In the last few months, I have gotten way behind on my reading, but even further behind in writing about my reading. So here's my effort to cover the majority of the books I've read over the last eight months in one go. As usual, there's a lot more to be said about all of them, but in all but the last case I've kept my comments short - admittedly in part because for some of the books I've already forgotten much of what I'd originally thought of saying about them.
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
This fantasy novel from Germany is rather different from most other books in the genre. It tells of a boy who enters a fantasy world, which is a common enough concept, but its similarities with other novels with such stories ends there. Fantastica, the fantasy world that the boy Bastian reads about in the book he stole from a seller of old books, is truly fantastic, and when he enters it, it turns out that he can shape it according to his desires, though this turns out to have a downside as well. But the fantasy world itself has virtually limitless possibilities, which is one of several ways in which the title is fitting. Another is the hints at many other possible untold stories that are scattered throughout the book. Basically, when a character’s part in the main story comes to an end, Ende often provides a brief hint at their future, concluding: “But that is another story and shall be told another time.” Of course, stories can be spun off in many directions from most novels that cover a lot of ground, especially in a fantasy world, but Ende makes it explicit that there are if not infinite at least a great number of stories that could be told. The main story itself is interesting and entertaining, if a little strange and unconventional in its twists. Bastian himself ends up as more of an anti-hero than a hero in much of the book’s second half, which makes an interesting twist, and Fantastica is a fascinating and unpredictable setting. While I’ll admit that my own preference is usually for somewhat more Earth-like fantasy worlds, if only because they are easier to get a mental grip on, a creation like Ende’s shows greater inventiveness. Overall, I found the book enjoyable, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy or just inventive storytelling.
World War Z by Max Brooks
I’ve never been particularly into zombies, but I have to admit a long-time attraction to post-apocalyptic tales, and that’s what this is. The disease that causes victims to become zombies is given a reasonably scientific-sounding explanation, and the stories of the various survivors are sufficiently gripping. While admittedly it has little relation to the merits of the novel as a whole, I have to say I also liked the treatment of China (the disease’s point of origin), where the government due to its exceptionally poor handling of the situation (starting with excessive secrecy similar to its handling of SARS in the real world) is eventually overthrown, and Tibet, which has become an independent, democratic and relatively prosperous independent country. A few things are not sufficiently well explained, and I would have preferred a little more about the overall course of events, as not everything is made clear through the disconnected stories. But while it’s not an exceptional piece of literature, the novel is good entertainment and a decent choice for reading on a trip or at the beach.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
This novel is often ranked by scholars as one of the greatest English-language novels of the 20th century. Like the similarly critically-revered Ulysses by James Joyce, it makes extensive use of stream of consciousness, and as such is not an easy read by any means. It tells of several decades in the lives of the highly dysfunctional Compson family through the eyes of various family members. The first section is told through the eyes of Benjy, the mentally disabled son of the Compsons. The narrative is a highly disjointed stream of consciousness that jumps around in time, so it takes quite some time to follow what is going on. The second section is narrated by the older Compson son Quentin, who was sent to Harvard using the money obtained from the sale of Benjy’s beloved pasture, which is turned into a golf course. Both Benjy and Quentin are in different ways obsessed by their sister Caddy, who is intelligent but willful. She becomes pregnant by one of her several lovers, and rushes into marriage with a man who later dumps her when he discovers the child is not his. Quentin’s part of the tale also jumps back and forth in time between his life at Harvard in an increasingly depressed mental state and his past, particularly his relationship with Caddy. His part of the narrative, while far more articulate than Benjy’s, is just as hard to follow and becomes even more so as his mental state deteriorates. The third section is told from the point of view of the third brother Jason, who is the most stable but the least likeable of the siblings. He is a racist and basically a sociopath who takes after his equally unlikeable mother, a hypochondriac who cares nothing for anyone else in the family except Jason, because he takes after her. Jason’s section is dominated by his running conflict with Caddy’s daughter (confusingly also named Quentin), who he has blackmailed Caddy into making him the guardian of, and whose money from her mother he is embezzling. The last section is narrated by the family’s black servant Dilsey, who does much to help the disintegrating Compson family hold together, though ultimately she can only watch them collapse. All in all, the novel is an impressive piece of work, one that paints an intriguing picture of life in the American South in the early 20th century, and it is an interesting challenge to read, but it isn’t something to read for fun.
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This is one of the most well-known retellings of the Arthurian legends, in part because it presents a feminist and pro-pagan version of the stories. This is a commendable approach, as the original stories certainly have a patriarchal and decidedly pro-Christian bias, and it is refreshing to see them re-interpreted in this way (Bradley herself apparently sees the book not as anti-Christian, but as opposing the traditional, patriarchal view of the religion). Bradley’s telling of the story is for the most part sufficiently interesting to keep the reader engaged through a quite lengthy novel. However, the book is not without its flaws. For one thing, some of the characterization struck me as unbelievable and inconsistent. Whether it was Igraine’s apparent transition from non-Christian to seemingly pious believer back to non-Christian; Morgause’s initial portrayal as scheming and ambitious, then basically sympathetic (and content with her situation) if somewhat hedonistic and then as cold-bloodedly scheming again; Arthur’s surrender to his wife Gwenhwyfar on the issue of the banner he carried into battle and his oath to Avalon; the relationship between Gwenhwyfar and Morgaine; or a number of other actions of the characters, there was much that didn’t ring true. Of course, people are complex, they can change over time, and they often hide their true feelings, and some consider that sufficient explanation for these elements in the story. But to me, it didn’t seem so much as if the characters were evolved or revealing hidden parts of their personalities, but more as if they had split personalities or had become entirely different people. Some scenes were a little hard to believe, such as one where Morgaine gets into a very heated argument with Arthur and Gwenhwyfar and aims at least one very strongly worded insult at the latter (the sort which normally would cause a complete rupture in a relationship), and yet a few minutes later they are all talking almost calmly. Also there were occasional lapses in the writing, such as where the exact same phrase was used to describe Arthur’s reactions several times in the space of a few paragraphs. At times it seemed that Bradley overemphasized the conflicting points of view at the expense of the story, somewhat like Ayn Rand did in Atlas Shrugged. Bradley’s tendency to do this was not nearly as egregious as Rand’s, and her writing is much better, but it still pales in comparison to that of a more subtle writer like Ursula Le Guin, who can make a point about a profound issue with much less preaching. These flaws were not enough to make me want to stop reading the book, but they do detract from it. Overall, in the field of Arthurian fantasy, I’d have to say that I’d rank Mary Stewart’s Merlin series as clearly superior to this book, though admittedly having first read Stewart’s books when I was in my teens and re-read them more than once since then, I’m somewhat biased in their favor. I would still recommend The Mists of Avalon to fantasy fans, particularly those interested in tales relating to King Arthur, but I’d recommend reading the Stewart novels first.
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
This is a sequel of sorts to Atwood’s excellent apocalyptic novel Oryx and Crake. I say “of sorts” because in fact the two for the most part overlap in time, though this book extends to a later point in time than the first. This novel follows two women who were members of an environmentalist cult of sorts, and like the previous novel it skips back and forth in time between the protagonists’ lives prior to the collapse of civilization and their efforts to survive afterward. Generally speaking, it is also a very good book, well-written and engaging, with interesting characters. Some of the coincidences (mainly how various characters just happen to encounter each other in very different places and situations) do stretch believability somewhat, which is a bit of weakness – though the coincidences are not more of stretch than those in Dickens novels, which are still regarded as classics. Atwood also seemingly engages in a bit of re-writing of her previous novel, at least with respect to Ren, one of the protagonists of this one. While a character named Brenda is mentioned briefly in the first novel as a girl that its protagonist Jimmy dated briefly, as is one specific incident between them, there is no hint that Jimmy had especially strong feelings for her, as is stated in this novel (two of Ren’s close friends from this novel also figure in the first novel, somewhat more prominently than Brenda, Atwood doesn’t have to change as much about the nature of their relationships with Jimmy). Atwood also adjusts the timeline of some events to fit the new story. However, this sort of thing is sometimes a necessary evil in writing a series of connected books (J.R.R. Tolkien had to literally re-write the encounter between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit to fit the story that later developed in The Lord of the Rings, though since all editions of The Hobbit published since the 1950s feature the later version of the story, few readers are aware of this), and the few inconsistencies that result can mostly be explained away, this is a minor issue. All in all, The Year of the Flood is a worthy follow-up to Oryx and Crake, though perhaps not quite its equal.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
One interesting thing for me about this novel is the way it triggered my slightly vague memories of the historical event it is based on. In the novel, a group of terrorists attack a party being held at the home of the vice president of an unnamed South American country, taking the guests hostage. Not too far into the novel, it is mentioned that the country’s president is of Japanese descent, which immediately called to mind Alberto Fujimori, the former president of Peru, which in turn reminded me of an actual incident that took place in Peru. I didn’t remember where the actual incident took place (it was at the Japanese embassy), and I suspected (correctly, as far as I could tell from what I looked up afterwards) that many key elements of the novel were fictional, but it was still obvious that the historical event served as inspiration for the novel. In the book, the party is a birthday party for the chief executive of a powerful Japanese electronics firm that the hosts hope to persuade to build a factory in their country. He has no plans to do so, and was only persuaded to attend the party because the host country arranged for his favorite opera star to perform at it. Of course everything is disrupted by the hostage-taking, but as a stalemate between the hostage-takers – who had originally expected that the president, their actual target, would be at the party – and the country’s military develops, the hostages and their captors end up stuck together inside the house, and all sorts of strange relationships develop. The novel in essence is an exploration of human relationships in an extraordinary situation, one that is far removed from the real world, and the tone of much of it is positive, sometimes humorous, and even uplifting. Unfortunately, the outside world hangs like an ominous cloud over all the blossoming relationships in the house, something I felt perhaps even more strongly than a reader who didn’t know of the historical incident would. This is because one thing I remembered most clearly about the incident was how it ended, including how the military’s behavior in the final assault had later come into question. Patchett hints at how things will end through foreshadowing, but since the actual assault takes place so fast it isn’t quite as dark as it might have been. Still, readers shouldn’t expect a very happy ending, though a few of the main characters are able to salvage something from the destruction. Despite the relatively bleak ending, the book as a whole is a pleasure to read, and it’s worth recommending.
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (Translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa)
This famous book is one of the earliest works of prose fiction to appear in post-medieval Europe. In structure it is quite similar to The Arabian Nights, as it consists of a series of mostly unrelated stories told within the context of a frame story. The frame story itself is not particularly eventful, though its background is fascinating. Boccaccio wrote the book in the mid 14th century, soon after the bubonic plague commonly known as the Black Death struck Italy, including his home city of Florence (Firenze), and the novel’s introduction includes a very vivid and grim description of the ravages of the plague. The premise of the book is that a group of ten young people, seven women and three men belonging to the upper classes, decide to escape to the countryside together, where they spend their time singing, dancing and telling stories. As they decide at the beginning of their trip to leave all bad news behind them, it is not surprising that for the rest of the book, the plague is rarely mentioned, to the point where one could easily forget their motivation for embarking on what seems like a rather idyllic holiday of idle pleasure. But then the frame story is not really the point, and anyway the introduction was no doubt enough unpleasantness for the readers who were Boccaccio’s intended audience (mainly women looking for something to while away their spare time). The main point is the stories told over a ten day period, with each of the characters telling a story in turn, usually based on a theme set by the member of the group whose turn it is to be Queen or King for the day.
The stories themselves come in a wide variety and for the most part are highly entertaining and often funny. Most are set in contemporary or near contemporary Italy, but others range farther afield, all over the Mediterranean and even to Cathay (though the characters in the story set there are Hebrew and Persian rather than Chinese), and back in time to Lombard Italy and even in one case the time of the Roman Empire. The obvious difference between these stories and those of The Arabian Nights is that there is much less swashbuckling adventure and magic (although there’s a bit of both) and a lot more sex. The amount of the latter (occasionally graphic, though mostly through use of earthy metaphors) may be surprising, until one recalls that not every Western culture of the past has been as repressed about sex as, say, the English of the Victorian era or Americans of almost any era. The Romans, for instance, frequently wrote very forthrightly about sex. Nevertheless, some of the (often hilarious) stories of various lovers’ escapades – one story involves a man who ends up sleeping with all the nuns in a convent, and another ends up with two couples making a permanent spouse swapping arrangement – make the reader wonder if the Italians of Boccaccio’s day really were that open-minded. Not that everything took place out in the open; in fact, though many of the stories involve adulterous affairs, it seems that being caught in one red-handed could have serious consequences (in fact much of the humor involves the efforts of various lovers to avoid getting caught). Homosexuality is rarely alluded to, and when it is it is treated negatively, though the mild disapproval in The Decameron is nothing like the virulent homophobia in a book like Fanny Hill. I should also note, though that it would be a mistake to assume that all the stories involve love affairs and sexual escapades. In fact, most told on the first and last days do not involve anything of the sort, and many of the others do not either. Many revolve around reversals of fortune, or clever remarks that put someone in their place, or get the speaker out of trouble.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is its view of women. At times, the book presents the sort of attitude toward women that one might expect to see in a very patriarchal society, that is to say, quite negative about both the abilities and the rights of women. Even at the beginning, when the group of seven women is discussing fleeing the city, one of them gives a speech that is very derogatory about women and their ability to manage without men, leading them to decide to ask the three young men to come with them. A few of the stories repeat attitudes of this sort. Several of the sexual escapades described are essentially rape, as the woman is described as submitting to the man’s advances unwillingly. In one of the stories featuring the rather stupid Calandrino and the pranksters Bruno and Buffalamaco (some of the few characters who appear in multiple stories), the former beats his wife rather badly, though in a later story she is able to take revenge. The most extreme example, however, is a story told by one of the women on the ninth day that not only once more contains a speech about women’s inferiority to men, but directly advocates the beating of wives by husbands (though it seems that not all the women approved of the message, as the story evoked “murmuring” among them).
Despite these examples of blatant misogyny, however, much of The Decameron has a very liberated attitude toward women. Many of the stories feature women who are not afraid to speak their minds and very clever women who get the better of the men they deal with. Nor do the women only use their intelligence for love affairs. In a few stories, the female protagonists display capabilities in fields that in that era were generally reserved for men alone. One woman is a very talented doctor who successfully treats the king of France. Another, after narrowly escaping death at the hands of her husband, who falsely believes she was unfaithful to him, disguises herself as a man and displays such abilities in a series of situations that she ends up as a high placed member of the court of the Sultan of Egypt. Another woman, caught in an affair in a city with draconian punishments for unfaithful women, forthrightly declares to the judge that the law is unfair because women were not consulted in its drafting. These positive portrayals of women are enough to justify the statement in the scholarly introduction to the translation I read that The Decameron is notable for “almost revolutionary feminism” – certainly, despite the lapses mentioned above, on the whole women are portrayed much more positively and in much greater variety than in many other later novels, even many from only half a century ago (where the women are usually restricted the roles of secretaries and housewives).
The Decameron paints an interesting picture of Italian society of the times in other respects as well. At times the stories reflect the belief, unfortunately widely prevalent in pre-modern Europe, that people of noble ancestry were naturally superior. However, other stories directly contradict this, presenting a much more egalitarian view where characters of poor backgrounds can be at least as noble as those of high birth. Another aspect of the book is its generally very negative view of the Catholic clergy, all the way up to the Papacy. Friars are routinely mocked and lambasted for their greed and hypocrisy, and in one of the very first tales a Jew whose Christian friend keeps trying to convert him goes to Rome to see how the leaders of the Church behave, and in the end converts not because the Pope and other prelates behave well, but because the religion manages to thrive in spite of their scandalous behavior. Incidentally, while this tale implies the superiority of Christianity as a religion over Judaism, the Jew himself is portrayed positively, and in the following story, the only other to feature a Jew, he is again shown in a positive light – as is Saladin, who also features not only in the latter story but in a much longer one near the end. All in all, the book doesn't include many of the biases against various groups (except the one against the clergy, but then they were not a disadvantaged group) that are common in many stories from previous centuries.
The Decameron features a wide range of characters, from kings to peasants and everything in between, and all of them are very vividly drawn. While Boccaccio may not have written the stories themselves, like William Shakespeare (who also did not make up his plots), it is in the masterful way he tells them that his greatness lies. Also worth noting is his conclusion, in which he addresses criticism that his stories are too scandalous (i.e., too much sex) and contain language not fit for refined readers. He makes a very excellent argument that all the words he uses are appropriate to the stories he tells and furthermore that his tales, like so many other things, will be harmful or useful depending on the reader. As he says, fire and weapons and even the Bible can be used for good or bad, and while "a corrupt mind never understands a word in a healthy way", a healthy mind will not be harmed by words of any kind. With this concise defense of his masterwork, Boccaccio not only punctures contemporary prudes who objected to his stories, but the centuries of prudes that would follow. Today, however, most readers can simply enjoy what the introduction with good reason argues is one of the most readable of any of the world's masterpieces of literature.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Friday, December 19, 2014
US News: Police Killings and CIA Torture
As usual I've been to busy to do much writing here, but I'd like to comment on a couple of US news stories that have gotten a lot of attention, not only in the US but worldwide. First off, there is the issue of killings of African-Americans by police and how the justice system has dealt with them. The Micheal Brown case probably got the most attention, but the Eric Garner, John Crawford, and Tamir Rice cases have also been widely reported and discussed. Let me first say that this issue is more complex than many on both sides make it out. I have considerable sympathy for most police officers, and I understand that it can be easy to overreact to perceived threats, sometimes with fatal consequences. When so many people have guns, of course it's easy for police to think that the slightest move by the suspect may be a prelude to them getting shot at. But of course this is a consequence of America's failure to do something about the ridiculous number of guns in the country, an aspect of this issue that gets far too little attention. Essentially, it is largely the fault of the NRA and the rest of the gun nuts that police work is so dangerous and officers feel they have to be ready to start shooting at any moment. In this sense, the police are not entirely to blame for the rash of police killings (for a summary of incidents where people, many of them minorities, were killed by police, see this article).
Even aside from the issue of guns, it is understandable that mistaken perceptions in a potentially dangerous situation can lead police to use excessive force. It is quite possible that Darren Wilson, for instance, really felt that he was in danger when he started shooting at Micheal Brown. It's even possible that he really believed that Brown was within striking distance of him and preparing to charge when he fired the last, fatal shots, as the human mind can play all sorts of tricks during such incidents, and afterwards as well through its tendency to unconsciously edit memories. But this doesn't mean he shouldn't have been indicted. After all, being indicted is not at all the same as being found guilty; it just means that there's enough evidence that a crime was committed to go to trial. The threshold for indictments is quite low, which is why grand juries will hand down indictments in the vast majority of cases - except, as it happens, where the possible crime was committed by a police officer. In this case, an unarmed man was shot, not once but many times, and was killed. No matter how threatened Warren may have felt, Brown was in fact quite far from him when the fatal shots were fired, and testimonies was conflicting as to the entire course of events. This alone should have been enough to warrant a trial to find out (as much as possible) what really happened. If, as seems probable, Wilson started shooting and kept shooting in a panicked overreaction to a perceived threat, he probably should have been found innocent of murder (though maybe not manslaughter), but at least he should have gone to trial. As an aside, I have to say that what sympathy I have for Warren is lessened by the fact that, as far as I am aware, he hasn't actually expressed any regret for killing Brown. Even if Brown acted aggressively toward him (and stole a few cigars) that hardly means he deserved to die, and in hindsight Wilson should at least acknowledge that he didn't need to shoot him that many times, especially given the distance between them at the end.
The Eric Garner case is even more straightforward. At most, Garner was resisting arrest; he was in no way threatening the officers, who outnumbered him anyway. The officer put him in a chokehold (though he claims it wasn’t a chokehold), and Garner suffocated. All of this was caught on video. Again, the officer probably had no intention of killing Garner, and so he probably could only be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. But at the very least, he should have gone to trial, especially since he can’t really claim that he had no idea that Garner was suffocating, since he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe”. Incidentally, despite what some commenters have claimed, being able to talk does not mean you can breathe. On the contrary, you can talk by squeezing air out of your lungs, but that doesn’t mean you are able to breathe in. As for Garner’s physique, of course that played a role in his death, but that doesn’t excuse the officer’s completely unnecessary use of deadly force.
Then there are John Crawford and Tamir Rice, one of whom was carrying a BB gun that was little more than a toy, and the other of whom was just carrying a toy gun. Neither of them was pointing it at the officers, who simply came up and shot them without even trying to talk to them. In Crawford’s case, he was just walking around the store talking on his phone when officers gunned him down, and the 12-year-old Rice was shot by police just seconds after they arrived at the park where he was playing. Both these cases were even more egregious than the Brown and Garner cases, and yet in Crawford’s case the police weren’t indicted, nor was the 911 caller whose false reporting of the situation led them to believe that they were about to encounter a threatening individual (not that that excuses their shooting first and asking questions later). Whether the officer who shot Rice (an officer who had been previously dismissed from another police force as unsuitable for the job) will be indicted remains to be seem, but we’ve already seen the Cleveland police have the gall to demand an apology from a Cleveland Rams player who wore a shirt demanding justice for Rice, when if anyone should be apologizing it should be them.
So how big a role did race play in this and the many other cases of black men killed by police in the past year? In most cases, probably not a conscious one. I don’t think most cops, white or not, are overt racists. But it is surely not a complete coincidence that this sort of thing happens to African-American males with far greater frequency than it does to whites. To a large extent, it is probably a matter of subconscious racial profiling, causing both 911 callers and police to treat black men as more threatening than anyone else doing the exact same thing (one black man was recently questioned briefly by a cop merely for taking a walk with his hands in his pockets on a cold day, and exchange that he recorded and posted online). On the other hand, white gun nuts can go wandering around Kroger armed with assault rifles, and they don’t get the reception John Crawford did for walking around Wal-Mart with a BB gun. Thinking about this issue, I recently recalled that when I was in college, I was pulled over several times for having one dim headlight on the old ’75 Chevy Nova I was driving. Note that the other worked perfectly, and the dim one was at least working, if not well. Every time, I was let off with a verbal warning. Looking back, I have to wonder if that would have been the case if I had been black or Hispanic.
In sum, while acknowledging that police have a difficult and dangerous job, we also have to acknowledge that they are often not held sufficiently accountable, even when they kill people, and that there are definitely disparities in how minorities, especially African-American men, are treated by law enforcement. There is no easy solution to this problem, but recognizing that there is a problem would be a good start.
Another major news story was the release of the executive summary of the Senate committee report on the use of torture by the CIA under the Bush administration. In a lot of ways the defenders of torture (or "enhanced interrogation") are quite similar to the defenders of the police in the incidents described above, in that they argue that the end justifies the means and that those responsible for defending Americans (or maintaining public order) should get extra leeway in their use of violence and other extreme measures. Former Vice President Dick Cheney went so far as to say he had "no problem" with the fact that up to 25% of the people the US tortured were later found not to have any involvement with terrorism as long as the torture accomplished its objectives. But in truth there is little evidence torture actually produced any useful intelligence. Almost all key intelligence obtained from captured individuals was not obtained through these methods. However, even if it had been effective, not only should we be appalled that the US tortured innocent people, we should even be appalled that "guilty" people were tortured. Use of torture is reprehensible even if it works and even if the tortured people really are enemies. Of course it's even more so when it is useless and many of those tortured are not even hostile. Certainly it's unlikely that Americans would so blase about if the victims had been American soldiers.
Despite the police killings and even the torture committed by the CIA, the US still has a better human rights record than places like China, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or nowadays even Thailand. But that isn't saying much. If it wants to be able to maintain the moral high ground against authoritarian regimes around the world, the US not only needs to address the problems with the police, but it needs to put safeguards in place against future attempts to use torture, and it needs to hold those who engaged in torture accountable, all the way up to Cheney and probably former President George W. Bush as well.
To end on a much more positive note, here are some links to news about recent discoveries on Mars:
http://news.yahoo.com/found-ancient-lake-mars-sign-143002982.html
http://news.yahoo.com/curiosity-rover-drills-mars-rock-finds-water-122321635.html
http://www.space.com/28019-mars-methane-disovery-curiosity-rover.html
http://www.space.com/28033-mars-life-building-blocks-curiosity-rover.html?cmpid=558746
http://www.cnet.com/news/curiosity-has-discovered-organic-matter-on-mars/#ftag=YHF65cbda0
And lest we forget, there's a lander on a comet as well, one that may wake up again and start sending us new information:
http://news.yahoo.com/european-comet-lander-may-wake-space-slumber-232545821.html
When things on Earth are looking bad, it's always nice to remember there's a big universe out there to explore.
Even aside from the issue of guns, it is understandable that mistaken perceptions in a potentially dangerous situation can lead police to use excessive force. It is quite possible that Darren Wilson, for instance, really felt that he was in danger when he started shooting at Micheal Brown. It's even possible that he really believed that Brown was within striking distance of him and preparing to charge when he fired the last, fatal shots, as the human mind can play all sorts of tricks during such incidents, and afterwards as well through its tendency to unconsciously edit memories. But this doesn't mean he shouldn't have been indicted. After all, being indicted is not at all the same as being found guilty; it just means that there's enough evidence that a crime was committed to go to trial. The threshold for indictments is quite low, which is why grand juries will hand down indictments in the vast majority of cases - except, as it happens, where the possible crime was committed by a police officer. In this case, an unarmed man was shot, not once but many times, and was killed. No matter how threatened Warren may have felt, Brown was in fact quite far from him when the fatal shots were fired, and testimonies was conflicting as to the entire course of events. This alone should have been enough to warrant a trial to find out (as much as possible) what really happened. If, as seems probable, Wilson started shooting and kept shooting in a panicked overreaction to a perceived threat, he probably should have been found innocent of murder (though maybe not manslaughter), but at least he should have gone to trial. As an aside, I have to say that what sympathy I have for Warren is lessened by the fact that, as far as I am aware, he hasn't actually expressed any regret for killing Brown. Even if Brown acted aggressively toward him (and stole a few cigars) that hardly means he deserved to die, and in hindsight Wilson should at least acknowledge that he didn't need to shoot him that many times, especially given the distance between them at the end.
The Eric Garner case is even more straightforward. At most, Garner was resisting arrest; he was in no way threatening the officers, who outnumbered him anyway. The officer put him in a chokehold (though he claims it wasn’t a chokehold), and Garner suffocated. All of this was caught on video. Again, the officer probably had no intention of killing Garner, and so he probably could only be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. But at the very least, he should have gone to trial, especially since he can’t really claim that he had no idea that Garner was suffocating, since he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe”. Incidentally, despite what some commenters have claimed, being able to talk does not mean you can breathe. On the contrary, you can talk by squeezing air out of your lungs, but that doesn’t mean you are able to breathe in. As for Garner’s physique, of course that played a role in his death, but that doesn’t excuse the officer’s completely unnecessary use of deadly force.
Then there are John Crawford and Tamir Rice, one of whom was carrying a BB gun that was little more than a toy, and the other of whom was just carrying a toy gun. Neither of them was pointing it at the officers, who simply came up and shot them without even trying to talk to them. In Crawford’s case, he was just walking around the store talking on his phone when officers gunned him down, and the 12-year-old Rice was shot by police just seconds after they arrived at the park where he was playing. Both these cases were even more egregious than the Brown and Garner cases, and yet in Crawford’s case the police weren’t indicted, nor was the 911 caller whose false reporting of the situation led them to believe that they were about to encounter a threatening individual (not that that excuses their shooting first and asking questions later). Whether the officer who shot Rice (an officer who had been previously dismissed from another police force as unsuitable for the job) will be indicted remains to be seem, but we’ve already seen the Cleveland police have the gall to demand an apology from a Cleveland Rams player who wore a shirt demanding justice for Rice, when if anyone should be apologizing it should be them.
So how big a role did race play in this and the many other cases of black men killed by police in the past year? In most cases, probably not a conscious one. I don’t think most cops, white or not, are overt racists. But it is surely not a complete coincidence that this sort of thing happens to African-American males with far greater frequency than it does to whites. To a large extent, it is probably a matter of subconscious racial profiling, causing both 911 callers and police to treat black men as more threatening than anyone else doing the exact same thing (one black man was recently questioned briefly by a cop merely for taking a walk with his hands in his pockets on a cold day, and exchange that he recorded and posted online). On the other hand, white gun nuts can go wandering around Kroger armed with assault rifles, and they don’t get the reception John Crawford did for walking around Wal-Mart with a BB gun. Thinking about this issue, I recently recalled that when I was in college, I was pulled over several times for having one dim headlight on the old ’75 Chevy Nova I was driving. Note that the other worked perfectly, and the dim one was at least working, if not well. Every time, I was let off with a verbal warning. Looking back, I have to wonder if that would have been the case if I had been black or Hispanic.
In sum, while acknowledging that police have a difficult and dangerous job, we also have to acknowledge that they are often not held sufficiently accountable, even when they kill people, and that there are definitely disparities in how minorities, especially African-American men, are treated by law enforcement. There is no easy solution to this problem, but recognizing that there is a problem would be a good start.
Another major news story was the release of the executive summary of the Senate committee report on the use of torture by the CIA under the Bush administration. In a lot of ways the defenders of torture (or "enhanced interrogation") are quite similar to the defenders of the police in the incidents described above, in that they argue that the end justifies the means and that those responsible for defending Americans (or maintaining public order) should get extra leeway in their use of violence and other extreme measures. Former Vice President Dick Cheney went so far as to say he had "no problem" with the fact that up to 25% of the people the US tortured were later found not to have any involvement with terrorism as long as the torture accomplished its objectives. But in truth there is little evidence torture actually produced any useful intelligence. Almost all key intelligence obtained from captured individuals was not obtained through these methods. However, even if it had been effective, not only should we be appalled that the US tortured innocent people, we should even be appalled that "guilty" people were tortured. Use of torture is reprehensible even if it works and even if the tortured people really are enemies. Of course it's even more so when it is useless and many of those tortured are not even hostile. Certainly it's unlikely that Americans would so blase about if the victims had been American soldiers.
Despite the police killings and even the torture committed by the CIA, the US still has a better human rights record than places like China, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or nowadays even Thailand. But that isn't saying much. If it wants to be able to maintain the moral high ground against authoritarian regimes around the world, the US not only needs to address the problems with the police, but it needs to put safeguards in place against future attempts to use torture, and it needs to hold those who engaged in torture accountable, all the way up to Cheney and probably former President George W. Bush as well.
To end on a much more positive note, here are some links to news about recent discoveries on Mars:
http://news.yahoo.com/found-ancient-lake-mars-sign-143002982.html
http://news.yahoo.com/curiosity-rover-drills-mars-rock-finds-water-122321635.html
http://www.space.com/28019-mars-methane-disovery-curiosity-rover.html
http://www.space.com/28033-mars-life-building-blocks-curiosity-rover.html?cmpid=558746
http://www.cnet.com/news/curiosity-has-discovered-organic-matter-on-mars/#ftag=YHF65cbda0
And lest we forget, there's a lander on a comet as well, one that may wake up again and start sending us new information:
http://news.yahoo.com/european-comet-lander-may-wake-space-slumber-232545821.html
When things on Earth are looking bad, it's always nice to remember there's a big universe out there to explore.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Current Events: Taiwanese Elections, Obama Tackles Immigration, and Comet Landing
A lot has been going on in the past few weeks that is worth of comment, and if I had unlimited time I could write a half a dozen essays around current events. But for now I’ll just settle for some (relatively) brief observations on a few news items. Starting with news from home, Taiwan held local elections in cities and counties around the country this past Saturday, and the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) did much worse than expected, losing most of the mayoral and county commissioner races, including in usually KMT-leaning areas such as Taipei and Taoyuan. At the risk of over generalizing, this result can be ascribed to disapproval of the governments’ performance, with food scandals, economic issues, corruption, expropriation of land with poor justification, and attempts to force through the service trade agreement with China all contributing factors. I should point out, however, that it would be a mistake to overestimate the importance of Taiwan-China relations in voters’ minds, as a lot of people in Taiwan, like elsewhere in the world, are more concerned with local issues (in other words, the food scandals probably hurt the KMT more than the service trade agreement did). In any case, the results were good news for Taiwan as a whole, even though in places such as Taipei it was a matter of a mediocre candidate beating a terrible one, and places like Hualian and Taidong on the east coast remain in the hands of terrible politicians. Our local Green Party candidate unfortunately didn’t win election to the city council (though one Green Party candidate in Taoyuan was elected to their council with a high vote total) and the KMT mayor in our city won, though by an unexpectedly narrow margin. Still, while the KMT and KMT-leaning independents hung on in many places and even the winning DPP and DPP-leaning candidates who won around the country are in many cases just the lesser of two evils, I’m certainly much more happy with these election results than those in the US at the beginning of the month.
Speaking of the US, I have been glad to see US President Barack Obama take strong actions in a number of important areas, even if it is overdue and often insufficient. The one which garnered the most attention, of course, was his executive order allowing some 5 million undocumented residents of the US to remain in the country without fear of deportation. Many Republicans had a predictably hysterical reaction to this. But contrary to their claims, Obama’s action was neither unprecedented nor illegal, and it was clearly justified. Many presidents have taken executive action relating to immigration, and both Reagan and the first Bush took actions very similar to Obama’s. The Supreme Court just a few years ago ruled that the executive branch had discretion in determining when to pursue deportation and that the law did not obligate authorities to deport all undocumented people. Many Republicans also complained that Obama should have left immigration reform to Congress. The problem with this complaint is that he did leave it to Congress for a long time, and Congress – more specifically, the House Republican leadership – did nothing. The Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill (an imperfect one which placed far too much weight on “border security”, but better than nothing) almost two years ago, and the House never even voted on it. So how long was Obama supposed to wait for Congress to act? If anything, Obama should be criticized for waiting as long as he did, and for not covering more people with his executive order.
In news (much) further afield, last month saw the first soft landing of a probe on the surface of a comet when the European Space Agency’s Philae lander, dispatched from the orbiting Rosetta probe, touched down on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Admittedly, the landing was not without a hitch; the harpoons that were supposed to anchor the probe to the comet’s surface failed to deploy, so the probe bounced twice before coming to rest, the first time traveling as far as a kilometer before landing and bouncing a shorter distance the second time. This was because due to the small size of the comet, its gravity is extremely weak. It is estimated to be about one meter per second, meaning you could easily throw a ball into space and with a hard enough jump you might be able to launch yourself. In any event, the probe ended up next to a cliff that left it mostly in shadow, so it could not recharge its batteries with its solar panels. However, it managed to send off some data before its power ran out, and simply by landing the probe made history. We can look forward to more space exploration milestones in the near future, as an unmanned test flight of the Orion capsule that NASA is developing for future crewed space exploration is coming up which will send the capsule further than any such capsule has traveled from Earth since the Apollo missions ended in 1972. While this would be even cooler if it actually had a crew (after all, unmanned probes have traveled thousands of times farther), if the test goes as planned it will be an encouraging sign that we may say real human crewed space missions to destinations beyond low Earth orbit in the not too distant future. Finally, looking further ahead, next year the New Horizons probe will make its rendezvous with Pluto on the edge of the Solar System, and the Dawn probe will visit Ceres. While humanity is still trying to get its act together on Earth, it’s good to see us continuing to explore beyond our home world.
Speaking of the US, I have been glad to see US President Barack Obama take strong actions in a number of important areas, even if it is overdue and often insufficient. The one which garnered the most attention, of course, was his executive order allowing some 5 million undocumented residents of the US to remain in the country without fear of deportation. Many Republicans had a predictably hysterical reaction to this. But contrary to their claims, Obama’s action was neither unprecedented nor illegal, and it was clearly justified. Many presidents have taken executive action relating to immigration, and both Reagan and the first Bush took actions very similar to Obama’s. The Supreme Court just a few years ago ruled that the executive branch had discretion in determining when to pursue deportation and that the law did not obligate authorities to deport all undocumented people. Many Republicans also complained that Obama should have left immigration reform to Congress. The problem with this complaint is that he did leave it to Congress for a long time, and Congress – more specifically, the House Republican leadership – did nothing. The Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill (an imperfect one which placed far too much weight on “border security”, but better than nothing) almost two years ago, and the House never even voted on it. So how long was Obama supposed to wait for Congress to act? If anything, Obama should be criticized for waiting as long as he did, and for not covering more people with his executive order.
In news (much) further afield, last month saw the first soft landing of a probe on the surface of a comet when the European Space Agency’s Philae lander, dispatched from the orbiting Rosetta probe, touched down on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Admittedly, the landing was not without a hitch; the harpoons that were supposed to anchor the probe to the comet’s surface failed to deploy, so the probe bounced twice before coming to rest, the first time traveling as far as a kilometer before landing and bouncing a shorter distance the second time. This was because due to the small size of the comet, its gravity is extremely weak. It is estimated to be about one meter per second, meaning you could easily throw a ball into space and with a hard enough jump you might be able to launch yourself. In any event, the probe ended up next to a cliff that left it mostly in shadow, so it could not recharge its batteries with its solar panels. However, it managed to send off some data before its power ran out, and simply by landing the probe made history. We can look forward to more space exploration milestones in the near future, as an unmanned test flight of the Orion capsule that NASA is developing for future crewed space exploration is coming up which will send the capsule further than any such capsule has traveled from Earth since the Apollo missions ended in 1972. While this would be even cooler if it actually had a crew (after all, unmanned probes have traveled thousands of times farther), if the test goes as planned it will be an encouraging sign that we may say real human crewed space missions to destinations beyond low Earth orbit in the not too distant future. Finally, looking further ahead, next year the New Horizons probe will make its rendezvous with Pluto on the edge of the Solar System, and the Dawn probe will visit Ceres. While humanity is still trying to get its act together on Earth, it’s good to see us continuing to explore beyond our home world.
Monday, November 17, 2014
2014 US Election Recap
So the results of the US election are in (except for a few close races that are still being contested, and the Senate race in Louisiana, which will decided by a run-off), and for the most part the Republicans came out on top. They won a majority in the US Senate, improved their hold on the US House of Representatives, and gained a number of state governorships. So how did the Republicans win, and what does their victory mean? Can this election be seen as a vindication of the Republicans' policies? What roles did massive amounts of anonymous campaign spending and voter suppression play?
In my opinion, the Republicans' success was due to a combination of factors, not any single thing. An important point to remember is that turnout was very low – at 36%, it was the lowest it has been since the mid-term elections in 1942, in the middle of World War II (when many eligible voters were fighting overseas and unable to vote). Aside from being appalling evidence of voter apathy, this means that even though the Republicans got the majority of votes cast, that only means they got the support of about 20% of the electorate, hardly a mandate for their policies. It remains an unfortunate fact that, as is usually the case, older white voters had the highest turnout, and this is the demographic that most favors the Republicans. This election certainly doesn't show that the Republicans have the support of most Americans, just of a small (and shrinking) but politically active block of voters. But the low turnout, and particularly the low turnout among minorities, can't be put down to apathy alone. Republicans throughout the country made obvious efforts to suppress turnout in general, and minority turnout in particular. In numerous states, they used the excuse of voter fraud, which is almost non-existent with possible cases over the last decade at most in double digit, to institute voter ID laws that prevented many thousands of people from voting. They reduced the time periods for early voting. Most blatantly, they closed down polling places in minority areas, so that not only did people have to travel farther to vote (often having to rely on public transportation due to a lack of their own vehicles), but lines were much longer at the polling places that were left, meaning that many with limited time had to give up without getting to vote. Then of course there was the failure of some Republican Secretaries of State to process many voter registration forms, Georgia being the most widely reported case. Of course these efforts to suppress the vote were hardly the sole reason for the low turnout, but in some races they may have done enough damage to change the results.
An additional reason for the Republicans’ success was the enormous amount of money that was spent by right-wing billionaires such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and corporate interest groups like the US Chamber of Commerce to support the Republicans – or, more commonly, to attack the Democrats. Recent dubiously reasoned Supreme Court decisions have unleashed an avalanche of spending, much of it anonymous (so-called “dark money”), and much of it going to attack ads containing so many misleading statements, factual inaccuracies and outright lies that if they were held to the same standards that we generally expect of product advertising, they would be immediately pulled off the air. You even had ads prominently featuring ISIL and Ebola (sometimes conflating them not with each other but the similarly unrelated issue of “border security”) and insinuating that President Barack Obama and by extension the Democrats running in the election were responsible, even though, first of all, claims that Obama is to blame are dubious in the case of ISIL and absurd in the case of Ebola; secondly, even if Obama were to blame that would not mean the Democrats in Congress, who have no control over the administration’s actions in these areas, were also to blame; and thirdly, ISIL and Ebola currently present negligible threats to the US itself. But these ads and others like them no doubt had an effect on low information voters, who unfortunately make up much of the electorate.
Some also have argued that the way the Democrats themselves campaigned was in part to blame for their defeat. Certainly candidates like Alison Grimes in Kentucky at times seemed intent on painting themselves as being closer to the Republicans than to Obama, just less extreme than the former. Few of them actively promoted progressive ideas, and those that did, like Jeff Merkley in Oregon (admittedly a heavily Democratic state to begin with), often won. I’m not certain that a more aggressively progressive campaign strategy would have gotten better results, especially in conservative states, but if nothing else it might have helped educate some voters and lay the groundwork for the future. In any event, running to the right didn’t pay off for the Democrats who tried it. Unfortunately, some don’t seem to have learned that lesson: while I wasn’t terribly inclined to go out of my way to support Mary Landrieu, the conservative-leaning Democratic Senator from Louisiana, in her run-off election against the (of course) even more conservative Republican Bill Cassidy, she recently destroyed any chance getting my support by introducing a bill in the Senate to approve the Keystone XL pipeline at the same Cassidy introduced a similar bill in the House. It is if the two are competing to show who is most beholden to oil and gas interests, hardly a strategy that’s going to appeal to anyone who cares about the environment or indeed the future of human civilization.
Another interesting point about this election, one that has been noted by a number of observers but largely ignored by Republicans and the right wing, is that even this small, relatively conservative group of voters passed a number of progressive ballot measures, even states where Republicans won Senate and gubernatorial races. Marijuana legalization referendums passed in several states, and a liberal medical marijuana measure got 57% of the vote in Florida, only failing because Florida requires a supermajority of 60% for passage. Personhood measures put forward by anti-abortion activists failed in conservative states like Colorado. In several states, including conservative ones like Arkansas, voters passed increases in the minimum wage. In Washington, a gun control measure was passed (while Washington leans Democratic, it is still significant that that the measure passed easily, in the face of the usual NRA scaremongering, and a pro-gun measure to hobble it failed by a substantial margin). So voters in many states approved progressive ballot measures and voted down right-wing ones, even while in some cases electing Republicans who took opposite positions on those issues.
While these indications that many progressive policies are popular – even among a narrow and more conservative electorate – are certainly heartening, the contradictory votes are also evidence of another reason for the Republican victories, one that was mentioned above: there are still far too many people in the US who are poorly informed, easily manipulated, full of biases and mistaken notions, or almost sociopathic in their lack of concern for the well-being of anyone other than themselves. No one who was well-informed, rational, reasonably objective and had any concern about the future could vote for a climate change denier, nor could anyone concerned about the long-term well-being of society vote for people who refuse to recognize income equality as a problem. Legalizing marijuana, treating undocumented people like human beings, making birth control easily accessible and making same sex marriage legal are all likewise easy calls. And yet people in many states elected people who not only oppose such things, but practically froth at the mouth in their opposition to them. Of course the US is hardly the only democracy where it is a mystery to many observers how some of the country’s politicians get elected: I still have difficulty comprehending how Israelis could elect not only Benjamin Netanyahu but the even more extreme politicians to his right, or how Australians could elect an anti-environmentalist like Tony Abbott, or the Canadians vote in the similarly fossil fuel-loving Stephen Harper, or the Indians vote in someone like Narendra Modi with so much blood on his hands (though I can understand their disgust with the Congress party). Humanity in general evidently has a long way to go on a lot of fronts.
But whatever the reasons, for the next two year, the US will be stuck with a Congress run by people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, and with even more crazy people like Ted Cruz and James Inhofe exercising far too much of a sway. It would be nice to simply dismiss it as a problem for the Americans who allowed these people to get into office (whether by voting for them or just failing to get to the polls and vote against them), but unfortunately the US has far too much of an impact on the rest of the world to do that. For instance, even two years of letting the fossil fuel industry run rampant could do a lot of harm, possibly even making it impossible (or at least very difficult) to avert the worst case climate change scenarios. So we’ll just have to hope that Obama stands firm and makes as much use as he can of his Presidential powers to keep things from getting too bad, and when necessary and possible, give him what support we can for doing so.
In my opinion, the Republicans' success was due to a combination of factors, not any single thing. An important point to remember is that turnout was very low – at 36%, it was the lowest it has been since the mid-term elections in 1942, in the middle of World War II (when many eligible voters were fighting overseas and unable to vote). Aside from being appalling evidence of voter apathy, this means that even though the Republicans got the majority of votes cast, that only means they got the support of about 20% of the electorate, hardly a mandate for their policies. It remains an unfortunate fact that, as is usually the case, older white voters had the highest turnout, and this is the demographic that most favors the Republicans. This election certainly doesn't show that the Republicans have the support of most Americans, just of a small (and shrinking) but politically active block of voters. But the low turnout, and particularly the low turnout among minorities, can't be put down to apathy alone. Republicans throughout the country made obvious efforts to suppress turnout in general, and minority turnout in particular. In numerous states, they used the excuse of voter fraud, which is almost non-existent with possible cases over the last decade at most in double digit, to institute voter ID laws that prevented many thousands of people from voting. They reduced the time periods for early voting. Most blatantly, they closed down polling places in minority areas, so that not only did people have to travel farther to vote (often having to rely on public transportation due to a lack of their own vehicles), but lines were much longer at the polling places that were left, meaning that many with limited time had to give up without getting to vote. Then of course there was the failure of some Republican Secretaries of State to process many voter registration forms, Georgia being the most widely reported case. Of course these efforts to suppress the vote were hardly the sole reason for the low turnout, but in some races they may have done enough damage to change the results.
An additional reason for the Republicans’ success was the enormous amount of money that was spent by right-wing billionaires such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and corporate interest groups like the US Chamber of Commerce to support the Republicans – or, more commonly, to attack the Democrats. Recent dubiously reasoned Supreme Court decisions have unleashed an avalanche of spending, much of it anonymous (so-called “dark money”), and much of it going to attack ads containing so many misleading statements, factual inaccuracies and outright lies that if they were held to the same standards that we generally expect of product advertising, they would be immediately pulled off the air. You even had ads prominently featuring ISIL and Ebola (sometimes conflating them not with each other but the similarly unrelated issue of “border security”) and insinuating that President Barack Obama and by extension the Democrats running in the election were responsible, even though, first of all, claims that Obama is to blame are dubious in the case of ISIL and absurd in the case of Ebola; secondly, even if Obama were to blame that would not mean the Democrats in Congress, who have no control over the administration’s actions in these areas, were also to blame; and thirdly, ISIL and Ebola currently present negligible threats to the US itself. But these ads and others like them no doubt had an effect on low information voters, who unfortunately make up much of the electorate.
Some also have argued that the way the Democrats themselves campaigned was in part to blame for their defeat. Certainly candidates like Alison Grimes in Kentucky at times seemed intent on painting themselves as being closer to the Republicans than to Obama, just less extreme than the former. Few of them actively promoted progressive ideas, and those that did, like Jeff Merkley in Oregon (admittedly a heavily Democratic state to begin with), often won. I’m not certain that a more aggressively progressive campaign strategy would have gotten better results, especially in conservative states, but if nothing else it might have helped educate some voters and lay the groundwork for the future. In any event, running to the right didn’t pay off for the Democrats who tried it. Unfortunately, some don’t seem to have learned that lesson: while I wasn’t terribly inclined to go out of my way to support Mary Landrieu, the conservative-leaning Democratic Senator from Louisiana, in her run-off election against the (of course) even more conservative Republican Bill Cassidy, she recently destroyed any chance getting my support by introducing a bill in the Senate to approve the Keystone XL pipeline at the same Cassidy introduced a similar bill in the House. It is if the two are competing to show who is most beholden to oil and gas interests, hardly a strategy that’s going to appeal to anyone who cares about the environment or indeed the future of human civilization.
Another interesting point about this election, one that has been noted by a number of observers but largely ignored by Republicans and the right wing, is that even this small, relatively conservative group of voters passed a number of progressive ballot measures, even states where Republicans won Senate and gubernatorial races. Marijuana legalization referendums passed in several states, and a liberal medical marijuana measure got 57% of the vote in Florida, only failing because Florida requires a supermajority of 60% for passage. Personhood measures put forward by anti-abortion activists failed in conservative states like Colorado. In several states, including conservative ones like Arkansas, voters passed increases in the minimum wage. In Washington, a gun control measure was passed (while Washington leans Democratic, it is still significant that that the measure passed easily, in the face of the usual NRA scaremongering, and a pro-gun measure to hobble it failed by a substantial margin). So voters in many states approved progressive ballot measures and voted down right-wing ones, even while in some cases electing Republicans who took opposite positions on those issues.
While these indications that many progressive policies are popular – even among a narrow and more conservative electorate – are certainly heartening, the contradictory votes are also evidence of another reason for the Republican victories, one that was mentioned above: there are still far too many people in the US who are poorly informed, easily manipulated, full of biases and mistaken notions, or almost sociopathic in their lack of concern for the well-being of anyone other than themselves. No one who was well-informed, rational, reasonably objective and had any concern about the future could vote for a climate change denier, nor could anyone concerned about the long-term well-being of society vote for people who refuse to recognize income equality as a problem. Legalizing marijuana, treating undocumented people like human beings, making birth control easily accessible and making same sex marriage legal are all likewise easy calls. And yet people in many states elected people who not only oppose such things, but practically froth at the mouth in their opposition to them. Of course the US is hardly the only democracy where it is a mystery to many observers how some of the country’s politicians get elected: I still have difficulty comprehending how Israelis could elect not only Benjamin Netanyahu but the even more extreme politicians to his right, or how Australians could elect an anti-environmentalist like Tony Abbott, or the Canadians vote in the similarly fossil fuel-loving Stephen Harper, or the Indians vote in someone like Narendra Modi with so much blood on his hands (though I can understand their disgust with the Congress party). Humanity in general evidently has a long way to go on a lot of fronts.
But whatever the reasons, for the next two year, the US will be stuck with a Congress run by people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, and with even more crazy people like Ted Cruz and James Inhofe exercising far too much of a sway. It would be nice to simply dismiss it as a problem for the Americans who allowed these people to get into office (whether by voting for them or just failing to get to the polls and vote against them), but unfortunately the US has far too much of an impact on the rest of the world to do that. For instance, even two years of letting the fossil fuel industry run rampant could do a lot of harm, possibly even making it impossible (or at least very difficult) to avert the worst case climate change scenarios. So we’ll just have to hope that Obama stands firm and makes as much use as he can of his Presidential powers to keep things from getting too bad, and when necessary and possible, give him what support we can for doing so.
Friday, October 31, 2014
The Real Reasons We Should Care About Ebola
In some ways I feel reluctant to even write anything on Ebola, as I think it’s getting far more media attention than it should, and what’s worse, most of the attention is misdirected. The Ebola epidemic is important, but at this point it is mainly important as a serious humanitarian crisis, and we should be chiefly concerned about helping the people in West Africa who are being affected by it. In sheer numbers it is not by any means the worst humanitarian crisis that is going on; the conflict in Syria, for instance, has killed far more people and affected many times more, and it is still going on. But while people can and should give to help Syrian refugees, not to mention refugees in other places like South Sudan, people in wealthy places like the US and Europe should feel especially motivated to help fight Ebola. Perhaps the best reason, though one that is not mentioned enough, is that with our help it can be stopped entirely. There’s not much we can do to stop the conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, Congo, Somalia, and so on, but given enough of it, Western aid could be sufficient to stop the Ebola epidemic completely. The chief reason the outbreak has become so serious in countries like Liberia is an almost complete lack of medical infrastructure and a severe shortage of trained medical personnel. If we can provide these things in enough numbers, we should be able to help bring the epidemic under control. While the fact that helping today’s Syrian refugees won’t prevent the war or the murderous behavior of Assad or ISIL from perpetuating the crisis should not stop people from helping, the fact that with Ebola we can not only help those that are suffering now but prevent further suffering ought to make people even more eager to take action.
The other motivation for helping to fight Ebola is, of course, that by doing so we protect ourselves from any danger of getting it ourselves. While the danger of Ebola spreading in the US beyond the few isolated cases so far is one of the topics that has dominated news and talk shows, even there a lot of people are getting it wrong. First of all, at this point in time, the chance of the average individual in the US is so miniscule it’s almost not worth thinking about. You are about as likely to have a plane fall on you as you are to get Ebola (okay, I don’t know the exact odds of either, but the point is the chance of either is extremely remote). Even people who have been around people with Ebola are not that likely to get it. As one such person sensibly observed, people would be better off getting hysterical about climate change. For anyone who is not actually in very close regular contact with an Ebola patient, getting hysterical about the chance catching Ebola is completely irrational. But this is not to say that Ebola couldn’t become a serious, world-wide health threat. It is contagious, if not highly so, and it is often fatal (though proper medical treatment seems to greatly reduce the fatality rate). But the right-wing politicians and talking heads whose main plan for dealing with this potential danger seems to be to shut the borders of the US are not only sorely lacking in conscience for their apparent disinterest in the people actually suffering from the epidemic in Africa, but they are also seriously lacking in intelligence or at least common sense.
In a clip that was shown on the Daily Show, Republican Pete Sessions of Dallas, in advocating policies like a travel ban on people from countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone, actually made a point of saying that his priority was to protect his constituents, implying (though not actually stating) that the people of West Africa could all drop dead as far as he was concerned. In case there is any question about their priorities, Republicans in Congress have shown a decided reluctance to fully fund efforts to fight Ebola in West Africa (and as the NIH pointed out, their budget-cutting over the years is a major reason there is still no vaccine for the disease), but are loudly calling for travel bans and other fortress America type measures to keep all the diseased foreigners out,including some truly nonsensical efforts to conflate Ebola, ISIL and undocumented immigrants crossing the US's southern border into a single right-wing paranoid fantasy. Aside from being callous and xenophobic, this approach, like the right wing approach to so many other things, would in the long-term be detrimental to what they claim is their main goal, in this case protecting Americans from the disease. Basically, it works like this. If we help to contain and eventually end the outbreak in West Africa by supplying substantial medical assistance, both in terms of equipment and personnel, no one will have to worry about Ebola, in the US or anywhere else. On the other hand, if we follow the right wing prescription of ignoring the suffering elsewhere but taking stringent measures to keep people from the affected countries out, the disease will continue to spread. Unchecked, it will spread out of West Africa, perhaps to Asia or elsewhere. The more countries and people that are affected, the harder it will be for the US to keep them all out. If it became widespread enough, it eventually would be impossible to keep out, and the US would face a far more serious threat from the disease than the almost negligible threat it faces now.
Unfortunately, hysteria seems to be winning over reason in many cases. Aside from comically idiotic cases like schools closing down because of exchange students from African countries that are nowhere near the ones where Ebola is present, there is the example of the nurse returning to the US from helping fight the disease in West Africa who was quarantined unnecessarily (and it's worth remembering that she knows far more about Ebola than the idiot governors who wanted to quarantine her). As she pointed out, this sort of treatment is likely to discourage those who might otherwise want to go help, a result which would ultimately be self-defeating, as explained above. Americans should care about Ebola, but only because like any others who can afford to do so, they should be helping the fight against it in West Africa, if only by contributing a few dollars to one of the organizations with a presence there (which is what I did myself). It will only become a danger to the US (or any other developed country) itself if our failure to help causes it to become one. In the meantime, Americans should spare some of their hysterical concern for some of the other dangerous epidemics in their country.
The other motivation for helping to fight Ebola is, of course, that by doing so we protect ourselves from any danger of getting it ourselves. While the danger of Ebola spreading in the US beyond the few isolated cases so far is one of the topics that has dominated news and talk shows, even there a lot of people are getting it wrong. First of all, at this point in time, the chance of the average individual in the US is so miniscule it’s almost not worth thinking about. You are about as likely to have a plane fall on you as you are to get Ebola (okay, I don’t know the exact odds of either, but the point is the chance of either is extremely remote). Even people who have been around people with Ebola are not that likely to get it. As one such person sensibly observed, people would be better off getting hysterical about climate change. For anyone who is not actually in very close regular contact with an Ebola patient, getting hysterical about the chance catching Ebola is completely irrational. But this is not to say that Ebola couldn’t become a serious, world-wide health threat. It is contagious, if not highly so, and it is often fatal (though proper medical treatment seems to greatly reduce the fatality rate). But the right-wing politicians and talking heads whose main plan for dealing with this potential danger seems to be to shut the borders of the US are not only sorely lacking in conscience for their apparent disinterest in the people actually suffering from the epidemic in Africa, but they are also seriously lacking in intelligence or at least common sense.
In a clip that was shown on the Daily Show, Republican Pete Sessions of Dallas, in advocating policies like a travel ban on people from countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone, actually made a point of saying that his priority was to protect his constituents, implying (though not actually stating) that the people of West Africa could all drop dead as far as he was concerned. In case there is any question about their priorities, Republicans in Congress have shown a decided reluctance to fully fund efforts to fight Ebola in West Africa (and as the NIH pointed out, their budget-cutting over the years is a major reason there is still no vaccine for the disease), but are loudly calling for travel bans and other fortress America type measures to keep all the diseased foreigners out,including some truly nonsensical efforts to conflate Ebola, ISIL and undocumented immigrants crossing the US's southern border into a single right-wing paranoid fantasy. Aside from being callous and xenophobic, this approach, like the right wing approach to so many other things, would in the long-term be detrimental to what they claim is their main goal, in this case protecting Americans from the disease. Basically, it works like this. If we help to contain and eventually end the outbreak in West Africa by supplying substantial medical assistance, both in terms of equipment and personnel, no one will have to worry about Ebola, in the US or anywhere else. On the other hand, if we follow the right wing prescription of ignoring the suffering elsewhere but taking stringent measures to keep people from the affected countries out, the disease will continue to spread. Unchecked, it will spread out of West Africa, perhaps to Asia or elsewhere. The more countries and people that are affected, the harder it will be for the US to keep them all out. If it became widespread enough, it eventually would be impossible to keep out, and the US would face a far more serious threat from the disease than the almost negligible threat it faces now.
Unfortunately, hysteria seems to be winning over reason in many cases. Aside from comically idiotic cases like schools closing down because of exchange students from African countries that are nowhere near the ones where Ebola is present, there is the example of the nurse returning to the US from helping fight the disease in West Africa who was quarantined unnecessarily (and it's worth remembering that she knows far more about Ebola than the idiot governors who wanted to quarantine her). As she pointed out, this sort of treatment is likely to discourage those who might otherwise want to go help, a result which would ultimately be self-defeating, as explained above. Americans should care about Ebola, but only because like any others who can afford to do so, they should be helping the fight against it in West Africa, if only by contributing a few dollars to one of the organizations with a presence there (which is what I did myself). It will only become a danger to the US (or any other developed country) itself if our failure to help causes it to become one. In the meantime, Americans should spare some of their hysterical concern for some of the other dangerous epidemics in their country.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
2014 US Elections (Texas Edition)
We’re coming up on the mid-term elections in the United States, and it’s still hard to tell which way they’ll go. Will the efforts of right-wing billionaires to buy political power by bombarding voters with misleading ads, coupled with Republican efforts to suppress voting by mainly Democratic constituencies by limiting voting times and enforcing voter ID laws (enacted to fight non-existent voter fraud) be enough to help the Republicans win a Senate majority, strengthen their hold on the House, and keep their extremist governors in power? Or will relative reason prevail, allowing the Democrats to hold the line in Congress and maybe even win some governorships? I say “relative reason” because unfortunately some of the Democrats are not exactly the most ideal of choices either. In an ideal world, someone like Alison Grimes, with her “I’m not Barack Obama” gun-toting TV ads, or worse yet her anti-“amnesty” (i.e., anti-immigrant) radio spots, or Mark Begich with his “let’s drill for oil in the wilderness” ads, would be the right-wing candidates. But with opponents like Mitch McConnell, even a flawed candidate like Grimes is preferable.
But in any case, I am registered in Texas, which means that few of the people I’m likely to vote for have any chance of winning. Changing demographics might tilt the balance in the Democrats’ favor in the future, but it probably won’t happen this year. There’s an outside chance that, given the awfulness of the Republican candidate for governor and the greater than usual enthusiasm the Democratic candidate has generated among her base, the Democrats could pull off an upset in that race, and perhaps one or two other statewide ones. However, it’s more likely that any Democratic wins will be in smaller constituencies. Unfortunately my US Congressional district is also heavily Republican, so probably the only Democrats on my ballot who will win are in races such as State Representative (where the Democratic incumbent is unopposed) or some of the judgeships (where again there are a number of unopposed Democrats).
As I did for the last election, I have done some research on the major races on my ballot and will summarize my conclusions here. Once again, my major sources are candidate questionnaires prepared by the Dallas News and Vote 411, though the latter is considerably shorter and so less useful. Another interesting site is I Side With..., where you answer yes/no questions about your own policy views and they match them with parties and candidates. I’m dubious about the precision of the results, since while the site provides some optional nuanced responses, some are not nuanced enough. Reading the individual candidates’ detailed answers to questions gives a better idea of where they stand. Also, in many cases, candidates from the same party seem to have given nearly identical responses, which makes me suspect they did not all individually answer the questions. However, you can get a general idea of how you match up with the parties, if not the individual candidates (the site claims I match around 97-8% with the Greens, 93-5% with the Democrats, 40+% with the Libertarians, and about 1-2% with the Republicans, which seems about right, though the numbers are probably a bit high). A fourth source is On the Issues, though they seem to only have information on the voting records of incumbent members of US Congress and on the US Senate challengers, but not on the current state races, and a few of the questions they asked candidates are a bit odd (including one about maintaining US sovereignty from the UN).
I will certainly be voting in the major races, but again I will probably not vote on local races where I discovered nothing about the candidates. Regarding the political parties, to paraphrase what I said about the last election, the Green Party, the third party whose general principles I most closely align with, seems to have a somewhat mixed set of candidates in that while some seem to be serious candidates, many of them don’t seem to be campaigning much or at all. Granted, Green party candidates can’t be expected to have much in the way of campaign funds, but that should be all the more reason to at least fill out all the candidate questionnaires that they can. While some of them may have legitimate excuses for their failure to do so, for most of them, especially those who failed to fill out not one but both of the questionnaires referenced here, I can only conclude they aren’t really serious about running for office. I mean, how hard is it to just fill out a short questionnaire? Or for that matter, to create a blog to promote your campaign, or at least campaign on Facebook (a few of the Green candidates do seem to be using Facebook to campaign, but others with pages haven't posted an update in months)? In these cases, if there is another halfway decent candidate (which generally means a Democrat), they'll get my vote over the Green. Annoyingly, several of the more serious seeming Green candidates are in races where the Democrat is not too bad, and some of the least active ones seem to be races where there are no other decent choices. Furthermore, while I would love to see the Green Party (or another progressive political party) become a serious alternative to the Democrats, at this point I think it’s more important to end the Republican stranglehold on the state. So if the Democrat is not too bad and stands a decent chance of winning, I’ll vote for them, even given a serious Green candidate. Of course if the Democrat is uninspiring and has no chance of winning anyway, I’ll certain pick a halfway decent Green candidate over them (though maybe not one I can find nothing about). On the other hand, if the Green doesn’t strike me as a serious candidate and I agree with the Democrat on most issues, I’ll vote for the latter even if they can’t win.
US Senator
John Cornyn (Rep) – The incumbent is a typically awful conservative Republican, only marginally better than his fellow Senator from Texas, the truly nutty Ted Cruz; according to I Side With, I’m only a 2% match with Cornyn, which sounds about right
David Alameel (Dem) – Good or very good positions on the majority of issues, including the minimum wage, immigration reform, education, taxes, foreign policy and climate change
Rebecca Paddock (Lib) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Seemingly tea party type, emphasizes supposed Constitutional limits on federal power, singles out the 2nd Amendment (apparently not so concerned about other rights), anti-immigrant
Emily Sanchez (Grn) – No response to the two main questionnaires, though she did respond to On the Issues, where most of her responses were good, except a reference to supporting school vouchers (she's also reasonably active on Facebook)
While Alameel has no real chance of winning, he seems like a solid progressive. Information about Sanchez’s positions is limited and not sufficient to make her a preferable choice, while the others are terrible. I plan to vote for Alameel.
US Representative, District 24
Kenny Marchant (Rep) – The incumbent representative is terrible on almost every issue (the only notable exception being that he favors normalizing relations with Taiwan), claims to be a libertarian but is still a hardliner on drugs and a hawk on foreign policy
Patrick McGehearty (Dem) – Mostly good, including his positions on taxes on the rich, the minimum wage, foreign policy on climate change, though on immigration his position is mixed (he advocates comprehensive reform but supports deporting undocumented minors)
Mike Kolls (Lib) – Mostly a classic libertarian (as he says, “socially liberal, financially conservative”), health care ideas very bad for the poor, against sending troops abroad but willing to bomb Iran, mixed on immigration, climate change denier
McGehearty, despite the flaws in his immigration stance, is the obvious choice here. Merchant is wrong on almost everything, and Kolls would only be better on a few issues.
Texas Governor
Greg Abbott (Rep) – The current Attorney General would be an awful governor, possibly even worse than the incumbent Rick Perry – at least Perry favors rethinking marijuana laws, while Abbott’s statement on drugs is pure nonsense
Wendy Davis (Dem) – Good on many issues, such as the minimum wage, drug laws, education, and immigration reform, not so great on guns and the death penalty, also rather vague in some responses
Kathie Glass (Lib) – Can’t disagree with most of her rants about cronyism (largely directed at Abbott and Perry) or her stance on marijuana, and a few of her remarks on education and handling death penalty cases make sense, but her ranting about federal tyranny, her xenophobia, her stance on guns, and her negative references to the EPA and the Endangered Species Act make her sound like a loony
Brandon Parmer (Grn) – Didn’t respond to the main questionnaires
I’m not as enthusiastic about Davis as some people are, but she’s good on enough issues to make her vastly better than Glass, not to mention Abbott. If Parmer seemed like a serious candidate, my reservations about Davis might lead me to pick him, but he doesn’t seem to be making a real effort (even on Facebook his last status update was in February), and Davis has an outside chance of actually winning, so I think I’ll go with her.
Lieutenant Governor
Dan Patrick (Rep) – terrible positions on numerous issues, including immigration, health care, the social safety net, and marijuana, and apparently just as bad on other issues such as gay marriage; indeed, he seems to be a complete wacko
Leticia Van de Putte (Dem) – Generally good answers on most policy questions, though occasionally reluctant to commit herself (e.g., she recognizes the potential medical benefits of marijuana but only says she thinks the issue should be discussed)
Robert Butler (Lib) – Apparently a classic libertarian, more reasonable sounding than most libertarians with good positions on immigration, drugs and the death penalty, even favors gas taxes and expresses a willingness to increase spending in certain areas, but his positions on guns, regulating payday lending and the chemical industry, school textbooks, and public charity are all bad
Chandrakantha Courtney (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Good answers to the few questions on this questionnaire, including those on health care, immigration, drugs and education
Patrick of course is not even worth considering, and Butler, while better than some of the wacky candidates on the Libertarian slate, has too many serious negatives. If he and Patrick were the only choices, I might vote for him (whereas in most Republican-Libertarian match-ups I just wouldn’t vote), but certainly not in this race. Courtney at least bothered to answer one of the questionnaires, so I will consider voting for her if I can find other evidence that she’s seriously campaigning. Otherwise I’ll probably end up voting for Van de Putte in the hopes that she can pull off an upset against the disastrous Patrick.
Attorney General
Ken Paxton (Rep) – terrible on many issues, including same sex marriage, immigration, regulatory policy and general philosophy
Sam Houston (Dem) – Good, thoughtful responses on most questions
Jamie Balagia (Lib) – Good on drug policy, gay marriage, the death penalty and openness in government, admits to some need to regulate the energy industry, not completely negative about federal government, mixed comments about regulation of business
Jamar Osborne (Grn) – Actually responded to both questionnaires, but unfortunately not very great answers, good on same-sex marriage and women’s issues (also implies support for public option in health care), mainly obsessed with deregulating the legal profession so lawyers don’t have to be members of the state bar, libertarian-style position on government (i.e., for limited government), expresses admiration for Dennis Kuchnich but also Ayn Rand(!)
Unsurprisingly, Paxton is by far the worst one here. In an odd twist, the Libertarian candidate actually sounds better than the Green one in this case, though neither seem to identify that strongly with their parties. If there were no Democrat running, I might have actually considered voting for Balagia, but as it is, Houston is plainly the one to choose.
Comptroller of Public Accounts
Glenn Hegar (Rep) – Favors business, hints at hostility to undocumented immigrants, usual references to conservatism and keeping government small, favors regressive tax policy, apparently has touted his pro-gun and anti-abortion views as reasons to vote for him despite their irrelevance to the job
Mike Collier (Dem) – Good remarks on education, mostly reasonable sounding on other issues
Ben Sanders (Lib) – Some reasonable answers but flawed ideas on taxes and budget in line with standard libertarian positions
Deb Shafto (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Good responses to the limited number of questions on the questionnaire, including on distribution of resources, people over profits, immigration and water
As this office is essentially like the state accountant and the questions relate to the job (which is less policy oriented than most), it’s a little harder for me to judge between the candidates. However, Hegar can be crossed off easily and Sanders almost as easily. It’s harder to choose between Collier and Shafto, though. I may decide to vote Green on this one if I can find evidence that Shafto is actually campaigning, but at this point I could go either way.
Commissioner of the General Land Office
George P. Bush (Rep) – Son of Jeb, nephew of W., supports oil and gas development, supports court ruling on beach access that favored private interest over public, talks about being a strong conservative, brags about being an early supporter of Ted Cruz
John Cook (Dem) – Generally good, mostly pro-environment responses, favors open access to beaches, but does also include fossil fuels in his energy strategy
Justin Knight (Lib) – Didn’t respond to either questionnaire
Valerie Alessi (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Good, strongly pro-environment responses to the questions
Texas doesn’t need another Bush in office, and Knight can be dismissed. I haven’t decided for certain between Cook and Alessi. If I find indications that Alessi is seriously campaigning I’ll probably vote for her, as this office in particular could use a Green in charge, but Cook seems decent enough and so is just as likely to get my vote if Alessi doesn’t seem to be doing much.
Commissioner of Agriculture
Sid Miller (Rep) – Anti-immigrant, usual rhetoric on conservatism and the free market, not interested in promoting sustainable agriculture or alternative energy, apparently once referred to Civil War as the “war of northern aggression”
Jim Hogan (Dem) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Brief answers to the few questions on the questionnaire that really don’t tell me anything
David Palmquist (Lib) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Big on hemp and pro-marijuana legalization, usual government is bad rhetoric, tacky American flag shirt in picture
Kenneth Kendrick (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Food safety activist and whistleblower, generally good-sounding answers to the few questions on the questionnaire, badly needs an editor/proofreader (though several other candidates could use one too); actually has a website, so at least he's reasonably serious
Not a lot to choose from here, but since Kendrick seems to be one of the few Greens who's making a real effort (and Hogan one of the few Democrats who isn't), I think I'll vote Green here.
Railroad Commissioner
Ryan Sitton (Rep) – Claims to be unbiased, coy on actual rules to limit contributions from industry, doesn’t mention renewable energy, climate change denier
Steve Brown (Dem) – Good, generally pro-environmental responses to the questions, including support for renewable energy, dealing with climate change and ending the pro-industry bias of the Commission
Mark Miller (Lib) – Good comments on ending the pro-industry bias of the Commission, acknowledges need to deal with climate change, doesn’t mention renewable energy, doesn’t support comprehensive energy plan, favors “free market”
Martina Salinas (Grn) –– Good, generally pro-environmental responses to the questions, including support for renewable energy and ending the pro-industry bias of the Commission
Sitton is clearly the worst candidate. Miller is relatively good for a Libertarian, but not good enough. I am going to have a tough time choosing between Brown and Salinas. Salinas, unlike other Green candidates, actually responded to both questionnaires, and this is certainly an office where it would be great to see a Green in charge. But Brown’s responses are just as good as Salinas’s. Even if I were to choose on the basis of promoting diversity in a state government dominated by white men, either Brown (an African American man) or Salinas (a Hispanic woman) would be great. This one I’ll probably decide at the last minute. I’d vote for both if I could.
Chief Justice, Supreme Court
Nathan Hecht (Rep) – While a number of his responses sound reasonable enough, such as those on limiting campaign contributions, he flatly (and very implausibly) denies the court has a pro-business bias, cites Scalia as a judge he admires, apparently was once admonished by ethics commission
William Moody (Dem) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Gave very brief answers (two just one word), did seriously campaign in past elections
Tom Oxford (Lib) – Considers both big government and big business threats to liberty, says court has pro-business bias, in previous election named liberal Texas judge William Wayne Justice as a judge he admired
This one is a little tricky. I certainly won’t be voting for Hecht; while he may not be the worst Republican out there, that isn’t saying much – his record is still that of a right-wing, pro-business, anti-gay judge with possible ethical issues. Oxford seems okay for a Libertarian, while Moody doesn’t seem to be campaigning much this time around. I might be tempted to vote for Oxford just because Moody doesn’t act like he’s that interested, but I’m not sure I can bring myself to vote for a Libertarian, unless the only other choice is a Republican. I may still vote for Moody, who is at least an experienced judge who has in the past run serious campaigns.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 6
Jeff Brown (Rep) – Names conservative Supreme Court Justice John Harlan and current justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito as judges he admires, denies the court has a pro-business bias
Lawrence Meyers (Dem) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Gave very brief answers, former Republican who recently switched parties
Mark Ash (Lib) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) While his answers were longer than Meyers’, they still aren’t much to go on
Brown is obviously out. Ash and Meyers don’t seem to be trying very hard (perhaps it is telling that this and Agriculture Commissioner are the two statewide races where there’s a Democrat on the ballot that the UAW didn’t endorse). I may just skip this one.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 7
Jeff Boyd (Rep) – Denies the court itself is pro-business in its rulings, though he admits that the legislature is pro-business and so has passed pro-business statutes that the court enforces, big on so-called judicial restraint
Gina Benavides (Dem) – Experienced judge, generally good sounding responses
Don Fulton (Lib) – Says major parties and court favor big government and big business
Charles Waterbury (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Adequate answers to the few questions, but not much to go on
Boyd seems slightly better than the other Republicans on the court, but not enough for me to even consider voting for him, and Fulton doesn’t particularly impress me either. Benavides looks like a good candidate. Waterbury, despite being somewhat lacking in qualifications, would get my vote if he were running for Place 6 and probably if he were running for Chief Justice, but in this race I think I'll vote for Benavides.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 8
Phil Johnson (Rep) – Cites Scalia as a judge he admires, denies the court is pro-business
Roberto Koelsch (Lib) – Didn’t respond to either questionnaire
Jim Chisolm (Grn) – Didn’t respond to either questionnaire
It’s regrettable that in the one race where there’s a Green running but no Democrat, the Green doesn’t seem to be bothering to campaign. I may still vote for Chisolm as a protest vote against Johnson, but only with considerable reluctance.
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 3
Bert Richardson (Rep) – Admits court has a reputation of favoring the prosecution (though he doesn’t actually say if he thinks it’s true), acknowledges inconsistency in application of death penalty, says he’s a conservative but claims to respect the beliefs of others, thinks partisan election of judges not the best method
John Granberg (Dem) – Adequate responses, though a bit brief at times
Mark Bennett (Lib) – Didn’t respond to questionnaires
Based on this rather slim amount of information, Richardson seems better than the average Republican, but not enough to get my vote. Granberg isn’t particularly inspiring, but if I vote at all in this race, it’ll be for him. More likely I'll skip this one.
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 4
Kevin Yeary (Rep) – Denies that the court is tough on crime or favors prosecutors
Quanah Parker (Lib) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Favors legalizing pot, otherwise little to go on
Judith Sanders-Castro (Grn) – Decent responses, though rather annoyingly answered many of the questions on the Dallas News questionnaire in all capitals
Since Sanders-Castro at least bothered to fill out the questionnaire I suppose I’ll vote for her, since Parker doesn’t have much to recommend her and Yeary even less so.
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 9
David Newell (Rep) – Acknowledges that there are problems with wrongful convictions and application of the death penalty, admits that the court probably has pro-prosecution reputation due to certain cases but argues that it is not fully deserved, cites dubious Republican philosophy about Constitution
William Strange III (Lib) – Responses somewhat brief and not too informative
George Altgelt (Grn) – Didn’t respond to questionnaires
With the choices being another conservative Republican, a Libertarian with nothing particular to recommend him, and a Green that doesn’t seem to be campaigning, I may skip this one. If I do vote I suppose it’d have to be for the Green.
Member, State Board of Education, District 11
Patricia Hardy (Rep) – Many responses not very informative, supporter of charter schools, not the most extreme member of the board but was the one responsible for the idiotic banning of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See based on an email from a fellow board member
Nancy Bean (Dem) – Generally good responses, favors multiculturalism, critical of charter schools
Craig Sanders (Lib) – Against all state standards, favors charter schools
Bean is the obvious choice here.
Judge, 5th Court of Appeals, Place 5
Craig Stoddart (Rep) – Admires Scalia, big on “judicial restraint” and strict construction of Constitution
Ken Molberg (Dem) – Reasonable sounding responses, though not much to go on
From the limited information available, Molberg seems okay, so he’ll get my vote.
I'll probably not vote in any of the local elections, so I'll be leaving the rest of the ballot blank (except maybe for the referendums). As already noted, I'm likely to leave some of the races above blank as well, as I'm reluctant to vote for a weak Democrat or an invisible and probably unqualified Green, and I certainly can't bring myself to vote for someone who still labels himself a Republican when the party is dominated by the likes of Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, John Cornyn, Pete Sessions, Kenny Marchant and Louie Gohmert, not to mention the idiots in the rest of the country. What's scary is that in Texas at least the latter crew are still probably going to come out on top, and with people like the Kochs spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bamboozle gullible voters, they may even win nationwide. But if the sensible people don't vote, they are certain to win, so I plan to mail in my ballot despite knowing it's unlikely to change anything.
But in any case, I am registered in Texas, which means that few of the people I’m likely to vote for have any chance of winning. Changing demographics might tilt the balance in the Democrats’ favor in the future, but it probably won’t happen this year. There’s an outside chance that, given the awfulness of the Republican candidate for governor and the greater than usual enthusiasm the Democratic candidate has generated among her base, the Democrats could pull off an upset in that race, and perhaps one or two other statewide ones. However, it’s more likely that any Democratic wins will be in smaller constituencies. Unfortunately my US Congressional district is also heavily Republican, so probably the only Democrats on my ballot who will win are in races such as State Representative (where the Democratic incumbent is unopposed) or some of the judgeships (where again there are a number of unopposed Democrats).
As I did for the last election, I have done some research on the major races on my ballot and will summarize my conclusions here. Once again, my major sources are candidate questionnaires prepared by the Dallas News and Vote 411, though the latter is considerably shorter and so less useful. Another interesting site is I Side With..., where you answer yes/no questions about your own policy views and they match them with parties and candidates. I’m dubious about the precision of the results, since while the site provides some optional nuanced responses, some are not nuanced enough. Reading the individual candidates’ detailed answers to questions gives a better idea of where they stand. Also, in many cases, candidates from the same party seem to have given nearly identical responses, which makes me suspect they did not all individually answer the questions. However, you can get a general idea of how you match up with the parties, if not the individual candidates (the site claims I match around 97-8% with the Greens, 93-5% with the Democrats, 40+% with the Libertarians, and about 1-2% with the Republicans, which seems about right, though the numbers are probably a bit high). A fourth source is On the Issues, though they seem to only have information on the voting records of incumbent members of US Congress and on the US Senate challengers, but not on the current state races, and a few of the questions they asked candidates are a bit odd (including one about maintaining US sovereignty from the UN).
I will certainly be voting in the major races, but again I will probably not vote on local races where I discovered nothing about the candidates. Regarding the political parties, to paraphrase what I said about the last election, the Green Party, the third party whose general principles I most closely align with, seems to have a somewhat mixed set of candidates in that while some seem to be serious candidates, many of them don’t seem to be campaigning much or at all. Granted, Green party candidates can’t be expected to have much in the way of campaign funds, but that should be all the more reason to at least fill out all the candidate questionnaires that they can. While some of them may have legitimate excuses for their failure to do so, for most of them, especially those who failed to fill out not one but both of the questionnaires referenced here, I can only conclude they aren’t really serious about running for office. I mean, how hard is it to just fill out a short questionnaire? Or for that matter, to create a blog to promote your campaign, or at least campaign on Facebook (a few of the Green candidates do seem to be using Facebook to campaign, but others with pages haven't posted an update in months)? In these cases, if there is another halfway decent candidate (which generally means a Democrat), they'll get my vote over the Green. Annoyingly, several of the more serious seeming Green candidates are in races where the Democrat is not too bad, and some of the least active ones seem to be races where there are no other decent choices. Furthermore, while I would love to see the Green Party (or another progressive political party) become a serious alternative to the Democrats, at this point I think it’s more important to end the Republican stranglehold on the state. So if the Democrat is not too bad and stands a decent chance of winning, I’ll vote for them, even given a serious Green candidate. Of course if the Democrat is uninspiring and has no chance of winning anyway, I’ll certain pick a halfway decent Green candidate over them (though maybe not one I can find nothing about). On the other hand, if the Green doesn’t strike me as a serious candidate and I agree with the Democrat on most issues, I’ll vote for the latter even if they can’t win.
US Senator
John Cornyn (Rep) – The incumbent is a typically awful conservative Republican, only marginally better than his fellow Senator from Texas, the truly nutty Ted Cruz; according to I Side With, I’m only a 2% match with Cornyn, which sounds about right
David Alameel (Dem) – Good or very good positions on the majority of issues, including the minimum wage, immigration reform, education, taxes, foreign policy and climate change
Rebecca Paddock (Lib) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Seemingly tea party type, emphasizes supposed Constitutional limits on federal power, singles out the 2nd Amendment (apparently not so concerned about other rights), anti-immigrant
Emily Sanchez (Grn) – No response to the two main questionnaires, though she did respond to On the Issues, where most of her responses were good, except a reference to supporting school vouchers (she's also reasonably active on Facebook)
While Alameel has no real chance of winning, he seems like a solid progressive. Information about Sanchez’s positions is limited and not sufficient to make her a preferable choice, while the others are terrible. I plan to vote for Alameel.
US Representative, District 24
Kenny Marchant (Rep) – The incumbent representative is terrible on almost every issue (the only notable exception being that he favors normalizing relations with Taiwan), claims to be a libertarian but is still a hardliner on drugs and a hawk on foreign policy
Patrick McGehearty (Dem) – Mostly good, including his positions on taxes on the rich, the minimum wage, foreign policy on climate change, though on immigration his position is mixed (he advocates comprehensive reform but supports deporting undocumented minors)
Mike Kolls (Lib) – Mostly a classic libertarian (as he says, “socially liberal, financially conservative”), health care ideas very bad for the poor, against sending troops abroad but willing to bomb Iran, mixed on immigration, climate change denier
McGehearty, despite the flaws in his immigration stance, is the obvious choice here. Merchant is wrong on almost everything, and Kolls would only be better on a few issues.
Texas Governor
Greg Abbott (Rep) – The current Attorney General would be an awful governor, possibly even worse than the incumbent Rick Perry – at least Perry favors rethinking marijuana laws, while Abbott’s statement on drugs is pure nonsense
Wendy Davis (Dem) – Good on many issues, such as the minimum wage, drug laws, education, and immigration reform, not so great on guns and the death penalty, also rather vague in some responses
Kathie Glass (Lib) – Can’t disagree with most of her rants about cronyism (largely directed at Abbott and Perry) or her stance on marijuana, and a few of her remarks on education and handling death penalty cases make sense, but her ranting about federal tyranny, her xenophobia, her stance on guns, and her negative references to the EPA and the Endangered Species Act make her sound like a loony
Brandon Parmer (Grn) – Didn’t respond to the main questionnaires
I’m not as enthusiastic about Davis as some people are, but she’s good on enough issues to make her vastly better than Glass, not to mention Abbott. If Parmer seemed like a serious candidate, my reservations about Davis might lead me to pick him, but he doesn’t seem to be making a real effort (even on Facebook his last status update was in February), and Davis has an outside chance of actually winning, so I think I’ll go with her.
Lieutenant Governor
Dan Patrick (Rep) – terrible positions on numerous issues, including immigration, health care, the social safety net, and marijuana, and apparently just as bad on other issues such as gay marriage; indeed, he seems to be a complete wacko
Leticia Van de Putte (Dem) – Generally good answers on most policy questions, though occasionally reluctant to commit herself (e.g., she recognizes the potential medical benefits of marijuana but only says she thinks the issue should be discussed)
Robert Butler (Lib) – Apparently a classic libertarian, more reasonable sounding than most libertarians with good positions on immigration, drugs and the death penalty, even favors gas taxes and expresses a willingness to increase spending in certain areas, but his positions on guns, regulating payday lending and the chemical industry, school textbooks, and public charity are all bad
Chandrakantha Courtney (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Good answers to the few questions on this questionnaire, including those on health care, immigration, drugs and education
Patrick of course is not even worth considering, and Butler, while better than some of the wacky candidates on the Libertarian slate, has too many serious negatives. If he and Patrick were the only choices, I might vote for him (whereas in most Republican-Libertarian match-ups I just wouldn’t vote), but certainly not in this race. Courtney at least bothered to answer one of the questionnaires, so I will consider voting for her if I can find other evidence that she’s seriously campaigning. Otherwise I’ll probably end up voting for Van de Putte in the hopes that she can pull off an upset against the disastrous Patrick.
Attorney General
Ken Paxton (Rep) – terrible on many issues, including same sex marriage, immigration, regulatory policy and general philosophy
Sam Houston (Dem) – Good, thoughtful responses on most questions
Jamie Balagia (Lib) – Good on drug policy, gay marriage, the death penalty and openness in government, admits to some need to regulate the energy industry, not completely negative about federal government, mixed comments about regulation of business
Jamar Osborne (Grn) – Actually responded to both questionnaires, but unfortunately not very great answers, good on same-sex marriage and women’s issues (also implies support for public option in health care), mainly obsessed with deregulating the legal profession so lawyers don’t have to be members of the state bar, libertarian-style position on government (i.e., for limited government), expresses admiration for Dennis Kuchnich but also Ayn Rand(!)
Unsurprisingly, Paxton is by far the worst one here. In an odd twist, the Libertarian candidate actually sounds better than the Green one in this case, though neither seem to identify that strongly with their parties. If there were no Democrat running, I might have actually considered voting for Balagia, but as it is, Houston is plainly the one to choose.
Comptroller of Public Accounts
Glenn Hegar (Rep) – Favors business, hints at hostility to undocumented immigrants, usual references to conservatism and keeping government small, favors regressive tax policy, apparently has touted his pro-gun and anti-abortion views as reasons to vote for him despite their irrelevance to the job
Mike Collier (Dem) – Good remarks on education, mostly reasonable sounding on other issues
Ben Sanders (Lib) – Some reasonable answers but flawed ideas on taxes and budget in line with standard libertarian positions
Deb Shafto (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Good responses to the limited number of questions on the questionnaire, including on distribution of resources, people over profits, immigration and water
As this office is essentially like the state accountant and the questions relate to the job (which is less policy oriented than most), it’s a little harder for me to judge between the candidates. However, Hegar can be crossed off easily and Sanders almost as easily. It’s harder to choose between Collier and Shafto, though. I may decide to vote Green on this one if I can find evidence that Shafto is actually campaigning, but at this point I could go either way.
Commissioner of the General Land Office
George P. Bush (Rep) – Son of Jeb, nephew of W., supports oil and gas development, supports court ruling on beach access that favored private interest over public, talks about being a strong conservative, brags about being an early supporter of Ted Cruz
John Cook (Dem) – Generally good, mostly pro-environment responses, favors open access to beaches, but does also include fossil fuels in his energy strategy
Justin Knight (Lib) – Didn’t respond to either questionnaire
Valerie Alessi (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Good, strongly pro-environment responses to the questions
Texas doesn’t need another Bush in office, and Knight can be dismissed. I haven’t decided for certain between Cook and Alessi. If I find indications that Alessi is seriously campaigning I’ll probably vote for her, as this office in particular could use a Green in charge, but Cook seems decent enough and so is just as likely to get my vote if Alessi doesn’t seem to be doing much.
Commissioner of Agriculture
Sid Miller (Rep) – Anti-immigrant, usual rhetoric on conservatism and the free market, not interested in promoting sustainable agriculture or alternative energy, apparently once referred to Civil War as the “war of northern aggression”
Jim Hogan (Dem) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Brief answers to the few questions on the questionnaire that really don’t tell me anything
David Palmquist (Lib) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Big on hemp and pro-marijuana legalization, usual government is bad rhetoric, tacky American flag shirt in picture
Kenneth Kendrick (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Food safety activist and whistleblower, generally good-sounding answers to the few questions on the questionnaire, badly needs an editor/proofreader (though several other candidates could use one too); actually has a website, so at least he's reasonably serious
Not a lot to choose from here, but since Kendrick seems to be one of the few Greens who's making a real effort (and Hogan one of the few Democrats who isn't), I think I'll vote Green here.
Railroad Commissioner
Ryan Sitton (Rep) – Claims to be unbiased, coy on actual rules to limit contributions from industry, doesn’t mention renewable energy, climate change denier
Steve Brown (Dem) – Good, generally pro-environmental responses to the questions, including support for renewable energy, dealing with climate change and ending the pro-industry bias of the Commission
Mark Miller (Lib) – Good comments on ending the pro-industry bias of the Commission, acknowledges need to deal with climate change, doesn’t mention renewable energy, doesn’t support comprehensive energy plan, favors “free market”
Martina Salinas (Grn) –– Good, generally pro-environmental responses to the questions, including support for renewable energy and ending the pro-industry bias of the Commission
Sitton is clearly the worst candidate. Miller is relatively good for a Libertarian, but not good enough. I am going to have a tough time choosing between Brown and Salinas. Salinas, unlike other Green candidates, actually responded to both questionnaires, and this is certainly an office where it would be great to see a Green in charge. But Brown’s responses are just as good as Salinas’s. Even if I were to choose on the basis of promoting diversity in a state government dominated by white men, either Brown (an African American man) or Salinas (a Hispanic woman) would be great. This one I’ll probably decide at the last minute. I’d vote for both if I could.
Chief Justice, Supreme Court
Nathan Hecht (Rep) – While a number of his responses sound reasonable enough, such as those on limiting campaign contributions, he flatly (and very implausibly) denies the court has a pro-business bias, cites Scalia as a judge he admires, apparently was once admonished by ethics commission
William Moody (Dem) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Gave very brief answers (two just one word), did seriously campaign in past elections
Tom Oxford (Lib) – Considers both big government and big business threats to liberty, says court has pro-business bias, in previous election named liberal Texas judge William Wayne Justice as a judge he admired
This one is a little tricky. I certainly won’t be voting for Hecht; while he may not be the worst Republican out there, that isn’t saying much – his record is still that of a right-wing, pro-business, anti-gay judge with possible ethical issues. Oxford seems okay for a Libertarian, while Moody doesn’t seem to be campaigning much this time around. I might be tempted to vote for Oxford just because Moody doesn’t act like he’s that interested, but I’m not sure I can bring myself to vote for a Libertarian, unless the only other choice is a Republican. I may still vote for Moody, who is at least an experienced judge who has in the past run serious campaigns.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 6
Jeff Brown (Rep) – Names conservative Supreme Court Justice John Harlan and current justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito as judges he admires, denies the court has a pro-business bias
Lawrence Meyers (Dem) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Gave very brief answers, former Republican who recently switched parties
Mark Ash (Lib) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) While his answers were longer than Meyers’, they still aren’t much to go on
Brown is obviously out. Ash and Meyers don’t seem to be trying very hard (perhaps it is telling that this and Agriculture Commissioner are the two statewide races where there’s a Democrat on the ballot that the UAW didn’t endorse). I may just skip this one.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 7
Jeff Boyd (Rep) – Denies the court itself is pro-business in its rulings, though he admits that the legislature is pro-business and so has passed pro-business statutes that the court enforces, big on so-called judicial restraint
Gina Benavides (Dem) – Experienced judge, generally good sounding responses
Don Fulton (Lib) – Says major parties and court favor big government and big business
Charles Waterbury (Grn) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Adequate answers to the few questions, but not much to go on
Boyd seems slightly better than the other Republicans on the court, but not enough for me to even consider voting for him, and Fulton doesn’t particularly impress me either. Benavides looks like a good candidate. Waterbury, despite being somewhat lacking in qualifications, would get my vote if he were running for Place 6 and probably if he were running for Chief Justice, but in this race I think I'll vote for Benavides.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 8
Phil Johnson (Rep) – Cites Scalia as a judge he admires, denies the court is pro-business
Roberto Koelsch (Lib) – Didn’t respond to either questionnaire
Jim Chisolm (Grn) – Didn’t respond to either questionnaire
It’s regrettable that in the one race where there’s a Green running but no Democrat, the Green doesn’t seem to be bothering to campaign. I may still vote for Chisolm as a protest vote against Johnson, but only with considerable reluctance.
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 3
Bert Richardson (Rep) – Admits court has a reputation of favoring the prosecution (though he doesn’t actually say if he thinks it’s true), acknowledges inconsistency in application of death penalty, says he’s a conservative but claims to respect the beliefs of others, thinks partisan election of judges not the best method
John Granberg (Dem) – Adequate responses, though a bit brief at times
Mark Bennett (Lib) – Didn’t respond to questionnaires
Based on this rather slim amount of information, Richardson seems better than the average Republican, but not enough to get my vote. Granberg isn’t particularly inspiring, but if I vote at all in this race, it’ll be for him. More likely I'll skip this one.
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 4
Kevin Yeary (Rep) – Denies that the court is tough on crime or favors prosecutors
Quanah Parker (Lib) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire) Favors legalizing pot, otherwise little to go on
Judith Sanders-Castro (Grn) – Decent responses, though rather annoyingly answered many of the questions on the Dallas News questionnaire in all capitals
Since Sanders-Castro at least bothered to fill out the questionnaire I suppose I’ll vote for her, since Parker doesn’t have much to recommend her and Yeary even less so.
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 9
David Newell (Rep) – Acknowledges that there are problems with wrongful convictions and application of the death penalty, admits that the court probably has pro-prosecution reputation due to certain cases but argues that it is not fully deserved, cites dubious Republican philosophy about Constitution
William Strange III (Lib) – Responses somewhat brief and not too informative
George Altgelt (Grn) – Didn’t respond to questionnaires
With the choices being another conservative Republican, a Libertarian with nothing particular to recommend him, and a Green that doesn’t seem to be campaigning, I may skip this one. If I do vote I suppose it’d have to be for the Green.
Member, State Board of Education, District 11
Patricia Hardy (Rep) – Many responses not very informative, supporter of charter schools, not the most extreme member of the board but was the one responsible for the idiotic banning of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See based on an email from a fellow board member
Nancy Bean (Dem) – Generally good responses, favors multiculturalism, critical of charter schools
Craig Sanders (Lib) – Against all state standards, favors charter schools
Bean is the obvious choice here.
Judge, 5th Court of Appeals, Place 5
Craig Stoddart (Rep) – Admires Scalia, big on “judicial restraint” and strict construction of Constitution
Ken Molberg (Dem) – Reasonable sounding responses, though not much to go on
From the limited information available, Molberg seems okay, so he’ll get my vote.
I'll probably not vote in any of the local elections, so I'll be leaving the rest of the ballot blank (except maybe for the referendums). As already noted, I'm likely to leave some of the races above blank as well, as I'm reluctant to vote for a weak Democrat or an invisible and probably unqualified Green, and I certainly can't bring myself to vote for someone who still labels himself a Republican when the party is dominated by the likes of Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, John Cornyn, Pete Sessions, Kenny Marchant and Louie Gohmert, not to mention the idiots in the rest of the country. What's scary is that in Texas at least the latter crew are still probably going to come out on top, and with people like the Kochs spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bamboozle gullible voters, they may even win nationwide. But if the sensible people don't vote, they are certain to win, so I plan to mail in my ballot despite knowing it's unlikely to change anything.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Hong Kong Protests for Democracy
The big news story in our part of the world recently is the protests in Hong Kong, and the heavy-handed response of the Hong Kong police. There are several different groups involved with somewhat different methods and objectives, but in essence the protests have arisen out of the refusal of the Chinese central government to allow the people of Hong Kong to freely choose their leaders. Since the British handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, the head of the Hong Kong government has been chosen by a committee dominated by pro-Beijing business figures. At the time of the handover, China agreed that universal suffrage was an ultimate goal for elections for the chief executive (and for the Hong Kong legislature as well), and the government’s current plans do call for the chief executive to be elected by the whole voting population in 2017. The problem is that all candidates first have to be approved by a committee that will essentially have the same makeup as the one that chooses the chief executive now. What’s more, one of the qualifications specified by the Chinese government is that all candidates must be “patriotic” and that they not have a confrontational attitude toward Beijing – in other words, they must be loyal to the central government and to the ruling Communist Party. Since Beijing generally views all liberal, pro-democracy politicians and activists as unpatriotic and confrontational, it is virtually guaranteed that under this set-up none of them will have a chance of getting approved. More likely Hong Kong voters will be faced with a choice similar to the two candidates that the committee had to choose from in its most recent vote for chief executive; both were pro-Beijing and pro-business, but the one who had originally been seen as the favorite became tainted by scandal, so the other, Hong Kong’s current leader C.Y. Leung, was elected. Many in Hong Kong rightfully think that by restricting nominations for chief executive in this way, Beijing is reneging on its promise to allow them to freely select their own leader. What's more, they fear that this may merely be a first step in reducing Hong Kong's freedom.
While some might wonder why the business interests that dominate the committee are predominately pro-Bejing, given that they are capitalists and the Chinese leadership is supposedly Communist, it is really no surprise. The business tycoons, for the most part, do not care about true democracy any more than their US counterparts like the Koch brothers. As long as they are free to make money without interference, they won’t object to a certain degree of authoritarianism. That is why Chinese president Xi Jinping recently summoned a large number of Hong Kong business tycoons to Beijing to consult with them on how to deal with (or suppress) the current protests. True democracy in Hong Kong would open the door to demands for higher wages, greater labor rights, and more social welfare. This is something that many of the wealthy business interests are desperate to prevent, and they will eagerly collude with Beijing to fight anything that they consider a threat to their interests. While there are a few rich tycoons who have taken the side of the democratic forces, notably Jimmy Lai, the owner of Next Media, one of the last independent media sources in Hong Kong, but he has faced considerable harassment for his stance. For the most part, the business interests are on the side of Beijing, and if all candidates for Hong Kong’s chief executive have to approved by a committee they dominate, it will be as if candidates for US president had to be approved by the US Chamber of Commerce (forget Barack Obama, much less someone like Elizabeth Warren – in 2012 Americans would probably have been left to choose between Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan).
When taken together with other developments in Hong Kong over the past few years, such as attacks on independently-minded journalists and media outlets and the attempt by the government to pass a stifling anti-subversion law (averted only by massive protests), it is no wonder that many in Hong Kong feel compelled to take to the streets to fight for their remaining freedom. And while due to Hong Kong’s extremely high profile and economic importance, the Chinese government has so far been hesitant to take the violently repressive measures they have taken in Tibet (or that they took in Beijing itself twenty-five years ago), that danger always remains. In any event, Hong Kong’s experience also serves as a lesson to Taiwanese that they would be wise to maintain their country’s independence (through mass protests, if necessary), rather than reaching any political accommodation with a control-obsessed and untrustworthy China. (For another detailed look at the Hong Kong protests, read this article).
While some might wonder why the business interests that dominate the committee are predominately pro-Bejing, given that they are capitalists and the Chinese leadership is supposedly Communist, it is really no surprise. The business tycoons, for the most part, do not care about true democracy any more than their US counterparts like the Koch brothers. As long as they are free to make money without interference, they won’t object to a certain degree of authoritarianism. That is why Chinese president Xi Jinping recently summoned a large number of Hong Kong business tycoons to Beijing to consult with them on how to deal with (or suppress) the current protests. True democracy in Hong Kong would open the door to demands for higher wages, greater labor rights, and more social welfare. This is something that many of the wealthy business interests are desperate to prevent, and they will eagerly collude with Beijing to fight anything that they consider a threat to their interests. While there are a few rich tycoons who have taken the side of the democratic forces, notably Jimmy Lai, the owner of Next Media, one of the last independent media sources in Hong Kong, but he has faced considerable harassment for his stance. For the most part, the business interests are on the side of Beijing, and if all candidates for Hong Kong’s chief executive have to approved by a committee they dominate, it will be as if candidates for US president had to be approved by the US Chamber of Commerce (forget Barack Obama, much less someone like Elizabeth Warren – in 2012 Americans would probably have been left to choose between Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan).
When taken together with other developments in Hong Kong over the past few years, such as attacks on independently-minded journalists and media outlets and the attempt by the government to pass a stifling anti-subversion law (averted only by massive protests), it is no wonder that many in Hong Kong feel compelled to take to the streets to fight for their remaining freedom. And while due to Hong Kong’s extremely high profile and economic importance, the Chinese government has so far been hesitant to take the violently repressive measures they have taken in Tibet (or that they took in Beijing itself twenty-five years ago), that danger always remains. In any event, Hong Kong’s experience also serves as a lesson to Taiwanese that they would be wise to maintain their country’s independence (through mass protests, if necessary), rather than reaching any political accommodation with a control-obsessed and untrustworthy China. (For another detailed look at the Hong Kong protests, read this article).
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Scotland's Independence Referendum (and the People's Climate March)
As most people who follow world events already know, last week voters in Scotland rejected independence, choosing to remain part of the United Kingdom. Whether this was the right decision is of course debatable. There were quite a few observers who argued that Scottish independence would ultimately be harmful to both Scotland and the remaining United Kingdom (of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and various dependencies and territories scattered about the world). Independence supporters naturally argued the contrary, and asserted that some of the dire predictions were little more than scare tactics. For instance, while UK officials said in the last few days before the election that an independent Scotland would not be able to continue to use the British pound, others pointed out that many countries around the world use the US dollar as their currency without asking the permission of the US, and likewise the UK couldn’t actually stop Scotland from using the pound (though perhaps they could create other difficulties for the Scots if they wanted, such as blocking them from attaining EU membership).
Regardless of how one views the arguments pro and con, in the end Scottish voters went with the safe choice of the status quo. While this was a major disappointment for independence supporters, it was not by any means a great shock. Scotland has been part of the United Kingdom for three centuries, and while many Scots justifiably feel that England has treated its smaller neighbor shabbily for much of that time (as Englishman John Oliver acknowledged), the English (at least in recent centuries) have certainly not been remotely as oppressive as the Chinese are to the Tibetans, or as the Indonesians were to the East Timorese, or the Russians to the Baltic states, just to name a few examples. Since things weren’t really awful for Scotland as part of the United Kingdom, it is hardly surprising that a majority of Scots decided to let well enough alone – after all, most people are naturally somewhat conservative and tend to fear change. If anything, it is more surprising that the vote was as close as it was. After all, when UK Prime Minister David Cameron first agreed to allow the referendum to go forward, he did so largely because polls at the time indicated that a large majority of Scots would vote against independence. Though the final results were not as good for the pro-independence side as some of the polls in the last week or so indicated they might be (many of the late polls showed the two sides within a few points, and independence even had a slight edge in a few polls), they were far better than anyone would have expected a few months ago.
But as far as I am concerned, the real point of the referendum is that the Scottish people exercised their right of self-determination, reinforcing the point that this is a basic right for peoples all over the world, especially those that are currently being ruled by governments dominated by another people or nation. For places like Tibet, West Papua or Chechnya, the issue is not whether a majority of the people would vote for independence, but that their foreign rulers (China, Indonesia, and Russia, in these cases) won't even permit a vote in the first place. In fact, they treat even advocacy of the right to self-determination as if it were a crime (unless it is in their interest to do otherwise). How many Tibetans have been arrested for supporting "separatism"? How many times has the Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of being a "splittist"? Perhaps if China really treated the Tibetans well, instead of driving them to self-immolate in protest against Chinese rule, Tibetans would actually vote to remain under Chinese rule. But by arresting people who merely speak in favor of the idea of independence, the Chinese government just reinforces the fact that it is just a harsh, oppressive imperialist ruler, and the same goes for other countries that suppress independence movements with harsh measures. While not all the arguments made for or against Scottish independence may have been convincing or even firmly grounded in fact, the point was that the debate, however passionate, remained in the realm of verbal arguments, TV ads, editorials, and blog posts, rather than arrests, beatings and muzzling of free speech. That is the lesson that nations like China need to learn from this.
In other news, the People's Climate March in New York and elsewhere brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets. Now let's just hope that world leaders (and everyone else) will finally wake up and start taking strong measures to deal with climate change before it is too late.
Regardless of how one views the arguments pro and con, in the end Scottish voters went with the safe choice of the status quo. While this was a major disappointment for independence supporters, it was not by any means a great shock. Scotland has been part of the United Kingdom for three centuries, and while many Scots justifiably feel that England has treated its smaller neighbor shabbily for much of that time (as Englishman John Oliver acknowledged), the English (at least in recent centuries) have certainly not been remotely as oppressive as the Chinese are to the Tibetans, or as the Indonesians were to the East Timorese, or the Russians to the Baltic states, just to name a few examples. Since things weren’t really awful for Scotland as part of the United Kingdom, it is hardly surprising that a majority of Scots decided to let well enough alone – after all, most people are naturally somewhat conservative and tend to fear change. If anything, it is more surprising that the vote was as close as it was. After all, when UK Prime Minister David Cameron first agreed to allow the referendum to go forward, he did so largely because polls at the time indicated that a large majority of Scots would vote against independence. Though the final results were not as good for the pro-independence side as some of the polls in the last week or so indicated they might be (many of the late polls showed the two sides within a few points, and independence even had a slight edge in a few polls), they were far better than anyone would have expected a few months ago.
But as far as I am concerned, the real point of the referendum is that the Scottish people exercised their right of self-determination, reinforcing the point that this is a basic right for peoples all over the world, especially those that are currently being ruled by governments dominated by another people or nation. For places like Tibet, West Papua or Chechnya, the issue is not whether a majority of the people would vote for independence, but that their foreign rulers (China, Indonesia, and Russia, in these cases) won't even permit a vote in the first place. In fact, they treat even advocacy of the right to self-determination as if it were a crime (unless it is in their interest to do otherwise). How many Tibetans have been arrested for supporting "separatism"? How many times has the Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of being a "splittist"? Perhaps if China really treated the Tibetans well, instead of driving them to self-immolate in protest against Chinese rule, Tibetans would actually vote to remain under Chinese rule. But by arresting people who merely speak in favor of the idea of independence, the Chinese government just reinforces the fact that it is just a harsh, oppressive imperialist ruler, and the same goes for other countries that suppress independence movements with harsh measures. While not all the arguments made for or against Scottish independence may have been convincing or even firmly grounded in fact, the point was that the debate, however passionate, remained in the realm of verbal arguments, TV ads, editorials, and blog posts, rather than arrests, beatings and muzzling of free speech. That is the lesson that nations like China need to learn from this.
In other news, the People's Climate March in New York and elsewhere brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets. Now let's just hope that world leaders (and everyone else) will finally wake up and start taking strong measures to deal with climate change before it is too late.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
The History of Chinese-Tibetan Relations and What It Means for the Present
I was recently asked to give a brief talk at a symposium hosted by a Tibetan organization here in Taiwan. Since they also want me to provide a paper that they can publish, I've written an article on the history of China-Tibet relations and its bearing on self-determination for Tibet. I may revise it later and I believe they want to translate it into Chinese, but I'm posting my draft version here first. A few paragraphs were taken from an older essay of mine on the topic, but most of it is new.
In almost all articles, debates and arguments about the status of Tibet and its relationship to China, the question of history is sure to arise. It could be argued that sometimes too much importance is placed on history in controversies of this kind, a point I will come back to later. But since the Chinese government and its supporters are particularly fond of making references to history in asserting China’s claims over Tibet, it is worth making an attempt to summarize the historical relationship between China and Tibet and examining whether the facts are in accordance with China’s claims.
Many wire service reports on the Tibet issue, after noting the Chinese claim that Tibet is part of China, go on to say that “Tibetans say Tibet was independent for centuries” or something to that effect. But this is not something that only Tibetans say; none but the most blatantly propagandistic Chinese account would deny that Tibet has a long history as an independent nation, even if much of that history is in the distant past. Over a thousand years ago, when the Tang dynasty ruled in China, Tibet had a powerful empire that contested with Tang China for dominance over the Tarim basin and frequently won. After the Tang dynasty went into decline, the Tibetans even succeeded in sacking the Chinese capital of Chang’an. Soon afterwards, however, the Tibetan empire itself collapsed and Tibet entered its equivalent of the European Dark Ages. But it remained independent of any sort of outside rule until the 13th century, when the Mongols under Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered both Tibet and China, adding them into their empire. China now likes to claim that this was the point at which Tibet was incorporated into China. But though Kublai Khan proclaimed a new dynasty, the Yuan, his regime never became Sinicized and Tibet and other non-Chinese territories were not treated as part of China or incorporated into the Chinese administrative system, but like China itself, were just another Mongol imperial possession. In other words, Mongol rule over Tibet during this period perhaps could be used as a (very weak) historical basis for Mongolia to claim sovereignty over Tibet, but it is completely irrelevant to any Chinese claims.
After the Chinese Ming dynasty overthrew the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Tibet and other Mongol conquests regained their independence. Chinese propaganda has tried to claim that the Ming had some sort of authority over Tibet, but at best the Ming would “confirm” the titles of Tibetan officials who had already been chosen without any Chinese input. Tibet’s relationship to China during this period was equivalent to Okinawa’s; both were independent states that retained ties with China primarily for their own benefit. The Ming had no political authority over Tibet and no real say over who ruled it. In fact, Tibet’s political ties with the Mongols were much stronger for most of the Ming era than their ties with China were. It was a Mongol ruler named Altan Khan who first conferred the title “Dalai Lama” on a leading Tibetan abbot in 1578. So as of about four centuries ago, not only did Tibet have its own culture, language and religion that was completely distinct from that of China, it was politically independent of China and never been ruled by the Chinese. Indeed, at the time of the Ming dynasty, even the Chinese themselves generally considered places like Tibet, Taiwan, Mongolia, East Turkestan, and Manchuria to be non-Chinese, “barbarian” lands outside the pale of Chinese civilization.
China’s present claim over Tibet, like its claim over other outlying, non-Chinese areas, is in fact based entirely on the conquests of the Manchu Qing dynasty. In the 17th century, China was conquered by the Manchus, a non-Chinese people from Manchuria, the land to the northeast, who set up the Qing dynasty. The Manchus were regarded by the Chinese as foreigners, though over time they eventually were assimilated by their subjects. In the first decades of Manchu rule, they expanded their empire far beyond China, conquering Mongolia, East Turkestan and Tibet. These territories were imperial possessions, just as India was an imperial possession of the British, Central America was an imperial territory of Spain, and so forth. In most cases, the Manchu did not administer these territories the same way they administered China (Tibet in fact retained a high degree of local autonomy), as neither they nor the people of these regions was Chinese. The main thing these regions had in common with China was that they were all part of the same empire.
In 1912, after a long period of decline under pressure both from foreign imperialists and domestic rebels, the Qing dynasty fell and the Republic of China was proclaimed. The ROC laid claim to all the territory of the Manchu empire, despite the fact that much of it was not Chinese. The new government was unable to enforce its claims, so most of the non-Chinese regions became independent (for that matter, the central government did not even effectively control all of China proper, as most of it was ruled by autonomous warlords). However, they maintained their questionable claims of sovereignty over all the empire, so when the ROC government was forced out of China to Taiwan and the People's Republic of China was set up, the PRC in turn claimed all of the same empire (except part of Mongolia, which their Soviet allies forced them to recognize as independent). Unfortunately for places like Tibet, which had been a de facto independent country for several decades by this time, the PRC was able to enforce its claims militarily, conquering all of the non-Chinese areas that had once been part of the Manchu empire except outer Mongolia (ironically enough, before they actually gained power, Mao and other communist leaders had at times supported full independence for all these outlying regions, only to change their minds once they had the power to take them over).
Are the Chinese claims to sovereignty over these places justifiable? One way to answer that is to ask whether other imperial claims are justifiable. Did Britain have the "right" to rule India, Malaysia, east Africa, and all its other imperial possessions? Did the French have the "right" to its colonies in West Africa, Indochina, and so on? Did Russia have the "right" to rule Poland, which it did throughout the 19th century? Most people now would agree that imperialism and colonialism as practiced by the Europeans was wrong, and all of those countries were justified in struggling for independence. So is Chinese rule in historically non-Chinese areas justified? China rules these places, which they "inherited" as part of an empire, in the same exploitative fashion that the Europeans ran their colonies. In some ways Chinese rule is even worse, as the Chinese government have actively tried to suppress local culture (the Europeans did this in some places, but not everywhere) and it is using the vast population of Chinese to swamp the local people by encouraging the Han (as the ethnic Chinese are called) to move to these places in large numbers to make money. Most of the money from economic development in places like Tibet goes into the pockets of Han Chinese, so the local people see that not only have they lost their independence, but their homeland is being turned into a Han-majority region in which they will be an impoverished minority with a culture that is slowly withering away. Some businesses located in these areas even post ads for workers online that specify “Han-only”, blatantly discriminating against the local people by denying them even basic job opportunities. It is no wonder that in the depths of their despair, some Tibetans have turned to the extreme act of self-immolation as a protest against Chinese rule.
Of course, China asserts that Tibetans have benefited from Chinese rule because it has brought economic opportunity (never mind the fact that most of the opportunity seems to go to Han Chinese). However, perhaps because it is difficult for China and its propagandists to directly defend either the Chinese conquest of Tibet or the current suppression of Tibetan culture and aspirations, a common strategy is to try to change the subject. One line that seems to be popular among Chinese propagandists online recently is that before "liberation" by China, the Tibetans suffered under oppressive rule by the monks (of course this implies that Tibet was independent, contradicting their claim that it has been under Chinese rule for centuries, but logical consistency is not their strong suit). One of their key assertions is that most of the Tibetan people had to work as serfs for their monk masters. The problem with this claim is that vast majority of Tibetans have always been nomads, not peasant farmers (though now the Chinese are trying to force them to change their lifestyle against their will). This rather seriously undermines the credibility of China's claims about monkish oppression, which seem in any case to be merely a grafting of standard Marxist historical theory about slave societies and feudal societies onto Tibetan history, regardless of how badly it fits.
But the problem is not just that the Chinese version of the history of Tibet and its relationship with China is distorted or simply false; it is that the Chinese government dogmatically insists that its version is the only true one and anyone who questions it – no matter how much evidence they have for their interpretation – cannot possibly be right and is acting out of bad motives. This rigid insistence on the official version of history is not limited to the Tibetan issue, of course, as the Chinese government’s reaction to the British researchers who came up with a shorter measurement for the length of the Long March or the Chinese professor who published a less rosy interpretation of the Boxer Rebellion in Freezing Point magazine show. This attitude shows that the Chinese government is not really interested in finding the historical truth, which can only be done by open academic debate; instead, it is only interested in using history, or rather its version of history, as a propaganda tool. If the Chinese government were really confident that their interpretation of history was the true one, they would not fear debate on the subject.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, it could be argued that historical claims should matter less than the will of the current residents. For example, just because the countries around the Mediterranean were ruled by Rome for many centuries doesn’t mean Italy can claim a right to rule them now, nor can Mongolia claim the former realm of Genghis Khan. One thing that even a basic knowledge of history tells you is that nothing is forever, so Chinese claims that one territory or another is “inseparable” from China are nonsense. Humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years before there were any countries at all, and throughout the five thousand or so years since civilization arose, nations have risen and fallen and borders have constantly shifted. The island of Sicily, for instance, has been ruled in whole or in part by Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, so the idea that a single nation or people could claim it based on history is absurd, and as long as the majority of Sicilians are content with being Italian, the history is irrelevant anyway. So while the historical evidence on the whole favors the cause of Tibetan independence, if the majority of Tibetans now preferred for their country to be part of China (perhaps with a greater degree of autonomy), then Chinese rule would be justified.
But while Chinese propaganda claims that most Tibetans support Chinese rule and that “separatists” are a minority, China does not even allow Tibetans to freely discuss the issue, much less have a vote on it. This casts serious doubt the Chinese assertions. If China were so confident that most Tibetans want Chinese rule, why doesn’t it dare to allow a Tibetan vote on the issue? Incidentally, a Chinese assertion with respect to the de facto independent state of Taiwan needs to be addressed here. Chinese occasionally make the claim that Taiwan’s future should be decided by “Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan strait”. But this is not how self-determination works. When places like East Timor, Kosovo, Quebec, and Puerto Rico have held votes on independence, only people in those places voted; the people in other parts of Indonesia, Serbia, Canada, and the US did not vote. Similarly, when Scotland votes on independence from the UK, people in England and Wales won’t be voting. So a vote on Tibetan autonomy or independence should only involve the people of Tibet, though long-time Han Chinese residents would have the right to vote too.
Perhaps the most basic point, though, is that Tibetans, like people all over the world, should have the right to freely advocate independence, whether or not the historical evidence is on their side and whether or not they are in the majority. Some Chinese seem to think that anyone who suggests that Tibet should be independent does so only out of hostility against China. But the right to self-determination and the right to freedom of opinion, including advocating independence, are universal. As the examples mentioned above show, there are plenty of Western countries with strong regional independence movements. Most Chinese and even most Americans may not be aware of it, but there are pro-independence political parties in both Alaska and Hawaii. They have little support, but they are perfectly legal and free to advocate their positions. In fact, I would say that in the case of Hawaii in particular there are also historical reasons that favor the cause of independence, since it was originally, like Tibet, an independent country with a distinct culture and ethnic makeup that was coerced by a large, imperialist neighbor into joining it, so if a majority of Hawaiians came to desire independence from the US, I would support their right to obtain it.
I challenge all Chinese to look on the cause of Tibetan independence with an open mind. Read some non-Chinese accounts of the history and objectively examine the historical evidence, keeping in mind that the version of history you learned in school may not be entirely true (just as old American history books that justified the European slaughter of the Native Americans were biased, as are Japanese history books that deny the Rape of Nanjing). What’s more, even if you still feel that Tibet should remain part of China, respect the right of other people to think otherwise, and even to openly argue their cause. Showing a respect for different opinions, including those calling for separation from China, will not make China weak. On the contrary, it will show the kind of maturity that every nation must have in order to be considered truly great.
In almost all articles, debates and arguments about the status of Tibet and its relationship to China, the question of history is sure to arise. It could be argued that sometimes too much importance is placed on history in controversies of this kind, a point I will come back to later. But since the Chinese government and its supporters are particularly fond of making references to history in asserting China’s claims over Tibet, it is worth making an attempt to summarize the historical relationship between China and Tibet and examining whether the facts are in accordance with China’s claims.
Many wire service reports on the Tibet issue, after noting the Chinese claim that Tibet is part of China, go on to say that “Tibetans say Tibet was independent for centuries” or something to that effect. But this is not something that only Tibetans say; none but the most blatantly propagandistic Chinese account would deny that Tibet has a long history as an independent nation, even if much of that history is in the distant past. Over a thousand years ago, when the Tang dynasty ruled in China, Tibet had a powerful empire that contested with Tang China for dominance over the Tarim basin and frequently won. After the Tang dynasty went into decline, the Tibetans even succeeded in sacking the Chinese capital of Chang’an. Soon afterwards, however, the Tibetan empire itself collapsed and Tibet entered its equivalent of the European Dark Ages. But it remained independent of any sort of outside rule until the 13th century, when the Mongols under Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered both Tibet and China, adding them into their empire. China now likes to claim that this was the point at which Tibet was incorporated into China. But though Kublai Khan proclaimed a new dynasty, the Yuan, his regime never became Sinicized and Tibet and other non-Chinese territories were not treated as part of China or incorporated into the Chinese administrative system, but like China itself, were just another Mongol imperial possession. In other words, Mongol rule over Tibet during this period perhaps could be used as a (very weak) historical basis for Mongolia to claim sovereignty over Tibet, but it is completely irrelevant to any Chinese claims.
After the Chinese Ming dynasty overthrew the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Tibet and other Mongol conquests regained their independence. Chinese propaganda has tried to claim that the Ming had some sort of authority over Tibet, but at best the Ming would “confirm” the titles of Tibetan officials who had already been chosen without any Chinese input. Tibet’s relationship to China during this period was equivalent to Okinawa’s; both were independent states that retained ties with China primarily for their own benefit. The Ming had no political authority over Tibet and no real say over who ruled it. In fact, Tibet’s political ties with the Mongols were much stronger for most of the Ming era than their ties with China were. It was a Mongol ruler named Altan Khan who first conferred the title “Dalai Lama” on a leading Tibetan abbot in 1578. So as of about four centuries ago, not only did Tibet have its own culture, language and religion that was completely distinct from that of China, it was politically independent of China and never been ruled by the Chinese. Indeed, at the time of the Ming dynasty, even the Chinese themselves generally considered places like Tibet, Taiwan, Mongolia, East Turkestan, and Manchuria to be non-Chinese, “barbarian” lands outside the pale of Chinese civilization.
China’s present claim over Tibet, like its claim over other outlying, non-Chinese areas, is in fact based entirely on the conquests of the Manchu Qing dynasty. In the 17th century, China was conquered by the Manchus, a non-Chinese people from Manchuria, the land to the northeast, who set up the Qing dynasty. The Manchus were regarded by the Chinese as foreigners, though over time they eventually were assimilated by their subjects. In the first decades of Manchu rule, they expanded their empire far beyond China, conquering Mongolia, East Turkestan and Tibet. These territories were imperial possessions, just as India was an imperial possession of the British, Central America was an imperial territory of Spain, and so forth. In most cases, the Manchu did not administer these territories the same way they administered China (Tibet in fact retained a high degree of local autonomy), as neither they nor the people of these regions was Chinese. The main thing these regions had in common with China was that they were all part of the same empire.
In 1912, after a long period of decline under pressure both from foreign imperialists and domestic rebels, the Qing dynasty fell and the Republic of China was proclaimed. The ROC laid claim to all the territory of the Manchu empire, despite the fact that much of it was not Chinese. The new government was unable to enforce its claims, so most of the non-Chinese regions became independent (for that matter, the central government did not even effectively control all of China proper, as most of it was ruled by autonomous warlords). However, they maintained their questionable claims of sovereignty over all the empire, so when the ROC government was forced out of China to Taiwan and the People's Republic of China was set up, the PRC in turn claimed all of the same empire (except part of Mongolia, which their Soviet allies forced them to recognize as independent). Unfortunately for places like Tibet, which had been a de facto independent country for several decades by this time, the PRC was able to enforce its claims militarily, conquering all of the non-Chinese areas that had once been part of the Manchu empire except outer Mongolia (ironically enough, before they actually gained power, Mao and other communist leaders had at times supported full independence for all these outlying regions, only to change their minds once they had the power to take them over).
Are the Chinese claims to sovereignty over these places justifiable? One way to answer that is to ask whether other imperial claims are justifiable. Did Britain have the "right" to rule India, Malaysia, east Africa, and all its other imperial possessions? Did the French have the "right" to its colonies in West Africa, Indochina, and so on? Did Russia have the "right" to rule Poland, which it did throughout the 19th century? Most people now would agree that imperialism and colonialism as practiced by the Europeans was wrong, and all of those countries were justified in struggling for independence. So is Chinese rule in historically non-Chinese areas justified? China rules these places, which they "inherited" as part of an empire, in the same exploitative fashion that the Europeans ran their colonies. In some ways Chinese rule is even worse, as the Chinese government have actively tried to suppress local culture (the Europeans did this in some places, but not everywhere) and it is using the vast population of Chinese to swamp the local people by encouraging the Han (as the ethnic Chinese are called) to move to these places in large numbers to make money. Most of the money from economic development in places like Tibet goes into the pockets of Han Chinese, so the local people see that not only have they lost their independence, but their homeland is being turned into a Han-majority region in which they will be an impoverished minority with a culture that is slowly withering away. Some businesses located in these areas even post ads for workers online that specify “Han-only”, blatantly discriminating against the local people by denying them even basic job opportunities. It is no wonder that in the depths of their despair, some Tibetans have turned to the extreme act of self-immolation as a protest against Chinese rule.
Of course, China asserts that Tibetans have benefited from Chinese rule because it has brought economic opportunity (never mind the fact that most of the opportunity seems to go to Han Chinese). However, perhaps because it is difficult for China and its propagandists to directly defend either the Chinese conquest of Tibet or the current suppression of Tibetan culture and aspirations, a common strategy is to try to change the subject. One line that seems to be popular among Chinese propagandists online recently is that before "liberation" by China, the Tibetans suffered under oppressive rule by the monks (of course this implies that Tibet was independent, contradicting their claim that it has been under Chinese rule for centuries, but logical consistency is not their strong suit). One of their key assertions is that most of the Tibetan people had to work as serfs for their monk masters. The problem with this claim is that vast majority of Tibetans have always been nomads, not peasant farmers (though now the Chinese are trying to force them to change their lifestyle against their will). This rather seriously undermines the credibility of China's claims about monkish oppression, which seem in any case to be merely a grafting of standard Marxist historical theory about slave societies and feudal societies onto Tibetan history, regardless of how badly it fits.
But the problem is not just that the Chinese version of the history of Tibet and its relationship with China is distorted or simply false; it is that the Chinese government dogmatically insists that its version is the only true one and anyone who questions it – no matter how much evidence they have for their interpretation – cannot possibly be right and is acting out of bad motives. This rigid insistence on the official version of history is not limited to the Tibetan issue, of course, as the Chinese government’s reaction to the British researchers who came up with a shorter measurement for the length of the Long March or the Chinese professor who published a less rosy interpretation of the Boxer Rebellion in Freezing Point magazine show. This attitude shows that the Chinese government is not really interested in finding the historical truth, which can only be done by open academic debate; instead, it is only interested in using history, or rather its version of history, as a propaganda tool. If the Chinese government were really confident that their interpretation of history was the true one, they would not fear debate on the subject.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, it could be argued that historical claims should matter less than the will of the current residents. For example, just because the countries around the Mediterranean were ruled by Rome for many centuries doesn’t mean Italy can claim a right to rule them now, nor can Mongolia claim the former realm of Genghis Khan. One thing that even a basic knowledge of history tells you is that nothing is forever, so Chinese claims that one territory or another is “inseparable” from China are nonsense. Humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years before there were any countries at all, and throughout the five thousand or so years since civilization arose, nations have risen and fallen and borders have constantly shifted. The island of Sicily, for instance, has been ruled in whole or in part by Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, so the idea that a single nation or people could claim it based on history is absurd, and as long as the majority of Sicilians are content with being Italian, the history is irrelevant anyway. So while the historical evidence on the whole favors the cause of Tibetan independence, if the majority of Tibetans now preferred for their country to be part of China (perhaps with a greater degree of autonomy), then Chinese rule would be justified.
But while Chinese propaganda claims that most Tibetans support Chinese rule and that “separatists” are a minority, China does not even allow Tibetans to freely discuss the issue, much less have a vote on it. This casts serious doubt the Chinese assertions. If China were so confident that most Tibetans want Chinese rule, why doesn’t it dare to allow a Tibetan vote on the issue? Incidentally, a Chinese assertion with respect to the de facto independent state of Taiwan needs to be addressed here. Chinese occasionally make the claim that Taiwan’s future should be decided by “Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan strait”. But this is not how self-determination works. When places like East Timor, Kosovo, Quebec, and Puerto Rico have held votes on independence, only people in those places voted; the people in other parts of Indonesia, Serbia, Canada, and the US did not vote. Similarly, when Scotland votes on independence from the UK, people in England and Wales won’t be voting. So a vote on Tibetan autonomy or independence should only involve the people of Tibet, though long-time Han Chinese residents would have the right to vote too.
Perhaps the most basic point, though, is that Tibetans, like people all over the world, should have the right to freely advocate independence, whether or not the historical evidence is on their side and whether or not they are in the majority. Some Chinese seem to think that anyone who suggests that Tibet should be independent does so only out of hostility against China. But the right to self-determination and the right to freedom of opinion, including advocating independence, are universal. As the examples mentioned above show, there are plenty of Western countries with strong regional independence movements. Most Chinese and even most Americans may not be aware of it, but there are pro-independence political parties in both Alaska and Hawaii. They have little support, but they are perfectly legal and free to advocate their positions. In fact, I would say that in the case of Hawaii in particular there are also historical reasons that favor the cause of independence, since it was originally, like Tibet, an independent country with a distinct culture and ethnic makeup that was coerced by a large, imperialist neighbor into joining it, so if a majority of Hawaiians came to desire independence from the US, I would support their right to obtain it.
I challenge all Chinese to look on the cause of Tibetan independence with an open mind. Read some non-Chinese accounts of the history and objectively examine the historical evidence, keeping in mind that the version of history you learned in school may not be entirely true (just as old American history books that justified the European slaughter of the Native Americans were biased, as are Japanese history books that deny the Rape of Nanjing). What’s more, even if you still feel that Tibet should remain part of China, respect the right of other people to think otherwise, and even to openly argue their cause. Showing a respect for different opinions, including those calling for separation from China, will not make China weak. On the contrary, it will show the kind of maturity that every nation must have in order to be considered truly great.
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