In the past few weeks a lot of attention has been focused on a video by the advocacy group Invisible Children called Kony 2012 which went viral and sparked a major debate. I should first state that I have not seen the video myself, but I had already heard of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army, and I knew that they stood out for their brutality, even among the many violent groups that plague Africa and other war-torn parts of the world.
Some of the criticisms of the video sound legitimate, others less so. It sounds as if it oversimplified history considerably, and even gave the impression that Kony was still an active danger in Uganda, where he and his group originated, when in fact they were forced out of the country in 2005. Ugandans were upset that the video did not seem to consider their views at all, as this report explains. Though some degree of simplification is inevitable, the lack of a Ugandan perspective is regrettable. Criticism of how the group spends its money seems less justified, since, as the report notes, their main purpose is advocacy. Some critics have also argued that it would be better to be drawing attention to some of the groups that are bigger and more active, such as some operating in the Congo (coincidentally, a Congolese warlord named Thomas Lubanga was convicted last week by the International Criminal Court of using child soldiers, which is one of the main abuses the Kony video focuses on – but a warlord who was accused along with Lubanga is still active in the Congo, as are others who are guilty of atrocities). If the video brings attention to the issue of child soldiers in general, this may not be a problem – and in fact Amnesty International referred to the video in a petition they recently circulated that called on Western governments to increase pressure on African governments over this issue – though there is something to be said for tackling the biggest threats first.
It sounds to me as if the Kony 2012 video would have been better if it were framed not so much as advocating efforts to stop a present threat (though LRA depredations continue on a small scale in countries near Uganda) as calling for a murderous war criminal to be brought to justice. The little I have read about on Kony in the past was enough to make it clear he certainly should not be allowed escape paying for his crimes. Unfortunately, if he did manage to do so, he would hardly be the first one. I (and I’m sure many other people) have often felt it to be one of the great injustices of the world that many people who commit atrocities manage to escape any sort of punishment.
Not long ago, the infamously brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin died peacefully in exile in Saudi Arabia without ever having to pay for his crimes, and he was hardly the only African dictator to escape justice, though he may have been the most notorious. And Africa is not the only place which has had leaders that have slaughtered huge numbers of people. While the leader of the murderous Khmer Rogue, Pol Pot, was eventually arrested and put on trial for treason by his own followers in an apparent effort to boost their own chances of getting amnesty in a peace deal (Pol Pot coincidentally died soon after – perhaps by suicide or poison), the only other leader of the regime to be convicted by any sort of court so far has been Kang Kek Iew, aka Duch, the former head of the Tuol Sleng prison (one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been to). Three other Khmer Rogue leaders are currently on trial (with a fourth being examined for fitness to stand trial due to Alzheimer's), but the tribunal has faced many problems, such that many fear the accused – all of whom are quite elderly – will die of old age before they are convicted. Though several others have already been implicated, the Cambodian government has blocked further investigation of these cases, in part because many in the current government, including long-time prime minister/dictator Hun Sen, were also once members of the Khmer Rogue and fear being implicated. As a result, prospects of trying anyone else from the regime are dim.
In one of my previous posts, I referred to the US-backed leader of South Vietnam, Ngô Dinh Diệm, and his much-hated brother and hatchet man Ngô Dinh Nhu, and how they were killed after having been captured following a coup in a manner not unlike the way Muammar Gaddafi died (their relationship was also somewhat analogous to that of Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria, and his even more murderous brother, Maher al-Assad, who heads the country’s security forces). What I find particularly unfortunate is that Nhu’s wife Tran Le Xuan, known as Madam Nhu, died in Europe only last year without ever having to face any punishment for her own misdeeds (aside from abetting her husband and brother-in-law in their brutality, when a number of Buddhist monks self-immolated to protest the government’s anti-Buddhist policies, she said “Let them burn and we shall clap our hands”, prompting her parents to disown her). But she was far from the only person who had a hand in atrocities in Vietnam to escape justice. One of the most infamous atrocities ever committed by US soldiers was the My Lai massacre in 1968, and yet only one soldier, William Calley, served a short prison sentence. Some others who by most accounts were guilty of taking an active part, such as Stephen Brooks, David Mitchell, Gary Roschevitz, and Calley’s commander Ernest Medina all got off without punishment, and some of them are still alive and free today. Even here in Taiwan there are no doubt some people still alive who participated in political murders such as that of Chen Wen-cheng or the family of Lin Yi-hsiung.
Unfortunately the list of people who have committed atrocities in war or as while acting in a position of authority (whether as police, soldiers or political leaders) and yet never were called to account is endless. More to the point today is the fact that there are many such people who are still alive and in some cases active (the Assad brothers are only the most egregious case; no one has been brought to trial for recent atrocities and war crimes in places like Guinea, Sri Lanka, Tibet or Bahrain either). While it is too much to hope that everyone guilty of participating in crimes against humanity will face justice, it would certainly be good if more people like Kony were brought to trial. If the Kony 2012 video helps accomplish that, it will have done something good. However, people should keep in mind that there are many others like Kony out there, and every effort should be made to bring as many of them to justice as possible.
Postscript: To learn about another horrendous situation, read this article, and read this for things that can be done to help.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Elections with no tolerable choices
In the past week, a presidential election was held in Russia (on March 4), and the "Super Tuesday" primary elections were held in a number of US states for Republican presidential candidates (as well as Congressional candidates from both major parties, though I won't discuss those here). Unfortunately, in both cases there was no chance of anyone who could really be considered halfway decent winning, so the best we can hope for in analyzing the results is a few positive signs for the future.
In Russia, it was a foregone conclusion that Vladimir Putin, prime minister and former president, would win the election. Despite his party's relatively poor showing in the recent legislative elections, the subsequent large protests over ballot stuffing and other irregularities, and general disillusionment, Putin retains a fair measure of popularity among ordinary Russians. Furthermore, the resources of the state, including all major media sources, were mobilized to support his candidacy, giving him an overwhelming advantage in campaigning that his opponents could not hope to overcome (one of the reasons European election observers concluded the elections were not free and fair). Though some steps were taken in response to criticism of cheating by the ruling party in the legislative elections, there were still reports of irregularities in some areas. Finally, there were no really decent opposition candidates. Candidates from liberal parties such as Yabloko were blocked from running, leaving only the communist Zyuganov, the right-wing nationalist Zhirinovsky, the leader of a smaller party and a tycoon who entered the race late as an independent. The latter two had in the past expressed strong support for Putin, so many questioned how serious they were about beating him. As a result, Putin won with over 60% of the vote, not quite as overwhelmingly as in 2004 when he won over 70% (his stand-in Medvedev won a similar percentage in 2008), but still easily. Zyuganov managed 17%, and all of the other candidates got less than 10%. If I had been a Russian voter, I would have voted to indicate that I cared who led the country, but I would have cast a blank ballot (interestingly, in 2004 Russians could vote "against all", but that option seems to have been taken off the ballot since then).
The situation in the Republican primaries was (and is) no better. The only Republican candidate whose positions on a substantial number of issues were at least tolerable, Jon Huntsman, is long gone from the race. While the front-runner, Mitt Romney, has in the past taken moderate positions on many issues, he has been running as hard as he can away from them for the entire campaign. The best that can be said for his closest contender, Rick Santorum, is that a few of his statements on human rights and its relation to foreign policy have been good; otherwise his positions are generally about as bad as can be. Similarly, perhaps the only good idea Newt Gingrich has had was advocating a permanent moon base (sure, it is completely inconsistent with his positions on tax and budget issues, but in and of itself it is an idea I could support); on virtually every other issue he is terrible. Ron Paul, as a libertarian, has a few decent positions, like being in favor of ending the war on drugs and being less aggressively anti-immigrant or anti-gay marriage. His opposition to foreign intervention by the US also sets him apart from the other Republican candidates, though he carries it too far the other way, opposing even humanitarian intervention. But on most fronts, a Ron Paul presidency would be a disaster, as would any libertarian presidency (he's not even entirely consistent as a libertarian, since he opposes abortion -- even if he wants the states to outlaw it rather than the federal government -- and some of his past votes on immigration have been in favor of restricting free movement of people).
Giving these choices, it's hard to say what to hope for. While Obama has been well short of perfect, he is far and away better than any of his prospective opponents (unless a really good third party candidate gets on the ballot). Given that, maybe the best result one can hope for in the Republican primaries is one that improves Obama's chances. With that in mind, many Democrats have been rooting for someone like Santorum or Gingrich to win, since Obama would be more likely to beat them. The only problem I have with that is Santorum and Gingrich are so awful that I just can't make myself cheer for them. Also, my confidence in the basic sense of independent and swing voters is not strong enough. Sure, I think the majority of them would reject an obviously extreme candidate like Santorum in the general election, but what if a severe economic downturn or other disaster caused Obama's ratings to drop so that many of his supporters stayed home and swing voters simply cast votes against him, regardless of how bad the Republican candidate was? We could actually end up with Santorum (or Gingrich, on the unlikely chance that he somehow won the nomination) as president. Not that Romney as president would be much (if any) better -- it's just that I can't quite make myself root for any of his opponents. I'm more inclined to hope that a long drawn out nomination battle leaves the Republicans in disarray and gives middle-of-the-road voters more chances to see how awful they are (though that should have been obvious long ago).
In Russia, it was a foregone conclusion that Vladimir Putin, prime minister and former president, would win the election. Despite his party's relatively poor showing in the recent legislative elections, the subsequent large protests over ballot stuffing and other irregularities, and general disillusionment, Putin retains a fair measure of popularity among ordinary Russians. Furthermore, the resources of the state, including all major media sources, were mobilized to support his candidacy, giving him an overwhelming advantage in campaigning that his opponents could not hope to overcome (one of the reasons European election observers concluded the elections were not free and fair). Though some steps were taken in response to criticism of cheating by the ruling party in the legislative elections, there were still reports of irregularities in some areas. Finally, there were no really decent opposition candidates. Candidates from liberal parties such as Yabloko were blocked from running, leaving only the communist Zyuganov, the right-wing nationalist Zhirinovsky, the leader of a smaller party and a tycoon who entered the race late as an independent. The latter two had in the past expressed strong support for Putin, so many questioned how serious they were about beating him. As a result, Putin won with over 60% of the vote, not quite as overwhelmingly as in 2004 when he won over 70% (his stand-in Medvedev won a similar percentage in 2008), but still easily. Zyuganov managed 17%, and all of the other candidates got less than 10%. If I had been a Russian voter, I would have voted to indicate that I cared who led the country, but I would have cast a blank ballot (interestingly, in 2004 Russians could vote "against all", but that option seems to have been taken off the ballot since then).
The situation in the Republican primaries was (and is) no better. The only Republican candidate whose positions on a substantial number of issues were at least tolerable, Jon Huntsman, is long gone from the race. While the front-runner, Mitt Romney, has in the past taken moderate positions on many issues, he has been running as hard as he can away from them for the entire campaign. The best that can be said for his closest contender, Rick Santorum, is that a few of his statements on human rights and its relation to foreign policy have been good; otherwise his positions are generally about as bad as can be. Similarly, perhaps the only good idea Newt Gingrich has had was advocating a permanent moon base (sure, it is completely inconsistent with his positions on tax and budget issues, but in and of itself it is an idea I could support); on virtually every other issue he is terrible. Ron Paul, as a libertarian, has a few decent positions, like being in favor of ending the war on drugs and being less aggressively anti-immigrant or anti-gay marriage. His opposition to foreign intervention by the US also sets him apart from the other Republican candidates, though he carries it too far the other way, opposing even humanitarian intervention. But on most fronts, a Ron Paul presidency would be a disaster, as would any libertarian presidency (he's not even entirely consistent as a libertarian, since he opposes abortion -- even if he wants the states to outlaw it rather than the federal government -- and some of his past votes on immigration have been in favor of restricting free movement of people).
Giving these choices, it's hard to say what to hope for. While Obama has been well short of perfect, he is far and away better than any of his prospective opponents (unless a really good third party candidate gets on the ballot). Given that, maybe the best result one can hope for in the Republican primaries is one that improves Obama's chances. With that in mind, many Democrats have been rooting for someone like Santorum or Gingrich to win, since Obama would be more likely to beat them. The only problem I have with that is Santorum and Gingrich are so awful that I just can't make myself cheer for them. Also, my confidence in the basic sense of independent and swing voters is not strong enough. Sure, I think the majority of them would reject an obviously extreme candidate like Santorum in the general election, but what if a severe economic downturn or other disaster caused Obama's ratings to drop so that many of his supporters stayed home and swing voters simply cast votes against him, regardless of how bad the Republican candidate was? We could actually end up with Santorum (or Gingrich, on the unlikely chance that he somehow won the nomination) as president. Not that Romney as president would be much (if any) better -- it's just that I can't quite make myself root for any of his opponents. I'm more inclined to hope that a long drawn out nomination battle leaves the Republicans in disarray and gives middle-of-the-road voters more chances to see how awful they are (though that should have been obvious long ago).
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Impressions of Burma (Myanmar)
Myanmar, or Burma as some still prefer to call it, has been in the news fairly often lately, and unlike in the past, it has been for mostly positive reasons. While it is still perhaps to early to tell if the changes taking place will stick (here is an interesting in-depth look at what has been taking place and the differing viewpoints about what it all means, and here is a briefer article about the negative effect of the current sanctions on one Burmese rock band), it has brought to mind the trip we made there back in early 2003 and the impressions I got of the country at the time. In the ten days or so we were in Burma, after arriving in Yangon (Rangoon) and spending a couple of days there, we took a bus up to Mandalay in the north and then to the ruins of Bagan before heading back to Yangon. I kept a journal of sorts at first, but I ended up falling behind and eventually abandoning it (I think the last entry was from our last day in Bagan). Someday I’ll dig it out and use it to write up a chronological account of the whole trip (relying on my fading memory for the last part), but for now I’ll just record a few general impressions.
[Note: As far as the name of the country goes, my opinions are rather mixed. The most serious objection to the name “Myanmar” is that the change was imposed by a particularly awful government. If the source of the name is ignored, it actually has some advantages over the name Burma, which derives from the dominant ethnic group (called Burman or Bamar). The country is home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, many of which resent and in some cases violent resist domination by the Burmans. Of course the government which imposed the name Myanmar also was guilty of some terrible atrocities against those minority ethnic groups, but that doesn’t change the fact that the name itself is more ethnically neutral. As a result, I don’t really favor either name strongly, and I tend to use them interchangeably. On the other hand, we spent all our time in the Burman parts of the country – in most cases it wasn’t even possible to go to the minority regions – so I’ll probably use Burma more often.]
Myanmar was clearly a poor country, and like several other former British colonies I have visited (such as Nepal, India and Sri Lanka), it seemed to have a rather large number of large colonial era buildings that looked as if they might have been fairly grand when new but were now falling apart. The people for the most part seemed very friendly. In Bagan we met a young woman who was one of the many locals selling souvenirs to tourists. We chatted with her and when we ran into her again later at another site talked with her some more. Eventually she introduced us to her father (who was also selling souvenirs) and gave us a set of postcards for free. They weren’t a new set, but I was still quite surprised that she would give us something on such a short acquaintance, just to be friendly (we hadn’t bought anything else from either her or her father, so it was clear that she had no other motivation). While we didn’t strike up any other friendships like that, most other people struck as genuinely amicable.
As for the government, its presence was obvious in some places and less so in others. There was a billboard in both Burmese and English in Yangon containing propaganda slogans along the lines of “the people firmly reject foreign imperialism” or something like that; for a precise quote I’d have to dig out the one copy of their English newspaper I picked up, as it also contained the slogans (in any case, they were a definite example of common phenomenon – the more a government or leader claims to be speaking for the people, the less likely they are to be speaking the truth). One day in Bagan we saw a long convoy of military vehicles (perhaps some top general was taking a tour of the ancient city, maybe out of the delusion that he was an heir to its former greatness). Also in Bagan we saw an office of Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy. It was a small building with a sign in Burmese and English. Outside there were a couple of men sitting on motorbikes (or maybe just standing – I don’t remember for sure). As we stood looking at the office, one of them told us to go ahead in and take a look. We did so, but there was no one inside, just a few pictures on the wall. We suspected that the men outside were most likely government agents who were keeping an eye on the place, though we had no way to tell for sure.
On the other hand, we saw a few things that showed that the government was a little lax in its suppression of criticism, either because they simply didn’t care about some things or they were inefficient. While we were in Mandalay, we went to see a performance by a comedy troupe led by Par Par Lay. He had previously spent several years in prison for making jokes about government corruption, but the performance we saw still included a number of obvious references to government censorship. Perhaps the main reason he could get away with that was because the show was in English and the audience was made up of foreign travelers. I have no idea if he was doing shows for locals at the time, but I would guess he would have been more circumspect if he did. Regardless, his bravery was impressive, and in fact I recently read that he did get arrested again in 2007, though he was released a few weeks later.
Another example that sticks in my mind was a T-shirt I saw for sale in Yangon. This T-shirt featured the image from the cover of a solo album (The Story of [the] Dispossessed) by the leader of the Thai rock band Carabao, Yuenyong Opakul, better known as Ad Carabao, showing him behind bars. This may not seem like much, but the theme of this particular album was the repression of the ethnic Shan (a Tai ethnic group, speaking a language closely related to Thai) by the Myanmar government. It’s possible that even the T-shirt seller didn’t know the significance of the image (we didn’t ask), but it was still a bit surprising to see. On the other hand, even the most efficient dictatorship is bound to let a few things through the cracks, and Burma’s government wasn’t terribly efficient (though it was probably more efficient at repression than anything else).
Of course there were many other interesting things we saw during our trip, such as the impressive ruins at Bagan, the Shwedagon Pagoda, and various places in Mandalay and Yangon, but an account of those will have to wait. As for the current situation in Myanmar, while things are definitely looking a lot better than a few years ago, it’s worth keeping in mind that there’s still a long ways to go. An unfortunate reminder of this came recently when the Burmese monk U Gambira, who was a leader of the 2007 protests and was released from prison just last month as part of the large-scale amnesty of political prisoners, was arrested again. Though he was released after questioning, the most recent reports indicate that he will be charged for illegally breaking into and squatting in monasteries that were padlocked following the 2007 protests. So it appears the government, or at least elements of it, is still not prepared to completely tolerate dissent (as it happens, U Gambira himself expressed some skepticism about the government’s sincerity in reforming after his release from prison last month). The outside world must still be prepared to put pressure on the government not to backslide in its relaxation of control.
[Note: As far as the name of the country goes, my opinions are rather mixed. The most serious objection to the name “Myanmar” is that the change was imposed by a particularly awful government. If the source of the name is ignored, it actually has some advantages over the name Burma, which derives from the dominant ethnic group (called Burman or Bamar). The country is home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, many of which resent and in some cases violent resist domination by the Burmans. Of course the government which imposed the name Myanmar also was guilty of some terrible atrocities against those minority ethnic groups, but that doesn’t change the fact that the name itself is more ethnically neutral. As a result, I don’t really favor either name strongly, and I tend to use them interchangeably. On the other hand, we spent all our time in the Burman parts of the country – in most cases it wasn’t even possible to go to the minority regions – so I’ll probably use Burma more often.]
Myanmar was clearly a poor country, and like several other former British colonies I have visited (such as Nepal, India and Sri Lanka), it seemed to have a rather large number of large colonial era buildings that looked as if they might have been fairly grand when new but were now falling apart. The people for the most part seemed very friendly. In Bagan we met a young woman who was one of the many locals selling souvenirs to tourists. We chatted with her and when we ran into her again later at another site talked with her some more. Eventually she introduced us to her father (who was also selling souvenirs) and gave us a set of postcards for free. They weren’t a new set, but I was still quite surprised that she would give us something on such a short acquaintance, just to be friendly (we hadn’t bought anything else from either her or her father, so it was clear that she had no other motivation). While we didn’t strike up any other friendships like that, most other people struck as genuinely amicable.
As for the government, its presence was obvious in some places and less so in others. There was a billboard in both Burmese and English in Yangon containing propaganda slogans along the lines of “the people firmly reject foreign imperialism” or something like that; for a precise quote I’d have to dig out the one copy of their English newspaper I picked up, as it also contained the slogans (in any case, they were a definite example of common phenomenon – the more a government or leader claims to be speaking for the people, the less likely they are to be speaking the truth). One day in Bagan we saw a long convoy of military vehicles (perhaps some top general was taking a tour of the ancient city, maybe out of the delusion that he was an heir to its former greatness). Also in Bagan we saw an office of Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy. It was a small building with a sign in Burmese and English. Outside there were a couple of men sitting on motorbikes (or maybe just standing – I don’t remember for sure). As we stood looking at the office, one of them told us to go ahead in and take a look. We did so, but there was no one inside, just a few pictures on the wall. We suspected that the men outside were most likely government agents who were keeping an eye on the place, though we had no way to tell for sure.
On the other hand, we saw a few things that showed that the government was a little lax in its suppression of criticism, either because they simply didn’t care about some things or they were inefficient. While we were in Mandalay, we went to see a performance by a comedy troupe led by Par Par Lay. He had previously spent several years in prison for making jokes about government corruption, but the performance we saw still included a number of obvious references to government censorship. Perhaps the main reason he could get away with that was because the show was in English and the audience was made up of foreign travelers. I have no idea if he was doing shows for locals at the time, but I would guess he would have been more circumspect if he did. Regardless, his bravery was impressive, and in fact I recently read that he did get arrested again in 2007, though he was released a few weeks later.
Another example that sticks in my mind was a T-shirt I saw for sale in Yangon. This T-shirt featured the image from the cover of a solo album (The Story of [the] Dispossessed) by the leader of the Thai rock band Carabao, Yuenyong Opakul, better known as Ad Carabao, showing him behind bars. This may not seem like much, but the theme of this particular album was the repression of the ethnic Shan (a Tai ethnic group, speaking a language closely related to Thai) by the Myanmar government. It’s possible that even the T-shirt seller didn’t know the significance of the image (we didn’t ask), but it was still a bit surprising to see. On the other hand, even the most efficient dictatorship is bound to let a few things through the cracks, and Burma’s government wasn’t terribly efficient (though it was probably more efficient at repression than anything else).
Of course there were many other interesting things we saw during our trip, such as the impressive ruins at Bagan, the Shwedagon Pagoda, and various places in Mandalay and Yangon, but an account of those will have to wait. As for the current situation in Myanmar, while things are definitely looking a lot better than a few years ago, it’s worth keeping in mind that there’s still a long ways to go. An unfortunate reminder of this came recently when the Burmese monk U Gambira, who was a leader of the 2007 protests and was released from prison just last month as part of the large-scale amnesty of political prisoners, was arrested again. Though he was released after questioning, the most recent reports indicate that he will be charged for illegally breaking into and squatting in monasteries that were padlocked following the 2007 protests. So it appears the government, or at least elements of it, is still not prepared to completely tolerate dissent (as it happens, U Gambira himself expressed some skepticism about the government’s sincerity in reforming after his release from prison last month). The outside world must still be prepared to put pressure on the government not to backslide in its relaxation of control.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
A Couple of Links
Here is a short but compelling (and somewhat scary) video put together by NASA showing global temperature variations for the past 130 years above and below a mid-twentieth century baseline temperature.
And to follow up on my last post, John Stewart had a great take on the conservative criticism of the Obama's administration's measure requiring birth control to be covered in health insurance plans offered to employees at religious-affiliated institutions in this segment and especially this one.
And to follow up on my last post, John Stewart had a great take on the conservative criticism of the Obama's administration's measure requiring birth control to be covered in health insurance plans offered to employees at religious-affiliated institutions in this segment and especially this one.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Obama, Contraception and the Catholic Church
In the last week or so one of the big political stories in the United States was the criticism the Obama administration received from the Republicans and others on the right for a new policy compelling insurance plans, including those offered by religious-affiliated organizations like hospitals, universities and charities, to provide women with coverage for birth control. The Catholic church protested because of its long-standing opposition to contraception, and many Republicans and other right-wing critics piled on, accusing the administration of attacking religious freedom. Originally the rule called for employers themselves to pay for such coverage, but because of the complaints, it was revised so that insurers would be required to pay instead. This hasn't satisfied many critics, because some institutions offer also act as insurers themselves, and even where they don't opponents say religious organizations will be paying indirectly for something they oppose.
Let's pretend for a minute that there was a university out there that was affiliated with some religion that believed that any kind of medical assistance was a sin, because sickness was sent by God (beliefs of this sort, while unusual, are actually not unknown in America). Would the government then be violating religious freedom by requiring that the university offer any kind of health coverage at all? To take an example that is less similar to the case in question, is the government violating religious freedom by banning polygamy, even among religions that encourage it? Or for more extreme example, what if a religion calls for something like the brutal female circumcision practiced in some parts of Africa, or for regular human sacrifice? (Note that I am by no means equating polygamy with the latter things; I think a good argument can be made for legalizing all marriage arrangements among consenting adults.) I think that most Americans, including this rule's critics, would be in favor of restricting some religious practices on the grounds that they are harmful to society as a whole (whether this is true or not). On the other hand, freedom of religion is one of the basic principles on which the United States was founded (despite the inaccurate assertions of some that the founders intended it to be a "Judeo-Christian nation"). So is this particular rule a necessary restriction or a violation of the basic principle?
I have long regarded the Catholic Church's views on contraception to be ridiculously backward, more in line with the geocentric view of the universe it clung to in the time of Galileo than with a doctrine that belongs in the 21st century. Not only is the Catholic position on birth control harmful to Catholics, particularly Catholic women, but in a world with seven billion people and counting, it is harmful to the entire human race and even to many other forms of life on Earth that are having their habitats squeezed out of existence by the ravening hordes of humanity. In the long term, probably the most important thing humanity has to do to create a sustainable future is to control its population. If the Catholic Church persists in its refusal to recognize this by changing its doctrine, it is my profound wish that either the vast majority of Catholics will start to ignore the church's teachings on this issue (as many do already) or that its membership will wither away to a tiny fraction of what it is today. Since I consider the Catholic position on contraception to be about as defensible as, say, Islamic fundamentalist efforts to prevent even non-Muslims from creating images of Mohammed (which is to say not at all), it should come as no surprise that I have little sympathy with Catholic complaints about being forced to provide birth control coverage to mostly non-Catholic employees at institutions like hospitals and universities, which are primarily secular in function anyway. The rule does not affect churches or other organizations that are primarily religious in function, so it does not restrict religious freedom. On the contrary, it simply helps ensure that one of the most basic preventative health measures around is available to all women who need it.
The Republican attacks on Obama over this issue on the grounds of religious freedom are also incredibly hypocritical. If it was an Islamic school or charity that was being required to provide some service that they felt violated their religion I wonder whether Newt Gingrich, for instance, would be leaping to their defense. Judging from his past rhetoric, I think it's safe to say that the answer is no, and the same is true of many if not most of his fellow Republican leaders. Their defense of "religious freedom" is completely opportunistic and highly selective. It is regrettable that the Obama administration has already felt the need to compromise with the backward thinking that the Catholic Church and its GOP allies represent on this issue. We can only hope that they have the backbone to resist any further relaxation of the minimal requirements that this new rule puts in place.
Let's pretend for a minute that there was a university out there that was affiliated with some religion that believed that any kind of medical assistance was a sin, because sickness was sent by God (beliefs of this sort, while unusual, are actually not unknown in America). Would the government then be violating religious freedom by requiring that the university offer any kind of health coverage at all? To take an example that is less similar to the case in question, is the government violating religious freedom by banning polygamy, even among religions that encourage it? Or for more extreme example, what if a religion calls for something like the brutal female circumcision practiced in some parts of Africa, or for regular human sacrifice? (Note that I am by no means equating polygamy with the latter things; I think a good argument can be made for legalizing all marriage arrangements among consenting adults.) I think that most Americans, including this rule's critics, would be in favor of restricting some religious practices on the grounds that they are harmful to society as a whole (whether this is true or not). On the other hand, freedom of religion is one of the basic principles on which the United States was founded (despite the inaccurate assertions of some that the founders intended it to be a "Judeo-Christian nation"). So is this particular rule a necessary restriction or a violation of the basic principle?
I have long regarded the Catholic Church's views on contraception to be ridiculously backward, more in line with the geocentric view of the universe it clung to in the time of Galileo than with a doctrine that belongs in the 21st century. Not only is the Catholic position on birth control harmful to Catholics, particularly Catholic women, but in a world with seven billion people and counting, it is harmful to the entire human race and even to many other forms of life on Earth that are having their habitats squeezed out of existence by the ravening hordes of humanity. In the long term, probably the most important thing humanity has to do to create a sustainable future is to control its population. If the Catholic Church persists in its refusal to recognize this by changing its doctrine, it is my profound wish that either the vast majority of Catholics will start to ignore the church's teachings on this issue (as many do already) or that its membership will wither away to a tiny fraction of what it is today. Since I consider the Catholic position on contraception to be about as defensible as, say, Islamic fundamentalist efforts to prevent even non-Muslims from creating images of Mohammed (which is to say not at all), it should come as no surprise that I have little sympathy with Catholic complaints about being forced to provide birth control coverage to mostly non-Catholic employees at institutions like hospitals and universities, which are primarily secular in function anyway. The rule does not affect churches or other organizations that are primarily religious in function, so it does not restrict religious freedom. On the contrary, it simply helps ensure that one of the most basic preventative health measures around is available to all women who need it.
The Republican attacks on Obama over this issue on the grounds of religious freedom are also incredibly hypocritical. If it was an Islamic school or charity that was being required to provide some service that they felt violated their religion I wonder whether Newt Gingrich, for instance, would be leaping to their defense. Judging from his past rhetoric, I think it's safe to say that the answer is no, and the same is true of many if not most of his fellow Republican leaders. Their defense of "religious freedom" is completely opportunistic and highly selective. It is regrettable that the Obama administration has already felt the need to compromise with the backward thinking that the Catholic Church and its GOP allies represent on this issue. We can only hope that they have the backbone to resist any further relaxation of the minimal requirements that this new rule puts in place.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
What I've Been Reading – September 2011 to December 2011
Here are some comments on the novels that I read in the last few months of the past year. I also read various short stories and bits of different non-fiction books, but I won't go over those this time.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was notable for me as the first (and so far only) novel I ever read on a phone (an Android that I’d recently been given as a present). There were a few obvious glitches in the transfer of the book to digital form, mostly words and letters that the software misread, but these were minor. More generally speaking, while I still prefer the real thing, I can’t say that I found reading an e-book to be all that different from a physical book, and I wouldn’t rule out reading more books in that form, though I also intend to give most of what little financial support I can afford to books published in the standard format (this particular e-book came free with the phone, so I didn’t have to buy it).
As for the novel itself, the book was perhaps easier going than I expected, and gave an interesting picture of life among the middle and upper classes in Austen’s time. The love story might seem something of a cliché nowadays, but it was less so in Austen’s time, and the characters were interesting. I can see why comparisons have been made between Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell and Austen’s work, though the former is still different in many ways (not least in telling a completely different kind of story), and also why a history book that I coincidentally was reading from about this time referred readers to this novel as a good second choice after Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones for a view of life in the 18th century (though Pride and Prejudice is technically set at the turn of the 19th century, no doubt the writers of the history book figured that is close enough). I would have to say I personally liked Tom Jones (and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell) somewhat better than Pride and Prejudice, but the latter is certainly worth reading too (now I need to get a hold of a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies…).
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is one of the most massive and complex novels I’ve read in recent years. One reviewer characterized it as four novels in one, and while four may be a stretch, there are certainly at least three novels contained within its thousand-plus pages. One focuses on life in a top tennis academy attended by many of the country’s top junior tennis players. The protagonist for this part of the narrative, and arguably the novel’s central character is Hal Incandenza, a tennis and academic prodigy. The second, initially unrelated tale is set in a halfway house for recovering drug addicts. The main character in this portion of the novel is the brawny former addict and burglar Don Gately, who next to Hal receives the second most narrative attention. The third novel is a science fiction-tinged thriller revolving around the search for the film Infinite Jest, the last work of Hal’s late father James Incandenza, which is so intensely pleasurable to watch that it is deadly.
It is very difficult to characterize this novel. At first glance, it seems like a modern day version of James Joyce’s Ulysses, with its immensely length, its hundreds of end notes (some of them constituting entire chapters worth of material themselves), its extensive use of difficult vocabulary and local slang, and its rather bizarre opening (which turns out to take place many months after everything else in the novel). But in fact the novel is for the most part quite readable despite its heftiness, though I certainly wouldn’t characterize it as light reading. Overall it is probably less bizarre in its content than, say, Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren. It is still quite bizarre in places, however, and it has a distinct absurdist tone at times. For example, it is set in a near future in which the traditional calendar has been done away with and replaced with what is known as Subsidized Time, where each year is named after a product whose producer has bought the rights to the year (much of the novel takes place in The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment). The US president is a former crooner with an obsession with cleanliness and hygiene (he is the founder and leader of the Clean Party). Much of New England has been turned into a toxic dump and foisted on Canada, which is part of the US-dominated Organization of North American Nations. And the terrorist group which is seeking the film Infinite Jest to use as a weapon against the US is a Quebecois separatist group known as the Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, or Wheelchair Assassins, as they are all legless and use wheelchairs.
Despite the absurdist elements and some quite funny bits, I wouldn’t characterize the novel as a comedy, as there are far too many dark parts, a few of which can be pretty grim reading (the bits about the effects of severe depression and suicide are made all the more compelling by Wallace’s own fate, though this is only in hindsight – after all, the novel also talks in great depth about drug addictions that Wallace himself never had). But then, as I said before, it is very difficult to characterize this novel in any way, as it is so many things at once. In addition to receiving fulsome critical praise (and a few harsh attacks), it has generated a vast number of thesis papers and derivative works (including a music video for "Calamity Song" by the Decemberists based on a strange, elaborate game played by students at the tennis academy). It should be noted that anybody expecting a conventional ending in which everything is neatly tied up and explained will be sorely disappointed in this book. In fact so much is left unexplained that the novel has prompted extensive discussion and debate among readers about various points (what caused Hal’s breakdown, whether Madame Psychosis is disfigured or not, the content and location of the film, and more). In some ways, my reaction upon finishing it was similar to that when I finished Dhalgren; I asked myself “What the hell happened?” and immediately started flipping back through the book to try to figure out some kind of answer. In the case of Infinite Jest, I was even tempted to join some of the fan debates I mentioned above, as while some of them pointed out things I’d missed or that hadn’t occurred to me, there were points that I thought some of them had missed (though by now my memory is faded somewhat, so if I really wanted to contribute to the various arguments, I’d have to reread much of the book again). So even though I found the sudden ending slightly jarring, I’m by no means sorry I read the novel. It is a weirdly fascinating, virtuosic work that is ultimately entertaining, if not as fatally so as the eponymous film.
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
I, Claudius, written by Robert Graves, is one of the best known historical novels of the 20th century. As the title indicates, it is written in the form of an auto-biography by Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, generally known as Claudius, who was the fourth Roman emperor. The novel covers his life up to his unexpected accession to the position of emperor, as well as a substantial period before his birth that Graves (speaking as Claudius) covers in order to give the reader some background on his family.
From birth or at least a very early age, Claudius suffered from some sort of disability (what exactly it was is still debated) which caused him be physically weak and to stammer, such that when he was young he was thought to be mentally deficient. The rest of his family engaged in sometimes murderous in-fighting, and the fact that Claudius was seen as harmless helped save him from falling victim to jealous relatives. But as portrayed by Graves, Claudius was in fact very intelligent, though socially somewhat inept, and proved to be one of the more sensible and capable members of his family.
Graves seems to have based his novel closely on the works of ancient Roman historians like Suetonius and Tacitus, though he takes a more favorable view of Claudius himself than they apparently did (I have not read their histories myself, though have read some of the works of early Roman historians like Livy, who appears briefly in the novel). Their accounts portray many of the members of the ruling Julio-Claudian family as murderous schemers, and in some cases, particularly that of Claudius’s predecessor Caligula (proper name Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus), as homicidally insane. Livia, the wife of Augustus and grandmother of Claudius, is accused of having had many of her own family murdered for political reasons and is the villain of the first part of the novel, though she is also acknowledged to have been a good administrator and appears much more positively later in the novel, if only in contrast to her son Tiberius (the second emperor) and great-grandson Caligula. However, modern historians regard many of the more lurid assertions made by the ancient historians as dubious or even wholly fictional (for one thing, it is improbably that everyone who was rumored to have been poisoned actually was, and some of the stories about Tiberius and Caligula are certainly exaggerated). Therefore, readers should be wary of accepting Graves’s characterizations of the members of the imperial family, well done though they are, as historically accurate. Despite this, I would certainly recommend the book to those who like historical fiction or indeed those who like good literature, and if I have a chance I will pick up Graves’s sequel, Claudius the God.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, a science fiction novel first published in 1974, was by Haldeman’s own admission inspired by his experiences in the Vietnam War. The protagonist, William Mandella was a physics student drafted along with other highly intelligent, well-educated young people to fight in an interstellar war with a newly discovered alien race. Due to time dilation effects (somewhat exaggerated, as I recall, since the starships would have to spend most of their time traveling at over 95% of light speed for the effect to be as pronounced as it is in the novel), Mandella and his fellow soldiers (the few that survive) return from their first two year tour of duty to an Earth where over two decades have passed and dramatic changes have taken place. It isn’t long before Mandella and his girlfriend (who had served with him) decide they can’t adapt and rejoin the military, originally under the condition they be posted to the Moon but almost immediately ending going back to the frontlines of the war. As more subjective years pass (from Mandella’s point of view), he encounters more senseless death and destruction while centuries go by on Earth, and he eventually learns how pointless the war itself was.
The Forever War widely regarded as the one of the most notable anti-war science fiction novels, and the first prominent one that was an allegory for Vietnam. Many regarded it as a response to the extremely pro-military Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (which like a number of Heinlein’s novels promotes some rather disturbing ideas), but Haldemann has supposedly downplayed this idea, declaring himself a fan of Heinlein (who was indeed a major figure in early sci-fi, despite the extreme views which he displayed in many later novels). Regardless, the novel certainly takes a bleak look at warfare and soldiering, and coveys Mandella’s alienation from the Earth he is supposedly fighting for quite well.
Some aspects of the novel come across as rather problematic today, however. Most notable is the way sexual orientation is treated (some people might also have issues with the way the military handles sexuality in the first part of the book – I doubt many women would consider such an arrangement ideal, and some men would also have objections – but I’ll have to admit I personally would not have a problem with it). When Mandella returns to Earth after his first tour of duty, overpopulation has become so extreme that the world’s governments promote homosexuality, such that most people are homosexual. Later in the novel, homosexuality has come to predominate such that heterosexuals are considered abnormal (it is even suggested to Mandella that he could be “cured” of his orientation). The problem with this is of course that we now know that sexual orientation is largely inborn, and while under certain circumstances primarily heterosexual people will engage regularly in homosexual activity, either due to lack of members of the opposite sex (prisons, ships at sea) or societal encouragement (ancient Greece), it would not be possible to completely change the primary orientation of the whole population without some type of genetic engineering, and people certainly can’t be “cured” of a sexual orientation (whatever Michele Bachmann may think). But in the 1970s the idea that homosexuality was a choice was more prevalent, and with that in mind it is a little easier to ignore this flaw in what is generally a good book.
The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams
The Dragonbone Chair is the first book in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, a fantasy trilogy by Tad Williams (actually in paperback there are four books, as the last book was so long it was published in two parts). The world is an invented one, but a number of elements are closely based on real world history, most notably the human ethnic groups and the dominant religion. There are lands and peoples corresponding to the Vikings and the ancient Roman Empire, the religion is closely modeled on Christianity, and there is a figure much like the Pope. In other ways, of course, Osten Ard (as it is called) differs greatly from our world, such as the presence of magic and fantasy races. Though only two of these play major roles in The Dragonbone Chair, others are mentioned and may appear in later books. The most important non-human race is the Sithi, an immortal, pre-human race who most closely resemble fairies or elves (particularly as portrayed in Tolkien). The other race that plays an important role is the trolls (actually just one troll), who are more like gnomes or pixies than the large, dangerous trolls that populate most fantasy works.
The story opens towards the end of the long reign of Prester John (a name that appeared in medieval legends in our world), who first came to power by successfully slaying a dragon whose bones were used for his throne (thus the book’s title). As the king nears death from old age, we learn that his sons have some strong differences of opinion, with the younger son Josua particularly objecting to his elder brother’s reliance on a sinister priest named Pyrates as an adviser. Things basically deteriorate from there, though I won’t go into any details of the plot here. The main protagonist of the novel is a teenaged kitchen scullion named Simon, who was raised as an orphan in the castle. Judging from this book and the one other Tad Williams book I’ve read, The War of the Flowers, he likes using flawed protagonists who are forced to mature by the experiences they go through. Simon initially is almost unbelievably immature and flighty (even granted that he is around 15 years old and many teens are immature and flighty), though he shows improvement by the end of the book.
I obviously can’t pass judgment on this series as a whole yet, but based on the first book, Williams has woven an above average fantasy epic with a gripping plot and an interesting world behind it. The novel is not as distinctive as some others I have read (China Miéville’s novels, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, Gideon’s Wall, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, or even Williams’ own The War of the Flowers), containing as it does a lot of standard fantasy elements, but if the remaining volumes keep up the standards of the first, it is still worth recommending as good fantasy reading.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was notable for me as the first (and so far only) novel I ever read on a phone (an Android that I’d recently been given as a present). There were a few obvious glitches in the transfer of the book to digital form, mostly words and letters that the software misread, but these were minor. More generally speaking, while I still prefer the real thing, I can’t say that I found reading an e-book to be all that different from a physical book, and I wouldn’t rule out reading more books in that form, though I also intend to give most of what little financial support I can afford to books published in the standard format (this particular e-book came free with the phone, so I didn’t have to buy it).
As for the novel itself, the book was perhaps easier going than I expected, and gave an interesting picture of life among the middle and upper classes in Austen’s time. The love story might seem something of a cliché nowadays, but it was less so in Austen’s time, and the characters were interesting. I can see why comparisons have been made between Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell and Austen’s work, though the former is still different in many ways (not least in telling a completely different kind of story), and also why a history book that I coincidentally was reading from about this time referred readers to this novel as a good second choice after Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones for a view of life in the 18th century (though Pride and Prejudice is technically set at the turn of the 19th century, no doubt the writers of the history book figured that is close enough). I would have to say I personally liked Tom Jones (and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell) somewhat better than Pride and Prejudice, but the latter is certainly worth reading too (now I need to get a hold of a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies…).
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is one of the most massive and complex novels I’ve read in recent years. One reviewer characterized it as four novels in one, and while four may be a stretch, there are certainly at least three novels contained within its thousand-plus pages. One focuses on life in a top tennis academy attended by many of the country’s top junior tennis players. The protagonist for this part of the narrative, and arguably the novel’s central character is Hal Incandenza, a tennis and academic prodigy. The second, initially unrelated tale is set in a halfway house for recovering drug addicts. The main character in this portion of the novel is the brawny former addict and burglar Don Gately, who next to Hal receives the second most narrative attention. The third novel is a science fiction-tinged thriller revolving around the search for the film Infinite Jest, the last work of Hal’s late father James Incandenza, which is so intensely pleasurable to watch that it is deadly.
It is very difficult to characterize this novel. At first glance, it seems like a modern day version of James Joyce’s Ulysses, with its immensely length, its hundreds of end notes (some of them constituting entire chapters worth of material themselves), its extensive use of difficult vocabulary and local slang, and its rather bizarre opening (which turns out to take place many months after everything else in the novel). But in fact the novel is for the most part quite readable despite its heftiness, though I certainly wouldn’t characterize it as light reading. Overall it is probably less bizarre in its content than, say, Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren. It is still quite bizarre in places, however, and it has a distinct absurdist tone at times. For example, it is set in a near future in which the traditional calendar has been done away with and replaced with what is known as Subsidized Time, where each year is named after a product whose producer has bought the rights to the year (much of the novel takes place in The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment). The US president is a former crooner with an obsession with cleanliness and hygiene (he is the founder and leader of the Clean Party). Much of New England has been turned into a toxic dump and foisted on Canada, which is part of the US-dominated Organization of North American Nations. And the terrorist group which is seeking the film Infinite Jest to use as a weapon against the US is a Quebecois separatist group known as the Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, or Wheelchair Assassins, as they are all legless and use wheelchairs.
Despite the absurdist elements and some quite funny bits, I wouldn’t characterize the novel as a comedy, as there are far too many dark parts, a few of which can be pretty grim reading (the bits about the effects of severe depression and suicide are made all the more compelling by Wallace’s own fate, though this is only in hindsight – after all, the novel also talks in great depth about drug addictions that Wallace himself never had). But then, as I said before, it is very difficult to characterize this novel in any way, as it is so many things at once. In addition to receiving fulsome critical praise (and a few harsh attacks), it has generated a vast number of thesis papers and derivative works (including a music video for "Calamity Song" by the Decemberists based on a strange, elaborate game played by students at the tennis academy). It should be noted that anybody expecting a conventional ending in which everything is neatly tied up and explained will be sorely disappointed in this book. In fact so much is left unexplained that the novel has prompted extensive discussion and debate among readers about various points (what caused Hal’s breakdown, whether Madame Psychosis is disfigured or not, the content and location of the film, and more). In some ways, my reaction upon finishing it was similar to that when I finished Dhalgren; I asked myself “What the hell happened?” and immediately started flipping back through the book to try to figure out some kind of answer. In the case of Infinite Jest, I was even tempted to join some of the fan debates I mentioned above, as while some of them pointed out things I’d missed or that hadn’t occurred to me, there were points that I thought some of them had missed (though by now my memory is faded somewhat, so if I really wanted to contribute to the various arguments, I’d have to reread much of the book again). So even though I found the sudden ending slightly jarring, I’m by no means sorry I read the novel. It is a weirdly fascinating, virtuosic work that is ultimately entertaining, if not as fatally so as the eponymous film.
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
I, Claudius, written by Robert Graves, is one of the best known historical novels of the 20th century. As the title indicates, it is written in the form of an auto-biography by Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, generally known as Claudius, who was the fourth Roman emperor. The novel covers his life up to his unexpected accession to the position of emperor, as well as a substantial period before his birth that Graves (speaking as Claudius) covers in order to give the reader some background on his family.
From birth or at least a very early age, Claudius suffered from some sort of disability (what exactly it was is still debated) which caused him be physically weak and to stammer, such that when he was young he was thought to be mentally deficient. The rest of his family engaged in sometimes murderous in-fighting, and the fact that Claudius was seen as harmless helped save him from falling victim to jealous relatives. But as portrayed by Graves, Claudius was in fact very intelligent, though socially somewhat inept, and proved to be one of the more sensible and capable members of his family.
Graves seems to have based his novel closely on the works of ancient Roman historians like Suetonius and Tacitus, though he takes a more favorable view of Claudius himself than they apparently did (I have not read their histories myself, though have read some of the works of early Roman historians like Livy, who appears briefly in the novel). Their accounts portray many of the members of the ruling Julio-Claudian family as murderous schemers, and in some cases, particularly that of Claudius’s predecessor Caligula (proper name Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus), as homicidally insane. Livia, the wife of Augustus and grandmother of Claudius, is accused of having had many of her own family murdered for political reasons and is the villain of the first part of the novel, though she is also acknowledged to have been a good administrator and appears much more positively later in the novel, if only in contrast to her son Tiberius (the second emperor) and great-grandson Caligula. However, modern historians regard many of the more lurid assertions made by the ancient historians as dubious or even wholly fictional (for one thing, it is improbably that everyone who was rumored to have been poisoned actually was, and some of the stories about Tiberius and Caligula are certainly exaggerated). Therefore, readers should be wary of accepting Graves’s characterizations of the members of the imperial family, well done though they are, as historically accurate. Despite this, I would certainly recommend the book to those who like historical fiction or indeed those who like good literature, and if I have a chance I will pick up Graves’s sequel, Claudius the God.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, a science fiction novel first published in 1974, was by Haldeman’s own admission inspired by his experiences in the Vietnam War. The protagonist, William Mandella was a physics student drafted along with other highly intelligent, well-educated young people to fight in an interstellar war with a newly discovered alien race. Due to time dilation effects (somewhat exaggerated, as I recall, since the starships would have to spend most of their time traveling at over 95% of light speed for the effect to be as pronounced as it is in the novel), Mandella and his fellow soldiers (the few that survive) return from their first two year tour of duty to an Earth where over two decades have passed and dramatic changes have taken place. It isn’t long before Mandella and his girlfriend (who had served with him) decide they can’t adapt and rejoin the military, originally under the condition they be posted to the Moon but almost immediately ending going back to the frontlines of the war. As more subjective years pass (from Mandella’s point of view), he encounters more senseless death and destruction while centuries go by on Earth, and he eventually learns how pointless the war itself was.
The Forever War widely regarded as the one of the most notable anti-war science fiction novels, and the first prominent one that was an allegory for Vietnam. Many regarded it as a response to the extremely pro-military Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (which like a number of Heinlein’s novels promotes some rather disturbing ideas), but Haldemann has supposedly downplayed this idea, declaring himself a fan of Heinlein (who was indeed a major figure in early sci-fi, despite the extreme views which he displayed in many later novels). Regardless, the novel certainly takes a bleak look at warfare and soldiering, and coveys Mandella’s alienation from the Earth he is supposedly fighting for quite well.
Some aspects of the novel come across as rather problematic today, however. Most notable is the way sexual orientation is treated (some people might also have issues with the way the military handles sexuality in the first part of the book – I doubt many women would consider such an arrangement ideal, and some men would also have objections – but I’ll have to admit I personally would not have a problem with it). When Mandella returns to Earth after his first tour of duty, overpopulation has become so extreme that the world’s governments promote homosexuality, such that most people are homosexual. Later in the novel, homosexuality has come to predominate such that heterosexuals are considered abnormal (it is even suggested to Mandella that he could be “cured” of his orientation). The problem with this is of course that we now know that sexual orientation is largely inborn, and while under certain circumstances primarily heterosexual people will engage regularly in homosexual activity, either due to lack of members of the opposite sex (prisons, ships at sea) or societal encouragement (ancient Greece), it would not be possible to completely change the primary orientation of the whole population without some type of genetic engineering, and people certainly can’t be “cured” of a sexual orientation (whatever Michele Bachmann may think). But in the 1970s the idea that homosexuality was a choice was more prevalent, and with that in mind it is a little easier to ignore this flaw in what is generally a good book.
The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams
The Dragonbone Chair is the first book in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, a fantasy trilogy by Tad Williams (actually in paperback there are four books, as the last book was so long it was published in two parts). The world is an invented one, but a number of elements are closely based on real world history, most notably the human ethnic groups and the dominant religion. There are lands and peoples corresponding to the Vikings and the ancient Roman Empire, the religion is closely modeled on Christianity, and there is a figure much like the Pope. In other ways, of course, Osten Ard (as it is called) differs greatly from our world, such as the presence of magic and fantasy races. Though only two of these play major roles in The Dragonbone Chair, others are mentioned and may appear in later books. The most important non-human race is the Sithi, an immortal, pre-human race who most closely resemble fairies or elves (particularly as portrayed in Tolkien). The other race that plays an important role is the trolls (actually just one troll), who are more like gnomes or pixies than the large, dangerous trolls that populate most fantasy works.
The story opens towards the end of the long reign of Prester John (a name that appeared in medieval legends in our world), who first came to power by successfully slaying a dragon whose bones were used for his throne (thus the book’s title). As the king nears death from old age, we learn that his sons have some strong differences of opinion, with the younger son Josua particularly objecting to his elder brother’s reliance on a sinister priest named Pyrates as an adviser. Things basically deteriorate from there, though I won’t go into any details of the plot here. The main protagonist of the novel is a teenaged kitchen scullion named Simon, who was raised as an orphan in the castle. Judging from this book and the one other Tad Williams book I’ve read, The War of the Flowers, he likes using flawed protagonists who are forced to mature by the experiences they go through. Simon initially is almost unbelievably immature and flighty (even granted that he is around 15 years old and many teens are immature and flighty), though he shows improvement by the end of the book.
I obviously can’t pass judgment on this series as a whole yet, but based on the first book, Williams has woven an above average fantasy epic with a gripping plot and an interesting world behind it. The novel is not as distinctive as some others I have read (China Miéville’s novels, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, Gideon’s Wall, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, or even Williams’ own The War of the Flowers), containing as it does a lot of standard fantasy elements, but if the remaining volumes keep up the standards of the first, it is still worth recommending as good fantasy reading.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Taiwan Election 2012
Last Saturday was election day in Taiwan, with elections being held for both president and the Legislative Yuan (as Taiwan's legislature is known). For anyone out there who missed the news, the incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomingtang (Nationalist) party won reelection over his Democratic Progressive Party challenger Tsai Ing-wen. The KMT also held on to its majority in the Legislative Yuan, winning 64 seats out of a total of 113. As anyone who has read my previous posts closely might expect, I consider this a disappointing result. While Ma is not nearly as awful as many other people in the KMT (or some in the DPP, for that matter), and KMT rule today is nothing like as bad as it was in the martial law era, the four years of his administration have not been good ones for the environment, Taiwan's sovereignty, human rights or plain good governance. I am not certain that Tsai would have been a huge improvement, but overall I have a favorable impression of her, and I think she would have done better than Ma (and better than Chen Shuibian, the DPP president who was in office before Ma).
Before the election, most polls showed Tsai and Ma as running virtually neck and neck, and Tsai was actually ahead in some of them. Also it was expected that James Soong of the so-called People First Party would take away a fairly large share of votes from Ma, perhaps enough to swing the election to Tsai. In the end, Ma won by a fairly substantial margin, getting 51.6% of the vote to 45.6% for Tsai. So what happened?
One problem is that many Taiwanese remain inherently conservative, and like voters elsewhere, they have very short memories. A lot of people seem to have completely forgotten the authoritarian rule of the KMT during the marital law era, or even view it positively as a time of growth (which it was, due to Taiwan's economic conditions at the time, not because authoritarian rule was actually conducive to growth) and order (at the expense of freedom of speech and many other liberties, but many chose to forget this). The KMT also prefers that the bad aspects of martial law be forgotten, criticizing any attempt to bring them up as divisive (if instead it faced up to and apologized for its past mistakes, I'd find it a lot easier to trust it now). Many voters now just have the vague feeling that the KMT represents stability, and so they are inclined to play it safe by voting for it (admittedly the DPP didn't help things by ruling erratically during its one period in power, though the KMT-dominated legislature of the time played a role in that as well).
One mistake that many outsiders are likely to make is seeing the Taiwanese election as purely a referendum on China policy. While the perception of the KMT as more pro-China and the DPP as more pro-Taiwan does play a role in many Taiwanese voters minds, and Ma's more China-oriented policy did win him the support of the business community (which is interested chiefly in making money in China, sovereignty and human rights be damned), domestic issues ultimately predominate in most voters' minds. For that matter, as some people have pointed out, the KMT now emphasizes Taiwan in its ads as well, claiming that its policies are the best for Taiwan. It certainly doesn't make a big point of being pro-China when it is addressing Taiwanese voters, claiming instead that it is for peace and stability. This is enough to convince many voters in the middle that the KMT is the safe choice.
The timing of the election (coincidentally?) favored the KMT somewhat. Taiwan does not have early voting or absentee voting, even within the country (though it should), so people have to vote wherever their household registration is. Many people from the south (which is strongly pro-DPP) work in the Taipei area. The election was held only a week before the Chinese New Year holiday, and many people didn't want to make a separate trip just to vote when they would be traveling to be with their families only a week later. Also, many university students had tests right up through Friday night, meaning they would have to rush back to their hometowns right after finishing their tests to vote on Saturday. How much difference this made is hard to tell. Probably not enough to change the overall results, but perhaps it could have affected particularly close races.
The KMT also had the advantages of large financial resources (even after divesting itself of some of its ill-gotten assets, it still owns a lot of businesses in Taiwan) and incumbency. Vote buying almost certainly went on in some areas, and with more money the KMT can easily buy more votes than any of its opponents. One constituency where vote buying has particularly been a problem in the past is the seats reserved for Taiwan's aboriginal population (six total, split into three for "Plains Aborigines" and three for "Mountain Aborigines). The aboriginal population is poorer and less well-educated, and there are far fewer of them (a total of only 215,000 votes elected the six legislators, with the third place candidate in the "Plains Aborigines" constituency getting elected with only 14,000 votes), which means anyone buying votes doesn't need to buy nearly as many. As a result, the KMT won four of the seats (with some pretty awful candidates), with the PFP candidate and an independent (a part-aborigine former pop singer who is disgustingly pro-China, even though Taiwanese aborigines have nothing to do with China historically) getting the other two. Our friend Mayaw Biho, on the other hand, despite having people like Ara Kimbo (胡德夫 Hu Defu), Panai Kisui (巴奈‧庫穗), Zhang Zhengyue (張震嶽), and Ilid Kaolo (以莉˙高露[小美]) campaign for him, only won 4,500 votes. Obviously the situation with aboriginal voters is particularly grim.
James Soong proved to be what I had already thought of him as, a washed-up has-been with little support, as he got less than 3% of the vote. Of course many of the people who supported him in the past tended to be even more conservative than a lot of KMT voters, and even less eager to see a DPP president. As a result, many of them probably chose to vote for Ma out of fear that Tsai would win if they didn't. But the PFP's performance in the legislative election was also weak, as it only got a little over 5% of the party vote, despite bold predictions that it would get as much as 10%. So the PFP, which is basically the James Soong party, only ended up with three seats in the legislature (parties have to get a minimum of 5% for two at-large seats, and the PFP also got one aboriginal seat).
It must also be said that this election was at least a vast improvement over the last one. Four years ago, the legislative elections and the presidential election were held separately, with the former being the first following reforms that cut the legislature in half and introduced the party vote. Some have argued that this new system favored the KMT, as several of the smallest constituencies, given a relatively greater weight in the smaller legislature, have traditionally favored the KMT, the more overwhelming support the DPP generally receives in the south did not translate into as many seats as the marginal lead the KMT has in the north, and also because the KMT could concentrate its much greater resources on fewer seats. Due to these factors and discontent with the outgoing Chen administration, the KMT won overwhelmingly, getting 87 seats to only 27 for the DPP. Since now the KMT will have 64 to 40 for the DPP, the former's majority has been reduced considerably. Likewise, in the 2008 presidential election, Ma won an landslide victory over the DPP's Frank Hsieh (admittedly a weaker candidate, in my opinion at least, than Tsai), getting 58.5% of the vote to 41.5% for Hsieh. So the DPP did far better this time (of course as 2008 was an unmitigated disaster, some improvement was to be expected).
This election was an improvement over 2012 in other ways. The Taiwan Solidarity Union, a pro-independence party inspired by former president Lee Teng-hui, only got 3.5% of the party vote in 2008 and thus failed to win any seats at all. This time it won just under 9% (compared to 44.5% for the KMT and 34.6% for the DPP) and got three seats. Some of this gain came at the expense of the DPP, which despite its poor showing overall got 36.9% of the party vote in 2008, but not all of it (the KMT's share of the party vote dropped a lot more than the DPP's, as it won 51.2% in 2008). While I have many reservations about both the TSU and the DPP and many politicians in both parties, it's good to see them do better, if only to counterbalance the overly (and, in the opinion of many, dangerously) pro-China policies of the KMT. Even better in my view was the improved showing of the Green Party. It got far less support than it should have, a mere 1.7% of the party vote, but this was a huge improvement on the 0.6% it got in 2008, and really not bad for a party whose campaigning was extremely limited in scope (for one thing, they refused to litter the streets with the flags favored by almost every other candidate and party). Other than the four parties which passed the 5% threshold for at-large seats (the KMT, DPP, TSU, and PFP), the Green Party actually did the best, outdoing the New Party, an extreme pro-China KMT splinter party that once was a real force in Taiwan politics but which only won 1.5% of the party vote (though admittedly the wacky "Free National Health Insurance Alliance" also won 1.2% of the party vote). If the Green Party can continue to increase its share of the vote, maybe in a few more elections it will be able to win seats.
Despite these bits of silver lining, overall the election results are still pretty depressing. They make me feel rather the way I feel when I see Americans elect extremist Republicans (which is most of them nowadays), Japanese vote for the LDP, Israelis vote for Likud or the religious parties, Egyptians vote for Salafists, or Europeans vote for any of the far-right parties. It certainly doesn't do much for my already shaky faith in the intelligence (or the open-mindedness) of the human race. But all we can do is keep up the struggle and hope things turn out better next time.
Before the election, most polls showed Tsai and Ma as running virtually neck and neck, and Tsai was actually ahead in some of them. Also it was expected that James Soong of the so-called People First Party would take away a fairly large share of votes from Ma, perhaps enough to swing the election to Tsai. In the end, Ma won by a fairly substantial margin, getting 51.6% of the vote to 45.6% for Tsai. So what happened?
One problem is that many Taiwanese remain inherently conservative, and like voters elsewhere, they have very short memories. A lot of people seem to have completely forgotten the authoritarian rule of the KMT during the marital law era, or even view it positively as a time of growth (which it was, due to Taiwan's economic conditions at the time, not because authoritarian rule was actually conducive to growth) and order (at the expense of freedom of speech and many other liberties, but many chose to forget this). The KMT also prefers that the bad aspects of martial law be forgotten, criticizing any attempt to bring them up as divisive (if instead it faced up to and apologized for its past mistakes, I'd find it a lot easier to trust it now). Many voters now just have the vague feeling that the KMT represents stability, and so they are inclined to play it safe by voting for it (admittedly the DPP didn't help things by ruling erratically during its one period in power, though the KMT-dominated legislature of the time played a role in that as well).
One mistake that many outsiders are likely to make is seeing the Taiwanese election as purely a referendum on China policy. While the perception of the KMT as more pro-China and the DPP as more pro-Taiwan does play a role in many Taiwanese voters minds, and Ma's more China-oriented policy did win him the support of the business community (which is interested chiefly in making money in China, sovereignty and human rights be damned), domestic issues ultimately predominate in most voters' minds. For that matter, as some people have pointed out, the KMT now emphasizes Taiwan in its ads as well, claiming that its policies are the best for Taiwan. It certainly doesn't make a big point of being pro-China when it is addressing Taiwanese voters, claiming instead that it is for peace and stability. This is enough to convince many voters in the middle that the KMT is the safe choice.
The timing of the election (coincidentally?) favored the KMT somewhat. Taiwan does not have early voting or absentee voting, even within the country (though it should), so people have to vote wherever their household registration is. Many people from the south (which is strongly pro-DPP) work in the Taipei area. The election was held only a week before the Chinese New Year holiday, and many people didn't want to make a separate trip just to vote when they would be traveling to be with their families only a week later. Also, many university students had tests right up through Friday night, meaning they would have to rush back to their hometowns right after finishing their tests to vote on Saturday. How much difference this made is hard to tell. Probably not enough to change the overall results, but perhaps it could have affected particularly close races.
The KMT also had the advantages of large financial resources (even after divesting itself of some of its ill-gotten assets, it still owns a lot of businesses in Taiwan) and incumbency. Vote buying almost certainly went on in some areas, and with more money the KMT can easily buy more votes than any of its opponents. One constituency where vote buying has particularly been a problem in the past is the seats reserved for Taiwan's aboriginal population (six total, split into three for "Plains Aborigines" and three for "Mountain Aborigines). The aboriginal population is poorer and less well-educated, and there are far fewer of them (a total of only 215,000 votes elected the six legislators, with the third place candidate in the "Plains Aborigines" constituency getting elected with only 14,000 votes), which means anyone buying votes doesn't need to buy nearly as many. As a result, the KMT won four of the seats (with some pretty awful candidates), with the PFP candidate and an independent (a part-aborigine former pop singer who is disgustingly pro-China, even though Taiwanese aborigines have nothing to do with China historically) getting the other two. Our friend Mayaw Biho, on the other hand, despite having people like Ara Kimbo (胡德夫 Hu Defu), Panai Kisui (巴奈‧庫穗), Zhang Zhengyue (張震嶽), and Ilid Kaolo (以莉˙高露[小美]) campaign for him, only won 4,500 votes. Obviously the situation with aboriginal voters is particularly grim.
James Soong proved to be what I had already thought of him as, a washed-up has-been with little support, as he got less than 3% of the vote. Of course many of the people who supported him in the past tended to be even more conservative than a lot of KMT voters, and even less eager to see a DPP president. As a result, many of them probably chose to vote for Ma out of fear that Tsai would win if they didn't. But the PFP's performance in the legislative election was also weak, as it only got a little over 5% of the party vote, despite bold predictions that it would get as much as 10%. So the PFP, which is basically the James Soong party, only ended up with three seats in the legislature (parties have to get a minimum of 5% for two at-large seats, and the PFP also got one aboriginal seat).
It must also be said that this election was at least a vast improvement over the last one. Four years ago, the legislative elections and the presidential election were held separately, with the former being the first following reforms that cut the legislature in half and introduced the party vote. Some have argued that this new system favored the KMT, as several of the smallest constituencies, given a relatively greater weight in the smaller legislature, have traditionally favored the KMT, the more overwhelming support the DPP generally receives in the south did not translate into as many seats as the marginal lead the KMT has in the north, and also because the KMT could concentrate its much greater resources on fewer seats. Due to these factors and discontent with the outgoing Chen administration, the KMT won overwhelmingly, getting 87 seats to only 27 for the DPP. Since now the KMT will have 64 to 40 for the DPP, the former's majority has been reduced considerably. Likewise, in the 2008 presidential election, Ma won an landslide victory over the DPP's Frank Hsieh (admittedly a weaker candidate, in my opinion at least, than Tsai), getting 58.5% of the vote to 41.5% for Hsieh. So the DPP did far better this time (of course as 2008 was an unmitigated disaster, some improvement was to be expected).
This election was an improvement over 2012 in other ways. The Taiwan Solidarity Union, a pro-independence party inspired by former president Lee Teng-hui, only got 3.5% of the party vote in 2008 and thus failed to win any seats at all. This time it won just under 9% (compared to 44.5% for the KMT and 34.6% for the DPP) and got three seats. Some of this gain came at the expense of the DPP, which despite its poor showing overall got 36.9% of the party vote in 2008, but not all of it (the KMT's share of the party vote dropped a lot more than the DPP's, as it won 51.2% in 2008). While I have many reservations about both the TSU and the DPP and many politicians in both parties, it's good to see them do better, if only to counterbalance the overly (and, in the opinion of many, dangerously) pro-China policies of the KMT. Even better in my view was the improved showing of the Green Party. It got far less support than it should have, a mere 1.7% of the party vote, but this was a huge improvement on the 0.6% it got in 2008, and really not bad for a party whose campaigning was extremely limited in scope (for one thing, they refused to litter the streets with the flags favored by almost every other candidate and party). Other than the four parties which passed the 5% threshold for at-large seats (the KMT, DPP, TSU, and PFP), the Green Party actually did the best, outdoing the New Party, an extreme pro-China KMT splinter party that once was a real force in Taiwan politics but which only won 1.5% of the party vote (though admittedly the wacky "Free National Health Insurance Alliance" also won 1.2% of the party vote). If the Green Party can continue to increase its share of the vote, maybe in a few more elections it will be able to win seats.
Despite these bits of silver lining, overall the election results are still pretty depressing. They make me feel rather the way I feel when I see Americans elect extremist Republicans (which is most of them nowadays), Japanese vote for the LDP, Israelis vote for Likud or the religious parties, Egyptians vote for Salafists, or Europeans vote for any of the far-right parties. It certainly doesn't do much for my already shaky faith in the intelligence (or the open-mindedness) of the human race. But all we can do is keep up the struggle and hope things turn out better next time.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
What's in a Name?
Back in 2010, I was living in a place called Taipei County. Now I am living in what is in English officially called New Taipei City. Did I move? No, it's just that a week before the end of 2010, what was once known as Taipei County (台北縣, a distinct entity from the city of Taipei, which in Chinese is known as 台北市 or Taipei City) was re-designated 新北市, which in Hanyu romanization is written as Xinbei Shi and literally translates as New North City (the old "north city" being Taipei, the name of which means "Taiwan North"). All of the smaller cities within Taipei County (essentially the suburbs of Taipei), became districts of this new city. Originally the new city was to be known in English as Xinbei City, based on the romanization of the Chinese, but the mayor insisted on "New Taipei City".
So what useful purpose did this change of names serve? None, really, except for political -- as a "special municipality" the so-called New Taipei City is equal in political status to the "special municipalities" of Taipei and Kaohsiung, as well as Taichung and Tainan, existing cities which were also given "special municipality" at the same time New Taipei City was created. In reality, New Taipei City is the same place it was as Taipei County, basically an urban extension of Taipei. As far as I am concerned, the renaming was basically pointless, and just means that I had to get used to writing my address differently.
This does not mean, however, that I think names don't matter. In many situations, they matter a great deal, and Taiwan is home to many examples of significant naming issues. In fact the nation itself is a good example. Officially, it is still known as "the Republic of China" after the Kuomintang (Nationalist) regime which ruled China until its defeat at the hands of the Communists over 60 years ago. Even though the actual territory ruled by "the Republic of China" since then has consisted of Taiwan and a few small outlying islands, both Communist-ruled China and a small but vocal pro-China minority in Taiwan strongly oppose any efforts to rename the country to something more logical like "the Republic of Taiwan", because they seemingly imagine that having "China" in the country's official name somehow keeps it more closely tied to China itself (of course the Chinese government does not officially recognize the name "the Republic of China" either, calling Taiwan "Taiwan, Province of China" in order to maintain the fiction that they rule Taiwan, but they still oppose in change in the name they don't recognize). A good analogy would be if Hawaii became split off from the continental United States but still insisted on calling itself "the United States of America", or if Sicily split from Italy but still called itself "the Republic of Italy".
This sort of political use of names has a long history in Taiwan (as it does elsewhere, but for today I will focus on Taiwan only). As far back as the Qing dynasty, the first China-based regime to rule parts of Taiwan, several Taiwanese cities had their names changed because the Qing government felt the new names would somehow encourage obedience on the part of Taiwan's restive population. For instance, Zhuluo (named for an aboriginal village) was changed to Jiayi (good and proper), and Banhsian ("half-line", also named for an aboriginal village) was changed to Zhanghua (translated by one scholar as "manifest the influence of the empire").
When the Kuomintang (KMT) came to Taiwan, they changed names throughout Taiwan to fit their ideology and political purposes. Practically every town and city in Taiwan has streets named Minsheng, Minquan, and Minzu (after Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People) as well as Zhongshan (after Sun Yat-sen himself) and Zhongzheng (after Chiang Kai-shek, the self-declared successor of Sun). There are even many streets called Jieshou, which means "long life to Chiang Kai-shek" (or Jiang Jieshi as he is called in Mandarin). A large number of street names in Taipei were renamed for cities and provinces in China, and many of the districts of the city were also renamed for political purposes. Thus there are Zhongshan and Zhongzheng districts, as well as districts with names corresponding to various concepts in KMT political ideology, like Datong. Even Taipei's most prominent mountain, Cao (Grass) Mountain was renamed by Chiang Kai-shek to commemorate Neo-Confucian scholar Wang Yangming. All of this renaming was done in an effort to promote the idea that Taiwan was closely tied to China.
In a very few cases, some streets and places have been renamed by governments headed by the more Taiwan-oriented DPP, but most of these rather absurdly ideological names remain in place, and efforts to change them often meet strong resistance from the KMT and its supporters. One reason they commonly bring up is that it costs a lot to change all of the street signs and addresses to conform to the new name. But if this is a valid reason for opposing any changes, then the same argument should apply to the recent renaming of Taipei County and other places. For my part, while I realize that it would be difficult to make wholesale changes in a short period of time, I would like to see all place names and street names in Taiwan depoliticized gradually, preferably by restoring the original names. While we shouldn't exaggerate the importance of names, they should as much as possible reflect reality, and they shouldn't be used as propaganda for outdated political ideologies. So while I'm willing to live with "New Taipei City", I'd like to get rid of all the "Zhongzheng" roads and such as soon as practicable.
So what useful purpose did this change of names serve? None, really, except for political -- as a "special municipality" the so-called New Taipei City is equal in political status to the "special municipalities" of Taipei and Kaohsiung, as well as Taichung and Tainan, existing cities which were also given "special municipality" at the same time New Taipei City was created. In reality, New Taipei City is the same place it was as Taipei County, basically an urban extension of Taipei. As far as I am concerned, the renaming was basically pointless, and just means that I had to get used to writing my address differently.
This does not mean, however, that I think names don't matter. In many situations, they matter a great deal, and Taiwan is home to many examples of significant naming issues. In fact the nation itself is a good example. Officially, it is still known as "the Republic of China" after the Kuomintang (Nationalist) regime which ruled China until its defeat at the hands of the Communists over 60 years ago. Even though the actual territory ruled by "the Republic of China" since then has consisted of Taiwan and a few small outlying islands, both Communist-ruled China and a small but vocal pro-China minority in Taiwan strongly oppose any efforts to rename the country to something more logical like "the Republic of Taiwan", because they seemingly imagine that having "China" in the country's official name somehow keeps it more closely tied to China itself (of course the Chinese government does not officially recognize the name "the Republic of China" either, calling Taiwan "Taiwan, Province of China" in order to maintain the fiction that they rule Taiwan, but they still oppose in change in the name they don't recognize). A good analogy would be if Hawaii became split off from the continental United States but still insisted on calling itself "the United States of America", or if Sicily split from Italy but still called itself "the Republic of Italy".
This sort of political use of names has a long history in Taiwan (as it does elsewhere, but for today I will focus on Taiwan only). As far back as the Qing dynasty, the first China-based regime to rule parts of Taiwan, several Taiwanese cities had their names changed because the Qing government felt the new names would somehow encourage obedience on the part of Taiwan's restive population. For instance, Zhuluo (named for an aboriginal village) was changed to Jiayi (good and proper), and Banhsian ("half-line", also named for an aboriginal village) was changed to Zhanghua (translated by one scholar as "manifest the influence of the empire").
When the Kuomintang (KMT) came to Taiwan, they changed names throughout Taiwan to fit their ideology and political purposes. Practically every town and city in Taiwan has streets named Minsheng, Minquan, and Minzu (after Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People) as well as Zhongshan (after Sun Yat-sen himself) and Zhongzheng (after Chiang Kai-shek, the self-declared successor of Sun). There are even many streets called Jieshou, which means "long life to Chiang Kai-shek" (or Jiang Jieshi as he is called in Mandarin). A large number of street names in Taipei were renamed for cities and provinces in China, and many of the districts of the city were also renamed for political purposes. Thus there are Zhongshan and Zhongzheng districts, as well as districts with names corresponding to various concepts in KMT political ideology, like Datong. Even Taipei's most prominent mountain, Cao (Grass) Mountain was renamed by Chiang Kai-shek to commemorate Neo-Confucian scholar Wang Yangming. All of this renaming was done in an effort to promote the idea that Taiwan was closely tied to China.
In a very few cases, some streets and places have been renamed by governments headed by the more Taiwan-oriented DPP, but most of these rather absurdly ideological names remain in place, and efforts to change them often meet strong resistance from the KMT and its supporters. One reason they commonly bring up is that it costs a lot to change all of the street signs and addresses to conform to the new name. But if this is a valid reason for opposing any changes, then the same argument should apply to the recent renaming of Taipei County and other places. For my part, while I realize that it would be difficult to make wholesale changes in a short period of time, I would like to see all place names and street names in Taiwan depoliticized gradually, preferably by restoring the original names. While we shouldn't exaggerate the importance of names, they should as much as possible reflect reality, and they shouldn't be used as propaganda for outdated political ideologies. So while I'm willing to live with "New Taipei City", I'd like to get rid of all the "Zhongzheng" roads and such as soon as practicable.
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