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.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sanity Rules In Taiwan

6:11 PM

It is surely no surprise to regular readers of these pages that I agree with China's central government on the national status of Taiwan. By modern international decree, at the very least, (i.e. Messrs. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.; etc., etc.) it is a province of China--which is almost universally recognized as the People's Republic of China--and should remain so, albeit with some extraordinary concessions that cannot be ginger-cake.

It is also no surprise to me that many, if not most of you disagree; some of you vehemently. Nothing wrong with that.

The short version of why I think as I do is one word: Sovereignty. The long version is also short: Sovereignty is everything; without it, there is no nation-state. Therefore, to remain a nation-state, sovereignty must be rationally claimed and defended to conclusion, whatever that conclusion might be.

The arguments and analogies pro or con are all but endless and, more importantly, are better served in lecture halls and diplomatic backrooms than in these pages. I will only excerpt and link to a news story in The New York Times that I find heartening in its facts, and believe you should read.

Opposition Wins Taiwan Parliamentary Election

By DAVID LAGUE
Published: January 13, 2008

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The opposition Kuomintang party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections in Taiwan on Saturday. President Chen Shui-bian, who has antagonized China with his efforts to forge a national identity for the self-governing island, resigned as chairman of the governing Democratic Progressive Party to take responsibility for the loss.

The victory by the Kuomintang enhances its prospects of success at the voting for president in March, in which it is expected to continue campaigning for closer ties with China.

Please continue reading at The New York Times

6:11 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Saturday, January 05, 2008

First Christmas

4:14 PM

Ya gotta be kidding me, Grammy. Are all Holiday Seasons this good?
This is Grandpa Bosco, and well, yes, they are, Baby Joseph Allen Bosco; during those magical days and years of youth, or at least they should be. Children with the joy of wonder in their minds and hearts, who are loved by the family around them come what may, special children like you, are truly blessed. That is the essence of the Christmas Story, is it not? That is why Christmas--and the Holiday Season around it--is only really Christmas when there are children at the center of it.

While I am on the other side of the Planet from you, and likely will be for some years to come, please know that you are a huge chunk of my life every moment, regardless of the global time of day or distance between us.

And now the photographic tale of Christmas, family-style in New Orleans, 2007, which will forever be your first: It is a very good one, with your sense of self and style emerging daily in the photographs I treasure. Thank all gods for the Internet. Without it, we would too long age and develop with little visceral knowledge of one another. And I wouldn't have the thrill of knowing that more than a few thousand people every month, from all over the world, are also getting to know you in these pages.

Mr. Personality in Sartorial Christmas Splendor* * *

The Holiday Season Begins!

Dad, I heard you tell Grandpa and 'Grandma' Bosco that it never freezes in New Orleans--what's up with this?

Hey, Big Guy, I've been good; really, I have, take my word for it.

I heard Holiday Season is also Party Time, Dad?

And so it is, with Uncle Alex.

Hey, I like this Party Time stuff, Uncle Alex!

Let the good times roll! Forget dem Saints; go Peyton!

Yeah!

Christmas is here! But, Dad, where's your hat?

There ya go. Aren't we cool?

Grandma Linda is in her sartorial Season splendor: "No rush, I'll be walking soon, and you'll get more than your exercise running after me."

Grandma Pat and Grandpa Allen are looking good, too.

Grandpa Allen pointing the way...

...to here. Let's eat!

Grandpa Allen is taking care of the bountiful feast in store.

With more than a little help from Grandma Pat.

Christmas is about love, and I've got plenty of it.

Christmas Dinner!

Christmas morning with Mom and Dad.

It's all about you, Baby Joseph.

Mom, you're the best!

You too, Uncle Alex and Aunt 'Princess.'

Mom and Aunt Princess and lots of good stuff!

How's about a little help here?

Baseball! When's Grandpa Bosco coming back from China?

See? I've got the best looking Mom and Aunt going!

Just me and you, Mom.

When we going fishing, Dad?

That's nice, Mom, but look what I've got!

What's in it, Mom?

Oh, yeah, this'll work!

Everybody knew you were going to get me a rocking horse, Grandma Linda, and I love it! Is it like the one Dad had when he was little? No, it's much better!

More...?

Is that it...?

Good...I'm about done for the morning.

Nap time in Grandpa Allen's arms.

4:14 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Friday, January 04, 2008

The Nobility of Suicide in Beijing

3:04 PM

Dead bodies on a stage make a searing impression on an audience; Shakespeare's Othello can conveniently end with three corpses on stage. That textually logical effect and purposeful staging of the Moor of Venice was a large part of our winning First Place at the Third Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival last year. Perhaps two will do the trick this time.

Our staging of Shakespeare's Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra for the Fourth Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival, hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, goes to finale black with both Marc Antony and Cleopatra dead on the stage and Octavius Caesar pronouncing the "solemnity" of it all.

After presenting it to an audience on December 20th, we are now in the exciting process of editing the video from three cameras, shot over multiple performances, and producing the highest quality 20-minute DVD we can. We must submit that to the festival by January 15th and then anxiously wait, hoping we make the finals. The 12 finalists, chosen by international judges after viewing some 3-dozen plus DVDs, will then present their show live in Hong Kong in May. The lucky over-all winner there gets a trip to London and the Shakespeare tour. Can we do it again? Who knows?

I must say that the raw video is quite good and I am very pleased with what is coming together in the editing studio in the Television Department of BFSU. Some still shots have come in from the live performance; they are posted below.

Marc Antony -- Liu Siyang
Cleopatra -- Guo Wenna
Octavius Ceasar -- Chen Tao

Marc Antony and Cleopatra: "Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving, And blemish Caesar's triumph."

"O, make an end of what I have begun. Let him that loves me strike me dead."

"And welcome, welcome! die where thou hast lived; quicken with kissing: had my lips that power, thus would I wear them out."

"The crown of the earth doth melt. My Lord! O, withered is the garland of the war, The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls are level now with men; the odds are gone, and there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon."

Octavius and Cleopatra: "Cleopatra, know, we will extenuate rather than enforce; if you apply yourself to our intents, Which towards you are most gentle, you shall find a benefit in this change..."

"This is the brief of money, plate, and jewels, I am possess'd of: 'tis exactly valued; Not petty things admitted."

"Therefore be cheered; make not your thoughts your prisons; no, dear queen; For we intend so to dispose you as Yourself shall give us counsel."

"Our care and pity is so much upon you, that we remain your friend; and so, adieu."

"Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, that sucks the nurse asleep?"

"...but she looks like sleep. As she would catch another Antony In her strong toil of grace."

3:04 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Thursday, January 03, 2008

The Sound of One Shoe Dropping...?

10:24 PM

Ka-plunk roughly approximates the foreboding sound of good shoe-leather falling upon hardwood floors in the beginning revelations of illicit affairs of sex or State. There is certainly nothing sexy about the subject or object(s) of this CIA-generated Ka-plunk, which we have addressed earlier.

I am too deeply absorbed into editing the 20-minute DVD movie of our Antony and Cleopatra entry in the 4th Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival, hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, to write more than the brief metaphor above to recommend, excerpt and link to an article in The New York Times.

Justice Dept. Sets Criminal Inquiry on C.I.A. Tapes

By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: January 3, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that the Justice Department had elevated its inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes to a formal criminal investigation headed by a career federal prosecutor.

The announcement is the first indication that investigators have concluded on a preliminary basis that C.I.A. officers, possibly along with other government officials, may have committed criminal acts in their handling of the tapes, which recorded the interrogations in 2002 of two operatives with Al Qaeda and were destroyed in 2005.

C.I.A. officials have for years feared becoming entangled in a criminal investigation involving alleged improprieties in secret counterterrorism programs. Now, the investigation and a probable grand jury inquiry will scrutinize the actions of some of the highest-ranking current and former officials at the agency.

The tapes were never provided to the courts or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had requested all C.I.A. documents related to Qaeda prisoners. The question of whether to destroy the tapes was for nearly three years the subject of deliberations among lawyers at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Please continue reading at The New York Times.

10:24 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

He Ain't Heavy, He's My 'Obstruction': Another Tale of Missing Tapes

8:33 PM

The words of Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton are heavy; but then we've seen this movie before, or certainly its closest facsimile--the missing Nixon tapes? Those less than two-dozen minutes of audio tapes, that were apparently destroyed some 35 years ago, brought down a sitting president, through resignation, for the first and only time in American history. Richard M. Nixon avoided his congressional legal fate by quitting.

With but a year to serve, George W. Bush is not likely to face that choice. But for those many hours of CIA interrogation videotapes allegedly destroyed, somebody will pay his due for him. Would that it could be Cheney the Terrible, he with the still strangely Teflon credits with too many of my mainstream journalistic colleagues. But that is pie-in-the-sky wishing. Justice for the low-down most-high? Only in movies and overly ambitious liberal websites is that even imaginable.

The scapegoat that now must be forthcoming, due in no small part to an Op-ed piece in today's The New York Times by Messrs Kean and Hamilton, is likely to hold a significant position in the Bush administration--in name value perhaps not, since almost all of the major names have already left this reeking, foul ship of state.

I have had little time of late to post in these pages for various reasons, some of them very good; but I had to post this item, albeit with at best a cursory introduction, or be forever ashamed of myself.

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the "facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001" -- and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president's chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission's mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes -- and did not tell us about them -- obstructed our investigation.

Please continue reading at: The New York Times

8:33 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments