5/26/2008
Is there a reason why the situation in Myanmar angers me so? It is late May, and on May 2 Cyclone Nargis ripped through the country, likely killing over 120,000 people, and 2.5 million require immediate aid. Only now has the government accepted the idea of genuine aid into the country, after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the country. Even so, no significant aid has—even today—been delivered.
There’s no need here to hash out all the reasons why this is. The military junta, a corrupt cadre of generals who refused to accept the results of a 1990s democratic election, is now infamous for human rights abuses, violations of international agreements, and other atrocities. Some initial attempts by the UN and ASEAN to deliver food found the government taking it for their own uses. And the dozens of US and European ships off the coast are laden with helicopters ready to deliver everything they need.
Contrast this audacity to the healthy and immediate response of China to its recent earthquake in Sichuan, an enormous natural disaster filled with stories of success and optimism. (And contrast this, too, to the 1976 earthquake in China where borders were closed and 250,000 died.)
“Why not just airdrop the aid?” a CNN commentator asked a UN aid coordinator. That would be a violation of Myanmar’s air space, he replied. And, “We prefer to work with the government, if at all possible.”
Nonsense. As hundreds and thousands die each day, clogging the rivers with bodies, every diplomatic mistake is too great. Three weeks have passed as I am writing this with diplomatic touring, diplomatic tea, and diplomatic cordialities hiding the real deaths which are so easily preventable. Sovereignty is not sacred—it must not be.
I could offer international legal justifications for broaching Myanmar air space (how the ICCPR does not allow human rights violations which, through neglect, cause suffering and death, even when a state of emergency is declared, for instance). The bottom line, however, is moral as well as political: a government has an obligation to the welfare of its people. If it fails this obligation, it is no government. And if no legitimate government, no worries about sovereign airspace.
The US has the helicopters ready. Send them in. We could cross borders for worse reasons.
 
In doing so, the US should also go to the United Nations to author a new Universal Declaration of Disaster Relief, to be signed by all nations, an expectation that in the event of catastrophic natural disasters all nations are expected to coordinate with regional and international aid agencies to bring in support within 48 hours. To delay longer is not merely negligence but a crime against humanity.
Under a UDDR, disaster relief will not be turned down and will be coordinated by the most able international agencies available. Signatories would agree that delays would indicate their abdication of host nation status and management of the disaster: the world would take over where the government failed. (And the US could also not repeat its hubris in turning down relief from Cuba following Hurricane Katrina.)
Okay, you sense that I am angry. But the idiocy of Myanmar ruling General Than Shwe (a UN spokesperson said that the government was “not the most enlightened”) is not what puzzles me most. I want to know why I’m angry at this negligence and I do not raise similar ire at the same government’s or Nigeria’s violence against ethnic minorities, at Russia’s declaration that a gay pride parade was “satanic,” the denial of rights of the Chiapas Indians in Mexico, or the innumerable wars in Somalia or the Caucasus.
Is it because when humans attack humans, I am saddened but not surprised—yet when the natural world strikes the innocent I am moved? Am I, then, so jaded by human cruelty, selfishness, and ignorance that I am numbed to it? Am I more moved by an “Act of God” than an “Act of Man”? Or is it that I can’t imagine why anyone would hesitate to help those whose homes have burned or flooded, but can somehow rationalize an Armenia or a Darfur? (That one makes me shudder.)
Is it simply the ferocity, speed, and devastation of the tsunami or wildfire which moves me whereas manmade deaths, however terrible, are dragged out over time and cannot compare in intensity (or attention-deficit news coverage)?
Even now, I don’t know. But it strikes me, that all of these are, in the end, human acts. The Sudanese, Nigerian, and North Korean governments select their policies, perpetuate their crimes with premeditation—just as the governments of Myanmar and China make opposite decisions for their people affected by natural disasters.
After 48 hours, the negligence of Myanmar moves beyond the excusable. The decisions to deny visas to aid workers and holding aid in Rangoon are premeditated, no different from a government intentionally shutting off heat and water supplies, no different from a government intentionally firing hundreds of thousands of bullets.
The rest of the world must decide how long the slaughter will continue.
5/4/2008
I just found out today—please don’t ask me how—that 2008 is the International Year of the Potato. That’s IYP, for those of you who are on the inside track.
Who knew such amazing facts as 1/3 of all the world’s potatoes are grown in China and India, that Dan Quayle still can’t spell the word, and that McDonald’s fries have more corn in them than potatoes (at least, as far as calories are concerned)?
The United Nations has gone all out with the spuds, producing a high-tech video, a complete history of the food, and a contest for the best potato recipe and photographs. And there are holidays and festivals around the world: if you can’t make this month’s Potato Congress in Ecuador, you may want to go to Fort Fairfield, Maine this July for the nine day Potato Blossom Festival featuring concerts, beauty pageants, sports, and mashed potato wrestling.
As important, potatoes are the fourth most important food staple, after wheat, rice (which had its year in 2004—sorry you missed it), and—of course—corn, which is the Number One food source for Americans and the world.
It might be safe to say—as Michael Pollen does in The Omnivore’s Dilemma—that humans have evolved into the “koalas of corn.” Heavily subsidized by the federal government, corn is remarkably cheap and is therefore overgrown and used for nearly everything food-related. It fattens our beef (in a most unnatural and even unhealthy way, often complicating cattle digestion; cows are therefore fed antibiotics to offset its effects); milled, it is ethanol for our gas tanks; it thickens fast food milkshakes; it’s the oil in margarine; it’s packed into bread and vitamins; it holds together the bits of meat in a “chicken” McNugget, and it replaces sugar as an infamous sweetener (high fructose corn syrup) in many of our foods, including ketchup, yogurt, salad dressing, and soda.
More, each bushel of corn grown uses up to a third of a gallon of oil, with all of its environmental and political problems. And it produces an economic paradox, says Pollen: the more corn we produce, the cheaper the cost. The cheaper the cost, the farmer reasons, the more need to grow more corn next season to increase profits. The more corn that is grown, the more we need to seek places to use it. Thus we create ethanol for our cars, and we bleach the nutrients out of it to make our breakfast cereals (and then feel better when those cereals are re-“fortified” with essential vitamins, also made from corn).
Debate rages on about biofuels. Will growing corn for fuel reduce the amount of food necessary for the world population? Rather than detail the argument here, I will merely refer to the above paragraph. As important, the increased production of corn displaces other crops which might also benefit the need for diversity in our food supply.
Want a good read? Pick up Pollen’s book. In the meantime, I have to check the ingredients list on my box of Ore-Ida’s.
10/13/2007
Last Sunday I heard the women in the restaurant booth next to mine complain about toys from China. One, in particular, was loud and vehement in her opinions. “I’m going to buy American from now on!” she practically yelled. “China should just leave us alone!”
And no, I didn’t set down my bite of feta cheese omelet (which was pretty amazing), to counter her points. Angry as she was, she would never have heard me. More, her comments revealed some pretty basic misunderstandings of consumerism, free markets, and our trade deficit.
I won’t write here about the faulty inspection system in China (which does need to be addressed) or the poor inspection systems in the US. No, I won’t remind anyone about the Tylenol scare of the 1980s or the Firestone tire worries of 2000. I won’t talk about Sharp’s 2006 fiery battery recall or of the pet food recalls this past spring. It would be wrong of me to write about the Nestle recall of chocolate bars with plastic in them this past April, or Gerber baby food recalls this summer, or that for the second time in three years Topps Meat Company was cited for poor inspections and this fall’s beef recall is the second largest in US history. (Topps finally closed a couple of weeks ago.)
What’s that? These aren’t toy recalls? Okay, so I also won’t write about K-Mart recalls of toy rattles which choke babies, Hi-C drink recalls of “Cool Cuffs” toys, Kenner’s recall of its Colorblaster paint guns, or Lionel Train’s recall of its Snoopy train.
But none of that is really the point. The fact is, China products are cheap, US consumers want cheap products fast, and free markets supported by US trade policy allow and encourage US companies to find their products and parts from China. Put simply, the US buys far more from China than it sells to China, creating a trade imbalance or deficit. As the US total trade deficit approaches $1 trillion (yes, that’s trillion), about one quarter of that is trade with China. I mean really, what do you think Wal-Mart means when it talks about “Price Rollbacks,” “Beware Falling Prices,” and “Save Money. Live Better”? It’s only those last two words which are cautionary.
And many of us do benefit. America’s poor can afford $35 DVD players, Microsoft and Mattel can move more products, and Chinese workers get jobs. US companies which haven’t outsourced to low-wage countries lose, of course, as do children who chew on their Barbie Dream Houses, but that is the price of a US policy (and an ignorant consumer-demand market) which perpetuates an unsustainable trade deficit. [China made almost $25 billion in September alone as a trade surplus while the US lost nearly $60 billion the same month.] According to BBC, even with all the toy recalls, the US purchase of Chinese toys continues to increase. Worse, our US economists call these numbers “Good news,” because they are slightly better than the summer imbalance.
Truly, economics is complicated, far too much for a simple blog entry this evening, but there are bigger issues about the Chinese lead in its trade than some paint. (Yes, read that every way you want.) Here are a few big-ticket issues which we should address now in order to better secure our global position with China:
- Let’s get control of our mortgage and interest rates and of our housing market;
- Let’s look at what our schools are doing to train students for a realistic global market, not one mandated by outdated notions of the industrial market;
- Let’s talk about China’s artificial lowering of its own currency values to prevent higher-priced US products from reaching its people;
- Let’s engage China in real discussion of its concerns over intellectual properties (books, music, film) which have created an enormous black market for pirated US art in China;
- Let’s talk about Chinese unemployment rates while we talk about US unemployment. (Currently there are more Chinese without jobs than there are total jobs in the US);
- And let’s get to work transforming our own economy, education, and awareness about what the US market must become. The days of the manufacturing base are fading and the techno-information-service industry age is past-upon us.
To “Buy American” is a simplistic and perhaps outdated slogan for a complex problem. And China is doing nothing to consumers that we haven’t demanded in Labor Day Sales and Sam’s Club wholesalers.
I paid my tip for a superior omelet (feta cheese from Germany, spinach from Mexico, side slice of pineapple from Panama, but tomato and eggs from Iowa and Wisconsin. Mmm!), and thought about what I would say to her as she brought a fresh-brewed cup of genuine Colombian-bean coffee to her Revlon’ed lips.
Read more about the US-China trade issue:
· http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html
· http://www.uschina.org/statistics/2004balanceoftrade.html
· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_surplus
· http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07scene.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=all
· http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j5053deIQXuHmOzFPADTSja70i_A
· http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=ayIRVbmgV3Mk&refer=asia
· http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Analysis/2007/10/12/commentary_new_global_paradigm/7381/
· http://worldnews.about.com/od/china/a/china_trade.htm
· http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6294624.stm
9/30/2007Someone, perhaps Neil Postman, said that the media doesn't tell us what to think, but it tells us what to think about. In the early US, many journalists styled themselves as "Watchdogs for Democracy," charged with investigating corruption and protecting human rights through the press. Later, journalists called themselves "objective," claiming that they would merely report the events of the world without judgment. Many of our corporate media still make this claim, crying foul if anyone suggests they have prejudice or bias.
As an experiment, then, I perused what four of our major news corporations published as news on the home pages of their internet sites. Leaving out editorials, celebrity and sports coverage, and advertising, whatever is left--news--might or might not be objective. I will leave it to you to decide what findings are here, what is valid, or if you wish to carry out this analysis in a more long-term and scientific way.
Sampling of Internet Home Pages of Four Major Networks: Numbers of News Stories
30 September 2007
|
|
FOX |
MSNBC |
BBC |
CNN |
|
Anti-Democrat |
7 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Anti-Bush |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Neutral GOP |
3 |
2 |
0 |
1 |
|
Neutral Dems |
0 |
1 |
0 |
3 |
|
US Violence |
13 (59%) |
12 (48%) |
3 (30%) |
8 (42%) |
|
US Non-violent |
9 (41%) |
13 (52%) |
7 (70%) |
11 (58%) |
|
Iraq |
3 |
2 |
0 |
1 |
|
Iran |
5 |
0 |
1 |
2 |
|
World Violence |
12 (100%) |
15 (60%) |
10 (40%) |
5 (50%) |
|
World Non-Violent |
0 (0%) |
10 (40%) |
15 (60%) |
5 (50%) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disease/Health Fears |
9 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
|
Tech Fears |
4 |
3 |
1 |
|
|
Economic Fears |
2 |
4 |
|
1 |
|
Weather/Environment Fears |
1 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
|
Civil Rights Fears |
5 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Celebrity News |
13 |
12 |
2 |
3 |
|
Humor |
1 |
4 |
2 |
2 |
|
Advertising |
9 |
11 disguised* |
0 |
3 |
|
Sports |
Not counted |
Not counted |
Not counted |
Not counted |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total News Stories |
73 |
71 |
42 |
43 |
|
Total Negative Stories |
61 (84%) |
45 (63%) |
20 (48%) |
23 (53%) |
|
Total Non-Negative Stories |
12 (16%) |
26 (37%) |
22 (52%) |
20 (47%) |
How did I determine the categories? Here are some notes on my thinking:
-
"Anti" -- the headline contained diction which implicitly or explicitly judged the event. For instance, one Fox story was titled "Butting In" for coverage of the Democratic strategies in Congress. In contrast, there were "neutral" stories which, by headlines anyway, covered the event without loaded language ("Debate over Dems Bill").
-
"Violent/Non-violent" -- The violent stories include crime, death, war, etc., any story where humans abuse other humans. Non-violent is a far larger category which includes both positive stories ("Lost Woman Rescued After Four Days") or stories not based on death and disease ("Fire Dept. Gets New Truck").
-
"Fears" -- A category which specifically shows dangers, broad or individual in the particular area ("Brain-eating amoeba" or "Tropical Storm Could be Hurricane"). What's interesting about these stories is that they are in addition to the "Violent" stories above. A new tech device on the market was categorized as "Non-violent" whereas "New Computer Virus" is tech fear.
-
* As an observation, the advertising on MSNBC's site is mostly formatted exactly as their news headlines are, making it difficult to distinguish. Buried amongst the other categories, they call ads "Sponsored Stories." Hmm.
What should I be thinking about? And with whom will I discuss it?
9/16/2007
“I have to get out of the country,” she said. “I don’t care where.”
I understood. Sitting across from me at a small diner, my former student had been complaining about the shallowness of American culture. Yes, there was materialism; yes, there was political posturing; and yes, there was the dim-witted soap opera which seemed to dominate the lives of so many around us. But none of this is quite what we were struggling with. No, it wasn’t the disagreement with idea which tormented us, but the refusal—even inability—of some to acknowledge that a contrary idea existed.
Mentally, emotionally, we felt boxed in.
It’s true that every culture and sub-culture defines its own ways of thinking, its own ideologies. The Buddhist seeks to avoid confrontation just as the Halo 2 player lusts for it. But I believe that in some ways the American culture brazenly seeks to limit itself. In other words, our problem isn't that we stubbornly hold onto an idea, but that our goal is to limit our own understanding.
· We’ll obsess over Lindsay Lohan’s latest rehab stay instead of pervasive poverty;
· We’ll seek amusement through the World of Warcraft rather than build genuine relationships;
· We’ll dismiss Islam as inherently violent rather than ask serious questions about our media portrayal of it;
· We’ll seek the best bargains at Wal-Mart and feel pride in our conquest rather than doubt about the reasons for it;
· And we’ll complain that thinking about it takes too long, is too complicated, or is just too hard.
 
“I’m too busy to think about that right now,” complains a friend of mine when I mentioned how she could recycle some of her plastics. And herein is a great lesson, I believe. Our culture is in the practice of keeping us pre-occupied, busy, speeding along on errands, in an accelerated effort to distract us from questioning it.
More, because we don’t have time to think, our media quickens its pace in parallel. We are surrounded by sound bytes, fast-clipped video, and instant messaging masquerading as knowledge. As a result, solutions to heart disease are dark chocolate, and Iraq can be settled by merely putting troops in or troops out. We become a nation of simplification.
We are a big open place, and American culture is fast spreading through the world. Just ask Disney, Coca-Cola, Exxon, or David Hasselhoff. Can we travel into the world without carrying along our blow dryers, iPods, and cruise ships? And can we talk about the world without holding our collective breath for the commercial break?
“I have to get out of the country,” she said. “I don’t care where.” Mentally, we hold our breath, longing to outwait the existential absurdity around us, but even the foothills of Himalayas are adorned with Baskin Robbins franchises and Sly Stallone posters (well, they are a little behind).
Is this really American ideology? Let’s try something different. |
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