October 29, 2007

The Lives of Others

We watched The Lives of Others yesterday and it was stunningly well made. In fact, I'm having a hard time thinking of something to compare it to. It wasn't flashy, it wasn't sentimental, it wasn't over the top. It was just incredibly well written, directed and acted.

I must admit I really didn't know anything about post war East Germany. The Wall came down when I was in high school - but I can't say I cared much about such things.

Just the other day Nerdstar and I were talking about what the chances are America could ever turn into a place like East Germany was. I know there are those on the far left who think it is under Bush. (I have no desire to debate those with that idea.)

Having read Chinese Lives and having seen The Lives of Others, I'd say we're so far from that sort of oppression. And I hope we're immune from such things. If the constitution failed to protect us, I would pray our general fuck you attitude to people telling us what to do would prevail. Then I see how the idea of global warming has taken over and tries to get us all to change our ways. But as Nerdstar said, how many people have actually changed any behaviors in spite of the non-stop barrage of messages telling us we should?

But we also talked about how hard it would be to go against such extreme oppression once it becomes entrenched. In my younger days I would have said absolutely I would fight. As you get older and you realize that it's not just about you, it's about all the people in your life they'd use against you.

My sense when reading about Chinese people's views of the Culture Revolution in the late 80s was that they mostly tried to just get through it. I don't know that it's ever that many people on either end - the politbureau dickheads, or the informants, or the revolutionaries. It's mostly people in the middle trying to get on with the lives and waiting for things to get better.

Anyway. Seriously, watch The Lives of Others.

Posted by Beth at 08:53 PM in The World
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March 21, 2006

Taiwan

Nerdstar and I sometimes talk about what's going on with China and Taiwan. Partly because it's where she's from, and partly because it's what she's writing and talking about at her job.

For my part, I just never understand why China cares about dominating a little island when it already has billions of people to take care of. And I sometimes laugh that little Taiwan pretty much just gives China the finger and says "leave us alone". (You can see I'm destined for a job with the state department!)

Nerdstar was trying to explain the history of Taiwan to me the other night, but gave up. Now she sends me this link about it. Can't say I understand it much better.

Maybe she'll write more about how it all affected her grandparents!

Posted by Beth at 04:49 PM in The World
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January 15, 2003

Mexico

While I'm posting about the world, here's a look at what our neighbors to the south (that would be Mexico) *grin* have planned for us!

Posted by Beth at 02:38 PM in The World
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Africa and North Korea

I was briefly watching New Hour on PBS last night and caught a story about how one of the countries in Africa was refusing corn from America because it's been genetically modified. I can't imagine being a leader of people and refusing them any kind of food that would prevent them from starving to death. This morning I ran across this article about the bigger picture in Africa.

Mostly it just makes me ever more aware of how lucky I am to have been born in America.

I also found this article this morning about our attempts at diplomacy with North Korea.

Most people don’t understand what President Bush means when he says that we will pursue a “diplomatic solution.”

He doesn’t mean that we’ll negotiate with North Korea. What would be the point of that? They don’t keep their treaties anyway.

The diplomacy that will solve the problem is happening right now – between us and China.

That’s right, China. Because this is China’s problem as much as it is ours.

The only reason North Korea exists as a separate political entity is because in the early ’50s, when UN forces had virtually overrun all of North Korea, China sent a huge army that flung us back south. Only when each army held roughly the territory that had been North or South Korea before the war did the Chinese agree to an armistice.

So what do our negotiations with China consist of?

Cutting through all the diplomatic niceness, here’s what we undoubtedly said to them:

“You’re the ones who kept us from getting rid of the Kim dictatorship 50 years ago. So now it’s your responsibility either to take away their nukes, or get rid of the Kim government and replace it with a sane one.”

To which the Chinese almost certainly replied, “Perhaps we can work something out. You can take the first step by withdrawing all military support from Taiwan. After all, why should we be responsible for North Korea, which isn’t part of China, while you won’t let us take responsibility for Taiwan, which is an integral part of China?”

Our reply: “We will not discuss Taiwan.”

Their reply: “Then we will not discuss North Korea.”

All this was absolutely predictable and led nowhere. Here’s how we raised the ante: “All right. Since you have allowed North Korea to develop and build nuclear weapons, while we have prevented the much-more-technologically-advanced South Koreans from doing so, we have no choice but to level the playing field so that North Korea will not be able to threaten our allies.”

Those options would include:

(1) Stationing tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea ... with the option of placing them under the control of the South Koreans.

(2) An embargo – or even a blockade – of North Korea’s ports, so that China becomes the sole supplier of all goods to North Korea.

(3) Holding China economically responsible by cutting back – or cutting off – trade between the US and China.

None of these options would be tolerable to the Chinese. Putting nukes in South Korea would humiliate the Chinese leadership. Putting them under South Korean command would terrify them.

Economic sanctions against North Korea would force China, whose economy is not all that robust, to assume the huge burden of keeping North Korea afloat the way the USSR did with Cuba for so many years.

As for sanctions against China itself – its economy has become significantly tied to trade with the US. America could trigger a major recession or perhaps even a depression in China, even if we couldn’t persuade other economic powers to join with us.

Now, the Chinese know that none of these options would be painless for us. Stationing nukes in South Korea would provoke massive anti-American demonstrations in that country and in Japan as well.

An embargo against North Korea would be slow and sievelike, while a blockade would be casus belli and lead to confrontations between us and friendly powers.

And a cutback in US-China trade would hurt our economy, too, and there are those who think our own highly-evolved economy is less resilient than China’s more primitive one. (I think, however, that they are wrong.)

But even though the Chinese know that we are reluctant to use any of these options, they also know that President Bush means what he says, and, because he is his father’s son, they believe he will act on his threats even if it means political risks.

And there is another factor that the Chinese leadership always has to keep in mind: the possibility that any of these events might trigger domestic disturbances, a coup or even a revolution within China.

That's just a couple of exerpts, the whole thing is worth reading.

Posted by Beth at 08:52 AM in The World
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January 14, 2003

The Iraqi everyman side of it

This article from the BBC is another must read related to my If/Then post.

The truth is that the overwhelming majority of Iraqi dissidents are an embarrassment to the Left. After enduring misery few of us can imagine, they have discovered that, without foreign intervention, their country won't be freed from a tyrant who matches Stalin in his success in liquidating domestic opponents. Only America can intervene. Therefore an American invasion offers the possibility of salvation.

There's a damnable logic to this that no amount of wriggling can escape. If you say to the Iraqi opposition that America is very selective in its condemnation of dictatorships, they shrug and ask why Iraqis should care. If you say that Iraq shouldn't be liberated from Saddam until Palestinians are liberated from Israeli occupation, they ask if the converse also applies. (It never does, incidentally.) They confront the anti-war movement with the disconcerting thought that there are worse things in the world than George W Bush and American imperialism, and Saddam Hussein and his prison state are among them.

I think this aspect of things (that of the Iraqi people truly being much better off without a dictator in charge, as I would say is true of any country under dictator rule) is far too often left out of any dialogue regarding this impending war.

In Washington, the future of Iraq is ferociously contested. The names of the competitors on either side of the argument prove that you should never believe easy political labels. To the surprise of the simple-minded, Donald Rumsfeld and his supposedly "far-Right" friends in the Pentagon support democracy, while the CIA and the supposedly "moderate" Colin Powell at the State Department hint that they want to replace Saddam with a more compliant dictator.

Mr Blair seems to be with Gen Powell. Ever since Britain created Iraq in the 1920s, the Foreign Office has wanted a kind of apartheid rule by a monarch or dictator from the Arab Sunni minority. The majority of Iraqis, the Shia, have been kept down, along with the Kurdish ethnic minority in the north.

At no point has Mr Blair said he wants dictatorship to end if Saddam is overthrown. The organisers of last month's conference of exiles in London asked the Foreign Office if Mr Blair or Jack Straw would address the assembled delegates. Zaab Sethna, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), told me the men at the FO "laughed in our faces". Our leaders didn't want to waste their time on Iraqi democrats.

Instead of protesting the war, maybe more time and effort should be put into what kind of Iraq there will be after the war.

Posted by Beth at 01:41 PM in The World
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