[Peace-discuss] Fw: The "Incivility" of the Salaita Affair [from Informed Comment]

[Jenifer Cartwright via Peace-discuss]

     It's all worth a look, but pls especially note the brilliant second entry on the consequences of mentioning Occupied Palestinians in so-called Polite Company. No exaggeration, unfortunately -- this happened right here in Champaign-Urbana, just a couple of miles from my house. I haven't had an update recently, but I don't think it's a done deal yet.
     --Jenifer/Mom
 

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Informed Comment
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   - NASA Photo of Sahara: Richat Structure, Mauritania
   - Incivility: On not Bringing up Occupied Palestinians in Polite Company
   - Rep. Louie Gohmert’s Ebola Theory Is Dumber Than He Is
   - Does Bear + Dragon Trump Eagle? How Russia & China may block the US in Asia
   - The Yasukuni Shuffle: China and Japan duke it out via T.V. Serials on the Wrongs of WW II
   - Pan-Mideast War: ISIL and al-Qaeda attack Hizbullah outposts Near Lebanese Border

| NASA Photo of Sahara: Richat Structure, MauritaniaPosted: 05 Oct 2014 10:14 PM PDTNASARichat Structure, Mauritania, Western Sahara Desert
 “Richat Structure, MauritaniaThis prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert of Mauritania has attracted attention since the earliest space missions because it forms a conspicuous bull’s-eye in the otherwise rather featureless expanse of the desert. Described by some as looking like an outsized fossil in the desert, the structure, which has a diameter of almost 30 miles, has become a landmark for shuttle crews. Initially interpreted as a meteorite impact structure because of its high degree of circularity, it is now thought to be merely a symmetrical uplift that has been laid bare by erosion. Paleozoic quartzites form the resistant beds outlining the structure.” 
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team  |
| Incivility: On not Bringing up Occupied Palestinians in Polite CompanyPosted: 05 Oct 2014 09:35 PM PDTBy Heike Schotten (Ma’an News Agency)In the US, and especially within the US Palestine solidarity movement, the biggest Israel-Palestine news since Gaza Genocide 3.0 (which, with Palestinians dying daily, whether from the effects of the siege or horrific wounds leftover from the attack, makes this genocide ongoing), is the unceremonious un-hiring of Professor Steven Salaita from the University of Illinois on the ostensible basis of his impolite presence on social media. The short version, by now familiar, is this: Salaita, a tenured professor at Virginia Tech, signed a contract with the University of Illinois and had his new job all but in hand. Two weeks before the start of the semester, he was informed by Chancellor Phyllis Wise that she would not be forwarding his case to the Board of Trustees for approval. Subsequent sleuthing revealed big donor pressure on both Wise and the Board to un-hire Salaita, with threats to turn off the money spigot unless he was removed. Shockingly, ridiculously, Wise and the Board caved.This disgusting turn of events is one big pile up of injustices that is dizzying even to contemplate, much less sort through or analyze.Just off the top of my academic head, this decision:• Evacuates tenure of any real meaning.
• Renders Salaita unemployed in the near term and likely unemployable in the long term.
• Thumbs its nose at the Department who vetted Salaita’s hire.
• Disparages the knowledge, qualifications, and judgment of U of I faculty.
• Privileges the demands of wealthy donors over faculty expertise, institutional integrity, and shared university governance.
• Makes a complete mockery of academic freedom.These are only the most obvious problems. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the next level of injustice, however — which isn’t about the ostensible “civility” Salaita was accused of lacking on Twitter. It is rather about the content of his tweets, which were less impolite than they were critical of the Israeli state and its latest armed incursion into the Gaza Strip, a one-sided act of military aggression that resulted, most crudely, in the death of over 2,000 Palestinians (a full fourth of whom were children).And those donors? They are supporters of Israel, who didn’t want someone with Salaita’s particular political views teaching the next generations of students at their alma mater. To date, there has been plenty of attention paid to civility, the justificatory fig leaf for Salaita’s firing. According to David Palumbo-Liu, civility is for suckers. Put a bit differently, Vijay Prashad notes that civility is the new term used by those in power to demand capitulation and compliance. And yet this case is not primarily about speech, or academic discourse, or the upholding (or restricting) the freedom and civility of either.The un-hiring of Salaita is part of the larger, national-level campaign being waged on US campuses against critics of Israel, be they faculty or student groups. It is, in other words, part of the McCarthyist silencing tactics of the Israel lobby to curtail political critique on college campuses.As Jakeet Singh has recently pointed out, there is another level of injustice to which we have been inattentive in the Salaita affair: systematic racism and colonialism. Singh argues correctly that the targeting of Salaita, as well as the department where he was to teach — American Indian Studies — replicates and perpetuates racist and colonialist structures of civilizationalism, paternalism, and white privilege. Prashad notes that Salaita’s tweets were deemed “uncivil” because they criticize a government that the US and its power brokers favor supporting. Were he to have tweeted critiques of Russia, say, or North Korea, the story would likely be different.And yet, there is a reason that Salaita was critiquing Israel and not Russia or North Korea. Salaita was hired by the University of Illinois’ American Indian Studies department, based on his contribution to the emerging field of comparative indigenous studies. He was going to provide scholarly expertise on the comparative situation of colonized peoples in North America and Palestine.Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the most-discussed aspect of this case as well as the least-discussed — civility, on the one hand, and race and indigeneity, on the other — are related.It’s not simply that a scholar of color is being targeted for being “too angry,” or that a critic of Israel is being targeted by the Zionist lobby, or that “civility” is being used to justify the neoliberalization of the university and perpetuate colonialism (although it is all of these things).It’s also that these are in some sense interchangeable. “Civility” is the sharp end of this particular spear of racism and colonialism, which drives the targeting of Salaita in particular and critics of Israel in general. Indeed, the effects of U of I’s actions actually replicate those of colonization and dispossession. As a result of his un-hiring, for example, Salaita notes that his “family has no income, no health insurance, and no home of our own. Our young son has been left without a preschool. I have lost the great achievement of a scholarly career: lifetime tenure with its promised protections of academic freedom.”It is difficult to ignore the bitter irony of a Palestinian American becoming homeless and destitute as a result of Zionist lobbying efforts to un-hire him. And yet, it isn’t even ironic. After all, “irony” implies an outcome that is surprising or unexpected. It seems, rather, that Salaita’s homelessness and de-instatementare simply appropriate, simply what Palestinians deserve. In some sense defined by refugee status, what happened to Salaita is simply what happens to Palestinians. Indeed, Salaita has become a refugee once more, academically unaffiliated and without a physical home for himself and his family.In his very scholarly existence, in other words, Steven Salaita is an exercise in incivility. Not only is he Palestinian himself, and thus a member of a group already considered savage, backward, and in need of a lesson in “making the desert bloom.”But if “civilization” is understood as having been brought into being through the settlement of North America and the North American (not to mention Israeli) academy, then surely to draw attention to this illegitimate foundation by engaging in comparative indigenous studies is to question the very basis and legitimacy of civilization itself.When that interrogation comes directly from the mouth of the “savage,” you can be sure that the result will be, by definition, “uncivil.” Its words — their content no less than their tone — will be anathema to civilization, synonymous with its annihilation.The day of the iniquitous Board of Trustees vote (which, strangely, took place, despite Wise’s insistence it would not), Salaita re-emerged on Twitter. He tweeted only once, stating:

I’ve never felt more Palestinian than I did today.— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) September 12, 2014

A whole book could be written on the profundity of this statement — about its implications for identity, affect, Palestinianness; for privation, withdrawal, and loss more generally. But one thing seems sure: the defenders of civilization have acted to preserve its sanctity from the threat of savagery and destruction. There is no question, then, that far from having finished, the ugly machinations of “civilization” — dispossession, dispersal, silencing, and removal — continue apace, whether in the ruins of what is left of the Gaza Strip or the elite ravages of the neoliberal American university.The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Ma’an News Agency’s editorial policy.Heike Schotten is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she teaches political theory, feminist theory, and queer theory (her work is available here). She has been active in the Palestine solidarity movement since 2006.Mirrored from the  Ma’an News Agency —–Related video added by Juan Cole: Steven Salaita Speaks About His Termination   |
| Rep. Louie Gohmert’s Ebola Theory Is Dumber Than He IsPosted: 05 Oct 2014 09:33 PM PDTThe Young Turks
 “Louie Gohmert (R-TX) this week blasted President Barack Obama for sending troops to Africa to help fight an Ebola outbreak, and predicted that they would bring the disease back to infect American citizens.In an interview with Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, Gohmert explained that a series of mistakes made by the U.S. Secret Service were a symptom of “political correctness.”“I talk to these Secret Service agents, most of them are the same agents who have perform admirably and loyally for all these years, done a stellar job,” he explained. “But when you put political correctness above all else, just like we have with our rules of engagement with our military that’s getting our own military killed.””* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.” 
 The Young Turks: “Louie Gohmert’s Ebola Theory Is Dumber Than He Is”   |
| Does Bear + Dragon Trump Eagle? How Russia & China may block the US in AsiaPosted: 05 Oct 2014 09:27 PM PDTBy Pepe Escobar via Tomdispatch.comA specter haunts the fast-aging “New American Century”: the possibility of a future Beijing-Moscow-Berlin strategic trade and commercial alliance. Let’s call it the BMB.Its likelihood is being seriously discussed at the highest levels in Beijing and Moscow, and viewed with interest in Berlin, New Delhi, and Tehran. But don’t mention it inside Washington’s Beltway or at NATO headquarters in Brussels. There, the star of the show today and tomorrow is the new Osama bin Laden: Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the elusive, self-appointed beheading prophet of a new mini-state and movement that has provided an acronym feast — ISIS/ISIL/IS — for hysterics in Washington and elsewhere.  No matter how often Washington remixes its Global War on Terror, however, the tectonic plates of Eurasian geopolitics continue to shift, and they’re not going to stop just because American elites refuse to accept that their historically brief “unipolar moment” is on the wane.  For them, the closing of the era of “full spectrum dominance,” as the Pentagon likes to call it, is inconceivable.  After all, the necessity for the indispensable nation to control all space — military, economic, cultural, cyber, and outer — is little short of a religious doctrine.  Exceptionalist missionaries don’t do equality. At best, they do “coalitions of the willing” like the one crammed with “over 40 countries” assembled to fight ISIS/ISIL/IS and either applauding (and plotting) from the sidelines or sending the odd plane or two toward Iraq or Syria. NATO, which unlike some of its members won’t officially fight Jihadistan, remains a top-down outfit controlled by Washington. It’s never fully bothered to take in the European Union (EU) or considered allowing Russia to “feel” European. As for the Caliph, he’s just a minor diversion. A postmodern cynic might even contend that he was an emissary sent onto the global playing field by China and Russia to take the eye of the planet’s hyperpower off the ball.Divide and IsolateSo how does full spectrum dominance apply when two actual competitor powers, Russia and China, begin to make their presences felt?  Washington’s approach to each — in Ukraine and in Asian waters — might be thought of as divide and isolate. In order to keep the Pacific Ocean as a classic “American lake,” the Obama administration has been “pivoting” back to Asia for several years now. This has involved only modest military moves, but an immodest attempt to pit Chinese nationalism against the Japanese variety, while strengthening alliances and relations across Southeast Asia with a focus on South China Sea energy disputes. At the same time, it has moved to lock a future trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), in place.In Russia’s western borderlands, the Obama administration has stoked the embers of regime change in Kiev into flames (fanned by local cheerleaders Poland and the Baltic nations) and into what clearly looked, to Vladimir Putin and Russia’s leadership, like an existential threat to Moscow. Unlike the U.S., whose sphere of influence (and military bases) are global, Russia was not to retain any significant influence in its former near abroad, which, when it comes to Kiev, is not for most Russians, “abroad” at all. For Moscow, it seemed as if Washington and its NATO allies were increasingly interested in imposing a new Iron Curtain on their country from the Baltic to the Black Sea, with Ukraine simply as the tip of the spear. In BMB terms, think of it as an attempt to isolate Russia and impose a new barrier to relations with Germany. The ultimate aim would be to split Eurasia, preventing future moves toward trade and commercial integration via a process not controlled through Washington.From Beijing’s point of view, the Ukraine crisis was a case of Washington crossing every imaginable red line to harass and isolate Russia. To its leaders, this looks like a concerted attempt to destabilize the region in ways favorable to American interests, supported by a full range of Washington’s elite from neocons and Cold War “liberals” to humanitarian interventionists in the Susan Rice and Samantha Power mold.  Of course, if you’ve been following the Ukraine crisis from Washington, such perspectives seem as alien as any those of any Martian.  But the world looks different from the heart of Eurasia than it does from Washington — especially from a rising China with its newly minted “Chinese dream” (Zhongguo meng).As laid out by President Xi Jinping, that dream would include a future network of Chinese-organized new Silk Roads that would create the equivalent of a Trans-Asian Express for Eurasian commerce. So if Beijing, for instance, feels pressure from Washington and Tokyo on the naval front, part of its response is a two-pronged, trade-based advance across the Eurasian landmass, one prong via Siberia and the other through the Central Asian “stans.” In this sense, though you wouldn’t know it if you only followed the American media or “debates” in Washington, we’re potentially entering a new world.  Once upon a time not so long ago, Beijing’s leadership was flirting with the idea of rewriting the geopolitical/economic game side by side with the U.S., while Putin’s Moscow hinted at the possibility of someday joining NATO. No longer. Today, the part of the West that both countries are interested in is a possible future Germany no longer dominated by American power and Washington’s wishes.Moscow has, in fact, been involved in no less than half a century of strategic dialogue with Berlin that has included industrial cooperation and increasing energy interdependence. In many quarters of the Global South this has been noted and Germany is starting to be viewed as “the sixth BRICS” power (after Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).In the midst of global crises ranging from Syria to Ukraine, Berlin’s geostrategic interests seem to be slowly diverging from Washington’s. German industrialists, in particular, appear eager to pursue unlimited commercial deals with Russia and China.  These might set their country on a path to global power unlimited by the EU’s borders and, in the long term, signal the end of the era in which Germany, however politely dealt with, was essentially an American satellite.  It will be a long and winding road. The Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, is still addicted to a strong Atlanticist agenda and a preemptive obedience to Washington. There are still tens of thousands of American soldiers on German soil. Yet, for the first time, German chancellor Angela Merkel has been hesitating when it comes to imposing ever-heavier sanctions on Russia over the situation in Ukraine, because no fewer than 300,000 German jobs depend on relations with that country. Industrial leaders and the financial establishment have already sounded the alarm, fearing such sanctions would be totally counterproductive. China’s Silk Road BanquetChina’s new geopolitical power play in Eurasia has few parallels in modern history. The days when the “Little Helmsman” Deng Xiaoping insisted that the country “keep a low profile” on the global stage are long gone. Of course, there are disagreements and conflicting strategies when it comes to managing the country’s hot spots: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, the South China Sea, competitors India and Japan, and problematic allies like North Korea and Pakistan. And popular unrest in some Beijing-dominated “peripheries” is growing to incendiary levels.The country’s number one priority remains domestic and focused on carrying out President Xi’s economic reforms, while increasing “transparency” and fighting corruption within the ruling Communist Party. A distant second is the question of how to progressively hedge against the Pentagon’s “pivot” plans in the region — via the build-up of a blue-water navy, nuclear submarines, and a technologically advanced air force — without getting so assertive as to freak out Washington’s “China threat”-minded establishment.  Meanwhile, with the U.S. Navy controlling global sea lanes for the foreseeable future, planning for those new Silk Roads across Eurasia is proceeding apace. The end result should prove a triumph of integrated infrastructure — roads, high-speed rail, pipelines, ports — that will connect China to Western Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, the old Roman imperial Mare Nostrum, in every imaginable way.In a reverse Marco Polo-style journey, remixed for the Google world, one key Silk Road branch will go from the former imperial capital Xian to Urumqi in Xinjiang Province, then through Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey’s Anatolia, ending in Venice. Another will be a maritime Silk Road starting from Fujian province and going through the Malacca strait, the Indian Ocean, Nairobi in Kenya, and finally all the way to the Mediterranean via the Suez canal. Taken together, it’s what Beijing refers to as the Silk Road Economic Belt.  China’s strategy is to create a network of interconnections among no less than five key regions: Russia (the key bridge between Asia and Europe), the Central Asian “stans,” Southwest Asia (with major roles for Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey), the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe (including Belarus, Moldova, and depending upon its stability, Ukraine). And don’t forget Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, which could be thought of as Silk Road plus.Silk Road plus would involve connecting the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridor to the China-Pakistan economic corridor, and could offer Beijing privileged access to the Indian Ocean. Once again, a total package — roads, high-speed rail, pipelines, and fiber optic networks — would link the region to China.Xi himself put the India-China connection in a neat package of images in an op-ed he published in the Hindu prior to his recent visit to New Delhi. “The combination of the ‘world’s factory’ and the ‘world’s back office,’” he wrote, “will produce the most competitive production base and the most attractive consumer market.”The central node of China’s elaborate planning for the Eurasian future is Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Province and the site of the largest commercial fair in Central Asia, the China-Eurasia Fair. Since 2000, one of Beijing’s top priorities has been to urbanize that largely desert but oil-rich province and industrialize it, whatever it takes. And what it takes, as Beijing sees it, is the hardcore Sinicization of the region — with its corollary, the suppression of any possibility of ethnic Uighur dissent.  People’s Liberation Army General Li Yazhou has, in these terms, described Central Asia as “the most subtle slice of cake donated by the sky to modern China.”Most of China’s vision of a new Eurasia tied to Beijing by every form of transport and communication was vividly detailed in “Marching Westwards: The Rebalancing of China’s Geostrategy,” a landmark 2012 essay published by scholar Wang Jisi of the Center of International and Strategic Studies at Beijing University. As a response to such a future set of Eurasian connections, the best the Obama administration has come up with is a version of naval containment from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, while sharpening conflicts with and strategic alliances around China from Japan to India. (NATO is, of course, left with the task of containing Russia in Eastern Europe.)   An Iron Curtain vs. Silk RoadsThe $400 billion “gas deal of the century,” signed by Putin and the Chinese president last May, laid the groundwork for the building of the Power of Siberia pipeline, already under construction in Yakutsk.  It will bring a flood of Russian natural gas onto the Chinese market.  It clearly represents just the beginning of a turbocharged, energy-based strategic alliance between the two countries. Meanwhile, German businessmen and industrialists have been noting another emerging reality: as much as the final market for made-in-China products traveling on future new Silk Roads will be Europe, the reverse also applies. In one possible commercial future, China is slated to become Germany’s top trading partner by 2018, surging ahead of both the U.S. and France.A potential barrier to such developments, welcomed in Washington, is Cold War 2.0, which is already tearing not NATO, but the EU apart. In the EU of this moment, the anti-Russian camp includes Great Britain, Sweden, Poland, Romania, and the Baltic nations. Italy and Hungary, on the other hand, can be counted in the pro-Russian camp, while a still unpredictable Germany is the key to whether the future will hold a new Iron Curtain or “Go East” mindset.  For this, Ukraine remains the key.  If it is successfully Finlandized (with significant autonomy for its regions), as Moscow has been proposing — a suggestion that is anathema to Washington — the Go-East path will remain open. If not, a BMB future will be a dicier proposition. It should be noted that another vision of the Eurasian economic future is also on the horizon.  Washington is attempting to impose a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on Europe and a similar Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Asia.  Both favor globalizing American corporations and their aim is visibly to impede the ascent of the BRICS economies and the rise of other emerging markets, while solidifying American global economic hegemony.   Two stark facts, carefully noted in Moscow, Beijing, and Berlin, suggest the hardcore geopolitics behind these two “commercial” pacts. The TPP excludes China and the TTIP excludes Russia. They represent, that is, the barely disguised sinews of a future trade/monetary war.  On my own recent travels, I have had quality agricultural producers in Spain, Italy, and France repeatedly tell me that TTIP is nothing but an economic version of NATO, the military alliance that China’s Xi Jinping calls, perhaps wishfully, an “obsolete structure.” There is significant resistance to the TTIP among many EU nations (especially in the Club Med countries of southern Europe), as there is against the TPP among Asian nations (especially Japan and Malaysia).  It is this that gives the Chinese and the Russians hope for their new Silk Roads and a new style of trade across the Eurasian heartland backed by a Russian-supported Eurasian Union. To this, key figures in German business and industrial circles, for whom relations with Russia remain essential, are paying close attention. After all, Berlin has not shown overwhelming concern for the rest of the crisis-ridden EU (three recessions in five years). Via a much-despised troika — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission — Berlin is, for all practical purposes, already at the helm of Europe, thriving, and looking east for more.Three months ago, German chancellor Angela Merkel visited Beijing. Hardly featured in the news was the political acceleration of a potentially groundbreaking project: an uninterrupted high-speed rail connection between Beijing and Berlin. When finally built, it will prove a transportation and trade magnet for dozens of nations along its route from Asia to Europe. Passing through Moscow, it could become the ultimate Silk Road integrator for Europe and perhaps the ultimate nightmare for Washington.“Losing” RussiaIn a blaze of media attention, the recent NATO summit in Wales yielded only a modest “rapid reaction force” for deployment in any future Ukraine-like situations. Meanwhile, the expanding Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a possible Asian counterpart to NATO, met in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. In Washington and Western Europe essentially no one noticed.  They should have. There, China, Russia, and four Central Asian “stans” agreed to add an impressive set of new members: India, Pakistan, and Iran.  The implications could be far-reaching. After all, India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now on the brink of its own version of Silk Road mania. Behind it lies the possibility of a “Chindia” economic rapprochement, which could change the Eurasian geopolitical map. At the same time, Iran is also being woven into the “Chindia” fold.So the SCO is slowly but surely shaping up as the most important international organization in Asia.  It’s already clear that one of its key long-term objectives will be to stop trading in U.S. dollars, while advancing the use of the petroyuan and petroruble in the energy trade. The U.S., of course, will never be welcomed into the organization. All of this lies in the future, however.  In the present, the Kremlin keeps signaling that it once again wants to start talking with Washington, while Beijing has never wanted to stop. Yet the Obama administration remains myopically embedded in its own version of a zero-sum game, relying on its technological and military might to maintain an advantageous position in Eurasia.  Beijing, however, has access to markets and loads of cash, while Moscow has loads of energy. Triangular cooperation between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow would undoubtedly be — as the Chinese would say — a win-win-win game, but don’t hold your breath.Instead, expect China and Russia to deepen their strategic partnership, while pulling in other Eurasian regional powers. Beijing has bet the farm that the U.S./NATO confrontation with Russia over Ukraine will leave Vladimir Putin turning east. At the same time, Moscow is carefully calibrating what its ongoing reorientation toward such an economic powerhouse will mean. Someday, it’s possible that voices of sanity in Washington will be wondering aloud how the U.S. “lost” Russia to China.   In the meantime, think of China as a magnet for a new world order in a future Eurasian century.  The same integration process Russia is facing, for instance, seems increasingly to apply to India and other Eurasian nations, and possibly sooner or later to a neutral Germany as well. In the endgame of such a process, the U.S. might find itself progressively squeezed out of Eurasia, with the BMB emerging as a game-changer. Place your bets soon.  They’ll be called in by 2025.  Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT, and a TomDispatch regular. His new book, Empire of Chaos, will be published in November by Nimble Books. Follow him on Facebook. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me.Copyright 2014 Pepe Escobar—–Related video added by Juan ColeMirrored from Work begins on new China-Tajikistan gas pipeline   |
| The Yasukuni Shuffle: China and Japan duke it out via T.V. Serials on the Wrongs of WW IIPosted: 05 Oct 2014 09:20 PM PDTBy Philip J CunninghamEveryday hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese and Japanese kill one another on Chinese television. Hundreds of Anti-Japan war dramas were churned out last year and the genre dominates China’s airwaves round the clock like never before, even though eight decades have gone by since Japan’s war of invasion.What’s more, the 2014 fall television season is packed with more patriotic drama than usual, reflecting unresolved tensions with Japan and a series of war anniversaries ranging from the September 18 date marking the invasion of Manchuria to the December 13 commemoration of the Nanjing massacre.  Scene from a recent Chinese TV drama showing pain and perfidy of Japan’s invasionIn recent years Chinese authorities have used television, indignant news reports and patriotic drama alike to bash Japan, but the waves of anti-Japanism rise and fall even though anniversaries are static, which begs the question, why now? Why in such volume, and why so much of it all at once? Seen from the ground in China, from the pained point of view of a victim nation, the story of how Japan raped and pillaged can’t be told often enough, or in indignant enough a fashion. China’s contemporary cultural czars exploit this to crank out a wide range of propaganda product that helps keep the historic indignities alive, but it’s not history for history’s sake, as the same czars are adept at burying history when it serves political purpose.The anti-Japan campaigns are not conjured out of thin air either, but often are launched in response to words and actions by Japan that insult China’s sense of itself. Often provoked by specific incidents, Beijing’s changing anti-Japan line is part and parcel of a broader policy to shore up contemporary Chinese identity while simultaneously pressuring Japan to own up to its own history. But there are grassroots pressures as well. Japan invaded China through treachery and force and wreaked great havoc on the lives of tens of millions, so it’s not something easily forgiven or forgotten. Each time a national politician in Japan denies, dismisses or whitewashes the miserable and horrific decade of warfare in which China was battered and millions of civilian lives were lost, the authorities rush to speak out in indignation lest they fall behind the curve of popular opinion.Chinese actors ham it up playing the Japanese villainAlthough anti-Japan media campaigns are an exercise in power in their own right, the mechanical summoning up of past misdeeds to arouse passions in the present, the historic roots of the anguish are secure. Sometimes the anti-Japanism is just an excuse, shamelessly exploited for other purposes. The rise of such media campaigns, almost non-existent in the days of Mao and Deng, is no doubt in part a reaction to the rise of revisionism in Japan. But it is also a useful way to whip up solidarity and unity in the vacuum created by the collapse of communism as a guiding ideology. The Japan issue is so emotional for most Chinese that it can be harnessed and then whipped to distract a restive populace from domestic problems. The story of communist China is inseparable from the anti-Japan struggle ñMao once jokingly thanked Japan for creating the conditions for successful revolution- and to this day it can be used to stoke nationalism, especially among the young.The timing by which China decides to launch it’s patently undiplomatic anti-Japan campaigns bears a relationship to perceived provocations, and is in this sense born of reaction, but it is not so much a matter of reacting to provocations as it is a matter of what provocations China’s leadership elects to react to. Textbooks? That problem has been around for a while, a backburner issue. Comfort women? It’s an irritant, but South Korea has stepped forward to guard the front line on that one. Territorial disputes? The most dangerous of all, and tightly-controlled from the center, although there is some evidence of local commanders making aggressive moves on their own initiative and the ever-present danger that an accidental collision might start a small war. Military discipline and control are paramount when it comes to guarding territory and trump the seasonal needs for anti-Japan campaigns. For the media machine to mess unduly with the territorial issue is to play with fire, not just in terms of triggering armed conflict, but populist passions. For the control-minded apparatchik, Diaoyu/Senkaku and other island disputes are too hot to play around with for ulterior purposes. Which leaves Yasukuni, the most innocuous and unnecessary source of conflict, but in some ways the most heated source of contention. In practice, it’s just a walk in the park. Innocuous is not to say innocent, symbolic actions can inflict great hurt, and those engaged in the Yasukuni shuffle are well-aware of the hurt it causes. Their ritual steps salute the memory of Japan’s war-makers, including convicted war criminals, while ignoring their many victims. It’s a picturesque stroll in a shady, leafy setting, but it tramples on the feelings of millions. The gate to Yasukuni Shrine on an ordinary day last MayShrine visits tend to follow a seasonal calendar, a useful consideration when launching a coordinated campaign. Preparations can be made in advance and rolled out on cue, but can be called off on short notice too. In the same way that sports events get excellent coverage because they take place in a set arena within known parameters, the dramatics of Yasukuni are perfect for newspaper and television coverage.China Daily, the leading English language state newspaper in China, has run some 3000 articles about Yasukuni since it digitized its archives in 2001. Looking at China Daily archives for December 2013, the month Japan’s Prime Minister Abe last visited Yasukuni Shrine reveals some interesting patterns. The headlines preceding the unannounced visit are breathlessly expectant. Will he visit or not? Has diplomacy at last won the day? If he does visit, does he realize the consequences? Then on December 26, 2013, during a quiet news period in the lull of the impending New Year’s holiday, Abe strode into Yasukuni Shrine and performed a brisk ritual in honor the spirit of Japan’s war heroes. The response from China was immediate and indignant.The state-controlled China Daily headlines excerpted below reveal a rage that erupts on day one and grows by the day. It is barely containable by week’s end, with devilish images being invoked, even though things usually get quiet journalistically over the New Year’s holiday.“Abe’s shrine visit grave provocation”
“China scathing on Abe’s Yasukuni visit”
“Abe’s Yasukuni Shrine visit is a dangerous step”
ìAbe’s shrine visit affronts worldî
“Abe shows his cloven hoof”All told, China Daily racked up 46 articles (news, editorials and op-eds) on the topic for the month of December and by the end of January over 150 pieces dealing with Yasukuni had been published. In the weeks to come, in January 2014, China’s state-controlled press continued to seethe with anger, running stories tagged with expressions such as “fury mounts” “media frowns” and “a flagrant denial of justice.” Japan is said to be suffering “world condemnation” so it “must correct mistakes” lest “outrage still fester.”The tone begins to quiet a month or two after the event and then Yasukuni recedes to a back-burner issue, By March it is merely invoked as background to other problems and other tensions. While there’s not a month when Yasukuni is not in the news, the peaks and troughs of anti-Yasukuni invective are directly related to the visit of the Prime Minister and members of his cabinet.In short, if Japan’s prime minister does the Yasukuni shuffle, expect a media blowout from China. A short, sharp campaign of vilification follows, restricted mainly to state media. An amping up the vitriol and the use of bombastic language is evident in the nightly news. PM Abe’s December pilgrimage to the most controversial shrine in Japan was followed by the broadcast of ìBlue Wolfî and other anti-Japan drama series in January, For the Communist Party, the periodic venting of anti-Japanism triggered by Yasukuni visits is an easy-to-manage, playable option. The visits may annoy ordinary citizens, but don’t make the blood boil like a military clash would. The Communist Party is keenly aware that keeping things under control is necessary to its survival, so fires are not stoked unless the leadership is confident of being able to contain them. Yasukuni Shrine attracts both the curious and the devoutIronically enough, the much-ridiculed, detested and deplorable acting out of unrepentant state Shinto at Yasukuni Shrine is not only useful, but even somewhat desirable for China’s media mavens. It provides a safe arena in which to joust with Japan. It’s the ground for a war by other means, as manageable as a giant sports match. The periodicity of Yasukuni is important in this respect, if there’s a blowout, it soon blows over, there’s always the next match. Looking at headlines, the focal point shifts from ìWill he go?î to ìWill he dare go again?î Yasukuni Shrine-embracing leaders such as former Prime Minister Koizumi and the incumbent Abe Shinzo have for their part played a Yasukuni game of their own, exploiting the limited focus of the Shrine in a way that puts them in control, choosing when to go and when not to, fine-tuning the details of the ceremony, and exploiting the periodicity of it. One merely has not to go to give the impression that an important diplomatic concession has been made. A sudden visit is play to their base, knowing full well China will take offense. A non-visit is to play the diplomatic card, eschewing predictable tension in order repair tattered relations.Abe’s December 2013 visit shows signs of such orchestration; it was played down and unannounced, tucked away in a quiet corner of the calendar, leaving a stain on the year 2013, perhaps, but allowing 2014 to get off to a fresh start. Both countries value the New Year as an auspicious time, a time for fresh beginnings, and even though the visit fell short of the New Year by just a handful of days, it put itself in the past, essentially becoming last year’s news only a week later.The pattern of breathless speculation and trepidation in the face of possible spring and summer visits to Yasukuni by Abe can be traced in the China Daily headlines of the period, and ultimately he did not visit. But with so many journalists ready and waiting, even his non-visit was news of a sort. Had Abe turned over a new leaf? Was he offering an olive branch? Perhaps not. In the absence of a real visit, there’s a virtual alternative, and Abe took advantage of that. As if to apologize for non-attendance, there’s a Shinto style protocol of sending a ritual gift, such as a masakaki tree, along with writing ritual words of support. When Abe attends it’s news, when he doesn’t attend it’s news too,but news of uncertain nuance. This past April Abe’s formulaic ìregretsî at not being able to show got picked up upon by a waiting and expectant press. So Abe hadn’t really had a change of heart after all. It was as Abe found a way to have his cake and eat it too, typical old Abe being sneaky again. The Chinese press understands ceremonial ritual well and had no illusions about Abe’s signal of solidarity with Japan’s neo-nationalist right, but this revelation aired to no great social effect. Over the summer, another tension-filled juncture centering on will-he-go-or-not came and went. The flashpoints didn’t flash, but it wasn’t quite business as usual, either. Still sore about the previous year’s visit, island tensions and renewed exchanges in the war of words by intemperate politicians, China made a declaration of cultural vigilance.On August 15, 2014, the day marking Japan’s surrender in WWII, China decided to jack up the volume, announcing a new, obligatory season of ìpatrioticî and ìanti-fascistî drama on television. China’s cultural czars, perhaps tired of passively waiting to react to each and every periodic pinprick of a provocation, decided to go on the offensive, drawing from a deep war chest of anti-Japan cultural product to launch the ìpatrioticî season of anti-Japan drama. The Fall 2014 offensive does not appear to be in reaction to any particular act on Japan’s part, but rather more as generalized response to what it might be regarded in Beijing as months, if not decades, of accumulated indignity.As a point of comparison, the language on the Diaoyu/Senkaku conflict, which is far more fraught with danger and has immediate real-world military ramifications, is generally more measured than the very public argument over Yasukuni. Diaoyu/Senkaku-related headlines, while not without a note of indignation, do not scream and shout as much.China calls on Asia-Pacific countries to contribute to peace and prosperity
China seeks to resolve disputes though peaceful talks
Obama criticized for Diaoyu Islands remarks
China notes Japanese military activity near Diaoyu Islands.
Might does not make right News reports and anti-Japan dramas draw attention to Japan’s flag, unchanged from war years.Political posturing at Yasukuni is appealing because it is essentially a cultural production, a concoction of new militancy and ancient symbols, a kind of political kabuki, that typically erupts four times a year in reflection of its seasonal character, and disrupts whatever else might be going on to the detriment of diplomacy, trade and military matters. Thus China jacks up and tamps down the volume on its anti-Japan rants in ways designed to show vigilance and shore up patriotism, if not the high moral ground. Neither side can let go until both sides let go, and that eventually still seems a long way off. In the meantime, the proliferation of period TV dramas, in which Japan abuses China but then loses both the battle and the war, helps keep the Yasukuni demons at bay. It’s as if every Japanese denial has to be answered with dramatizations showing precisely the sort of ungentlemanly behavior that Japan claims never happened or doesn’t want to acknowledge. If ìnever forget!î is the universal refrain of oppressed peoples and victims of injustice, then China’s TV dramas, sometimes edifying and entertaining, sometimes neither, manage to serve, nonetheless, as memory aids for those too busy or too young to remember.With regards to past disputes, it’s not so much about history, as the handling of history. With regards to current conflict, keeping things manageable is at least as important as addressing points of conflict.Philip J. Cunningham |
| Pan-Mideast War: ISIL and al-Qaeda attack Hizbullah outposts Near Lebanese BorderPosted: 05 Oct 2014 09:05 PM PDTBy Juan Cole ISIL and al-Qaeda have, according to Hizbullah, launched attacks in Syria’s Qalamoun district (abutting the Lebanese border near Baalbek) on Hizbullah military outposts on the Syrian side. Hizbullah is acting in Syria as an adjunct to the Syrian Baath Army and helped reduce Qusayr and Homs last spring. The Syrian rebels were exploring for weaknesses in the Shiite party-militia’s positions in the mountainous area.Al-Qaeda and ISIL are said to have  briefly overrun the Hizbullah outpost at the small town of Brital, but then were pushed back out. Villagers and townspeople in the area are said to have formed a militia in anticipation of fighting the Sunni extremists themselves, but Hizbullah asked them to stand down.Hizbullah spokesmen said that 5 of its members were killed and “dozens” of the enemy were killed, and that several were captured alive. The rebels did not penetrate Lebanon.Lebanese Army units were said to also have shelled the attacking Syrian rebels, using artillery. I presume this means that they fired from inside the Lebanese border into Syria, which seems controversial. The battle could be heard in Baalbek.I am a little skeptical of Hizbullah’s claim that some of the attackers were ISIL, since ISIL does not usually cooperate with the Succor Front (Jabhat al-Nasr, an al-Qaeda affiliate). I’m wondering if they think they can strengthen their international legitimacy be being seen as among the groups taking on ISIL.The fight between Sunni extremists and either government forces or Shiite populations is now going on in a significant way in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, and is threatening to spill over onto Lebanon. There hasn’t been a regional war of this scope since the Gulf War, when Syria, Egypt and other Arab League countries allied with the US and Western allies to push Saddam Hussein’s radical Baath nationalists out of Kuwait. Before that it was probably 1973, when Anwar El Sadat of Egypt orchestrated at least token Arab League participation on the Arab side against Israel.related video: Press TV: “Report: Hezbollah counters militant attack on city of Baalbek”   |


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