World Is Round

I Heart You Wikipedia! (And the Ministry of Information Industry)

Did you know?

The Chola dynasty was a Tamil dynasty that ruled primarily in southern India until the 13th century CE. The dynasty originated in the fertile valley of the Kaveri River. Territories under their domain stretched from the islands of Maldives in the south to as far north as the banks of the river Ganges in Bengal.

I did!  And do you know how?  Today, it was Wikipedia's featured story. 

I often surf Wikipedia, but what I didn't have to do for the first time since arriving in China is use a proxy server.  That's right, folks.  Wikipedia (or at least the non-Chinese langauge content) has been unblocked.  Speech in China just got a little bit freer.  One of my coworkers hailed the move "one of the few the good things that have come with the Olympics."

There's no guarantee, of course, that the change is permanent.  For all I know someone at the Ministry of Information Industry (Isn't Orwellian Chinglish delicious?) accidentally pressed the wrong button or fell asleep at the switch. But for now, I'm going to enjoy my new wikifreedom while it lasts. (Edit: It lasted only two glorious weeks.  Blocked again.)

Amish School Killings and Why Americans Don't Care About the Consequences of Loving Their Guns

I'm not sure who penned the slogan, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," but when you read about the Amish school killing spree in the Times of London and then you read that last paragraph where they talk about the two other school shootings that happened in the U.S. this week, you have to start asking yourself whether there something deeply wrong with American society.

Googlebombingforalaa

This is me writing my second Google bomb for Alaa, the award-winning Egyptian blogger who was detained for peacefully protesting the detention of other activists. So here is an Egypt for Alaa.

Read more about the Free Alaa meme game: "Bloggers Rally in Support of Jailed Egyptian Blogger" and about Web 2.0 activism.

Technorati Tags: Egypt, Googlebombingforalaa

"A Day Without Immigrants" - New York City Protest March

On an absolute whim I found myself skipping lunch, borrowing the office camera and ducking out of work at 4:30pm to go to yesterday's Union Square-to-Battery Park rally and protest march.  The march was organized by a variety of community-based organizations and political groups and was part of a series of marches held around the country for "A Day Without Immigrants," a national strike meant to demonstrate the vital part immigrants - legal or not - play in the US economy.

Since my other posts have probably already given away my political leanings, it's no surprise that not only am I completely opposed to all of the more ridiculous Republican proposals (e.g., building a giant fence along a 2,000 mile border; denying healthcare, education, and legal counsel to immigrants and their children; expelling the 12 million laborers who help make our lives easier and cheaper), I have a hard time taking any of it seriously.  Every immigrant group - the Germans, the Irish, the Polish, the Italian, the Chinese - was hated by those groups that had arrived earlier and already "assimilated."  More established groups have always supported exclusion acts and intelligence testing and eugenics programs and...I'm sure you have heard more than your ear's full elsewhere. (If you haven't please visit the Eugenics Archive)   This is in our history, in our blood, and no doubt these immigrants who now protest will, in two generations or so, be voting to exclude the next group of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses..

French Student Protests Against the CPE

I'm trying *not* to post a ton of About.com articles on my personal blog, but I absolutely have to post a newly retooled article on the student protests in France against the CPE.  A really good friend of mine teaching in Paris emailed me to say that "most of the opinions [presented] don't really even try to understand the french mentality" and the article was "polemically NOT comprehensive." I realize I made a sort of rookie journalism mistake of relying too heavily on English language media, mainstream media, and well, whatever Google was telling me, and in the process completely failed to give adequate time to legitimate arguments against the law.

Iraq War - My Three Years Later

I am going to keep this post short so as to try and limit your dose of my own self-righteousness (I'll break that promise), but here it is.  Thirty bodies were found yesterday just north of Baghdad, all of them decapitated.  For me, it triggered a breakdown in my detached, world news, blogging mindset. 

Decapitating humans is hard work.  It takes force. It's extremely up close and personal.  There must have been gallons of blood and spinal fluid pouring down the streets and splattered all over the executioners' hands and faces when they were done.

These weren't the first thirty bodies.  Nor will they be the last.  But it's what got to me and got me writing.

University of Kansas to teach Creationism and Intelligent Design - the right way

This AP article really gave me a glimmer of hope.  There are bastions of liberalism in the heartland.  Of course, that may change if David Horowitz has his way with higher education.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) -- Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.

   

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies." Read the full article >>>

News articles:

"

Univ. of Kansas Takes Up Creation Debate" DailyBreeze.com

Tags:

University of Kansas, Kansas, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Education

Australian to be hanged in two weeks for heroin trafficking in Singapore

The Sydney Morning Herald: Convicted Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van will be executed in Singapore on December 2, his Australian lawyer has announced.

A letter from the Singapore government confirming the news was sent to Nguyen's mother, Kim Nguyen at 2pm (AEDT) today, lawyer Lex Lasry said today.

   

She will be allowed to visit Nguyen in the three days before his execution, Mr Lasry said.

   

Nguyen, 25, was caught at Changi airport in Singapore in 2002 with 396 grams of heroin strapped to his body and in his hand luggage.

   

The news comes a day after Prime Minister John Howard left Australia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Joint Ministerial Meeting in South Korea, where he said he hoped to discuss Nguyen's fate with members of the Singapore government.

   

But shortly before he left Sydney for South Korea yesterday, Mr Howard said he held little hope for a positive outcome.

I had been following this case in the Australian press, albeit not very closely. But then I started digging around a bit and reading about just how many Australians have been executed or sentenced to lengthy prison terms for drug trafficking in Southeast Asia. Most are likely guilty, but some (e.g., Schapelle Corby) may have been the hapless victims of trafficking rings run out of airports that use tourists as unsuspecting couriers (a la Brokedown Palace).

It seems the strategy of the Australian government is to try and intercede in individual cases with the mightly tool of moral suasion, perhaps simply as a nod to domestic public opinion (which never works); they are far more reluctant to make any broad criticisms of the countries in question or start waving around the banner of human rights. Perhaps this is because, as John Quiggin, an Australian blogger, suggests, Australia - or at least Australia's version of the War on Drugs - actually benefits from having such draconian neighbors. And I suppose well-behaved states in the international system are not supposed to be intervening in countries' internal affairs.

That said, could you imagine what would happen if young, attractive Americans were being executed left and right for drug trafficking in Latin America? George Bush (whatever his complete indifference to the state of the American penal system) would drape that human rights banner around his shoulders, get up on his podium, and then start doing his Axis of Evil or Armies of Darkness or whatever speech and Colombia or Guatemala (or wherever) would get a smack down. Does Australia just not have that kind of overwhelming power vis-a-vis its immediate neighbors, or is it just not as keen to throw around its weight when what hangs in the balance are a few (not always so innocent) lives?

Some cases of Australians convicted of drug trafficking this year:

Nguyen Tuong Van (Age 25/Heroin/Singapore/Death Penalty (hanging))
The Bali 9 (Ages 18, 19, 20, 20, 21, 24, 27, 28, and 29/Heroin/Um...Bali/Still at Trial, but prosecutor asking for Death Penalty (firing squad)) - apparently the Australian Federal Police tipped off the Indonesians)
Schapelle Corby (Age 27/Marijuana/Bali/20 years) - if you need any proof that Australia is absolutely obsessed with this case, just check out the wikipedia entry outlining her defense in agonizing detail.
Michelle Leslie (Age 24/Ecstasy/Bali/3 months w/ time served) - granted she only had 2 pills, but who could let such a beautiful face rot behind jail? I am sure if she had looked like Renae Lawrence, or at least had looked average, she would have gotten the 15-year sentence ecstasy possession normally carries.

Sydney barman Michael McAuliffe was hanged in Malaysia in 1993. Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were hanged in Malaysia in 1986.

If you were to say I am somewhat morbidly fascinated by this poor chap's fate, you would not be wrong. But then again, so is the entire population of Australia.

Read more >>>

News Articles:

"Turn our backs on the island of death"  The Australian. November 21, 2005.

Tags:

Australia, Nguyen Tuong Van, Singapore, Indonesia, Bali, Malaysia, drugs, drug trafficking, death penalty