Laying a Presidency to Rest

You don’t really need me to explain or describe the reaction to yesterday’s election here in Europa… so I’ll skip right past it.

Looking to the future yesterday, I was picturing how strange it will be for the world, after so many years of a US administration and an overall image of the United States government as this plotting, bumbling, profit greedy entity.? What I mean is, having the Bush administration was like having this internernational measurement standard; if you wanted to know what was a bad idea or some indicator of a poor government, you would look to the actions of the Bush administration.? Based on this, alot of people created careers and followings for themselves.. entire systems of meaning, I would venture to say.

Take Latin America, presidents of nations such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Equador, who have long said to their people – we do things contrary to that disfunctional US administration. They’ve experienced wide spread support using such rhetoric, and it is quite understandable that so many citizens looked at these leaders, and comparing them to the Bush group, said – Yes, we choose this guy.

Now with Bush leaving, and what seems like it will be a new kind of government, one more open to international cooperation, sustainable development, and rational thought, aren’t such leaders losing their number one reference point.. their rally cry?

Other comparisons can of course be made, looking at regions like the Middle East and of course the Africa, where it would seem people are, for the first time perhaps ever, excited and eager to work with this new president.. with the US.? Again, pulling the rug out from under a system that over the last decade, had become quite standard.

Still it isn’t only other nations that are entering a strange moment in history, many of us critics and concerned citizens, we’re losing the best evil emperor many of us have ever known. After so many years of not having to think hard about what is a good policy or a bad policy, suddenly we are now put in a position where we will have to look closer and work harder, as a new and potentially better functioning administration takes over power, no more reliably awful president.

This line of reasoning all started while listened to the most recent edition of On the Media, as they interviewed an author about the work of the great Hunter S. Thompson in the book that shaped alot of my journalistic thinking, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. The author, at one point, explains that when Nixon finally died, Thompson went into a strange kind of celebration, fearing the great task of having to put this president whom he so hated, to sleep once and for all.? For me it seemed he had lost his nemesis, which is not always the bliss you might expect.

The Quintessential China-US Debate

I’ll start the week by pointing you to a very excellent edition of On the Media, one of my absolute required-listening podcasts each week – Journalism with Chinese Characteristics. And the subtext of the post reads as follows:

There is real investigative reporting in China, it?s just not done under a free press flag. Instead, practitioners mind an unstated set of rules, keeping themselves safe by employing tactics like using excessive jargon and exploiting government rivalries…

The program itself doesn’t present particularly new facts or opinions about China.? If anything, in the last few years, there is no shortage of Chinese voices in international media talking about how China isn’t what you might remember from the movies or old stereotypes. That the country is modernizing fast and people have alot of new freedoms that are comparable to whatever you have in the west.? That said, OTM provides a nice group of voices who communicate their experiences and opinions in a manner worthy of listening to.

What gets me about the interviewees in this podcast is that they come back to the classic China-US comparison talking point: The freedom criticism.? So they point out how strange it is that there are “free Tibet” protests on the streets of the US, and yet the US occupies Iraq and has guantanamo bay.? To which there are no protests on the streets of China saying “Free Iraq.”? The arguement brushes over the well known hypocracy and goes right for some kind of lack of reciprocity.

My response would simply be as follows, once and for all let it be said, that it is our right and responsibility as human beings on this earth, to protest and engage in some form of acknowledgement whenever and wherever human lives are being destroyed and opressed.? Moreover, that you might be American and on the streets protesting what takes place in Tibet, does not mean you automatically believe your own government is doing just fine and you support the occupation of Iraq.? Hell, you probably attend those demonstrations as well.? But protesting human rights violations in another country does not require that you live in a country where human rights are perfectly respected and it shouldn’t result in silencing dissent anywhere in the world.

Just because you have the capacity to repeat all the terrible mistakes and crimes of the western world, dear China, does not mean you should.

Drowning Torture

Waterboarding is one of those words that is pushed on the public in order to distract or mislead people from thinking about the actual crime it involves.

On the latest edition of On The Media, they did a fantastic job of exploring the manipulation of this word and what it means. At one point, a high-up military official comes on and says that actually the name waterboarding is incorrect, the real name should be Drowning Torture, because that is what it is. Later in the program some people argue about the semantics of what drowning is and can you drown if you don’t die, but nevermind that. The point that was made should render all following arguements moot… stop calling it Waterboarding.. if someone uses the term Waterboarding when talking about what United States soldiers are doing to prisoners, correct them – IT IS drowning torture… and it always has been.

After World War II, in 1947, the United States actually convicted a Japanese soldier of “Waterboarding”.. Drowning Torture. He was sentenced to 15 years hard labor.

More than 50 years later… it is about time that the individuals responsible for ordering and carrying out Drowning Torture get sentenced to some hard labor of their own.