Early Signs From 2005

American RadioWorks did a series of shows called Reports from a Warming Planet.

The reports are from the work of a class taught by John Harte at ERG and environmental journalist Sandy Tolan.  For most people, these anecdotes are probably much more persuasive than any scientific evidence that global warming is really happening and that it is a problem.

Political Theater

Lots of acts around the world.

In the US, the whole dance around seating Roland Burris, the black American who was appointed to the senate in place of Barack Obama by Rod Blugoyavich. They ended up seating him, though, so yeah, touche Blugoyavich, touche.

Russia and Gazprom and Ukraine and EU are doing some kind of square dancing. It's all very horrible and embarrassing. And now many people are very cold. On the upside, it looks like the EU is actually refraining from taking sides, although admittedly, probably Russia is being a jerk.

In the Middle East, all that nonsense is still going on, and Osama Bin Laden has called for a Holy War. Uh huh. It remains to be seen if Mr. I_live_in_a_cave_somewhere is even relevant anymore.

Internet Usage Surges in China

NYT reports on Chinese internet usage. "There are a lot of internet users, almost as many as the population of the US. Obligatory paragraph on how the government censors the internet there."

News Analysis About Israel Bombings

This is a really good article by the NYT assessing Israel and Palestine's options from a political standpoint. Yes, it is damned if you do and damned if you don't, but for me, I really think it's damned for sure if you keep bombing, and mostly likely damned but perhaps not if you don't.

Tim Russert Dies!

Whoa! He died at 58 on the job of a heart attack.

China Correspondents

New York Times and the BBC have really bad China articles mostly because of their bad China correspondents. What makes their China articles and correspondents so bad?

The articles themselves often imply that China is a threat, Chinese nationalism is a threat, and things like the food shortage and global warming are China's fault. This xenophobic view of China is mostly sensationalism so in my view, it's bad journalism, but that's the industry standard these days. What is more annoying is that almost every article becomes an editorial about censorship and restrictions on journalists and the lack of democracy. The worst part is when they claim to represent how the majority of Chinese people feel about Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the Chinese Communist Party.

They do this by using Chinese correspondents who are meant to be more credible since they are Chinese. However, these correspondents are more often than not people who have bad history with the Communist Party. Some are pro-democracy activists who have been kicked out of the country. However, they do not really have a following in China. Some are even seen as traitors.

Take this New York Times' article.

Here is a comment in response.

As a former Tiananmen protester living in the States, I believe that "The future of China is in the hands of ordinary Chinese." Unfortunately, Ma Jian's view does not reflect views of ordinary Chinese no matter how many western media or their readers like his views. The bottom line is that Chinese people know what are their best interests during their cause leading to prosperity and democracy. They certainly do not need others to remind them what to do and how to do to achieve their best interests.

Some selections of the discussion about this BBC article in Chinese from the BBC:

Black Horse Liu's article? He was one of so-called "four scholars" during 6.4 Tiananmen event. He used to state that China would have been much better off if it had experienced real colonialism under Great British like HK. No wonder BBC still recommend his opinion after so many years.

Liu and his ilk have been long marginalized in China, political power wise. Now their sole role is to serve western media as dissent voice of "Chinese people" to pacify their readers' thirsty for hope of transforming China with "freedom and democracy".

Only Western people listen to these people as if they are really credible, but Chinese people know who these people are. It's like if Chinese people quoted Ralph Nader as an expert on what Americans think. Another example is when people quote the Epoch Times, which every Chinese person knows is a Falun Gong newspaper that publishes outright lies.

Nooz

Project Censored - articles that probably nobody read, but they should have!

The Real News - supposedly an independent news organization.

An American Jew in response to American Jews' calling for boycotting the Beijing Olympics.

The China Threat Meme

It continues. Ugh. I'm not sure what Chinese people are supposed to do since we can never seem to get anything reasonable published, although usually the Atlantic is pretty good. Coordinate writing more letters to the editors. I don't know if it makes sense to write a letter with lots of random people's signatures.

Economist

CNN

BBC

Although NYTimes had a good article. Except for the end. "China is not a democracy. It will not budge." What a big misconception. Westerners always think China would be great if only it were a democracy. What a joke. They have no idea.

The Prospect also has a good article about the intellectuals in China.

Democratic Incompetence

Article in the Washington Post assessing what the Democrats in Congress have been up to lately. Pelosi and Reid are too into protectionism and subsidies instead of job training.

Internet is Full of Talking People

Noam talks about the role of mass media and democracy.



The most interesting part of this video is when he talks about the NED, National Endowment for Democracy, established under Reagan, which funds programs such as Students for a Free Tibet and other programs which used to be funded and run by the CIA. The US government is often involved in politics in ways we do not expect. It really distorts Americans' view of the world. For example, the NED and other groups get money from Congress, which then fund Chinese democracy activists who are exiled from China. In the West, we are given the impression that these people are hugely influential, but in fact, there are not very many democracy activists, and they are largely dismissed in China by the public as idealist radicals.

Olympics and Tibet

eh I don't remember what the article was about, but it was cool.

some info and speculation about who is really behind recent events

More Info on Tibet - Stranger than Fiction

A video by the National Geographic about old Tibet and a relationship with the Nazi's??!? I thought people made that up.



http://blog.joegringo.com/2008/04/01/free-tibet-chinese-sayfree-china.aspx

Good Magazine

literally

i saw it today at whole foods. it was "the China issue"

My Subversive Boss

he got subpoenaed and written about in the new york times. how exciting!

Water Water everywhere except in Alamosa Colorado

There has been a story floating around the news this last week about a small town in Colorado whose water supply was shut down by salmonella. The entire town's drinking supply had to be taken off-line because an unknown source salmonella was making a lot of people sick. They had to use a lot of chlorine to disinfect the water pipes and then water couldn't be used for drinking, eating, or bathing until chlorine levels dropped. Basically you could flush your toilet and that was it. What I find interesting in this story is that every news outlet basically reports it as a human interest story. Oh it is interesting that people are drinking thousands of bottles of water in order to survive, or that people haven't been able to shower in days. It is cute to watch people rough it, but it seems there has been very little appreciation for what most other people in the world do on a daily basis, which is survive without clean water. Another aspect of this I find surprising is the fact that no one is really mentioning that the town's water supply was not even chlorinated to begin with. The lack of pretreatment is the entire reason why a bacterial contamination event was even able to occur. I am not advocating everyone needlessly treat their water out of some irrational fear, but it would seem this fact would be far more integral to the story than an off-hand fact buried in a paragraph somewhere or not mentioned at all.

Western Journalism

I came across this article titled "Nationalism at core of China's reaction to Tibet unrest"

which reflects pretty typical attitudes toward China in the West. And this is one of the more balanced articles.

First of all, it is always nationalism when it's China, but patriotism when it's the US. I'm not saying nationalism/patriotism is good, but it's not like there's much of a distinction between the two except it's always nationalism when it's someone you don't like and patriotism when it's someone you like.

Second, "Scholars often describe nationalism as the state religion in China now that the Communist Party has shrugged off socialist ideology and made economic development the country's priority." As if patriotism isn't an American state religion in addition to Christianity? Geez.

Also, "Commentators in Chinese state media have said foreign news reporting has been more sympathetic to Tibetans in Lhasa than to the Chinese who lost their lives and property in the riots. Meanwhile, Chinese from around the world were infuriated when several Western news organizations mislabeled photographs of the police beating pro-Tibet protesters in Nepal as being from China." Yeah, isn't that pretty bad? Chinese people have reason to think that Western media is out to get them.

So much for free speech. Given that everything they write is so twisted, is it really a surprise that the Chinese don't want them in Tibet? I don't think it's necessarily right, and it's obviously non-ideal, but their case - that they're unbiased and therefor should be there - is not very convincing.

Black Man's Burden

Huckabee and McCain more gracious than Clinton, not that that's hard

Tibet and China

There is no doubt that Tibetans need more civil rights. At the same time, demanding for Tibet to be independent and demonizing the Chinese government are counterproductive. The main issue is that Chinese people don't believe that Western nations really care about human rights (see Iraq War) and are just making a stink to bring China down. Thus, Chinese people are very offended and alarmed when Western nations call for free Tibet. Western people should know that if Tibet really became independent, Chinese people around the world would protest and riot. These are relatively neutral article from the Wall Street Journal.

article1

article2

Clinton Clinton Clinton

Sucks, says Frank Rich from the New York Times

San Francisco Chronicle Interview

This is a video of the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle interviewing Barack Obama. The last five minutes are really really good.

He talks about how the problem with the American political system right now is that politicians are not necessarily rewarded for doing good for the nation, emotionally as well as financially. When they stand up to big money, most of their constituents don't know anyway, and then big money funds someone else to run against them and they get voted down. This is something that came up in the studies of Chinese local governments, too. In the towns and villages where leaders of the community were involved with the local government in praising them and giving them moral standing when they do things for the village, those villages did really well. They had the best roads, best schools, etc. In the villages where they don't get moral standing for doing things, those villages were run the worst. And it did not matter whether the village was rich or poor. This is something that Obama gets and nobody else does.