Reflections on the Confederate Flag (and More)

There’s been a lot of dramatic news out of the United States recently, including the US Supreme Court’s historic ruling declaring bans on same sex marriage unconstitutional (with a hilariously ironic dissent from Scalia calling the decision an attack on democracy, when the real assaults on democracy came in cases like Citizens United, where he and his right wing cohorts were in the majority), not to mention its ruling against a rather absurd challenge to the Affordable Care Act, its rulings upholding standards for proving housing discrimination and an independent redistricting committee in Arizona, or, on the negative side, their ruling against the EPA’s restrictions on mercury pollution. However, I want to focus on another news item that is unrelated to the Supreme Court, namely the reactions to the mass murder of innocent churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, and particularly the debate over the Confederate flag.

Regarding the murders themselves, there is a lot that could be said, such as how they are yet another piece of evidence showing how disastrous it is for a society to allow guns to be so easily available, or how the reluctance of right wingers to admit that racism was the reason for the shootings just says that they have some of their own issues in that area, but my interest in history leads me to focus on the Confederate flag debate. I will, however, mention in passing that it is ridiculous for many, particularly on the right, to refuse to label these murders a terrorist act when they are exceptionally eager to call any attacks by extremist Muslims terrorism. Yes, Dylann Roof probably acted alone and in that sense was a lone nut, but the same was true of Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator in the mass shooting at Ft Hood in 2009, and yet Ted Cruz and his ilk have been adamant that the latter was a terrorist act. For that matter, even the Tsarnaev brothers seem to have acted alone in the Boston Marathon bombing. In all cases, you had one (or two, though it was clearly the elder Tsarnaev brother who was the driving force) disturbed individual, motivated largely or at least in part by a warped ideology, striking out violently at unsuspecting victims. If any violent act, even by individuals unconnected with a larger organization, intended to strike terror in the hearts of ordinary people in the name of some ideology is a terrorist act, then these three incidents could all be described as terrorism. If we restrict the definition of “terrorist acts” to those that are organized or at least directly assisted by a larger organization, then none of them are (though quite a few actions by governments would still fit the definition). But anyone who claims that the Waco and Boston incidents were terrorism but Charleston was not is quite simply full of it. The truth is, right-wing radicals are much more of a threat to the average American than groups like ISIL, though lone nuts of any stripe are a danger – and much more so when guns are easily available.

Getting back to the Confederate flag and the efforts to get removed from public places all around the southern US, I would first like to note that not only did I myself grow up in Texas, but many of my ancestors, at least on the paternal side, were Southerners, and quite a few fought for the Confederacy. My great-great-great grandfather in the direct paternal line, a German immigrant to Texas just after it joined the US, was an officer in the Confederate army, and several other ancestors fought on the Confederate side elsewhere in the South. The battle of Shiloh was fought at least in part on land belonging to members of one of my ancestral lines, the Cantrells. A number of my ancestors were slave owners as well (it’s also probable that at least one very distant ancestor was a slave himself, though that’s another story – and in any case some of the slave owners and Confederate soldiers in my ancestry would have been his descendants). As a matter of fact, I don’t know for certain of any ancestors who fought for the Union, though it’s possible some on my mother’s side did (most of her paternal ancestors were presumably living in the North at the time of the Civil War, though her maternal ancestors didn’t come until after 1900). So my own heritage is much more closely tied to the Confederacy than the Union.

Does this mean that I think the Confederate flag should be flying at state capitols around the South? Not at all. Though they themselves may have been unaware of it, the cause for which my Confederate ancestors fought was wrong. Despite the nonsensical arguments of pro-Confederate apologists, that cause was clearly slavery. Or as someone put it the other day, claiming it was about states’ rights is at best an incomplete statement of the reality, as it was about a particular “states’ right”, namely the right of states to keep slavery legal. This is clear from not only from the history of the years leading up to the Civil War, which were full of struggles between the North and South over slavery (the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and so forth), but the articles of secession of the various Confederate States, which repeatedly cited slavery. Then there was the Cornerstone Speech of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, in which he talked of how founders of the US like Thomas Jefferson considered slavery “wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically” and an “evil” that would disappear over time, then went on to say that they were “fundamentally wrong”, because their thinking “rested upon the assumption of the equality of races.” Stephens (who ironically opposed secession before the war and worked for peace in the later years of the war) declared this to be an error, and that “our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” Since the Confederate leaders explicitly stated that slavery was a major – even the major – motivation for their rebellion, claiming otherwise reflects either a complete ignorance of the history Confederate apologists claim to honor, or else a highly disingenuous attempt to whitewash history.

Of course, the North didn’t necessarily treat black people all that much better than the South did, and that was still true long after the war. Their ways of mistreating them were just different. My mother often cites an African-American saying that reflects this: “In the South white folks don't care how close you get as long as you don't get too big. But in the North they don't care how big you get as long as you don't get too close." As late as the 1970s, Randy Newman could still skewer this Northern hypocrisy in his song “Rednecks”. But the fact that many Northerners were both racists and hypocrites doesn’t change the basic fact that the Confederate flag is the symbol of a rebellion that was fought for the right to keep other people as slaves, and even in later years it was used as a symbol of racism (after all, South Carolina only raised it over their capitol building in the 1960s as a symbol of defiance against efforts to end segregation). It isn’t just that Dylann Roof “misused” the flag; the flag itself is inherently steeped in racist ideology. And it isn’t enough to say that it’s “part of our history” either. After all, the flag of the Third Reich is part of Germany’s history, but that doesn’t mean that Germans (other than neo-Nazi idiots) raise it in public. Even when I was young and ignorant (i.e., politically conservative), I found it vaguely disturbing that a popular show like The Dukes of Hazzard (which to be honest I never really watched) prominently featured a car named the “General Lee” with a big Confederate flag on it. If people in the South want to find a symbol of resistance against oppression by corrupt government officials, they can surely due better than a flag that itself stood for the oppression of an entire people in the interest of wealthy landowners.

Finally, I should note, as many others have, that just removing the Confederate flags is far from sufficient. The racism, both subtle and blatant, that still exists throughout the US (not just in the South) has to be addressed as well, as do the many other problems faced by African-Americans in particular due to the legacy of slavery and discrimination. Even if we’re only talking about historical symbols, aside from removing the flags, Southern states would do well to start changing the names of all the roads and buildings named after some of the most notorious pro-slavery leaders. But removing the flags, while a very small step, is nevertheless a step in the right direction.

Pope Francis and Climate Change

The Catholic Church has a long history, and in much of that time it has not been a force for good, but rather has stood for corruption, repression and stubborn conservatism. Even in The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th century work, the portrayal of the church is for the most part very negative. In modern times, the Catholic Church retains some exceptionally backward ideas about contraception, women, and homosexuality, among other things. I remember once years ago when Time magazine selected Pope John Paul II as its Man of the Year, one political cartoonist parodied their choice by drawing a magazine with John Paul II on the cover as Man of the Year, but with the name of the magazine changed to Behind the Times. While for the most part the Catholic Church is not nearly as radically right wing as many evangelical Protestant churches, given its size as the single largest Christian denomination in the world and indeed the world’s largest hierarchally-organized religious sect, with the Pope exercising ultimate religious authority over a billion people, its conservative bent has meant has acted as a major hindrance to progress on many issues. In other words, my overall view of the Catholic Church has tended to be negative. However, this has changed somewhat since Pope Francis took charge. While the Catholic Church still has many negatives, Francis has shown that with the right kind of leadership it can still be a strong force for good, a message he has reinforced with his recently released encyclical on climate change and the environment.

In the short time he has been in charge, Francis has managed to drastically change the image of the Catholic Church and the tone of its pronouncements, even if the substance of its teachings has not changed much. To a large degree, this has been due to a change in emphasis. Past Popes like John Paul II and Benedict XVI seemed to focus much more on defending some of the Church’s more conservative positions, such as its views on contraception, abortion and homosexuality. Francis, while not actually abandoning or contradicting these positions, except to express greater tolerance of those with views contrary to the Church’s teachings, has chosen to emphasize issues such as social justice and fighting poverty, areas where even in the past the Church has done much good. The problem in past years has been that the Vatican and much of the rest of the hierarchy has seemed to care much less about social justice than fighting for socially conservative positions or even covering up its own flaws, such as all the sexual abuse scandals that have come to light in past years. Symptomatic of this warped emphasis is the fact that many priests who had been found to be guilty of sexual abuse went unpunished, while one American nun who performed an emergency abortion in a hospital to save a woman’s life was excommunicated, though she was eventually reinstated. Another example is the case of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the American association of nuns that was punished by the Vatican for placing too much emphasis on social justice rather than the church’s teachings on issues such as abortion. However, despite initially allowing the inquiry (or perhaps we should say Inquisition) into the group’s work to continue, he ended it in April of this year and met with a delegation of the nuns for almost an hour. Also, he has removed some of the more conservative church officials from power and seems to genuinely be attempting to change the Church’s overall direction, thereby allowing it to play a more positive role in society.

This latest encyclical is a powerful example of the kind of positive role the Church can play in the world under Francis’s leadership. In essence, Francis has declared that fighting climate change and protecting the environment is a moral issue, one that it is intimately tied to fighting poverty and struggling for social justice, as it is the poor and disadvantaged of the world that will suffer – indeed are already suffering – from the effects of climate change, which, as he notes, is "a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods [that] represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day". He reviews the scientific consensus on climate change and points out the urgency of doing something about it now, noting "it is remarkable how weak international political responses have been". He condemns the short-sighted greed that has led to not only to our continued pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere despite our growing awareness of the harm they are causing but also other sorts of environmental destruction in so much of the world and declares that we need to radically adjust our priorities. He calls out over-consumption by the wealthy nations of the world as being a major cause of our current problems and calls on people to stop viewing endless economic growth and acquisition of material goods as “progress”, but instead to work to improve quality of life. Indeed, aside from being a much needed call to action on climate change, the encyclical is also an indictment of the entire system of rampant capitalism that ruins the environment and tramples on the poor and disadvantaged in the name of short term profit, as "economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain". He notes that claims that God gave the world to humans to exploit at will are bad theology, arguing "we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures", as it is clear that the Bible calls on humans to be good stewards of the Earth and its resources and that "responsibility for God’s earth means that human beings, endowed with intelligence, must respect the laws of nature and the delicate equilibria existing between the creatures of this world."

While I have not read the entire encyclical (and at 191 pages I may not ever get around to doing so), I agree pretty much completely with all the excerpts and paraphrases I’ve seen so far, with one notable exception, one that shows that Francis, for all his progressive pronouncements, still holds to some of the Church’s more backward teachings. At one point, he criticizes the view that overpopulation is to blame for the environmental problems we face and that we just need to limit population growth. Of course, few if any people with an understanding of the issues believes that overpopulation alone is the problem or halting population growth alone is the solution. Of course, as Francis says, over-consumption, waste and inequality, not to mention the short-sighted pursuit of profits that leads people to extract and burn destructive fossil fuels rather than search for alternatives, are at least as much the issue as population, if not more. There is no question that we could easily feed, clothe, house and educate all of the world’s seven billion plus people if we distributed our resources more equitably and used them more wisely. But it is also unquestionable that this would be much easier if there were far fewer people, and it will become much harder if the population keeps increasing at anything near the current rate. While so far our food production has managed to keep pace with our population growth, thanks to innovations such as the “green revolution” in agriculture, it is foolish to just assume it will continue to do so. No matter how environmentally sustainable our lifestyles, seven billion people cannot help but create a rather substantial strain on the Earth’s carrying capacity and great pressure on the habitats of other species, and of course it will be worse with eight, nine or ten billion. So even if we do everything else Francis suggests, population growth must still be restrained – not coercively, like in China, but through education and read availability of contraceptives and other forms of birth control, especially to women. This of course is the unspoken reason for Francis’s dismissal of overpopulation as an issue; admitting it was a problem would be an admission that the Church’s teaching on contraception is wrong and even harmful. While Francis appears to be far more willing than his predecessors to tolerate the use of contraception by Catholics, already quite common despite the Church’s position on them, he doesn’t seem to be prepared to actually overturn this, probably the most harmful of the Church’s teachings.

But despite this one notable flaw, if Catholics and even non-Catholics could take what the encyclical teaches to heart, the world would definitely be a better place. Of course, many will not, and even before its release right-wingers, conservatives, climate deniers, fossil fuel profiteers and others (many of which groups also happened to be targets for sharp criticism in the encyclical), began attacking it. Catholic Republicans like Rick Santorum and Jeb Bush questioned the appropriateness of the Pope addressing an issue such as climate change, saying he should stick to moral teachings. This is despite Francis’s convincing framing of human stewardship of the Earth as a moral issue, which makes at least as much logical sense than declaring homosexuality or even contraception to be a moral issue – indeed, I would say that these two only become a moral issue when people attack the former or try to reduce availability of the latter, because it is such attacks that are immoral. These Republican critics decry the Pope getting involved in what they call a “political” issue, but they don’t seem to object to the Church making pronouncements on abortion, which is at least as much a political issue as climate change. Indeed, as everything is some sense political, saying the Church should not express a viewpoint on political issues is tantamount to saying it should not express a viewpoint on anything. Furthermore, climate change is, or should be, much less a political issue than it is; it is only the climate deniers who reject the overwhelming scientific evidence who make it into a political issue. Or rather, the real political issue with climate change is not whether to do something about it, but what exactly we should do, and how we should distribute responsibility for taking action.

It’s worth pointing out that while the extreme right wing views of certain prominent Catholics like Santorum, Bush, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, or the various Catholic leaders who spoke against the birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act might give the impression that most American Catholics take very conservative positions on issues such as climate change or homosexuality, polls show that in fact Francis’s position on climate change is more in accord with most American Catholics than with these political “leaders”, and many also support same-sex marriage (something that is true of many Catholics in other countries as well, with Catholic countries like Spain and Ireland being leaders in legalizing same-sex marriage). As is the case with the views of American Jews on Israel, where most ordinary Jews support a negotiated two-state solution and are willing to see Israel receive constructive criticism but many major Jewish organizations (with the notable exception of J Street) take a hardline position that admits of no criticism of Israel, it seems sometimes that the most extreme Catholics are the loudest and so give a misleading impression of the views of Catholics in general (for that matter, the same is true of Protestants, as many mainline Protestant churches favor action on climate change and support same-sex marriage, unlike some of the most outspoken Protestants who wave their opposition like a banner).

This encyclical, with its broad acceptance of the scientific consensus and its solid summary of the science itself, is also a reminder that despite some of the black marks in its past like the suppression of Galileo and the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno, Catholics as individuals and even the Church itself has often played a positive role in advancing science. Many important scientific ideas, including genetics and the Big Bang, were first proposed by Catholics, and the Church itself accepts basic scientific ideas such as evolution, unlike many evangelical Protestants. Francis, who apparently has a background in chemistry, has consulted widely with scientists on climate change and indeed seems to have almost as much of a personal interest in science as the Dalai Lama, a religious leader who he has much in common with. Both of them accept that it makes no sense for religion to attempt to oppose itself to science, but rather to use science to help find ways to make the world a better place. With this encyclical on climate change, Francis has helped point out to both Catholics and non-Catholics ways in which we can work together to do just that.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership: How Can We Ensure That It Will Be Beneficial?

In the past month or so, one of the biggest political news items from the United States has been the fight of the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP, a massive trade agreement that US President Barack Obama’s administration has been negotiating with around a dozen countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Obama has been trying to persuade Congress to grant him fast track authority, under which, once the agreement is finalized, Congress has to decide to approve or reject it by a simple up or down vote, thereby taking away Congress’s power to modify the agreement. The administration has pointed out that in the past, Congress has usually granted this authority to the executive branch, since if Congress modifies the agreement the other parties to the treaty may not agree to the amendments, forcing negotiations to be reopened and making it difficult to ever arrive at a final agreement. However, there has been considerable resistance against Obama’s push for fast track authority. What has made this particular fight unusual is that most (though not all) the opposition has come from Obama’s usual allies, including most of the Democrats in Congress and a wide array of labor and environmental groups, social activists, and other progressives, while most of his support has come from Republicans (who normally oppose almost everything he does), big business, Wall Street and similar interest groups.

On the surface, many of Obama’s arguments in favor of the trade agreement in general and fast track authority in specific seem persuasive. One of the strongest arguments in favor of the latter is the one mentioned above, namely that without it reaching a final agreement would be difficult. However, the fact that not only do most of Congress’s most progressive politicians but almost every single major progressive organization strongly opposes both the agreement and the granting of fast track authority is hardly reassuring. Of course, there are many on the left who will reflexively oppose any trade agreement of this sort, whereas I try to judge every public policy measure on its individual merits; if it can make the world a better place for ordinary people and ensure strict protection of the environment and human rights, than I am for it. But even if I didn’t know any of the specific arguments against the TPP, the fact that I have received email concerning the TPP from dozens of different organizations that I generally support and largely trust with respect to their particular areas of focus and every single one has been in opposition would make it hard for me to support it, despite the strong support of Obama himself (the only pro-TPP emails I've gotten have been from him), who I support on most issues. But in addition, some of the specific concerns raised by opponents indicate to me that their worries are well founded.

One of the most problematic parts of the TPP is the reported ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) provisions. These provisions would allow corporations to sue nations before special tribunals if the government took an action that deprived of anticipated profits, for example by imposing new regulations which hindered its ability to do business. Of course, it is certainly possible that there could be situations where a country unjustifiably put roadblocks in front of a company, perhaps for reasons of corruption (say to extract a bribe or to benefit a rival which the decision maker had ties to), so I am not entirely without sympathy with desire of corporations for some means of redress. However, such a system would be far too easy for corporations to abuse. Furthermore, we can already see instances of such abuse. Tobacco companies have sued or threatened to sue several countries over new health warnings. A mining company has sued El Salvador for stopping an environmentally harmful mining project. With such a system in place, fossil fuel companies could sue over new measures to fight climate change (a particularly dangerous possibility, considering how essential it is to take immediate, revolutionary action to avoid catastrophic changes to the climate), and multinationals of all sorts could sue over new laws to protect workers. Some of the opposition in the US has focused on the possibility of corporations or financial institutions using ISDS to overturn US regulations, with opponents countering that that hasn’t happened in the past, despite the existence of similar provisions in previous treaties. However, first of all, just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it never will, unless the provisions are written in a way that completely precludes such a possibility. In one interview President Obama criticized his erstwhile ally Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the most outspoken opponents of the TPP, for talking about hypothetical situations. But of course we are dealing in hypotheticals; if the treaty makes such a situation even hypothetically possible, then we should be worried about it. Furthermore, while this particular exchange was about potential effects on US law, I for one am not only concerned about the US and its people; if there is a strong possibility that such provisions will be used anywhere in ways that are detrimental to the environment or to ordinary people, then they are unacceptable.

But the ISDS provisions are far from the only disturbing rumored elements of the TPP. There are said to be many other provisions that have been written with corporate interests in mind. For instance, if passed, the TPP will apparently strengthen patent protections, making it more difficult and time-consuming to bring generic drugs onto the market. Since a majority of the world’s people cannot begin to afford brand name drugs but only their much cheaper generic counterparts, such a provision would be harmful to many people. The administration is also unaccountably fighting efforts to ensure that the US can still restrict trade with companies with poor records against human trafficking. People should also be asking how the TPP would impact efforts to hold multinational corporations accountable for disasters like the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, to stop fossil fuel companies from accelerating climate change, or tobacco companies from pushing their drugs on young people worldwide. In fact, there are many ways in which the TPP could potentially be very harmful to human rights, the environment, labor rights and many other very important issues.

Alert readers may have noticed that in the above discussion I refer to “rumored” provisions of the TPP. This is because of another very controversial aspect of this whole process, the fact that the negotiations are being conducted behind closed doors. While members of Congress can read the draft agreement, they can only do so under very strict conditions, and they are not allowed to reveal the contents in any detail. This secrecy is another major concern. Many have called on Obama to release the text of the agreement, but he has so far declined to do so. The chief excuse for not doing so seems to be that it would compromise negotiating positions for parts of the agreement that have not been finalized yet, though it is not clear why that would be the case, nor why parts of the agreement that have been finalized can’t be released immediately. Obama has said that the entire text will be made public before Congress actually votes on whether to approve it (I believe the specific time period is 60 days before it is sent to Congress), but of course this would be after he had obtained fast track authority, and so there would no longer be any possibility of actually changing the text. At most, if the draft agreement proves as bad as some fear it may be, civil society could put pressure on Congress to reject it entirely. But of course in that case there will be considerable pressure to pass it as well, especially since it will be a choice of all or nothing. Furthermore, 60 days is not really a great deal of time for even keenly interested parties to fully digest a massive agreement.

Now, I will admit that, as in the case of fast track authority, I can understand the administration’s position to some extent. It is true that it is a bit difficult to conduct delicate negotiations under the public eye. But on the other hand, a treaty negotiated in complete secrecy that potentially could have serious negative effects on all of us hardly seems acceptable either. This is why I have still been happy to sign petitions calling on the President to release the entire text. There is, however, another possible option that as far as I know no one has suggested, perhaps because it is impractical for some reason that has failed to occur to me. It seems to me that one of the problems is the negotiators themselves. According to opponents of the agreement, corporate lobbyists are doing the negotiating; more specifically, corporations have been allowed to weigh in on sections of the treaty of particular interest to them (e.g., pharmaceutical companies on patent issues). If this is accurate, then of course the final agreement is almost certain favor corporate interests, since we probably can’t rely on the government negotiators to stand firm for the interests of workers, ordinary citizens or the environment. President Obama is asking everyone to trust him not to abandon progressive principles in the negotiations, but while he has been pretty progressive on a number of issues and has taken firm stands on some issues recently, his overall record is not sufficiently reassuring, especially given all the forces dedicated to making the TPP as corporate friendly as possible. But if corporations are being invited to weigh in on aspects of the agreement, why not environmental groups, labor activists, human rights activists and others dedicated to fighting for the interests of ordinary people? If Obama invited a number of trustworthy activist groups to take part in the negotiating process, perhaps that would be sufficient to reassure everyone that the final agreement, even if negotiated in secret, would put the environment, human rights, workers, and the interests of ordinary people in general ahead of profits for a few. Absent the participation of a significant number of such groups in the negotiations themselves, we should continue to demand that the secrecy end and that fast track authority be denied to these unaccountable negotiators.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that when Taiwan’s current government was pushing the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement with China, giving rise to the Sunflower Movement in opposition, one of the supposed “merits” of the service trade agreement with China was that according to the government it was a necessary pre-condition for Taiwan to join the TPP. Even assuming that passage of the service agreement would really guarantee that Taiwan could join the TPP (and I doubt that either the US or any of the other governments has given Taiwan such a guarantee), this argument assumes that joining the TPP would be a good thing, an assertion that neither the government nor the media seems to question. But not only is the TPP, like the service trade agreement, a “black box” negotiated in secret without the participation of the public or civil society, there are many reasons to suspect that it would not be a good thing to be a part of. Likewise, the Taiwanese government seems to just assume that the TPP is essentially a done deal, completely ignoring the strong opposition in the US. In any case, many of the problems with the cross-strait service trade agreement and the TPP are quite similar: a lack of participation by the public, a noticeable tendency to favor business interests over the public interest, and attempts by the respective governments to rush the agreements through in the face of serious doubts about their potential effects. As citizens, while we may not necessarily have the time or ability to full understand these agreements and their potential consequences, at their very least, we have to put pressure on our governments to allow full participation by civil society in their formulation in order to prevent the possibility of waking up one day to find that without our knowledge, our rights and our environment have be dangerously or even fatally compromised.

Some Reminders for Taiwanese Drivers and Motorcyclists About Lanes and Alleys

As anyone has spent any time in Taiwan knows, there's quite a bit of bad driving on the roads here. This is an off-the-cuff lecture/rant about misuse of lanes and alleys (the little side streets, mostly residential, off the main streets) by drivers and motorcyclists in Taiwan. This hardly exhausts the topic of bad driving here, so I may revisit the topic someday. I should note that Taiwan is not the only country with a lot of bad driving, and I've been to a few which noticeably worse. But there are also some that are, on the average, much better (Japan, for example). In any case, since this is where I live, this is the place I'd first like to see some improvement in driving habits.

1. Lanes are not highways. Just because there is no traffic in a lane or alley doesn’t mean you can drive as fast as you want. Pedestrians use these lanes. Kids often live along them. The last thing those living and working on the lane need is some idiot barreling down it like they are on the highway. If you want to go fast, go find a highway to drive on. See also 5.
2. Lanes are not for short cuts. They are not there so you can cut through on your way somewhere else. If you have no reason to be there, don’t go down it.
3. Lanes are not there to help you get around red lights. This is a corollary to 2 above. Just because you see a red light at the intersection ahead where you wanted to turn right doesn’t mean you can whip through a nearby lane to make your turn. Stay on the main road and wait for the damn light.
4. Traffic regulations apply as much or more in lanes as elsewhere. Stop signs mean stop. Just because you are on a motorcycle or your destination happens to be just a little way down the lane doesn’t mean you can go the wrong way down a one way lane. See also 7.
5. Lanes are for pedestrians, residents, and others who are going to a building located on or near it. This is a corollary to both 2 and 3. If you are just passing through, stay on the main road.
6. Pedestrians first. Cars and motorcycles have to yield to pedestrians, and pedestrians don’t have to hurry out of the way of cars and motorcycles. If they have to hurry to get out of your way, then you are going too fast (see 1).
7. Drivers and motorcycle riders who are residents don’t get to ignore the above rules. Many years ago I saw a woman who had been driving the wrong way down a one way lane trying to argue with a driver who was going the right way as more cars piled up beyond the latter. She argued that she lived there – as if being a resident somehow exempted her from traffic regulations (needless to say, in the end she had to back out to let everyone else through). If you live on the lane, fine, you get to drive or ride down it, but slowly, and you should get to the main road as quickly as you can. Better yet, get rid of your car or motorcycle and start walking, biking or taking public transportation (or some combination of the three).

Religion Versus Society

The other day when I was walking down the street in Taipei I saw some people burning so-called ghost money, a practice I have criticized in the past. In this case, it brought to mind the efforts by Republican legislators in US states such as Indiana to create a license to discriminate based on religion as well as bans against alcohol in some Muslim countries and the sometimes violent efforts of some Muslims to discourage publication of images of Muhammed. At first glance these things don’t seem to have much to do with each other, but in all cases they involve a negative interaction between some religious believers and the rest of society. They are all violations of the basic principle for religion in society: you are free to practice your religion as long as in doing so you do not significantly infringe on the rights of others.

As I noted in my previous post on the subject, burning ghost money is very harmful to the environment. Aside from being a waste of resources, it contributes to climate change and when the usual varieties of ghost money are used, it adds harmful chemicals to the air. While some people may sincerely believe that it is something they have to do, that belief doesn’t them the right to seriously harm everyone else’s environment in the process. Either find a way to do it without harming the environment (such as by “burning” virtual ghost money), or don’t do it all.

The efforts in some US states to pass so-called “religious freedom” laws in effort to make it possible for businesses to discriminate against some people (particularly gay couples) for supposedly religious reasons create a similar situation. While people are free to believe that their religion doesn’t allow same sex marriage (and individual religions are free to recognize or not recognize particular types of marriage), that doesn’t mean that they can discriminate in their business dealings. Some conservatives, in justifying these laws, have raised a false analogy, saying that forcing wedding photographers or bakeries offering wedding cakes to treat same sex couples who request their services the same as straight couples is equivalent to forcing Jewish deli owners to sell bacon. Of course it is not the same at all; any business can choose what services or products it wants to offer, but it cannot deny those services or products to some on the basis of their sexual orientation. Or for other reasons – if these “Christian” wedding service providers were truly so determined to follow Biblical strictures, they should also be trying to deny services to people on second marriages. For that matter, as many opponents of these laws have pointed out, once you open the door to using religion as a reason to discriminate, some people will start trying to find religious justifications for discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, or other reasons. Once again, no one’s exercise of their religion should give them the right to infringe on the rights of others. If you choose to be a wedding photographer, you can’t discriminate against certain couples. If you choose to be a doctor, you can’t discriminate against certain patients (like the doctor who refused to accept a lesbian couple’s child as a patient). If that is too difficult for you, chose another profession.

It is this principle that makes the Hobby Lobby decision so idiotic – well, that and the absurdity of the idea that a corporation can have religious beliefs. While the owners of a company are free to practice their religion, when doing so interferes with the rights of others (in this case their employees), then they cannot impose their beliefs on the latter. If you think abortion is bad, don’t have an abortion. If you think, contrary to the medical facts, that certain forms of birth control are the same as abortion, then you are free to retain your delusions. But you can’t deny your employees access to necessary medical treatment on that basis (not to mention the fact that if they truly cared about reducing abortion rates, they should be trying to make obtaining contraception easier, not more difficult).

Another ridiculous aspect of the fundamentalist mentality behind the “religious freedom” laws and efforts to escape contraception mandates is how so many right-wing Christians moan about persecution in the process. Despite such claims, requiring that LGBT people be treated equally or making contraception part of a health plan does not interfere in any way with anyone’s private practice of their religion. Nor are restrictions on overtly religious actions and symbols in public contexts part of any kind of a “war” on Christianity. The truth is, it is precisely because Christianity still has such a dominant position in American society that we have to be particularly careful about how much it is allowed to enter into the public sphere. For example, when players at a school sporting event have a “voluntary” prayer, this is still problematic, because in the majority of schools in the US, Christians vastly outnumber everyone else. If a few Muslim or Buddhist students held a prayer ceremony before a game, the rest of their classmates are unlikely to feel any pressure to join. But if a team only has one or two students who are not Christians, they will be made to feel extremely uncomfortable if everyone else joins in a prayer. Of course to be fair this means that any such activities have to be banned, regardless of what religion is involved or whether they represent a minority. But it is clear that such a ban would not constitute persecution of Christian students but on the contrary it would provide necessary protection of the rights of non-Christian students.

Lest anyone doubt the strength of peer pressure, especially for adolescents, I will give an example. When I was in my early teens, my family attended a conservative Methodist church mostly attended by upper middle class, wealthy white people, most of whom were almost certainly conservative and right wing (in any event, the church library was full of literature with a decidedly right wing bent). I went to a Sunday school class for my age which was full of rather stuck up preppie kids and taught by a young man and young woman with a very fundamentalist approach to Christianity. I always felt rather uncomfortable, for numerous reasons; I was a little late in hitting my growth spurt, so I was smaller than the others, as well as being a little geeky, a bit less well off, and attending a different school (I believe most of the others either went to private school or went to one of the local suburban public schools, while my public school was in the city). In one class, they asked us to vote on which sin we thought was worse, murder or homosexuality. Now at this time I was still fairly conservative myself. I supported Reagan, the Republican party and virtually all the right wing political positions that I mostly abhor now. I was fairly homophobic and as much as I might hate to admit now, I did think of homosexuality as sinful. But even then there was no way I thought it was as bad as murder. From the little I remember, my guess is we were supposed to raise one hand for murder and the other for homosexuality, and I also have the impression that the girls and boys voted separately. In any case, most of all of the girls voted for murder as the worse sin. I was going to do the same, but all the other boys raised their hands for homosexuality as the worse sin, so, I am ashamed to admit, after some hesitation I did the same for fear of how my vote would be interpreted. Of course the teachers, after putting us through this reprehensible exercise, said that in truth all sins were equal in God’s eyes, though if all they wanted was to teach that, it hardly seems necessary to make everyone vote, not to mention the questionable choice of “sins” to chose from (why not murder and theft, say, or coveting your neighbor’s wife and taking God’s name in vain?). In hindsight, it is easy to say that I should have had the courage to vote what I really thought, and even the me of today would be tempted to lecture my younger self about how terrible it was to even passively support the absurd notion that homosexuality is worse than murder or even a sin at all. But frankly, while I’d like to think that if I could go back in time I’d have the courage to stand up and reject the whole premise, probably if I was stuck in the body and mind of my teenaged self, the best that I could manage would be to change my vote, and even that not without some discomfort. So I can easily imagine how hard it must be for a non-Christian teenager in a school full of Christians, if the latter are frequently engaging in “voluntary” religious activities.

On a related note, if any proof is required that Christians are not only not persecuted but still have an unreasonable prominence, we need look no farther than the fact that it would be extremely difficult if not impossible for an openly agnostic or non-believing individual to be elected US President, and it is even quite difficult for an atheist to win election on a local level. It was only recently that I learned that, in clear contravention of the US Constitution (which specifically bans any religious test for office) and the clear intentions of the founders, some states still officially require that anyone running for believe in a Supreme Being. Even aside from this, there are still many people who would not vote for anyone who openly admitted to being a non-believer, no matter how well qualified they are otherwise.

But to return to my original theme, another example of religious people imposing on others through the practice of their religion is how some Muslim countries ban items like alcohol, pork (though I am against eating either pigs or cattle myself, mostly for environmental reasons), and pornography – for that matter, the restrictive attitudes of many Western countries toward pornography and sex work can be traced to Christians imposing their moral standards on the society – as well as the violent reactions of some Muslims toward images of Muhammed. Here, again, while the believers are free to avoid doing things that their religion forbids, or that they think it forbids (as I have noted in the past, the whole idea that Islam forbids images of Muhammed is somewhat questionable, and Islamic images of Muhammed are not unknown), but they have no right to forbid others from doing these things, unless there are rational, non-religious grounds for doing so, such as banning the consumption of pork on ethical grounds (after all, pigs are quite intelligent and the way they are raised and slaughtered in factory farms is inhumane).

In conclusion, religion can never be an excuse for behavior that is harmful to others (such as burning ghost money) or for infringing on the rights of others (by discriminating against them or forbidding them from doing things that are banned by a particular religion). Rather than expending their energy in efforts to infringe on the rights of others, religious people would be much better off attempting to demonstrate the superiority of their religion by exemplary behavior, which in addition to kindness and charity includes the tolerance of and indeed active support for the rights of others even when the latter engage in behavior that contravenes their personal beliefs.

World News Briefs: Israel, Singapore, Yemen and Iran

A few weeks ago, Israel had a parliamentary election, and once more, the wrong side came out on top. Benjamin Netanyahu had already shown himself to be a poor and even dangerous leader, seriously damaging the prospects for peace with the Palestinians by settlement expansion in the West Bank in defiance of world opinion and causing great suffering in Gaza, not only by getting into an avoidable war and using disproportionate force, but also by keeping a harsh blockade up that has kept Gazans in great poverty. He added further a black mark to his name by going to give a politically motivated speech to the US Congress a few weeks before the election at the behest of Republican leaders in a major violation of diplomatic protocol, doing significant harm to US-Israeli relations. Finally he clinched his negative reputation by sucking up to far right Israeli voters in the last days before the election, repudiating his past (admittedly lukewarm and superficial) support for a two state solution and making a blatantly racist attack on Israeli Arabs, urging right wing Israelis to get out and vote because the Arabs were voting "in droves" (as some pointed out, one has to wonder what Netanyahu's reaction would be if some right wing politician in Europe urged their followers to the polls with a warning that "Jews are voting in droves"). Yet this turn to the far right allowed him and his Likud party to win votes away from other right wing parties, giving them the largest share of seats and therefore a victory over the moderate, pro-peace Zionist Union. Even though the right did not actually win more votes than in past elections, they will once again form the government, dimming prospects for any kind of negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians in the next few years. While I still feel that many around the world focus too much on Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and far too little on worse occupations such as China's in Tibet, it's hard not to feel that the US should stop defending Israel in global institutions and that Netanyahu and those who voted for him will deserve most of the rough ride Israel will get internationally over the next few years. The rest of the Israeli populace (many of whom do strongly support peace) don't, but hopefully they can dump Netanyahu before the damage becomes irretrievable.

Here in Asia, a major news item was the death of Lee Kwan Yew, the former long-time leader of Singapore, at the age of 91. He was eulogized by world leaders, including US President Barack Obama (who as a child lived for several years in Indonesia, not too far from Lee's then newly established nation), and Singapore had a big funeral for him. It is certainly true that he was a capable leader and was largely responsible for Singapore's economic success. However, as a piece in the New York Times observed, his record was decidedly mixed. He was essentially an authoritarian ruler and his Singapore was a faux democracy; in fact, despite some improvement in the years since Lee retired as prime minister, it is still far from a true democracy with genuine freedom of speech. Even the fact that his son, Lee Hsien Loong, is the current long-time prime minister is revealing: in this respect, Singapore is not much different from places like martial law Taiwan (where Chiang Kai-shek was succeeded by his son Chiang Ching-kuo) or even North Korea. True, between the two Lees Goh Chok Tong served as prime minister for some time, but even at the time it was commonly known that he was just holding the position until the younger Lee was fully ready to take over - and after all, a similar situation occurred in Taiwan, where while the younger Chiang directly followed his father as KMT party leader, Yan Chia-kan served for a few years as president, though as even more of a figurehead than Goh was in Singapore. More to the point, Lee repressed dissent and ensured his party remained in complete control. Sure, his methods, which his successors have mostly continued, were more mild than those of most other dictators, but they were still blatant. Foreign newspapers and magazines that included articles critical of Singapore had their circulation in the city-state severely cut. Critics of the government were sued in court. When a foreign academic wrote an article talking about an unnamed Southeast Asian state using a "compliant judiciary" to control dissent, the Singapore government sued him in their courts - and (surprise!) won. Residents of public housing estates (a large percentage of Singaporeans) were told that decisions about allocations of funds for repairs and improvements would hinge in part on how high a percentage of the vote the ruling PAP had received at each estate in the latest election. It is no wonder that Lee was admired as a model for rulers like Xi Jinping in China, not exactly something to be proud of, though no doubt Lee, with his paternalistic, autocratic mindset and his "Asian values" nonsense, thought otherwise.

On the other side of Asia, the civil war in Yemen has reached a new level, with Saudi Arabia using air power against those fighting the internationally recognized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who has been forced to flee the country. In addition to the Houthi rebels (who are Shiite, unlike most of the remaining populace, which is Sunni) who forced Hadi out of the capital Sanaa, forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh are helping the rebels against the government in what is clearly a marriage of convenience, as Saleh fought the Houthi for years when he was in power. Saleh himself is bad news, having previously ruled the country for decades, only surrendering power in 2012 under extremely strong pressure from the US, the Saudis, and massive domestic protests. Before he finally gave in, he had peaceful protestors gunned down, reneged several times on tentative agreements for a political transition, and allowed the country to deteriorate into chaos, with he himself eventually being forced to fly to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment after nearly being killed by a bomb attack on his presidential compound (indeed, it is probably that this injury and the several months he had to spend abroad for treatment helped force him to final give in to pressure to step down). It is clear that even now he dreams of regaining power, regardless of the cost to the people of Yemen. Aside from Saleh, the Houthis, and forces loyal to Hadi, there is also Yemen's powerful al-Qaeda branch as well as a secessionist movement in what was once the separate country of South Yemen. All in all, Yemen is now almost as much of a mess as Syria, and the conflict threatens to further inflame that part of the world.

Lastly, the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program are still hitting snags, despite the supposed deadline for an agreement today. Of course any decent agreement will at least make it very difficult for Iran to get nuclear weapons, though the trick is how to do that while allowing them to claim that they did not give up their right to nuclear power, and how to lift (or, as the West has proposed, suspend) sanctions to provide relief to the Iranian people and to strengthen moderate Iranian president Rouhani against hardliners. Of course we know that people like Netanyahu and right-wingers in the US claim the prospective agreement will give away too much to Iran, but they haven't proposed any reasonable alternatives. An example of how laughable (in a scary way) the idea of Ted Cruz as president is seen in the bill that he recently introduced in the Senate to scuttle negotiations, which as his latest newsletter explains, re-imposes previously suspended sanctions, adds new ones, and: "Gives Iran a clear path towards their removal: dismantling their nuclear program in its entirety; removing all centrifuges, relinquishing enriched uranium, and ceasing all research and development of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program." In other words, rather than a compromise solution, he wants a complete surrender on the part of Iran. Whether he is stupid enough to think that they would ever capitulate so completely or it is just that he badly wants another war in the Middle East (as that would be the only way left to prevent an Iranian drive for the bomb if he, Netanyahu and their allies force the Iranians to choose between total surrender and abandoning negotiations entirely) is not clear. Of course, this doesn't mean the West should give Iran everything it wants, either. After all this is a regime which not only suppresses political dissent, it is even trying to force its women to have babies by restricting access to contraceptives, banning sterilization and making it harder for women without children to get jobs. But a negotiated solution means both sides have to compromise, and any agreement that makes it harder for Iran to get nuclear weapons is better than abandoning negotiations entirely, which would almost certainly mean Iran getting the bomb or its opponents starting a war to stop it.

What Is the Capital of Assyria?

In recent weeks the group variously known as ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State or Daesh has perpetrated some of the worst crimes of its short but sordid career by destroying ancient artifacts in a museum in Mosul and ancient ruins in Nimrud and Hatra. However, rather than dwell too much on the depressing destruction wrought by ISIL, I’d prefer to talk a bit about some of the region’s history.

If you’ve seen the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (and if you haven’t, you should), you may recognize the title of this essay as the question from the bridge keeper that tripped up Sir Robin (the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot) when he attempted to cross the Bridge of Death. But unlike Sir Robin (and, it is probably safe to say, most other people), I actually knew the answer to the question the first time I watched the movie – or at least I knew a couple of possible answers to the question. In the many centuries when Assyria was a powerful independent state, it had several capitals. The two that I had long been familiar with and so leapt to mind when I heard the bridge keeper’s question were Assur (also spelled Ashur) and Nineveh; a third, Nimrud, was recently in the news for tragic reasons due to the senseless destruction visited on it by ISIL, and there was at least one other significant one. To be sure, the name Assyria was used for various political entities long after the destruction of the ancient Assyrian Empire (the name is still used of an ethnic group in the region), and without looking it up I have no idea what their capitals were. But it is ancient Assyria and its capitals that have the most historical prominence.

Ashur was the center of the Assyrian kingdom that first appeared in the 3nd millennium BCE. Though kings occasionally moved the capital away temporarily in later centuries, Ashur was the capital of Assyria for most of its history, and remained the country’s most important religious center and burial site for most of Assyria’s kings even when the capital was moved away permanently at the peak of Assyrian power. The Assyrians were a Semitic people, like many other ancient peoples of West Asia, such as the Akkadians, the Amorites, the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Hebrews and the Arabs. The Assyrian kingdom waxed and waned in power many times over its long existence, though each successive peak was higher than the last. Assyria first appeared in the mid to late 3rd millennium BCE, though little is known of its early history. It first became a regional power in the period around 2000 BCE to 1800 BCE (the so-called Old Assyrian Empire), not long before Hammurabi reigned in Babylon, and in the same era Assyrian merchants had a trading settlement in central Anatolia from which they traded with local kingdoms such as that of the Hittites. Historians have learned a great deal about the ancient Middle East from the documents they left behind (some of which I saw last month in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums). After several centuries of decline, Assur was once again the center of a powerful Assyrian kingdom from the 14th to the 11th century BCE (the Middle Assyrian Empire).

Assyria's final and greatest period of strength began around 900 BCE with the rise of what later historians have sometimes called the Neo-Assyrian Empire. One of the important early kings of this era, Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE), was the one who moved the capital from Ashur to the city of Kalhu (called Calah in the Bible), which the Arabs in later centuries gave the name Nimrud. Several of my books have pictures of some of the monuments, sculptures and reliefs installed there by Ashurnasirpal II and his successors, much of which presumably have now been destroyed by ISIL, who are so idiotic that they try to compare their destruction of the ancient heritage of humanity with Muhammad's destruction of idols in Mecca, even though in the latter case, for better or for worse, he was trying to end active worship of pagan gods by destroying objects that were contemporary and so at the time had no particular historical value, while the things ISIL is destroying are not worshiped by anyone now but have immense historical value. Not to mention the fact that you'd think they'd have better things to do than engaging wanton destruction, seeing as they are in a war that they currently seem to be losing. But I digress....

Kalhu (or Nimrud) remained the Assyrian capital for over 150 years, and major Assyrian kings like Shalmaneser II and Tiglath-pileser III built palaces there (indeed, the later king Esarhaddon also built a palace there, even though by then the capital had been moved), though as noted earlier kings from Ashurnasirpal II on also continued to build and be buried at Assur. Sargon II (721 - 705 BCE) moved the capital to a new city he built called Dur-Sharrukin (meaning Sargon's Fortress). This site, now called Khorsabad, has reportedly also been damaged or destroyed by ISIL. Dur-Sharrukun was only the capital for the reign of Sargon II, as after his death his son Sennacherib moved it to what is probably the most well-known of Assyria's capitals, Nineveh.

Nineveh was already an old city when it became Assyria's capital, but under Sennacherib and his successors Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal it became the largest city in the world at that time and the center of the biggest empire so far in history. In the 7th century BCE Assyria reached the height of its power, ruling or dominating not only all of Mesopotamia but also Syria, Cilicia (the southeast corner of Anatolia), Palestine and even briefly the delta region of Egypt. The Assyrian Empire and its kings have a reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty which is not entirely undeserved. Of course, most ancient empires were founded on harsh rule of their subjects, so the Assyrians were hardly unique in this regard. But their own reliefs often make a particular point of showing such things as the impaling or torture of defeated enemies, and they made frequent use of mass deportations of conquered peoples (most notoriously the so-called "ten tribes" of the kingdom of Israel, but they were just one of many groups that was treated this way), an effective but cruel method of control. On the other hand, they also created a highly efficient governmental structure. The efficient Assyrian mail system would later be adopted by the Persians, and later empires also made use of other elements of the Assyrian empire's administrative system. Ashurbanipal also created the greatest library that the world had yet seen, collecting many thousands of texts, including more than 10,000 cuneiform tablets, from all over the empire and covering over two millenia of Mesopotamian history back to the days of Sumer and Akkad (Ashurbanipal himself was supposedly able to read Sumerian and Akkadian, even though by that time Assyrians spoke their own dialect of Aramaic). Indeed, much of what we know of Mesopotamian history comes from the texts recovered in modern times from Ashurbanipal's library.

But the harshness of Assyrian rule eventually caused the empire's subject peoples and neighbors to rebel and attack it. A coalition of peoples led by the Babylonians under their new Chaldean ruler Nabopolassar and the Iranian Medes eventually defeated Ashurbanipal's successors, sacking Ashur in 614 BCE and destroying Ninevah and Kalhu in 612 BCE, bringing the Assyrian Empire to a final, crushing end. But despite the destruction wrought by the victors (who despite a brief period of glory under rulers such as Nabopolassar's son, the famous Nebuchadnezzar, would be conquered by the Persians under Cyrus a few decades later), substantial ruins remained, even aside from artifacts hauled away by later rulers such as the lamassu (winged bull men) we saw in the museum in Istanbul. But now thanks to ISIL, much that had survived for thousands of years, in Nineveh as well as Kalhu and Dur-Sharrukun, has now been destroyed, as have later ruins such as the well-preserved Seleucid-Parthian city of Hatra. We can only hope that ISIL is defeated before they do any more damage to our common heritage.

Lightning Tour of Eastern Europe

Since I began this blog in 2009, I have consistently managed to post something (even if it was only a few links to things elsewhere on the Internet) at least twice a month. This month is an exception, however, chiefly because I was traveling for most of the month (and in the week before my departure I was far too busy to post anything). I have only been back for a few days and so have not had time to write an account of our trip (I traveled with my family and a few of my wife's colleagues), but here is a very brief summary of the places we visited.

Istanbul, Turkey: This was a transit stop on our original itinerary, but since we were passing through, I wanted to stop for a few days, and I'm glad we did. We were there three days, which was too little even to explore all the top sites as thoroughly as they deserve, but at least we were able to see the most important ones, such as the Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofia), and we even briefly crossed over to the Asian side by ferry. This is definitely near the top of my list of places I'd like to go back to.

Budapest, Hungary: This was our chief destination, as a friend who had invited us to come was studying there, though altogether we were only there about four days (three initially and one at the end). It was a very pleasant city with some nice sites, and it seems like it would be one of the better places to live in Eastern Europe, as it's nice, has plenty of good restaurants and shops, and yet is not too expensive. Regrettably, it currently has a rather bad right-wing government. We stopped to talk to a few brave protesters who are camping out in the square next to the parliament building until the current prime minister, Viktor Orban, is gone (we wished them good luck).

Krakow, Poland: We were only here for a little over a day, mainly because some in our group wanted to visit nearby Auschwitz. That was interesting but rather depressing (most of the people who really need to see it unfortunately won't go). I preferred Krakow itself, which has a very well preserved old town that is a nice place for wandering around in.

Prague, Czech Republic: We were here for about three days as well. This was also a pleasant place with a lot of interesting sites. Fortunately, though it's a bit more touristy than Budapest, it wasn't as much so as I feared. Aside from interesting places to see, it had a lot of nice little restaurants and shops. The only notable downside was that the middle of the old town square had been taken over by a noisy, over-the-top propaganda show sponsored by the Chinese government for Chinese New Year. Overall, Prague is definitely worth a visit, as are the other places we visited on this trip.

While we flew to and from Budapest, via Hong Kong and Istanbul on the way there and via Istanbul and Singapore on the way back (aside from our extended stop in Istanbul on the way out, we went to downtown Singapore for a few hours during our long layover there), we traveled by bus from Budapest to Krakow and by train from Krakow to Prague and from Prague to Budapest (the former overnight), so we did get a bit of a look at the countryside. We also passed through Slovakia on the first and third of these journeys, and the bus from Budapest to Krakow actually made a rest stop outside of Banská Bystrica, so we did set foot in Slovakia, if only for about ten minutes. If we ever get a chance to go back to that part of the world, I hope we will be able to take time to explore each of these countries in more depth.