The LongBow Papers

Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Monday, June 28, 2004

Thomas Friedman's Visit To Beijing--and the China Foreign Affairs University--Spurs His "Imagination"

10:36 AM

Thomas Friedman, a writer and thinker I'd very much like to spend some time jawboning with, was at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing (where I am a visiting professor of "Media & Foreign Policy") last week and delivered a lecture that was exceedingly well-received by students, many of whom asked quite probing, intelligent questions and received answers that impressed them. I know, because they told me so in follow-up discussions in class. Now, I was of course delighted by this turn of events--but not nearly as much as if I'd been present for his lecture and visit to our tiny campus!

Yes, I missed it. Such are the vicissitudes of teaching at three universities and not being able to read Mandarin. While my schedule ostensibly precluded my attendance, I might have been able to alter it had I been able to read the hand-written posters that accounts for most of the intra-campus communication here at a university smaller than most junior high schools in a smallish American town. While I have a wonderful relationship with the Chinese faculty, they forget that we "Foreign Experts" cannot read Chinese. And, since every week we have at least one major dignitary from most any part of the globe visiting our little school for Chinese diplomats and leaders of the future, there isn't enough excitement at any particular visit to warrant a ripple of grapevine communication that would arouse enough curiosity for us to ask "what's up?"

So, I missed a wonderful opportunity to listen to and chat with a colleague whom I much admire. However, his visit to Beijing and our university was of enough import to Mr. Friedman that its residue appeared in his column in today's The New York Times. In a piece announcing a three-month sabbatical to finish a new book, Mr. Friedman listed three headlines "I'd like to read while I'm gone." The second one--and part of the third--is a direct result of his visit to Beijing and the Foreign Affairs University. It is below:

President Bush Stuns Electorate -- Does His Own Version of Nixon to China and Announces Joint Chinese-American Crash Program for Developing Alternative Energies. Roughly 30,000 new cars merge onto the roads in Beijing every single month. Every day, the newspaper headlines in China are about energy shortages, blackouts and brownouts. U.S. officials estimate that 24 out of China's 31 provinces are now experiencing power shortages. China's foreign policy today consists of two things � Taiwan and searching for oil. China's oil imports jumped last year alone by 30 percent. This is not a healthy situation. Environmentally speaking, in 10 days in Beijing I saw blue sky once. The other days were a gray, polluted haze. Developmentally, China's growth is soon going to be restrained, if it isn't already, by a sheer shortage of energy. Strategically, China and America could soon find themselves in a dangerous head-to-head competition for fuel.

If there was ever a time for big imagination, it is now. What we need is for President Bush to surprise himself and the world and propose a grand China-U.S. Manhattan Project � a crash program to jointly develop clean alternative energies, bringing together China's best scientists and its ability to force pilot projects, with America's best brains, technology and money. "When it comes to renewable technology and sustainable energy, China could be the laboratory of the world � not just the workshop of the world," said Scott Roberts, Cambridge Energy Research Associates analyst in China. Why not?

Bush Administration Calls an End to the "War on Terrorism." No, I haven't taken leave of my senses on the way out the door. I realize that we have enemies and they need to be confronted. But I do not want this to be all that America is about in the world anymore, and that is what has happened under this administration. I don't want the rest of my career to be about an America that exports fear, not hope, and ends up importing everyone else's fears as a result. I don't want it to be about explaining to young Chinese why my government can't give them student visas anymore. [emphasis added, ed.] I don't want it to be about visiting U.S. Embassies around the world and finding them so isolated behind barbed wire, they might as well not be there at all. Defeating "them" has begun to define "us" in too many ways.

America is so much more than just "Anti-Al-Qaeda Inc." � but our whole identity in the world, and too many aspects of our way of life, are getting contorted around that mission. If we're really having a relevant presidential campaign, I'll come back and find the candidates debating, not who is the "toughest" guy � the jungle is full of them � but who can be the toughest guy while preserving the best of what we had and the best of who we are.

The whole column is well worth you clicking through and reading it in full at: The New York Times

10:36 AM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

Sunday, June 27, 2004

An Intellectual Dilemma: Who to Believe, A Writer or a Critic?

2:21 AM

As a professional wordsmith of some 30 years, this scribbler hesitates not even an eye-blink before announcing: I'll take Larry McMurty's word over Michiko Kakutani's every day of the week and twice on Sunday! What in the blue blazes am I talking about, you ask? It is the diametrically opposite reviews of President William Jefferson Clinton's autobiography, "My Life," in the same newspaper, The New York Times--actually, the literary giant McMurty's rave review is in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, and the critic Kakutani's small-minded rant first appeared last week in the daily edition of the Old Grey Lady.

Kakutani is a pedestrian toiler in the back-forty of the landscape of arts & letters who only dreams of turning a phrase equal to the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lonesome Dove," and some two dozen other novels, or the author of "My Life" for that matter. What we really have going on here is another example of a Northeastern elite's compulsion to slam anything of intellectual value that might come from any State of the Old South, most particularly if the intellectual property comes from a Southerner of meager pedigree, such as President Clinton. I know this phenomenon well; I am of the same age as President Clinton and grew up in Mississippi, in many ways Arkansas' closest neighbor, and I don't mean only geographically.

Read them both--only excerpts are below. You will wonder if you are reading reviews of two different books:

William Jefferson Clinton's "My Life" is, by a generous measure, the richest American presidential autobiography - no other book tells us as vividly or fully what it is like to be president of the United States for eight years. Clinton had the good sense to couple great smarts with a solid education; he arrived in Washington in 1964 and has been the nation's - or perhaps the world's - No. 1 politics junkie ever since. And he can write - as Reagan, Ford, Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson, to go no farther back, could not.

In recent days the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant have been raised as a stick to beat Clinton with, and why? Snobbery is why. Some people don't want slick Bill Clinton to have written a book that might be as good as dear, dying General Grant's. In their anxiety lest this somehow happen they have not accurately considered either book.

Grant's is about being a general, in what Lincoln called a big war. Clinton's is about being a president at the end of the 20th century. Grant's is an Iliad, with the gracious Robert E. Lee as Hector and Grant himself the murderous Achilles. Clinton's is a galloping, reckless, political picaresque, a sort of pilgrim's progress, lowercase. There are plenty of stout sticks to beat Clinton with, but Grant's memoirs is not one of them. ...

One of the appealing things about Bill Clinton, at least to literary types like me, is that he frequently reminds me of authors or their characters - for instance, there's Thomas Wolfe, the big ghost from the other side of the South. Bill Clinton looks homeward often, to laud his angel mother, Virginia Kelley. But why stop there? You can have Clinton as Gulliver, pricked by the Boss Lilliputian, Kenneth Starr; you can have him as Tom Jones, eternally seeking his Dad; you can have him as L'il Abner, wooing his Daisy Mae in the unlikely purlieu of Yale Law School; though to his gnatlike cloud of enemies he will always mainly be the Artful Dodger, the man they're convinced is getting away with something, even if, as is often the case, they can't figure out what.

The one literary figure Clinton does not suggest is Don Juan. From the massive evidence of this book he's still obsessed with politics, as he always has been. Undoubtedly he has occasionally made time for bedroom sports, but not much time. Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky may be three of the nicest ladies in America, but their "conquest," however we are to understand that term, does not make Clinton the world's No. 1 ladies' man, or even the No. 1 ladies' man of northwest Washington. From my observation, which has been long and searching, the people who are doing most of the messing around in our lovely capital - les hauts journalistes - are still unable to manage a mature tone when dealing with presidential sex, when there is any.

Please read the rest of a masterful wordsmith's review of a book that will surely have more "legs" than any other piece of political literature since the works of Winston Churchill: The New York Times Book Review

Below is Michiko Kakutani's review--excerpts only--read it and you will understand why so few of us authors send Christmas cards to critics who are not also authors:

As his celebrated 1993 speech in Memphis to the Church of God in Christ demonstrated, former President Bill Clinton is capable of soaring eloquence and visionary thinking. But as those who heard his deadening speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta well know, he is also capable of numbing, self-conscious garrulity.

Unfortunately for the reader, Mr. Clinton's much awaited new autobiography "My Life" more closely resembles the Atlanta speech, which was so long-winded and tedious that the crowd cheered when he finally reached the words "In closing . . ."

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull � the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.

In many ways, the book is a mirror of Mr. Clinton's presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities; high expectations, undermined by self-indulgence and scattered concentration. This memoir underscores many strengths of Mr. Clinton's eight years in the White House and his understanding that he was governing during a transitional and highly polarized period. But the very lack of focus and order that mars these pages also prevented him from summoning his energies in a sustained manner to bring his insights about the growing terror threat and an Israeli-Palestinian settlement to fruition.

I suppose to be fair you should read the rest of this exercise in book-contract envy: The New York Times

2:21 AM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

Saturday, June 26, 2004

Sending a Message to the Evil Doers

7:04 PM

Sending John C. Danforth to the U.N. is sending a "message" to all of the "evil doer" nations with whom he must interact "diplomatically." The message, however, is a blatant statement that "our god" is the only "god" you must believe in if you want to stay on the good side of the world's only superpower, otherwise we will kick your national ass in to line with the "godly"--us, or rather U.S.F.C., the United States of Fundamentalist Christianity.

WASHINGTON, June 24 -The Senate on Thursday unanimously approved the nomination of former Senator John C. Danforth, a Missouri Republican, to be the next American ambassador to the United Nations.

Mr. Danforth, 67, an ordained Episcopal priest who officiated at the Washington funeral service of former President Ronald Reagan, recently served as special envoy for peace talks in Sudan. He served in the Senate for three terms, leaving in 1995.

The New York Times

7:04 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

This is a Must Read: "An American Supervised My Torture"

5:54 PM

Some articles should not just be highlighted and linked to; they are too important. The article below is one of them. As you read it you should keep in mind that the "diplomat" responsible for implementing much of America's pro-military dictatorship policy in Central America during the time when the events central to the article occurred was John Negropante, who was just installed as the United States Ambassador to Iraq. I also want to acquaint you with a website that should be of great interest to all whom consider themselves even marginally to the left of Attila the Hun:THE GLOBAL BEAT: Resources For The Global Journalist a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media.

Reliving my torture: An American supervised it

By Sister Dianna Ortiz, OSU

WASHINGTON--On November 2, 1989, I was abducted by Guatemalan security forces and taken to a clandestine prison, where I was burned with cigarettes more than 111 times, raped repeatedly, and subjected to other forms of torture. While there, I met the man my torturers referred to as their boss.

He was an American.

Later, when I first spoke of this man publicly, many of my fellow citizens here in the United States had difficulty believing that an American could be involved in torture, much less be boss of a squad of torturers. Even fewer would accept that he was undoubtedly acting on orders from superior.

I hope this is easier to believe today.

News of U.S. military involvement in cruel prisoner abuse in Iraq and against our captives from Afghanistan should not surprise foreign policy experts or anyone familiar with U.S. involvement in many developing nations. Not only have U.S. presidents supported governments that systematically engaged in tortured, they have presided over administrations that taught torture to foreign military personnel and practiced it as well. The abuses I experienced first-hand also occurred in prisons in El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and the Philippines while those countries received U.S. military aid.

Our leaders who violated U.S. law by ordering torture or knowingly permitting it have evaded responsibility for their actions largely by hiding incriminating documents from the rest of us by classifying them, turning into state secrets this information the public had a right to know. The usual justification is the protection of "sources and methods." As a result, U.S. torturers and torture instructors have long been protected.

Due to government secrecy, we do not know all the details, but anyone who wants to do so can learn enough to be convinced that our government has been involved in torture.

Naturally, most citizens don't want to know, don't want to believe. Knowing and believing that our government is guilty of torture makes us uncomfortable. The demands of torture survivors like me and others who have sought to declassify the facts have gone unheeded. The government we are accusing of torture is in charge of deciding whether to release the documents that would prove our accusations.

Today's situation is different. Those U.S. leaders responsible for torture in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq either did not know about the photographs or did not foresee their impact. Now our top leaders have taken "official notice" of torture. The issue has become so public that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush have apologized.

But their apologies do not go far enough for me or any other torture survivor who has suffered from U.S.-supported abuse. Our leaders have voiced regret that a "few bad apples" tarnished America's human rights record. In fact, there have been quite a few apologies--but not enough consequences. Rumsfeld, for example, apologized because it happened "on his watch." But does that mean he was responsible? Apparently not. He seems to have suffered no consequences. For this administration, the buck stops with a few bad apples.

Thanks to leaked memos, we now know that the White House was fully aware of attempts to redefine torture as "not torture," under the impetus of some Justice Department lawyers and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.

Even if only the people around him were plotting to make torture acceptable under U.S. law, should Bush be exonerated? If he is so irrelevant or ignorant, should we not demand to know who is truly the chief executive?

I want to say, "Of course. We've known it all along this was going on," but until now, few would listen--perhaps because there were no photographs. But my second reaction is pure horror, or rather, a revisiting of horror. There it is again--this time all over the front pages. What was done to these detainees brings me and many others back to our own prison cells, to our own torturers. Again we live under their control. Again we experience indescribable pain and suffering. Doesn't our government know what it is permitting?

Dark as the deeds of our leaders, there is a ray of hope. The media is tearing down the walls of silence that has surrounded our torture policies. Now it is our responsibility. We all must express outrage at what has been done in our name. That outrage has power--the power to compel our leaders never to permit torture again.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Sister Dianna Ortiz, an Ursuline nun, is executive director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International in Washington, D.C. She was tortured in Guatemala in 1989 after spending two years there as a Catholic missionary teaching Mayan children. She is the author of "The Blindfolds Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth."

The Global Beat

The Global Beat Syndicate, a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, provides editors with commentary and perspective articles on critical global issues from contributors around the world. For more information, check out http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/.

5:54 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Speaking of Television Broadcasting in China...?

2:51 AM

In some China-oriented blogging of late there has appeared more than a dollop of demagoguery regarding the state-owned media, CCTV in particular. And while I will shortly take issue with one of the most egregious examples of same, penned by one Ann Condi, in this post I wish only to explain yet another reason for the scarcity of blogging here in The LongBow Papers.

Aside from the ongoing technical problems with Blogger, I have been absent from these pages over the past ten days or so because I have been working pretty much around the clock producing and directing a 90-minute "Variety/Talk Show" of the David Letterman type as an extravaganza-finale to the academic year for the Beijing Broadcasting Institute where I have been lecturing part-time in their new English Language Broadcasting major.

As is often the case in the always amazing Middle Kingdom, the decision to attempt such a thing with 45 very talented but very inexperienced "stars of tomorrow today"--and task me with it--was made at the last minute. Well, folks, although I am not really sure I can believe it just yet--we pulled it off! Today! Never have I been so proud of a group of young people under my supervision than I am of those that made "Talk The Talk" a resounding success for both a live studio audience and for broadcast.

We had dignitaries from the university/institute along with luminaries--and my colleagues--from CCTV International in attendance as honored guests (and hopefully employers of my stalwart troupers next year). Except for one technical screw-up with a miscued piece of pre-recorded video, the show exceeded even my optimistic projections--which were very much akin to whistling past a graveyard based upon the final dress rehearsal. But, as so often happens in "show biz," the show peaked at exactly the right time--opening day (and in this case, also closing day).

I am very tired of body, and totally drained of mind, but I am aglow with the reinforced belief in the future of all things "New China" because of what these young men and women accomplished in so short a period of time. This past February was the first time any of them had ever been in front of a real television camera in a real studio; and while much of the credit is being heaped upon me for putting them there and then pushing them to "be good or be gone"--the unfortunate truism of real TV--the glory and achievement belongs to them alone.

It might be interesting to note that "Talk The Talk" dealt with contemporary social issues that ranged from being gay in China to Anorexia Nervosa.

Anyway, and any how, it is done, and so is my fulltime class load at the China Foreign Affairs University: another academic year has ended. I will now have almost eight weeks to only write--and rest!

2:51 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Sticky Dicky Gets Testy--and Foul Mouthed, Too

1:49 AM

Frankly, me chiding anyone for profanity is more than a little hypocritical since I'm a cussing man myself. However, when it comes to being critical of the man who is hands-down the greatest danger to our Republic and its sacred freedoms since Joe McCarthy, I'll take the hit. Shame on you Dick "Haliburton" Cheney.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney blurted out the 'F word' at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont during a heated exchange on the Senate floor, congressional aides said on Thursday.

The incident occurred on Tuesday in a terse discussion between the two that touched on politics, religion and money, with Cheney finally telling Leahy to "f--- off" or "go f--- yourself," the aides said.

"I think he was just having a bad day," Leahy was quoted as saying on CNN, which first reported the incident. "I was kind of shocked to hear that kind of language on the floor."

"That doesn't sound like language the vice president would use but there was a frank exchange of views," said Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems.

According to congressional aides, Leahy said hello to Cheney following the taking of the Senate group photo on the floor of the chamber.

Cheney, who is president of the Senate, then ripped into Leahy for the Democratic senator's criticism this week of alleged war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran.

Leahy and other Democrats have called for congressional hearings into whether the vice president helped the firm win lucrative contracts in Iraq after the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein.

During their exchange, Leahy noted that Republicans had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic because they are opposed to some of President Bush's anti-abortion judges, the aides said.

That's when Cheney unloaded with the "F-bomb," aides said.

With the Senate sharply divided, Democrats and Republicans have had numerous partisan battles in recent years on matters from taxes to health care.

"Things have been pretty bad around here," said Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat. "But as far as I know, as far as I'm concerned, this is a new low."

According to Senate rules, profanity is not permitted while the chamber is in session. But when the exchange occurred between Leahy and Cheney, the Senate was not in session so there was technically no foul.

Earlier on Thursday, before word of the exchange spread, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, stood in the chamber and spoke of the need to improve civility with what he called the "politics of common ground."

Reuters

1:49 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Can Dubya Count?

1:00 AM

Since Bush brags about his aversion for reading, I can only wonder if he also has the same distaste for basic math. These matters are of interest today because his application of two of the proberbial 3 R's would bring decidedly bad news for our less than stalwart Commander in Chief. In other words, the most recent polling numbers will most likely have Mama Bush once again chastising the "liberal media" for picking on her favorite son--read 'em and weep Bushies, one and all:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For the first time since the start of the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans now say the U.S.-led invasion was a mistake, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll released on Thursday.

Amid continuing violence in Iraq and questions about the justification for the war, 54 percent of the 1,005 Americans polled said it was a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq, compared with 41 percent who held that view three weeks ago.

The findings mark the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of U.S. forces a mistake, USA Today reported on its Web site.

In addition, the poll found that for the first time a majority also said the war in Iraq has made the United States less safe from terrorism.

Fifty-five percent said the war has increased U.S. vulnerability, compared to a December poll in which 56 percent said the war made the United States safer.

Reuters

1:00 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Sunday, June 20, 2004

Show Us the Proof, Mr. Bush

10:50 PM

Because of my intermittent ability to post due to Blogger's as yet malingering techies, there have been items that I wished to have in these pages when they were immediate but could not do so. The New York Times editorial below is one of them. Though it is almost two days old now, I believe it important enough to satisfy the better-late-than-never rule that I just this moment chose to adopt for this site

:When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history.

Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.

Before the war, Mr. Bush spoke of far more than vague "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said Iraq had provided Al Qaeda with weapons training, bomb-making expertise and a base in Iraq. On Feb. 8, 2003, Mr. Bush said that "an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990's for help in acquiring poisons and gases." The 9/11 panel's report, as well as news articles, indicate that these things never happened.

Mr. Cheney said yesterday that the "evidence is overwhelming" of an Iraq-Qaeda axis and that there had been a "whole series of high-level contacts" between them. The 9/11 panel said a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan in the early 1990's, meeting with Osama bin Laden once in 1994. It said Osama bin Laden had asked for "space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The panel cited reports of further contacts after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, but said there was no working relationship. As far as the public record is concerned, then, Mr. Cheney's "longstanding ties" amount to one confirmed meeting, after which the Iraq government did not help Al Qaeda. By those standards, the United States has longstanding ties to North Korea.

Mr. Bush has also used a terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Mr. Bush used to refer to Mr. Zarqawi as a "senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner" who was in Baghdad working with the Iraqi government. But the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime, nor under the direction of Al Qaeda.

When it comes to 9/11, someone in the Bush administration has indeed drawn the connection to Iraq: the vice president. Mr. Cheney has repeatedly referred to reports that Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent. He told Tim Russert of NBC on Dec. 9, 2001, that this report has "been pretty well confirmed." If so, no one seems to have informed the C.I.A., the Czech government or the 9/11 commission, which said it did not appear to be true. Yet Mr. Cheney cited it, again, on Thursday night on CNBC.

Mr. Cheney said he had lots of documents to prove his claims. We have heard that before, but Mr. Cheney always seems too pressed for time or too concerned about secrets to share them. Last September, Mr. Cheney's adviser, Mary Matalin, explained to The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney had access to lots of secret stuff. She said he had to "tiptoe through the land mines of what's sayable and not sayable" to the public, but that "his job is to connect the dots."

The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy.

The New York Times

10:50 PM / Editor / permalink 1 comments

The Man Who Didn't Kill Nicole Brown Simpson

3:31 AM

Many of you probably do not know that some three years of my life was spent at the epicenter of the O.J. Simpson murder case. I seldom speak much about it anymore, but with this past week being the 10th anniversary of the double-homicide in Brentwood and the slow-speed Bronco chase, for the past few months I have been contacted by all of the usual networks wanting me to participate in specials planned for the week. Being in China, there was little I could do but consult via e-mail.

There is something, though, that I have finally decided to do here in these pages: I am going to ask you to read a very special cover story I wrote for Time Magazine during the Spring of 1998. The story was killed 10 minutes before going to press when the highest management level of Time, Inc. caved into political and legal pressure. The story was subsequently published in various forms in smaller magazines and on the Internet. I would like for you to read it as it was written, in full, by me.

I also want to pass on an interesting piece of news that I would not have known about except for one of my faithful colleagues who has kept me informed about some of the televised specials I did not know about and couldn't watch here in China. I cannot identify this person, but she knows she has my deepest gratitude:

Geraldo said, "Fox news requested an interview with [Homicide detective Brad] Roberts, and others who had worked the Simpson case. The LAPD Media Relations Department [Don Cox] left us a surprising response in a voice-mail message: They said the 10 year old case is, quote, "still in an investigative state and due to that, we have been advised by the office not to get involved in any interview regarding this case at this time."

The significance of what Geraldo announced will be understood only after you have read the Story. It may load a little slowly, it's a big file, but it is also a big story, published in Prevailing Winds (now defunct) with important graphics.

3:31 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Orwell meets Kafka

12:52 AM

The title above is a catchy moniker for a really fine roundup of recent revelations of the events which could very well serve as the endgame of the Bush family Dynastic Restoration, another ignominious one-term embarrassment for the Republican Party. It is from a site that perhaps many of you do not have on your must-read list, the Daily MoJo, the blog of one of the best magazines in the world, Mother Jones. While folks such as Josh Marshall and other well-known progressives are doing an excellent job in chronicling the Bush disaster, I want to strongly recommend that you check out the journalists that bring you the sample below:

Orwell meets Kafka

By Tom Engelhardt
Quotes of the week:

"Congress lacks authority � to set the terms and conditions under which the president may exercise his authority as commander in chief to control the conduct of operations during a war�Congress may no more regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield. Accordingly, we would construe [the law] to avoid this difficulty and conclude that it does not apply to the president's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants." (From a 56-page memo, "Detainee Interrogation in the Global War on Terrorism" written by a legal team for the Secretary of Defense on the eve of the Iraq War.)

"Congress shall have the power � to declare war and make rules concerning captures on land and water � to define offenses against the law of nations [and] to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces." (From the Constitution, David G. Savage and Richard B. Schmitt, Lawyers Ascribed Broad Power to Bush on Torture, the Los Angeles Times)

"We need to have a less-cramped view of what torture is and is not." (A military official explaining the approach of the team writing the above memo, Jess Bravin, Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture, The Wall Street Journal)

"It's a very cowboy kind of affair." (Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who controlled the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib prison, speaking of the actions of the CIA unit there, R. Jeffrey Smith, Soldier Described White House Interest, the Washington Post)

Room 101

For his dystopia, 1984, his classic novel of totalitarianism, George Orwell created "Room 101," an interrogation room where a prisoner's deepest fears were to be realized and applied. Tier 1 in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, as the now-infamous photos indicate, was the Bush administration's Room 101 for the "Arab mind," and so the crown jewel of its global interrogation facilities; just as Guantanamo was the "crown jewel" of the prison camps in its global Bermuda Triangle of injustice; just as the new appointed "interim government" hidden within the ever-more fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and led by a prime minister and former CIA asset whose exile organization, we learned this week, once set off car bombs in downtown Baghdad, is now the crown jewel of "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East. This is our "war against terrorism." Talk about an Orwellian world.

As it happens, from the heart of Abu Ghraib's interrogation rooms and the acts of, as our President and other administration officials have repeatedly said, "a few people" or even "a few hillbillies," the nature of, extent of, knowledge about, and responsibility for such acts has been rapidly spreading outwards across the imperium, upwards into the highest reaches of our government, and backwards in time. We now know, for instance, that, to the various acts of horror caught on camera in Abu Graib, we must add murder (or rather numerous murders) in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, and the use of electric shocks on prisoners, as the Marine Corps Times reported recently.

In the meantime, responsibility for such actions has moved inexorably upwards. We know now that interest in information gleaned from interrogations, ranging from that of John Walker Lindh to those in Iraq was requested at the highest official levels (not so surprising, since our offshore mini-gulag was a pet project of top officials in this administration): "The head of the interrogation center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq told an Army investigator in February that he understood some of the information being collected from prisoners there had been requested by �White House staff,' according to an account of his statement obtained by The Washington Post." Far more specifically, R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White of the Post reported this Saturday that, despite his denials to Congress, in the fall of 2003, "Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents."

In turn, thanks to Jess Bravin and Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, we now know that in December 2002 Donald Rumsfeld approved a very similar list of "interrogation techniques" right down to those dogs for Guantanamo: "U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could put prisoners in �stress positions' for as long as four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations, �fear of dogs' and �mild non-injurious physical contact,' according to [a] list of techniques Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved in December 2002." (The list was later rejiggered not because of any qualms Rumsfeld had but due to complaints from military officers about the severity of the methods suggested. The present list of approved techniques remains classified, but will undoubtedly soon be leaked to the press.)

There is a great deal more in this post, please go click on the Daily MoJo

12:52 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Condi Rice Splitting Frog's Hair

4:29 PM

It has long been apparent that Ms. Rice can split a political hair with the very best of them. The hair she is splitting of late, however, is a remarkable achievement�a frog's hair. I don't know if you've had much experience with frogs, but in the part of America I hail from, the deep south, namely the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, frogs are plentiful and harvesting them--called "frog gigging"--for the dinner table is a routine part of life.

Frankly, if any of the frogs I gigged and/or ate had any visible hair on them then my powers of observation were indeed more than a little suspect. Of course, later in life, as a journalist and author, not a few critics of my reportage have indeed made that accusation. I have always disputed it vigorously, as I do almost any statement about why we invaded Iraq that comes from the Bush administration. Below you will find another example of the administration�s fondness of prevarications, and also why I call this particular attempt splitting frog's hair.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In publishing a report that cited no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the Sept. 11 commission actually meant to say that Iraq had no control over the network, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Friday.

As the White House strove to curb potential damage to President Bush's credibility on Iraq, his closest aide on international security denied any inconsistency between the bipartisan panel's findings and Bush's insistence that a Saddam-Qaeda relationship existed.

"What I believe the 9-11 commission was opining on was operational control, an operational relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq which we never alleged," Rice said in an interview with National Public Radio.

"The president simply outlined what we knew about what al Qaeda and Iraq had done together. Operational control to me would mean that he (Saddam) was, perhaps, directing what al Qaeda would do."

Intelligence reports of links between Saddam and the group blamed for the 2001 attacks formed a cornerstone of Bush's rationale for the invasion and occupation of the turbulent Arab country, where 833 U.S. soldiers have died after 14 months of violence.

The chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission differed with Rice's characterization of their panel's findings in separate interviews with Reuters.

"We don't think there was any relationship whatsoever having to do with 9/11. Whether al Qaeda and Saddam were cooperating on other things against the United States, we don't know," Commission Chairman Thomas Kean said.

Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton said he was unaware of anyone ever claiming that Saddam had directed al Qaeda.

"The word 'control' is new," Hamilton said.

"The president talks in terms of a relationship between the two. The vice president talks in terms of a tie between the two. We talk in terms of contacts between the two," he added.

"All of those words are similar, but clearly relationship and ties suggest more than contacts."

The Sept. 11 commission's staff report said there had been contact between Iraqis and al Qaeda members including a Sudan meeting between al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officers.

But the panel concluded that Iraq never responded to a bin Laden request for help and said there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship."

Reuters

4:29 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Torture? The Word Itself is Ugly and Patently Un-American

11:43 AM

Since I agree that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" I am loathe to label anything, much less anyone, with the sobriquet "Un-American," but in the case of this most ugly word, "torture," I have absolutely no compunction at its use in this context. Also, if Samuel Johnson's oft-cited quotation is of substance, then I may be allowed to stretch its structure and theme more than a little and offer a quote of my own: 'Torture in the name of patriotism, or even in the defense of that for which we rightly feel patriotic, is the first refuge of a tyrant.'

My sometimes friend, and former colleague, Alan Dershowitz, and his unconscionable departure from his senses--something Alan does from time to time just to piss off Lawrence Summers and almost everyone else for the sheer pleasure of hearing his name rattling from rafters near and far--in his now infamous defense of torture, notwithstanding, there is no excuse for the use of torture by a civilized society. Its use destroys the user even more surely than its victim with its internal rot of the soul; just as slavery ultimately made slaves and moral degenerates of the slaver.

I am, of course, by no means alone in this belief. Two of my favorite bloggers, who are more often than not on opposite sides of political debates, have both recently posted strong views condemning the torture that we know was done in our name in Iraq, Richard of The Peking Duck, and Conrad of The Gweilo Diaries. Therefore I shan't preach in great length here upon the odoriferous gangrene now eating away at the center of the American soul, but since I have not been able to post of late, I had to add my voice to the clamor calling for the rot to be cut away no matter how deep and upwards it goes.

Below you will find an excellent short piece on the issue from Reason Express, and below that you will find a link to "The Memo" which is the damning evidence of just how high and official is the rotting core of the torture scandals.

The Department of Justice's torture memo, despite its length and finely honed language, is a rather simple document that sets out to achieve two ends. First, it makes the case that when the president wears his commander-in-chief hat, he may do as he pleases to anyone, anywhere. Second, the memo functions as a defense lawyer's brief for any government official charged with committing torture.

Of the two goals, the second seems by far the more insidious and potentially dangerous. After all, the notion of executive supremacy can be rejected on its face. But if a definition of torture were to become enshrined that recognized torture as torture only when the accused knew he or she was committing torture (which is what the memo argues), that definition might become difficult to dislodge.

Moreover, such a definition of torture is an almost perfect roadmap to dehumanizing prisoners and adopting a "they're used to it" defense of harsh treatment. Bang them around and rough them up? It's OK, they're used to it. Strip them and turn the dogs on them? It's OK, they'll get over it.

A legal definition of torture that holds that only the intent to cause severe pain and possible permanent injury is torture actually encourages abusers to regard captives as persons able to withstand rough treatment. In short, it behooves the torturer to view his captives as more animal than human. Doing so removes the needed intent the Justice Department says must be present to show that torture, in fact, occurred.

Reason Express

The Memo, in .pdf form

[NOTE: I am still suffering intermittent posting woes; Blogger.com�s interface�the �dashboard��works only occasionally, and only for brief moments, which means that it is extremely difficult to blog with any consistency. Blogger.com is blaming the problem on Chinese censorship of the Internet. However, since my site isn�t blocked, nor is Blogger.com�s Home Page or the personalized posting interface for The LongBow Papers blocked, I find that explanation illogical. How can the government censors monkey with the internal functions of Blogger? And why not just pull the plug on my site or Blogger.com itself? Whatever, please forgive the scarcity of new posts�it is not due to a lack of interest, I assure you.

Further update: The problem continues; there are only short windows of opportunity for posting and they are not predictable. Consequently, timely posting is extremely problematical]

11:43 AM / Editor / permalink 1 comments

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

From The Geniuses at Blogger.Com Tech Support...

4:29 PM

Blame it on China. Yepper, that's an always convenient answer in the western mind, and has been for many decades. As you know by now, I have not been able to post for well more than a week using the Blogger application on my own domain on Interland, an independent ISP. Well, last night the ability to post mysteriously returned. Now, I had notified Blogger Tech Support shortly after everything went fritz, but nary a word came in response, until today.

Below is their response to the problem which I summed up to them originally thusly: "For at least three days I have not been able to post anything. I can get to my "dashboard"--sometimes--but then any and all functions I attempt result in a DNS or "Server Cannot Be Found" page. ... my blog, The LongBow Papers, is not blocked, I can access it but I cannot do anything but look at it."

Hi Joseph,

I'm afraid that the Chinese government has been blocking all BlogSpot
pages from being shown within that country for a while now, so it may be
that they are starting to block Blogger as well. I'm sorry about that, but
I'm afraid there's not much we can do. To rule out a problem on your
computer, though, you can try clearing your browser's cache and cookies,
and/or using a different computer.

Sincerely, Graham
Blogger Support

I would think that the Chinese government would block my blog, or Blogger.com itself, not fiddle with the internal workings of Blogger--I'm not at all sure they can even do that. So, what the hell, blame it on China the techies say and pass another joint.

4:29 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Monday, June 14, 2004

Blogger Works!

10:41 PM

I'm back! It worked! I can post again! I don't have a clue as to why Blogger went away for well more than a week--but I think I will have to be retrained on how to be a blogger! It has been that long since I've been able to do what had become a routine part of my busy life. I mean, I take a trip to the states for a week--no blogging--then I come back to Beijing to a broken Blogger.

What to post? That is the question...

10:41 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

The Bosco Fire Drill...(Redux + Update)

10:36 PM

No excuses, just the facts, ma'am: The scarcity of posts of late is not due to a lack of will or interest, it's the evidence of a failing of mine, piling too many obligations upon my plate. This fact was of course exacerbated by a trip back to the States, which not only expended time, but carried with it the baggage of almost an equal amount of time lost in recovery from the drastic effect of time-warp more commonly known as jet-lag.

New York is exactly 12 hours behind Beijing. On this last trip, the itinerary included an overnight stop in Tokyo, which occasioned a rather surreal time dynamic: arriving in New York 30 minutes BEFORE we left, even though we were in the air for more than half a day! Upon our return, the reverse of this dynamic was that we left New York early on a Wednesday morning, flew for well more than half a day, but arrived in Beijing late Thursday night. Altogether it meant a time whiplash of the mind and body that damn near killed me--and I am using only a small dose of hyperbole.

Then came the catch-up of catching up with the duties and responsibilities of teaching and lecturing at three Biejing universities. This is not to mention catching up with the work by which I make my real living--writing (I teach only because I love it and believe that I am giving back something for a career that has been rather good to me). In that direction, besides one book that is dangerously short on deadline, there are two more that are chronically, acutely behind schedule.

Plus the best, the worst, and newest news in my wordsmithing career is that upon my return I signed onto a major book and film project here in China--the details of which I cannot contractually reveal just yet, except to say YIPPIE! and thank you lucky stars! When the time is appropriate, I will proudly announce more details of a project that might be said to be a dream-come-true kind of creative endeavor.

Anyway, and any how, the point is I wish to ask the faithful readers of these pages to forgive the lack of posting and bear with me if you please; I will have a new post or two quite soon, perhaps even today, maybe--because to add cyber insult to injury, I haven't been able to access my Blogger interface for several days and I don't have a clue as to what's up with that. I can access the site, it isn't "blocked," but all I can do is look at it and quietly curse the fates as the hours and days, and more than a week(!) speeds by....

I think it is WORKING! I won't know until I click the mouse...will I or will I not be back in the blogging business?

10:36 PM / Editor / permalink 1 comments

Monday, June 07, 2004

I Cannot Mourn His Passing...

5:15 AM

Leave it to a 3rd-rate actor to upstage a 4th-rate president during the commemoration of the most defining day of a uniquely 20th Century force for freedom and justice that had as its hallmark a brotherhood of nations unlike any this world has witnessed before or since, a bonding internationalism--a concept that both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush repudiated every day of their lives, and worked diabolically to ensure it would never happen again. No two American leaders have ever done more to divide our world into camps called "us" and "them," with the only distinction between the two being an unquestioning obedience to a singularly skewed ideology that is as faulty in logic as it is in simple human empathy.

Of course, for Bush, some might say it was a bit of a blessing that Reagan, whose sense of timing was indeed that of a professional actor, died on a weekend that saw Bush have to sit quietly and squirm during verbal spankings from world figures such as Pope John Paul II, and French President Jacques Chirac.

There are surely many of you who will find my harsh words at this moment inappropriate, after all, compassion alone calls for kinder words when any human dies. In almost all cases I would agree--but this time, at this moment, at this passing, I cannot be anything less than harsh, lest I be a hypocrite of the first order.

I do grieve for those who grieve for him, those humans who were his loved ones and friends, those who are truly in pain this weekend. I grieve for my dear friend Dominick Dunne, who was close to the Reagans, particularly Nancy Reagan, for many years. Many's the time that in spite of myself I listened happily as with all of the excitement of a child Nick would breathlessly recount tidbits from one of his just-completed luncheons with Nancy and one or two of her other illustrious friends squeezed in between morning and afternoon sessions of another high-profile murder trial we were working. I am certain that Dominick is hurting tonight--for him, and for other notables I know who do not share my deep animosity for Ronald Reagan, I do grieve.

Why is there so much coldness in my heart for Reagan, even at the time of his passing, when at the passing of another presidential disgrace and arch adversary--Richard Nixon--I did grieve and even weep a bit? There are an almost incalculable number of reasons--the man's time in office was a mockery of the American Way like none other; he never met a right-winged dictator or racial bigot he didn�t nourish and pamper--but just one reason is so egregious that it will suffice:

How can I mourn the death of a man who traded the freedom of the American hostages in Iran for his election as the 40th President of the United States, the "October Surprise"? For me it is not just a largely held "belief" that he did this as it is for so many of my colleagues; for me it is not just the two or three very good books that document much of the evidence that he did this. No, for me, as the biographer of Leonid Shebarshin, the last Chairman of the KGB, who was Station Chief in Tehran during those terrible days of the Iranian Revolution, it was the indisputable proof I learned from a source who had no horse in the race. Messages were intercepted in Tehran, France and in Moscow; meetings were observed; assets reported. Then two devils struck a deal.

A very good and moral man, President Jimmy Carter, was defeated for being "too weak" in his handling of the Iranian hostage crisis by an ambitious, amoral actor who would do anything he could to assure he was cast in the biggest role of all. He got the part. And almost all of the civil rights and human dignity gains won at great cost by many during the activists years of the 60's and 70's were scuttled. May he never rest in peace.

5:15 AM / Editor / permalink 9 comments