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Today's Stories December 15 / 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh A People's Penny for the Magna Carta December 14, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski The Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him John Ross Iraqi Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax Jacob Hornberger Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? Allan Nairn "Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes Dave Zirin The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners Dave Lindorff The First Cut is the Deepest Misty MacDuffee Toxic Grizzlies Ben Terrall What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine? Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi Prerequisites for Peace Website of the Day Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"   December 13, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out Mike Whitney Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding Ron Jacobs Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy Norman Solomon The USA's Human Rights Daze Peter Morici The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch Sandy Mayes Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia Franklin Lamb The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling? Jacob Hornberger Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It Nadim Rouhana An Interloper in My Own Land Dave Zirin On Pigskin and Petrol Website of the Day Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support! December 12, 2007 Allan Nairn US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones Alan Farago How Sprawl Eats Its Young Ray McGovern Torture, Lies and Videotape Winslow T. Wheeler The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts Evan Jones The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt James Petras An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers Joel Hirschorn The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine Joshua Frank Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention Sherry Wolf Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul Dan Bacher Survey of a Fish Graveyard Website of the Day Men Eating Bugs   December 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn What's Really Happened During the Surge? Diana Johnstone The Next Kosovo War Paul Craig Roberts It's Waco All Over Again: Preventive Detention and the Constitution David Macaray Impasse in Hollywood Ralph Nader Gail Collins Versus the Underdogs Andy Worthington Guantánamo Britons to be Released: a Mixed Result Martha Rosenberg No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers Steve Champion / Anthony Ross Words for Our Brother, Tookie Williams Kim Nicolini Tangled Up in Dylan Michael Dickinson Say Goodbye to Purgatory: Pope Rat Gets Indulgent Website of the Day A Charming (and Worthy) Pitch December 10, 2007 Uri Avnery How They Stole the Bomb From Us Debbie Nathan The Perils of Journalism and Child Porn JoAnn Wypijewski Is There a Left Here Left? If So, What Can It Do? Steve Kelly Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness Donna J. Volatile Welcome to the Revolution   December 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Coup Against Bush and Cheney Brenda Norrell Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists Saul Landau The Ruins of Empire R. F. Blader A Rape in Every Drink? Ray McGovern Spinning Iran's Centrifuges Allan Nairn Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in Indonesia Linn Washington, Jr Spotlight on Death Row Paul Craig Roberts When Will Bush Come Clean?   December 7, 2007 Sean Penn Piano Wire Puppeteers Arthur Versluis Mining Water in the Desert M. G. Piety Racism and the American Psyche: Some Thoughts on Race and Intelligence Pam Martens Banksters Gone Wild Alan Farago Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia? Sprawl and the Credit Crisis Allan Nairn It Takes (Out) a Village Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday Alice Slater The Iran Opening Robert Weissman The Story of Stuff Website of the Day Something About Mitt   December 5, 2007 Mike Whitney Why the CFR Hates Putin Sharon Smith The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden and the Dead End Democrats James Petras Venezuela in the Aftermath Ron Jacobs The Iran Charade Dave Zirin Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor John V. Whitbeck Two States or One? Time to Choose Peter Zinn Covered in New Orleans Niranjan Ramakrishnan Impeach Pelosi Instead Alan Farago The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida Heather Gray US Meddling in Australian Politics Website of the Day A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas   December 4, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in Ann Arbor Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the Supreme Court Paul Craig Roberts The Lies at the End of the American Dream Ray McGovern No-Nuke Iran Winslow T. Wheeler Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are Too Small Allan Nairn The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just Want Food" Russell Mokhiber The USA v. Al Arian Nikolas Kozloff As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American Left John V. Walsh Peace Movement Paralyzed Ghada Ageel Will Peace Cost Me My Home? Stephen Soldz The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations Website of the Day Hands Off the People of Iran     December 3, 2007 Tariq Ali Venezuela After the Referendum Bill Quigley New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor, Tax Credits for Developers Eric Walberg The Bible and Middle East History Uri Avnery After Annapolis Marjorie Cohn Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed Dave Lindorff Vengeance Isn't Sweet Stephen Fleischman Homeless in Paradise Martha Rosenberg Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile Website of the Day So Just Lead!   December 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift in a Sea of Booze Jeffrey St. Clair The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and the Future of the Rocky Mountain West Mike Whitney "Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir Rosen Shemon Salam A Visit From the FBI Roger Burbach The Battle in Bolivia Benjamin Dangl New Politics in Old Bolivia Brian M. Downing The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to the Surge? Greg Moses Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story Sonja Karkar The "Never-Never" Peace Conference Saul Landau Ethics and Evil in South Boston Margaret Kimberley Black America Left Behind John Ross What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution? Reza Fiyouzat Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran Judith Scherr Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays Lance Olsen Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy Christopher Brauchli Mr. Bush and the Despots Robert Fantina Iraq as U.S. Colony Dan Bacher Fish Triage on Prospect Island Michael Donnelly Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency Website of the Weekend Appalachian Voices   November 30, 2007 Peter Stone Brown The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan Wajahat Ali The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's Former Minister of Information Allan Nairn Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers Alan Farago The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash John Ross The Death of Latin America's First Revolution Corporate Crime Reporter America's Corporate Crime Capitals Lucia Alvarez Diego Gonzalez Argentina's Political Future James Rothenberg The Iraqi Miracle Website of the Day Bio-Bling?   November 29, 2007 R. F. Blader The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran Stephen Soldz War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire Sheldon Richman Iraq 3.0 George Wuerthner Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws Felice Pace Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis? Col. Dan Smith The Meaning of Annapolis Harvey Wasserman Terror Target Nukes Nikolas Kozloff Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08 Paul Krassner Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike! Dave Lindorff News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela? CP News Service The One State Declaration Website of the Day A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter November 28, 2007 James Petras CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela Jeff Halper Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street Pam Martens Crashing Citigroup Peter Morici Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession Mohammed Khatib Separate and Unequal in Palestine Helen Redmond The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America William S. Lind In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm? Ben Tripp We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons Liaquat Ali Khan Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges Jeff Berg Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran Website of the Day The Lies of Joe Klein   November 27, 2007 Joe DeRaymond On the Road to the Torture School Paul Craig Roberts Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary and Rudy Marjorie Cohn Remembering Victor Rabinowitz Mike Whitney A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp Ron Jacobs The Myths of Military Progress Col. Dan Smith The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work Ralph Nader Family Learning Karim Makdisi Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut Christopher Ketcham Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop Ronan Bennett Martin Amis Does a Coulter Website of the Day Celebrating the Uncensored Media   November 26, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Heading for Annapolis Paul Craig Roberts The End of All That David Macaray Enter Mediator Sameer Dossani Pakistan's Wounded Dictator Roger Burbach The Final Battle in Bolivia Mark Scaramella Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire Brian McKinlay Howard's End Rick Kuhn The Fall of a Racist Union Buster Binoy Kampmark Ruddslide and Dull Alec Monica Benderman What Do You Know of War? Brenda Norrell Return to Alcatraz Website of the Day Ghostworld by DJ Spooky   November 24 / 25, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD Robert Fisk Darkness Falls on the Middle East Saul Landau Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P. Jeffrey St. Clair Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal Environmentalism Rannie Amiri Beirut's Black Friday Christopher Brauchli Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace Daniel Gross The Gap and Black Friday Mike Whitney "A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions" Marjorie Cohn Iran and the 2008 Elections David Rosen Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans David Michael Green If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom .... Kenneth Rexroth When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan Muhammad Iqbal Trans. Shahid Alam Ghazal Website of the Day Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill November 23, 2007 Gary Leupp Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley Laura Carlsen Coming to Terms with Diversity in Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP David Macaray Keeping Labor Unions Out Andy Worthington Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden Clifton Ross Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant Seth Sandronsky Battling Sodexho Dan Bacher Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation William A. Cook The Myth of Middle East Peace Website of the Day Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short Film   November 22, 2007 Alan Farago Who Lost America's Everglades? Greg Moses A Thanksgiving Basting Dave Lindorff Impeachment is Back on the Table Mike Ely Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving Omar Azfar Gore for President of Pakistan?   November 21, 2007 Vijay Prashad Our Dictator, Their Democracy Martha Rosenberg Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant Manuel Garcia, Jr. Epiphany on the Glacier John Ross The Last Days of Mexican Corn Brian McKenna Cancer Terrorists Unmasked Stephen Soldz Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo Monica Benderman Needing Peace Ben Terrall Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar Website of the Day Mercy for Animals   November 20, 2007 Oren Ben-Dor Why Israel Has No "Right to Exist" as a Jewish State Wajahat Ali An Interview with Norman Finkelstein Alan Farago The Dark Arts and the Bush Dynasty Marjorie Cohn Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool Ralph Nader Green is Gold? Andy Worthington Guantánamo Whistleblower Launches a New Attack on Rigged Tribunals Sara Olson When Going AWOL is the Only Escape Dave Lindorff Likelihood of Iran Attack Gains Credence Paul Krassner The First Amendment, a Dialogue Website of the Day Joanne Mariner on Torture November 19, 2007 Winslow T. Wheeler Why Congress Won't Reform China Hand The U.S. Game Plan in Pakistan Allan Nairn Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia Uri Avnery How to Get Out? David Macaray The Chalice that Poisoned the Labor Movements Dave Lindorff Democrats in Future Shock: They Could Lose It All in 2008! Bill Quigley Twenty Thousand Protest at Ft. Benning; Eleven Face Federal Criminal Trials Ron Jacobs Sitting on the Group W Bench: War, Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie Sunsara Taylor Legalized Rights for Fertilized Eggs? Binoy Kampmark Why Steve Irwin--You're Dead! Heather Gray Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois Website of the Day The Meat Market     November 17 / 18, 2007 P. Sainath Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India David Rosen The Scarlet Hypocrites: Republicans, Christians and the Politics of Adultery Mike Whitney Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War? George Wuerthner Saving the Big Wild Brenda Norrell The Case of Jim Main, Jr: In Montana, Indians are Guilty Until Proven Innocent George Ciccariello-Maher Of Submarines and Loose Screws Karim Makdisi Lebanon is Hanging by a Thread Marie Trigona Wal-Mart in Argentina Valerio Volpi The Catholic Church, Incorporated Fred Gardner The Straight-Ahead Runner Robert Fantina The White House Press Office Mike Ferner Thank God for the Senate Republicans! Missy Comley Beattie The Radical Majority Kenneth Couesbouc Circles of Power Patrick O'Hayer A Portrait of Mailer and a Young Poet Poets' Basement Davies, Buknatski and Ford   November 16, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair The Vices of Hillary Clinton: Secrecy, Intransigence and War Dave Zirin The Indictment of Barry Bonds: Busted by a Broken System Gary D. Barnett A Day in the Life of an Unwilling Federal Agent Alan Farago Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption Dave Lindorff Two Brothers and Two Scandals Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: "What Should be Done with Those Protesters?" Robert Ovetz Cargo Ships in Paradise: Shipping Lanes Threaten the Yosemite of the Sea Brenda Norrell "Today We Experienced America:" Arresting Indigenous People on the Border David Swanson Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate Peter Letheby Outside the Box on the Great Plains Website of the Day Why Activism Fails   November 15, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair Hillary Clinton in Arkansas Adolfo Gilly The Spirit of Revolt Peter Bohmer 10 Days That Shook Olympia Andy Worthington The Trials of Omar Khadr: Gitmo's Child Soldier Gray / Derks Obama's Pitch to South Carolina's Black Churches Affronts Gay Groups Liaquat Ali Khan Liberating Pakistan Dave Lindorff Where's the Party? Christopher Brauchli Tipping Point: the Politics of Gossip Anthony Papa Racism as Law: Crack Cocaine Sentences Martha Rosenberg Merck's Big Write Off Ben Terrall Thank You, Ehren Watada Website of the Day On the Colorado: Drought, Climate Change and Water Supplies November 14, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair The Making of Hillary Clinton James Petras Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets Al Giordano Campaign 08: Don't Trust Anyone Over 50 Paul Craig Roberts The Lobby Andy Worthington Innocents and Foot Soldiers Stephen Lendman Torturing Palestinian Detainees Fatima Bhutto Aunt Benazir's False Promises: the Dismantling of Pakistani Democracy Martin Smith Norman Mailer and the "Good War" Jeff Leys Slip Sliding Away: House Votes on War Funding Website of the Day Why the Writers are Striking November 13, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Hillary's Big Problem and How Bill Can Fix It Jeffrey St. Clair Mailer and Us: the Writer as Fighter Robert Bryce The Pakistan Fuel Connection David Macaray The Teamsters and the Hollywood Strike Mike Whitney Bulletins from the Titanic Ralph Nader Pakistani Lawyers vs. American Lawyers Nikolas Kozloff Chavez Blasts the Spanish King Jordan Flaherty Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana B. R. Gowani Dear Mrs. Bhutto Website of the Day Monty Python: "Fuck You, Very Much FCC"   November 12, 2007 Vicente Navarro Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really Failed Ben Brown Letter from Ho Chi Minh City: a Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father Omar K. A Pakistani Lawyer's Testimony: Life Under the Brutal Emergency Sadia Abbas The Roots of Pakistan's Political Crisis: Corrupt Elites and a Kleptocratic Military Farzana Versey Mailer's Miasma Richard W. Behan The Political Crimes of Complicity Paul Krassner Asshole of the Year: Congratulations Tim Russert! Cindy Sheehan Faith and War Peter Stone Brown The Return of Levon Helm Dave Lindorff Dennis, You are Not Alone Website of the Day Police Attack in Olympia   November 10 / 11, 2007 Alain Gresh Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard Mike Whitney For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street Ron Jacobs A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq Jeffrey St. Clair The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story Alan Farago Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism Binoy Kampmark When Language Drowns: Torture in America Robert Fantina Legitimizing Torture Fred Gardner Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values Ayesha Ijaz Khan The General in His Labyrinth Nicola Nasser NATO's Southward Drift Philip Rizk The Blame Game in Gaza Michael Dickinson Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins Joel S. Hirschhorn The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties Paul Krassner Flunking Out of the Electoral College Wadner Pierre / Joe Emersberger The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti           Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition December 15 / 16, 2007 A Chance to Open Up A Vision for China's Future By JAMES L. SECOR Around the time of the 17th Party Conference in mid-October, Li Datong penned a couple optimistic articles, focusing on the possibilities for change based on which men would be put forward . It is sad that he did not do a follow-up article; only one by a foreigner was posted and really didn't do much more than report what had happened and give a little background of the men promoted. Li Datong's article on the re-emergence--or possible re-emergence--of the Communist Youth League was interesting but, for all that, a sidelight. Li Datong's next article was a rather pessimistic if historically accurate look at the changes that haven't happened down through the country's history with each change in regime, the present one included. Authors Can Xue and Mo Yan have had their hands slapped for saying something similar, that there's no difference between this regime and the last (meaning the Qing Dynasty). Although I think Li Datong's appraisal is, in the main, correct, I also think that his analysis is a little narrowed and inward in that it only looks backward at history and does not take into account the outside world happenings that China is so intimately involved in and, thereby, cannot escape suffering from. With the (inevitable and oft-predicted) meltdown of neo-conservative economics and the US's irresponsibility and me-first attitude, the worth of the dollar is falling and predictions are for another Great Depression, this time truly involving the whole world. As China holds billions of US dollars in reserve and has threatened to sell them off--who wants to buy?--China is going to be affected in no uncertain terms. It seems that the US is on a mission of self-destruction and is intending to take the world down with it, like a maniacal Samson after his hair's grown back or a Poe character who will be damned if he'll be the only one to suffer because of his peccadillo; for the US Congress is bent on imposing tariffs and sanctions on China for its, the US's, debt indemnity, as if it's China's fault that the US's buy-buy-buy consumerism, with its corporate-created needs and wants, has put the country in debt. If the Chinese government does follow through with its threat, the certainty of a Great Depression will be more immediate than if China lets the US economy fall of its own accord: there is no need of a trumpet at this Jericho. Whether this inevitable horror is to be brought down on humanity immediately or allowed to play itself out of its own accord, China will be affected. . . albeit less so than most other countries if only because of Hu Jintao's foreign policy: he's secured markets worldwide to take up some of the slack from the US populace not being able to buy its inexpensive good. If we look back to one aspect of recovery from the prior Great Depression, we will note that in order for countries to recover, they had to turn their sights and their concerns inward, to the country's well-being; that is, to the citizens' needs and betterment. Where this was done to the utmost, the recovery was maximized, despite some countries' looking outward and creating a need for coherent togetherness by fighting a non-existent enemy. The same thing will occur, I think, this time, as well, and China will have to turn its eye inward and concentrate its resources and energies to buffering its own citizens. This can only be for the good. With the coming Great Depression--I'm sure some historian or literary-minded person will find a superlative name, as they did to supplant WWI's "the war to end all wars"--jobs will be even more scarce in China and even more poorly recompensed: there are already too many people to employ and some of the unemployed already rebel. With the decreased ability to sell homemade products, the internal economy of the land will be laid waste. Somehow or other, the government is going to have to come out of its shell and pay attention to the never-important people and their needs since the government is interested in maintaining its power and, without appeasing the hordes below, this will not happen. But there is a further global problem to be considered. The Earth is warming up. Global warming. Now, I agree that some of the problem is indeed due to humanity but, at the same time, the known prior-pleasant state of the world was not always so. Climate changes. It has in the recent past, it has in the distant past. Nature does not stand still. Change is the only constant. Put the two together--humanity and nature--and there's a problem. I do not think, however, it is as cataclysmic and end-of-the-world Armageddonish as some. Nevertheless, resources will become less obtainable and the need for conservation and different sources (as opposed to a different source) of energy will become necessary. In this respect, China and other less modernized countries and cultures stand to be less likely to suffer greatly as great strides in industrialization have not taken hold and, therefore, manpower is still available. People have not gotten themselves so distanced from a labor-intensive existence that they will not be able to function or make up for their luxurious loss. There are still more bicycles on the road than cars in China; waterwheels, either powered by the water itself or people, are still at work; farming has found itself to be more productive with oxen and human hands than with machinery--Mao did at least learn from that mistake (The Great Leap Forward)! Smaller farms more humanly managed manage greater yield. There is yet a massive distance between city and country in China; I would wager there are more people in big cities with relatives in the country than not. And this will be a boon. The working class mentality is not so distant as in the US. When energy demands become fulfillable, the first places to suffer will be the energy-wasting cities. Big cities will become less populated--as well as less ordered. People will move out into the more efficient countryside, even beyond suburbia's real wasteland. These internal immigrants will gravitate toward the more populace (larger) towns but, there being only a finite amount of room and provisioning, they will be redirected to the surrounding countryside and the satellite villages and hamlets, thus setting up an interconnecting, interdependent society. There will be a great number of medium to small sized cities because they are more conservative of their energy, more efficient in its usage--and they more or less already exist. There may be even a trend to the low-tech, still flourishing in China but almost unheard of in the US. The government is going to have to step in on this process or the internal repercussions, the violence and corruption, will lead to a breakdown of the system--what system there is--and, eventually, to an overthrow of the government for not taking care of its own when it knew it needed to. The government will have to step in and open up employment, perhaps along the lines of FDR's works programs during the Depression of the 1930's in the US. In whatever form--and this could include uncovering alternative forms of energy-production--the government is going to have to do something to support its populace or the populace will rebel. Not even the politicized Peoples Army could withstand a billion rebels on the march--and they probably wouldn't. A rebellion would set the country back hundreds of years and the climb out of the new pit would be almost like walking across the La Brea Tar Pits. In the coming world collapse, the government of China cannot continue to turn a blind eye to its people and bind itself in its cocoon of me-me-me and irresponsibility, two traits it inherited from its founder (Cf. Jung Chang, Mao, the Unknown Story. NY: Anchor Books, 2006). When the needs of the people make their heads of state look up, then there will be the new world order philosophers and rebels have shouted for for centuries. When government truly becomes the mind of the people, it's father in Confucian terms, it will truly be a government of its people instead of an overlord. But there's more. As the world closes in on itself and China becomes more inward-looking, something will have to be done with the deplorable education system, a system that flounders in routinization and deans and leaders who are do-nothings, perhaps relying on a perverted reading of Laozi's instructions on how to govern. For this routinization stifles scholarship and creativity, which will be abundantly needed during the depression times. Routinization is a political tool that creates a situation where there is no intellectual threat to the power hegemony; but it produces nothing else. The educational system, and thereby the populace, are entrapped in a cycle of low self-esteem full of excuses for "why not" and a hidden shame and guilt. Conceptualization will have to take precedence over routine and theory and the much misaligned traditional way: there is nothing traditional about the present state of Chinese education. "Most advances in knowledge have occurred when some brave soul broke out of her/his routine. De-routinized, the learner is able to see a problem that had hitherto had been invisible, and apply a new approach to solving it" (Thomas J. Scheff, Routines in Human Science: the case of emotion words). This is because, with routinization, new problems cannot be approached in a new way, a failing suffered by both the Qing Dynasty and the Tokugawa Bakafu rulers when the West all but invaded. In the past, putting down the problems forcibly and, thence, ignoring them was the way, for if you ignore something long enough it is expected to go away. In reality, it does not. More and more students are clamoring for study overseas as they are well-aware that what they will get in-country is inferior. When was the last time a Chinese Nobel Laureate appeared? A picture of this routinization might be gotten from the behavior of one of the top ten universities in the country, Beijing Normal University (Beishida), a university that once housed intellectuals and social rebels, it has turned into a space where there is no job, no room for a professional writer to teach writing or literature. Other schools prefer foregoing lectures of quality and competence for the cheaper, run-of-the-mill, no specialty foreigner who will speak on given mundane topics of little interest to students, like the convention of Christmas. . .because providing the students quality means paying for it and the administration only sees the bottom line, not the benefits that accrue down the line. And, of course, students aren't worth it. Education is not for the student, it is for the continuation of the education machine. (This is autopoiesis, which routinization literally guarantees. Cf. the works of Humberto Maturana and Humbert Mariotti.) There is a glut of English speaking foreigners in China for the sole purpose of traveling who figure they can teach English since they speak it--and so does the educational establishment; so, the outcome is inferior teaching--but it's cheap and satisfies a complacent educational machine: as long as the course is being offered and there's a body teaching it, there is no thought to quality or content. In this fashion, incompetence is generated by the educational system, incompetence and cheating on a pandemic scale, including rampant plagiarism. And why not? The teachers don't know and even when they do know, the culprit is passed--even at top-10 universities. The teachers aren't scholars, even in the loosest sense of the word. Teachers for the past 10-20 years have only mouthed what's been told them before, for teaching in China means the teacher lectures, the students listen--end of lesson. Now, parrot it back on a test. Further, although it is difficult to get into a college, it is easy to get out: once in, a degree is guaranteed. At the same time, teachers who have gotten their Master's degrees abroad and studied methods return and try to institute their learning, bringing with them student-centred learning and excitement only to find that this is not wanted--despite the Ministry of Education's call for such alternative teaching methods. These teachers find that teaching in a homegrown university is a popularity contest: if the students, if too many students (which could be 1-2), complain, the department head calls the teacher on the carpet and orders them to return to the "traditional" way, the way of no knowledge, no learning, no work for the students--who sit in class anyway and do homework for other classes, send text messages on their phones or listen to music from their MP3's. Why should they work? They're guaranteed a piece of paper and, after all, the degree is important, not what you learn, no? So. . .why struggle? Only, there are some who want more. Heidegger sympathizes with them, for he maintains routinization promotes boredom (Cf. Paul Thiele, "Postmodernity and the routinization of novelty: Heidegger on boredom and technology," Polity, June 1997). This comes, in part, from the attitude toward knowledge at universities: knowledge is a thing to be sold, a commodity for sale, not something to be gained or discovered. Helmut Klaus notes, in Towards a Phenomenological Account of the Completion of Organisational Modernisation, that knowledge is organized as "information, as communication of something useful, and as shaping action, as reporting and effecting" and that it dictates the lifeworld via the experts teaching it, yet is "as devoid of any humanistic connotation, being the outcome of the interactions of forces within a network"; that is, knowledge and technology are manageable, obviating innovation because of a rational approach that sees of nothing outside of the given world order. Which, of course, makes both education and the changing of it a political process (available as a pdf document at www.filoinfo.bem-vindo.net). With the coming crisis, the government is going to have to offer knowledge and questions and newness to them. The government is going to have to revamp the educational system, the educational environment, or the country will sink. There will be no experts for nothing--one of the results--desired--of the Cultural Revolution: rid the country of those pesky intellectuals, always thinking new things and causing trouble. With the depression and the change in the country's need, these people will once again be in demand. Methods will have to change. Students will have to work. Scholarship will have to once again take on a top priority: knowledge wins, not incompetence. Different thinking will have to be nurtured in order to deal with the different problems facing the country. . .if for no other reason than the economics of business will have to change. China will need to construct an alternative universe and it will not be able to do this with the present educational system, a system that actually holds the student back. As Nathalie Lazaric notes, "Changing routines and creating new routinization processes are difficult tasks involving both cognitive and political mechanisms" (Routinization and memorization of tasks in a workshop: the case of the introduction if ISO norms and Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 14, Issue 5, pp. 873-896, 2005). Diane Mitsch Bush has already noted how China is routinized in deviant fashion, for, it must be stated, that a routine is a necessity--but only up to a point ("The Routinization of Social Movement Organizations: China as a Deviant Case," The Sociological Quarterly 19 (2), 1978, pp. 203-217). Too much routinization stultifies. I see, then, necessity dictating a course of action (innovation) that can only be advantageous to China's internal development because there is more to change than historical precedent and continuation of the same old same old, as seems to be Li Datong's approach. I see, because of the coming economic depression, the Chinese government coming out of its protectionist shell and opening up to its people, creating real change. Hard-heartedness and inhumanity and repression will not help an injured bear stand up. James L. Secor is a writer dramatist and professor of literature at Shaoxing University, Shaoxing China. He can be reached at znzfqlxskj@gmail.com.   Your Ad Here

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