After confessing to my lack of understanding re the recent explosion of violence in eastern Congo (DRC), i've been reading through article threads on the Mail & Guardian and elsewhere, getting the situation sorted out historically and otherwise in my under-fired cerebral cortex. i recall a retired government bureaucrat in Dar es-Salaam telling me "there is no tragedy like an African tragedy," and what's happening in Congo now unfortunately seems to confirm this. From what i've been able to digest, here are the main issues being grappled with, all very intertwined so the order i'm presenting them in is irrelevant.
* Kabile's government (DRC) has been harboring Hutus (the FDLR) who fled after the massacres in Rwanda and continued to attack Tutsis in eastern Congo. Protecting his people from them has been one of the rationales given by Nkunda for pursuing this sweep of the region. A lot of Africans seem to view this conflict as the ultimate call for addressing the rampant racism that continues to plague the continent.
* Foreign countries are intent of stripping the resources from this area, signing agreements in Kinshasa without giving the inhabitants a voice and supporting violence against them for refusing to have their territory sold to the highest bidder. China is a main player on this stage. This is Nkunda's other rationale, and he says he's willing to march all the way to Kinshasa if that's what it takes to stop the resource rape.
* The UN needs to broker a cease fire in order to get the refugees out, and thought they had done so but no dice. Peacekeeping troops come from a variety of countries and are not operating under a unified command, so they can't stop the fighting any more than they can protect the civilians caught in it. Nkunda now says he won't deal with the UN until they set up a joint meeting with Kabile.
* President Kagame of Rwanda claims the UN's mission in DRC has been supporting Kabile's support of the FDLR, and there is some speculation that Rwanda is aiding Nkunda in an act of tribal solidarity. The consensus among African commentators is that racism is a major element driving the conflict and needs to be tackled on the broadest level possible within the entire continent.
* The African Union, which has essentially blown off the conflicts in Somalia, Darfur and Zimbabwe, is not seen as having any chance of being effective in this even more complex conflict. This is particularly true with respect to its younger partner/offshoot, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which is discredited with having done nothing to force Mugabe out of power. Since some SADC members, e.g. Angola, have an apparent interest in seeing Kabile stay in power, the credibility of this organization - which the world community would love to see solve this whole business so they don't have to - is next to nil in the eyes of just about every african writing about it.
* The EU is prepared to send forces into the region, yet without a coordinated mission, what they can accomplish in terms of securing a long-term peace is unclear. There are some who see the entire mess, going back to the uprising in Rwanda, as the responsibility of francophone europe; ergo, opinions as to whether the fox can be trusted and effective in really cleaning out the henhouse are extremely varied and contentious.
There's no question that nearly all of the problems found in sub-saharan africa converge in the DRC: lots of horses, lots of carts, i'm not sure that the world can rise to the occasion when it comes to ironing them all out... at least in the near-term, it's clear that's impossible. The question of respecting national sovereignty seems to be used here as an excuse for non-aggressive intervention, just as it always is when it comes to Africans raping and killing each other with all those non-interventionists' arms. Staying out of your neighbor's business is a value highly espoused in the US and, in my experience, most of the rest of the world as well, perhaps excluding arabs. With all the fanfare internationally about Savior Obama coming to set the world right (liberal rapture is truly without comparison in its naivety), there is a chance that this sovereignty-intervention question will start to be addressed. Start - and that's a start. In the meantime, more tragedy in equatorial Africa - prophesy or proverb? Take your pick.
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
17 November 2008
11 July 2008
Convergence of Conspicuity
Anyone who’s been following preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing may have come to a premature conclusion that it would have been better if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had selected some other city for these games - and i don’t mean Shanghai. Just three months ago, following the Chinese government’s severe response to an uprising in Tibet, the games’ grand global unity vision seemed at the point of derailing from a potential boycott. Then an earthquake struck Sichuan, stretching thin the premise that this is the right time for China to be throwing the world’s premier sports extravaganza (out of respect for the ~80.000 dead). Environmental problems have been generating concerns about the efficacy of Beijing as host city, and censorship continues to be a sticking point for those who believe that countries in which media activists are thrown into prison should not be celebrated as beacons of fair play. As someone who is not very interested in the sports world but extremely concerned about the planet’s health, i would posit that the Beijing Games have served to generate an obviousness about the latter that probably could not have happened were the games to be held in any other country.
This week, the IOC released a statement expressing its satisfaction with how preparations have been proceeding, asserting that “these Games have set a gold standard for the future,” while also acknowledging that air quality remains a concern. An article in Le Monde this week quotes world champion of the 100 and 200 sprints, Tyson Gay, as saying that many people have been telling him to wear a mask, which he refuses to do. According to Le Monde, particulate matter concentration in Beijing’s air remains well above the WHO’s acceptable limit. Chinese authorities have told Beijing area residents that if possible, they should work at home, and official business hours will be reduced from 20 July onward. If the air quality does not improve, i think some of the events won't be allowed. High polluting vehicles have been banned from the city and industrial emitters are being shut down altogether for the duration. With car sales in China increasing at the rate of 15% (10 million cars sold this year), this problem clearly will NOT be drastically impacted by a mere month of controls on vehicular use. However, one has to hope that China’s budding environmental movement will take advantage of the attention air pollution in their country is receiving and use this olympic-sized window of opportunity to generate some deeper national thought about the consequences of having a billion cars on the roads.
In a time when millions of people are suffering from malnutrition and outright starvation, seeing all this rich green plant matter being carted away to probably be dried out then thrown on a fire (after the Olympic games, of course) i couldn’t help but think we’re seeing a lost opportunity here of some magnitude. It turns out i was right, but not in the area of food production, directly. Algae are extremely greasy, using the vernacular, and in fact are the source of many of the oil deposits on which our material existence has come to depend (yes, it’s fun to think we’re using decomposed dinosaurs to run our air conditioners, but percentage-wise, the dinos of the Jurassic can’t hold a candle to their microscopic counterparts). To read about the progress that’s already been made in developing algae-based biofuels is to hit one’s head against the wall listening to G8-types lament the rock vs. hard place decisions they’re being pushed to make with respect to grain-based fuel.
"Algae have long been known to produce lipids that can be used for biodiesel production," says Dheepak Ramduth, [a lead researcher affiliated with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa]. "With the current worldwide focus on cleaner fuels and environmental awareness, algal biodiesel is an attractive option, as the specific production of oil per unit biomass is extremely high in algae compared to most seed crops. Current biodiesel technologies utilise oil seed crops that are either food crops themselves or could potentially compete with food crops for limited arable land and hence threaten food security in the country," says Ramduth.
Somewhat predictably (since alternative fuels development is consistently stifled in the US), the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado was working on algal energy development 25 years ago. Their final report on the potential of of algal biodiesel can be found here. Based on the research conducted, these folks reached the conclusion that, “… Algal biodiesel could easily supply several ‘quads’ of biodiesel – substantially more than existing oil seed crops could provide. Microalgae systems use far less water than traditional oil seed crops. Land is hardly a limitation. Two hundred thousand hectares (less than 0.1% of climatically suitable land areas in the US) could produce one quad of fuel.” [italics mine]
Quite a few countries and small firms have been pursuing this technology, with a company in New Zealand announcing in 2006 they’d produced their first sample of algal biodiesel from a sewage plant. In additional to alternative vehicular fuel, scientists have also been working on photobioreactors which can be used – get this – to scrub pollutants out of coal and other industrial plants, the “waste” product - pure algae with high carbon content - then sent on to become FUEL or food. Check out this tour that Alan Alda took of MITs unit, which certainly spun my head around - very impressive.
30 June 2008
There has got to be an I Ching stanza that correctly correlates with this request from Chinese officials in Guizhou following massive riots there:
At around 4am yesterday morning, police used megaphones to urge people to leave the area, and local television stations broadcast notices asking people who participated in the protest to turn themselves in. [you can read the entire story here, though i'm sure it's being covered widely in intl press]i'm thinking something along the lines of "The Thunder knows it cannot control the lightning/ Once released it follows its own path/ Wise fishermen know it is better to stay close to shore/ Fish recognize the currents long before they are seen as waves."
10 April 2008
More Gloss
See what i meant about China and the terrorist label?
A student asked this morning what i thought about the protests - i support them, absolutely - and we had a brief discussion about politics and sports. It's nice to think that politics can be kept out of sports, but as far as i can tell, this argument is usually made by those who don't want their own bad political positions and/or systems to be questioned, e.g. the Israeli govt, the USSR, the apartheid South African govt. My father is a huge basketball fan, and even back in the 60s i can remember him talking about racial discrimination on the court (Dr. J was his big hero, so i'm glad to say the tenor of his rants was always pro integration). Politically-embroiled olympic games are hardly new. Hungarians, in fact, will be among the first to declare this an ineluctable reality, referring to the famous Hungarian-Russian water polo match at the 1956 Olympiad in Melbourne. All i can say to complaining Chinese at this juncture is "get over it" and think about why this global resurgence of Tibetans' human rights support is happening. Suppressing the voices of our Tibetan brothers and sisters, as well as their supporters, is not the right solution to this equation.
A separate report on Reuters said the crackdown was on two East Turkestan "terrorist" groups. A government spokesman told Reuters: "At the end of last year an overseas East Turkestan terrorist group issued an order requesting its members to enter the country to be ready to launch terrorist attacks at the Beijing Olympics. (Guardian)The story goes on to note:
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International say Beijing often uses alleged terrorism as an excuse to violently repress any activism for independence in the region, whether violent or peaceful.i can't be the only person who sees this as both a diversion from the Tibet torch relay protests and a justification for preparing everyone - including and perhaps especially, journalists - for high security summer fun in Beijing.
A student asked this morning what i thought about the protests - i support them, absolutely - and we had a brief discussion about politics and sports. It's nice to think that politics can be kept out of sports, but as far as i can tell, this argument is usually made by those who don't want their own bad political positions and/or systems to be questioned, e.g. the Israeli govt, the USSR, the apartheid South African govt. My father is a huge basketball fan, and even back in the 60s i can remember him talking about racial discrimination on the court (Dr. J was his big hero, so i'm glad to say the tenor of his rants was always pro integration). Politically-embroiled olympic games are hardly new. Hungarians, in fact, will be among the first to declare this an ineluctable reality, referring to the famous Hungarian-Russian water polo match at the 1956 Olympiad in Melbourne. All i can say to complaining Chinese at this juncture is "get over it" and think about why this global resurgence of Tibetans' human rights support is happening. Suppressing the voices of our Tibetan brothers and sisters, as well as their supporters, is not the right solution to this equation.
03 April 2008
The Terror Gloss
There are times when social constructs have to attain the level of absolutely absurd extreme before we can see that the absurdity actually exists at a much lower level of the idiocracy chain, and the latest swipe of the terrorist wand is definitely one of those times. When the Dalai Lama is declared a terrorist – Dharamsala Nancy the new Hanoi Jane? – even those people who accept the axis of Islamic evil concept have got to be experiencing lexical dissonance. The Dalai Lama orchestrating a terrorist plot? What spin doctor came up with that notion? Ah yes, the ever-ameobic Chinese government, always embracing the best of what works in the West. But i’m not blaming the Chinese. This is what the W Dick junta has done to the world - their lasting impact, cause célèbre, Chernobylesque meltdown in the sphere of global syllogisms. As it now stands, anyone anywhere who uses violence in charged political atmospheres – or is affiliated with those who do - is branded a terrorist; all acts of dissent that the state (or a corporate entity) doesn’t like become acts of terrorism. China is merely following the US lead, and it becomes harder for the US to publicly criticize them without drawing further attention to its unabashed hypocrisy.
In the old days we had terms like insurrection – revolt – war – occasionally, the crazed rantings of a recent widower or war veteran. Then guerilla wars became “low intensity conflicts,” regionalized with huge imparities, evolving finally into privatized occupation and militarily weeding out evil-doers (itself a twist of “enemy;” is it obvious, the extent to which the West is also highly theocratized?) This is a new New World Order, and woe especially to those whose acts remain somewhat unpredictable, making the state look weak and feel weak. Instilling fear is a mandatory counter measure, leading people to want their big strong uncle to keep them safe: whatever it takes, just do it. This is all about spin at a gross Orwellian magnitude, but it has far more serious consequences than generating middle class suburban paranoia. Countries are being destroyed, cultures are being exterminated, increasingly far and wide as part of a “global war on terror.” War seems to be what globalization is ultimately all about, or at least where its strands are most strongly knotted together. As the safe havens between war zones shrink, arms deals are cut which would have been unlikely or unpermitted a decade ago. Slap a “war on terror” tag on the package and it’s a go. War has always been big business, and terror is proving to be bigger business – the shock doctrine is just part of it.
On any given day that i can tolerate a few minutes of seeing what Little Bush is up to, or Ehud Olmert, or (at the more pathetic end) Musharraf, i am struck again and again by the use of “terror” to justify any level of violence the state apparatus chooses to employ. US soldiers from Iraq speak about how rules of engagement essentially devolved to the point where anything moving was a valid target. Indiscriminate killing – is that not murder? (Is that not terrorism?) In Palestine, same situation. The IDF doesn’t even bother with the whole collateral damage label since all Palestinians are current or future terrorists. The arbitrariness of harassment is maddening, and the soldiers as well as vigilantes operate with total immunity. The US wants to bomb targets in Pakistan, they bomb Pakistan. Israel wants to bomb civilians in Lebanon, they bomb civilians in Lebanon. Columbia wants to eliminate the FARC, they ignore borders and shoot to kill. You can do whatever you want, or pay someone else to do it, with one very crucial provision: do not, under any circumstances, allow the enemy to organize a real army, with colonels and uniforms, marching into battle under a unifying banner, because then you’ll be forced to drop ‘terrrorism’ from the slogan, it will just be war and there will have to be limits, and maybe conscription (in the US, at least), and the whole presentation would have to change.
At the heart of the current public relations campaign is the premise that suicide bombers, RPG-toters, and their various counterparts worldwide are in the fight for the mere existential thrill of killing people and wreaking general havoc. While the latter is in fact probably true, the over-arching problem is that by focusing on terrorism, states are able to ignore the political issues that underlie the resistance movements. Israel mastered this tactic early on, leading the world to assume that once Palestinians ditched the suicide bombings and stone throwing, they might get their independence, or at least Israel wouldn’t have to constantly be punishing them. Putin used the same tactic with Chechnya, Bush continues to slog it out on this premise in Iraq and, along with the rest of NATO, in Afghanistan. Now China has attempted to justify its violence against Tibetans by construing monks as suicide terrorists, shifting the question away from why they are persecuted to why they must be even more aggressively occupied and controlled. It’s effective spin in this age of fear and retribution. In the “have your say” comment boards about Tibet, Chinese contributors say over and over that terrorism is not the way for Tibetans to put forward their cause. The ultimate irony is that the longer legitimate political and cultural rights are repressed or ignored, the closer people move towards taking unpredictable, violent action. To paraphrase Sartre, we don’t get a war without wanting a war, and people get the war they want.
Which brings us back to the absurdity of Jiabao’s government labeling the Dalai Lama a terrorist. Whatever his political shortcomings, the Tibetan leader-in-exile has repeatedly offered to negotiate the establishment of a culturally autonomous region within China, under which Tibetans would control selecting their leaders and basically managing their territory according to their own traditions, while China would be able to continue exploiting the natural resources, secure the borders, et al. One assumes this would allow Han Chinese who’ve moved into Tibet to continue living there, so long as the PLA is not around enforcing cultural genocide. However, since nearly all governments tow the line that there is no negotiating with terrorists, this new classification of Tibetan resisters as suicide attackers serves to undermine negotiations, with public support for doing so. China – like Israel, Russia and the US – has huge military resources and theoretically doesn’t have to put up with anybody who burns their flag. Yet, it’s one thing to not negotiate with a bunch of kuffiya-wearing desperados who’ve hijacked a plane, another entirely to not negotiate with an entire people. The options that leaves us are exactly two: extermination or perpetual war.
This is the essence of why the terminology is so blatantly idiotic and corrupt: political conflict is not about methodology; it’s about greed and sometimes, ideology. Just today, Bush in Bucharest told his NATO comrades that they must “fight to the finish” against Afghani extremists. This was in the context of pushing missile defense systems in South Asia and expanding NATO. The rest of the EU leaders joined in at the refrain: death to the Taliban or bust. On other words, we’ll just annihilate the farmers, herders and religious illiterates in Afghanistan and then all will be well with the world. Guess again. That Bush is trying to get NATO to commit more resources, and intensify the fight, has only got to mean that from their standpoint, the situation is going backwards not forward. Stronger methods are required. In other words, the terrorists in Afghanistan are calling the shots? If that’s the case, the only way to resolve it is to fight terror with terror, and therein lies the rub.
There is no moral high ground here, as any Iraqi exile will tell you – terror, by definition, is determined as such by those at the receiving end of it. i’m no fan of Osama bin Laden, but let’s be real about what these Afghan “extremists” want and why they haven’t put down their toys yet: i guarantee they are not fighting to protect Osama or whichever crazed mullah is in command at the moment. The US/NATO position that in the war against terror there are no constraints is a license for everyone involved to use whatever means of battle they choose. That US forces cannot succeed in a guerrilla war is not the guerrillas’ fault. Nor is it the Tibetans’ fault that the Chinese cannot get the world to forget about their violent occupation of Tibet. Painting these resistance movements over with lacquers of terrorist fanaticism ultimately lays bare the inability of governments to deal effectively with the political conflicts they, themselves, have initiated and subsequently perpetuated. (To be clear, i do not use “effectively” here to mean success of the invaders; effective ending of a conflict means negotiating conditions that are just, and respect the aggrieved parties, i.e. the unsuccessfully conquered.) It also keeps the battle going, the war profiteering on track, likewise the endless death and destruction. We can call this a fight against terrorism, but really it’s a fight against fighting back, and to pretend anything else is to side with the well-manicured terrorist spin doctors, those people who appreciate the finer aspects of gloss.
In the old days we had terms like insurrection – revolt – war – occasionally, the crazed rantings of a recent widower or war veteran. Then guerilla wars became “low intensity conflicts,” regionalized with huge imparities, evolving finally into privatized occupation and militarily weeding out evil-doers (itself a twist of “enemy;” is it obvious, the extent to which the West is also highly theocratized?) This is a new New World Order, and woe especially to those whose acts remain somewhat unpredictable, making the state look weak and feel weak. Instilling fear is a mandatory counter measure, leading people to want their big strong uncle to keep them safe: whatever it takes, just do it. This is all about spin at a gross Orwellian magnitude, but it has far more serious consequences than generating middle class suburban paranoia. Countries are being destroyed, cultures are being exterminated, increasingly far and wide as part of a “global war on terror.” War seems to be what globalization is ultimately all about, or at least where its strands are most strongly knotted together. As the safe havens between war zones shrink, arms deals are cut which would have been unlikely or unpermitted a decade ago. Slap a “war on terror” tag on the package and it’s a go. War has always been big business, and terror is proving to be bigger business – the shock doctrine is just part of it.
On any given day that i can tolerate a few minutes of seeing what Little Bush is up to, or Ehud Olmert, or (at the more pathetic end) Musharraf, i am struck again and again by the use of “terror” to justify any level of violence the state apparatus chooses to employ. US soldiers from Iraq speak about how rules of engagement essentially devolved to the point where anything moving was a valid target. Indiscriminate killing – is that not murder? (Is that not terrorism?) In Palestine, same situation. The IDF doesn’t even bother with the whole collateral damage label since all Palestinians are current or future terrorists. The arbitrariness of harassment is maddening, and the soldiers as well as vigilantes operate with total immunity. The US wants to bomb targets in Pakistan, they bomb Pakistan. Israel wants to bomb civilians in Lebanon, they bomb civilians in Lebanon. Columbia wants to eliminate the FARC, they ignore borders and shoot to kill. You can do whatever you want, or pay someone else to do it, with one very crucial provision: do not, under any circumstances, allow the enemy to organize a real army, with colonels and uniforms, marching into battle under a unifying banner, because then you’ll be forced to drop ‘terrrorism’ from the slogan, it will just be war and there will have to be limits, and maybe conscription (in the US, at least), and the whole presentation would have to change.
At the heart of the current public relations campaign is the premise that suicide bombers, RPG-toters, and their various counterparts worldwide are in the fight for the mere existential thrill of killing people and wreaking general havoc. While the latter is in fact probably true, the over-arching problem is that by focusing on terrorism, states are able to ignore the political issues that underlie the resistance movements. Israel mastered this tactic early on, leading the world to assume that once Palestinians ditched the suicide bombings and stone throwing, they might get their independence, or at least Israel wouldn’t have to constantly be punishing them. Putin used the same tactic with Chechnya, Bush continues to slog it out on this premise in Iraq and, along with the rest of NATO, in Afghanistan. Now China has attempted to justify its violence against Tibetans by construing monks as suicide terrorists, shifting the question away from why they are persecuted to why they must be even more aggressively occupied and controlled. It’s effective spin in this age of fear and retribution. In the “have your say” comment boards about Tibet, Chinese contributors say over and over that terrorism is not the way for Tibetans to put forward their cause. The ultimate irony is that the longer legitimate political and cultural rights are repressed or ignored, the closer people move towards taking unpredictable, violent action. To paraphrase Sartre, we don’t get a war without wanting a war, and people get the war they want.
Which brings us back to the absurdity of Jiabao’s government labeling the Dalai Lama a terrorist. Whatever his political shortcomings, the Tibetan leader-in-exile has repeatedly offered to negotiate the establishment of a culturally autonomous region within China, under which Tibetans would control selecting their leaders and basically managing their territory according to their own traditions, while China would be able to continue exploiting the natural resources, secure the borders, et al. One assumes this would allow Han Chinese who’ve moved into Tibet to continue living there, so long as the PLA is not around enforcing cultural genocide. However, since nearly all governments tow the line that there is no negotiating with terrorists, this new classification of Tibetan resisters as suicide attackers serves to undermine negotiations, with public support for doing so. China – like Israel, Russia and the US – has huge military resources and theoretically doesn’t have to put up with anybody who burns their flag. Yet, it’s one thing to not negotiate with a bunch of kuffiya-wearing desperados who’ve hijacked a plane, another entirely to not negotiate with an entire people. The options that leaves us are exactly two: extermination or perpetual war.
This is the essence of why the terminology is so blatantly idiotic and corrupt: political conflict is not about methodology; it’s about greed and sometimes, ideology. Just today, Bush in Bucharest told his NATO comrades that they must “fight to the finish” against Afghani extremists. This was in the context of pushing missile defense systems in South Asia and expanding NATO. The rest of the EU leaders joined in at the refrain: death to the Taliban or bust. On other words, we’ll just annihilate the farmers, herders and religious illiterates in Afghanistan and then all will be well with the world. Guess again. That Bush is trying to get NATO to commit more resources, and intensify the fight, has only got to mean that from their standpoint, the situation is going backwards not forward. Stronger methods are required. In other words, the terrorists in Afghanistan are calling the shots? If that’s the case, the only way to resolve it is to fight terror with terror, and therein lies the rub.
There is no moral high ground here, as any Iraqi exile will tell you – terror, by definition, is determined as such by those at the receiving end of it. i’m no fan of Osama bin Laden, but let’s be real about what these Afghan “extremists” want and why they haven’t put down their toys yet: i guarantee they are not fighting to protect Osama or whichever crazed mullah is in command at the moment. The US/NATO position that in the war against terror there are no constraints is a license for everyone involved to use whatever means of battle they choose. That US forces cannot succeed in a guerrilla war is not the guerrillas’ fault. Nor is it the Tibetans’ fault that the Chinese cannot get the world to forget about their violent occupation of Tibet. Painting these resistance movements over with lacquers of terrorist fanaticism ultimately lays bare the inability of governments to deal effectively with the political conflicts they, themselves, have initiated and subsequently perpetuated. (To be clear, i do not use “effectively” here to mean success of the invaders; effective ending of a conflict means negotiating conditions that are just, and respect the aggrieved parties, i.e. the unsuccessfully conquered.) It also keeps the battle going, the war profiteering on track, likewise the endless death and destruction. We can call this a fight against terrorism, but really it’s a fight against fighting back, and to pretend anything else is to side with the well-manicured terrorist spin doctors, those people who appreciate the finer aspects of gloss.
31 March 2008
US Role in Tibetan Resistance
There's a very interesting article up on Asia Times right now: Tibet, the 'Great Game' and the CIA. While the last few paragraphs present a grim diagnosis on China's ability to control Tibet militarily, the analysis of the US again using Tibet as a way to pressure China on other issues is worth reading.
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