Left Flank

I have tried since this afternoon to upgrade to WordPress 2.5…to no avail! I've just downgraded, and I'll try again this weekend.

I'm reading Immanuel Wallerstein for a class right now, and I have other projects to complete.

I finally watched Charlie Wilson's War. Aside from a brilliant Aaron Sorkin script, and numerous other female distractions—notably Emily Blunt—the serious historical error about arming Ahmad Shah Massoud (YouTube embedding disabled by request) is terminal.

I've corroborated this claim in both Peter Bergen's Holy War, Inc. and Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

Why Tom Hanks allowed this whopper is almost as troubling as the Pakistani connection to Hekmatyar.

Joshua Foust reminds us of the unromantic Tibet. And then, he offers this sage, post-Kosovo advice:

However simply looking down upon China with Holy Western Outrage is not a solution. Ignoring the priggish and quite frankly offensive Han chauvinism (dwarfing even the gaudiest excesses of American chauvinism, which rarely goes beyond empty sloganeering and angry TV pundits), the current Chinese government—which kindly props up our entire financial system through its generous purchasing of our securities and bonds and cheap exports—literally stakes its existence on the government's infallibility. Allowing Tibet independence would require allowing Xinjiang independence… which would also require Taiwan's independence. Many Americans would cheer at the prospect, but hopefully not with the understanding that Chinese society is actually much less homogeneous and far less stable than the CCP likes us to realize. And, like it or not, a stable China means a stable America. We disrupt that at our own peril.

So yes, let us join hands with the spiritual, romantic Tibetan people—I cannot deny their appeal. But let us also do so in a proper context, taking a sober look at the true history and true issues surrounding it. Nothing in anyone's past can justify the horrors visited upon any of the CCP's hundreds of millions of victims. But that is why we should agitate for their redress in a constructive manner—which precludes angrily stomping our feet and shouting slogans. Brave people are literally dying for their freedom in China: let us do them the courtesy of seriously advancing their concerns.

The rest of the post is more informative than all of those western deconstructions on CNN.

McClatchy's Tim Johnson deconstructs in effect today's Beijing-escorted reporters' trip to Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. What makes it so postmodern is the fact that no reporter was actually there.

Okay, so imagine you're a Chinese official in charge of public relations for this disaster: How do you spin it? Do you say the monks drank funny kool-aid this morning? Do you avoid explanations and just move on? Can you plausibly contend that all these monks are part of the «Dalai clique» and have been infiltrated into one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism?

Or do you just sit and feel that indigestion bubble up in the tummy, another Maalox moment, and prepare to go to the woodshed?

Who knew Tim Johnson was writing a novel?

Robert Barnett, a Tibet scholar at Columbia University, warns against a simplistic understanding of the events in Tibet. It seems that even in Tibet, interest is gray.

We have to be very careful not to confuse exile politics, which is a demand for anti-China this and anti-China that, with internal politics, which is much more pragmatic, complex, and sophisticated.

A very important sector of Tibetans have become very wealthy because China has poured money into creating a middle class in Tibetan towns, though there hasn't really been a dividend for the countryside and the underclass. So, we can't explain this as just economic modernization. We could explain the violence against the [Han] Chinese in that way. It could have to do with that. But the violence is present in just one demonstration out of 50 in the past two weeks.

These protests are really about two things: A huge sector of the rural population has said, «Tibet was independent in the past. We reassert that belief. That doesn't mean we demand that it be independent again, but we are reinserting that into the discussion.» And, «The Dalai Lama represents our interests.» I suppose a possible third thing is, «We are certainly not happy with Chinese President Hu Jintao.» This is a huge political statement that nobody anticipated.

(…)

The most significant of the 50 protests are the rural peasants taking over the countryside. These are people who get on horseback or march down to the local government office or police post, burn it to the ground, and raise the Tibetan flag. You can be shot on sight for having a Tibetan flag in Tibet in a non-Olympics year. Nothing like this has been seen in Tibet for decades, and it has untold political significance for China.

(…)

We [in the West] think that people do politics by saying, «I'm going to stage this protest in order to get X.» But nobody gets X in China. It just doesn't work like that. You're dealing with one of the biggest power systems in the world. Instead, burn a government building, put a flag up, and then you've achieved this huge victory because China has created a symbolic form of politics in which everyone is supposed to have forgotten that they were independent once. So, just by doing that, you have completely changed the political equation.

(…)

The exile complaints are not about power. And we have to put aside suggestions that the protests in Tibet are because people are unhappy about economic loss. That really is reductive. And I think we have to get over any suggestion that the Chinese are ill-intentioned or trying to wipe out Tibet. It's obviously horrible that people are being savagely beaten up and killed. But crucially, this is a historic change in the profile of Tibetan politics. We're looking at something much larger than any immediate anxiety about Olympics, or whether somebody planned one of these things, or whether people are upset about economic disadvantage. Historians are going to tell us that we missed the big picture if we didn't notice that this is the big story here. All the party cadres are going to be sent to the countryside areas to listen to the Tibetans' complaints and find out what has gone so wrong with the policy machine in China.

In other words, globalization has offered a peek into a very abnormal way of doing politics in a part of the world few westerners understand.

I can't say I've ever liked any essay about DPRK Dr. Andrei Lankov has ever written...until now. I must be fossilizing! But, I recall hearing similar statements from Dr. Johan Galtung.

It will happen, sooner or later, but there are two strategies to speed up the event which should be used simultaneously. First, one should try to provide North Koreans with information about the outside world. The continuous support for radio broadcasts and to fund opposition activities is vital.

Second, there is another strategy to foment dissent - the development of officially approved exchanges, such as visits by academics, hosting concerts and exhibitions. Since such measures require Pyongyang's consent, they would be impossible to arrange without some compromises. Hardline critics may be right that North Korean officials will portray these visits as a foreigners' tribute to their "Dear Leader". However, one should not overestimate the efficiency of this propaganda. I grew up in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and officially approved cultural and academic exchanges were a critical source of information about life overseas and helped arouse serious doubts about the communist system.

Both strategies should be used persistently, irrespective of what is happening on the ever-shifting diplomatic front. One should not dismiss support for broadcast and opposition activities, even when optimists assure everybody that the North Korean regime is about to change itself. (It will never change itself.) On the other hand, the cultural and academic exchanges (as well as humanitarian assistance) should continue even in the midst of another crisis - whatever the hawks say.

And, since I let my FA subscription lapse, kudos to MDC for making some quotes beyond the summary available.

Left, meet Right!

ESWN reminds its readers about joining the pro-Tibet bandwagon, and I agree. And, not just because I trust Rebecca MacKinnon implicitly. As I've argued before, on this blog, and also contra-TNR (it would take too long to find the comment on the TNR site), why stop at boycotting the Olympics when ending them permanently is so much more beneficial?

Beijing is doing much that's distasteful, like blocking communication and roughing up protesters. Even