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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July 27, 2007

Despite its self-image as a profession that excommunicates and banishes those who violate its ethical codes, journalism routinely grants its miscreants second chances. For example, a 1995 Columbia Journalism Review piece about plagiarism documented the low price Nina Totenberg, Michael Kramer, Edwin Chen, Fox Butterfield, and 16 other journalists paid after being accused of nicking the words of other writers.

Author Trudy Lieberman found that nearly all of them were still in the business, and some of them had even kept their original jobs. As it turns out, not many publications force journalists to pay their debts to their profession and their readers. Often, they don’t even send the bill.

Journalist Michael Finkel got his second chance in the July 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine, where he contributes a lengthy cover story on malaria. Finkel, you may recall, was the New York Times Magazine contract writer who got busted in 2002 for committing a variety of transgressions in his feature story, “Is Youssouf Malé a Slave?” which chronicled the life and work conditions of a young laborer on an Ivory Coast cocoa plantation.

An Editor’s Note appended to the magazine story (subscription required) explains that Finkel built his feature “around a composite character, with time sequences and certain other facts falsified.” Although Youssouf Malé actually exists, Finkel created the Youssouf of the article by combining the stories of several boys. The real Youssouf spent less than a month at the plantation, not a year as Finkel reported. Youssouf’s return to his home and his parents, of which Finkel wrote, was told to him by another boy. A scene from the article in which a psychologist interviews Youssouf never took place.

These inaccuracies were deliberate, as Finkel has acknowledged to reporters and in his 2005 book, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa. Finkel writes that after he finished reporting from Africa, an editor asked if he could write the story of just one boy. He said that he could.

Finkel admits in True Story that he “invented” the composite character. “I thought I’d get away with it. I was writing about impoverished, illiterate teenagers in the jungles of West Africa. Who would be able to determine that my main character didn’t exist?” he writes. But Finkel was found out. He contemplated covering his tracks with a paper trail of new notes but ultimately confessed to his editors.

Finkel was no novice, so there can be no blaming his deceptions on youth or on not knowing better. He’d been freelancing at that point for 12 years, collecting bylines in Skiing, Sports Illustrated, the Atlantic, and National Geographic Adventure, as well as several in the Times Magazine for features from around the world, including a daring story in which he joined a group of Haitian refugees to sail illegally to the United States. His non-Youssouf work still commands respect from journalists I respect.

Should Finkel have been shunned forever, or did National Geographic do the right thing by giving him a second chance? Since writing True Story, for which he told the New York Observer he earned $500,000, he’s gotten a couple of other second chances. Finkel tells me via e-mail that he’s written for Men’s Journal, Backpacker, Runner’s World, and a few other publications, but nothing with the circulation of National Geo, a publication with great prestige.

If I had the constitution of a hanging judge, which I don’t, I’d have sent Finkel directly to the gallows for his Youssouf lies. He deliberately wrote things that were not true and called the work journalism. If that doesn’t constitute a professional death wish, I don’t know what does. He filed his lies in a fact-checked magazine that is read by knowing eyes around the world, the equivalent of robbing a camera-filled bank while wearing no mask. Finally, he violated the extreme bond of trust that readers and editors must invest in foreign correspondents. Distance, language, and culture make double-checking the truthfulness of stories reported from overseas difficult.

Comments Finkel has made to the press since the incident also indicate something less than complete remorse. (Finkel e-mailed me back once in response to a direct question about his career, but wrote that given his druthers he didn’t want to appear in this column. He did not respond to a second e-mail.)

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Posted at 11:52 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times
July 28 2007

China is an education. Learning about the country can seem as difficult as learning Chinese. The business visitor is said to be swiftly engulfed in the soupy embrace of China’s cities, with their mushrooming tower blocks, television-illuminated meals in private restaurant rooms and visits to karaoke bars. Those who classify themselves as tourists rather than travellers, meanwhile, will walk a famous wall and meet an army of model warriors, cruise a large river, eat some mystifying meals, go shopping and go home. Either way, the new, open China can sometimes seem as elusive as the old, forbidden one.

Unlocking its intricacies requires either the courage to sally out in the face of incomprehension (tough but rewarding – problem-solving, good humour and honesty are far more common in China than their opposites) or it requires a special interest – in birds, gardens, railway trains, art – which will lead you to stranger, more educative places than nightclubs and cruiseboats. Tea can do this, too. Grown throughout southern China and loved nationwide, it will not only draw you towards some of the country’s most remarkable landscapes but it also provides a glimpse, in the drinking, of a China far sweeter and more gracious than the nation’s brash public image.

My own Chinese education was defective in that I had assumed that the vast, sparely rugged landscapes of classical Chinese painting were more spiritual lesson than a faithful rendering of place. Those tiny figures moving, insect-like, between indolent river and abrupt peak were there to teach modesty, instil calm and underline impermanence, surely, rather than reflect reality. No landscape could open like that, could it? It could and it does. Travel in China’s tea country, and those same scenes will unfold before you, their pines seemingly placed at the summit of crags by some great artificer and their quiet valleys broken only by the soft race of falling water. Even the lenses of mist, mobile and intermittent, are accurate. Tea bushes thirst for more than twice London’s annual rainfall, and cloud cover combined with high humidity is perfect for keeping their vivid green leaves pliant.

A good bit of China is mountainous. Lowland areas are commandeered for the productive agriculture required to feed 1.3bn people, so that any crop that can migrate upwards will do so. Tea is ideal for this task – indeed you can create a small tea garden in many areas by doing no more than clearing the scrub to leave the wild, native bushes to enjoy the light and warmth on their own. “Garden” is exact: the small, shaped bushes grafted on to stone terraces and rock ledges look, at first sight, like effusions of the privet so cherished in suburban horticulture or like some vegetable sculptor’s audacious installation. In the Da Hong Pao (Great Red Cloak) valley of Wuyi Mountain in Fujian Province, this is an installation dating back to Tang times. At the same moment as the first Viking raiders were descending on Lindisfarne, in other words, the bamboos were being parted to make way for Camellia sinensis in this almost secret valley where water cuts its way through soaring planes of sandstone and conglomerate as sheerly as gin through ice.

In addition to Great Red Cloak, an oolong that is said to taste both of rocks and of sweet apples, Wuyi is also home to the greatest of all Lapsang Souchongs (or Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong, as it is known locally): that of Bohea Farm. This farm, where great smoked tea from wild bushes has been produced continuously since the 15th century, is sited at the village of Tongmu within the Long Chuan (Floating Dragon) gorge, in a protected zone of such environmental value that public access is restricted to the lower parts of the valley.

In springtime, smoke from logs of Taiwan red pine seeps from the wooden kiln roofs like the steam rising from a horse’s back after a canter in the rain; under the eaves, the rolled and withered leaves rest on giant bamboo trays while the fragrant, almost peat-like fumes riffle through them. The subtlety of Bohea Lapsang makes cheaper versions taste like burnt toast. Within China, Bohea is considered the origin of black tea. The fact that it was the source of the first tea imported to Britain meant that the name became, in the 17th century, a metonym for tea itself (the two words rhyme), and is thus used by Pope (in “The Rape of the Lock”) and Byron (in “Don Juan”). The great Scottish plant hunter Robert Fortune, who ended China’s tea monopoly by planting Darjeeling on behalf of the British East India Company, visited Bohea during a three-year voyage in the mid-19th century. “Never in my life,” he wrote later, “have I seen a view such as this, so grand, so sublime. High ranges of mountains were towering on my right and on my left, while before me as far as the eye could reach, the whole country seemed broken up into mountains and hills of all heights, with peaks of every form.”

For the complete article, please see ft.com

Posted at 11:41 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Review of Books

When the Press Fails: Political Power and the New Media from Iraq to Katrina
by W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston

University of Chicago Press, 263 pp., $22.50
American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media
by Neil Henry

University of California Press,326 pp., $24.95
1.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins. It has lost too much public respect. Courts that once treated it like a sleeping tiger now taunt it with insolent subpoenas and put in jail reporters who refuse to play ball with prosecutors. It is abused relentlessly on talk radio and in Internet blogs. It is easily bullied into acquiescing in the designs of a presidential propaganda machine determined to dominate the news.

Its advertising and circulation are being drained away by the Internet, and its owners seem stricken by a failure of the entrepreneurial imagination needed to prosper in the electronic age. Surveys showing that more and more young people get their news from television and computers breed a melancholy sense that the press is yesteryear’s thing, a horse-drawn buggy on an eight-lane interstate.

Then there are the embarrassments: hoaxers like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass turn journalism into farce. The elite Washington press corps is bamboozled into helping a circle of neoconservative connivers create the Iraq war. What became of heroes? Journalists used to dine out on the deeds of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during Watergate; of David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, and Malcolm Browne in Vietnam; of “Punch” Sulzberger and Kay Graham risking everything to publish the Pentagon Papers. Instead of heroes, today’s table talk is about journalistic frauds and a Washington press too dim to stay out of a three-card-monte game.
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Rupert Murdoch of course has long spread melancholy in newsrooms around the world, but it was the disclosure in May that the Bancroft family, which controls The Wall Street Journal, might be ready to sell him their paper for five billion dollars that really struck at journalism’s soul. The sale of another newspaper is common enough these days, but The Wall Street Journal is not another newspaper. It is one of the proudest pillars of American journalism. Like The New York Times and The Washington Post, it has for generations been controlled by descendants of a founding patriarch.

Family control has sheltered all three newspapers from Wall Street’s most insistent demands, allowing them to do high-quality—and high cost—journalism. It was said, and widely believed, that the controlling families were animated by a high-minded sense that their papers were quasi-public institutions. Of course profit was essential to their survival, but it was not the primary purpose of their existence. That one of these families might finally take the money and clear out heightens fears that no newspaper is so valuable to the republic that it cannot be knocked down at market for a nice price. Murdoch at the Journal is a dark omen for journalists everywhere. When the sign in the shop window says “Everything For Sale,” it is often followed by “Going Out Of Business.”

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism’s problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance. Still, it is on the ownership and management side that the gravest problems exist. The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers’ own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs. One document widely read among newspaper people is a speech delivered to the American Society of Newspaper Editors a year ago by John S. Carroll, formerly editor of the Los Angeles Times. It is an eloquent expression of the uneasiness many reporters and editors now feel about the future. Carroll titled his speech “What Will Become of Newspapers?” and, as the title suggests, his prognosis was not cheery.

He was especially alarmed about the breakdown of understanding between owners and working journalists and about the loss of common purpose that once united them. This has come about, he said, because the functions that were once the realm of strong publishers have been taken over by Wall Street money managers. The breakdown at the top began some forty years ago when local owners began selling their papers to corporations. As the nature of markets changed, power shifted from the corporations to investment funds, which make money by investing other people’s money in ways that make it multiply. It became hard to say anymore who or what a newspaper owner was. Owners ceased to be “identifiable human beings,” as Carroll put it. Sometimes the owner, who had once had a name—Otis Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, John Knight of Knight Ridder newspapers, Barry Bingham, of the Louisville Courier-Journal—became an it. Sometimes it seemed to be a room full of market researchers trolling the world by computer for profitable investment opportunities. Sometimes it was a fund manager with neither experience nor interest in journalism.

In this “post-corporate phase of ownership,” Carroll said,

we have seen a narrowing of the purpose of the newspaper in the eyes of its owner. Under the old local owners, a newspaper’s capacity for making money was only part of its value. Today, it is everything. Gone is the notion that a newspaper should lead, that it has an obligation to its community, that it is beholden to the public….

Someday, I suspect, when we look back on these forty years, we will wonder how we allowed the public good to be so deeply subordinated to private gain….

What do the current owners want from their newspapers?—the answer could not be simpler: Money. That’s it.

Carroll is an authority on the subject. As editor of the Los Angeles Times, the owner to which he reported was the Tribune Company, a conglomerate which had mushroomed out of Colonel Robert McCormick’s Chicago Tribune, self-styled “World’s Greatest Newspaper.” Before anyone guessed that the late-twentieth-century stock market boom was a bubble in the making, the Tribune Company had bought famous old newspapers hither and yon. Among them was the Los Angeles Times, then widely respected as one of America’s finest dailies.

Its reputation had been built a generation before Carroll’s arrival by Otis Chandler, a dynamic publisher willing to spend expansively, and sometimes extravagantly, to compete with the best in journalism. He could afford it because he belonged to the family that owned the paper. These were the descendants of Harry Chandler (1864– 1944), a California real estate tycoon, who had set up trusts for his children in the Depression years. It was a family that multiplied rapidly; at last count the Chandler trusts were thought to provide the main source of income for about 170 of Harry’s descendants.

In Otis’s time the number was smaller, of course, and though many resented his take-charge style and his indifference to the paper’s traditional right-wing politics, he was able to have his way with the Times as long as the other Chandlers’ money was not imperiled. Time passed, and Otis with it, and the Chandler heirs, who had never been wild about journalism anyhow, were courted by the Tribune Company. The deal was consummated in the year 2000 with the Tribune Company buying the Times and its parent Times-Mirror Company for $8 billion in stock and three seats on the Tribune board.

The Times-Mirror Company had itself been collecting newspapers (Newsday on Long Island, The Baltimore Sun, and The Hartford Courant, among others), and these all tumbled into Tribune’s basket in Chicago. Tribune was obviously a mammoth financial organization and hence extremely vulnerable when the market bubble broke and stocks, especially newspaper stocks, began declining. Carroll had the Times cruising successfully and was amenable to economizing when his Chicago bosses began asking him to cut editorial costs in 2003. Then he was asked to cut again. And again. He began objecting that the cutting was seriously damaging the paper, but Chicago insisted on more cuts. Eventually, in 2005, he resigned. The editor succeeding him was soon told that still more cuts would have to be made, and he resigned too.

Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product. Papers everywhere felt relentless demands for improved stock performance. The resulting policy of slash-and-burn cost-cutting has left the landscape littered with frail, failing, or gravely wounded newspapers which are increasingly useless to any reader who cares about what is happening in the world, the country, and the local community. Cost-cutting has reduced the number of correspondents stationed abroad, shriveled or closed news bureaus in Washington, and crippled local reporting staffs which once kept an eye on governors, mayors, state legislatures, small-town rascals, crooks, and jury suborners. It has also shrunk the size of the typical newspaper page, cutting the cost of newsprint by cutting news content.

Newspapers report their own erosion in the business columns, doggedly recording inch-by-inch shrinkage of page sizes and job-by-job shrinkage of news coverage, but statistics alone cannot convey the true loss to the country. Besides the Los Angeles Times, the papers showing the ravages of extensive cost-cutting include many once ranked among the country’s finest: The Baltimore Sun, The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Des Moines Register, The Hartford Courant, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the San Jose Mercury News, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for example.

The new-style owners are often puzzled when their editors and reporters make the traditional argument that journalism’s business is to provide a public service by supplying the information the citizenry needs for democracy to work. The new owners have a different view of duty. They are “sometimes genuinely perplexed to find people in their midst who do not feel beholden, first and foremost, to the shareholder,” Carroll says.

What makes these people tick? they wonder. The job of any employee, as they see it, is to produce a good financial result, not to indulge in some dreamy form of do-gooding at company expense…. Our corporate superiors regard our beliefs as quaint, wasteful and increasingly tiresome.

Carroll’s speech is invaluable for its working journalist’s grim view of how competitive market practices have changed the business; but Donald Graham recently provided a similar view from the owner’s seat. Graham is chairman of the board of The Washington Post, and his comment appeared on the Op-Ed page of The Wall Street Journal in April when Wall Street had The New York Times under attack.

Carroll is saying that free-market capitalism doesn’t really work very well in the newspaper business, and, if rigorously applied, tends to destroy it. Astonishingly—he is an owner, after all—Graham seems to agree. His essay, only a thousand words or so in length, was notably angry in warning that Wall Street’s single-minded insistence on maximizing profits could be fatal to journalism.

His statement was provoked by a Morgan Stanley money manager’s efforts to break the two-tier stock structure that preserves the Sulzberger family’s control of The New York Times. This arrangement was built into the Times corporate structure when the company entered the stock market in 1967. It limits control of the company to people holding a preferred class of stock, most of whom descend from Adolph S. Ochs, who founded the modern Times in 1896. Its present publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., is Ochs’s great-grandson.

Morgan Stanley tried to start a revolt of unprivileged stockholders last spring, urging them to withhold their votes from the candidates the Times Company had nominated to sit on its board. Graham acknowledged that he was not a disinterested party, since The Washington Post also operates under a two-tier structure designed to preserve family control of the business. The Post took its modern form in 1933 when Eugene Meyer (himself an extremely important figure in Wall Street) bought it at a bankruptcy sale. Graham is Meyer’s grandson, but while his family fortune may have been rooted in Wall Street, he is clearly disturbed about the modern money world’s rough hand on journalism. To support Morgan Stanley’s attack on the two-tier stock structure, he wrote, “is to run crazy risks” with the future of The New York Times. Eliminate the two-tier structure, and “a line of buyers eager to purchase the company would form within minutes,” Graham wrote. “No one could say no. The line would include private equity firms, high-ego billionaires, international media companies lacking a famous property and lots more.” The New York Times, he predicted, would be “auctioned off like a side of beef.”
2.

Wall Street at the feeding trough receives little attention in Neil Henry’s genial and rambling survey of journalism’s troubles in these electronic times. After a career at The Washington Post, Henry is on the journalism faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, and his book is concerned with the subjects that must worry young people starting out in the business: How does the Internet affect what we still call “the press”? Is “blogging” the journalism of the future? How can the journalist avoid being manipulated by the vast and deadly effective propaganda machinery of government and business?

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Posted at 3:23 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune

LETTER FROM CHINA

By Howard W. French
July 27, 2007

SHANGHAI: You can’t imagine how many flights there are in China until you’ve had the experience of waiting for a delayed plane at Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport, and the impression of abundance doesn’t come from watching planes take off.

China, a state run by engineers, is a builder’s paradise, where almost no expense is spared for infrastructure. Lots of Chinese cities, including many the average reader may have never heard of, have smart airports of recent vintage and clean, well thought out design that compare favorably to their American and European counterparts.

Shanghai and Beijing are hurtling toward the completion of fancy and expensive new terminals that are being added onto their spectacular existing international airports, both of which are relatively new.

Waiting for a flight at Hongqiao, Shanghai’s older, domestic terminal, is hell, though, because whether you’re there for 30 minutes or for three hours (more likely), you will be bombarded almost nonstop with blaringly loud announcements expressing “terrible regret” about delayed flights, about canceled flights and about changed gates. Anything else would simply not be a normal day at Hongqiao.

Console yourself, dear passenger, with the thought that you are at least receiving a free lesson in Chinese geography while you wait, as the names of virtually every city of note in China are read out - again, with “terrible regrets” - over the bad news concerning these flights.
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My most recent flight to Beijing, or to be more accurate, my most recent near flight to Beijing, lived up to Hongqiao’s airport hell reputation, and then some.

In the last few years, late afternoon air travel along the heavily trafficked Beijing-Shanghai corridor has become something akin to flying on the American Eastern Seaboard just before Thanksgiving.

And when there are summer rainstorms along the route, as happened to be the case on this day, it’s like trying to catch a flight on the eve of the Christmas holidays in the midst of a major snowstorm that wreaks a cascade of havoc on entire flight networks.

Experiences like these have come far too close to being the norm along China’s booming east coast, and all of the infrastructure in the world has done little to alleviate the situation. The misery is compounded by a lack here of many of the niceties of first world economies - notions like passengers’ rights, straightforward and timely information, or for that matter, departure halls where announcements are not shouted until you’ve been battered into submission.

On a sweltering Shanghai summer day, we sat on China Eastern Flight 5119, scheduled for 5 p.m. departure. Instead, the flight boarded at 5, and the passengers - we, that is - were kept in our seats with the plane parked at the gate for the next two hours, as the temperature steadily rose.

The first bad signs came with a terse announcement from the crew that we hadn’t moved yet because we hadn’t received instructions from the tower. “Terrible regrets. Your cooperation is appreciated.”

With that, plop, down came the overheard TV screens, which play the role of pacifiers in the world of Chinese aviation, and I knew from experience they were to be the source of yet more punishment.

In this instance, that meant one of those shows modeled after the old “Candid Camera,” where pranks are played upon unsuspecting passers-by, all to the sound of a high decibel laugh track.

When that tape ended, we were treated to a Chinese opera sung by a woman in a voice as shrill as the nightly news in Pyongyang. I had been trying to read a novel, and if you were to imagine that I was wondering right about then when it would dawn on Chinese airlines that many passengers prefer quiet, or perhaps their own stash of music via iPod, you wouldn’t be far off.

Note to Chinese airline passengers: loud or long mobile phone conversations are often not pleasing for your neighbors.

Note to the global airline industry: if anyone thinks legalizing cellphone use in the air is a good idea, please visit China first.

By this time it had become truly hot, with passengers busily fanning themselves with whatever was at hand. Others sat slumped, almost unconscious in their seats, or wearing stunned looks. Thoughtfully, the stewardesses decided to serve a meal, which, as comforting as it may have been to some, wasn’t altogether a good sign.

My instincts were correct. After the meal came an announcement in Chinese saying that weather conditions were responsible for the delays.

For the complete article, please see the link below:

http://iht.com/articles/2007/07/27/asia/letter.php

Posted at 2:51 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

July 20 2007

The crowd in the ballroom of the Kunlun Hotel in Beijing erupted in applause as the hammer went down on Wu Guanzhong’s “Ancient City of Jiaohe”. The occasion was Poly Auction Co’s inaugural evening sale on May 31 when the 1981 painting sold for a record Yn37m (£2.8m).

The room, packed with collectors and buyers, had been growing increasingly animated as bidding drove up the price from its estimate of Yn15m. When the final bid was announced, the crowd seemed to be celebrating not only the record sale but the vibrancy of the Chinese art market as a whole. Poly Auction representatives believe it to be the highest price paid for a work by a living Chinese artist.

The buyer, identified only by his surname, Cai, was from Singapore while 80 per cent of buyers at the sale were Chinese, according to Poly Auction director Li Da.

There were plenty of other high prices that evening. Mao Yan’s “Memory or the Dancing Black Rose” fetched Yn9.1m. Shi Chong’s “Contemporary Scenery” sold for Yn15m. Buyers for both were from mainland China.

The evening sale netted a total of Yn248m. Sixty-five contemporary works were offered for sale and, of these, 48 matched or exceeded their high estimate.

Though some at the auction dismissed the prices as “crazy”, the results were in line with the recent trajectory of the Chinese contemporary art market with prices having risen as much as tenfold over the past year. This jump, however, has led some to speculate that there is a bubble market.

Beijing art dealer Meg Maggio, who also serves as Poly Auction’s foreign adviser, dismisses this idea. “People are reacting because there’s no more bargain shopping in the third world,” she says. “At Poly, who got the highest prices? An 85-year-old man, who has dedicated his life to painting. The living father of Chinese modernism, Wu Guanzhong. If anyone deserves to get these prices, it’s him.”

The success of the sale has bolstered Poly Auction’s already impressive performance history. In November, it set a record price for Chinese contemporary art when “Newly Displaced Population”, a painting by Liu Xiaodong, sold for more than $2.7m.

For the complete article please ft.com

Posted at 10:28 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune

By Howard W. French
Published: July 19, 2007

BEIJING: On a recent slow news day, the modest item stuck out like the blast from the past that it was.

Out of nowhere, Lin Biao, Mao Zedong’s No. 2 during the 1960s, disgraced and largely forgotten, had resurfaced.

Marshal Lin had been canonized as a military hero in the war against the Japanese, and, mostly through sycophancy in the run-up to the Cultural Revolution, had won a place as the chairman’s designated successor.

Finally, he was judged a traitor, according to the Communist Party’s official verdict, following an airplane crash that killed him in 1971 while he was fleeing the country, after an alleged plot to assassinate Mao.

Suddenly, this relic of an era that feels more distant than the three-plus decades that separate us from these events was being given prominent display in the Chinese People’s Revolution Military Museum, in Beijing. The exhibit restored Lin to his place among the 10 giants of China’s revolutionary military history.

What did this all mean? If Lin Biao sightings are not altogether unheard of in China, an appearance like this was exceedingly rare. Was it the tentative start of his rehabilitation? Was it a volley in an obscure factional contest before a crucial party congress this autumn? Was it a largely unremarkable event, as some pretended? Or was it, as the curators of the museum said with straight faces, as press inquiries came flooding in, that this was an attempt to provide a more “comprehensive and objective” history?

Few things could be less certain than the last proposition. From beginning to end, Lin Biao’s history, like that of many of the great historical figures of what is called here “post-Liberation” China, has been massaged and embellished by the Communist Party’s keepers of the officially sanctioned truth.

Foreign historians, and increasingly their Chinese counterparts, too, say that Lin was neither quite the military genius he was made out to be at a time when a new revolutionary order was eager to enhance its legitimacy, nor was he ever quite the villain that the party made him out to be after Mao turned against him in 1970.

Indeed, Lin’s “plot” to kill Mao, if it existed, never got beyond the talking stage. He “probably knew next to nothing, or nothing at all, of the whole plot,” said Philip Short, a Mao biographer.

He Shu, the editor of Annals of the Red Crag, a party history magazine, said, “For a long time, historical studies or anything related to ideology have had to serve politics, to serve the purpose of propaganda.”

“When the political objectives are different, the propaganda is different, and social science goes along in accordance with the proper propaganda line. That’s not telling it as it is, that’s not real history.”

So why has Lin been returned to the revolutionary display case, and a spotlight, however narrow its beam, trained on him? If there are Chinese experts who know the answer to this question, so far they are not saying.

Whatever the intentions behind the exhibit may have been, for many experts, the Lin Biao matter reminds the world that however much China has changed economically, politically it remains relatively stuck in the past.

In the place of clear rules of power whose workings are regular, largely transparent and freely subject to coverage in the press and to public debate, China’s politics remain a universe of shadow plays and tea leaf readings, of combat through the posting of allegorical messages in often obscure publications and of history bent to the needs of the day.

Indeed, this point was made during the recent resurfacing of yet another disgraced political leader. A small but prestigious progressive journal, Yanhuang Chunqiu, lauded the all-but-invisible former party secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was dismissed and disgraced following the student protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, which ended in a deadly military crackdown. Unlike the hard-liners who prevailed, Zhao, who died under house arrest in 2005, had favored conciliation.

The authors who took the somewhat risqué step of hoisting Zhao’s banner openly did so in the name of political reform. The article asserted that corruption and influence peddling have become far worse in the period since Zhao and said that political reforms had “severely regressed.”

“Checks and balances of power are alarmingly lacking, the article continued, warning gravely that “the longer fundamental, substantial political reforms are delayed, the more likely unpredictable and insurmountable social unrest and political crises are going to occur.”

Du Daozheng, the president of Yanhuang Chinqiu magazine, denied that the article was part of any infighting. “If Lin Biao can be spoken about, why shouldn’t Zhao Ziyang be?” he asked. “After all, Zhao was member of party! So it is just normal for us to talk about Zhao.”

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Posted at 1:15 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
July 14, 2007

BEIJING

Zhang Jianhua, a sculptor, before a photo shoot with his piece, “Coal Accident, Coal Accident,” at A-Space gallery in Beijing, China.

IT is not easy to forget an encounter with Zhang Jianhua’s sculptures of Chinese coal miners; that is, if one is lucky enough to see them.

Many of the life-size works depict miners sitting on the ground in their black rubber boots wearing looks of sheer fatigue. Some stare blankly into the distance or prop up their heads with both hands, their faces fixed in nameless agony.

Yet, easily overlooked at first are the most haunting sculptures of all. At the edge of the out-of-the-way Beijing lot in a new art zone that is frequented by foreigners — but few Chinese — lie six figures shrouded in green blankets. Silently, they symbolize the mostly anonymous victims of China’s rolling mineworker catastrophe.

Although Mr. Zhang, 35, has an impeccable background as a student of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and has received critical praise for years, no Chinese museum or established gallery has been willing to display his coal miner work in its entirety, as he insists that they must. When an exhibit was organized in April at 798 Art Space, one of Beijing’s premier forums for contemporary artists, censors demanded that he leave the six dead workers out of the show.

Officially, 4,794 coal miners died in work-related accidents in China last year — more than 13 every day, on average, though many believe that the official figures understate the real toll. But Mr. Zhang’s temerity in representing the victims has won his work what might be called a soft ban.

“Each year, countless coal accidents take place,” he said. “The media puts the death toll at six to seven thousand, but I know the numbers don’t stop there. There are between 20 and 30 thousand deaths a year, but those who die at many illegal mines are not counted, and these deaths are not allowed to be reported.”

These days, a great deal of contemporary Chinese art veers into abstraction, or clever visual punning, often riffing on the country’s revolutionary past or on the new prosperity that many have found. But Mr. Zhang’s route to prominence has been more old-fashioned. He embraces realism, and uses it in a time-honored tradition as a prod to the social conscience of a society that he finds lacking in that department.

The artist’s first taste of successful shock realism came with another series of sculptures four years ago in which he depicted the lives of peasants from his native Henan Province. The 12 figures in that series included an elderly woman sitting alone, threadbare migrant workers and rural schoolteachers.

The work drew critical praise when it was introduced at a gallery in Beijing. But when the show began touring other venues in the capital later that year, displayed on the grounds of two middle-class housing developments and at China Agricultural University, it drew strong protests, with residents and students attacking it as vulgar, striking the artist and knocking over some of the figures. The university exhibition had to be canceled after only two hours. “These were beggars,” said one commentator in a school newspaper. “It’s sick.” Another complained, “Rural areas have progress, too. Why not show that?”

Mr. Zhang’s answer is that China these days is consumed with what he calls a “bubble reality.” Euphemism and sentimentality have deep roots in Chinese art, but on top of this has come a kind of idealizing self-censorship reinforced by the state propaganda system and further fueled by years of strong growth.

IN China today, news reports are full of problems being solved. The radio airwaves are full of odes to perfect love, and art galleries are full of pretty pictures. “Very few works speak to social problems,” Mr. Zhang said. “Chinese contemporary art doesn’t make people understand. It has lost its function and its very important social, avant-garde and revolutionary features.

“Today’s artists now create neither pain nor itch, and they don’t remain in people’s memories. Many of them are scared.”

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Posted at 2:17 PM · Comments (0)

(Editor’s note: This is a bit of a departure for me. Read it through, though. Funny. Quite funny.)

Copyright The Des Moines Register

July 13, 2007

Katie Couric needs our help.

Since she took over the anchor chair of the “CBS Evening News” last September, viewership has plunged to the point where only her immediate family and Bob Schieffer watch. (He’s still hoping to get the job back.)

This is not good.

“I have days when I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, what did I do?’ Couric told New York magazine.

I assume they failed to include the rest of the quote: “And then I have other days when I’m like, ‘I signed a long-term contract for $15 million a year. That’s what I did.’”

The magazine also reported that Couric became so upset with a news editor that she slapped him repeatedly on the arm. His sin: He had used the word “sputum” in a story.

For the record, here are other words she dislikes: “Nielsen,” “ratings,” “perky,” “pay cut,” “Meredith Vieira,” “Brian Williams,” and “nose rocket.”

I’m with her on “sputum.” First of all, it’s difficult to pronounce. Do you go with “sput” as in “Sputnik,” or “sput” as in “spud,” or “sput” as in “spewt?”

The other thing is, I can think of no occasion in which the word “sputum” has appeared in a news story that contained the slightest bit of good news. You never see, “The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to researchers at the University of Iowa who figured out the correct pronunciation of the word, ‘sputum.’”

Now that I know that I’m unlikely to hear the word “sputum” on the “CBS Evening News,” Couric can count on me to watch, if I’m home at 5:30 p.m., and if, for some strange reason, I haven’t already heard the news on CNN, FOX or MSNBC.

“The biggest mistake we made is we tried new things,” Couric told New York magazine.

She couldn’t be more wrong. The biggest mistake they made is not giving viewers what they want. Such as:

1. Puppies. People love puppies. Now that Bob Barker has retired, Katie should hold a puppy during the broadcast, then remind viewers to get their pets spayed and neutered. Although she might want to just stick with “neutered.” “Spayed” comes dangerously close to sounding like that other word she detests. By the way, “Sputum” would be a great dog’s name.

2. Celebrity gossip. We can’t get enough. Did you see that Madonna recently required reporters to maintain eye contact “at all times” during interviews, even banning them from looking at their notes?

Obviously, Madonna has figured out a way to hypnotize people to keep them obsessed with her career. Reporters are no longer able to see their questions, such as, “Why am I wasting my time talking to you?”

Here’s a ratings winner: Katie should challenge Madonna to a stare down.

3. Missing white women. Nancy Grace and Greta Van Susteren have built their careers on this. During those rare weeks when there are no missing white women, our Katie could set up a sting to catch Internet predators. There’s apparently no shortage of them, either.

4. Make “YouTube” your friend. You might think that Americans would tire of seeing squirrels skateboarding. You would be wrong.

5. More slapping. The most attention Couric has received in six months is the revelation that she slapped her news editor. I think she’s on to something.

Admit it, how many times have you wanted to reach into the television and whack the person inside?

Imagine: A White House spokesman is invited on to the “CBS Evening News” set to be interviewed. The instant he begins defending President Bush, Couric says, “Wait a minute!” and reaches under her desk, where she pulls out one of those giant bats that Bamm-Bamm carried on “The Flintstones.” She then proceeds to smack the tar out of him.

Make it a plastic bat. You wouldn’t want the puppies getting hurt.

“Watch Katie Couric Whack Somebody.”

Let’s see Charlie Gibson compete with that.

Reporter Ken Fuson’s column runs on Friday. He can be reached at (515) 284-8501 or kfuson@dmreg.com.

Posted at 1:19 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune

TOKYO: Every day in Japan I face etiquette dilemmas.

My son returns from camp with another child’s clothes. Do I ship them back dirty, which seems sort of mean, or do I launder them, which would cause the owner to lose face?

My neighbor tells me to leave my phone number in her letter box if I want to occasionally receive baked goods from her. It seems forward of me to leave her my number, but I don’t want to ignore her request.

I’m in a crowded train, and my nose is running. Blowing is considered disgusting here, but the alternative is disgusting to me.

From the proper degree of a bow (15 to 45 degrees depending on occasion) to how a lady eats a rice cracker (broken by hand into bite size pieces with handkerchief on lap), a complex and subtle etiquette code dictates the proper way to do everything in Japan.
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Japanese embrace the rules because following them assures there will be no offensive or embarrassing moments. My parents implanted the code into me from childhood, warning that I would be shunned if I didn’t learn the protocol. But my reflexes are rusty from having lived abroad for many years.

Judging from the large section of manners books at my local bookstore, I’m not the only lost, rude soul. Increased social interaction and new technology like cellphones and computers have diversified scenarios giving rise to more rules and a big demand for the latest etiquette guides. Last year, long-time former bureaucrat Mariko Bando set out to write a book on how professional women could maintain their emotional dignity in a male-dominated workplace, but her publishers urged her to cover etiquette tips like attire, manners and polite language. She complied, and “Dignity of a Woman” has become a best seller.

Manners books traditionally focused on “kan kon sou sai” - literally meaning the rites of coming of age - weddings, funerals and ancestor worship. Now they offer titles like “PTA Dictionary for Getting Along with Others and Writing Notes,” which tells you how to inform the teacher that your child has to sit out gym class or how to wiggle out of committee duties. A letter-writing guide offers tips on composing an apology note to a store where you have shoplifted two packs of gum and some AA batteries, (express deep remorse even if the items are small) and declining an offer for a second hand piano (blame it on a scatterbrained child who now wants to take swimming instead).

It doesn’t all end in this lifetime either. Funeral preparation books offer pointers on how to be well-regarded after death.

Want to make a phone call? I found four books on the store shelf devoted exclusively to phone manners with tips like no walking and talking on a cellphone because the other party might detect a roughness of breath or hear your footsteps. If you buy the phone guide, you might need a language handbook, too, to guide you through the maze of honorifics. I was recently tongue-tied with confusion on the phone with my father’s secretary when trying to tell her my father didn’t need to call me back. I must use respectful forms when addressing her but humble language when referring to my father or myself.

There are plenty of etiquette guides for foreign visitors, but it’s probably most important to try to do as others do instead of flaunting what you think you may know. On several occasions I’ve seen foreigners striking wooden chopsticks against each other, smug that they know how to smooth off any splinters. That’s actually a crass gesture. These people probably don’t know that there are more than 30 faux pas chopsticks maneuvers each with their proper term like sucking and wandering.

A likely infraction that is a topic of much discussion these days is applying makeup on trains. It’s become a common sight to see young women drawing their eyeliner and brushing on mascara with great dexterity in crowded morning commuter trains. While critics say grooming is a private act that others don’t wish to observe, “there are still no rules for anonymous situations,” says Bando.

I’m still trying to get my bearings back, and my current strategy is to overcompensate. I laundered and ironed the scraggly camp clothes and took a gift with me when I presented my neighbor with my phone number. On the packed train, I dabbed my nose and swallowed the rest. All for the sake of politesse.

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Posted at 6:23 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The International Herald Tribune

By Howard W. French
July 12, 2007

SHANGHAI: The facts may be murky, but the situation itself is riddled with hints that favor certain interpretations.

Seminarians in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, who were associated with the city’s notorious Red Mosque, site of a recent gun battles and a military siege, were scouring the town in search of redoubts of “loose morals.”

After weeks of free rein in the city attacking fellow Pakistanis, the squads of self-appointed enforcers of strict Shariah, consisting of armed male and female students, raised the stakes, and selected a foreign target.

On June 23, the seminarians entered a Chinese-run health care center, which is often a euphemism for sex parlor, and kidnapped seven Chinese people, including five females whom they believed to be prostitutes.

Within Pakistan, and indeed much more widely among people who have followed these events closely, this incident, along with the killing two weeks later of three Chinese people in the western Pakistani city of Peshawar, is believed by many South Asian diplomats to have precipitated the decision by President Pervez Musharraf to lay siege to the mosque, mounting a rare, direct confrontation with the forces of radical Islam in his country.

Alarmed by the attacks on their citizens, and on the sensitive question of public perception of these events, Chinese leaders are widely reported by these diplomats to have put strong pressure on Musharraf to take action. And China being an increasingly important ally, militarily and economically, for Pakistan, that is exactly what Musharraf did.

This understanding of events may be common elsewhere, but it has gone all but unheard of here in China. There has been scarcely any mention of a possible role of the anti-Chinese attacks in the Pakistani government’s decision to take on the radicals at the Red Mosque, and none at all in the Chinese media.

Moreover, almost no one in the press has printed, even speculatively, what many Chinese themselves presume to be the truth of this matter, that the women kidnapped and later released in Islamabad were sex workers.

After all, there are important myths to protect: One of them is the essential goodness of the Chinese people, and the other, that China does not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.

Chinese citizens and Chinese interests are fanning out around the globe at a rate that is unequaled in this country’s long history. Wherever they land the Chinese are very often reproducing a Chinese way of life, as Americans did in the postwar era over half a century ago.

As with overseas Americans - the “Ugly American” became a cliché in Asia - among the Chinese, naturally enough, there is good and bad. Along with fresh injections of capital and ingenuity and China’s famous entrepreneurial bustle, the Chinese also often bring an insular clannishness, a driven style of management, an unblushing attitude toward corruption, and as the case in Pakistan suggests, an acceptance of things like brothels, which are common in China but in many other societies are seen as undesirable or are illegal.

Beyond the very real issue of the problems such things might cause abroad, there is an issue of growing importance in China itself, one of information and candor and an ability to accept criticism, or more to the point where the events of Pakistan are concerned, to promote and accept self-criticism.

In online discussions of the massage parlor kidnappings, Chinese who mentioned the possibility that the abductees were prostitutes were quickly denounced. Others who had been fed sanitized accounts of the incident demanded military action.

“If you ask me, I’d say we stop protesting, and just go there and eliminate the problem,” wrote one man on a popular forum after the Peshawar killings. “How about it? We have over one billion people. We needn’t fear. If our country loves its people, it should stand up for them. If the Americans have a lot of excuses, we can find excuse too!”

Another person lamented that “the last page of an American passport says, ‘The U.S.A. stands behind you!’ The last page of a Chinese passport says, ‘When Chinese citizens encounter difficulties, please look for necessary assistance from the country or area you are in.’ ” Unfortunately, neither passport description was correct.

Why does any of this matter? Because as the Chinese presence in countries around the world grows and as the country’s overseas interests deepen, nationalistic reasoning like this, fed by skewed and censored news accounts - filled with conspiring foreigners and innocent Chinese - is likely to grow.

The Chinese government will, of course, have only itself to blame if a crisis like Peshawar passes the threshold of damage control and spirals altogether out of control.

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Posted at 10:43 AM · Comments (0)

I could begin and end this with one word: delightful.

There is a wonderful dream like quality to this memoir, a dream with the kind of clarity and detail that we often yearn for but seldom attain. Kapuscinski anticipated magic realism, and continues in that vein to the end. There may nothing utterly reliable in the whole text, but its innocence and enthusiasm for life is rare. The conceit of linking his life with that of Herodotus, too, is a stroke of genius. Highly recommended.

Link

Posted at 12:40 PM · Comments (0)

This is perhaps the most beautifully produced book of photography ever sold. It’s not my genre, and I bought it despite second thoughts that a book of images of rocks could really hold my interest in a lasting way.
The book arrived and the doubts have been vanquished. The rocks are rendered with a beauty that equals the very best of abstract impressionism, and indeed often surpasses it.
The short essays on each counter page are also quite stunning.

Link

Posted at 12:22 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Straits Times

Monday 9 July 2007

Much has been said about China’s soft power in recent years. From the establishment of Confucius Institutes spreading Chinese language teaching around the world to the increase of aid to Africa, China has been portrayed as being extremely skilful and effective in projecting soft power.

A new book on this subject — Charm Offensive by Joshua Kurlantzick of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - is even subtitled “How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming The World.”

Whether China’s soft power has reached world-transforming proportions may still be subject to debate, but clearly it is in no danger of being’ underestimated.

But is there any danger of it being overestimated? Analyses of China’s soft power tend to focus on its fast growth, with little mention of the gaps. And these are indeed many.

One particularly prominent gap is the absence of Chinese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on the international stag~, which deprives China of a crucial soft power tool, hampers its public diplomacy, weakens the credibility of the messages it seeks to send out, and reduces the amount of feedback Beijing receives on its soft power initiatives, limiting its ability to assess existing programmes and improve them.

A good’ illustration can be found in Africa. With the rapid expansion of China’s economic activities on the African continent in recent years, accusations of exploitative Chinese behaviour have mounted. Cheap Chinese imports are held responsible for the decline of local industries; Chinese companies are said to mistreat African employees; and Chinese immigrants are blamed for taking jobs away from locals.

On top of that, China is accused of propping up regimes that oppress their own people while African opposition politicians have successfully used attacks on China to gamer votes.

Traditionally, Chinese diplomacy in Africa has been strong in developing relations with the political elites but weak in engaging African civil society. Beijing’s lack of tools and experience in engaging the “African on the street” makes it ill-prepared to address the new problems associated with China’s heightened presence on the continent. This is a time when Chinese NGOs could play an indispensable role - prod ding Chinese companies to be more socially responsible, ensuring that Chinese aid money spent more efficiently, sensitising Chinese immigrants to local culture and customs, and helping Chinese government understand better the needs of ordinary Africans. If such organisations existed, that is. The lack of Chinese NGOs to mitigate some negative effects of the explosion of Chinese activity in Africa is an obvious gap in China’s soft power.

Another example of the limits of China’s soft power is the absence of Chinese non-governmental voices that are organized, well-measured and international, commenting on the hot issues plaguing Sino-Japanese relations.

There is much popular anger in China over the attitudes i right-wing Japanese towards war-time history, and Beijing has loudly condemned each visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and each denial of the Japanese army’s World War II atrocities by right-wing politicians.

However, China has had little success in winning international sympathy and support in its dispute with Japan over history. Every Chinese national knows about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. which 300,000 Chinese civilians were reportedly killed by the Japanese army, but only after ill publication of a best-selling boo by an American journalist i 1997 did the Western public learn about this “forgotten Holocaust of World War II”.

Although many Chinese women were enslaved as “comfort women” for Japanese soldiers during the war, it was only through the efforts of South Korean, Filipino, Taiwanese and Western NGOs that the crimes again comfort women gained world-wide attention and pressure pile up on the Japanese government to issue an official apology.

China’s continued anger over Japan’s handling of their shared history may well be justified, but there is no Chinese NGO to tell an international audience the little-known facts about the sufferings of millions of Chinese people under Japanese occupation There is no Chinese NGO to explain to the international community, using language and methods familiar to them, why the Chinese seem hung up on things that happened long ago and why they seem to enjoy bashing Japan over its past quite so much.

With all the criticisms of Japan coming from either the Chinese government or blog postings and Internet chatroom discussions, their credibility has been severely challenged.

The Chinese government is vulnerable to accusations that it is exploiting history to deflect domestic political tensions and to try to out-manoeuvre Japan in present-day rivalries, while most Internet chattering is rightly dismissed as nothing more than wild nationalistic raving.

Until there are independent, internationally savvy Chinese NGOs operating abroad to serve as a bridge between the Chinese and other peoples, and to fill in the gaps left by China’s formal diplomacy, it is probably premature to give high scores to China’s soft power.

The writer is a research fellow at the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham

Posted at 2:01 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

July 6 2007

I am not a regular on the A-Train, but I suspect Tokyo’s subway system is more ruthlessly punctual. Several years ago, on a business trip to Japan, I made the awful faux pas of clipping the stiletto heel of my rather stern interpreter with my own shoe as we were about to board a train. I watched, in horror, as her patent leather footwear gently spiralled onto the track, leaving her standing on one leg, like a stranded flamingo.

A guard was summoned and, after examining a fabulously intricate timetable, he jumped onto the track to retrieve the lost shoe. Coming from London, I couldn’t see the point of checking a schedule, especially as the trains were arriving every two or three minutes. Where I come from, a timetable would have provided little, if any, clue as to whether the next District line train would arrive in 15 seconds (splat) or 15 minutes.

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After living in Tokyo for five years I have learnt that even crowded commuter trains run to the second. I have literally set my watch by a bullet train’s scheduled arrival time.

Japan’s legendary efficiency has little to do with technology – as is sometimes supposed – and much more to do with people’s attitude to work. If you watch Tokyo’s subway guards, you’ll notice that they run everywhere, as if they were on army manoeuvres. So do waiters and waitresses. And post office staff.

Everywhere you look, the Japanese work with a speed and efficiency that cannot fail to produce puzzled (if admiring) head-shaking from outsiders. Construction workers perform callisthenics to recorded music before starting their 6am shift with a company song and a deep bow to their supervisor. Assembly workers practise ways of eliminating unnecessary movements that might cost fractions of a second when they could be building cars or photocopiers. I once visited a Canon assembly plant outside Shanghai fitted with an electronic sensor to ensure that staff entered the factory floor at optimum speed. About a year later, anti- Japanese riots swept across China – though this may have been purely coincidental.

For the foreigner living in Tokyo, all this efficiency is a joy to sit back and behold. But is the Japanese dedication to work entirely healthy?

For the complete article, please see the link below.

Posted at 6:07 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times

July 9, 2007

John Szarkowski, a curator who almost single-handedly elevated photography’s status in the last half-century to that of a fine art, making his case in seminal writings and landmark exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, died in on Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 81.
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Richard Avedon/Courtesy Richard Avedon Foundation

John Szarkowski in 1975.

The cause of death was complications of a stroke, said Peter MacGill of Pace/MacGill Gallery and a spokesman for the family.

In the early 1960’s, when Mr. Szarkowski (pronounced Shar-COW-ski) began his curatorial career, photography was commonly perceived as a utilitarian medium, a means to document the world. Perhaps more than anyone, Mr. Szarkowski changed that perception. For him, the photograph was a form of expression as potent and meaningful as any work of art, and as director of photography at the Modern for almost three decades, beginning in 1962, he was perhaps its most impassioned advocate. Two of his books, “The Photographer’s Eye,” (1964) and “Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures From the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art” (1973), remain syllabus staples in art history programs.

Mr. Szarkowski was first to confer importance on the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand in his influential exhibition “New Documents” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967. That show, considered radical at the time, identified a new direction in photography: pictures that seemed to have a casual, snapshot-like look and subject matter so apparently ordinary that it was hard to categorize.

In the wall text for the show, Mr. Szarkowski suggested that until then the aim of documentary photography had been to show what was wrong with the world, as a way to generate interest in rectifying it. But this show signaled a change.

“In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends,” he wrote. “Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it.”

Critics were skeptical. “The observations of the photographers are noted as oddities in personality, situation, incident, movement, and the vagaries of chance,” Jacob Deschin wrote in a review of the show in The New York Times. Today, the work of Ms. Arbus, Mr. Friedlander and Mr. Winogrand is considered among the most decisive for the generations of photographers that followed them.

As a curator, Mr. Szarkowski loomed large, with a stentorian voice and a raconteurial style. But he was self-effacing about his role in mounting the “New Documents” show.

“I think anybody who had been moderately competent, reasonably alert to the vitality of what was actually going on in the medium would have done the same thing I did,” he said several years ago. “I mean, the idea that Winogrand or Friedlander or Diane were somehow inventions of mine, I would regard, you know, as denigrating to them.”

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Copyright Psychology Today

Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature.

This means two things. First, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our ancestors millions of years ago. Second, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all men or women, despite seemingly large cultural differences.

Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and environment. In this article, however, we emphasize biological influences on human behavior, because most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. In contrast, evolutionary psychologists see human nature as a collection of psychological adaptations that often operate beneath conscious thinking to solve problems of survival and reproduction by predisposing us to think or feel in certain ways. Our preference for sweets and fats is an evolved psychological mechanism. We do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste good to us.

The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. We state them because they are true, supported by documented scientific evidence. Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct.

Excerpted from Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, to be published by Perigree in September 2007.

1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)

Long before TV—in 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia ago—women were dying their hair blond. A recent study shows that in Iran, where exposure to Western media and culture is limited, women are actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts. It is difficult to ascribe the preferences and desires of women in 15th-century Italy and 21st-century Iran to socialization by media.

Women’s desire to look like Barbie—young with small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes—is a direct, realistic, and sensible response to the desire of men to mate with women who look like her. There is evolutionary logic behind each of these features.

Men prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older women. One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness; another is hair. Healthy women have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair grows slowly, shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman’s health status.

Men also have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio. They are healthier and more fertile than other women; they have an easier time conceiving a child and do so at earlier ages because they have larger amounts of essential reproductive hormones. Thus men are unconsciously seeking healthier and more fertile women when they seek women with small waists.

Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman’s breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman’s age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.

Alternatively, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).

Blond hair is unique in that it changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to mate with blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women. It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.

Women with blue eyes should not be any different from those with green or brown eyes. Yet preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable—in males as well as females. One explanation is that the human pupil dilates when an individual is exposed to something that she likes. For instance, the pupils of women and infants (but not men) spontaneously dilate when they see babies. Pupil dilation is an honest indicator of interest and attraction. And the size of the pupil is easiest to determine in blue eyes. Blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not.

The irony is that none of the above is true any longer. Through face-lifts, wigs, liposuction, surgical breast augmentation, hair dye, and color contact lenses, any woman, regardless of age, can have many of the key features that define ideal female beauty. And men fall for them. Men can cognitively understand that many blond women with firm, large breasts are not actually 15 years old, but they still find them attractive because their evolved psychological mechanisms are fooled by modern inventions that did not exist in the ancestral environment.
2. Humans are naturally polygamous

The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.

Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.

Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the “winners” and the “losers” in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.

In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one.” Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy

When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.

The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that’s much better than not marrying anyone at all.

Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don’t realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim

Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why? The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don’t get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.

However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.
5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce

Sociologists and demographers have discovered that couples who have at least one son face significantly less risk of divorce than couples who have only daughters. Why is this?

Since a man’s mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power—whereas a woman’s is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness—the father has to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of these resources he has. In contrast, there is relatively little that a father (or mother) can do to keep a daughter youthful or make her more physically attractive.

The continued presence of (and investment by) the father is therefore important for the son, but not as crucial for the daughter. The presence of sons thus deters divorce and departure of the father from the family more than the presence of daughters, and this effect tends to be stronger among wealthy families.
6. Beautiful people have more daughters

It is commonly believed that whether parents conceive a boy or a girl is up to random chance. Close, but not quite; it is largely up to chance. The normal sex ratio at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls. But the sex ratio varies slightly in different circumstances and for different families. There are factors that subtly influence the sex of an offspring.

One of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents of low status have more daughters. This is because children generally inherit the wealth and social status of their parents. Throughout history, sons from wealthy families who would themselves become wealthy could expect to have a large number of wives, mistresses and concubines, and produce dozens or hundreds of children, whereas their equally wealthy sisters can have only so many children. So natural selection designs parents to have biased sex ratio at birth depending upon their economic circumstances—more boys if they are wealthy, more girls if they are poor. (The biological mechanism by which this occurs is not yet understood.)

This hypothesis has been documented around the globe. American presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet secretaries have more sons than daughters. Poor Mukogodo herders in East Africa have more daughters than sons. Church parish records from the 17th and 18th centuries show that wealthy landowners in Leezen, Germany, had more sons than daughters, while farm laborers and tradesmen without property had more daughters than sons. In a survey of respondents from 46 nations, wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for sons if they could only have one child, whereas less wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for daughters.

The generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis goes beyond a family’s wealth and status: If parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for sons than for daughters, then they will have more boys. Conversely, if parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for daughters, they will have more girls.

Physical attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even more to women’s reproductive success than to men’s. The generalized hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents should have more daughters than sons. Once again, this is the case. Americans who are rated “very attractive” have a 56 percent chance of having a daughter for their first child, compared with 48 percent for everyone else.

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Copyright The Miami Herald

PEARL LAGOON, Nicaragua — In hidden fishing villages straddling the wide, muddy Kukra River along the Atlantic Coast, a quiet cultural and civil-rights movement flickers:

Almost six feet and dark-skinned, a 17-year-old whirls in her kitchen, enchanted by the intricate African beading on the gown she will wear in the village’s first black beauty pageant.

A 47-year-old reggae artist who chronicles the pain and hope of his people in song makes history as the first black to win his country’s highest cultural award.

A 30-year-old activist finally liberates her hair, lets it grow naturally, an act that screams race more than complexion ever could.

These stories are part of a slow but dramatic shift in consciousness among blacks here and throughout Latin America. In something akin to the civil-rights movement in the United States — without the lynchings, bombings and mass arrests — blacks are pushing for more rights and reclaiming their cultural identity.

“For years, it was just so much easier to not ‘be’ black, to call yourself something else,” says Michael Campbell, who grew up 18 miles downriver in Bluefields. “But the key to our future is to strengthen our identity, to say we are black, and we are proud.”

BELATED ATTENTION

Latin American governments are listening and have finally begun to address racial inequities that have simmered since slavery.

Just four years ago, Brazil created a Cabinet-level position to deal with race. In Colombia, activists have won legislation legally recognizing blacks and their history. In Cuba, increasing numbers of non-political groups are forming to tackle race issues, including the Martin Luther King Movement for Civil Rights. And in the nearby Dominican Republic, some blacks are fighting state authorities for the right to be categorized as “black” on their passports.

Statistics show that blacks in the region are more likely to be born into poverty, to die young, to read poorly and to live in substandard housing.

Authorities are only now starting to count the black population, but the World Bank estimates that it numbers anywhere from 80 million to 150 million, compared with 40.2 million in the United States.

The new push for change is fueled by support from African-American politicians and civil rights groups through globalization — the technological ability to share common human experiences. Indeed, once isolated Latin American countries now have access to pop-cultural channels such as MTV and BET, which broadcast social messages worldwide.

Just last week, U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., led members of the Congressional Black Caucus in a nationally televised townhall discussion in Colombia with President Alvaro Uribe about the living conditions of Afro-Colombians.

“[Afro-descendants] can see what the outside world is doing. That’s caused a consciousness where they say, ‘We can do it, too,’ ” says Meeks, who is also working with blacks in Peru and Bolivia. “They can see what the civil-rights movement did in the United States and know that they have the ability to benefit also.”

The movement challenges a widely held belief that Latin America comfortably witnessed the civil-rights movement in the United States from afar because the region was not racist, and blacks were already integrated.

“The black movements have been able to get people to question that notion, and to acknowledge that racial democracy is a great idea and kind of wonderful dream, but it really doesn’t exist on the ground yet,” says George Reid Andrews, author of Afro-Latin Americans and a professor of comparative race at the University of Pittsburgh. “That, I think, is a real achievement.”

DISADVANTAGED GROUP

Nicaragua’s black population is the largest in Central America, but there is only one black member in its National Assembly, Raquel Dixon Brautigam, who was elected last year.

Only about one in five residents in Nicaragua’s predominantly black neighborhoods have access to clean water, versus the national average of three in five. Between 4 percent and 17 percent have electricity, compared with the national average of 49 percent.

Twenty years ago, the country recognized blacks and indigenous people through autonomy laws, making it possible for them to claim natural resources, demarcate communal lands, govern themselves and reclaim their ancestral identity.

For years, the struggle has been framed largely in regional terms — the Atlantic Coast, led by towns such as Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas, versus the Pacific Coast — English versus Spanish, Creole versus Spanish-indigenous mestizo. Creoles, descendents of English masters and their Caribbean slaves, often identify themselves as black.

“Race and region are inextricably linked,” says Juliet Hooker, a native of Bluefields and assistant professor of government at the University of Texas. “We have never really been acknowledged in the national narrative about identity. Much of the discrimination has been through the lens of the coast we live on.”

Now, for blacks — about 477,000, or 9 percent of the 5.3 million Nicaraguans — the movement is largely about visibility.
A Garífuna boy, kicking a soccer ball, is part of a dwindling group descended from shipwrecked Africans exiled to Honduras in 1797. (Patrick Farrell/Miami Herald)

Black leaders and activists say they are collectively defining, and redefining, what it means to be black here. They are working on an ambitious agenda that includes redistricting for better political representation, bilingual education and a black-history curriculum for public schools. And in March, the National Assembly passed a reform measure to include race issues in the new penal code.

Before now, there were no anti-discrimination or affirmative-action laws. Still, a bill that would outlaw institutional racism has languished in the assembly for more than two years, with not enough backers to push it through.

This isn’t the first time blacks have mobilized.

A black-power movement started along the coast as early as the 1920s through the nationalist message of Marcus Garvey.

In the 1960s, as the civil-rights movement was unfolding in the United States, blacks formed a coalition to negotiate better living conditions. That effort fell apart with the start of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. After the war, the Sandinistas promised to end racial discrimination and to promote regional cultures. At the same time, they were accused of precisely the opposite — oppressing groups already disenfranchised.

It would be almost three decades before meaningful steps were taken under the Sandinista regimes. Now, there is cautious hope with the return of that government.

RACE CONSCIOUSNESS

Although the Atlantic Coast has been settled since the 17th century, the first road connecting the coast to the rest of the country opened only 50 years ago. It is still impassable during the rainy season and still doesn’t go all the way.

The last leg to Bluefields from Managua is by boat, along the Escondido River. Despite the remoteness, it has not been closed entirely to the outside world. Some residents talk on the telephone, listen to the radio, watch foreign programs on television and a few have access to the Internet. Much of the contemporary movement along the coast came from men who died long ago — Martin Luther King Jr. and Bob Marley. King’s unyielding message of equality and Marley’s social lyrics were delivered here starting in the 1970s by kids who got jobs on cruise ships and brought back books and music.

Pearl Lagoon’s unofficial leader, William Wesley, a warm guy with an easy smile, lives on the main road with a view of the village. Just inside his living room, a picture of King hangs near the phone.

“The kids came home, and they kept talking about these people,” says Wesley, a retired teacher. “I knew a little bit already. But I wanted to know more. I found myself in the teachings of King and Malcolm X. I discovered my Afro heritage. We have to take what they said to help us create a direction that we can all follow.”

In Bluefields, Carmen Joseph, more comfortably ‘‘Miss Carmen,” a caterer who is said to make the best potato salad in town, quickly steps outside a neighbor’s house. She sits on the front porch, this racial business too touchy for inside talk.

“Yes,” she whispers, never making eye contact. “Some folks don’t say they are what they are. You see, I am black, and I raised my family up knowing they were black.”

With eight children, Joseph has spent a lifetime trudging up and down the hills of Bluefields, establishing her place as one of the town’s matriarchs. “I am not ashamed. I never turned on my color, but some people do.”

To appreciate the story of race here, is to understand the kaleidoscopic legacy of slavery, the historic demonization and denial of blackness and the practice of racial mixing.

This portrait is complicated by the lack of reliable census data because of traditional undercounting and because some blacks decline to identify themselves as such.

The dynamic along the coast is a layered quilt of Miskitos, mestizos and blacks. The ancestors of other Afro-Nicaraguans were free blacks who immigrated from Jamaica and other Caribbbean countries, lured by the good, steady jobs available for English speakers.

Stories abound about people who have hidden behind ambiguously brown complexions, “passing” for Miskito Indians, or mestizo.

“It’s hard to mobilize when you are still recouping the identity and just starting to openly use the term black,” says Hooker, the University of Texas professor whose father was a regional councilman.

A year ago, Shirlene Green Newball, who grew up in Puerto Cabezas, allowed her perm to grow out. “I really wanted to show and know who I am,” says Newball, who works for a women’s organization.

Newball had thought for a while about what it meant to be black here. She considered all the terms morena, coolie, afro, chocolate, la negra. Then she decided that natural hair — an enduring barometer of ethnicity was the purest expression of blackness.

“You are seeing an authentic black movement along the coast, but things are moving slowly,” says Kwame Dixon, an assistant professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University.

SYMBOL OF CULTURE

In Pearl Lagoon, population 3,000, the dogs sleep on the dock, the main drag is more dusty path than street, the country-western music drifts from open windows and doors, and Koreth Reid McCoy rushes home from school.

She floats the whole way, more than a mile, to behold the lovely lavender gown with beads she is to wear at the beauty pageant. In the last decade, the coast has held annual black beauty pageants, but this is the first one — along with an African cultural festival — in Pearl Lagoon.

“I love the way it falls. I love the colors. I love the style,” Koreth says, her voice falling into a lullaby. “It reminds me of Africa. I’m so proud of my heritage and my ancestry.”

Leaving her house, Koreth steps into the road, and, carried by the giggles of barefoot little girls, makes her way toward the river and back, as poised and glamorous as she would be on anybody’s runway. All of a sudden, and maybe not so suddenly, she is more than a pretty girl in a pretty dress. Koreth is a symbol of cultural possibilities.

“I want people to know where we are from.”
Philip Montalban Ellis sings about his hometown, Bluefields. ‘I been trying to sing songs that say something and that uplift my people,’ he said. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)

MESSAGE IN MUSIC

For as long as he can remember, and certainly when times were bad, Philip Montalban Ellis — beautiful dreadlocks to his waist and a guitar that rarely leaves his side — has been singing about the black experience.

… We gotta fight or we will die… . Lord knows we need liberation, Lord knows it’s the only solution… .

Today, Montalban sits on an old, rusted chair under a lime tree in his backyard, strumming away.

“I been trying to sing songs that say something and that uplift my people. We have struggled so long,” he says. “I have been charged with carrying the message of my people.”

Earlier this year, the Nicaraguan government recognized Montalban’s art, awarding him its highest cultural honor. Before now, the idea of an unapologetically black man even being considered was unthinkable.

“I feel like I am accepting the award for a whole race of people,” Montalban says. “I hope this means something.”

Miami Herald staff writer Pablo Bachelet and special correspondent Tim Rogers contributed to this report.

Posted at 6:03 PM · Comments (0)

The online magazine, Small Swords, has just published an interview with me about my work. It can be found here:
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My new, all-photography website, Glimpse is here:
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I will be posting “No Longer Available” notices soon for several of my most popular prints from the Glimpse website’s Disappearing Shanghai collection. A dwindling supply of catalogs of my Disappearing Shanghai October 2006 show in Berlin, as well as beautifully made, specially-priced boxed collections of archival prints of my photographs are still available via the Glimpse link above.

Posted at 4:45 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The New York Times
July 8, 2007

I never had any intention of becoming a novelist — at least not until I turned 29. This is absolutely true.

I read a lot from the time I was a little kid, and I got so deeply into the worlds of the novels I was reading that it would be a lie if I said I never felt like writing anything. But I never believed I had the talent to write fiction. In my teens I loved writers like Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Balzac, but I never imagined I could write anything that would measure up to the works they left us. And so, at an early age, I simply gave up any hope of writing fiction. I would continue to read books as a hobby, I decided, and look elsewhere for a way to make a living.

The professional area I settled on was music. I worked hard, saved my money, borrowed a lot from friends and relatives, and shortly after leaving the university I opened a little jazz club in Tokyo. We served coffee in the daytime and drinks at night. We also served a few simple dishes. We had records playing constantly, and young musicians performing live jazz on weekends. I kept this up for seven years. Why? For one simple reason: It enabled me to listen to jazz from morning to night.

I had my first encounter with jazz in 1964 when I was 15. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers performed in Kobe in January that year, and I got a ticket for a birthday present. This was the first time I really listened to jazz, and it bowled me over. I was thunderstruck. The band was just great: Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone and Art Blakey in the lead with his solid, imaginative drumming. I think it was one of the strongest units in jazz history. I had never heard such amazing music, and I was hooked.

A year ago in Boston I had dinner with the Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Pérez, and when I told him this story, he pulled out his cellphone and asked me, “Would you like to talk to Wayne, Haruki?” “Of course,” I said, practically at a loss for words. He called Wayne Shorter in Florida and handed me the phone. Basically what I said to him was that I had never heard such amazing music before or since. Life is so strange, you never know what’s going to happen. Here I was, 42 years later, writing novels, living in Boston and talking to Wayne Shorter on a cellphone. I never could have imagined it.

When I turned 29, all of a sudden out of nowhere I got this feeling that I wanted to write a novel — that I could do it. I couldn’t write anything that measured up to Dostoyevsky or Balzac, of course, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to become a literary giant. Still, I had no idea how to go about writing a novel or what to write about. I had absolutely no experience, after all, and no ready-made style at my disposal. I didn’t know anyone who could teach me how to do it, or even friends I could talk with about literature. My only thought at that point was how wonderful it would be if I could write like playing an instrument.

I had practiced the piano as a kid, and I could read enough music to pick out a simple melody, but I didn’t have the kind of technique it takes to become a professional musician. Inside my head, though, I did often feel as though something like my own music was swirling around in a rich, strong surge. I wondered if it might be possible for me to transfer that music into writing. That was how my style got started.

Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation. Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a work — upon ending your “performance” and feeling you have succeeded in reaching a place that is new and meaningful. And if all goes well, you get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience). That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.

Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music. It may sound paradoxical to say so, but if I had not been so obsessed with music, I might not have become a novelist. Even now, almost 30 years later, I continue to learn a great deal about writing from good music. My style is as deeply influenced by Charlie Parker’s repeated freewheeling riffs, say, as by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elegantly flowing prose. And I still take the quality of continual self-renewal in Miles Davis’s music as a literary model.

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Copyright The New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: July 8, 2007

SHANGHAI, July 7 — For weeks, as questions have multiplied over the safety of China’s exports of food and other consumer goods, the Chinese news media have had a consistent refrain.
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Ryan Pyle for The New York Times

At a market in Shanghai, customers can buy meats and other food. But even as China’s exports face greater scrutiny overseas, some food sold domestically has been found to be substandard or tainted.

American complaints about China’s products are part of a mounting trade war. They are the expression of efforts by Westerners to keep China down, to invent what the news media here have called a “China threat” to manipulate public opinion.

Exceptions can be found to this line, particularly regarding safety issues involving Chinese-made toothpastes, which importers around the world recently discovered often contain diethylene glycol, a poisonous chemical that tastes sweet, like its more expensive cousin, glycerin. Panama last year inadvertently mixed the chemical, imported through middlemen from China and mislabeled as glycerin, into cold medicine, killing at least 100 people.

After an initial spate of attacks on the foreign coverage, many Chinese media outlets have belatedly come to accept that the country’s toothpaste standards — which hold that using the chemical in small amounts is not harmful — need to be refined.

In a commentary last week, one newspaper, The Xiaoxiang Morning Post, went further, rejecting the foreign conspiracy theories outright.

“In the end, it is not trade barriers, or stirring people up, which I deeply believed at the outset,” wrote Liu Hongbo. “In recent years, whenever we have heard of the rejection of Chinese agricultural or seafood products, we have adopted the formula of invoking trade barriers. Please, let’s drop the perspective of international struggle to explain our consumer safety issues.”

Such commentary, however, has been rare. And that is remarkable, given that for years, Chinese consumers have been bombarded with reports about problems with domestic food safety and fraud: animals injected with illegal hormones to speed growth; eggs treated with poisonous dies; turbot, a popular fish, contaminated with unsafe antibiotics.

“I have no idea what we can and cannot eat nowadays,” said Feng Jiangping, 40, as she shopped in a Shanghai street market. “I have stopped eating many things based on media reports. Recently I have stopped eating turbot, river eel, eggs from free-range chickens.”

“I don’t know how the government manages food-safety things,” added Ms. Feng, a saleswoman for a chemical company. “I only know there is less and less safe food for us to eat.”

More than anything, the food-safety crisis has revealed major weaknesses in China’s emerging civil society, which for all its booming, frontier capitalist ethos has never developed anything like a consumer movement or citizen advocacy groups.

That leaves Chinese consumers at the mercy of what the Chinese government decides to make of any situation. Since earlier this year, when Chinese exports of tainted pet food ingredients touched off one of the biggest pet food recalls in American history, the Chinese government has announced that it would rewrite food safety regulations, introduce a national recall system and overhaul the nation’s top drug watchdog. On Friday, it sentenced a former top drug safety official to death.

[China’s food and drug watchdog announced that it had shut down five drug makers over the last year, including one that made a substance implicated in 11 deaths, The Associated Press reported Saturday, citing state news media. The agency, the State Food and Drug Administration, also stripped 128 drug makers of their Good Manufacturing Practice certificates, a symbol of favorable performance, the newspaper China Daily reported on its Web site.]

But the government’s sense of commitment seems, at the least, variable. “After all, these problematic products in the news are infinitesimally few,” said Qing Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in a briefing on Tuesday. “Do they represent all the goods China exports? Should we totally deny the quality and safety of Chinese products because of what very few people did and the existence of very few products?”

The next day, a government survey was released showing that nearly 20 percent of consumer goods on sale in China were substandard. The news drew scant commentary here.

“China’s food and drug situation has worsened over the last 10 years,” said Wang Hai, one of the country’s few prominent consumer advocates. “Before, it was only small and informal workshops that would churn out fake food and drugs, but nowadays many big companies have joined in. The main reason, I think, is that penalties are not stiff enough to stop wrongdoers from making bad products, but there are many other faults in our consumer safety system, as well.”

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Copyright The New York Review of Books

Tropic Moon (Coup de lune)[*] is the first of Georges Simenon’s novels to be set outside Europe, and it is also among the first and best of his serious novels, those he called romans durs in order to distinguish them from the hundreds of genre fictions he produced, the romans populaires that were making him rich and world famous, including his psychological crime thrillers and the titles in the Inspec-tor Maigret series. It is a remarkable work, in which Simenon’s characters deliver a brutal and clueless enactment of interwar French imperialism at its most naked—in Gabon, French Equatorial Africa, in the capital, Libreville, and upcountry. As a revelation of the institutionalized squalor the French Empire amounted to, it stands high, ranking with L.F. Céline’s depiction of life in another part of the same empire, Cameroon, in his Voyage au bout de la nuit.

It’s a particularity of the iconography in porn magazines that the male partners of the lovingly detailed women on display will often enough be represented essentially as mere functioning lower selves, torsos, their heads cut off by the edges of the layouts. Something similar is seen in the character embodiments in this moral tale: the actors are reduced to their appetites. The face of Adèle, the hyper-promiscuous antiheroine of the novel, is never described. We do learn about her that she wears clinging dresses and disdains underwear. She is in her thirties. Her breasts droop, slightly. Similarly, the African locale is rendered rather generically. We have the Hotel, the Prefecture, the Docks, the Police Station, all evoked without recourse to the kind of detail that might distract from the vertiginous drama of personal destruction we have come to witness. Simenon’s heightened minimalism serves his purposes well, forwarding the staccato unfolding of the central plot. Maddening heat, isolation, boredom, illness, alcohol—the traditional scourges of white expatriates in tropical Africa—play their expected parts in sustaining the lethal malaise that hangs over Libreville.

Joseph Timar, a young man from the provinces (La Rochelle), arrives in Libreville in the early 1930s intending to take up a posting at a timber camp in the jungle. His well-placed family in France has arranged this opportunity for him. He is an innocent. Obstacles arise that prevent him from going directly upriver and he falls into a sexual relationship, not an affair exactly, with the wife of the owner of the hotel he is lodging in. This is Adèle, and she has been active with a great many of the French gentlemen around town. Billiards, Pernod, card games, out-of-date newspapers, and intermittent sex with Adèle occupy Timar’s time. When the mood seizes them, male members of the French community organize orgies in the bush with native women, abandoning them there without transportation at the end of the one excursion Timar goes along on. At this stage, the story has only begun.

In Tropic Moon the sad tale of Joseph Timar is less a plot in the usual sense than it is an artifact of other plots, in the sinister sense, going on around him, of which he is very imperfectly aware. What happens is that early in his liaison with Adèle, a homicide occurs. After an altercation with Adèle, a black restaurant worker, Thomas, is found shot dead less than two hundred meters from the hotel. No weapon is in evidence. No one who was present in the hotel dining room on the night of the shooting has any information to contribute. An investigation, of sorts, gets underway.
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Blackwater fever abruptly takes Adèle’s husband, a repellent figure whose past activities in the field of white slavery (in which Adèle was a partner) had resulted in their banishment to the colonies. The widow inherits the hotel. The affair between Adèle and Timar continues, even as Timar learns that suspicion in the homicide has fallen on Adèle. A bullet has been recovered that would undoubtedly match her revolver, if only that item could be found.

Sick of inaction, and despite his realization that the timber company that he has come to Gabon to work for is technically bankrupt, Timar undertakes to repair, at his own expense, the motor launch that will take him upriver to his work. But Adèle has another plan for him: he is induced to use his family connections in France to secure personal title to a valuable timber concession whose original leaseholder wants to sell. Adèle has capital and will be his partner. His family agrees, and the deal goes through.

Adèle sells the hotel to one Bouilloux, and prepares to move with Timar to the concession in the bush they have acquired. They set off together. En route, Adèle makes a stop: she vanishes into a hut in a riverside settlement for an unexplained rendezvous. She and Timar then proceed to the concession, where she takes charge of timbering operations. Timar is unwell, delirious at times. He suspects Blackwater fever.

News arrives from Libreville. Thomas’s murderer has been identified. A local has been found in possession of the murder weapon. It becomes obvious to Timar that the mysterious river stop had been made by Adèle for the purpose of handing over the incriminating revolver to someone, in fact to the purchaser of the hotel, with the purpose of planting it on a black. Timar’s fixation on Adèle survives all this. The carnival of injustice is about to climax. Adèle and Timar will return to Libreville for the trial.

Passim, Simenon presents the vile minutiae of empire. He describes the shocking level of insult used in normal discourse with the Gabonese people. The public prosecutor, offering friendly advice, explains to a timber dealer how to beat his employees without leaving marks. Gratuitous cruelties are added to everyday matters of exploitation: a man whose wife and her sisters, one of them “not much more than a child,” have been commandeered for sex by the white gentlemen of Libreville is given a derisory bribe and sent off with a kick in the behind. In good times and bad, the butchering of the forests gathers pace, and the rare woods, the ebony and mahogany, must be sought farther and farther inland.

We can’t help but read this novel today against our knowledge that in 1932 European civilization is poised, one more time, to give birth to monstrous fratricide, genocide, apocalyptic warfare, cultural destruction, the breaking of nations. In Tropic Moon the dehumanizing heedlessness, rapacity, and cruelty shown by the agents of the French mission civilatrice toward the black populations under their control will, we know, be replicated, played out differently very soon elsewhere, by different Europeans, different actors, with different victims. And beyond the looming specter of fascism—a subject, by the way, not on the minds of any of the characters in this book—is something else we know is coming. And that something else is the bleak outcome for black Africa of the inevitable arrival of independence, a process itself hastened by the autodestruction of European power.

The reader should not indulge in the easy comfort of feeling that the poverty and cruelty of colonial life described in Simenon’s novel will be, will have been, undone by decolonization. Conditions in Francophone Africa today are dauntingly, if variably, grim. But how could it be otherwise? The scene presented by Simenon—the stripping of natural resources by French commercial interests, the instruction in unfairness provided by the colonial system of justice, the reduction of the African population to servile status—is portentous. There are portents in Tropic Moon. Its original readers may not have seen them, but we do.

In the matter of justice, Simenon’s novels—the romans durs and the psychological crime studies—dispense with it. It is not to be had, generally speaking. So Tropic Moon can be taken as one more specimen from a dense array of similarly Hobbesian Simenon stories set anywhere, including the United States, Europe, ships at sea, in which crimes (typically crimes of passion or impulse) are committed, l’homme nu (Simenon’s term for the potentially murderous universal everyman he saw everywhere and in every station of life) does his thing, people get hurt, and somebody’s suicide may wrap things up.

If you want to see justice done, you must go to the seventy-six Maigret policiers. Maigret embodies justice, the bringing of order. Simenon referred to him as le redresseur des destins. Maigret is reliable. Simenon kept the two streams of narrative running fiercely side by side his whole life. It makes an interesting balance. Graham Greene, another great writer as engaged as Simenon with questions of crime and punishment, made a similar distinction between his commercial products, which he called entertainments, and his serious novels. Greene, however, employed his serious novels as vehicles for explorations of justice —justifications of the ways of God to man. There is no theodicy in Simenon. Nothing close.

It can be instructive to compare what a novel stands for or represents —its direct or implicit advocacies or critiques—and what it accomplishes as a strictly aesthetic device. Tropic Moon is notable on both counts. What it achieves aesthetically is a true evocation of a social hell and a persuasive portrayal of what it does to thinking, perception, identity, to be a member of the oppressor class in such an environment, and to a lesser degree, of what the toll is on the oppressed. This evocation is conveyed in Simenon’s trademark style—swift, colloquial, seamless. (Simenon deliberately restricted his literary vocabulary to two thousand words, in the interest of accessibility.) And these qualities are strongly registered in this fine new translation by Marc Romano.

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Copyright The International Herald Tribune

By Howard W. French
July 5, 2007

SHANGHAI: This has been the season of scandal in China, from the revelation that hundreds of people, including kidnapped children, had been held as virtual slaves to work in the primitive brick factories of Shanxi Province, to the rolling food and product safety scandal, in which toys made for export were found to be painted with lead, and toothpaste and cough medicines laced with industrial poisons.

Go back a little further and you come across a municipal finance scandal in the country’s richest city, Shanghai, in which the city’s powerful Communist Party secretary was diverting pension funds for his own use and that of his friends, who for years treated their positions in Shanghai as a license to print money.

Fast forward to recent days, when there have been allegations that the Chinese government has used its muscle to force the World Bank to delete portions of a report about the human costs of rampant pollution in this country, which the bank estimated may be killing as many as 750,000 Chinese every year.

The warning that Chinese officials reportedly gave to the World Bank was that to release such details could affect social stability, which in today’s China amounts to something akin to a paramount ill.

The government’s message to the public is to get on with your lives. This isn’t such a big deal, Beijing’s spokesmen have protested in recent days on the question of the safety of China’s food exports, in what has become a sort of stock response in situations like these.
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Such answers are, in fact, a fairly reliable indicator that all is not right, and one suspects that in all of these cases, what is known is the very tip of the iceberg. And the signs are growing that the Chinese public deserves a lot more credit for being able to grasp this.

In the broadest sense, what the deluge of scandals suggests is that reality is catching up with the old and familiar story line of the “Chinese miracle.” Indeed, this country has been deluding itself and much of the world with the notion that healthy and lasting prosperity can be built on a foundation of counterfeiting, of exploitation and of fraud.

To keep company with the constant rejoinders about preserving stability, the prevailing creed would seem to have only one other thought: that to make money, in the immortal words of Deng Xiaoping, “is glorious.”

As governing philosophies go, “Shhh, quiet, we’re busy making money,” is not a very inspiring one, and it leaves a country and its people without any moral or ethical compass, beyond crudities like “might makes right,” or “the ends justify the means,” or “I got here first.”

That a kind of prosperity has come to China is undeniable. What this country has achieved in lifting huge numbers of people out of absolute poverty in the space of a generation is a monumental accomplishment.

But by its very nature, the wealth of this new, compass-free China raises questions about its own staying power. Even by the government’s indirect acknowledgement, Shanghai’s recently imprisoned party secretary, Chen Liangyu, is not a unique case. Rather, he is merely one of the most flagrant examples of public officials at all levels of government here wielding power for personal gain.

Meanwhile, there are other costs. China’s environment is being ravaged at a pace that many experts both here and outside of the country say is unsustainable, even in the medium term. A change of course proves all but impossible, though, because it is argued that to protect the environment is to slow growth, and to do that is to endanger stability.

Finally, a system that is so clearly based on influence peddling and on power networks, where accountability is elusive and where the individual stands little chance of legal redress, is a system that breeds instability and scandal and an erosion of trust.

Today, go into a cheap restaurant and when you pay your bill, the cashier will inspect the currency closely. It recalls scenes of people biting a nickel in Westerns, and although it has become almost a cliché to liken today’s China to the Wild West, the analogy is apt.

Outside of one’s closest personal relationships, almost nothing can be safely trusted: not the goods on the shelves or the food in the market or the medicines at the drugstore. A woman interviewed at a Shanghai supermarket the other day captured this feeling when she scoffed at the concerns of foreigners about Chinese food exports. “It’s the quality of our food here that’s not good,” she said. “The quality of our exports is O.K.”
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Copyright The Financial Times
Beijing
July 2 2007

Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social unrest”.

The report, produced in co-operation with Chinese government ministries over several years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities.

China’s State Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and health ministry asked the World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths from the report when a draft was finished last year, according to Bank advisers and Chinese officials.

Advisers to the research team said ministries told them this information, including a detailed map showing which parts of the country suffered the most deaths, was too sensitive.

“The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest,” one adviser to the study told the Financial Times…

Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, according to previous World Bank research.

Guo Xiaomin, a retired Sepa official who co-ordinated the Chinese research team, said some material was omitted from the pollution report because of concerns that the methodology was unreliable. But he also said such information on premature deaths “could cause misunderstanding”.

“We did not announce these figures. We did not want to make this report too thick,” he said in an interview.

The pared-down report, “Cost of Pollution in China”, has yet to be officially launched but a version, which can be downloaded from the internet was released at a conference in Beijing in March.

For the complete article, please see ft.com

Posted at 3:41 PM · Comments (1)

Copyright Southern Metropolis Weekly
As translated by Danwei: http://www.danwei.org/scholarship_and_education/wu_si_on_the_intractable_probl.php

After the media exposed the Shanxi kiln affair, there was a swift reaction from critics, who went after the core issue from different perspectives. The ethical bravery and rational power of public opinion became a welcome bright spot amid the process of rescuing the kiln slaves. Today, aid has been mobilized, but the analysis and contemplation of the situation should not halt yet. We have been searching for a deeper vision with which to evaluate the illegal kiln affair, and we found Mr. Wu Si. This student of history, who discovered amid the voluminous historical record “unwritten rules” and a “principle of blood payment,” has had his theories verified by the illegal kilns: do not those cold-blooded, black-hearted kiln-masters and local officials believe in none other than grey “unwritten rules” and a blood-drenched “principle of blood payment”? The final termination of illegal kilns depends on the termination of the local blood payment system. Wu Si has a new concept to apply to the illegal kiln affair - the local tyrant system. And it is under the local tyrant system that illegal kilns spring up all over.

China has had illegal mines since ancient times

Southern Metropolis Weekly: Looking at the information revealed in the Shanxi illegal brick kilns affair - child labor, the mentally disabled, corpses, wolfhounds, thugs, the town’s party secretary, and the 95% unlicensed rate - were you surprised?
Wu Si: I wasn’t surprised. These things aren’t unique to Shanxi. Other provinces may have them as well, and history shows that this sort of thing was prevalent throughout China. In addition, the solutions of the past were basically the same as those today - they rely on supervision of the subordinates by their superiors. If China did not have this sort of thing, then I’d find it strange. Because the core power structure has not changed: it is still an upwardly-responsible pyramid. The exposure of this incident just further corroborates my argument.

SMW: So looking at history we can see that this type of thing has been around for a while?
Wu: I’ll read for you a few passages that I’ve copied down. In the twelfth month of the fourth year of Jiaqing (1799), Jiaqing issued an edict: “Xishan’s coal-pits are most vulnerable to harboring treachery. We have heard that there is a bandit in that place named ‘Water Foreman’ who coaxes common people into the pits and flogs them so ruthlessly that they die.” The emperor commanded the Shunyi Magistrate: “If there is such a ruffian, then find him, seize him, and prepare a memorial so that his crimes may be punished according to the law.”

So a magistrate named Lu led a contingent “through many pits, thunderously liberating all of the miners imprisoned in the tiny dorms.” And they dismantled all of the coalpits and dorms. The records state that the miners who were rescued “all cheered and put their hands to their foreheads.” The Xishan coalpits were where Mentougou is today.

This type of thing did not only occur in the Jiaqing era - it also happened under Qianlong. “Mentougou is in Xishan, Wanping. All of the coal used in the capital is produced there. There are more than 200 coalpits. The mine owners sent people hundreds of miles away to deceive poor people to dig coal in the mines. At night they are imprisoned in dorms (锅伙) - places providing food and shelter. Piled stones form high walls topped with thorns so no one can get over. Wages are enough for two meals with nothing extra.” There is a special name for this sort of mine - a “closed-door pit” (关门窑).

From the Qing to the Republic, these problems never found a total solution but rather came back over and over. And they were not limited to Beijing’s Mentougou; these things also happened in Leiyangxian in Hunan, Mixian in Henan, Lushanxian in Shandong, and in Shaanxi Province. In Hunan, pit-bosses hired local ruffians as overseers in charge of shipping water - they were called “water shippers” (水承行).

During Guangxu’s reign, one local official in Hunan made a report containing this description: “Water-shippers are mostly local scoundrels, vicious and violent, and they collude with local gangsters to force [the poor] to sell themselves into the pits.” “…they are ordered to take turns carting water day and night with no rest, without sympathy for hunger or cold. If they flag just a bit, they are whipped on their shoulders. If they try to flee, their foot is stabbed with a knife. The pits are dark, cold, and coarse. The work is extraordinarily harsh. Thus the weak always meet their deaths in half a month. Before several months are out, the able-bodied find their feet mangled and their bellies distended. Rest is not allowed, medicine is not given, and idlers are killed.”

Advantages and disadvantages in the local tyrant system

SMW: So what brings about this sort of problem, and why is it so hard to stop?
Wu Si: The Qing enacted laws to ban it. In the second year of Daoguang (1822), after review by Shunyi Prefecture and agreement by the Bureau of Punishments, the court ratified and promulgated the Regulations on Handling Coal Dorms, banning the establishment of “closed” rooms. “All thorn-topped walls are to be demolished.” In addition, the following provision was put into place: “Those who deceive common people, force them into the pits, and prevent them from escaping shall be dealt with under the regulations for thugs, separately for the boss and his underlings. Collaborators and those who knew of the pits shall be punished under the regulations for harboring criminals.”

But the law was unreliable. At the time, the Minister at the Bureau of Punishments, Nayancheng, worried: “I fear that time brings laziness”; moreover, “Unworthy licentiates accept favors from the pits, hence they are lax in their actions.” Why do these problems survive repeated bans, recurring again and again? Nayancheng put it very clearly - lax enforcement is the number one reason.

At the same time, this is related to China’s historical “local tyrant system” (地霸秩序). Throughout China’s history, local domains have cropped up, one after another. Though party discipline and national law may have rules, these local domains keep their own rules, similar to what officials call “hidden rules,” or what the underworld calls “perverse rules.” I call them the “local tyrant system.” How are these domains formed? If everything works smoothly, and the government works as it should, then these local domains cannot form. For example, the illegal kilns in Shanxi could be thought of as a local domain. Who benefits from this local tyrant system? We can look at the advantage-disadvantage relationship and analyze it from a cost-benefit standpoint.

The kiln owners are definitely the first beneficiaries. And from what the media has exposed, when the mine owners got their money, they first bought off the officials and then roped in different departments at different levels. The people who were roped in also benefited, forming an interest chain. Those with money, those with influence, those with power, and those who controlled the flow of information were all beneficiaries. Only one victim - the enslaved workers. For those who protected this system, so long as the profit was greater than the cost, the system could be established, sustained, and enlarged.

Next, let’s look at the officials: their benefit is also obvious. But what about their risk? Risk is present in the anger of their superiors. Officials have many ways of combating risk. One is concealment. The officials do not pass reports up, they do not take care of anything, they pretend like they see nothing, they are lax in enforcement - this is information warfare. Another is organizational warfare. They delay, pass the buck, overlook, obstruct, cause trouble, oppose all kinds of instructions, suppress nay-sayers. Didn’t the reporter from Hunan TV say that the greatest obstacle in his investigation came from the local government in Shanxi? Some government agencies even took the people he had rescued and quietly sold them back to the boss. But they cannot continue to resist the anger of their superiors - is losing a position for that pittance of profit worth it? But they have ways of opposing a mobile war as well - weren’t some officials playing cards in their office when they should have been out searching?

The victims of the local tyrant system are the ones consistently opposed to it. Those upper-level officials reap no benefits from the system - they only lose face. After these matters came out, the central government held meetings and gave instructions to look into the local officials responsible. The slave laborers were the biggest victims of the local tyrant system; they should be the ones most strongly opposed. But look at the cost of opposition. Under this system, they are are not united, or may not even be able to unite. They are scattered and isolated with no labor organizations and no information channels while they face a straight line of power. So if going to the local government doesn’t work, they go to the courts. If the courts don’t work, they go to their representative. If the representative doesn’t work, they they go to the media. There’s a chance for a solution at every point. The resolution in this case was first touched off by the media, and only later was the anger of the higher-ups set off. Fortunately, Fu Zhenzhong was a reporter with Hunan TV, so this system had no hold over him. If he was from Shanxi, then I’m afraid Fu Zhenzhong would have become a second Gao Qinrong.

SMW: In China’s current administrative framework, administrative organizations in rural areas, particularly at the town level, still exist; there is no power vacuum in the countryside. But the illegal brick kiln affair exposed the fact that low-level political organs took on the role of sheltering the kiln owners, conspiring with them and ignoring human rights and national law.
Wu: How is low-level political power formed? Is it elected or is it appointed? In the current low-level framework, a village head is elected, and a village party secretary is appointed. Wang Dongji, the secretary who was dismissed from office, was actually the first in command. Of course, it’s still hard to say what connection this affair has with building low-level political organs. You can’t say that popular elections will solve this problem, but it is highly likely that the absence of popular elections created this problem. As reported in the media, the village head said that this party secretary was high-handed; if there were public elections, he probably would not be elected. He is still a county representative. Was this people’s representative elected? It’s not clear.

Secondly, democracy will not necessarily resolve the problem of interest groups. A village may have internal democracy, but the villagers may not protect the interests of laborers from the outside. You cannot always look to the conscience of the electorate; their conscience is not necessarily reliable.

SMW: How can the local tyrant system formed from this interest chain be broken up?
Wu: Workers’ interests must be protected. Fundamentally, this rests on the victims themselves. First, their cost of obtaining information must be lowered - television, print media, and the Internet lower the costs of information. The contribution of Tianya to fact that the victims’ families were able to organize should not be ignored. Though the cost of obtaining information has fallen compared to the past, it is still far from ideal. Next, the cost of victims’ lawsuits must drop. A lawyer once did some calculations on migrant workers seeking back wages and found that for the migrant workers throughout the country to use the law to get back 100 billion yuan owed to them, 300 billion would have to be spent. Victims could be permitted to organize to avoid going the lawsuit route. This would give them courage, and it would speed the flow of information, thereby reducing costs. Or the development of NGOs and organizations that protect people’s rights could be encouraged. These organizations protect the rights of vulnerable groups; allowing them to organize is an effective means of opposing the powerful.

When evil rises, good rises higher - this system can be broken through reducing the strength of the opposition. The method is democracy - throw the crooks out by casting votes. And separation of powers, too, so that one individual can no longer mislead the public. An independent disciplinary department, an independent judiciary, an independent legislature - let the powers check each other internally.

Of course, what’s most important is to carry out reforms on the system - enhance the people’s power of government oversight. If the village level can have elections, then the town can have elections. Although outsiders are made slaves, when elections are held, these things will come to light, shaming the local officials, sending them out of office. At the same time, the news media should be given more freedom, make things good for the muckrackers. If Fu Zhenzhong wins the Changjiang Journalism Prize this year, then things are on the right road.

Only in this way can the local tyrant system be destroyed at the root. Only when the law’s promises are not just on paper can true civil society be established. When the solution for this kind of problem is the same as in the past - fury from the upper levels and a top-down accountability mechanism - it will only be a temporary or partial solution rather than an complete, fundamental solution.

SMW: This incident was actually disclosed by the media, which then pushed it forward, and only later did it attract upper-level attention. Then public power intervened and acted swiftly until the officials who were accountable apologized. Then a nation-wide “anti-corruption campaign” was launched. What do you think of the media’s overall performance during the whole process?
Wu: Compared to similar incidents in the past, the media’s performance was one of the few bright points from the exposure until the resolution. This was the breakthrough point. In fact, to a certain degree the media shared the victim’s and their families’ cost of opposing the local tyrant system, becoming an alternative method.

SMW: There’s a view that this incident can be blamed on capitalist greed, that it would not have occurred in China before the reform and opening up. What do you think of this viewpoint?
Wu: Capitalist greed is there, no doubt about it. Capital is greedy, power is also greedy. Everyone is greedy - workers and peasants are greedy. Workers’ greed is to get more money for less work. Everyone is like this; the question is how to restrain it. Do you instruct me to practice self-restraint, or do you rely on the system for restraint. Were these kiln-owners capitalists? No, they had become like slave-owners. Their greed was the desire that their slave workers would eat less and work more. Concerning capitalist greed, the most important restraint is a labor union. If these capitalists use illegal labor, they commit a crime, so the restraint should come from the government, from the police. If the police are derelict in their duties, then you have to think about restrictions on power.

SMW: The illegal brick kiln affair is in complete accordance with the logic of power, as well as with your own principle of blood payment. The kiln owners, in addition to making use of the labor of their slave workers, even took possession of their bodies. But opening this up a bit, one could say that this is one extreme of a continuous spectrum of the relationship between labor and capital in China. In the media, we have often seen reports of forced labor, body searches, abominable working environments, excessive hours, short wages, and so forth. Some have called these phenomena “problems in the course of development,” and “the inevitable cost of transition” as China moves toward modernization. What is your evaluation of the “price of progress” view?
Wu: How could it be the “price of progress”? This is precisely an expression of “non-progress”. A recurrence of the events of two centuries ago - is this “progress”?

The essence of “progress” is an expansion of the rights of every citizen, development is above all a development of rights. China’s agricultural development was first of all the result of the development of peasants’ rights - land assigned for each household. Farmers controlling the fruits of their own labor, farmers permitted to travel elsewhere to work, farmers permitted to transport goods long distances - in the past, these rights were “turned in.” It was the same for industry - once it belonged to the state, but now individuals can run factories, capitalists have gained the rights they ought to have, so industry can develop. Workers are upset now because in the relationship between labor and capital their rights are often encroached upon. What kind of progress is this?

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Copyright The Nation (Nairobi)
2 July 2007

Accra

The Ninth Africa Union heads of state summit opened in Accra, Ghana, yesterday with renewed calls for African political union.

Outgoing AU Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare stole the show with a passionate speech pressing the need for an African government.

With dozens of presidents in attendance including President Kibaki, Mr Konare electrified the Summit opening by throwing away the diplomatic manual to deliver stinging rebuke to the assembled leaders.

Speaking without notes, Mr Konare criticised the AU as an ineffective and powerless body, referring to many of the critical problems on the continent,from the Darfur crisis to dictatorship, human rights, corruption and poverty that the African leaders prefer not to confront.

In an unprecedented address from the top AU official, Mr Konare made a strong pitch for progress towards a unity, taking the view that the AU would remain a talking shop unless it acquired legislative power that could only come with creation of a United States of Africa.

Delivering the official opening speech shortly afterwards, Ghana’s President John Kufuor who is the new AU chairman noted that the Accra Summit is devoted exclusively to discussing proposals for a continental government.

At the same time, Foreign minister, Mr Raphael Tuju, yesterday said the Kenyan delegation had gone to the summit with an open mind and was fully committed to the AU charter, which it had signed.

The minister said: “The AU charter is something all of us who signed the charter are committed to, but the devil is in the details.”

Mr Tuju said the question was on what, when and how, which is the subject of discussion at the on going AU summit in Accra.

Ironically, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi who has been a lone voice amongst African leaders in demanding immediate union skipped the opening ceremonies.

The Libyan leader had caused a stir prior to arrival in Accra with visits to many neighbouring states where he dismissed the AU as useless and demanded immediate steps towards an African government.

In his opening speech President Kufour did not directly refer to the absent Gadaffi’s demand for immediate union, but focused on the need for gradual and structured approach. The Ghanaian president referred to the independence of Ghana under the late President Nkrumah 50 years ago, the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (The AU’s predecessor) by the late President Kenyatta and other stalwarts of African liberation in 1963 and over events which established the clarion call “Africa Must Unite”.

He also noted that the establishment of the AU nine years ago was seen as merely the first step towards the ream of dream of African political and economic union.

Others who spoke at the opening ceremony were the Secretary General of the Arab League Mr Amr Moussa and the deputy secretary general of the United Nations Dr Asha-Rose Migiro.

One of the highlights of the AU conference was supposed to be a historic debate yesterday featuring five African presidents seated across five African journalists.

But the debate was called off late on Saturday. The message form the host Government and the AU was that it would be re-scheduled for Tuesday.

There was drama at the opening of the summit as armed policemen and soldiers faced-off with angry journalists marching towards the conference hall.

Hundred of journalists who had converged in Accra from all over the world had been barred from entering the main hall at the Accra International Conference Centre. They were restricted to the media centre where they were supposed to watch the opening speeches in television monitors. The picture often dissapeared and the sound was mostly not audible.

As President Kufuor was delivering the opening speech, the journalists signed a petition of protest and started marching towards the conference hall about 50 metres away.

But armed policemen and soldiers in battle fatigues were deployed to set up a barricade. Even journalists who wanted to leave the Conference Centre entirely were blocked, provoking an angry stand-off that continued for nearly an hour until after the morning programme was concluded and the large retinue of assembled presidents had left.

Earlir, yesterday, declaring himself a “soldier for Africa”, Gaddafi called on the continent to unite under a single government so it could compete in a globalised world, adds Reuters.

He said: “For Africa, the matter is to be or not to be,” the Libyan leader told a cheering audience of students, activists and local Muslim leaders at the University of Ghana.

“My vision is to wake up the African leaders to unify our continent.” Flanked by female bodyguards dressed in camouflage, Col Gaddafi wore dark glasses and a brown shirt emblazoned with images of Pan-African leaders and a map of the continent.

But, as heads of state and government began arriving in Accra for the summit, most of the 53 AU members appeared to favour a gradual, step-by-step creation of a United States of Africa.

“When you build a house you should start with the foundation, not the roof,” Zambian Foreign Minister Mundia Sikatana told Reuters. “We are telling him, as we say in one of our African languages ‘pole pole’ (Swahili for ‘slowly’).”

But, human rights groups from the continent supported Gaddafi.

They called for the removal of visa requirements between Africa’s more than 50 states and the lifting of commercial barriers in the world’s poorest continent, whose trade and transport links lag far behind other parts of the world.

“Without continental citizenship, continental government is meaningless,” the groups said in a statement which expressed enthusiastic support for the proposal, to be debated at the summit, to create a continental government.

They also urged African leaders to study introducing direct elections across the continent from 2009 onwards to appoint members of a legislating African parliament that would truly represent Africa’s nearly 1 billion people.

The existing Pan-African Parliament in South Africa is composed of representatives of national assembles and parliaments from individual states and is largely advisory. Mr Brian Kagoro, Pan Africa programme director of Action Aid International, told reporters: “The borders that constitute us into African states were arbitrarily drawn by some white men, some under the heavy influence of whisky.”

Historical “carving up”

He was referring to the historical “carving up” of Africa by European colonial powers that took place at the end of the 19th century, giving the continent its current web of borders.

Mr Kagoro and other civil society representatives said that in its existing “defederated state”, Africa could never compete as an equal with other major economic blocs and powers, despite its vast resources of oil, mineral and human capital. “Inter-African trade is still criminalised.

Those brave souls who trade across borders are branded as smugglers,” said political scientist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, who is general secretary of the Global Pan-African Movement.

Posted at 5:43 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

June 29 2007

When I first came to live in Seattle in 1990, one had only to look from the streets to the water to see the city’s essential history: slow-moving tugs towing rafts of logs like floating islands; Japanese-flagged freighters laden with raw timber destined for the Tokyo construction industry; husband-and-wife gill-netting boats, laying nets across the tide for Puget Sound salmon. Squint, and you could almost see Seattle as it was in the 1850s: a sheltered deepwater harbour on the edge of a limitless forest of massive Douglas firs and cypresses, with an abundant fishery on its front doorstep. Given such lavish natural resources, it would be hard for a city founded here to fail. Add a railroad connection to the interior (James J. Hill’s Great Northern transcontinental line reached Seattle in 1893, in ample time for the Klondike gold rush of 1897) and the place was bound to enjoy the kind of extravagant and unruly success that is both the blessing and curse of the American boom town.

Yet - even in 1990 - there was a rootedness to Seattle that evaded most boom towns. The cautious, Lutheran, Scandinavian character of so many of its settlers perhaps helped; likewise the Lutheran, Scandinavian quality of its weather. Manic elation is difficult to sustain under the low grey skies of the Pacific northwest, and Seattle was never likely to emulate the dizzy excesses of Los Angeles or Las Vegas. Hemmed in by parallel mountain ranges to the west and east, its livelihood grounded in tall trees and deep water, the city stood at an odd, proud, provincial angle to the rest of the US, insulated by its geography from the crazes and fashions that took hold elsewhere.

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Entirely predictably, the city’s first “big” business was Henry Yesler’s steam sawmill, built in 1853 on Elliott Bay at the foot of what is now Yesler Way. Docks, mills, salmon canneries and shipbuilding yards quickly assembled themselves along the waterfront, forming a basic infrastructure that shaped Seattle’s development for more than a hundred years. When William Boeing, president of a family-owned timber company based in Aberdeen, Washington, entered the aircraft-manufacturing business in 1916, he moved into a bankrupt yacht yard on the Duwamish River, where he employed shipwrights to construct his first planes. Built on the “stick-and-stringer” principle, with light wooden frames sheathed in fabric instead of timber planking, early Boeings, such as the Model C training seaplane, were like featherweight avian boats (lovely examples of these shipshape planes hang from the ceilings of the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field airport). So the pedigree of the 787 Dreamliner is thoroughbred Seattle, reaching back to the fir forest, the mill, the delicate skills of the boatbuilder with his spokeshave and chisel.

When I arrived here, I cherished this kind of logical continuity. No city I knew seemed on such comfortable and unselfconscious terms with its own beginnings. I warmed to Seattle’s downtown, its modest cluster of skyscrapers rising from streets still dominated by turn-of-the-century brick-and-stucco examples of far-west neoclassical swank. Rebuilt after a fire levelled most of the business district in 1889, Seattle had Roman dreams of the grandeur yet to come, and its hotels, clubs, department stores and theatres were designed like palaces in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. In a region of logging and mining camps, of here-today-and-gone-tomorrow, Seattle meant to stay for the ages.

From early on, Seattle had a canny grasp of how to act as a provincial capital. Its potential hinterland was vast if underpopulated, stretching to Alaska in the north and beyond the Rocky Mountains to the east, a nearly boundless territory of isolated, makeshift towns, whose inhabitants might reasonably look to Seattle as their centre for shopping, entertainment, medical facilities and higher education (the very large and highly ranked University of Washington began life as Territorial University in Seattle in 1861, just 10 years after the arrival of the first settlers). The behaviour of the city during the gold rush was typical: when prospectors swarmed through, en route for the Klondike diggings, Seattleites mostly stayed home, preferring to make reliable fortunes from the miners rather than chance their luck in the gold fields. Stores sold clothing, shovels, pans, sluice-boxes and hydraulic equipment to the stampede of hopefuls, and for those few who returned with money in their pockets, the city laid on whorehouses, dives, casinos, restaurants and burlesque shows. Seattle effectively turned Alaska into its own client-state, making the last open frontier dependent on the city for shipping, supplies and services, and handsomely enriching itself in the process.

Few cities have enjoyed such a long-distance reach into their hinterlands. In the mid-1990s, I conducted an experiment. Driving eastward, I stopped at towns along the way, trying to find out where allegiance to Seattle’s big-league sports teams, such as the Mariners (baseball) and Seahawks (football), gave way to support for the Minneapolis-St Paul teams, the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings. At the 500-mile mark, Missoula, Montana was solidly for Seattle. I crossed the continental divide near Butte, and drove on to Billings, where, with 830 miles on the clock, I saw a travel agency advertising weekend packages to Seattle, with hotel, Mariners tickets and a show at the 5th Avenue Theatre thrown in. A day or two later, I was more than a thousand miles from Seattle, at a barbecue lunch on a North Dakota ranch, after a long morning’s calf-branding. Minneapolis was now 600 miles away. I asked my neighbour which baseball team was most closely followed in these parts. “Seattle Mariners,” he gruffly said, as if I’d asked a silly question. Seattle’s reach is that long. The Montana novelist Deirdre McNamer had a piece in The New York Times Magazine not long ago, describing how she and a Missoula friend would drive to Seattle to get their hair done. Five hundred miles for a haircut.

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