Evil Olympics, Closing Ceremony: Exporting Death

Of all the things I have mused about over the past two and a half weeks concerning the truly awful things the People's Republic of China has done, I saved this one for the last. China exports a lot of products. It's not clear whether it "dumps" products or it really has a great competitive advantage over western industrial countries.

China exports its people, largely illicitly, and is a major transshipment point in the international slave trade. China is also a producer and transshiper of drugs. Both of these exports -- slaves and drugs -- represent a significant fraction of the global market in these dangerous, destructive, and contraband products. We ought not to condemn the government of the PRC, because it does not turn a blind eye to slavers or drug dealers -- it actively polices for these things and when it catches bad guys, the PRC just plain kills them.

But here's the focus -- one of China's biggest exports is weapons, and the weapons trade in China is directly with the government of the PRC, not with autonomous corporations within the country.

No western industrial nation can really criticize China for entering the world arms market -- everyone sells weapons, and nearly everyone sells weapons to other nations that probably ought not be trusted with anything more dangerous than a pointy stick. The United States is not immune from criticism with regards to the nations that we allow our arms manufacturers to do business with, although I think we're better than a lot of other nations in that regard.

I say that because compared to the PRC, we're a bunch of prissy angels with regards to our choice of trading partners. China's most controversial export is not weapons, but rather the support for genocide and other human rights abuses it extends to other nations.

The most prominent beneficiary of direct Chinese foreign aid to support a government engaged in human rights atrocities is the government of Sudan. To be sure, China sells weapons to Sudan, and is by far the biggest supplier of weapons to the government there. China's government defends itself by noting that other nations sell weapons to Sudan also and that it has expressed "grave concerns" about the genocide in Darfur. Because that's what the government is doing with those weapons -- putting them in the hands of its death squads and technically non-governmental militia groups, who then raid villages in Darfur and practice, if not wholesale extermination, then the systematic eradication of undesirable ethnic and religious groups.

"Grave concerns." Thanks, comrade.

Similarly, China has been untroubled by the uses to which its weapons are put in Zimbabwe, where minority and political opposition groups proposing an end to the rule of 28-year dictator Robert Mugabe have been on the receiving end of secret police squads Chinese-manufactured small arms as well as mortar shells and hand-held rocket launchers.

China's relationship with North Korea is complex, but it is not an oversimplification to say that the nations are allies. They have been allied in the past, however, and there is still a degree of geopolitical affinity between the PRC and the DPRK, two of the last remaining overtly socialist governments on Earth. Although North Korea imposes a regime of even greater brutality and cruelty than the PRC does on its own people, the styles and techniques of the two nations are similar and truly differ only as a matter of degree in terms of their focus on monopolizing political control of the nation through the deployment of force and terror upon the civilian population. China has until recently tolerated the presence of a large underclass of North Korean workers; China and North Korea share a trading relationship analogous to that of the U.S. and Mexico. China is a significant donor of unconditional food grants to North Korea; it is likely that without this food support, North Korea's extraordinarily poor and inefficient economy would be unable to feed millions of people and there would be mass starvation -- at the same time, because the food supports are there, the DPRK can concentrate its economic efforts (such as they are) to maintaining a large military. China also sells North Korea about 90% of its oil at vastly under-market prices. China does appear to be working in good faith to encourage North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, although it is an open question if China's economic support for its neighbor is not the most significant enabling factor allowing Lil' Kim to chase nukes.

I should also add that although we are technically allied with Pakistan in the Global War On Terror, China's biggest trading partner, co-developer of military equipment, and strategic ally has a significant history of internal human rights abuses and nuclear brinksmanship with rival India. Pakistan would not be so dangerous or obnoxious a regional power were it not for substantial support from China. If so, this represents at minimum a significant bending, if not outright violation, of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

I feel compelled to repeat myself with two important caveats. First of all, selling weapons is not necessarily a bad thing for a nation to do. The sale of weapons to other nations can be a good way to spread stability by putting military power in the hands of nations that will use it responsibly and that will become strong, reliable, and reasonably moral members of the international community. And second, the USA has in the past sold weapons to nations who have not lived up to their promises of responsible use of those weapons. What distinguishes us from China in this respect is that when it has become clear that our trading partners are not behaving responsibly with the weapons we have sold them -- El Salvador, Chile, the contras -- we have passed laws to prevent the further sale of weapons to these nations. Similar statements can be made of most European nations (although I have some doubts about the French).

China cannot credibly offer a similar defense of its weapons trade. China sells weapons knowing full well that they will be used to effect genocide, nuclear brinksmanship, and terrorism. The People's Republic is at best unconcerned with what happens in other nations, and why should it be? Like Spartans deathly afraid of their Helots, the Chinese government treats its own people as so much livestock, worrisome mouths to feed and minds to control so that there is no revolution. So the product of its highly profitable weapons sales program does not cause a moment's moral concern in Beijing -- the worst that could happen is that other nations will treat their citizens the way China treats its own.

Presidents Eat Arugula

Enough with the arugula jokes already. Even when we might be mulling over the pros and cons of Joe Biden as Barack Obama's running mate, there are still people who seem to obsess over Obama's liking for arugula. Get over it.

The man is an attorney, has been a law professor, and a legislator for his entire adult life. He's not a prole. We haven't nominated a true prole for President in either major political party since... LBJ? Can we accurately describe him as having personal prole class experience? He didn't work as a department store elevator operator and high school teacher for "breadth" or a lesson in humility (if it was the latter, it sure didn't take).

So the man eats greens in his salad and on his sandwiches that aren't iceberg lettuce. That means he isn't like the average, working-class American. Well, duh. Neither is John McCain. We do not, as a rule, pick leaders who eat Easy Mac for dinner all that often. Here, then, is my central point about Obama and his bitter weeds:

We pick our Presidents from the elite class.

Elite people eat elite food.

This is a bipartisan behavior.

Besides, arugula tastes good. It is pungent, flavorful, and satisfying; more like spinach than lettuce, with more fiber than either. If you could eat arugula regularly, you just might like it. And should the man be elected President, he's going to have all kinds of state dinners and diplomatic functions to go to. Those sorts of affairs are filled with elite food, including arugula. Liking arugula is a qualification for a job that involves a lot of high-class social mingling, and President of the United States is such a job.

If you're the sort of person who is offended that Barack Obama eats bitter weeds in his salad, chances are good you can identify something in his policy platform that you also can't stomach either. Focus your criticism of the man on the policy, please, not on the salad.

Hot Peaches

We went to the fair yesterday. The Wife had a better time than I think she had anticipated. I had an experience other than I had anticipated. My expectation was to run in to people I knew; I saw no one I knew at all.

The Wife, however, really enjoyed the livestock displays and the petting zoo. We got to play with a lot of goats. Normally, urban dwellers don't get to interact with livestock all that much, so it was fun and novel for me, too. The goats we interacted with were all gentle and used to being fed by hand, and did not make much noise. Like dogs, they have their own personalities; some are more receptive to petting and love from humans, others want food, some are more willing than others to push another animal aside to get food. Particularly amusing to me was the baby zebra who really liked goat milk (pictured).

The little pygmy goats are small enough to feasibly keep as pets in a suburban house, although obviously such a creature would be an outdoor-only beast. I wonder how well the dogs and the goat would get along. Also having a goat around would mean no garden for sure. On the plus side, I'd never have to mow the back yard again. I'm not seriously thinking about getting a goat but they were pretty durn cute. I liked the floppy-eared ones the best. We also found the Navajo sheep interesting; the ram had four horns. The difference between the wool and the hair on the animal is quite noticeable; I've never bothered to learn how the hair is sorted out from the wool but I'm sure that sheep farmers are able to do that with some efficiency.

The biggest local product submitted for competition, to my great surprise, were not carrots or onions (the big commercial crops grown out here) but peaches. Are there that many people who have fruit-bearing peach trees in their back yards that they can enter their fruit for competition? Is it just a coincidence that peaches are harvested around this time of year that they are featured so prominently? I know there are people with avocados, citrus, and cherry trees around, but none of those fruits were evident anywhere. Maybe avocados are simply not "county fair" enough.

We also enjoyed the craft and arts exhibits; I got a kick out of the hucksterism in the exhibit hall with people selling Super Chamois and hot tubs and super-expensive "waterless cookware." We didn't buy much of anything other than a pair of sunglasses for me and a new wallet for The Wife. One of the things we noticed was that there were a lot of photography contest entries; the number of really good photographs, though, was quite low. We surmise that there are few barriers to entry for those who wish to take photographs of vacations and other events they'd take pictures of anyway. I doubt my "best" photos would stand up to competition unless I got incredibly lucky to capture something at exactly the right moment.

We also didn't do any midway rides -- most of them make me sick to my stomach and give me astonishingly painful headaches -- and didn't eat any of the expensive junk food. I'll just have to wait next year for my deep-fried Oreo cookie and vanilla ice cream sandwich or a foot-long corn dog. All the same, I was glad The Wife suggested we leave and eat off the premises; we weren't going to stick around for the night's entertainment anyway, and so we wound up spending probably about the same amount of money we would have and had good sushi instead.

Evil Olympics, Day Fifteen: The Power Of The Party

I'm growing weary of this series of posts, to be honest with you, Loyal Readers. Losing my Tibet post into the aether of the Intertubes was a bit demoralizing, to be honest, and I think you get the point by now.

This post was intended to discuss how pervasive the Communist Party is in China. Topics of discussion were to include 1) the party's monopoly on all positions of any governmental power, 2) the party's censorship of all media to eliminate counter-cultural or disestablishmentarian messages, and 3) the network of secret police and informers that send friends and family members off to labor and re-education camps. But if you've been reading the rest of the Evil Olympics series, you've heard about all of that already. And if you haven't been reading about the Evil Olympics, then by now you aren't going to start and nothing I write will make you care.

I have, however saved one more subject for my grand finale. Read all about it tomorrow.

Props to M. Takhallus

I dispense props where they're due.

Obama's VP selection, at long last, was revealed to be Joe Biden at about midnight. I'm not a huge fan of Senator Joe myself but I think he provides some needed wisdom and gravitas to the governing team, and as I wrote a few days ago I think he brings a level of both steel and foreign policy knowledge that Obama will need should he win and take up the reins of government. So sitting here as a moderate sort of Republican, obviously I'd prefer members of my own party, but if something happened to President Obama, that would hardly be my first choice, but I could live with it.

The tease of "who's it going to be" got dragged out for a long, long time yesterday and it seems to me that the campaign should have announced the choice right around 5:00 p.m. eastern time to hit the news cycles. So I'm not sure the media handlers played it right -- Saturday at 3 a.m. on the east coast is not the time to release Big News. Obama and Biden will appear together this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois, and then make their way to Denver for the convention.

But the big props go to blogbuddy Michael Reynolds. He predicted this ticket nine months ago, back when I was saying the race belonged to HRC and she'd have to club a baby harp seal to death in order to lose the nomination. (As this month's Atlantic Magazine describes, it was more a case of internal campaign personality clashes than the result of any failure by the candidate herself or even the brilliance of the Obama campaign's unorthodox strategy.) The idea that Obama could actually win the nomination, much less have the ability to find someone to complement him like campaign rival Joe Biden, was a foggy and improbable notion back then. But that's the fun of sticking your neck out with a prediction -- sometimes you get proven exactly right.

Argh - The Lost Post

I had a wonderful, historically-rich, and melancholy post all written and teed up for publication yesterday. I started it with the medieval-period emergence of Tibet, traced it through the fall of the Chinese Emperors, the autonomous period that ended in the 1950's, and then focused on the brutalization of Tibet that has taken place since then. There was some overlap with my post about religion in China, what with the missing Panchen Lama and the Tibetian Government in Exile.

But something happened and I don't know what but all that good stuff vanished and now I have to re-create it to explain the tragedy of Tibet. Along with more research for today's "Evil Olympics" post. Well, I've got to write something I suppose. But it sucks losing all that work.

Evil Olympics, Day Fourteen: The Tragedy Of Tibet

Masterfully Played?

There is a media frenzy about who Obama will pick to be his running mate unlike any I can remember since I started watching politics as a teenager. It's really reached a fever pitch this morning. Is this a case of the media working itself up into a lather, or is there some tinkering around with the press going on by Camp Obama? If it's the second of those choices, I really have to offer a golf clap of appreciation. Squads of reporters are gathered around ready to pounce any second now on Tim Kaine and Evan Bayh.

UPDATE: I just got a text message on my phone announcing that Obama has announced his running mate -- Michael Phelps, and inviting me to get more info at www.obama-phelps2008.com. Someone out there is clearly having fun with this.

McCain's Houses

The Intertubes are abuzz today with repetitions of the story that John McCain could not glibly and correctly respond to a question about how many houses he and his wife own. The liberal Intertubers are gleefully attacking him for being out of touch, too rich for his own good, and so on. Conservative Intertubers, on the other hand, have chosen two strategies -- counterattack Obama on Rezko, and to offer lawyer-like apologies because "houses" is a confusing term; after all, the McCain own condominiums, so do they count as "houses"?

So there. I've spared you fifty to a hundred blog posts back and forth on the issue. Now I'll tell you what I think about it. Weak as their defenses sound (and they do sound weak) the conservative apologists are right on this one. To really understand why, you've got to appreciate four realities.

First - the socioeconomic reality. Rich people hire people to handle their assets for them. Thanks to Cindy McCain's family wealth, the McCains are rich. (By the way, his wealth says nothing about McCain's qualifications, relative to his opponent, to be President.) That's what it is to be on top of a command structure, whether that be in the military, in politics, in business, or with regards to having personal wealth above a certain threshold -- at some point, more than one person becomes involved with running things, and the person at the top is obliged to entrust the administration of details to other people. Asset management is no different than anything else -- if you're quite wealthy, you've hired someone else to take care of handling your real estate investments for you.

Second - the professional reality. John McCain has no personal training for managing personal capital. He is a military man, a policy maker, and a politician. Like most politicians, his stock portfolio is administered through blind trusts. His assets and money are handled by other people like his wife and professionals, who think about those kinds of issues for him. This frees him up to think about the policy and political matters that are his job.

Third - the political reality. Presidential campaigns have acquired a significant "gotcha" component to them; a journalist or a political operative will sometimes ask a candidate "Who's the prime minister of Kyrgyzstan?" or "How many Americans received Social Security in 2007?" and when the correct answer is not immediately shot back, this is cited as evidence that the candidate is not qualified to hold high office. The Ambush Trivia Attack™ is periodically deployed during a campaign for the purpose of making a candidate look foolish. This particular ambush also has an element of economic populism, so McCain was doubly right to be wary of the question. So it was much more prudent of him to to give a cautious non-response than a flip but incorrect response to such a question; I'd rather have a leader who admits what he doesn't know than pretend to know something he doesn't.

And Fourth - the personal reality. People get confused all the time, especially when thinking about one thing and being asked about another. Neither my wife nor I always remember the number of pets we own. I'd have to think for a few seconds to answer the question "how many cars have you owned?" Hell, my next door neighbor can't always keep the names of his three daughters straight. When you get hit with a sudden demand for information, you may not always be Johnny-on-the-spot, especially if at that exact instant you're thinking about something else.

So McCain got momentarily confused about his assets when he was ambushed with a Johnny-on-the-spot question -- and he chose a cautious response rather than a flip reaction. I say, give him a slackburger on that one. All this really reveals about McCain is that he's got enough money that he knew the answer was "more than one" -- something that we already knew about him and something that we seem to demand of our leaders anyway.

Evil Olympics, Day Thirteen: Family Values Of The PRC

There are a lot of people in China. The government has been concerned for a long time about overpopulation. And it's taken action. Not as draconian as you might have initially feared, but yeah, it's still pretty bad. It wouldn't affect me personally were I Chinese, but the point about caring about people's rights is you have to care about everyone's rights, not just your own, or they're not really meaningful at all.

A Chinese couple is allowed to have only one baby. If a couple has more than one baby, it must pay a "social maintenance fee" which we would call a "baby tax." The fines are adjusted annually and at the provincial level, and adjust upward depending on the number of siblings that a new baby has. The "fee" is quite steep, usually amounting to the entire amount of disposable income of an average two-income couple in an urban area or the entire cash product of a rural couple's annual labor.

As with all laws and policies that are implemented and enforced at a local level, there is variance from place to place in how things happen. Some areas are lax in enforcement -- these tend to be rural, agricultural parts of China, where the new children are seen as providing agricultural labor for the future and are therefore welcomed. But in urban areas, this policy is more rigorously enforced, and that's probably where the policy is "needed" most -- urban dwellers consume food, rather than produce it. Different provinces have different policies about children from families that have split up due to divorce or widowed parents who remarry.

It does not seem to be the case that second and third children are denied social services, education, health care, or the other kinds of benefits provided to other children in China. Many rumors to that effect float around the internet but I have not found any substantiation of them.

Although the "one child" policy was implemented nationally in 1979, there had been efforts by the government to discourage fertility from the latter days of the Cultural Revolution in the 1950's. A common slogan many older Chinese can repeat to you is "One is good, two is okay, three is too many." (Apparently it rhymes or otherwise sounds cool when you say it in Mandarin.) The slogan was bombarded on people all over, from radio and TV to newspapers and posters around town. I get the impression that this family planning slogan is the Chinese equivalent of "Tastes great! Less filling!"

Along with the fees, the government also overtly encourages the use of various kinds of contraceptives, including birth control pills (which are available at a dramatically subsidized rate), condoms, IUDs, and contraceptive abortions. This pastiche of population-control policies has been more or less successful, as negative population growth is noted in many areas of China. Overall, the population of China continues to rise, but much less slowly than in many other industrialized areas of the world. 10% population growth will take China twenty years to realize; other nations can expect a rate of growth two to three times faster than that.

Adoption is one way out of the problem for some parents. All over the world, people who cannot afford to raise children offer them for adoption, and all over the world, other people who for one reason or another step in and adopt them. The Chinese government encourages this to a significant degree, both within China and to make Chinese babies available for adoption to foreign nationals. However, no tax breaks are given to the parents of children who offer their babies for adoption; that birth still counts for later potential liability for the baby tax.

If you are the sort of person who thinks abortion is bad, then this policy is something you will rush to condemn. (If you are the sort of person who thinks contraception is bad, then you will be beside yourself with rage.) I am not the sort of person who thinks abortion is bad (most of the time) but nevertheless, I also think that as a basic human right, you should be able to have children if you want to have them. A lot of people find that reproduction is an urge, a need, and they feel compelled to go out and make babies. This is a good thing in that it helps provide for the future, of course -- and I say, you get to decide when and how many babies you make, not the government. It's hard to imagine a much more personal sort of choice to make, and it's obnoxious that the government of China arrogates to itself the role of making such decisions for its people. Encouragement to a desired policy? Sure, that would be okay in my book. But the use of direct and powerful economic incentives is something else entirely.

I think that everyone, whether pro-choice or pro-life, can agree that forcing a woman to have an abortion is very, very morally offensive. This has not been unheard-of and happens to a small but appreciable extent even today. One suspects that the women forced to undergo abortions (a few of which have taken place during labor or even after birth has been given, which should probably be labeled "infanticide" at that point) at the hands of oppressive and intrusive police (and Party minders) are the ones who are otherwise branded "troublemakers" for political dissent or non-standard lifestyle choices. Artists, for instance.

There is also a phenomenon that China is only now starting to understand -- it has been called the "4-2-1 problem" by some and the "little emperor" syndrome by others. "4-2-1" is easy to understand -- a family now means four grandparents, two parents, one child. Children grow up without brothers and sisters to compete for family resources, so when they are young and the parents and grandparents are all working and earning income and other state support, a tremendous amount of resources can be put into a child by the family. But as the grandparents retire or die, and the parents age and need care from their children, there are fewer people to spread the burden around to. And if negative population growth is realized and sustained, China will confront a generational issue familiar to Americans today -- what happens when the larger, older generation starts to retire and the economic burdens of sustaining the country fall on smaller numbers of people? We don't know how to maintain our old age pension system (Social Security) in the face of baby boomers retiring and baby busters now being the focus of the workforce. China will face a similar problem in the future; indeed, its baby bust problem will likely be more dramatic than ours.

Parents are also subject to various kinds of genetic screening; those who are considered likely to pass along problems to their children -- from schizophrenia to serious genetic diseases like Huntington's, are given much heavier "fees" to pay if they have any children at all. The list of "imperfections" rendering parents susceptible to the enhanced baby tax is expanding and now includes dyslexia -- nearsightedness and crooked teeth surely cannot be far behind.

And finally, China's social structure is such that males are valued more highly than females. The pride of a traditional Chinese family is its eldest son. This is not so different from traditional societies around the world. But it can create something of a disappointment if the one "free" child a couple gets turns out to be a girl. And statistically speaking, about half of them are girls. More than three-quarters of all babies adopted by foreign parents out of China are girls. The result is that the next generation of Chinese is going to be overwhelmingly male. There are many stories of gender-selection abortions and exposure of girl-children to the elements so they die; it's hard to say to what extent that sort of thing actually happens. Lots of girl-children go missing in China; many fewer boy-children do.

"Overwhelming" doesn't sound like much at first glance -- in 2000, the sex ratio for live-born babies was 117 boys for every 100 girls. The trend preceding that benchmark in 2000 was increasing dramatically and it is currently thought that the ratio is about 125:100, which reduces down to 5:4. Again, 5:4 doesn't sound so awful, until you realize that we're talking about a nation of 1.2 billion people. One-ninth of 1.2 billion is more than 133 million "surplus" men. And what does a society do with its surplus men? It makes them into soldiers.

Same-Sex Marriage: The Federalist Society Debate

One of the really great things about the Federalist Society is its ability to put together discussions that fairly, intelligently, and civilly represent both sides of a contentious issue. Federalist Society debaters do not call one another names, do not resort to cheap shots and avoid intellectual short cuts to make their points.

I try to take that as a model for my own writing. Sometimes I may fall short of that ideal. Well, I'm only human and I have opinions like anyone else. (Although I am also of the opinion that at times, the use of provocative terms is justified and consistent with high-quality analysis; this is something that can only be determined on a case-by-case basis.)

So in that vein, I commend to all readers of all opinions this online panel on the issue of same-sex marriage, between two SSM advocates and two SSM opponents for such a discussion. I think the SSM advocates got the much better end of the discussion, but I have a strong opinion on the issue so of course I would sympathize with them. At any rate, enjoy the debate.

Still Thinking Sebelius

Senator Joe Biden says "I'm not the guy." I believe him. I would like it to be Biden for two reasons -- first, my preference is McCain over Obama and I think Biden presents a target-rich opportunity for Republicans to attack. Second, if Obama-Biden gets elected, I think Biden would provide a needed level of maturity, experience, and foreign policy expertise otherwise lacking. But, Biden says, "I'm not the guy."

So who is? I don't think there is a perfect choice. But my money is still be on Kathleen Sebelius. Tim Kaine would be a good choice for Obama, too. But applying rudimentary game theory to the decision, Sebelius seems like she presents the most upside with the least downside.

Sebelius offers the best advantages-to-disadvantages ratio of the available choices, especially since Biden has made it clear that “I’m not the guy.” Her disadvantages: Doesn’t help on foreign policy; most rabid of PUMAs will be offended that the choice was a woman other than HRC. Her advantages: Is still a woman, popular governor of a “red” state, perceived as both politically moderate and administratively competent, and she’s not going to be portrayed as a Washington insider.

Unlike some people, I'm moved by her popularity in her state -- I think she can probably carry Kansas, which is six points out of McCain’s column and into Obama’s that otherwise would have been conceded. Kaine may not be able to flip Virginia for Obama; on the other hand, Obama might be able to flip Virginia without him. Sebelius, at minimum, makes the Democrats competitive in Kansas, which means a fire in McCain's backyard that he has to expend resources to put out.

The play here is to double down on the “new” and “change” themes – which are strong for Obama – and to put McCain on the defensive somewhere he otherwise would not need to be. McCain's calm non-response to Obama opening up twenty field offices in Indiana has been vindicated as that state has remained stubbornly red. We'll see if that pays off in the long run, but thing of it is, McCain can't afford to be so aloof in the Sunflower State if Kansas' popular two-term governor is right there on the ticket.

As for Clinton? I’ve said it before – if I were advising her, I’d tell her to make a play for Governor of New York in 2010. It’s no small thing to be Governor of New York and I have to imagine it would be hers for the taking. If Obama loses in November (and the popular vote gap has narrowed to less than one point), and she’s Governor of New York, it would take a mighty wind indeed to keep the nomination out of her hands in 2012.

What, Are Democrats Going To Hate Him More?

Apparently, Joe Lieberman will speak in praise of John McCain at the RNC in a few weeks. I suppose this means he won't be one of the "cool kids" in the Democrats' Senate caucus any more. Oh, wait, he's only barely tolerated there now. Maybe he'll have to deal with a primary challenge when he runs for re-election. Oh, wait, he already did have a primary challenge, which he lost, and then got himself re-elected anyway as an independent. So now he's standing up for McCain, who is a personal friend of his and with whom he has had a mutual admiration society for years.

Personally, I find this appealing. McCain and Lieberman disagree on a lot of things, they agree on quite a few things, and they have a working political relationship that is not governed by party affiliation but rather by trying to find common ground. This is the very definition of an "independent" and it seems like the way politics ought to be done. Lieberman is certainly not beholden to the Democratic party any more, and can act politically as he pleases. So why not speak at the RNC?

Keynoter

Rudy Giuliani will not be John McCain's running mate. If that were still in the cards, Giuliani would not have been tapped to deliver the keynote speech at the RNC. This, by the way, is also a sop to the pro-choice Republicans out there, so we can be reasonably sure that McCain's running made will be pro-life. I feel confident stating, although it is no surprise anymore, that the Republican Reboot I've wished for -- one in which the party recasts itself as less strident on social issues in favor of other kinds of policies and political foci -- will clearly not be taking place this cycle.

Evil Olympics, Day Twelve: Whatever Happened To That Guy Who Shouted At The Tank?

If you don’t remember the Tank Man, watch the video below. If you’re too young to remember the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, then you must watch the video. If you have managed to stumble on this blog from China, please watch the video. Remember what he did. I write to help you remember why he did it -- I say he is the greatest hero in China's five-thousand year history.



At the end of his hundred and fifty seconds of distilled and pure bravery, a number of other people came out and grabbed him and pulled him out of the way of the tanks. He seemed to go willingly and these people do not appear to have been police. They seem to have been people who became convinced that this guy was about to get shot and tried to save his life. They may have been his friends; they may have been strangers to him.

Here's the background.

On April 15, 1989, young people, particularly including college students, began gathering in public places around China. The protests were precipitated by the death of the former Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Yaobang. Hu had, in his years after stepping down from party leadership, condemned the harsh and authoritarian practices of the government under the stewardship of Deng Xiaoping. Hu openly admired the policy of glasnost pursued by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviety Union and called for implementation of “rapid reform” of the Chinese government. Because his policies were seen as critical of Deng and his clique of pro-authoritarian leaders, Hu had been forced to resign and to publish a humiliating “self-criticism,” which was circulated as another example of the evils of the repressive regime within the universities of China. So his death marked an opportunity for pro-democracy students to stage public memorial services in his honor.

Starting early on April 15, the day he died, and gaining force over the next several days, students began to congregate in Tiananmen Square, and by April 18, 10,000 of them demanded that the government revise the official obituary of Hu. For a day or so, they were dispersed, but after Hu’s funeral, more than a hundred thousand protestors gathered to march back on Beijing’s only major open space near the centers of government.

This was thought by the government to be too many people to disperse using the city’s available police force. So the government tried to use its favorite weapon – propaganda. Official state newspapers distributed an op-ed piece written by Deng, who wrote:

After the memorial meeting, an extremely small number of people with ulterior purposes continued to take advantage of the young students’ feelings of grief for Comrade Hu Yaobang... This is a planned conspiracy and a disturbance. Its essence is to, once and for all, negate the leadership of the CPC [Chinese Communist Party] and the socialist system... All comrades in the party and the people throughout the country must soberly recognize the fact that our country will have no peaceful days if this disturbance is not checked resolutely.

This only added fuel to the first and half again as many people came to Tiananmen Square to raise their voices in favor of reform and against repression. Some leaders emerged out of the crowds, and they issued a written demand to the government for freedom of the press, an end to corruption within the state, the resignation of Deng Xiaopang, and abolition of the Chinese Communist Party.

When propaganda did not work, the Party tried persuasion (and, we may assume, some level of intimidation as well). Protestors were identified as much as possible and overt representatives of the Party were sent to go speak with their families. Although the official line is that the Party tried to explain what kinds of benefits would be available to the protestors if they gave up the ghost and returned to their daily, ordinary lives, it seems safe to assume that along with the many carrots dangled there were also a few sticks raised. Implied in promises to provide medical care for ailing family members and opportunities for further educational and career advancement are the threats that such benefits can be withheld.

But this national network of party activity was so extensive that it actually strained the resources of the party and its network of informants and secret police (many of whom could not be contacted and activated for fear of revealing their identities to the friends and family they were supposed to be spying on. So party apparatchiks who were tapped to do the work were diverted from their main jobs of censoring the media. Although it took the Chinese media a few days to realize that suddenly, their minders had left them unattended, they figured it out soon enough and began broadcasting live coverage of the protests in Tiananmen Square across the country. This would prove decisive in making the protests a truly national symbol and a truly national crisis.

The protestors were, by contrast to what we might expect to have seen in Europe or the United States, orderly and law-abiding. There was peace, and the majority of the crowd demonstrated great respect to the government by seizing and handing over to police on the fringes of the square a man who, in an excess of contempt, had thrown ink on a poster of Mao Zedong. On the day that Mikhail Gorbachev came for a previously-scheduled state visit, the protestors sang socialist songs.

The hunger strike began at some point in mid-May. The leaders of the protest began to not eat and display their starvation to show solidarity with the lower classes of the cities, who they claimed had been neglected by a corrupt and elitist government. When Gorbachev came, the world media came with him and extensive coverage of the protests was broadcast around the world. Gorbachev had his meetings and left, but the global media stayed on to cover this most dramatic of events -- China appeared poised on the precipice of a popular revolution.

Immediately after Gorbachev departed, a significant dispute about how to handle the protests arose within the ranks of the governmental leadership. One faction, led by a Hu’s successor Zhao Ziyang, urged a soft response, while another group, led by Li Peng, urged a forceful crackdown. Zhao went so far as to wade into the protests with a megaphone, urging the students to end their hunger strike and not give up their lives so cheaply. The point at which he probably cut his own throat politically was when he told the protestors to look to their own futures, saying of his generation (the ones holding the reins of power), "We are already old, it doesn't matter to us any more." It mattered to Li and his group, and they eventually persuaded Deng to go along with their preferred response to the situation.

Li had martial law declared on May 20, 1989. Zhao protested that this was not necessary, and Li called for a vote of no confidence. Zhao lost and was unceremoniously ousted from power. However, the heavy-handed consolidation of power in the hands of the hard-liners threatened to cause rifts in the army itself; the regular army detachments stationed near Beijing were thought to be sympathetic to Zhao and unreliable against the civilian protesters now blocking entrance into the city as part of their demands for democratic reform. So the 27th and 28th People's Liberation Armies, which then combined infantry and armor divisions based in a more westerly province, were mobilized and given orders to enter Beijing and restore order.

On May 29, a statue, called the “Goddess of Democracy,” was brought into the square, to the amazement of the international media. She was more than thirty feet tall and constructed of papier-mache over a light metal skeleton by art students at Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts. The government threatened to take the license away from any truck driver who hauled the Goddess to Tiananmen Square, so the art students hired six rickshaws instead. For six days, the Goddess held court in Tiananmen Square, and something like three hundred thousand people gathered in the square to see her unveiling. The sculptors of the statute proclaimed at the unveiling:

At this grim moment, what we need most is to remain calm and united in a single purpose. We need a powerful cementing force to strengthen our resolve: That is the Goddess of Democracy. Democracy…You are the symbol of every student in the Square, of the hearts of millions of people. …Today, here in the People’s Square, the people’s Goddess stands tall and announces to the whole world: A consciousness of democracy has awakened among the Chinese people! The new era has begun! …The statue of the Goddess of Democracy is made of plaster, and of course cannot stand here forever. But as the symbol of the people’s hearts, she is divine and inviolate. Let those who would sully her beware: the people will not permit this! …On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent. We have strong faith that that day will come at last. We have still another hope: Chinese people, arise! Erect the statue of the Goddess of Democracy in your millions of hearts! Long live the people! Long live freedom! Long live democracy!

The 27th People's Liberation Army arrived on the scene on June 2. Its entry to the city was actively resisted by civilians, who overturned buses and other cars and set them on fire to prevent the entry of the military vehicles. The 27th responded by shooting tear gas and live ammunition into crowds of civilians, and firing tank shells at oncoming vehicles and the makeshift barricades. Awaiting arrival of the lighter infantry from the 28th PLA, the armored columns positioned themselves strategically throughout the city, encircling Tiananmen Square and the universities. There were some civilian victories caused by the massive number of protests -- one armored personnel carrier was actually overturned by a mob and set on fire; the soldiers inside were killed by the mob.

In the square itself, black armbands began circulating amongst the protesters, and some slipped away in fear of what might happen next. They were prescient. The first wave came in the form of a light infantry maneuver on the morning of June 3, from three armored personnel carriers deployed at the primary entry and exit points for the square. The soldiers were given orders to fire on the crowd, and they executed them. When they ran out of ammunition, they conducted bayonet charges. Some print reporters described seeing soldiers with AK-47s hosing down the crowd with live fire. Some sought refuge from the hail of bullets and blades in the makeshift bus barricades; when the soldiers approached and removed these people, they were savagely beaten with truncheons, and much of this violence was captured on video. (You can find it on the internet if you care to look for it; I'll not embed it here.) Some of the protesters fought back with Molotov cocktails, but there were few, if any, firearms.

Once the firing began, the streets surrounding Tiananmen Square cleared in a hurry. That's when the tanks moved in. An American reporter on the scene described seeing tanks actually crushing protesters to death under their treads. By the early morning hours of June 4, Tiananmen Square was cleared. Hundreds had died in the square, and thousands more -- their parents, who came hours later to try and find their missing children -- were fired upon indiscriminately, in multiple waves, by the infantry occupying the square. The soldiers killed the driver of an ambulance that came to tend to the wounded. The China Red Cross initially published a figure of 2,600 dead on June 4, but that figure was retracted after the government threatened to arrest the leaders of the China Red Cross. The official figure is about 200 dead and about 500 wounded on June 4 in Beijing. It is thought the true number of casualties is between 7,000 to 10,000.

Scenes of slaughter like this were replicated in every city in China on June 4. No one knows how many people died, how many were shot and wounded.

More tanks and infantry continues to pour into the city as the remaining portions of the 27th and 28th PLA arrived on the morning of June 5. That's when Tank Man stood in front of the advancing column and, armed only with what looks like a shopping bag or a briefcase, briefly caused an advancing column of armor to stop on its deadly mission.

Newsweek photojournalist Charlie Cole is morally convinced, but lacks hard evidence to prove, that Tank Man was taken away from the scene by secret police, and executed within a few days of his unbelievable showdown. Other journalists who were on the scene point out that the people who took Tank Man away from the advancing column did not use physical force but instead guided him by the arm, a degree of gentleness unlike the more violent means employed by police when apprehending someone. A government official could not identify him when challenged by Time Magazine to do so, offering only the comment "I think never killed." Cole's leads have suggested Tank Man's name was Wang Wei Lin, but he cannot confirm that. Another author researching the incident came up with the name Wang Ai-Min, but again, this relies on some dubious sources. Regardless of his name, if those were secret police who spirited the man away, it's hard to imagine that he was not executed. China was put under intense diplomatic pressure to prove that the man was still alive and all right after things calmed down, and it has never done so.

But it's hard to say. We should not forget that the protests in Beijing were being duplicated in nearly every major city in China at the time. This was a very serious crisis -- not just several hundred college students smoking dope and engaged in hippie talk. Literally millions of people were demanding the immediate deposition of the government and its leaders. Cries of "down with the government" and "fascists stop killing" were frequently heard in protests around the nation. Deng and Li were right about one thing -- China was on the brink of a revolution. Tens, if not hundreds, of police and soldiers were killed by pro-democracy protesters.

Had a charismatic leader with sufficient ambition stepped forward to lead it, it seems likely that portions of the PLA would have defected to the rebel side and there could very well have been civil war. A possibility exists, we will never be able to know how probable, that this revolution could have actually succeeded. The PRC may well have found itself deposed and replaced with a new form of government -- one that would have had to have been more democratic than its predecessor, based on the strength and pervasiveness of the protests.

But that did not happen. The bad guys won. The Goddess of Liberty was rolled underneath the treads of a Chinese tank.

They won through the direct and brutal application of military force on innocent civilians. More people were killed trying to find loved ones in Tiananmen Square than had been killed in the square itself, even when soldiers were hosing down the crowd with automatic weapons. Parents paid a higher price in blood for daring to approach the square to learn their children were still alive or slain at the hands of their government than did the students who had been at the receiving end of the AK-47s and bayonets earlier that day.

They won by arresting a significant number of the intelligentsia that had formed the original core of the democracy movement. Thousands of college professors and student leaders around the country were rounded up and arrested, never to be heard from again. Many were able to plead for exile instead, and all have been refused re-entry into China to this day, even for short visits with their families.

They won by executing tens of thousands of arrested protesters from around the country after trials in kangaroo courts lacking even the most rudimentary forms of due process.

They won by purging any hint of sympathy for the protesters from within their own ranks. Zhao was not only stripped of his position within the Communist Party, he remained under house arrest until his death in 1991. Other reform-sympathetic leaders within the Party were arrested as well until they wrote public "self-criticisms" and other statements describing how they had "changed their minds" about the events of June 1989, and assigned to mid-level jobs in the western provinces. Journalists who expressed emotions of sadness or regret for the executions were fired from their jobs in state-run media.

They won by purging the event from their nation's history. No one will talk about the Tiananmen Square massacre. Discussion of the summer of 1989 is not permitted in schools or universities. Simply put, the PRC has marshaled all of its available resources into attempting to erase the memory of those days from its history in an eerie replication of Winston Smith's job editing history books for Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. Journalists touring Beijing University have shown pictures of the Tank Man facing down the armored column to students in 2006, to be met with blank stares and uncomprehending comments. They'd never heard anything about Tiananmen Square as the site of a protest against the government. They have heard of the chaos and violence of the Cultural Revolution, but the Revolution of 1989 is, for them, a purely European even; what happened then is dismissed as an insignificant counterrevolutionary demonstration of a small group of malcontents. An anniversary protest in Hong Kong just ten weeks ago was reported in mainland China as a rally in support of the earthquake victims in Sichuan. If you grew up in China in the 1990's, you might never know it happened at all.

They won by continuing to arrest, detain, and execute dissidents. Families of people who went missing in June of 1989 are labeled "dissidents" and arrested themselves. Every year as the anniversary approaches, the normally-tight security at Tiananmen Square is ratcheted up and no public assemblies are allowed at all, anywhere.

The bad guys won. They killed so many innocent people, people who wanted the freedom to think and write as they chose, people who wanted the right to vote for their own leaders, people who wanted a government more or less free from corruption and one-party control. Things that most Americans take for granted.

I haven't cried much when writing this blog, ever. I can't help but cry putting these words down, re-learning better now what was learned twenty years ago through shadows and fog and clouds of gunpowder. China's leaders may try to edit Tiananmen Square from their country's official memory. But let the rest of the world never forget it. If I haven't made you cry about this, this episode of Nightline will.

Tank Man is a profound symbol of protest to repression. He demanded something from the tank – he is visibly shouting at the tank, asking a question or telling the tank to go away. I have always fancied that he said something like “Get out of my city! You’re not going to drive into the Square and attack all those kids!” And despite everything that had happened already, the tank driver hesitated, at least three times. For a few unbelievably pregnant seconds, the overwhelming military force of a brutally repressive government was stopped, by common decency, and nearly toppled a government.

Tank Man stands for all those kids, all those young people, all those Chinese citizens who stood up to their evil, repressive government, built a Goddess of Democracy and for seven glorious weeks made the Revolutions of 1989 a global, not just a European, world event. His identity has been lost to history forever, but if there was anyone, anywhere, who deserves the Big Brass Ones Award periodically dispensed from this blog, the Tank Man is him.

Evil Olympics, Day Eleven: The Three Gorges Dam

Hailed by some as a miracle of engineering, the Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest hydro-electric power generator, which when it is fully operational will produce 22,500 megawatts of electricity -- this is more than would be generated by twenty nuclear plants. If it had been done right, I'd be ready to hand huge kudos to the PRC for creating a source of power that massive, causing that much relief on fossil fuel burning plants, and being able to build it in the first place. I don't think the government of China was "evil" in the same sense that it is evil in its mind control practices and its zest for inflicting violence on its own citizens. Something on this scale cannot be anything but morally ambiguous and to be fair, we should not lose sight of the fact that the dam will generate a lot of power without leaving radioactive waste or pumping pollutants into the atmosphere; we should appreciate the engineering and innovations that led to its creation. But like nearly everything this authoritarian regime has attempted, the unthinking adherence to the commands of Mao, who originally ordered construction of the dam in 1949, has not been rationally considered in light of what is known today and were the project to be proposed now, it would have been dismissed as carrying too heavy a price tag. But because the dam was a dream of Mao's, the government has been all too willing to pay heavy prices in other arenas to achieve a single goal, and the most heavy price paid is human. Much electricity will be generated and commerce to the fabled city of Chongqing will be facilitated, but the government has dismissed an incredible amount of damage done by the many, many unintended consequences of the flood.

At a small town formerly known as Sandouping, the dam rises across a narrow portion of the Yangtze River Valley just downstream of a point where two large tributaries enter the river. The water began to accumulate in 2003 and as of this year, the lake created by the dam extends nearly four hundred miles upriver and the lake's deepest point is now more than 600 feet. Trillions of gallons of muddy water now make up this incredible flood.

1,400,000 people have been dislocated by the project, which has flooded prime farmland in the Yangtze River Valley. Thirteen cities, 140 towns, and over 1,000 villages were all moved because they were in the flood zone. For some of the displaced people, new housing above the flood zone was created, which involved displacing even more people. Others migrated to larger coastal cities to seek their fortunes there. No one was given all that much choice in the decision to move; it is not clear who was permitted their preference between remaining in the area or participating in the urban migration. And if you got migrated, you got screwed -- quoting from one human rights report:

• Compensation offered to resettlers has fallen short of the replacement cost for their property. Instead, they are forced to buy housing at a cost that far exceeds the compensation they have been offered.
• The land and jobs that have been promised to resettlers from rural and urban areas are no longer available. Where land has been offered, it has often turned out to be of inferior quality.
• While approximately 500,000 people have been resettled to other areas in the Three Gorges region, more than 100,000 people have been forced to leave the Three Gorges area altogether.
• Local authorities appear to have diverted a large part of the resettlement budget into unrelated infrastructure projects, using funds intended for household compensation on projects like hotels and roads.
• According to the report, there is a “widespread belief that local officials have used the project as an opportunity to fill their own pockets.” Many cases of embezzlement of resettlement funds have been documented.
• No independent grievance mechanism exists, and the resettlement process is conducted “in an atmosphere of officially orchestrated secrecy and intimidation.”
• The police have used “excessive force” to quell the numerous protests against the resettlement problems, and the Three Gorges Project has become “an instrument of repression with widespread human rights abuses.”

Many of the people who wound up going to an urban area wound up in Chongquing, which has suffered a significant infrastructure strain and housing shortage as a result of the hundreds of thousands of people who have moved there. We will never, ever know how many people were rendered homeless by the flood.

In those cities and outlying areas were quite a large number of medium to heavy industries, including steel foundries, soap plants, and paint factories. Also in the more rural areas that have been flooded were some of the best farmland on the planet. All of this has been submerged. The loss of the farmland is regrettable because it increases the strain on China to produce enough food to feed all of its people. But this is nothing compared to the problem of the old industrial sites -- they are filled with a wide variety of toxic chemicals, heavy metals, and petroleum products. Some of this was cleared away before the flood. A great deal of it was not. A great deal more was trapped in the soil, which now will become silt and sediment at the bottom of the lake, agitated by shifting and changing currents and by the boats which now ply the river overhead. Consequently, materials like mercury, arsenic, phosphates, palladium, and benzene are all mixed with the lakewater and being discharged into the lower Yangtze river, there to wash out to sea. About a third of the water entering the reservoir is discharged from sewage treatment plants that inadequately filter... contaminants, shall we say. The million-plus residents of the cities of Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai (each city has populations of over nine million; Shanghai's greater municipal area is estimated at nearly twenty million) all use the lower Yangtze as a primary source of drinking water; it is not clear how much of this stuff can be filtered out or whether it is even being filtered at all since no one is quite sure what is in the water anymore. And it's not just people who drink the water; some ecologists estimate that as many as a million pounds of fish and other sea harvest will die every year for the next twenty years, killed off and no longer breeding new fry, and putting further pressure to feed the 1.1 billion Chinese citizens who rely, in no small part, on the bounty of the sea. It remains to be seen how many people will be killed, either of toxic shock or starvation, by the poisons unleashed in the flood.

Some of the world's most amazing scenery -- the famous green-covered rounded mountain pillars of the Yangtze -- have been submerged in the name of industrial progress. These picturesque scenes have been replaced by 100 to 200 meters of water. This, by itself, might not be so awful, but along with the loss of the view, wetland areas used by a wide variety of birds have also been destroyed, raising substantial concerns about their ability to survive their annual migrations. Already lost are a species of river dolphin; the only surviving specimens are in aquaria and can no longer survive in the river because of habitat loss, temperature changes in river water and the disruption in their food supply. That food supply includes the fit-for-human consumption Yangtze Sturgeon, which will no longer be able to migrate from winter feeding grounds near the ocean to summertime molting grounds upstream to breed. It is not clear how the sturgeon will survive in the Three Gorges Reservoir without their food supply that in the past has included food found in abundance only towards the mouth of the river. The next candidate for extinction is the already-threatened Siberian crane, whose migratory patterns (for the eastern flock) included several days of layover in the wetlands that have now been lost to the flood.

Culturally, the Chinese drowned a huge amount of their heritage. The river valleys were the places were civilization first arose in China and there are countless burial sites and archeologically important areas. All of the raw information that could have been gained about early civilization in the area is now lost forever. Of particular interest were the hanging coffins of the Bah people, who inhabited the valley about 3,000 years ago. It was their custom to bury their dead in hollowed-out logs attached to the cliffs of the gorges; some coffins have been preserved for museum display but thousands have been lost to the flood.

Did it all need to be done? Perhaps. The dam will account for about 3% of China's overall electric use when it reaches full capacity; total hydroelectric power in China is projected to make up something like 10% of China's total supply by 2020 and this is a third of it. If that number seems small, bear in mind that China will have to provide electricity for 1.3 billion people and their employers by that time. It's a huge amount of power being generated, and in theory, the power does not generate pollution. But, because inadequate cleanup of the valley floors, the river and the South China Sea will have to deal with elevated levels of all sorts of heavy metals and toxins for years to come, all washed downstream by the waters of the flood.

And the earth will have her revenge on the water, sooner or later. The effectiveness of the dam will ultimately have to face its greatest test in the form of silt. Downstream of the dam, flooding will be controlled well by the new structure, but upstream there continue to be periodic rainstorms and the flooding they cause. This kicks up large amounts of silt, and now that the flood waters are higher, there is new much dirt for nature to erode and to deposit in the lakebed. Like everything else in the lake, the silt will gradually make its way downstream towards the dam. No one knows exactly how much or how fast it will move, but it is certain that the silt will diminish water pressure behind the power intakes for the electric generators. Particularly worrisome are large rocks displaced from the steep cliffs, which will eventually roll downstream with the currents; these cannot be moved or displaced with the same kind of tools as particulate mud. The more silt, the less electricity. Silt also is an impediment to navigation, of course. And the lack of silt resupplying river banks downstream raises the risk of soil subsidence, landslides, and destructive erosion downstream as well, putting something like a hundred million people living downstream of the dam at risk. as the silt moves downstream with the rest of the flood.

Why did all of this happen? Could the government have prepared for these things better? Obviously, it could have done so in retrospect. But the project had earned criticism for ten years from the outside world, and all of these issues had been raised in international forae then. Internally, though, critics of the Three Gorges Dam found themselves silenced and steered away from positions of influence over the project. Now, even the government has been forced to acknowledge that they have a tiger by the tail and a wide variety of problems could result if anything goes wrong with the dam. It is a shame that the authoritarian form of government that prevails in China did not allow for free public debate about so momentous, complex, and expensive an undertaking. Let us all hope, for the millions downstream, that the dam never breaks, because not since the Black Sea was created in an earthquake will any human being have seen such a flood.

Maybe The Message Is Getting Clear

Yesterday, California's Supreme Court issued a decision that ordered a fertility clinic to make its artificial insemination services equally available to a lesbian as it did to a straight woman. This means that the lesbian will now be able to have a child with her partner (or wife, if they get married) and they will not need to have a man involved.

"But wait," some might say. "What if the doctor has a legitimate ethical objection to homosexuals raising children? A legitimate ethical objection, well-grounded in the moral teachings of a widely-accepted religion like, say, Christianity?"

To this argument, the Supreme Court said "There is no legitimate objection to discriminating against homosexuals." More specifically:

Do the rights of religious freedom and free speech, as guaranteed in both the federal and the California Constitutions, exempt a medical clinic’s physicians from complying with the California Unruh Civil Rights Act’s prohibition against discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation? Our answer is no.

Again, an example by way of substitution makes it really easy to understand why this should be the case. What would you think of a doctor who withheld fertility services from an African-American woman but provided them to a woman of European descent? Easy call. What about a doctor who dispensed those services to Catholics but not Mormons? Again, an easy call. Both kinds of withholding could be justified by a reasonable reading of Biblical commands,* but there is no doubt that the law should reach a different result.

Now, do you really think the homosexual chose to be that way? What rational person would choose a lifestyle that involved facing that much discrimination, if it were just a choice? Gay people are gay because that's what they are; they have no more ability to control their homosexuality than they do their height, race, or their eye color. So it's unfair to discriminate against them because of something they can't control. And if a gay person is gay, so what? How does that hurt you? If a gay person has sex with another gay person, again, how does that pick your pocket or beat you up? And even if that really is contrary to God's laws, isn't that between God and the sinner? Despite all of these objections, some people continue to insist that religion justifies their bigotry against gays.

As has been pointed out in many ways and in many places, by many people, gay people cannot conceive through their ordinary sex practices. So if a gay person wants to have a kid, that person has to go well out of his or her way to do it. The sort of person who will do that is much more likely than the sort of person who wakes up and says, "Holy crap! We're pregnant! What are we going to do?" to be a good parent. Yes, people in that second category often turn out to be very good parents. But there are a lot of crappy parents out there, too. So letting gay people have kids is a way of increasing the percentage of children who grow up with parents who love and care for them. It's also worth noting that fertility services are expensive and not covered by most kinds of medical insurance, so the sort of person who would use these services is more likely than others to be in a position to provide for the material needs of the child, too.

But this is getting away from the point, which is simply this: it is not legitimate, ever, to use your religion as a gloss for your bigotry. It diminishes the ethical force of religion and it causes people to be treated poorly on the basis of matters over which they have no control or choice and which hurt no one.

I'm well aware that not all religious people discriminate against homosexuals and those who do not -- in particular, those who caution their co-religionists against doing so -- are to be commended. Rather, it is those sorts of people who would marshal religion in the defense of bigotry who earn this morning's sneer, and who are on the receiving end of the Supreme Court's decision.

* Both kinds of withholding could be condemned on the basis of other kinds of commands to the faithful in the Bible, too. It's a question of which passage you select and how you interpret and apply it and in fact I rather suspect that the better interpretation of the Christian religion is that a Christian dispensing medical services ought to treat everyone the same way, with charity and love -- which, come to think of it, is how an atheist or a follower of a different religion ought to act, too. I view religion and the Bible as neutral in this question -- the aim of my condemnation is not religion but rather those who would invoke it to cloak their own misconduct.

Bigotry From The Modern Pulpit

Rick Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church here in southern California, scored a huge hit for himself by hosting the "faith forum" which consisted of interviews of John McCain and Barack Obama over the weekend. Both candidates seemed to do well for themselves, although it would appear that McCain made political gains from the exposure. This result is not a source of much wonder; Obama can talk the talk on the faith side of things (his religiosity seems to be genuinely closer to that of an evangelical's), but McCain is with the Christian right on policy and benefits from being the Republican standard-bearer.

But I want to focus on something that Pastor Warren said that got quoted in the Fish Wrapper:

Warren told his congregation that someone had asked if there was any kind of president he would not vote for.

"I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, 'I don't need God,' " Warren said. "They're saying, 'I'm totally self-sufficient by [myself].' And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It's too big a job."

That's why the President has advisors, Pastor! No one has ever done that job by himself, not even George Washington. It was never, ever imagined that the President would do such a thing. What Warren is really saying is "You need God's help to be President." Now, I don't really want to get into an issue here about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, or any other historical President's religiosity. Suffice to say that Lincoln was the guy who said "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." He managed to keep the nation together during the worst crisis we have ever faced.

What I want to address is the question of whether a future President would be able to take on the issues of the day and the challenges of the future without the benefit of weekly churching in the manner Pastor Warren seems to think is so indispensible. Given the immense resources, both material and intellectual, at the disposal of the President, it's easy to see that the real challenge of the job is not insufficient resources but rather managing all of them together into something of a synthesis that can illuminate policymaking.

The hoary old prophecies of long-dead clerics about the Babylonian Exile are not going to be tops on the list of those resources. At best, they may elliptically form a portion of the President's ethical base. We certainly hope the President is an ethical person. But faithful Readers should know that I am quite specific that religion and morality are different things entirely that sometimes have the benefit of juxtaposition. Just as sometimes it's hot outside and sometimes it's windy. Wind is not a necessary condition for heat; religion is not a necessary condition for morality, or vice-versa. Warren is no dummy nor is he a naïf; he surely knows this himself both intellectually and by bitter experience.

So what is he really saying here? Let's play the game of search-and-replace. Consider what a previous generation's political figure might have said:

"I could not vote for a Catholic because a Catholic says, 'God speaks to me through the Pope.' They're saying 'The Pope speaks for God.' But the President needs to speak for the United States."

If you voted for JFK in 1960 (or even if you voted for Nixon), you had to contend with that argument. And in retrospect, can you characterize that argument as anything but bigotry?

More fancifully, what would you think of someone who said this?

"I could not vote for someone who denies the divinity of Zeus because that person says 'I don't need to sacrifice a live goat to appease the heavens.' They're saying, 'Hurricanes and lightning storms and earthquakes just happen by themselves.' They don't understand that those things don't happen by themselves, they happen because Zeus is mad that the king failed to make the right kind of sacrifices."

You probably wouldn't take that person's advice on political matters at all. And rightly so. It's hard to imagine anyone making such a claim seriously, but that's because everybody is an atheist when it comes to Zeus. When you can understand why you would discount the political advice of the Zeus-worshipper, you will understand why I discount Pastor Rick Warren's foray into politics.

I've tried to unpack Warren's words as many ways as I can. But no matter how I slice them, it looks to me like bigotry against atheists. I can't turn his remark into anything but "It's okay to not vote for an atheist for President, regardless of his qualifications, just because of his atheism." Maybe someone else will want to defend him. I feel no desire to try.

P.S.: On the subject of Presidents who don't believe, I just stumbled across this quote from William Howard Taft, a President I greatly admire and who seems under-appreciated by virtue of his poor political fortunes: "I do not believe in the divinity of Christ and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe." This is the only man who got to be both President and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Evil Olympics, Day Ten: What It's Like To Be Gay In China

Traditionally, Chinese society takes a dim but not completely negative view of homosexuality. The begetting of children, particularly sons, is a duty of a good Chinese man; this is reinforced by Confucian and Taoist teachings. So traditional morality in China takes a generally dim view of homosexuality; even cross-dressing can be considered morally unacceptable because it disrupts and challenges traditional gender roles in society at large. However, it should also be noted that homosexual acts are not "sins" in Confucianism or Taoism they way they are in the western monotheistic traditions; they are rather considered diversions from more productive or dutiful sorts of tasks. A man engaged in sex with another man could be having sex with his wife to father children, and therefore his neglect of his duty is the same as if he had been gambling or drinking too much.

I should also note that there is a substantial tradition of same-sex love in ancient Chinese literature and some scholars have suggested that homosexual acts for recreational sex were condoned in the Imperial court during the Han, Song, Quin and Ming dynasties. To that extent, homosexual affairs were sometimes seen as fashionable and elite sorts of activities, and one can imagine that as with all people, everywhere and at all times in history, when elites engage in a particular kind of behavior, some of the people below the the elites in social status will emulate them as a form of aspirational behavior.

In modern China, these traditional attitudes sharpened to a significant degree after the Cultural Revolution in 1949. For thirty years, homosexuality was outlawed and people who were openly homosexual were rounded up and sent to psychiatric treatment clinics where they were supposed to be "cured" but instead subjected to a variety of extraordinarily cruel and sometimes violent forms of aversion therapy.*

In recent years, the situation has materially improved and this is an area in which some genuine credit must be given to the PRC's government. Sodomy was decriminalized in 1999 and the reprogramming clinics were all shut down in 2001 when the government removed homosexuality from its list of recognized mental disorders. Gay pride parades have been permitted and gay-bashing is rare. It seems that younger generations of Chinese are tolerant of homosexuality, at least in the abstract.

However, state-run media outlets routinely censor any kind of entertainment or film coverage depicting homosexuals, whether in a good or bad light. Popular movies, like Brokeback Mountain, are not shown (openly) in China, although it seems possible for a consumer there to get a DVD of such things illegally. (There was great interest in Brokeback Mountain because the director, Ang Lee, is a world-renowned filmmaker of Chinese ancestry who also directed the immensely popular Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). A popular story of two men struggling against official and social condemnation of their love, Lan Yu, was filmed in Taiwan but possession of a copy of the movie will earn the owner a substantial fine and, of course, confiscation of the contraband film.

There is still generational tension and attitudes about homosexuality are far from uniform. In that sense, China seems to be not unlike the rest of the industrialized world -- speaking very generally, the older generations take a dimmer view of it and individuals' tolerance varies widely. At first blush, it seems that gays in China face similar sorts of social pressures to remain closeted or to come out as they do in America or Europe. However, some activists complain that the social pressures in China are much stronger than in other industrialized countries, and therefore a large number of people remain closeted, even to the point of having heterosexual marriages to conceal their true preferences. It is hard to say to what degree that is true, since closeting of this degree inherently involves people who do not want to be identified.

The judicial system in China appears to be lagging behind evolving social attitudes about homosexuality. Some local law enforcement officers continue to harass homosexuals and in parts of China, particularly in rural areas, gay people continue to risk arrest for associating with one another or failing to conceal their identities. Gay rights activists claim that gay people convicted of crimes receive harsher sentences than straight people convicted of similar crimes. In October 1999, a court in Beijing issued an opinion condemning homosexuality as "abnormal and unacceptable to the Chinese public," and this opinion was allowed to stand on appeal to the People's Supreme Court.

AIDS and HIV have only very recently been recognized as significant health problems in China, and the government has been quick to identify "men having sex with men" as both at heightened risk for the disease and as vectors for its transmission. Although initially slow to react to the arrival and spread of the disease, the government is now taking action to provide education, distribute condoms, and treat those afflicted with the virus.

Gays certainly aren't going to get married any time soon; gay marriage legislation has been introduced and roundly thrown out of the National People's Congress twice, in 2001 and 2003, and the National People's Congress has shown no interest in revisiting the issue since. Being openly homosexual is also still grounds to deny a Chinese person the ability to adopt a child.

Hong Kong and Macau are a little bit different. Homosexuality seems to be well-tolerated in Macau and there have not been official laws against it since the Portuguese yielded administration of the "Las Vegas of China" to the PRC. Hong Kong had anti-sodomy laws until 1991, with punishments ranging up to life imprisonment, but the laws were almost never enforced and were taken off the books in 2005 by a prominent court case.

I started researching this subject thinking that I would wind up with another roundhouse condemnation of the PRC government, but I cannot justify such a thing. The government of China seems to be much more ambivalent than that and to some extent, the official policies of nondiscrimination and equal treatment appear to be both facially similar to those that prevail in some portions of the United States, and they appear to be treated with similar gravity by some -- not all -- government officials. Others seem to hold on to traditional prejudices against homosexuality, but again, I can't sit here in modern America and say the Chinese are necessarily any worse or even on balance very different from my own society in that regard.

It may be that there is a very high social pressure to conform to particular norms of behavior that exclude homosexuality, and so gays there feel the need to remain closeted to a degree higher than they do in the US. It seems to be be that traditional condemnation of homosexuality carried over to some official acts and some people exercise whatever power they have to make life hard for homosexuals. There may be more of that in China than there is here, but with the exception of rural cops harassing gays in their communities, on the whole things do not seem to be qualitatively different. Gays here complain about the same sorts of things. There does seem to be more of it in China.

So in answer to the question, what's it like to be gay in China? The answer seems to be that it sucks to be gay in China. But it sucks to be gay in the US, too. China has relatively escalated social pressure to remain closeted and discreet as compared to the US, so the difference in suckage is one of degree rather than kind.

* Some similar techniques are used in "gay deprogramming therapy" in the U.S. today.

Lots of Biden Buzz

Senator Joe taking a trip to Georgia isn't going to quiet it. Obama still needs to shore up his foreign policy credentials, and naming Biden as his running mate would be a really good way to do it. Despite some criticism from Reader Thomas in response to this post, and disagreement with Reader Mike Reynolds in another forum, I continue to think that strong rhetoric and possibly even economic sanctions were the appropriate response to the Russian intervention in and escalation of the South Ossestia conflict. Even if all we could do was scold the Russians, we should have -- because Russia, unlike Georgia or South Ossestia, figures prominently in the global balance of power and needs to be encouraged to exercise its imperial impulses through economic and cultural means rather than at gunpoint.

Obama's initial response was to plead for both parties to set their emotions aside and submit to mediation. Ultimately yes, that's where it winds up. Ultimately yes, we don't have the logistical ability to inject ourselves militarily into the situation or any strategic advantage to direct military conflict with Russia. Ultimately yes, economic sanctions against Russia will fail because the EU won't go along with them and ultimately, Georgia just isn't that important in the great global game; it gives Russia a logistical advantage of a south-of-the-Caucasus base to project its forces into the Iranian theater if it wishes to, but that is more of a convenience than anything else, and Georgia produces oil but not enough to make a huge difference. All of those things are true.

But we can't start out trying to resolve a shooting war by telling everyone to cool out and talk things through. You at least have to say "Knock it off!" in a nasty tone of voice first. A dispute resolve can gain some authority by focusing attention on himself, if the proper words are used and the proper tone is delivered, even if ultimately this person does not actually have any real power to change things. Three examples: Parents don't ask their bickering children to sit down and be reasonable; they loudly and assertively insist upon silence, NOW. Judges faced with attorneys who won't stop arguing about a dispute don't mildly sit back and say, "Gee, any chance you guys want to submit this case to a mediation?" (At least the good ones don't.) They say, "Save it for trial, guys, because I just don't care which one of you is right." A bouncer trying to stop an argument from escalating into a bar fight does not tell the arguers to calm down and restate their disputes in less offensive terms. He sticks his beefy self in between the two arguing guys, tells them both to shut it, and physically separates them. In all of these cases, if the disputing parties really want to, they can keep on disputing things.

In each case, the intervenor can step in and use some power to try and more forcefully end the dispute, but is not yet prepared to do so. Rather, the intervening party is attempting to use only language and words, to talk the disputants into behaving peacefully. Obviously, these sorts of disputes are not nearly as complex as a war. And warring nations are not the same as individuals trying to resolve their disputes. But dispute resolution writ large on the diplomatic scene is still dispute resolution.

And if we really, really wanted to, yes we could involve ourselves in some military fashion in Georgia. It would take time, effort, money, and a high tolerance for risk. But if something were sufficiently important to us, we would do it, and implicit in every international intervention we make is the possibility that we just might decide that this conflict really is worth the effort, time, money, and risk. That's how we have credibility mediating between Israelis and Palestinians. That's how we have credibility facing off against Iran. That's how we have credibility in Korea and defending Taiwan from the PRC. If we really, really cared enough, we could inject ourselves into those disputes and implement our will. Yes, everyone knows that it is very unlikely we will actually go that far, but as long as the possibility is greater than zero, we get listened to.

To sum up: if all you can do to resolve a dispute is scold someone, then remember that when scolding, tone is important.

I found Obama's tone (initially) to be inappropriately weak and too quick to admit America's immediate impotence -- it wasn't even really a scolding at all; he seemed to shy away from even using strong language. (I give him partial credit for later finding stronger language that was appropriate to the situation and which mirrored the language coming out of the White House.) I like the idea of Biden as Obama's veep because Biden gives me the impression of being able to project a stern tone when necessary, and if he's at Obama's side in the Oval Office, he may be in a good position to dispense advice like that because sometimes we may have to say unfriendly things to our rivals. I get the impression that Biden understands the process at a gut level, in a way that Obama seems not to.