct. 9.

“There are still many questions left unanswered,” said Pierre de Maret, rector of the Free University of Brussels and a member of the committee of experts. “But it is worth noting that this is the first time that a former colonial power has had the courage to come to terms with its colonial past. I would like to see a conference organized in which all colonial powers address their past. This is only the beginning.”

Posted at 1:52 AM · Comments (0)

At the end of the film, ***Hotel Rwanda***, a weary and terror-stricken group of Tutsis make a final run toward freedom during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In terrible awe, they press on, weaving through an endless mass of equally forlorn Hutu refugees who head in the opposite direction.

Unlike the 100 days of genocide, which were powerfully and honestly depicted in the film, the story of what happened to those Hutu refugees has not been heard and heard again around the world. As a ***New York Times*** correspondent in Africa, Howard W. French stood witness to that story as millions of innocent Hutus left Rwanda for the Congo, driven by fear of reprisals and threats from the extremist militiamen responsible for the genocide. They would later become the victims of mass killings themselves in a catastrophic war that, in part, rages on to this day.

French’s coverage of the Congo war is also the running focus of his latest book, ***A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa*** (Knopf, 2004). French, an African American who first lived in Africa almost 30 years ago, instills his book with an appropriate amount of poignant personal reflection that sets him apart from the many other writers of memoirs about the continent.

The range of his coverage in the book is still great: his first voyage into Mali as young romantic Pan-Africanist and a return trip more than a decade later; the forgotten history between Liberia and the United States and rise of the Liberian dictator Charles Taylor; meetings with legendary African writers and musicians.

Just as French targets corrupt African leaders and Western governments for their misguided and exploitative policies and neglect, he also criticizes the media and even himself for a narrow representation and understanding of Africa.

“All too often, Africa coverage has come to resemble the cowboys and Indians games of my childhood,” he writes. “We are too quick to find heroes in the Westerners who are always rushing to the rescue, while unconsciously concluding that the Africans served better in the role of, at best, passive spectators. […] I was determined to be different, and yet here I was, just like everyone else, rushing around another lurid African mess that, thanks to the magic of television, had become the global story of the week.”

Instead of the story of the week, ***A Continent for the Taking*** may be the most compelling book on Africa in recent years. Last week, the ***Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder*** interviewed French (HF) via Shanghai, where he now lives with his family, still writing for the ***New York Times*** and working as a scholar.

MSR: I want to start by asking if you could delve deeper into your inspirations for writing ***A Continent for the Taking*** both as, in your words, a personal memoir and a meditation on the historical encounters between Africa and the West.

HF: I had witnessed and in some sense lived the reality of one of the greatest human tragedies since the Second World War: the civil war and subsequent near disintegration of the Congo (formerly Zaire). I felt that despite my best efforts, working for a very powerful newspaper, the story of this tragedy had remained little known and poorly understood. My book, therefore, became an effort to bear witness to this tragedy and to its victims, to explain more truthfully and thoroughly how the Congo got sucked into the maelstrom, and to detail our responsibilities and complicity, moral and political, as Americans.

MSR: How would describe the difference between your perspectives of Africa from when you first journeyed through Cote D’Ivoire and Mali in the 1970s to when you left your position with the ***New York Times*** from the Congo in the late 1990s?

HF: I was a fresh-eyed kid at the time of my first Mali trip, which is recounted in the early part of my book, idealistic and freshly imbued with a lot of the ideals of Pan Africanism, picked up, in part, in school at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where I studied African history and art and politics.

It is almost impossible to recount the sense of exhilaration I felt trodding African soil, visiting places of history that I had once read so eagerly about. By the time I left my assignment for the ***Times***, this had already changed.

Politically speaking, Africa had entered a sort of Dark Age. I am grateful that it appears to have been a short-lived Dark Age, but it was a dire period nonetheless, with coups and violence eating away at much of the subregion, often, as in the case of Congo, or Liberia and Sierra Leone, to catastrophic effect.

MSR: Minnesota happens to be home a large population of Liberians. Do you have hope that Liberia will be able to overcome the specter of Charles Taylor and realize lasting peace in 2005?

HF: Liberia is about to have very important elections. This is a critical moment for the country. I sort of feel that the country has gone so low there is nowhere to go but up. That sentiment is generally right, perhaps, but it is not helpful if it lulls people into complacence.

Liberia has a large, skilled and relatively prosperous diaspora. They must bring their contributions to bear in rebuilding this country, which is an important beacon for Africa. They must also play a vigorous role in keeping Liberia on the radar screen in Washington, and in helping make sure that the United States does the right thing in that country, which hasn’t always been the case.

Monrovia is a capital city without public electricity. This country’s everyday life is equal to most countries’ dire emergencies, and some of the same generosity that has been mustered to help the tsunami victims of Asia should be mustered to help Liberians lift themselves up again.

MSR: I found the running story of Mobutu Sese Seko to be the most telling and evocative of the book. Between the coup of Lumumba and the on-and-off genocide between the eastern Congo and Rwanda, how do you think the Congo encapsulates the tragedy of post-colonial Africa?

HF: The story of Congo has all the essential elements of Africa’s tragedy, and many elements of the continent’s hope, too. It was the scene of some of the first extended contacts between Europeans and Africans, which gave way to one of the most poignant betrayals of Africa by the “West,” setting in place patterns that are still operative today.

The Congo was and is a zone of economic predation par excellence, where resources, from human beings, to rubber, to gold and diamonds, copper, cobalt and coltan are raked off by outsiders without a thought to the fates of the indigenous peoples.

There is hope in the Congo, though, because the human impulse for self-betterment is strong there — the same impulse that fired Lumumba to stand up to the West, and which resisted three decades of misrule by Mobutu Sese Seko — and the Congolese show no sign of giving up, however dire their situation might look.

MSR: In the book, you seem to particularly assail the Clinton Administration for its neglect and downright neo-liberal exploitation of Africa.

HF: My book is not meant to become part of anyone’s generalized brief against Bill Clinton. There are other aspects of his record that I admire. His Africa policy, though, was an unmitigated disaster, and must be described as such. This is where having a well-informed and energized African American public comes into the picture.

Clinton paid his respects to his Black base, knowing how important it was to his election. To a significant extent, his African policies of engagement with Africa, were designed to appeal to this base.

The fact, though, is that Clinton compounded one of the worst disasters of recent memory, the Rwandan Genocide, which his government studiously avoided intervening in, by allowing Rwanda to invade the Congo. The net result of this miscalculation based on feelings of guilt over the genocide was the death of four million Congolese — over four times the number of dead in the Rwandan catastrophe, and the largest toll in any conflict since WWII.

MSR: That being said, how would you rate the Africa foreign policy under George W. Bush for the past four years?

HF: The Bush Administration has failed Africa, too. Sudan, it acknowledges, is the scene of an ongoing genocide, but it seems to think that it is enough to simply acknowledge the tragedy and walk away from it. This is a running scandal, made all the more appalling by comparison to the outpourings of aid for the recent tsunami victims in Asia.

MSR: Can you comment further on how journalists define the global view of Africa?

HF: Journalists are the messengers. There is no way around that. We all have a responsibility to our profession and to our readers to break out of convention and stereotype and say something more meaningful, more true, and hopefully more interesting. Too few respond to the call.

Posted at 1:46 PM · Comments (0)

Joel Kotkin wrote a piece in the LA Times in December 2004 predicting the decline of some of the world’s greatest cities, specifically East Asia’s biggest cities, as a function of demographic change and other factors.
The February 2005 issue of Harper’s Magaizine, meanwhile, has a well-written, if occasionally slightly breath piece that all but anoints Shanghai (where I live) as the city of the future. The author is Mark Kingwell, a philosopher at the University of Toronto, and some readers may feel that as a first timer to Shanghai, a great city without question, he has nonetheless fallen a bit victim to the city’s patented razzle-dazzle.

Major excerpts of each piece follow:

Sizzle to Fizzle: East Asian cities are giants of culture and commerce, but have they hit their growth ceiling? By Joel Kotkin Copyright the Los Angeles Times

For the first time, a majority of the world’s people live in metropolitan areas, and the most electric urban experiences are in East Asia. Four of the world’s largest metropolitan areas — Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo — are there, as well as eight of the 10 tallest buildings.

At night, the neon-lit landscapes bustle with an energy that would impress the most jaded denizens of New York City. Slick subways, ferries, a rising number of arts museums and state-of-the-art stadiums adorn these urban centers. Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore are shedding their dirty, polluted, manufacturing images for the slick, clean industrial look. The once horrifically filthy Han River in Seoul is being cleaned up and bordered with tree-lined parks.

But those skyscraping symbols of supremacy also may signify the end of an era barely 30 years old. The effects of sudden affluence and extremely high population densities — three or more times greater than New York — have undermined the Confucian values that were the foundation of these cities.

Urban dynamism is no stranger in East Asia. Before 1500, many of the world’s most sophisticated, wealthiest and best organized cities were in China, as Marco Polo and others observed. But 400 years later, after Europe achieved technological and commercial preeminence, only Tokyo remained a city comparable to its Western counterparts.

Asia’s growing cities — Singapore, Hong Kong, Bombay, Calcutta and, most important, Shanghai — were largely products of Western colonialism. These “queens of the Further East,” as one early 20th century British writer described them, served as entrepots for European products, garrisons for colonial forces and administrative capitals of European authority. They were also notorious for their corruption, prostitution, drug dealing and criminal gangs. “If God lets Shanghai endure,” one missionary said, “he owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Most of East Asia outside Japan, however, remained an agrarian backwater. Only 3% of Koreans lived in cities in 1900. Seoul, the ancient capital, was a backward Japanese colonial city with barely 200,000 residents, the vast majority of them poor. Much of ancient and Japanese-built Seoul was demolished in the Korean War and, until the early 1960s, the city’s per capita income ranked with that of Cairo and Calcutta.

Yet by the early 1970s, it was increasingly evident that Seoul and other East Asian cities were breaking out of the dystopian urban patterns characteristic of many cities in South America, Africa and the Middle East. Led by Tokyo and Osaka, Asian cities were not simply growing in population and sprawl. They were rapidly becoming rich, matching the West in many indexes of social and economic well-being. The cities attained new wealth by successfully gaming the global capitalist economy. Starting only with an abundance of cheap manufacturing labor, cities such as Seoul and Shanghai evolved into high-tech centers.

Much of the credit for these achievements belonged to Asian governments, whether the authoritarian regimes in Singapore, Taipei and Seoul or the largely British-run administration in Hong Kong. Later, these economies became the role model for post-Mao China, where nominally communist bureaucrats blended capitalism and Confucianism with government-sponsored development of economic infrastructure. In the course of just 30 years, this basic strategy enabled East Asia’s cities to transform themselves from overgrown rural villages into sparkling high-rise mega-cities. Seoul grew from roughly 2.5 million people in 1960 to more than 10 million today. Such Chinese cities as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing have experienced similar growth.

Despite their remarkable successes, however, the future of East Asian cities is not promising. The prolonged emptying-out of rural villages and small towns has eroded the family-oriented Confucian value system that animated first-generation migrants to the city.

At the same time, the soaring price of land has eliminated the hope for all but a few of acquiring anything spacier than a cramped apartment. Private homes have been replaced by huge complexes of high-rise apartments, some located an hour or two from the city center. Blocks of suburban apartments can extend as far as 50 miles from historic cores.

Intense economic competition, mainly with China, is destroying the dream of upward mobility. For example, about 40% of young South Korean college graduates are unable to secure a decent-paying job, according to some estimates.

A decade ago, 70% of Koreans considered themselves middle class, said Suh Yong Bu, an expert in business demographics; today only half feel that way.

The alienation is greatest among the young.

“The older generation thought tomorrow was going to be better than today,” Suh said. “Today there’s a lot of downshifting. People are losing faith.”

Diminished prospects and the chronic lack of space appear to be the root causes of South Korea’s falling birthrate. More and more young Koreans eschew marriage, and many who do marry express no intention of producing children. Since 1993, the birthrate has dropped 33%.

All this has transformed South Korea from one of the industrialized world’s youngest countries 25 years ago into one that is aging more rapidly than other such nations.

By 2026, demographers say, South Korea will have made the full evolution from a youthful society to an “ultra-aged” one, in which the retiree population will exceed that of children. Seoul city planners are talking about developing large new “silver towns” for retirees, including one in its famous Chongnyangni red-light district.

Japan is already at the ultra-aged stage, and the prospects for a turnaround are not bright. A quarter of Japanese choose not to tie the knot. The wedding business in Tokyo is suffering while the funeral industry prospers. Singapore, Taiwan and the coastal regions of China are also experiencing rapid aging and declining birthrates, particularly in their urban centers.

“The same patterns can be found throughout Asia,” said demographer Phil Longman, author of “The Empty Cradle,” a study of world population trends. “Once everyone is forced into a small city place, there’s literally no room left for kids.”

If these trends continue, the era of East Asia’s urban dominance may be short-lived. Societies without children inevitably lose their vitality, their ability to innovate and generate new wealth, as is evident in urban history from ancient Rome to contemporary Europe.

By contrast, the demographic prospects of cities in North America, Australia and Canada are more promising because they are blessed with both ample space and a quality of life that promotes family growth. Birthrates in all three countries are holding up far better than those in either East Asia or Europe, and these countries seem more comfortable with continued immigration, including economically dynamic migrants fleeing congested Asian cities.

Western cities, then, may reemerge as the exemplars of successful urbanism in the mid-21st century. Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo will be the most exciting cities of the next decade or two, but the future may yet belong to Sydney, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Houston and other cities in the land-rich and family-friendly West.

The City of Tomorrow: Seaching for the Future of Architecture in Shanghai, by Mark Kingwell. Copyright Harper’s Magazine February 2005:

Ask anyone here and they will tell you: Shanghai is the future. But that is not so. Shanghai is not the future; it is every future, a palimpsest of urban visions, a history of what is to come. A visit to Shanghai is a journey to the very near future by way of the very near past, a fact that contributes to a strange form of urban vertigo: I came here looking for the city of tomorrow and was immediately overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu. Shanghai is a fantasyland of architectural grandiosity where any drawing, no matter how insane or adolescent, may come to life almost instantly, without the citizens committees, building restrictions, and expensive labor that hamper architectural geniuses elsewhere.
To call the city science fiction is correct but too general. Yes, there are geodesic domes and massive cantilevers and huge expanses of neon and glass. But the landscape offers a full spectrum of sci-fi echoes and allusions. There are Buck Rogers ray-gun finials on the China Life Building in Pudong. Portholed Jetson-style flying saucers hovering over the People’s Square in Puxi and atop the JJ Oriental Tower in Pudong. The knifing faceted slash f the Tomorrow Tower in like Darth Vader’s headquarters designed by Japanese toy freaks. For advanced students, there is Space Ghost whimsy to be found in the Shanghai Golden Beach tower, with its crown of gold spikes, said to recall a lotus blossom but really looking more like a huge pineapple…
…The city buzzes and stinks and knocks you over if you don’t step nimbly. The Chinese are used to personal space than almost any people on the planet, and especially on the streets of Shanghai, largest and fastest of China’s cities, body contact is not optional; unlike the deft dancers of Tokyo or the sweetfeet dodgers of Sao Paulo, people here make no effort at all to avoid sidewalk collisions. Accidental slams that would prompt an offer of violence in London, or an abject apology in Vancouver are here merely ignored, the routine tolls of walking the streets of the city. Shanghai is not for strollers, no refuge for dreamy Parisian flânerie…
…In the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s rule, a cadre of influential Shanghai technocrats, schooled in Western efficiency, found favor in Beijing and put urban improvement on the national agenda for the first time. Jiang Zemin, once party secretary in Shanghai, was made president; a former mayor, Zhu Rongji, was elevated to prime minister. The smart, go-ahead Shanghai boys replaced a conservative, suspicious and corrupt leadership, mostly from Hunan and Sichuan, that had ruled in an unbroken line from Mao. China was changing, and Shanghai’s legendary taste for novelty was a central focus, accelerating beyond all precedent due to huge injections of cash from the central government. Individuals began to flash their money, too, with most of China’s estimate population of a quarter million U.S. dollar millionaires calling the city home.
And yet, the cit, for all its newness and international sophistication, remains irremediably Chinese, which is to say suspicious, even provincial, and racked by ancient conflicts and attitudes. Most of the city’s inhabitants are, by North American standards, poverty-stricken, creating a disturbing First World/Third World dynamic found in many other “megacities.” Money and poverty combine with the city’s familiar but strange visual field, which shifts from premodern to postmodern in a blink — like advertising on the moon — to destabilize your judgment constantly. …

http://www.harpers.org/

Posted at 7:18 PM · Comments (0)

DENGFENG, China - Well-worn flagstones lead up a gentle gradient, through an imposing gate, past huge statues of fierce guardian spirits. The tiled eaves of a temple loom behind a giant ginkgo tree, all but groaning under the weight of a heavy snow.

Suddenly, the pounding of hammers and the whine of an electric saw interrupt the reverie. Only then does it dawn that this is no ancient temple but a re-creation. The impression is confirmed by a glance at the colors in the rafters, impossibly bright for anything truly old.

Discordant sensations may be forgiven. Like any temple, the birthplace of China’s most famous form of kung fu is supposed to be a space of tranquillity and meditation. Yet Shaolin has become such a fixture of Chinese popular culture that much of the life of this holy shrine involves greeting paying tourists who arrive year-round by the thousands.

For the monks of Shaolin Temple, identity crises are nothing new. Is Shaolin kung fu popular entertainment or solemn exercise? Is it a money maker or tool of spiritual mastery? Is this idyllic site in the Song Mountains of Henan Province a contemplative retreat or a theme park? The short answer to all these questions is, of course, yes.

There are even two versions of how it all started. The official account, a blend of history and religious lore, places the origins of the Shaolin tradition in the sixth century. A Buddhist monk from India named Bodhidharma, or Damo, settled here then and began instructing local monks in scripture and the physical drills that are still said to be the basis of kung fu.

But if the question is more about when this country went kung fu crazy, then the origins trace back several thousand films to “Shaolin Temple,” featuring the Chinese action movie star Jet Li.

Mr. Li, a four-time national martial arts champion, filmed mainland China’s first kung fu hit here in 1979 (it was released in the West in 1982), just as China was embarking on its economic liberalization. The moviemakers borrowed as their plot the then-dilapidated Shaolin Temple’s most famous legend, the story of 13 monks who rescued the Tang emperor from a vicious warlord.

The rest is, as they say, history. The road to Shaolin Temple today is literally lined with kung fu academies, which at last count numbered over 50. The schools are huge, some with over 10,000 students who come from all over China to train throughout the year, including now in this season’s bone-chilling weather, in hopes of becoming the country’s next Jet Li.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times

For the complete article, please see the link below.

Posted at 2:49 PM · Comments (0)

SEOUL, South Korea — A film that portrays Park Chung Hee, the dictator who ruled South Korea for nearly two decades until his 1979 assassination, as a philandering tyrant with ties to Japan is part of an unprecedented spasm of historical revisionism roiling the country’s business and political elites and damaging pro-U.S. conservative forces.

Produced in secret because its contents are so potentially explosive, the movie, “The President’s Last Bang,” is a partially fictionalized account of the killing of Mr. Park by his own intelligence chief. In the film, the killer calls Mr. Park by the Japanese name the president adopted when serving as a soldier for Imperial Japan, and then shoots him in the head, proclaiming victory for “democracy.”

The movie, which is set to open here today, comes as South Korea is digging up its past, hunting those who collaborated with Japanese colonial rule and debating how to treat those who supported the country’s own military dictators.

This wrenching re-examination has been prompted by liberal politicians — in control of the presidency and Parliament for the first time in the nation’s history — in part to discredit conservative opponents by pointing up their links to Korea’s former Japanese colonial masters and repressive home-grown regimes.

For South Korea, this is anything but ancient history. Newsreel footage of Mr. Park’s state funeral, spliced into the end of the new movie, features close-ups of Mr. Park’s daughter Park Geun Hye, who now is head of the conservative opposition Grand National Party.

Conservative lawmakers have condemned the movie. Mr. Park’s son has sued the film’s makers for defamation. A Seoul court on Monday ruled the producers must remove some scenes, including footage of Ms. Park, or it would block distribution of the movie. MK Pictures, which made the film, says it will contest the ruling.

The upheaval goes far beyond usual partisan bickering and is part of a much broader antiestablishment wave. Koreans who battled the generals who ruled here in the 1970s and 1980s are rising to positions of power in society and moving to break the hold of the old elite — many with strong ties to Japan and the U.S. — which has dominated politics and the economy for decades.

“This is a new generation. They don’t have the same baggage of the past, so they can dare to do this kind of thing,” says Kim Yong Deok, a historian and dean of the graduate school of international studies at Seoul National University. “So many things in our history have just been hidden. They need to be cleared.”

The National Assembly passed a law late last year setting up a committee to investigate South Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese authorities during the colonial period. Japan annexed Korea in 1910, and Korea was liberated in 1945 after Japan’s defeat in World War II. The government also wants to probe past abuses by military governments and those who served in them. And it has declassified documents showing how the American-backed Mr. Park cut a deal with Japan for development aid in exchange for letting Tokyo off the hook for claims by individual Korean citizens.
[A poster for South Korean movie ‘The President’s Last Bang’]
A poster for South Korean movie ‘The President’s Last Bang’

All of this is strengthening the hand of liberal parties and dealing a significant blow to the pro-U.S. conservatives here at a critical time. The U.S. and South Korea are working to redefine their 50-year-old military alliance, while at the same time struggling to maintain a unified front as they confront a nuclear North Korea.

It also could help the government’s liberal economic agenda, which proponents say is focused on achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth. Critics say the administration of President Roh Moo Hyun is penalizing the wealthy and pursuing antibusiness policies, such as measures that seek to reduce family control of the country’s major conglomerates.

“The president wants to rewrite history. He thinks existing history was written in favor of the conservative mainstream,” says Park Jin, a member of the National Assembly from the opposition Grand National Party. “But you have to do that very carefully and not through the prism of politics.”

A number of venerable Korean companies might be affected by the collaboration investigations. Among those accused by some scholars of cooperating with the Japanese or profiting under colonial rule: Chosun Ilbo, one of the country’s largest newspapers and its leading conservative media voice; and the Doosan group, a large conglomerate with interests in construction, beverages and publishing.

Chosun Ilbo said that during the Japanese colonial period the paper may have done things that “were both meritorious and things that were mistakes.” It said that both should be considered and “we should not highlight only the mistakes.”…

…New movies and books are looking at South Korea’s past with a new — and skeptical — eye. The film about Mr. Park’s demise uses dark humor to look at the nature of his autocratic regime and personal foibles. Mr. Park is shown speaking Japanese with aides and is shot dead while in the company of two women — one a famous singer — brought to entertain him.

“I wanted to reveal the truth about the regime and Park Chung Hee,” says the film’s writer and director, Im Sang Soo. Mr. Im, who was 17 years old when Mr. Park was assassinated, says he grew up frustrated at the inability of people in South Korea to speak honestly about the late president…

Criticism of Mr. Park and discussion of his service in the Japanese Army and his ties to Japan were discouraged when Mr. Park was in power. His successors also clamped down on free expression. “I wouldn’t have been able to make this movie before now,” Mr. Im says. “Korea is changing very rapidly.”

Koreans don’t like to discuss Mr. Park’s connections to Japan, which is still widely reviled for its role as colonizer of Korea in the first half of the 20th century, says Mr. Im. Mr. Park served in the Japanese Army, fighting Korean partisans. “It’s a tragedy of modern Korean history that Park Chung Hee could become president of this country after independence from Japan,” Mr. Im says…
For the entire article, see the Journal’s archives at the link below.

Posted at 4:22 PM · Comments (0)

What’s the sound of 1.3 billion people partying? Count the tons of TNT. Light a fuse. Stand back! It is New Years once again — my second in Shanghai, and all around my house it has sounded like Dresden during the bombings for the past several hours (and I have a full week of this to look forward to!).
I’ve been posting pix from my Vietnam trip, and, in the latest gallery, stuff from my third adventure in Yunnan Province, which properly should have preceeded the Vietnam pix, because I traveled to Hanoi overland via Yunnan, which I confess to starting to develop a weakness for.
The shots in the Yunnan gallery, by the way are mostly of border towns, notably Malipo and Hekou, where I walked across a bridge and caught an overnight train on the Vietnamese side for Hanoi. The cemetary scenes are from a monument to the Chinese soldiers killed in the brief but bloodly war fought with Vietnam, beginning in 1979.
The posting of pictures is slower going than I would like because I mostly used my vintage OM4, which requires scanning, favoring it over my little Casio.
Both galleries, the latest Yunnan shots, and the Vietnam gallery will swell in the next couple of days, so if you are interested, you’ll have to keep coming back.
I nearly added the promised excerpts from Pankaj Mishra’s book, the End of Suffering, which is a real gem. Maybe tomorrow. I’m reading “Mr. China” now, by Tim Clissold. It promises to be a quickie, and I’ll report more on that soon.
One more notice: Stuart Isett has sent me some gorgeous shots from his work on Japanese nationalists. With his permission, I’ll be posting them as a gallery tomorrow.

Posted at 12:59 AM · Comments (0)

Jeune Afrique has long been an integral part of the peculiar and deep seated corruption linking France and Africa. Here, a corner of the veil is lifted.

Le scandale qui pend au nez de Jeune Afrique
Le Courrier d’Abidjan - 1/27/2005 8:28:38 PM

Révélations ? Francis Kpatindé, journaliste-vedette à
JAI, démissionne, épuisé par un système qu’il trouve désormais
détestable. Il met en lumière la nature profonde de l’hebdo de Béchir Ben Yahmed. Sa lettre que nous publions ainsi qu’un rapport de mission de «l’envoyé
spécial» de Ben Yahmed au c?ur du système Gbagbo, permet de comprendre un
certain nombre de choses sur la manière dont JAI couvre l’actualité ivoirienne.

Par Théophile Kouamouo

La maison Ben Yahmed, sise au 21 bis rue d’Auteuil,
dans le 16ème arrondissement à Paris, brûle-t-elle ? Difficile pour
l’instant de répondre à cette question. Une chose est sûre : l’atmosphère à
Jeune Afrique L’Intelligent, le célèbre hebdomadaire francophone,
est électrique depuis plusieurs semaines. Au centre de la nouvelle crise, la
démission de Francis Kpatindé, journaliste-vedette du magazine fondé le 17
octobre 1960 par Béchir Ben Yahmed, actuellement président-directeur
général de l’organe de presse, mais également de la Société de Finance et de
Communication Internationale (FINCOM) et de la Compagnie internationale d’édition, de presse et de communication (CIDCOM), toutes les deux
liées à JAI.

Des méthodes mafieuses mises à jour. C’est que Francis Kpatindé, spécialiste de plusieurs pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest (dont la Côte d’Ivoire) et ancien chroniqueur-maison, ne fait pas que quitter l’entreprise de presse qui l’employait. Il lève le voile, dans une lettre d’explication que nous publions ici en intégralité, sur le harcèlement
moral auquel se livre Béchir Ben Yahmed, le tout-puissant patron dont les
notes, rédigées à l’encre violette, font trembler le personnel et peuvent signer des
excommunications définitives ; sur le profond mépris qu’éprouve «B.B.Y» à
l’égard de l’Afrique et des Africains, alors que aradoxalement, il veut arler à leur place et «ponctionne» régulièrement leurs Etats pour faire prospérer sa «boîte» ; mais aussi sur le mélange des genres entre journalisme et aff airisme que la haute hiérarchie de JAI encourage, ce qui n’est pas sans avoir des conséquences sur l’honnêteté intellectuelle à géométrie variable du seul hebdomadaire parisien
spécialisé (en partie) sur l’Afrique.
Jusqu’à présent, seuls les milieux spécialisés connaissaient la «machine à
broyer» du papivore Tunisien, qui a toujours été impitoyable avec ses
«stars» subsahariennes. Le calvaire de Sennen Andriamirado, harcelé
jusqu’à la mort par un patron exigeant au point de ne pas se rendre compte de
sa grave maladie ; la descente aux enfers du Sénégalais
Elimane Fall, utilisé, puis jeté, puis récupéré, mille fois humilié ; la
révolte de Jean-Baptiste Placca, quittant JAI quand BBY refuse qu’un envoyé
spécial aille couvrir la libération de Nelson Mandela ? c’est en raison de tels
choix que certains interlocuteurs le taxent «d’intellectuel arabe» et lui
dénient le droit de parler de l’Afrique en Africain ?, tout cela est très
peu sorti du cercle des initiés. Francis Kpatindé rejoint aujourd’hui le
club fermé de ceux qui ont ouvertement dit non à Ben Yahmed, à son mythe
et à sa puissance. Il s’en explique dans la lettre que nous publions. Ce
qu’il ne dit pas, c’est que l’événement catalyseur de sa «disgrâce», c’est sa
réaction d’indignation lors d’une conférence de rédaction ennovembre 2004 ?
alors qu’Abidjan était sous occupation française quasi-intégrale ? lorsque
l’ancien journaliste français Henri Marque (RTL), ami de Ben Yahmed et
invité par ce dernier à assister aux débats de son équipe, affirmait
sans sourciller que la «paresse est congénitale chez les Africains.» Outré,
Kpatindé juge ouvertement ces propos «inadmissibles» et tance le «racisme»
du vieil ami de son patron qui menace de quitter les lieux si l’impertinent
Noir ne présente pas ses excuses. «Jamais de la vie !», martèle Kpatindé
face à l’insistance de son «boss», qui tient à ses relations avec Henri Marque ? un ancien ambassadeur de France est également présent dans la «piscine», la salle de rédaction de JAI. Kpatindé tient d’autant plus sur ses positions que trois collègues français et un journaliste arabe soutiennent clairement avoir entendu les propos
racistes d’Henri Marque.
Dès ce moment, la «machine à broyer» de Ben Yahmed s’accélère contre
Kpatindé. 

Le dossier «Côte d’Ivoire». C’est que le patron de JAI en veut déjà à son
plus célèbre journaliste subsaharien. Dans son système, en principe, les
journalistes jouent à la fois leur rôle et celui de «commerciaux», si
l’on veut être «politiquement corrects» ? mais plus précisément de «porteurs
de valises» entre les palais d’Afrique et la rue d’Auteuil, à Paris.
Ainsi, François Soudan, le directeur de la rédaction, a son
«champ de mission» extrêmement fertile : le Cameroun, le Togo et la
Mauritanie. Il écrit des articles particulièrement bienveillants pour les
régimes dirigeant ces pays, surtout quand ils sont en difficulté et qu’ils
doivent se justifier sur les violations des droits de l’homme ou de la l
iberté de la presse, noue des relations spéciales avec les chefs d’Etat,
négocie des publi-reportages sous toutes leurs formes, des
contrats de conseil de divers ordres, et est gratifié, ainsi que son journal,
de diverses façons?  C’est ce schéma qui est proposé à Kpatindé, quand on
lui propose 5% sur les marchés qu’il ramène. C’est que, entre autres choses,
«B.B.Y», après avoir misé à fond sur Alassane Ouattara ? qui est un des
actionnaires de son groupe ? veut se rabibocher avec le pouvoir d’Abidjan
depuis un certain temps, pour que le «robinet» s’ouvre à nouveau.
Francis Kpatindé va en Côte d’Ivoire, fréquente les différents camps politiques, a
de bonnes relations avec la «galaxie Gbagbo»? mais se contente d’être
journaliste. Or, BBY veut «jouer la carte Gbagbo», conjointement bien entendu
avec celle d’ADO, son ami, son préféré. Il dessaisit donc du dossier
Kpatindé, pourtant apprécié du lectorat ivoirien et bien renseigné. Il envoie son
«petit», le jeune journaliste sénégalais Cheikh Yérim Seck en mission
commandée à Abidjan, pour percer le mystère de l’entourage de Gbagbo ? tout
en se gardant d’éprouver de la sympathie pour un système qui reste
«ennemi», bien que financièrement nécessaire ? et obtenir des contrats
ainsi, que, cerise sur le gâteau, une invitation de Béchir Ben Yahmed à
Abidjan, qui scellerait une «réconciliation» très intéressée. Nous publions
également en exclusivité un rapport de mission du jeune journaliste
sénégalais qui, s’il se tait sur ce qui «s’écrit difficilement» (l’argent),
évoque avec un certain cynisme ses méthodes d’infiltration, notamment
auprès de Charles Blé Goudé, dont il a réussi à devenir l’ami ? si on y
ajoute des guillemets, bien entendu? Incursion dans un univers aux m?urs
particulières !

Lettre de démission de Francis Kpatindé
Francis Kpatindé Le Blanc Mesnil, le 4 janvier 2005
Le Blanc Mesnil
A
Monsieur Béchir Ben Yahmed
Président Directeur Général
Groupe Jeune Afrique
57 bis, rue d’Auteuil
75016 Paris

Objet : Mon départ du Groupe Jeune Afrique.

Monsieur,

Je viens, par la présente, officialiser la lettre que
je vous ai fait remettre en mains propres le 3 janvier et vous fournir
plus d’explications sur les conditions de mon départ du Groupe Jeune
Afrique.

Cela fait bientôt 19 ans que je travaille dans votre
entreprise. Je l’ai quittée à plusieurs reprises pour des emplois à l’ONU,
à Port-au-Prince, à Johannesburg, puis à Genève, où j’étais porte-parole
du Haut commissaire des Nations unies pour les réfugiés, Sadako Ogata.
Lorsque j’étais à ce dernier poste, vous m’avez demandé avec insistance de
revenir à Jeune Afrique. J’ai accepté la proposition en dépit de la
perte qu’une telle décision entraînait pour moi au plan salarial. Je
gagnais quelque 40 000 FF net d’impôts. Vous m’avez demandé quelles étaient mes
prétentions salariales. «Donnez-moi ce que vous voulez», vous
ai-je répondu dans le secret de votre bureau. C’est donc vous-même qui avez
fixé mon salaire.

En 19 ans de présence à Jeune Afrique, vous ne trouverez
dans vos archives nulle trace d’une demande d’augmentation de salaire
portant ma signature.

Vous m’avez repris avec mon ancienneté. Modestement,
j’ai apporté mes connaissances, y compris celles que j’ai acquises dans
le système onusien, ainsi que ma sensibilité au Groupe Jeune Afrique. Ma
présence et mon travail ont, sans doute, contribué à préserver une
touche africaine (l’Afrique, toutes zones confondues) à un journal qui,
de l’avis général, louvoie et se fourvoie depuis quelques années loin de
ce continent.

Quelle n’a été ma surprise lorsque vous m’avez brutalement informé par
courrier, le 3 janvier, que j’étais «libéré» de ma collaboration à la
rubrique éditoriale quinzomadaire Post-Scriptum, que
j’assurais avec plaisir depuis 7 ans en tandem et en alternance avec
Fouad Laroui, un (excellent) collaborateur extérieur ! Cette mesure
s’apparente, ni plus ni moins, à une censure et à une volonté manifeste de
faire taire un journaliste qui n’a pas la même sensibilité que vous
sur l’Afrique et ne partage pas obligatoirement vos analyses sur les
affaires de ce monde.

Si vous aviez un tant soit peu de respect pour moi et,
surtout, pour les lecteurs, nombreux à témoigner de l’intérêt à
Post-Scriptum comme le prouve le courrier, abondant ces dernières années, vous
auriez dû en débattre avec moi, avant de m’adresser, en fin de journée, une
lettre à laquelle je me suis empressé de répondre.

Votre lettre de cachet, destinée à me faire taire,
intervient après une série de mesures tout aussi vexatoires me visant et
qui s’apparentent à un véritable harcèlement. Depuis avril 2004, vous m’avez
envoyé des notes pour le moins étonnantes. Elles portent, non pas sur la
qualité de mon travail ni sur ma « production » quantita tive - votre
baromètre - mais, selon votre humeur du moment, sur « mon tonus » ou sur « ma
performance ». De fait, vous n’avez rien de substantiel à me reprocher
au plan professionnel.
Ma production journalistique, comme en témoignent les tableaux
statistiques que vous faites établir tous les mois, est bonne,
sinon la meilleure du journal. Je caracole en tête des confidentiels, qui ne
sont tirés ni du Wall Street Journal ou du Financial Times, ni de
discussions salonnardes sur la place de Paris. Et, rien qu’au cours des 4
premiers mois de 2004, j’ai assuré 4 sujets de cover sur 16. Je m’étonne donc
que vous mettiez en avant l’absence supposée de « tonus », alors que les
critères que vous avez vous-même établis sont remplis.

Comment expliquer, dans ces conditions, le véritable harcèlement dont
je fais l’objet depuis 9 mois ? A mon refus, constant, de porter, comme
d’autres, une double casquette de journaliste et de commercial ?
Laissez-moi vous rappeler une de vos correspond ances dans laquelle vous me
proposiez 5% de commission si, au cours de mes voyages, je vous
ramenais des contrats commerciaux et des actionnaires. Je peux
également citer ces étranges correspondances, auxquelles je n’ai jamais
donné suite, d’une responsable de l’entreprise me demandant de lui «
faire parvenir des listes de prospects pour l’actionnariat et l’abonnement
patrimoine ». J’ai, bien entendu, les moyens de prouver ce que j’avance. Et
plus encore.

Votre ire s’est accrue, en novembre dernier, après ma réaction, en
conférence de rédaction, contre les propos racistes ? à l’égard des
Africains ? de l’un de vos collaborateurs. Au lieu de m’apporter votre
soutien, comme beaucoup d’autres collègues, vous avez semblé prendre le
parti de l’intéressé.

Il est évident que je ne puis accepter cette façon de faire et le
harcèlement continu dont je fais l’objet depuis plusieurs mois. Je me
réserve donc le droit de donner une suite à ces comportements pour le
moins inadmis sibles au sein d’une entreprise qui tire profit, plus que de
raison, de l’Afrique.

Salutations distinguées
Francis Kpatindé

Posted at 3:30 PM · Comments (0)

Doyen des chefs d’Etat africains et figure de la “Françafrique”, considéré par beaucoup comme un dictateur patenté, Gnassingbé Eyadéma est mort samedi 5 février dans la matinée, a annoncé samedi soir le gouvernement togolais. L’armée a décidé de “confier” le pouvoir à Faure Eyadéma, un des fils du chef de l’Etat défunt. L’Union africaine a aussitôt dénoncé “un coup d’Etat militaire”. Jacques Chirac a salué la mémoire d’un “ami de la France”.

“Le Togo vient d’être frappé par un grand malheur. Il s’agit d’une véritable catastrophe nationale. Le président n’est plus”, indiquait le texte publié par le gouvernement togolais, samedi 5 février dans la soirée. “Il a rendu l’âme ce samedi matin 5 février alors qu’il était évacué d’urgence pour des soins à l’extérieur du pays”, précisait le texte.

“Ce deuil cruel dont est victime notre pays à une période de notre vie commune doit nous inciter à préserver la paix et l’unité nationale qui sont nous atouts les plus précieux”, poursuivait le communiqué du gouvernement.

“Le gouvernement, les forces armées et de sécurité, veilleront à ce que l’ordre, la sécurité et la paix règnent sur toute l’étendue du territoire national”, assurait le communiqué, lu à 19 heures locales (20 heures à Paris) à la radio nationale par le premier ministre, Kofi Sama.

Dimanche, le gouvernement togolais a officiellement décrété un “deuil national” de deux mois “sur toute l’étendue du territoire”.

L’ARMÉE “CONFIE” LE POUVOIR AU FILS DU DÉFUNT

Le gouvernement togolais a ordonné, samedi soir, le bouclage immédiat des “frontières terrestres, maritimes et aériennes” du pays, a-t-on appris de source officielle.

Moins de deux heures après l’annonce du décès, le chef d’état-major des Forces armées togolaises a lu à la télévision un communiqué annonçant que l’armée décidait de “confier” le pouvoir à Faure Eyadéma, un des fils du chef de l’Etat défunt.

En vertu de la Constitution, l’intérim présidentiel devait être assuré par le président de l’Assemblée nationale, Sambaré Natchaba Ouattara, qui se trouvait à l’étranger au moment de l’annonce du décès.

“Les FAT (Forces armées togolaises) se trouvent devant l’évidence que la vacance du pouvoir est totale”, indiquait le communiqué lu à la télévision nationale par le général Zakari Nandja. “Le président de l’Assemblée étant absent du territoire national, et pour ne pas laisser perdurer cette situation, les FAT ont décidé de confier le pouvoir à Faure Eyadéma à partir de ce jour”, a déclaré l’officier supérieur.

LE PRÉSIDENT DE L’ASSEMBLÉE RETENU AU BÉNIN

Selon l’entourage du principal opposant, Gilchrist Olympio, qui vit en exil à Paris, le président de l’Assemblée nationale, Sambaré Natchaba Ouattara, a quitté l’Europe pour Lomé à la suite du décès du président togolais. “Il était en Europe, notamment à Bruxelles ces derniers jours. Il rentre actuellement en avion à Lomé”, a indiqué par téléphone à l’AFP, samedi soir, l’un des assistants de Gilchrist Olympio.

M. Ouattara est arrivé samedi soir au Bénin à bord d’un vol d’Air France dérouté sur Cotonou, a-t-on appris de source aéroportuaire. Ce vol Air France a été détourné vers le Bénin après la fermeture des frontières aériennes, terrestres et maritimes du Togo.

M. Ouattara, membre du parti présidentiel Rassemblement du peuple togolais, a été accueilli à l’aéroport par le ministre de la communication du Bénin, Frédéric Dohou, et par le président de l’Assemblée nationale du Bénin, Antoine Idji Kolawolé. Le responsable togolais a ensuite été installé dans un grand hôtel de la métropole béninoise. Les autres passagers du vol Air France étaient également bloqués à Cotonou en raison de la fermeture des frontières togolaises.

Gilchrist Olympio a déclaré, samedi soir à l’AFP, souhaiter que la mort du président togolais permette que le “Togo se mette sur le chemin de la démocratie”. “Je souhaite des élections transparentes et libres dans les deux, trois prochains mois”, a-t-il ajouté dans un entretien téléphonique à Paris, où il vit en exil depuis une tentative d’assassinat contre lui en 1992. Gilchrist Olympio a l’intention de se rendre au Togo “après en avoir parlé avec son parti”, l’Union des forces du changement (UFC).

UA : “UN COUP D’ÉTAT MILITAIRE”

Après le communiqué de l’armée togolaise, le président de la Commission de l’Union africaine (UA), Alpha Oumar Konaré, a dénoncé “un coup d’Etat militaire”. “Ce qui est en cours au Togo, appelons les choses par leur nom, c’est une prise de pouvoir par l’armée, c’est un coup d’Etat militaire”, a déclaré à l’AFP M. Konaré à Addis Abeba (Ethiopie), où siège l’UA.

“Il est clair que l’Union africaine ne peut pas souscrire à une prise de pouvoir par la force, il est donc improtant qu’on en revienne au respect des règles constitutionnelles”, a-t-il ajouté.

“L’Union africaine devra contribuer à l’ouverture du jeu politique pour que les élections soient transparentes et sans exclusive”, a encore dit M. Konaré. “Nous proposerons rapidement une rencontre des chefs d’Etat de la Communauté économique des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (Cedeao) et de l’Union africaine pour suivre l’évolution de la situation”, a-t-il conclu.

Quant au président nigérian, Olusegun Obasanjo, président en exercice de l’Union africaine, il a affirmé samedi que l’organisation “n’acceptera aucune transition non-constitutionnelle au Togo”.

“Le président Obasanjo a encouragé le peuple togolais à réclamer le respect de la Constitution nationale concernant le pouvoir intérimaire au Togo, qui aboutira à l’élection démocratique du président du Togo conformément à la Constitution”, a déclaré sa porte-parole.

Dimanche dans la matinée, le président de la Communauté économique des Etats de l’Afrique de l’ouest (Cedeao), le chef de l’Etat nigérien, Mamadou Tandja, a “condamné fermement la prise du pouvoir” samedi au Togo “par l’armée togolaise en violation des dispositions constitutionnelles” dans ce pays, dans un communiqué transmis à l’AFP.

Dans ce communiqué, le président de la Cedeao “condamne fermement cette prise du pouvoir anti-constitutionnelle” et “réaffirme l’attachement de la communauté” à ses principes qui s’opposent, notamment, aux “changements anti-constitutionnels de gouvernement en Afrique”.

CALME À LOMÉ

La situation était normale, dimanche matin, dans les rues de la capitale togolaise, Lomé, après une nuit calme, a constaté un correspondant de l’AFP.

Samedi, l’annonce officielle en début de soirée à la télévision et à la radio nationale de la mort du président n’avait suscité aucune manifestation ou regroupement populaire.

Les rues de la capitale togolaise sont restées calmes pendant toute la nuit, se vidant cependant dans la soirée un peu plus vite qu’à l’accoutumée.

Dimanche matin, toujours aucun militaire n’était visible dans les rues, aux principaux carrefours de la capitale, ou près des ministères. Aucun déploiement de soldat n’était également à signaler autour de la résidence du chef de l’Etat, “Lomé 2”.

A Dekon et Bé, les deux grands quartiers populaires de Lomé, la vie suivait son cours normalement. Dimanche à l’aube, quelques joggeurs pouvaient être aperçus sur les grandes avenues de la ville, tandis que des fidèles se rendaient comme d’habitude à leur messe dominicale.

Après avoir annoncé officiellement samedi soir la mort du président Eyadéma, la radio nationale continuait dimanche à diffuser en boucle et en continu des chants religieux.

Les communications téléphoniques nationales et avec l’étranger fonctionnaient normalement, malgré quelques petites perturbations samedi en début de soirée, a-t-on également constaté.

L’entourage du principal opposant au régime, Gilchrist Olympio, en exil à Paris, avait affirmé samedi que les “soldats togolais ont quitté leur camp pour descendre vers Lomé” et que les “communications téléphoniques sont coupées avec le Togo”.

Posted at 7:49 PM · Comments (0)

When I awoke early this morning for the flight back home from Hanoi, the news on the CNN crawler at the bottom of the TV screen was of the sudden death of Gnassingbé Eyadema. A few minutes later, CNN’s talking head duly made a quick report, duly mispronouncing his name as they explained that he had died of a heart attack, while being rushed off to France for emergency treatment.
Looking out the window of my 17th floor hotel room this misty, gray dawn, it was easy to imagine I was back in West Africa. There were the same low, spirit-deadening skies of the rainy season, there were the moldering buildings with the French facades. There was the flooded plain of the Red River, doings its sturdy facsimile of a lagoon. The traffic was horn-honking motorbikes, with cars still few and far between at this hour – or was it that they were still rare in this age?
Eyadema dead. Finally. After ruling for 38 years. After having mounted the first coup d’etat in history. I checked the news on the Internet, and the first reports were not encouraging. The helmsman’s son had been sworn in as president in a rushed ceremony that flouted key provisions of the constitution. There I found statements from Gilchrist Olympio, the son of the president that Eyadema had overthrown, and still the preeminent opposition figure – in exile.
I reached the Hanoi airport after a long, gloomy ride, past the flower markets, where the final rush of tangerine bushes were being sold by the roadside in preparation for Tet, as the Chinese New Year is known here. Next came past huge, open fields where farmers in peaked, traditional hats labored over their shoots of rice, gray reflections of the sky playing in the pools of water of their paddies. We passed a huge Vietnamese Arc de Triômphe in construction, all gray metal and colorless scaffolding. Wrought metal horses cavorted on top, seemingly ready to take flight.
Some things never change. Many things change rapidly, though, and when I got to the Hanoi airport, my thoughts were thrust back to Africa, to the countless coups that have followed Eyadema’s unique contribution to history. Of recent construction, the airport is modest, but bright and glistening.
Most of the Vietnam War was conducted under this African leader’s rule. The invention of the videocassette, the Walkman, the CD, the Internet, DVDs, globalization, wars, plagues, namely AIDS, for one, natural disasters, the march of time, the change of governments most everywhere, more often than not these days through elections. And through it all, Eyadema, and a clutch of other peers, clung to power, flattering themselves into believing they had something irreplaceable to offer their people, growing richer and fatter by the year.
The Vietnamese have been through a string of disasters like few countries have known in the last century, and here I found myself at the Hanoi airport, after a quick stay, having my papers processed quickly and without fuss. The country is open for business. No bribes were asked. There was toilet paper in the bathroom, along with a working air blower to dry my hands. The big digital clock in the main hall showed the correct time, not only in Hanoi, but in countries around the world.
I was a little early, so I sat and waited, and my thoughts returned stubbornly to Africa. There had been a strong piece by Marc Lacey in the NYT about telephone call centers gaining ground in Africa. The operative quote spoken by an American businessman talked about the continent’s need to “lift its game.” Amen.
I thought of one of my first trips to Togo in the early 1980s, stopped at customs in the Lomé airport because of a thin little Casio typewrite I owned: a neat little machine that used heat sensitive paper, and anticipated by a couple of years the true word processors that were to come. The officer made me print a test page using every key, just in case I was bringing the machine in for subversive purposes!
Eyadema was a great friend of France, and of Jacques Chirac in particular. He was an enforcer, an intriguer, a man who borrowed assiduously from the police state of North Korea’s Kim Il Song and who, to be fair, later in his career, was a sometimes peacemaker, who sought to take over Houphouët-Boigny’s mantle after the death of Ivory Coast’s “Vieux.” Eyadema always believed that no matter what, France could save him, and in fact it often had, providing him intelligence on opponents, helping his notorious security forces, selling out the democratic opposition by refusing to condemn blatantly rigged elections in the early ’90s, and on and on. This time, though, no dice. France was way too far away when Eyadema’s heart stopped ticking.
I thought of Lagos airport, and of the countless ripoff schemes, from the agents who ask straight up for a bribe: “So, my friend, what have brought for me today?” to the taxi drivers who would hijack you right out and if you were truly unlucky, leave you in the middle of nowhere, alive or dead, but certainly stripped of anything of value.
Africa has to raise its game!
By the way, a special treat of this stopover in Hanoi was the chance to retrace my father’s footsteps here 32 years earlier, when he came as a physician and public health expert on behalf of Senator Edward Kennedy to investigate the Christmas aerial bombings of civilian sites in Hanoi in 1972, including Bach Mai Hospital, in the center of town. Click to see photos I asked my guide to take me to the hospital He knew exactly where I meant, but seemed confused. “Nobody asks to go to that hospital anymore,” he said. “The military museum, the Hanoi Hilton, Ho Chi Min’s memorial, yes. But the military museum? No. I’ve never been asked about it before.”
“Many Vietnamese thought it was safe during Christmas,” the guide said to me, dispassionately. “Many people were caught by surprise. There were many deaths.”
I told him my father’s story, which had helped uncover dissembling by the Nixon Administration over the bombing campaign. My guide spoke for several minutes to the driver in Vietnamese. I understood nothing. He turned to me again after several minutes and said: “We were always taught the American people were not our enemies, just some parts of the society. I think that is right.”

A 1998 Associated Press piece about the 1972 hospital bombing follows.

Posted at 7:41 PM · Comments (0)

Finally, an official UN report has put in black and white what the world has known for several years - that the Sudanese Islamic fundamentalist regime has been systematically murdering its own citizens in Darfur by the tens of thousands. But the failure of the report to label the events in Darfur as genocide is political expediency of the worst sort. Otherwise, it would mean that the Security Council would have to intervene in Darfur automatically under international law. There is a conspiracy to avoid such action. The Arab and African countries are not anxious to create such a precedent. If Sudan, why not Zimbabwe or Congo? Even America is not rushing to take on any new overseas commitments, given the situation in Iraq. Such realpolitik might just be acceptable if the UN Security Council moves quickly to force Khartoum to end the mass murder. (The Scotsman)
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See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the International Herald Tribune.
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< < Back to Start of Article
EDINBURGH Human rights precedent in Morocco
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Morocco may be establishing a long-overdue precedent in the Middle East and North Africa region with its Justice and Reconciliation Commission, established just over a year ago by King Mohammed VI. The 16-member commission is charged with investigating state-perpetrated human rights abuses during the second half of the 20th century and pursuing out-of-court settlements for “disappearances” and arbitrary detention and, where necessary, the rehabilitation of victims. This is, of course, an applaudable and marvellous development. It is, indeed, for this part of the world, an experiment. And on behalf of the people of this region, we can only hope the Moroccan commission is genuine and that it’s mission is successful. Unfortunately, the reality of political life in the Middle East over the last 50 years or more has been one of state repression, and of brutal suppression. (Daily Star)
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State of emergency decreed in Nepal
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By declaring a state of emergency now, King Gyanendra has lifted the veil of ambiguity that covered his authoritarian and reactionary political agenda. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the increasing determination of the government and its Maoist adversaries to settle Nepal’s fate on the battlefield is, to a significant extent, the product of King Gyanendra’s putschist politics. Thanks to the king’s support, the Royal Nepal Army has had a free hand in its people- and terrain-destructive war against the Maoist insurgents; that the ensuing violations of human rights have not brought the authorities any closer to victory is a different matter altogether. As for the Maoists, the growing illegitimacy of the king and the hollowness of the political system of constitutional monarchy have led their leadership to conclude that a spectacular victory could be around the corner. (The Hindu)
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Giving in to realpolitik on Darfur
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Finally, an official UN report has put in black and white what the world has known for several years - that the Sudanese Islamic fundamentalist regime has been systematically murdering its own citizens in Darfur by the tens of thousands. But the failure of the report to label the events in Darfur as genocide is political expediency of the worst sort. Otherwise, it would mean that the Security Council would have to intervene in Darfur automatically under international law. There is a conspiracy to avoid such action. The Arab and African countries are not anxious to create such a precedent. If Sudan, why not Zimbabwe or Congo? Even America is not rushing to take on any new overseas commitments, given the situation in Iraq. Such realpolitik might just be acceptable if the UN Security Council moves quickly to force Khartoum to end the mass murder. (The Scotsman)

Posted at 11:47 PM · Comments (0)

NPR has put together a remarkable package.
Please see the link below.

Posted at 11:41 PM · Comments (0)

When Tokyo offered $500 million to help tsunami victims, its biggest package of natural disaster aid ever, the reaction of Peng-Er Lam of the National University of Singapore was fairly typical: “Japan’s assistance will help to reclaim certain diplomatic clout it had lost to China when Tokyo has to play catch-up with Beijing over free trade agreements with Southeast Asia.”

However, while this may be a natural way to look at recent events, it actually obscures the real debate within Japan about how the country can become a normal nation and exercise leadership. On one side are the nationalists, who see military deployments such as the tsunami relief effort as opportunities to re-accustom both domestic and foreign constituencies to the idea of Japan using its power to advance its self interest. On the other side there are the pacifists, who have not thought clearly about how Japan can find its own independent voice in international politics without abandoning its constitution.
Missing is the idea of a new paradigm, in which Japan plays a valuable role by entering into a closer relationship with China and engendering a new notion of Asia, much as France and Germany did in Europe after World War II. Instead, there is a growing danger that what is today perceived as a competition for regional prestige over tsunami relief will escalate into a destabilizing battle for hegemony over the region.

It’s certainly true that China does not have the resources to match the Japanese effort. And Sino-Japanese competition for economic leadership in Southeast Asia is one facet of regional politics today. But the tendency to see East Asian politics as a whole in terms of Sino-Japanese competition is myopic. If policy makers in Beijing and Tokyo are driven by such empty competition, the future of East Asian peace and prosperity is in peril.

States possess comparative advantages that can be used toward the general good. Cash-rich Japan can play a meaningful role in the tsunami relief effort. But Japan is relatively powerless when it comes to solving the North Korean question, which is where China holds leverage and plays a critical role—for geographic and historical reasons, and as the primary provider of North Korean energy.
Meanwhile, ASEAN countries do not want to be beholden to the highest bidder. They are economically and politically small countries, with memories of imperial victimization, mindful of the havoc big powers can wreak. They have been astutely playing China and Japan against each other whenever possible, seeking maximum gains from both. For further balance, there is the United States, which is not about to allow either China or Japan to dominate. And now ASEAN is reaching for closer relations with the European Union.

The question for East Asia, therefore, is how to conceive of a world in which China and Japan both gain in power and stature, but the rise of one does not diminish the other.

The American Lens

The tendency to see East Asia in terms of Sino-Japanese rivalry is rather common and readily assumed. Where does it come from? There is the historical fact. During most of modern East Asia history, China and Japan were in conflict. Until 1945, China was the target of Japanese imperialism. After 1945, there was the Cold War divide. And there is the fact of strained diplomatic relations of late. The record of antagonism is real.

However, perceptions of this rivalry are magnified because they often come to us through an American lens. Rachel Swanger of rand talks of the binary nature of American policy toward Asia—if China is ascendant, Japan must be descendent. The current perception is that China’s economic rise has put it in a position to supplant Japan both economically and diplomatically.

It is hard to remember a moment when the United States treated China and Japan equally. In war and peace, the history of American East Asian policy has been about favoring one over the other. While the United States has had an ample number of Europeanists in academic and policy circles, Asianists have been rare. Instead, American policy experts have tended to become either China specialists or Japan specialists, and there has been a strong tendency for the China specialist to adopt a Chinese view of Japan, and vice versa.

More than the manner of American knowledge creation, there is the unwavering American East Asian foreign policy doctrine. Since the beginning of relations with East Asia in the mid-19th century, the United States has successfully foiled any one country’s ambition to dominate East Asia—whether the contender be Britain, Russia/Soviet Union, China or Japan. When war broke out between Russia and Japan in 1904 for regional supremacy, the United States sided with Japan, the perceived weaker power. It was soon after the surprise Japanese victory that the United States drew up its first war plan against Japan.

In other words, there is an ingrained habit of thinking that says it is in the American interest when the strongest East Asian country is descendant, and the weaker antagonist is ascendant. It is straightforward balance of power thinking. When in the 1980s, economically robust Japan tried to launch an East Asian Economic Community, the United States was quick to snuff it out. Now there is concern in America that dynamic and economically successful China may pose a threat to American national interest several decades hence. The cheer heard in America when Japan “showed up” China in the tsunami-relief effort fits the pattern.

Japan’s $500 Million Logic

Two days after the tsunami struck, on December 28, Japan announced a $30 million aid package, double the American offer. Japanese diplomats prided themselves on their quick action, mindful of past criticisms for slow decision-making. But just three days later, the United States raised its offer to $350 million and, more pertinent to Japanese calculations, China announced an offer of $63 million. Japan then upped its offer to $500 million.

At this point, there was scant information on the extent of the devastation and what sorts of relief and reconstruction efforts were needed. What was the logic behind the $500 million figure?
First, the sum was to be a quarter of the world’s total pledge. Policy makers had in mind Japan’s current bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council.

As a matter of prestige, Japan’s offer had to be bigger than the American one, because it was an Asian disaster. And this time there was no danger of offending the United States, for the increase was prompted in part by Washington—and Washington was about to launch a military rescue and relief operation on a scale no other country could match.

Also, the Japanese government decided that its contribution would be an order of magnitude greater than the Chinese, that it would seize the moment to impress the countries of the region that Japan is the dependable power in Asia. There was an element of childish rivalry at work, admitted one official. Japanese policy makers were convinced that the money would positively transform their country’s image in the region and lead to a pay-off in better relations.

However, the Thai government declined the Japanese offer of $20 million, saying that the money should be sent to countries with greater need. Indonesia declared on January 12, before Japanese troops could even arrive, that all foreign troops should leave within three months.
Japan organized its largest foreign military deployment since 1945, comprising approximately 1,000 troops, five helicopters, a couple of cargo planes and three ships. Tokyo is in the process of formalizing rescue and relief operations abroad as one of the military’s primary duties. Portraying the military as a relief organization is an established trope at home. The tsunami disaster was a chance to sell the same idea abroad.

Japanese Defense Minister Yoshinori Ohno stole a march on his troops by touring Southeast Asia. In Singapore, he stressed that the safety of the Malacca Strait is vital for Japan so dependent on oil shipments from the Middle East. His Singapore counterpart coolly responded that keeping the Strait safe is the task for adjacent countries. The Malaysian defense minister simply denied that there is a Chinese military threat when the Japanese tried to make the case. On the way home, Mr. Ohno stopped in Seoul, only to be told that the Japanese military should concentrate on territorial defense. It turned out that $500 million was not as fungible as Japanese policy makers had hoped. While there are linkages, international relations is increasingly functionally differentiated. Just as a trade dispute over bananas is really about bananas, humanitarian aid is just that, humanitarian aid.

With the promise of the largest immediate cash donation of any country, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi attended the January 6 Jakarta conference of major aid donors and relief organizations. There, Mr. Koizumi and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao could barely manage a few pleasantries as they walked past each other. Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations have been so strained of late that for over three years now their heads of state have not been able to visit each other’s capitals. A couple of days after the Jakarta conference, Beijing, citing inadequate preparation, indefinitely postponed a meeting of senior members of the Chinese and Japanese ruling parties. The cancellation and the brief scene in Jakarta were indicative of the prevailing climate of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations, unsurprising and not news.

Cultivated Ignorance

At the moment, Japan does not have a workable formula to maintain the security relationship with the United States and foster cordial relations with China. A more ambitious Japan seeks to gain a permanent seat in a reformed United Nations Security Council, but the credibility of such a bid is diminished by Tokyo’s strained relationship with neighboring China, a permanent seat holder. A Chinese argument against inviting Japan to the Security Council is not entirely without merit: Why should the Council allocate a second American vote? Japan holds a fat checkbook, but it is not clear what sort of political ideas and values it wants to promote. This is a reflection of the way status- conscious Japanese society functions— form precedes and often substitutes for substance.
Since its utter defeat in World War II, Japan has not thought seriously about international politics, except for the relationship with the United States. U.S. military protection and Japanese willful subordination to American political leadership have allowed Japan to live in a state of cultivated ignorance about the harshness of international politics. Now the Japanese political class wants to shed such ignorance and begin to engage more fully in international politics. But Japan is simply out of practice.

This Japan is concerned about re-establishing statehood. Today’s dominant political and intellectual voices deem that Japan had ceased to be a state after World War II. The argument is simple: Recovery of statehood means reacquiring the right to use force as an instrument of state policy. In a sense, the rise of such thinking is understandable. After all, Japan is maneuvering between the United States and China, two countries that are extremely sensitive about sovereign statehood, and whose policies are driven by the equation of sovereignty and national security.

The Japanese quest for statehood means the ability to engage in collective security policy with the United States— Japanese soldiers fighting alongside American GIs. Already, there are 600 Japanese ground troops in Iraq as part of the “coalition of the willing”—although these soldiers stay put inside their isolated fortress, since their primary mission is to be there and not get killed. This is the first time since 1945 that Japanese soldiers have ventured into a war zone.

The Japanese government correctly fears that Japanese casualties will turn public opinion against its plan to recover statehood. The Iraq expedition is a violation—a de facto revision—of the pacifist constitution, authored and imposed by the American army of occupation some 60 years ago.
Notwithstanding the Japanese pitch to sell the military as an international rescue force, soldiers are essentially warriors, and the time will come when they fall in battle. A Japan of cultivated ignorance, where patriotism has been suspended, does not have a way to honor their deaths, which leads to Prime Minister Koizumi’s obsession with reviving the cult of Yasukuni, a Shinto shrine in central Tokyo. At Yasukuni, the spirits of all fallen Japanese soldiers since the founding of modern Japan in the mid-19th century are enshrined, including those executed as class-A war criminals by the allied powers following World War II. And Yasukuni has famously become the point of contention between China and Japan—a symbol of deteriorating relations.

Prime Minister Koizumi, who ordered the troops to Iraq, has been adamant about Yasukuni. He contends that it is a sovereign issue, an internal matter, and not a legitimate concern of China or any other country—an ironic echo of the argument China makes on many delicate questions. Mr. Koizumi remains deaf to suggestions that a new cenotaph representing a new Japan ought to be constructed. His brand of nationalism, couched in terms of tradition, seeks to re-establish continuity in Japanese statehood that was hobbled by military defeat and decades of cultivated ignorance. The nationalistic blind obscures the simple fact that national security is a relational matter. Would it be too much to ask of a statesman how antagonizing a neighbor contributes to national interest and security?
The business community is clearly not pleased with the government’s handling of China. While the overall economy remains deflationary, corporate profits have begun to surge, thanks in large part to Chinese demand. During the recent years of icy Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations, paradoxically, China has replaced the United States as Japan’s largest trading partner. Keidanren, the largest association of Japanese corporations, has counseled caution to the prime minister.

Remilitarization of Politics

After two devastating wars, France and Germany together imagined an idea of Europe. Demilitarization and denationalization of politics are two central notions of the European Union. Sovereignty is no longer the primary concern; they have become “post-modern” states with open borders and a unified currency. So much has changed in Europe’s mindset that there are European writers who even refer to the World Wars I and II as European civil wars.

Demilitarization and denationalization of politics fit the Japan of cultivated ignorance—a pacifist constitution, strict limitation of its military to territorial defense, prohibition on the export of arms, and other self-imposed restraints on sovereign rights recognized by international law. The end of the Cold War could have been the opening for Japan to start spreading such values in Asia, if only the immediate post-Cold War talk in America of a “peace dividend” had lasted. But the subsequent series of events—the first Iraq war, the break-up of Yugoslavia, 9/11, Afghanistan and the second Iraq war—has shifted the United States from internationalism to unilateralism. It is becoming a self-conscious hyper-power, knowing only to trust its own prowess, ever vigilant of its sovereignty. The America of the Patriot Act would dictate to the world, if you are not with us, then you are against us.

Japan certainly was not about to turn against the United States. There is no realistic option for Japan today but to adhere to the U.S.-Japan security treaty. Over the decades, the security treaty has become Japan’s highest source of authority, standing above the constitution—the functional equivalent and successor to the pre-1945 emperor, “sacred and inviolate.” The Koizumi style of nationalism is only possible with American encouragement.

During the Cold War, in essence, Japan provided its territory as an American military base, and the United States guaranteed Japan’s security, while Japan incurred no military obligation. With the first war against Iraq, coming immediately after the end of the Cold War, the United States began to demand of Japan a greater security role. Japan provided $13 billion to the allied war effort to oust Iraq from Kuwait. Then the Japanese government wrote a new law permitting its soldiers to venture abroad as blue-helmeted United Nations peacekeepers, and they went to Cambodia, Somalia, Mozambique and the Golan Heights. Now Japanese soldiers are in Iraq without United Nations cover. And Washington has begun to talk of transforming the U.S.-Japan security treaty into a platform for Japan to join the United States in the war against global terrorism.

China has made clear that the United States should stick to the original intent of the security treaty—to use the Japanese archipelago as a forward military base and to check the remilitarization of Japan. China is wary of the new American intention to use a remilitarized Japan to foil future Chinese military ambitions and, concretely and presently, to deter China from making a military move toward Taiwan.
Misgivings

It is quite reasonable that Japan, the second wealthiest country in the world, should contribute to global security. By far the most important contribution Japan can make toward international peace is the establishment of a solid and peaceful relationship with China.

China is in the midst of groping to define its place in the world, learning the rules, and testing possibilities and limits—for instance at the World Trade Organization. For now, Japanese militarization—in the name of collective security, humanitarian relief or sovereign right—dangerously erodes Sino-Japanese relations. On the thorny question of Taiwan, the American posture and presence in Asia based on the U.S.-Japan security treaty is operationally sufficient. If the present American arrangement is not capable of deterring China from making a move toward Taiwan, it is hard to imagine how a more forward and active Japanese participation can do any better. Moreover, it is clear that a Japan seeking an enhanced military role makes China more intransigent on Taiwan. The specter of a militarily active Japan fuels China’s vision of recovering past greatness, the very element of Chinese pride the world would like to see tamed.

From the vantage point of Japan, I am concerned about the climate of opinion in the political and intellectual classes propelling the remilitarization of Japanese politics. There is hardly any opposition. The exceptional defense of constitutional pacifism comes from a very strange mix of sources, the emperor and the socialist and communist parties, but the emperor’s voice carries no political weight, as stipulated by the very constitution he defends, and the leftist parties are of negligible significance in parliamentary politics. The dominant talk is rightist and nationalist, about writing a new constitution, becoming a normal state and sovereignty—ideas deemed taboo for so long after 1945. The rightist dominance is eerie because of the sudden silence of the constitutional defenders, whose voices had been mainstream for most of the post-1945 decades, even in the ruling Liberal-Democratic party that now spearheads the rightist turn. Consequently, there is no real debate and no sense of measure and balance.

The silence of the constitutional defenders is evidence that Japan had not been thinking seriously about international politics. They never articulated the shape of an active foreign and security policy based on pacifist principles. They had assumed a perpetual American shield against the harshness of international politics. In this sense, the rightist critique of constitutional defense as “pacifism in one country” is apt. But the newfangled rightists, too, come from the same unthinking mold. Too many rightists wishfully and bravely speak of constructing a more equal partnership in which Japan can begin to influence American grand strategy. Britain’s Tony Blair could readily attest to the delusion of such bravado.

An East Asian Identity?

Conferences on east Asian politics, security and economics abound. Almost always they include a discussion of Asian regionalism. Acronyms are tossed about—ASEAN, ASEAN+3, ARF, APEC, ASEM, EAC. Then speakers admit that the acronyms do not yet represent solid institutions, a set of binding rules, that the acronyms point to what are still for a for dealing with issues on an ad-hoc basis. It is not uncommon to hear officials and thinkers, straining to discover a basis for Asian unity, cite with great seriousness the fact that Asia shares a culture of using chopsticks.
There are no shared Asian values. There is neither Asian community nor Asian regionalism. Asia is just a geographic denomination. To the extent there is a community, it has no peculiarly Asian foundations. It is capitalism and bourgeois life that bind. Membership in the community hinges on the degree of middle class development and interaction within global capitalism. Laos and Myanmar, which do not even have functioning commercial laws, hardly qualify for membership.
Still, there are solid arguments for constructing regional institutions. The acronyms cited above are such initiatives and, interestingly, most of them originate in Southeast Asia. Superimposing what is happening in Asia onto Europe after 1945, it is as if the Benelux countries took the initiative to persuade France and West Germany to imagine a European community. China and Japan, Asia’s France and Germany, together ought to be taking the initiative in community building. Over the long run, China and Japan need each other to deal with critical problems.

Japan’s problem is its ageing population and low birth rate. Within a span of 30 years, between the years 2000 and 2030, the working population will decrease by 20%, given present trends. Men will begin to work longer years; more women will join the workforce, further reducing the birth rate.
But in the end, immigration of white- collar workers is the only solution. And it is China that can provide an adequate number of educated, Japanese-speaking workers—as residents, raising families. Much is made of the insularity of the Japanese, but suffice to note, about 5% of all marriages in Japan are already international, most of them to other Asians.

China’s problem is ensuring political stability—whether it can continue to create sufficient wealth, and whether the government has the ability and will to redistribute that wealth to ameliorate current vast income differences. China’s GDP may be large, but it is still a poor country in per capita terms. Economic cooperation with richer Japan would bring considerable benefits. Economic integration will enhance efficiency and productivity. One idea is to selectively integrate the richer pockets of China with Japan, creating special economic zones.

The goal is a China whose per capita income approximates Japan’s. In the process of achieving this goal, borders will become more porous and eventually open, between China and Japan as well as between most other countries in the region. Consequently, sovereignty will tend to lose meaning. Taiwan will become a non-issue. Japan and China will become equal for the first time and, in a sense, one and part of a larger global whole.

It is hard to imagine how an economically successful China so enmeshed in global capitalism will threaten the very system that made it rich and middle class. Bourgeois success tends to diminish military efficacy in international relations. In the long run, the Chinese threat to the United States, Japan and the world comes from an economically faltering China, not a prosperous, self-confident China.

This new paradigm will require a change in thinking in Beijing just as much as in Tokyo. But the first step should come from Japan. A disaster like the tsunami offered an opportunity to break the diplomatic ice and coordinate a response that utilized the two countries’ respective strengths. Instead, the Koizumi administration once again played into the idea of a competition for regional leadership. Japan sorely needs a national discussion on how to address a rising China if it is to end this self- defeating policy.

Mr. Tamamoto is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute in New York and resides in Yokohama, Japan

Posted at 11:33 PM · Comments (0)

What you think about the China Gold Rush.
By Henry Blodget
Posted Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005, at 12:51 PM PT

The downside of writing this type of series, in which you start knowing nothing and learn as you go, is that you might as well hang out a sign that says, “I am a moron.” In the past two weeks, in response to my request for help, several hundred readers have graciously taken the time to write and advise me about how to cover China. Not surprisingly, almost all of them know more about the China gold rush than I do. Also not surprisingly, a few are quite exercised about this fact.

For example, one writer excoriated me for using clichéd food shtick in last week’s piece about Mr. China (“Look at the wacky stuff they serve at banquets!”). He also dismissed the 1990s direct-investment wave I found so entertaining as “Gordon Gekko-era stuff” and predicted that once I got to China I would marvel at caged hedgehogs in restaurants, giggle at madcap linguistic faux-pas (“horse” and “fuck” are apparently only a tone apart), and upload phone-cam pictures of nutty spellings on street menus…

…Such was the volume of notes, in fact, that I have still only been able to read about half of them. But some themes are emerging.

For example, I now have a better idea of what expatriates do in China. In addition to the predictable occupations—banker, lawyer, consultant, teacher, investor, journalist, professor, student, backpacker, M&A adviser—I have heard from (or of) a French horn player in an orchestra in Guangzhou, a Web designer from Montreal who telecommutes from Shenzhen, the founder of a chain of Internet cafes, a prizewinning blogger, a German restaurateur, a magazine publisher, an oil executive, an English-school mogul, a DJ, a headhunter, an architect, a factory manager, a public-relations honcho, and “a guy in Beijing who made $1 million smuggling cars into the PRC (a crime punishable by execution) and then lost it all gambling in Macao.” (I’ve requested an interview.)

Readers’ ideas can be distilled into several groups, many of which I’ll explore in the weeks ahead:
Chinese and Westerners “think differently.” This is a consistent theme in the books I’m reading, and it obviously has profound implications for business. From the stories I’ve heard, one source of conflict appears to be differing attitudes about the purpose of companies. Westerners, especially Americans, tend to regard firms’ raison d’etre as delivering the highest possible returns to owners. Chinese, meanwhile, tend to regard the purpose as delivering jobs and sustenance to employees and partners. Although both views are perfectly reasonable, they lead to frustration and mistrust about management decisions.

The Chinese care about face-saving and appearances. One reader cited my apparent failure to understand this as evidence that Chinese and Westerners will never understand each other. Having lived in Japan, I thought I had a sense of how central these considerations can be in other cultures. Having worked on Wall Street, however, I can also say that the corollary implication—Americans don’t care about face-saving and appearances—is absurd. I have yet to read any vivid examples of how the face-saving proclivity is different in China than that in the West, so if you know any, please send them along…

…China’s 1.3 billion people should be viewed not just as potential customers, but as potential competitors. As one writer put it, “the Chinese look at this gold rush in a very different way. They don’t see themselves as being ‘colonized,’ or even necessarily the recipients of investment. They seek to invest in the West, and maintain the upper hand in business deals with Western companies. This gold rush is just as much about the Chinese making a killing selling stuff to rich foreigners as it is us making a killing selling stuff to them.” Another writer pointed out that the Chinese “invented the marketplace while our European ancestors were trying to get an alphabet together.”…

…The ticking time bomb hidden within the Chinese economy is bank loans to lousy companies. Financial busts result from excessive leverage—something in the system that makes the system look healthier than it actually is (China’s 9 percent GDP growth for decades, for example, or the U.S. telecom boom a few years ago). Non-performing loans issued by China’s state-run banks to China’s state-run firms appear to be the mother of all leverage.

One writer explained that China’s economy is “still dominated by massive and moribund state companies which are supported by a banking system that is technically insolvent. The government issues bonds and spends the money to keep the state companies in operation and keep the banks (somewhat) capitalized. The state banks buy the bonds and lend to the state industries. The government keeps this up because it is deathly afraid of what would happen if hundreds of millions of state employees were suddenly added to the millions of farmers and others now out of work.” When this bomb goes off—and it’s a “when,” not an “if”—the bust will be heard round the world.

Guanxi, guanxi, guanxi. Everyone agrees: If there’s one thing you need to succeed in business in China, it’s guanxi. Often translated as “connections” or “relationships,” the word seems to imply something deeper. One reader explained that “when the Don calls in his favors, you gotta do what you gotta do. Networking in China is more like Little Italy than the Hamptons.” Once again, although this concept seems more important in China than in the U.S., I can’t help but view it as a similarity. Anyone ever heard of the Carlyle Group?…

As always, please send thoughts, comments, and suggestions to chinagoldrush@yahoo.com.

For the full article, see the link below.

Posted at 11:00 AM · Comments (0)

The culture shock that puts victims in hospital

A JAPANESE woman in her 20s stopped a well-dressed Frenchman in the Opera metro station yesterday afternoon and asked him in broken English for help with a public telephone. He replied with a finger in the air and walked on, leaving another potential candidate for “Paris Syndrome”.

The term has been coined by Dr Hiroaki Ota, a Paris-based psychiatrist who specialises in a state of depression which hits Japanese who come to live in the City of Light. The condition mainly afflicts young Japanese women and is brought on by the collision between the Japanese dream of France, and the rough reality of Paris life.

The symptoms usually appear after three months in France and a quarter of the cases require stays in hospital, said Dr Ota. Japanese residents in London, with a higher Japanese population than the estimated 20,000 in Paris, do not suffer so much.

“The phenomenon manifests itself among those who do not have the capacity to adapt to France because of the shock between the two cultures,” said Dr Ota, who recently practised at St Anne’s, the city’s main mental hospital. Patients, who are usually determined to stay in France, make complaints such as: “They (Parisians) laugh at my French”, “they don’t like me”, “I feel stupid in front of them”, Dr Ota told Libération newspaper. Japanese residents confirmed that adapting to French life is harder for them. “The syndrome exists,” said Issaki, 28, who works for a Japanese media company in Paris. “We don’t have the habit of expressing ourselves so forcefully as the French. They can be aggressive. We are more sensitive even than other Asians. The Chinese and Koreans have thicker skins.”

Tadahiko Kondo, 59, a conference organiser, said he fell ill when he first arrived in France. “Everything was unpleasant. People were cold, rude and never smiled. It is completely different in Japan. Especially the girls who come to France thinking it is all about Louis Vuitton and gastronomy. They become depressed because France is not like that,” he added.

The Japanese are often hurt because the French show no interest in their country while France is an obsession in Japan, the ultimate destination for romance, refinement and art. Bernard Delage, president of the Young Japan organisation, said that Paris Syndrome, which has become a talking point in Japan, was exaggerated. “There are some girls who dream about France as the land of shopping, courtesy and lovers. They are naive and not as sensible as they should be.”

Young Japanese women are always shocked to find that Frenchmen want to head for bed rather than discuss culture said Yuriko, a Japanese assistant at a department store. “We have this idealised picture of France, the reality can be hard to accept. But we still love it and don’t want to leave.”

Posted at 12:51 AM · Comments (1)

I arrived in Hanoi by train from the Chinese border on Friday the 4th, very early in the morning, to a scene that reminded me more than anything else of my days in West Africa. Monrovia and Freetown, in particular came to mind.
The pre-dawn train station was like a movie set of another era: what appeared to be two old Chinese trains, parked parallel on the platform, jostling crowds of people making their way with heavy bags, all the heavier because of the approach of next week’s Chinese, or Tet New Year. At the exit stood gathered an impossible knot of motorcycle and car taxis and drivers and touts and perhaps thieves, too, pushing, shouting, contending for business.
I hope to get pictures up from Hanoi early next week. My Casio Exilim Z55 digital camera, a real wonder (and I’m a major camera buff) gave up on me — the battery, anyway. I forgot, stupidly, to bring the charger, overconfident, perhaps, because the thing shoots hundreds of shots between charges. The result is that I’ve relied almost entirely on my Olympus OM4, another marvel, to shoot street scenes in Hanoi, and will have to await development and scanning once back in Shanghai, before I can post anything here.
I’ll get some of my Yunnan materials from the border region with Vietnam onto the site on Sunday night. I was being parsimonious with the digital shots, aware of the lack of battery power, but there should be some good stuff.
By the way, that was my second extensive Yunnan trip. The first, whose pictures are already posted, are of China’s border region with Burma and Laos.

Posted at 12:20 AM · Comments (1)

This is adapted from “Killer Species, published in the Fall 2004 issue of Daedalus. A chilling precis of this appears in the January issue of Harper’s, focusing mainly on the war-like behavior of chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives.

“For humans, chimpanzees, and wolves it makes sense to kill deliberately
and frequently. Their protean grouping patterns mean they can choose to
attack only when they have overwhelming power, which in turn means they
can kill safely and cheaply, thereby winning a likely increase in
resources over the succeeding months or years.

“Killing thus emerges as a consequence of having defined territories,
dispersed groups, and unpredictqable power relations. These conditions,
in turn, appear to result from ecological adaptations, whether to a
scattered fruit supply or to the challenges of hunting vertebrate prey.
The implication is that because of our particular evolutionary ecology,
natural selection has favored in the brains of humans, chimpanzees, and
wolves a tendency to take advantage of opportunities to kill their
rivals.

“This doesn’t condemn us to be violent in general. Indeed, within our
communities humans are markedly less violent than most other primates,
and in some ways humans are especially peaceful. Nor does it mean that
intergroup aggression is inevitable; rather, it predicts little violence
when power is balanced between neighboring communities. What it does
imply, however, is that selection has favored a human tendency to
identify enemies, draw moral divides, and exploit weaknesses pitilessly
across boundaries….The spontaneous aggressiveness of humans is a harsh
product of natural selection, part of an evolutionary morality that
revels in sort-term victory for one’s own community without regard for
the greater good.”

Posted at 12:03 AM · Comments (0)

Published: February 2, 2005

The extraordinary range of African-American migrations - from the earliest Africans who arrived to the recent movement of blacks back to the South - is the focus of a new Web site and an exhibition of recent research that could redefine African-American history, said scholars involved with the project, which was announced yesterday at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. “In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience,” a three-year project that cost $2.4 million, is probably the largest single documentation of the migrations of all people of African ancestry in North America, said Howard Dodson, director of the center, part of the New York Public Library.

The exhibition at the Schomburg Center’s Exhibition Hall, which opened yesterday, showcases many of the images, maps and music assembled for the project. But the project’s 16,500 pages of essays, books, articles and manuscripts, as well as 8,300 illustrations and 60 maps are also available on the center’s Web site (schomburgcenter.org) and could encourage a national conversation on the very definition of African-American, Mr. Dodson, a historian, said in an interview.

“This is a huge story,” Mr. Dodson said. “This will serve as a catalyst for the continued re-thinking of who the African-American community is. For the first time, here’s a project that explores the extraordinary diversity of the African-American community. This is organized around 13 migrations, 2 of them involuntary: the domestic slave trade and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.”

Broadening the examination of migration beyond the slave trade means “you come away with some very different perspectives,” Mr. Dodson said. Twice as many sub-Saharan Africans - about one million - have migrated to the United States in the last 30 years as during the entire era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, project organizers said.

The project is chock full of illuminating facts. It shows that in recent years, twice as many African-Americans have moved from the North to the South as from the South to other regions. From 1995 to 2000 approximately 680,000 African-Americans moved to the South and 330,000 left, for a net gain of 350,000.

And for the first time, all the elements of the African diaspora - natives of Africa, Americans whose ancestors were enslaved Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Central and South Americans of African descent, as well as Europeans with African or Afro-Caribbean roots - can be found in the United States.

This has happened in only the last 15 years and is prompting a far broader view of the term African-American, said Sylviane Diouf, a historian who served as the content manager for the project.

In addition to the Web site and the exhibition, the project includes a book, “In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience,” released by National Geographic last month, and a Black History Month education kit, with lesson plans and a bibliography.

“It’s really a new interpretation of African-American history,” Ms. Diouf said. “We’re seeing the centrality of migration in the African-American experience. What we’re seeing now with the new immigration from Haiti, the Caribbean and Africa is a new diversity, people coming with their languages, their culture, their food.”

For the complete article, see the link below.

Posted at 8:37 PM · Comments (0)

Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror  

From the New York Times — Sept. 4, 1967  

 WASHINGTON, Sept. 3— United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.  

 According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.  

 The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.  

 A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.  

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government.

Posted at 7:36 PM · Comments (0)

Weary of spyware, tired of virus attacks, a nation turns its lonely eyes to … Apple?

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Twenty-one years ago this month, Steve Jobs, Apple Computer’s theatrical co-founder, launched the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Cupertino, Calif., by quoting Dylan: “For the wheel’s still in spin/ And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’/ For the loser now/ Will be later to win/ For the times they are a-changin’.” Then, after a brief diatribe on the stupidity and villainy of IBM, Apple’s main rival at the time, Jobs cast himself as the hero in a near-epic, if ultra-geeky, battle between good and evil: “It is now 1984,” he said. “It appears that IBM wants it all … IBM wants it all, and is aiming its guns at its last obstacle to industry control, Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right?”

Jobs is hammier than an Easter feast, and it’s easy to discount his perpetually revolutionary air, but that 1984 shareholder meeting — at which the company, besieged by IBM, unveiled its radically different Macintosh home computer — was nevertheless magical. You can read this account by Andy Hertzfeld, a Mac co-creator, to get a sense of the tension and the mania in the auditorium that day, the feeling that this was a moment for the history books. Or watch a video of the event that’s recently been making the rounds online: “Chariots of Fire” rises in the background as the Mac is switched on, and the audience gasps as the machine before them actually speaks its name in greeting. And why shouldn’t they gasp? Outside of Kubrick films, whoever had seen such an amazing machine before?

If you’re into this sort of thing, the clip can give you goose bumps. Isn’t it a shame, you say, that Apple hasn’t been this cool in decades? And then: Isn’t it wonderful that the magic is back?

After all, we’ve been living, for the past couple years, in Apple’s world, a time and place in which the normal rules of commerce no longer seem to apply to the once much-beaten-down firm. The company has seen an extraordinary string of hits recently. The iPod is bigger than Jesus. Apple is literally selling these things faster than it can make them. Now, for the first time in almost two decades, there’s a good — great — feeling attached to the Apple brand, a haze of optimism that is unlike the sensation we feel for all but the most cherished of consumer tech products. (There’s Google, there’s TiVo, and there’s Apple: Can you think of any other company that has recently changed your life as you know it?)

So, perchance to dream: After iPod, can Apple make a comeback in the world of personal computers? On Jan. 22, the company began shipping the Mac Mini, a diminutive entry-level machine aimed at Windows people. The computer is tiny, beautiful and, at $499, cheap; already, it’s receiving generally positive praise from reviewers.

What happens now? The entire effort could fizzle, certainly. Apple releases nice Macs all the time that never spark in the Windows world. There is a theory, though, that this go-round might be different, that the moment may be ripe for the Mac Mini to take off. The landscape of the personal computer market has altered. In recent years, the home computer has increasingly become a digital entertainment center; people use it for the Web, they use it for e-mail, and they use it for photos, movies and music.

The Mac is not just good at these few tasks: It’s the best there is. There’s simply no arguing that Apple’s built-in software and operating system make for the single most powerful photo, music and movie system you can buy.

But the things that the Mac is good at make up just one part of the story. There’s a flip side — the increasingly obvious failings of PCs running Microsoft Windows. Among Windows users, there’s a rising feeling — accounted for mostly by anecdotes and not all that well-measured, but nevertheless important — that the system is becoming too hard to maintain. Talk to experts at computer security firms and they’ll give you some pretty scary straight talk about how spyware, adware and viruses are just killing the user experience on an ordinary Windows PC.

It’s not unusual for people to throw out their year-old Windows computers because they’ve become just too clogged with bad junk, says Richard Stiennon, vice president of threat research at the anti-spyware firm Webroot. The Mac, in contrast, simply doesn’t suffer such afflictions.

David Gelernter, a computer scientist and tech visionary at Yale, likens today’s PC market to the American automobile market of the early 1970s. At the time, Americans were buying American-made junk — and because they didn’t know any better, they were putting up with the junk. “So what happened?” Gelernter asks. “What happened was that Japan started exporting huge numbers of Hondas and Toyotas, and people saw that for a reasonable price they could buy a car that didn’t fall apart in two weeks. When you picked it up at the dealer all the parts were in it, the whole thing worked. Until that happened, people were satisfied with the garbage they were getting from Detroit.”

Forget the iPod. What if the iPod’s just a gateway drug? What if Apple’s future is much grander: What if Apple could become the Toyota of the computer business?

Apple’s computer business isn’t so bad. But it’s not the stuff of dreams, either. In the winter of 2004, Apple sold about a million Mac machines. This represented a 26 percent increase over sales from the same quarter in the previous year, but during the course of the year, Apple’s numbers zig-zagged between increases in one quarter to declines in the next. Its share of the world’s computer business remains dismal. The company now has about 2 percent of the worldwide computer market; its market share in the United States stands at just above 3 percent, a tenth of the share of the top Windows PC maker, Dell.

We won’t pause long to chew on the paradox of the Mac — the mystery over why, so far, the world’s best desktop computers are also the world’s least popular machines. That’s an old chestnut among tech journalists, and it’s a lame one, too, as the answers are pretty close at hand: Consider the Mac’s (perceived) high prices, the curse of tech-industry network effects, the business missteps and strategic stumbles Apple has made over the years, and the savvy and sometimes criminal behavior of its competitors — consider all this and it’s no surprise that the Mac’s not the main machine in town.

Now, many Mac lovers will argue that market share doesn’t matter. BMW and Mercedes, they point out, have a small share of the auto market, and nobody frets about that. This may be so, but computing platforms are different from cars. Unlike automobiles, your computer improves as more people use systems like it — as more developers become interested in your system, you get more and better software, for one thing. It’s true that the Mac’s not in danger of dying out as a platform, and that the Mac does benefit, in some ways, from its small market share (it’s a lower-profile target for attackers, for instance). But do you remember the famous 1984 Mac commercial, the one that argued that this was not just another PC, that it was instead a revolutionary product? The Mac’s current market share does not speak well of the fate of that revolution. If more people used the Mac, and if it became an actual threat to Windows, we’d see two gains: Mac users would benefit from a more vibrant platform, and, perhaps more important, all other systems would improve due to competition.

To tech industry observers, the Mac’s tepid sales in 2004 were something of a surprise. During the same year, the iPod experienced phenomenal sales; Apple saw a 500 percent increase in sales of the music device in the winter quarter of 2004 compared to same quarter in 2003. In 2004, the company sold several times more iPods than it did Macs, meaning that the device was purchased by millions of people who didn’t own Macs. Their only association with Apple came through the brilliant music player, and some analysts and Apple execs thought it was natural to expect some kind of “halo effect” from the iPod — all those Windows people with favorable impressions of the iPod might consider switching to Macs.

But that halo didn’t seem to work. For some reason, in 2004, vast numbers of Windows people didn’t look at their iPods and decide to buy Macs. Why not? Perhaps the answer lies in what Jason Snell, the editor of Macworld magazine, says is the essential difference between Windows people and Mac people: Mac people love their computers on a personal, emotional level. Windows people, on the other hand, prefer to think of their machines as office tools, gadgets no more special than the stapler. Windows users don’t expect much in the way of quality, beauty or elegance from their machines; if they did, they’d be Mac people. Instead, they expect their PCs to perform a great many tasks, and they’ve resigned themselves to having to labor over those tasks.

This is not at all how we think about our iPods. The iPod is a consumer electronics device; it does one thing, plays music, and it does that one thing extremely well. The device is also intensely personal: People buy the iPod as much for form, for the way you look when you carry it around town, as for function. Your Windows PC, by contrast, is all function, no personality. Computers are the workhorses of our lives, slaves to the routine and the mundane. You do your taxes on your PC. You pay homage to John Coltrane on your iPod. Thinking about it this way, it seems clear why Windows people didn’t look at the iPod as a first step to the Mac: In the mind of the typical Windows user, there’s no clear connection between a desktop computer like the Mac and the iPod. The two exist in separate product universes. The iPod is sublime. Your computer is a chore. Why would you ever associate the two?

But the Mac Mini, Snell says, eases the mental transition between the iPod and the desktop machine. Indeed, one way to think about the Mac Mini — and the way that Apple may be thinking about it — is as the iPod of computers. Yes, the Mac Mini can do everything that any other Mac can do; it’s a full-fledged computer. But “there’s a big part of Apple that wants to be a consumer electronics company,” Snell says, and the Mac Mini has the look and feel of a consumer electronics device — a friendly, personal thing that will be marketed mainly for its core functions, its facility with your pictures, movies and music.

“I was visiting some friends this weekend,” Snell says, “and they’re PC people, they don’t own Macs. But one of them was describing going to a friend’s house to use iPhoto so she could make a photo book for their daughter’s birthday. They loved the Mac, and they were seriously talking about buying a Mac Mini.” What’s interesting, Snell points out, is that these people didn’t want the Mini for its intrinsic computer power; they were going to keep their PC up and running. They wanted the Mini as a household digital hub, as an appliance, rather than a computer, that made it easier to play with their photos.

Windows users often think about the buying of a Mac as a terminal decision. Indeed, you don’t just “buy” a Macintosh; in jargon that Apple has popularized, you “switch” to the Mac, you make a change to your life in order to reorient yourself to a whole new platform. Put that way, buying a Mac is a huge decision; it involves learning a new operating system, transferring files, and buying new, expensive software to replace the software on your Windows machine. But if you think of the Mac Mini as an appliance, as a device for photos and making movies, you can conceive of using the Mac without “switching,” Snell notes. You can use the Mac alongside your Windows computer, in much the same way you can use an iPod in your Windows home. Stephen Baker, an analyst at the NPD Group, a market research firm, echoes this thought. “The whole ‘switching’ thing isn’t the way to look at this,” Baker says. “People who are buying these are not switching all their Windows PCs to Macs. As more and more households get more and more kinds of computers in the house, they have a range of PCs for different uses. It’s reasonable to expect that the Mac will be part of that range,” he says.

Apple has been down this road before. The iMac, which Apple released in the 1990s, was also supposed to be something like an appliance. It was the Internet computer, the machine that made connecting to the booming and then mysterious Web a very painless thing. The iMac was in fact a hit for Apple — but it didn’t reverse the Mac’s dwindling fortunes. So why should we expect Mac Mini to have any more success?

Well, for one thing, the Mini’s cheaper than the iMac was. It is still possible to buy a Windows machine that costs less than the Mac Mini, but you’d really be scraping the bottom of the barrel, and even if you got something with comparable computing power — as fast a processor, as big a hard drive, as much memory — you still wouldn’t be getting what you get with the Mini. A comparably priced Windows computer is a cheap Windows computer; a Mac Mini, with its built-in top-of-the-line software, is a digital media appliance that fits on a countertop, connects to your HDTV, stores all your photos, catalogs your music, edits your movies and (if you slap down $100 for the DVD-burning drive) creates your DVDs. Thanks to the Web, it is also now easier to start using the Mac without really going through the hassle of “switching.” Key applications — like e-mail in the form of GMail, or photos with Flickr — are available on any platform, reducing your dependence on Windows.

But the main reason that the Mac Mini may find more success in the Windows world than the iMac did is that these days, the Windows world isn’t doing too well. There are about 100,000 known pieces of “malware” — viruses, worms and Trojan horses — targeted at the Windows operating system, says Vincent Weafer, a computer security expert at Symantec. In addition, there are between 40,000 and 100,000 individual bits of spyware (defined broadly) aimed at the OS. Weafer says that by all accounts, the spyware problem reached a fever pitch during the past year. “Judging by submissions and support calls, it was getting a lot worse,” he says. “We are also seeing a trend where a subset of the programs are becoming a lot more viruslike — to hide themselves on your machine, they’re using methods like viruses to try to become more persistent.” Some people calling Symantec looking for answers to their spyware and virus problems are just beyond help, Weafer says. “They’ve tried many different things and it doesn’t help. They’ll end up reinstalling or cleaning it out or buying a new one — a lot of this stuff is just so deeply embedded, it becomes more and more difficult to get rid of the gunk, the sludge at the bottom of your machine.”

Spyware is big business; in the strange economy that is the spyware market, a parasitic piece of software can earn its owner $2.95 per year for every computer it’s installed on. “If you want to earn some free money, you infect a million machines and you make almost $3 million a year,” says Richard Stiennon, of Webroot. These incentives have caused spyware writers to build quite harmful applications, some of which are nearly impossible to get off your machine. “There are about a dozen pieces of spyware that are installing themselves in such a way that they’re pretty much destroying the machine when they get on it,” Stiennon says. People who are infected with such persistent bugs will notice the damage. Their machines will run slower, and key applications — like the Internet Explorer Web browser — basically cease to function. For Windows users, protecting against this software has got to be a full-time job, the experts say, involving multiple pieces of anti-malware software.

Compared to Windows, the Mac is a Fort Knox of security. There are only about 200 pieces of malware known to attack the Mac platform, and security analysts could not identify a single instance — not one — of spyware aimed at the Mac. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the Macintosh operating system is inherently more secure than the Windows platform. As a technical matter, the Mac operating system, which is based on Unix, has a much smaller “surface area” for attackers to target, Stiennon says. Windows, by contrast, “is a really dirty OS that requires thousands of system calls to do simple functions — and every single system call is an opportunity” for an attacker to get at the system, Stiennon explains.

According to experts, though, it isn’t the Mac’s better structure that accounts for why so few pieces of malware and spyware are aimed at the operating system — it’s the size of its user base. If miscreants really put their heads to it, they could probably come up with many dangerous attacks against the Mac — but who would want to? Faced with the choice of disrupting 95 percent of the computer users in the world or just 3 percent, which would you choose? The choice is especially obvious for the purveyors of spyware, who, remember, depend on high numbers of infected machines to make money. If you want to make a killing in the spyware business, you’re not going to get far by attacking the Mac.

This is, though, a distinction without a real difference. To the individual Mac user, it matters little why the machine is less vulnerable to attacks. The only thing that matters is this: “If you switch over to the Mac,” says Weafer, “you’ll be relatively safer.”

A couple weeks after Apple unveiled the Mac Mini at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, I called up Andy Hertzfeld, one of the engineers on the original Mac team, to see what he thought about the idea that the Mini could create a new opening for Apple with Windows users. Considering its appeal as a digital-media appliance, and its relative security from malware, wasn’t the Mac Mini ideally positioned, I asked him, to take the Windows world by storm?

Herztfeld, who left Apple in 1984, is still a dedicated fan of the company’s wares and a keen observer of its fortunes. (He recently published an insanely great memoir, “Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made.”) Because he buys just about every piece of hardware the company makes, Hertzfeld had ordered the Mac Mini, and was awaiting delivery of his unit on the day I spoke to him. He planned to use the machine as the hub of his home theater system, and he said he expected many people would use it in similar ways — as an extra machine, or as a digital media appliance, or just something cool to have around the house. The Mini, he said, was the product of a “confident Apple,” a company buoyed by the success of the iPod and unafraid to take the fight to its rivals.

Pleased as he was by the new machine, though, Hertzfeld didn’t think it could overturn the Microsoft monopoly. For one thing, he didn’t believe that the Mac could really capitalize on its security strengths over Windows. If Apple were ever to take out an ad promoting the Mac’s security, “it would only motivate attacks,” Hertzfeld pointed out. “Even I have enough of the perverse hacker in me to try something.” And certainly as the Mac’s market share rose, so would the number of attackers targeting the system.

Hertzfeld believes that the Mac Mini, given the timing and Apple’s recent successes, could likely increase the Mac’s market share by a bit. If the system did extraordinarily well, if it were successful beyond Apple’s wildest dreams, maybe the company would get to a 10 percent market share, he said. But Apple’s problem, as Hertzfeld sees it, isn’t in getting to 10 percent of the market. The company is smart enough to do so; and if that happened, it would be phenomenal for Apple — but would it really be a revolution in the PC business? Hertzfeld didn’t think so.

The problem with the modern personal computing environment is that, in some fundamental sense, it’s a broken business. “There’s a poison in the computer industry,” Hertzfeld says, “and that is the fact that the common software base is controlled by a predatory software company with a lack of ethics.” In case you didn’t get the reference, Hertzfeld is talking about Microsoft, which, through Windows, controls the underlying software development base for the PC industry — essentially, it controls the standards, the keys to empire. “Microsoft is not a good steward of the standards,” Hertzfeld says, and if Microsoft is to be beaten, and if a company like Apple is to exert more dominance in the PC world, Microsoft has got to first lose control of the standards. Hertzfeld actually believes that this is occurring; Microsoft is in fact slowly losing its grip on the software development standards, he says. “But I don’t think Apple is the driver of that dynamic — I think the free software movement is pushing that.”

Hertzfeld is an ardent believer in the free and open source software movements — in which software programmers all over the world voluntarily write code that anyone can share, modify or distribute. In the late 1990s, he co-founded Eazel, a company that created a slick file manager app called Nautilus for use on the open-source Linux operating system’s GNOME desktop environment. If Apple really wants to change the personal computer business, it will need to do more than release a machine like the Mac Mini, no matter how good it is, Hertzfeld says. It will, instead, need to commit to free software. “Eventually the fix [in the PC business] is for the Windows monopoly to get marginalized by free software, and Apple could make a gulf of difference in that effort” by contributing some of its code, resources, energy and branding power to the free software movement.

Does Hertzfeld have any real hope that Apple, which guards its code just as closely as Microsoft holds Windows, may go the free software route? “I don’t predict they will,” he says, “but I don’t predict they won’t, either. They’re smart people.” What he means is that they may eventually see that it’s in their interest to do so.

When discussing the PC business, an important thing to remember is that nothing’s quite settled yet. The personal computer is a young product, and the PCs we have today are not the PCs we’ll have forever. David Gelernter, the Yale computer scientist, raised parts of this argument in December in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, published on the occasion of IBM’s sale of its personal computer business to Lenovo, a Chinese firm. Gelernter lamented that sale; it indicated, he wrote, that IBM no longer saw potential for the greatness of the PC, and that this “is a shame, even a tragedy — because the modern PC is in fact a primitive, infuriating nuisance. If the U.S. technology industry actually believes that the PC has grown up and settled down, it is out of touch with reality — and the consequences could be dangerous to America’s economic health.”

A conversation with Gelernter is an eye-opening experience. As modern computer users, we go through our lives resigned to mediocrity; this is true of Windows users, but it’s even true, he says, of Apple users. The computer can be so much more than the systems we have today. Gelernter wants machines that are “transparent,” that are more like appliances than fancy gadgets, machines that put your data, your information, before their own idiosyncrasies. “I don’t care about the machine, I care about my documents,” he says. It shouldn’t matter which computer he goes to in his house, or whether the machine he’s on is new or old; he should get access to his life on any machine. And why should anybody spend any time at all “securing” your machine from outside threats, he wonders. Why can’t the machine do this for you? “Most people don’t want to spend their time to download the latest thing to deal with the latest disaster to strike,” he points out. Would we deal with such tediousness for other products we use on a daily basis? “Would anyone ever say, ‘Hey, my brakes don’t work but that’s O.K., I can just download a new anti-lock braking system.’” No; you wouldn’t use a car in which the brakes didn’t work. Yet we put up with computers all the time in which key functions just stop working, and, routinely, we are OK with that.

The industry desperately needs a new player. Some new company, or new idea, needs to come along to shake the PC business from its foundations. Which company could this be? Well, he knows which firm it won’t be — it won’t be Microsoft. “I don’t think Microsoft has the freedom to do it,” Gelernter says. “If you were the most successful company in the history of mankind, if you were running this moneymaking machine that has done a better job making money than any similar mechanism in history — if I were that person, I would be far too cautious. Why would I change what I was doing?”

Gelernter believes that IBM or Sun, tech firms that have a long history of research, are two Americans companies that have the best chance of creating a fantastic PC experience. Or, he believes that an unknown Asian company, some firm in Japan or India or China or South Korea that we have not yet heard of, will come along one day and surprise the American PC business in much the same way Japanese auto companies surprised Detroit in the 1970s.

But there’s one more American company he thinks has a chance of profoundly altering the way we use computers: Apple Computer. “When we all reluctantly turned off our Macintoshes five years ago, we dived into the PC world, and we haven’t looked back,” he says. But Apple’s recently been building machines that are headed in the right direction, Gelernter says. And God knows they’re smart engineers.

“Apple could get a brainstorm,” he says.

And Apple’s brainstorms, from the Apple II, to the Mac, to the iPod — and, now, maybe even the Mac Mini — have a tendency to set the world spinning in directions we’d never thought possible.

Posted at 11:37 PM · Comments (0)

EW DELHI - It was 4:30 a.m., the stars were still out and Swami Ramdev was ready to begin the day’s yoga lesson. His 12,000 students watched raptly as he sat wearing little more than a loincloth, chanting morning prayers in Sanskrit. When he walked on his hands across the stage in New Delhi’s cavernous Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, they applauded.

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The students were on the final day of a weeklong yoga camp that the swami had promised would cure whatever ailed them, mentally as well as physically, and without a great investment of time. For a growing number of harried middle-class Indians, worrying about health problems associated with a more affluent lifestyle, that is just the message they want to hear.

While a majority of Indians are familiar with yoga, many think it is too complex and time-consuming to practice, particularly with the increasing demands on their time. The swami, youthful and photogenic, has become wildly popular with a “yoga made easy” approach that promises to yield quick health benefits with minimal effort.

His emphasis is on pranayama - roughly put, breathing exercises or the art of breath control. “If you do pranayama half an hour daily, you will never fall sick,” he claims.

Each month, his weeklong yoga camps attract about 75,000 acolytes, he says, all of them paying at least $11. He receives an additional 60,000 visits to his permanent camp at Haridwar, 125 miles north of Delhi…

…He says he spent eight years in school, dreaming of becoming a saint. At 14, he ran away from home to a nearby Gurukul, a traditional school teaching Sanskrit and Vedic literature. He studied in the school for 10 years before spending many years wandering the Himalayas learning yoga and meditation. He has been teaching yoga for the last 15 years.

He sleeps only five hours a night, from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., but always bubbles with energy. He eats only fruits and vegetables, and claims he has never had sex.

“I sublimate my libido to positive energy through yoga,” he said. He was 25 before he used a telephone, he says, but now carries a fancy cellular phone….

For the complete article, please see the link below.

Posted at 11:11 PM · Comments (0)

Feb. 1, 2005  |  Mwanvua Silimu has just told a lie and everyone in the room knows it. She stares at her feet, silent. The 14-year-old is back home after months as the prisoner of vagabond soldiers, relating her ordeal. It is the obvious question, and her family members ask it: How many of her 13 kidnappers raped her? In little more than a whisper, Mwanvua replies “one.”

Her parents and siblings exchange looks but say nothing. Nobody believes her. Not taking her eyes off the earth floor, after some minutes Mwanvua speaks again, the voice firmer this time. “All of them. They all passed through me.” Her mother, Mariamo, winces and looks away. Her father, Radjabo, blinks several times and gazes at his daughter. They had guessed the truth, but hearing it out loud, laid bare here in the family home, is not easy.

The family now fears further revelations. Mwanvua’s period is late; she may be pregnant with the child of one of her captors. She may be infected with any number of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. There is no doctor in the village, and no means of testing.

Complaining of muscle pain and headaches, she spends most days in her room. Deemed “damaged goods” by the community, she is unlikely to find a husband — and even if she does there will be no traditional dowry of five goats, a bag of salt and clothes valued at $100 because she is no longer a virgin. “This is the mentality here: Once you are caught by these people you have no value,” says her father.

Two years after the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was declared officially over, a wave of sexual violence continues to sweep through the country. Scenes such as that in the Silimu household are being repeated across the lawless eastern provinces bordering Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Here the war has ebbed but not disappeared: Fighters from Congo’s myriad militias and rebel groups, as well as fighters from Rwanda, are still loose in the forests and cities, pillaging, murdering and raping.

Although the violence is not on the same scale as it once was, it remains a messy, unfinished conflict that is having a huge impact on civilians — particularly girls and women. At least 40,000 have been raped over the past six years, according to a recent report by Amnesty International.

Congo’s recent history is a dark, underreported horror story that started a decade ago when Hutus responsible for murdering 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide fled across the border to escape the avenging Tutsi army. Two years later, Zaire (as it then was known), the vast, ramshackle heart of central Africa, imploded from a civil war and invasions by neighboring states, principally Rwanda. Rwanda invaded again in 1998 with the stated aim of hunting Hutus, sparking a six-year war that sucked in six other countries.

All sides used proxy forces: The Congolese army was aided by tribal Mayi-Mayi militias and Hutus. The Tutsi-led Rwandan army sponsored a rebel movement, as did Uganda. They turned eastern Congo into fiefdoms of plunder in which rape was a form of booty as well as a weapon against ethnic groups deemed hostile.

Spending months at a time in remote forests eroded the fighters’ discipline and humanity. “These forces very rarely met each other but they all punished the civilian population,” says Gwendolyn Lusi, a program manager in eastern Congo for the aid agency Doctors on Call for Service.

Following the loss of more than 3 million lives, peace accords were signed in 2002 and 2003. Foreign forces withdrew and Congo’s rival factions formed an interim government in the distant capital, Kinshasa, under President Joseph Kabila. This unwieldy, mutually suspicious coalition of former foes promised to rein in the fighters marauding in the east, but they have failed to integrate their forces into a single, unified army, leaving the east a patchwork of divided loyalties. Reeling from a succession of political crises, the government has paid lip service to restoring order but made little progress in building an effective police force and criminal justice system, leaving the east largely lawless.

The number of assaults against young girls in Goma, capital of North Kivu province in eastern Congo, has risen over the past year, according to Virginie Mumbere, an administrator with DOCS. They are attacked not just by soldiers but also by people they know — neighbors, relatives, teachers. Whether this means that the incidence of rape has increased, or that more assaults are being reported, or both, nobody can say.

“Insecurity continues to reign and the rapes continue: They are the fruit of disorder,” says Dr. Jacques Kalume, who treats 150 inpatients — 90 percent of them victims of sexual violence — at Goma’s main hospital. He performs 44 surgeries a month on women suffering incontinence as the result of a fistula forming between the anus and the vagina, the result of extreme violence. The smell of feces, which in some cases emerges from the vagina, can be so strong that many victims are shunned by their communities. Repairing the damage involves delicate surgery and months of convalescence. More than one operation is often needed.

In a recovery ward, some of Kalume’s patients knit or tend to infants while others gaze at the ceiling. Esperance Nyirandegeya, 30, gasps with pain when emptying her bladder into a tube, but she wants to talk — about the men who raped her and killed her husband and two children; about how she is afraid to return home because Rwandan rebel fighters are still there; about how so few women have the opportunity for treatment.

From a neighboring bed, Cecile Furaha, 24, speaks of fresh attacks on women in her village. Asked about her rapists, her voice turns brittle. “I hate them. I was destroyed.”

The great unknown is HIV/AIDS. With many soldiers and refugees coming from Uganda and Rwanda, high-prevalence countries, it is assumed that many Congolese have been infected. But in towns such as Kasongo, in Maniema province, there is little opportunity for testing or treating. The colonial-era hospital, its grounds littered with syringes and needles, can afford only 140 tests per month, most of which are used to screen blood donors and surgical patients.

A tenth of patients test positive for HIV but are not told of their status. Staff fear for their lives in breaking such bad news, says the hospital’s director, Dr. Felly Ekofo. And there are some male patients who, after they discover they have the virus, continue to be promiscuous or to rape. Why? Ekofo shrugs, as if the answer were obvious. “Because they don’t want to die alone.”

But there are some small glimmers of hope that the peace, however fragile and spasmodic, is eroding the war’s terrible legacy. Anecdotal evidence (in the absence of reliable statistics there is no other kind) suggests that the number of sex attacks, while still high, is dwindling in some places. Improved security is allowing medical care to reach previously cutoff areas, sometimes for the first time in six years.

Rural areas, such as the forests of Maniema province, have become safer, said Zahera Zainabo, vice president of the nongovernmental organization the Voice of the Oppressed Women of Maniema. From recording a rape a day last year, the organization now receives reports of just one every three months.

This is still too many, she says. “Women are still considered like a toy, like something of no value.” Dehumanized by war, a soldier’s moral reference points are skewed, says Zainabo. Asked why they had raped a woman, one group of soldiers told her that their wives were far away and so they had no choice but to find a temporary, local replacement.

But she sees signs of progress: “This week a soldier was publicly punished for raping a woman prisoner. That’s new.” In the absence of a functioning police service and civil judicial system, the military is left to discipline itself. Having singularly failed to do so before, the sight of even just one soldier being arrested and taken away for indefinite detention on his commander’s orders counts as a breakthrough.

The arrest came after the radio station in Kasongo town reported the assault in its news bulletins — a daring departure. “It was a big risk for us,” says the station director, Modeste Shabani. “Soldiers came to us, angry, asking why we did that. We used not to speak about sexual violence.”

Even Mwanvua Silimu’s sad, brutal tale suggests the culture of impunity is eroding. It starts typically enough: In June 2003 she was abducted by a group of 13 Hutu rebels who used her and other female captives as slaves — porters, cooks, cleaners — and took turns beating and raping them.

But a year later, the improved security climate emboldened Mwanvua’s sister, Salama, 34, with courage bordering on recklessness, to track them down and demand Mwanvua’s release. Her father, Radjabo, followed her to make the same demand. Apparently fed up with years in the wilderness, and in an apparent attempt to curry favor with U.N. peacekeepers who could arrange their return to Rwanda, the kidnappers complied and in October handed over a bruised, battered but joyful Mwanvua. “I was so happy I wept,” she says.

Interviews with other victims recently attacked in Kasongo and Goma yield a pattern of rapists getting away scot-free, untouched by a puny police force that was either absent or reluctant to confront a soldier. Elaka Kalume, 21, was attacked in June by five soldiers on her way home from the market. “My husband was angry that I took that route alone. He was right; I blame myself.”

Vumilia Simuke, 24, was raped by a soldier on the orders of a village chief who wanted to punish her husband for endangering public health by not keeping the family toilet clean. “My husband didn’t respect the law,” she shrugs, matter-of-factly. Asha Mbaruko, 17, was assaulted in fields by two soldiers who beat her and stole the family’s goat. When her father reported the rape, military commanders threatened to kill him because they wanted to keep the goat. The rape complaint was brushed off as an irrelevance.

Buried in these accounts, however, there are signs that Congolese men are now slower to stigmatize daughters and wives who have been raped, and quicker to pursue justice against their rapists. Elaka was “forgiven” by her husband rather than banished. The people in Vumilia’s village were so enraged by the chief’s hard-line approach to sanitation that they fired him. Asha’s father had the courage to report the attack, and she has since found a husband.

Harbingers, perhaps, of more tolerance for victims and less for perpetrators. It may not seem much, but after eight years of darkness it is, at last, a glimmer.

Posted at 10:54 PM · Comments (0)

This book has been staring at me from the book shelf for a few weeks. I even gave it for Christmas to a couple of people, based on the recommendations of others. Let me say quickly that having started it yesterday on a new trip to Yunnan province (where the weather is gloriously warm and bright), I have not been disappointed. The writing is witty and incisive, and the author establishes an intimate feeling from the very first pages. The novel is the story of a mixed marriage between a Chinese-American man, Carnegie Wong, a Wasp wife, who is called Blondie, their three children, his mother, who dies of Alzheimer’s early on, but haunts them in the afterlife, and the ayi, or live in helper, who has come from China.
A quick passage about the mother:

Carnegie: To wit: she had, in her day, escaped from the Mainland by swimming across the harbor to Hong Kong. How appropriate was that? Given that there were sharks in the water; given that she couldn’t even swim, exactly. Anyone else would have thought twice. But my mother, being my mother, simply snugged a basketball under each arm, kicked until she got there, then looked up a distant cousin.
Where there is will, there is way, she would explain, years later, if asked.
Or else: I just don’t like those Communists.
Now she still said these things, her eyes blank.
— Where there is will.
— Those Communists.
— My cousin surprised, yes. Surprised.
Once I have her a nightgown printed with fish for Mother’s Day; she still wore it to bed at night. It had grown diaphanous with washing, so that you could see through the trout to her nipples, which sported the forlornly useful look of spare-the-counter stick-on appliance feet. Worse, you could see her diaper, which she needed. She cried and cried while I tried to get her to drink juice.
— You are going to become dehydrated, I told her. Do you want to dry up?
Often, in her early years at the Overlook, she still had her English, having attended a primary school run by American missionaries. How lucky fo rus! Often too, she still joked. What? You think you are white? You are Wong! Wong! Wong! she would say, banging her hands on her mattress. Or else: Two Wongs — two Wongs — two - don’t make a white!

Posted at 12:57 AM · Comments (0)

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