Absurdity, Allegory and China

“Ground zero is hallowed ground to Americans,” Elliott Maynard, a Republican trying to unseat Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat, in West Virginia’s Third District, said in a typical statement. “Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?” ( G.O.P. Seizes on Mosque Issue Ahead of Elections)

Elliott “Spike” Maynard is running for a seat in the U.S. Congress as a representative from West Virgina. Spike, “a strong conservative voice” – or so it says on his campaign website (ilikespike.org) – is a recent convert to the GOP. He used to be a Democrat as well as having been a former West Virgina Supreme Court Justice. I would think it’d be tough sledding trying to reason with any justice who could utter (even think!) the sentence, “Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?” as a position for disallowing the building of a mosque in Lower Manhattan? What a fundamental lack of respect for the intelligence of the good folks of West Virginia. Using the “Let’s be just like them” argument is totally nonsensical. Someone ought to let Spike know that he’s off the rails on this one, that what he, in fact, said, is that we need to be just like those folks in Mecca. U.S. history has mostly not been about that sort of thing, though we have been known to intern citizens of Japanese ethnicity, and there is still the continuing legal/moral dead zone of Gitmo, which we were once promised would have been closed a good six months ago.

This fabricated partisan political offensive (see A CNN anchor expresses the crux of “mosque” opposition) has been classically fumbled by the Democrats, who have been blindsided once again by the dull-eyed, mean flank of the ever-juggling right. And now that it’s gotten a few more sharp teeth, they all want to feed on the politically visualized carcass. Even a guy like Spike. Especially a guy like Spike! A former judge with the reasoning skills of a toddler with a loaded gun is a characteristic that has indelibly marked the post-Watergate GOPs, though they ramped up from six shooters to automatic weapons under the Congressional reign of Newt Gingrich in the 90s.

To put it very bluntly, the “ground zero mosque” is a constitutional legal issue, not a political one.When a vote grubbing fool like Harry Reid allows himself to be pulled into the fray by declaring whether or not he is for or against it, thinks it’s a good or a bad idea, is inconsequential. A politician’s opinion doesn’t matter in this scrum, and to declare your feelings, one way or another, is a very rookie move. The only answer to the question regarding the expansion of the Manhattan mosque is, “It’s a constitutional issue that, most likely, can only be changed by a constitutional amendment. So, if you don’t want a mosque in your neighborhood, work on a constitutional amendment that will undo the Establishment Clause. See how that one flies for you.” My bet is that it will be the proverbial lead balloon. But if the Dems are going to use that strategy they need to speak it as if they mean it, which means that they will actually have to mean it: speaking with fortitude, confidence and belief, rather than their default running-scared mutterings.

My sense is that someone/group could sue to stop the construction, but I don’t see how this could ever really go anywhere, short of amending the constitution, that, as I said, would more than likely fall into the sea. (The last time they tried an amendment, they couldn’t even give women equal rights. Of course, discriminating against a single religion may be right up the “average American” alley, which speaks heaps to the American education system.) If this were ever brought before the right leaning Supreme Court of the United States, it is a relative no-brainer. Even speechless Clarence Thomas might actually be forced to utter a nay. But it is highly unlikely that a case like this would even be accepted by the Supreme Court, since it is pretty clear that what is good for Muslims would also have to be good for Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Melvin the Broom Guy who’s started his own church in the strip mall under the overpass.

But there will always be people like the former judge and current candidate Spike Maynard of Tug Valley, West Virgina, who just got his name in the New York Times. But think about this one Spike (Sarah, Mitch and Newt): What if the mosque was, instead, a Catholic church. Given the seemingly unending tales of child sexual abuse, would Newt Gingrich, a recent convert to Roman Catholicism, be willing to campaign against the expansion of a cathedral within the boundary of what is perceived as hallowed ground? There is no more hallowed ground than the bodies of our children, many of whom have been horrifically victimized and have had their lives shattered by the overpowering criminal weaknesses of certain twisted clergy. Would the outrage extend to include the community of Roman Catholics? Spike ought to be more concerned with some of his Christian statemates who secretly meet in little back road buildings and handle poisonous snakes as a test of their faith (as well as God’s), despite the local laws agin it. Wait until the NYT catches up with that bag of rattlers. How will the good Spike handle that? With more gems of fractured reasoning and bone-headed idiocy, I’m sure. But he may score big again and get his name in the New York Times. And that plays real good in the holler, especially at ‘lection time.

The last two mornings have seen capital sunrises in the capital city, and below are a few photos of Beijing architecture from both mornings, shortly after sunrise. (Click on each photo for a larger version that opens in a lightbox.)

The National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, CN - August 16, 2010 5:54 AM

The east end of the National Centre for the Performing Arts & the back of the Great Hall of the People - August 16, 2010 5:54 AM

CCTV Headquarters Bldg. from Zhenzhi Lu, August 15, 2010 6:36 AM

Jianwai SOHO, Guomao, August 15, 2010 5:46 AM

Yesterday (August 11, 2010) morning I waded through the mess masquerading as Beijing air down to the CCTV Headquarters project to see if the rumors, via Weibo, of the demolition of the TVCC were true. Was the building about to be dismantled as the rumor hinted. I am happy to report that I still don’t know, though there was much activity on site, as well as many workers milling about at the north gate on Chaoyang Lu, an uncommon sight over the past year-and-a-half. Many of them were, of course, interested in my camera, which started some conversations. Had I ever been inside? Would I like to go in and have a look (construction humor, since there was no way I was getting past the security guys) – one guy said he’d carry me in, no one would see. Laughs all around. And then I asked the unaskable: “Is this place coming down?” which moved the conversation into the ting bu dong (I don’t understand what you’re saying!) territory, and as they filed through the gate into the CCTV sanctum,I laughed, they laughed, we all laughed: Ting bu dong.

My sense is that the demolition work is actually (finally) the gutting of the building in order to proceed with substantive renovation not rebuilding as the rumor suggested.  And as I understand it, the renovation work should take 2-3 years. Below find several photos from yesterday near the project, a day I normally would not have gone to shoot this place once again. (If you click on the photos they will take you to larger, clearer versions in a Flickr lightbox, a vast improvement over what Flickr was for much too long.)

Man on a trike, the 402 and traffic on the East Third Ring Rd. --August 11, 2010 9:46 AM

Layers of Civilized Chaoyang, from the foreground office of Xanadu, an upscale develpoment that has displaced nearly everyone in Hujialou Xi, to the TVCC and the CCTV Headquarters Bldg. in the background. The manga-ed billboard in the mid-range, right, is compliments of people who have no idea of just how much they don't know. --August 11, 2010 11:03 AM

It is what it is: a man on a crane, the CCTV Headquarters Building with funny helodeck beanie and the Bad Air of Beijing. --August 11, 2010 10:47 AM

Man on a porch in Hujialou Xi. He is either a worker who is squatting or the last holdout in the midst of the development of Xanadu, an upscale development north of the CCTV Headquarters project. This lone building has stood in defiance of the gentrification that has leveled the rest of Hujialou Xili (and will eventually consume the whole Hujialou area) with the former residents displaced to the outskirts of the huge and very sprawling capital of the Kingdom --August 11, 2010 11:18 AM

Strangely (and familiarly) patterned wind-filled rag - an IOU? - snagged in the concertina wire on the north side of the CCTV Headquarters project's razored perimeter, with the TVCC in the background. --August 11, 2010 11:48 AM

Woman on a tricycle in Hujialou --August 11, 2010 11:25 AM

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Update, August 13, 2010, 8:43 AM
Here is an article from the Strait Times (Singapore): Workers rebuilding TV tower

"H-A-S ... A-N-Y-B-O-D-Y ... S-E-E-N ... S-A-M ... L-O-W-R-Y?"

The Television Culture Centre, Beijing, CN
August 11, 2010, 11:04 AM
An extremely shitty air day in the business heart of the Kingdom.
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The CCTV Building project has been rife with rumors since before the first hole was dug, and the latest one (via niubi at Twitter) was spotted on Weibao, a Chinese microblogging service. The rough translation (and I stress “rough”) is “Heard that my foolish masters’ big underpants scorched little brother [TVCC] must be demolished tomorrow, it seems like the ruins could not make it, blessed be the new building.”

I have mentioned several times in the past that in the land of little news, rumors – once they’ve reached some unspecified critical mass – have a way of muscling in, for better or worse, and commanding attention until they are either dispelled or deemed true enough to be spun into fool’s gold. This one’s pretty specific when it comes to positing a time: “tomorrow,” which happens to be today. A quick trip over to the site will be enough to find out the truth of it, though there’s nothing to say that it won’t be tomorrow, next week, or never.

I have heard many rumors concerning this project that I have reflexively blown off. The proof, as always, is in the building. The architectural critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, when asked in an interview about dogma and  and theories answered, “I discount the theories and look at the building,” which is also good advice when addressing rumors. I have heard too many concerning the CCTV Building, two of the most recent being that the interior work on the iconic building is being done on the cheap (not surprising if it turns out to be true, given what I can only imagine is a staggering cost overrun for the entire project, due in great part to CCTV burning down the little brother of the complex), and that CCTV is looking for a buyer, as they try to distance themselves from their eponymous, though dead-in-water, flagship.  Is their any truth to any of these rumors? I have no idea, though they are believable at some level – especially the lack of quality of the interior work if the project is, in fact, on the auction block. If CCTV were actually able to pawn it off, who would/could possibly buy it? There are so many problems attached to this possibility that I am not going to go down this road more than a single step: What would a new name do to the building’s global high profile and everyone attached to it, given the fact that it is still one of the great architectural works of the fledgling 21st century? Rumor-generated questions of this sort are interesting to play with, though not worth spending too much time with until a for sale sign appears on the strange beanie of a helo deck, which will happen when hell freezes over, allowing George Steinbrenner an opportunity to skate (apologies to Bill “Spaceman” Lee).

“Architecture is surely our greatest physical symbol of the idea of community, our surest way to express in concrete form our belief in the notion of common ground. The way a community builds tells you , sometimes, all you need to know about it’s values.” — Paul Goldberger, Why Architecture Matter

I am not about to skate onto the thin ice of What is architecture and what isn’t?, but Goldberger is a great place for anyone to begin to understand how to answer this question. Though I have only just begun reading this book, it has already sent me off on any number of tangential searches. In the first page of the introduction he gets right to it: “You could say that architecture is what happens when people build with an awareness that they are doing something that reaches at least a little bit beyond the practical.” Simple, yes, but that allows me to look with a keener eye and question what I see out my window here in Beijing.

This morning at the top of the China Daily website the headline that caught my eye was ‘Most homes’ to be demolished in 20 years.

More than half of China’s existing residential structures will be demolished and rebuilt in the coming 20 years, according to a senior researcher from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, a claim that has sparked fresh questions about the short lifespan of Chinese buildings.

Chen Huai, director of the policy research center at the ministry, was quoted on Friday by Southern Metropolis Daily as saying that homes built before 1999 will be dismantled to make way for new development during the next two decades. Chen said some historical relics that deserve protection will be spared the wrecking ball.

I won’t even attempt to address the “historical relics that deserve protection” qualifier, though it is abundantly clear that China’s historical residential architecture in its various vernacular forms, is only included if: 1) someone very close to Heaven did something heavenly while they lived there – though anymore Heaven’s no guarantee; or 2) developers just haven’t gotten to that neighborhood yet – though if you live in one, new or old, you can bet they will be coming.

But both experts and industry watchers have questioned the rapid speed of demolition and reconstruction, suggesting poor building practices and a lack of consistent urban planning, along with a blind pursuit of economic gain on the part of developers, are the real reasons for the relatively short lifespan of buildings.

I keep thinking that at some point a housing market with a physical half-life of a decade can’t possibly sustainable itself, and that somewhere hidden deep within the vaults is The Book of Actual Acountability – currently classified as a state secret – that will eventually show up on Wikileaks and expose the shell game nature of this fraud. A country perpetually Under Construction will eventually have to pay the piper, no matter that the tune will be disconcertingly off-key.

The article also goes on to note that “the average life expectancy of a building in Britain is 132 years and they last around 74 years in the United States,” and that “[i]n China, construction waste comprises 30 to 40 percent of the total volume of urban waste.”

If, as Goldberger suggests, “The way a community builds tells you, sometimes, all you need to know about it’s values,” then what can we say about a system that needs to tear down it’s houses after twenty years?  It doesn’t take a genius to realize that that this is not what “sustainability” is supposed to look like.
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For another good, frank article on low quality construction in China from the China Daily see, Poor construction quality keeps foreign property buyers away which I mentioned a few months ago here.

At the end of June Vanity Fair, in a web exclusive, published Vanity Fair’s World Architecture Survey: the Complete Results.

We asked the world’s leading architects, critics, and deans of architecture schools two questions: what are the five most important buildings, bridges, or monuments constructed since 1980, and what is the greatest work of architecture thus far in the 21st century?

A closer look at the ballots show that the wording was slightly different.

1) My choices [5] for the most important buildings, monuments, or bridges completed since 1980:
2) My choice for the most significant work of architecture created so far in the 21st century:

Though constructed implies completed, completed is a degree more final, suggesting accomplishment, as in mission accomplished.

A closer look at the individual ballots shows that Beijing fared pretty well, with two buildings included in both ballots. The Bird’s Nest received two (2) votes under category 1, while tallying seven (7) under category 2, the highest number of votes of any “architecture created in the 21st century.”

The other Beijing building that received votes in the balloting was the CCTV Building (not the entire project), which received two (2) votes under category 2, the same category that the Bird’s Nest won. What is odd is that the CCTV Building also received three (3) votes under the category 1 “for the most important buildings, monuments, or bridges completed since 1980.” The three votes came from architects Frank Gehry, Eric Owen Moss and Wold D. Prix. The rub is, of course, that the CCTV has not been completed, and is not expected to be completed until sometime next year. Though the exterior is seemingly complete, the interior is still in the process of being finished, and the CCTV staff is still not commuting to Civilized Chaoyang (here and here). Splitting hairs? No, I don’t think so. If it were complete it would be operating as the state-run TV headquarter’s loop. But it is still behind multi-story billboards with workers still reporting everyday fitting it out. Someone ought to tell Mr. Gehry et al.

Gehry ended up with the most mentions in the survey. For more see Architecture in the Age of Gehry, which mentions that the CCTV Building is still under construction. Of the 90 people asked to participate in the survey, only 52 actually submitted their ballots. Koolhaas was not one of them, which is not surprising.

It's 2010! Call home!

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For more on the Vanity Fair article and Frank Gehry see Charlie Rose’s interview with Matt Tyrnauer, the author of the VF piece, which also includes of very moving clip of Philip Johnson’s visit with Frank Gehry to Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

If you don’t know the Global Times you should. Here’s a brief sample from their About Us page:

Global Times particularly focuses on expressing Chinese people’s real feelings, sharing their opinions and standpoints on significant international issues and promoting their understanding of the global views on China.

When I see “Chinese people” and “real feelings” in the same sentence, there’s no question where this one is heading. When I see it on an About Us page I have no question where it’s coming from. Other than to say that I’ve heard the term “nationalistic rag” used on more than a few occasions when the GT is mentioned, I will leave it at that. Well …, almost. The English language edition has been Onion-ed in the past, my personal favorite being Alessandro is a man. He lives in Beijing now.*

Women who have enjoyed Alessandro are 24 percent more profoundly aware that light years are a measure of distance rather than time when compared to their less attractive counterparts, according to a recent study by the Space Probe Italy Center. Alessandro has loved many women, very much.

Alessandro goes on to answer the age-old question: “If unused for a long time, can vaginas really grow closed?” Suffice it to say that his answer was hilarious. I apologize for not being able to provide the link, but it was taken down after it made the Twitter/Facebook rounds, which, no doubt, boosted its page stats through the roof, though it probably earned the clueless editor some long weekend classes.

Last week a woman named Sirkka Korpela, a Finn and “former United Nations Ambassador to Bolivia,” wrote a piece for the GT entitled “My visit to Tibet” (h/t to Charlie Custer @ China Geeks, via Twitter). It is hard to know where to start with this one, so it is probably a good idea not to get started at all. Here’s a sample:

I had a chance to talk to some educators in Tibet. I asked them about the language used in primary education, weary of the alleged loss of the Tibetan language in the formal education system. I was told the kids learn three languages: Tibetan, Chinese and English! I had thought my own children were something of a special case, as they have been learning French, Spanish and Finnish since they started schooling, but I realize these Tibetan kids will be as internationally literate as my children are, with all the same opportunities that will provide them in life.

Believe me, it gets better. I have no further comment on this other than to say that Ms. Korpela has worked for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), as well as working in the private sector advising “large multinational companies, such as Royal Dutch/Shell and Newmont Mining, on political and socio-economic development and corporate social responsibility issues.” In 2005 she was an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs teaching Corporate Social Responsibility. A search of the current faculty and staff doesn’t include Ms. Korpela. I imagine over the last week they’ve been breathing a sigh of relief.

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*Update
The GT column was known as Ask Alessandro. As mentioned below in a comment by Choudoufu, Richard at The Peking Duck posted the full piece under the post Ask Alessandro? Another good link to read concerning Alessandro is The impending death of Ask Alessandro at the Heart of Beijing blog. Both of the aforementioned blogs are blocked within the PRC.

(I am stepping away from the China mode in this post, other than implying that China is one of the players/variables in the future ‘development’ of Afghanistan. So if you’re looking for a straight shot of China, tune in next time. PS: I am moving to Beijing in one week, and my writing has been indirectly proportional to the packing. Books!!!)

Dan Harris from the China Law Blog has been Twittering on Afghanistan for a while now, and I should follow his lead and not take it onto my blog, but here I am not following my own advice. All the talk and news of Afghanistan has set me to reviewing some of my writings from late October 2001, forty days after 9/11 and two weeks after the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan.

That the U.S. is still there in the middle of June 2010 is, unfortunately, not surprising. Now that this war has been designated the longest in U.S. history, the recent acknowledgement that Afghanistan is a mineral Midas cache worth “1 trillion USD” is bound to ensure that it will continue ad infinitum with or without the U.S. Afghanistan as a pot of gold has been known but under-reported for several years. The Obama teams’ pre-election promise to get the U.S. out of this mess seems to have been hijacked by winning the keys to the White House then learning what’s at stake in Taliban country. It has now taken a Weyland Yutani “Building Better Worlds” turn.

In October 2001 I was a member of a Listserv, with members in NYC, others in NOLA, Texas, Philadelphia, New Zealand and several other places throughout America and the world; I was in China. Most, if not all, of the talk in that post-9/11 period had to do with the event itself, as well as the initial official combat response, which was the bombing of Afghanistan, an action I was opposed to. My opinions were minority to say the least. Some in the group asked questions, which I was not shy answering. The questions below are from two or three different people, though, for privacy sake, I have not included their names. I believed then that going into Afghanistan was a mistake, and in light of what unfolded, see it as the first step by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney to committing war on Iraq. Their decision to fail at Tora Bora was the indication that they weren’t really interested in Afghanistan. If they knew then what is known now I cannot imagine that Saddam Hussein would have seemed all that important. They would have settled down in their counting house and waited for their bags of money.

I begin by asking a question. Questions addressed to me are in italics.
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Do you believe Donald Rumsfeld when he says that the bombing has only killed four innocents (October 21, 2001), and that the other guys are just a drooling pack of dog-ass liars. This whole thing feels like a bad rerun of the Republican Guards getting to do war. I keep seeing the same old minds in different bodies. Am I the only one who thinks that dealing back planeloads of death is a bad way to go?

>Can you suggest an alternative?

Yes. A very simple one: not “dealing back planeloads of death.” Unfortunately, as obvious and simplistic as that might seem, it does not seem to have been an option on the table. By saying that “It is bad, but I still feel it is necessary,” is accepting the fact that there will be innocents killed, as you stated in another post on this topic:

>It is horrible that innocent civilians are dying. I wish it were not so. I am certain the military also wishes it was not so, but collateral damage was expected from the very beginning.

To say that it was expected means that at some point it became acceptable. And where is that point? If we accept one, do we accept two? Do we say one hundred is tolerable? What about 6,000? Acceptable? What about 6 million? At what number does the acceptance of the killing of innocents become unacceptable?

Is the acceptance of the death of an Afghan innocent rationale for the unacceptable death of  American innocents? Acceptance — not feeling horrible, but actually accepting the “collateral damage was expected” argument  (and by saying that it is “necessary” is acceptance) — is a tacit, affirmative nod that, yes, we will do this once again, and that, yes, it will come out as it always has: Badly. To say that it is necessary is giving in.

The next question, I suspect, will be, “Well, what would you do?” And at this point all I can say it, “Not bomb.” As humans we have come far in the deadliness of the designs of our conventional weaponry, though, in an odd way, their scaled-up “effectiveness” has probably only kept stride with the corresponding rate of population growth. Perhaps it’s time to step back and look for different solutions to the same old problems that have dogged us since Big Cane smote Lil’ Abel. I wonder if the Beltway drones will set aside a piece of the budget for that.

>But this alternative that you suggest does not stop terrorist attacks.

Will the dumping of thousands of tons of explosives on Afghanistan stop terrorist attacks?  I, for one, am not about to take that leap. All I am suggesting is that the same bad solution is being applied over and over again, and all we do is dig a deeper hole. What we are experiencing now is just the latest relentless sequel. Each and every one of “us” can point our fingers, while each and every one of “them” can point theirs, too, and we can all trace a line right back to a grunting congregation of rival apes at some nameless waterhole, the Clark/Kubrick bone as weapon scene. What we are experiencing now is what we’ve been experiencing all along, and this is what we get for not seeing our history as a continuum of bad decisions. We have done this before. We have watched it go badly. And I am thoroughly convinced that this one will go the same way. It always does. It has for as long as we have written records. Can we honestly think that violent reactionary responses to equally violent reactionary responses to a long list of previous actions will solve it this time? It’s as if we keep putting our money on the same bad horse that we just don’t want to admit is always on the way to the glue factory. Why do we keep doing it? Because it’s easy. But when does someone finally say, “You know, this doesn’t seem to be working. Why don’t we try something different?” It’s a long-shot, but given that the odds-on historic favorite has turned out to be a perennial loser, I think it’s time we start living up to our own PR as human beings, as homo faber, and try to fabricate a better response, a better peace, something that will endure the periodic violent aberrations that happen, which, I have no doubt, will continue to happen.  Dropping bombs isn’t going to do it. All we are doing is prepping the next generation of the powerless disenfranchised, who will turn to extreme measures to be heard. Some eight year old in NYC is trying to deal with the tragedy that Mom or Dad, or Mom and Dad are not ever coming home. And so is some eight year old in Afghanistan. That, to me, is unacceptable. How do we save them from the numbingly mindless path of the same old pain? By dropping more bombs? At what point does it stop making sense?

The solution, if there is one and if it really is being sought – a strong argument can easily be made that it isn’t – can only be found by stepping out of the same pointless script. This calls for creative solutions. But as long as the highly invested, politically interested are making the decisions we are not going to get beyond the next bombing event. That is not a hard one to understand. To look for a solution in the Bush camp is futile. I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that the number 2004 keeps coming up in the informing process. And it would be coming up now if Al Gore – who, lets not forget, crossed the aisle in 1990, giving Big Bush the go ahead for the Persian Gulf mess – was at the wheel. The overwhelming majority of politicians have proven time and again that they are not capable of making the leaps that are needed to actually take us into new territory. I think we need to look at our country’s actions and ask if what we are doing is going to move us in the direction of peace. Peace through war…well, it hasn’t worked yet.

>The term “dumping” suggest something other than the effort to be selective of targets.

Okay, substitute “dropping” for “dumping.” It changes nothing. They still fall, they still explode and they still do what bombs often do — end up in unintended places. You can quibble about my use of “often,” though “once” for some is often enough.

>I think this war is a first step in a number of steps that will, I hope, greatly reduce the number and size of terrorist attacks.

Since the boys at the table are doing what they and you think is necessary, I hope that both you and they are right. And since my opinion is obviously an overwhelming minority one, they will do it no matter what I think.

>I don’t see this as the same bad solution being applied over and over again. Wars have their own history and they have evolved along with everything else.

As best I can tell, they only evolve as far as the weapons used to fight them have.

>It must be I have missed something, but the only alternative I’ve read from you is just to stop without any other suggestion in place to hold back the terrorist threat.  Surely in addition to stopping you have something else in mind?  Or do you think the terrorist will just stop?  Or do you think we should capitulate and give up our existence?

I don’t have an answer, nor am I asking you to give up your existence. I am in the process of struggling along with everyone else on this one. I can only state that I feel this bombing is very wrong. This view seems to make some folks very uncomfortable. That is not my intent. I believe that it will not get us what some might think it will, and I also believe that the outcome, in the long view, will have the opposite effect.

I am disappointed in the “Peace through war” response given by another. We are still doing it as we always have, and at a greater clip than probably ever before. So when can we expect the next long period of peace? Does the carnage have to register at a certain level on the butchery scale before peace finally breaks into blossom? Are we close yet? Keep me posted.
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>I am trying to see, but I do not see well.  I have so many questions. Mostly, reading and re-reading this post, my question is:  How do you do it?  If you could go back in time to the afternoon of September 11 — the horrors have happened — and you were the duly elected leader (or were by some god magic in power), what specifically would you do?

I have run that one over and over and I just don’t know. My feeling is that I would have done pretty much exactly what was done on that day: try to do whatever could be done to save anyone from the wreckage of the buildings. The rescue effort that was undertaken is beyond my ability to express. What had to be done was done by ordinary people making extraordinary efforts. My sense is that at the federal level everyone had to be in a defensive state, to try their best to ensure that more incidents wouldn’t occur. I believe that even George Bush was acting in a way that befit his position. My rub comes in the somewhat distant aftermath. Between the event and the bombing strikes I feel that there was an opportunity to step even more out of script by working at defining a completely creative and radical response to the horror, something that would have even been a surprise to the Arab nations who find themselves caught up in the middle of this all. What that sort of response possibly could have been is hard to know, though I believe that the U.S. has plenty of very intelligent and compassionate people whose collective efforts could have been channeled into forging a new paradigm for a response, one that didn’t include the dropping of bombs on Afghanistan. The general nature of the initial incident was not a surprise. The vehicles of delivery were, but not the potential for destruction. There are enough people from widely different backgrounds to advise us on a different course. My sense, though, is that the course as it unfolded was the only one given serious thought, and it was the only one considered from the outset. Someone was going to die, and that someone will be measured in large numbers to match the numbers in NYC/DC.

But don’t we have to believe that we had an alternative? Because if we don’t we’re playing this game just like we were expected to do by the terrorists. In this sense I feel as if we are following their script. The near future will tell

>I certainly believe “Thou shalt do no murder.”  Yet, I can imagine situations in which killing someone would be the greatest good.

I can too.

>Buddha, Jesus, Confucius, Mohammed all changed the world — and yet the world didn’t change.  What are we to do?

Keep trying, I imagine.
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>I didn’t think you had an alternative, but so many words were set into motion, I was concerned that I might have just overlooked it.  I understand how you feel even if I don’t agree that we should act on such feelings.

Because I don’t have an alternative does not exclude the fact that there isn’t one (aren’t any). I am upset because we, the citizens, continue to drop unimaginably large sums of money into the halls and the hands of the humanistically uncreative, who continue to prove that they are incapable of solving very solvable problems (like society-wide health care), the kinds of problems which involve thinking outside the very limited box of continuous violence. Shouldn’t we be upset? We can get new and “smarter” weapons that seem disarmingly and deceptively bloodless when viewed from the relative safety of our TV screens, though we can’t seem to get newer and smarter non-violent solutions that would necessarily remove those weapons from our lives. Granted, there are seemingly insurmountable obstacles that need to be overcome, but to say that they are impossible to hurdle is to place and accept limits on human intellect that we don’t accept on that very same intellect when it comes to the construction of new weaponry used to slaughter each other. Why? Because it’s easier to kill than not kill. Maybe that’s why the whole “killing” issue is stigmatized in the Big Books of world religions. It is much easier to waste thy neighbor than it is to get along with them. This is not news, though it continues to sell news. Industries are built on this notion.

In my view it’s a question of will. What is necessary to provide for a less violent, safer future is a willingness to be creative in seeking solutions that don’t accept killing as a necessary evil. Being creative means imagining the unimaginable. Anything less is cliche.
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Nearly nine (9) years on and now under the Obama Administration’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan the civilian death rate has soared.

I have just finished reading Googled by Ken Auletta, and I followed it up with James Fallows’ Atlantic Monthly piece, How to Save the News. A lot of good reading here, as well as a much deeper explanation of who and what Google is and what it appears they are doing, though it becomes a bit clearer that they, too, are figuring it out as they go. Though I still intensely dislike the “don’t be evil” motto, I have the sense that they are actually trying to follow that cliche of a guideline. I don’t get the same sense with Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg seems much more shameless than Sergey Brin or Larry Page could ever even imagine. Brin and Page genuinely seem like engineers tackling problems with engineering precision, though there are times when it is obvious that they need to be more understanding of why there are so many who fear that what seems like their good intentions is seen too much of an overreach into human privacy (think the rollout of Buzz which they believed was such a good idea that it didn’t need to be beta tested). I do not have the least sense that Zuckerberg is anyone who can be trusted as being unconsciously too earnest.  I had a Facebook account for several months, and though I enjoyed being in touch with many people I had not been in contact with for a very long time, I still never trusted it. When the last twisted batch of changes hit, I dutifully figured out what I had to do to try to minimize all the possible unwanted exposure. After that battery of changes was made I quit, since I realized I had no faith in the golden hoodie behind the product. I was unlikely to change my mind, even after the inevitable changes – that we knew had to come – finally came. At least for those of us who were paying attention. There seem to be a lot of folks who either don’t care or don’t have a clue about what’s been going on with Facebook, since they’re far too lost in their Facebook.

Commenting on Zuckerberg’s interview with AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid’s Mark Zuckerberg Talks (And Swerves Around) Facebook Privacy reports

Zuckerberg also brought up Facebook’s oft-repeated stat that over 50% of users have adjusted their privacy settings, citing it as evidence that users know what they’re doing (this doesn’t convince me in the slightest — that means nearly 250 million people haven’t touched them).

Wouldn’t you like to see the private video of the Facebook meeting where Mark “I have more money than a mule can shit” Zuckerberg is in the Big Chair surrounded by his minions when he says, “Listen if we keep it opt out only half of them will change their settings, which leaves us with 250 million dumb fucks to take to market.” I don’t have to stretch that far to get here, which is why I scuttled my account.

The next round of slippery changes are just around the corner. My feeling is “Why bother with it anymore?” The last thing I need is to be hooked on FB when they cut the product again.
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I’ve been having much trouble with the internet connection at our flat, which is where I work. It is there about 23 hours and 50 minutes a day, though it drops sometimes two/three times in 10 minutes. Sometimes I can get an an hour or two, but the chance of it holding on all day has been zero for the last four-and-half weeks. If I happen to be using a VPN the loss of connection will require a reboot, though if I am not on a VPN I can pick right up where I left off. My sense is that it is a problem in some “switching box” close to my home, though it has been very effective at being a total pain in the ass. As I write, it has been connected for 1:22:30, though I cannot imagine that it will hold out much longer. My fear is that it is a new strategy to disrupt GFW leaps, but I have no evidence that it is happening to anyone else. That said, here in Tianjin the speeds have been slower than they normally are, which means that the connection sometimes drops to late-90′s dial-up chugs. If there were someone to call, I’d call them. But it’s the Middle Kingdom, and no one wants to answer any questions. About anything.
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Yesterday it was reported that Wen Jiabao, while visiting Japan, went out for an early morning run through a Tokyo park, and at one point asked some of the locals, “Do you know who I am?” Perhaps this is one of those cross-cultural befuddlers, but I found the question a bit strange. This sort of question has the oddness you might pick up in a much younger princeling who, when caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar and faced with a reprimand or punishment, offers up loudly in a wholly threatening tone, “Do you know who my father is?”
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We will be moving at the end of the month to Beijing. Twelve years in its shadow is long enough. Tianjin has been fun, but the fun wore off for us a while ago, and my attempts to rekindle the spark have not been successful. So, we are looking forward to life in the capital city. Just in time to watch the rebuilding of the TVCC, the battered boot-shaped step-child of the CCTV Headquarters Building. And just in case you may have forgotten what it looks like, here’s a reminder:

May 23, 2010 - 6:05 PM