Years of Poems and Spirits

Didn’t want to do much but saw this poster and have to mark it down:

Really got a kick out of it!! By the way, the map is a real one, circa 1830s. Go Absolut!

I saw this right after seeing reports of the Olympic torch was extinguished three times in Paris amidst violent protests. Immediately I switched to Chinese news sites and saw almost nothing of it being reported.

This is totally fascinating because I’d think the development is a good thing for the Chinese government yet it chooses not to report it. Why is that?

Although in my paper, I am adopting Susan’s line to say it is useless to say if the state is strong or weak, by conventional standards, I’d say the government is very weak. It has such a tenuous hold on public opinion and national narrative, it chooses to put down anything that may generate excitement.

With regard to Tibet, in a “Absolut World”, the map should have been different. But there is little argument today what the map is. I am sure the Tibetans’ anger is legitimate. But they have to adjust their expectation: if Taiwan can’t become independent, where the Chinese government didn’t have any control for 60 years, Tibet has little hope to be independent either. For those who use East Timor or Kosovo as example, they really have to ask themselves whether those are exceptions or the rule.

Instead, the question of independence is now a wedge issue that split the Tibetans. If there is anything I want to tell them, that is, “don’t listen to the NGOs or Human Rights activists!” They can advocate indepedence because they don’t have to live with China. They can make all kinds of noise but they seldom deliver results. Most importantly, you have to have a unified front and you have to control the message.

Also, someone (Robbie Barnett?) brought up a good point: don’t forget the Chinese public in the whole issue. Dalai’s best hope is to have the Chinese public on his side. It was a improbably proposition. The way things are going, it looks like this is becoming increasingly impossible.

为什么政客们亲那么多Baby不会得病，我亲一个就病得摇摇欲坠?!

When one is physically ill what does that do to one’s mind? I had many hours of sleep but dreaded the dreams. It was the day time stress and anxiety repeated over and again. I was making arguments that at once seemed to make perfect sense and no sense at all. Just like my paper… Early in the morning, I didn’t want to go back to sleep just because I didn’t want to go back to the dreams. But when I was at 39c, it wasn’t always up to me.

While sick, I had time to watch some TV and to read from New Yorker:
1. Watched the Indy Race in St. Petersburg on TV, I think the cry “it is green flag racing!” is very sexy!

2. Watched Carman the opera: I always enjoyed listening to Carman. After all, the Toréador Song was what got me into classical music to begin with. And I watched the opera couple of times before. But this time it was different. Something clicked. Micaëla’s solo in the Gypse’s camp is the most moving: not only the music beautiful, but perfectly encapsulates the obsession of Jose and the power of Carmen. Although Don Jose’s possessiveness is pathological, Carman’s free-will almost justifies one’s total admiration: she is woman worth dying for.

3. Watched One Flew over Cuckcoo’s Nest: It is more Owellian but definitely not Foucaultian. The antagnistic nurse Ratched is NOT how mass society works today. Rather it is the elaborate weddings and ceremonies that David Brooks talked about in the Bobos in Paradise. However, the movie is superb at portraying the tension between the subjected and the privileged once the sensation of being free is discovered and the pursuit of liberation is on.

4. Read Eric Alterman’s “Out of Print” on NYKr. I am certainly in Lippmann’s camp. For a while, I thought that is what Alterman’s argument too. But that is just not progressive enough, uh? This article deserves another entry. But in summary, I do think politics and governance are becoming too complicated, too nuanced to be decided by the general public.

I remember a skit from SNL where a weekend party is going on in a loft apartment somewhere. That was right after 9.11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. Suddenly a guy rushes in and says, “the Northern Aliance just took Jalalabad!” and everybody raises their glasses and cheers.

The moral of the joke is that the world is just too complicated. Alterman seems to be finding hope in the newly burgening phenomenon of “participating” journalism, or a mixture of opinions and leaks and rumors. He is well aware of the ptifalls of such a development: the degradation of journalistic integrity. And more importantly, the polarization of public opinions. But strangely, he seems to say this is actually good for democracy: the reason that more Europeans voted than Americans is because they have so many tabloids.

Of course, his musing stops right there. No further reasoning offered why these two are even corelated! That is rather ridiculous for a serious article (or posting, should I say). But he has several good points, for example, that the “veneer of neutrality” is becoming increasingly unsustainable. And the very effort to stay “above the fray” may render print journalism cold and distant.

5. By the way, just saw my old boss Dan Hesse on TV in a Sprint commercial. I was such a fan of his while at Terabeam. I still think he is a heck of communicator and salesman.

Books may need renewal:
China’s Long March toward Rule of Law
Holding China together
Engaging the Law in China
转型中国：媒体，民意和公共政策 7-309-047095

SARS

2nd year response much better: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=314040

Internet: management or market?
http://www.democ.uci.edu/research/conferences/gradconf/democracyanditsdevelopment/jiapaper.pdf

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