Current TV: Chinatown, Africa

What are the 1.5 million Chinese in Africa up to? What is the meaning of China's deepening involvement on the African continent?

Current TV's Maria van Zeller provides some clues to the immediate as well as the complex and long-term ramifications of the spread of the Chinese diaspora, industry, and state in Africa.

Are the Chinese to fulfill Thomas Barnett's so-called "SysAdmin" role, or will the Chinese economically dominate the continent as they have throughout other parts of the developing world, incurring resentment of neo-colonials as in places such as Malaysia and Indonesia? Are the "SysAdmin" and neo-colonial one and the same, or is there some measure of mutual exclusion?

There are far more questions than answers, but this piece provides a few clues.

In "Chinatown, Africa", Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Angola to investigate China's rapidly growing presence in Africa. While many welcome China's investment, others see reason for concern. Chinatown, Africa is revealing look at a growing superpower's adventures abroad.

Raul Castro sings in Chinese for Chinese delegation

He is in fact singing the commie Chinese classic, "The East is Red" (东方红, or Dōngfāng Hóng)

NASA: The One That Got Away

This video is remarkable from the perspective of watching someone literal lose something into the (essentially) infinite vacuum of space. It's a bit like dropping your watch off a boat deck and watching it swiftly disappear beneath the murky water, and you can only watch helplessly, without any possibility of ever recovering it. However, this case is worse both from the perspective of the impossibility of recovery and the transparency view of the bag's descent -- it will be in plain view until it is too distant or burns up in the atmosphere.

Additionally, I find it particularly remarkable in that such highly trained people as astronauts could make such a typically "stupid human" error while performing in space. Of course, every human on earth can empathize (have you ever left something on the hood of your car?), but its embarrassing for NASA and I imagine that other countries' space programs probably would have censored this footage.

As a final thought: why wasn't there a fail-safe in keeping the bags secured to each other and secured to the astronaut? It seems losing something like this would have been an obvious hazard that engineers would have anticipated.

The BIGGEST Picture

Forgive me for using the term, but this is "mind-blowing" in the purest sense. From TED Talks: "At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos -- with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids -- got built this way."

This talk presents astonishing concepts and imagery. For example, according to Dr. Smoot, there are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Now, wrapping your brain around the concept of a number as large as a 100 billion is by no means an intuitive process, much less such a figure representing objects as vast as galaxies. By way of comparison, Dr. Smoot estimates that our galaxy alone has about 100 billion stars.

So how does this relate to you? Well, in conjunction with geologic time it represents part of the body of facts that reinforces the idea that you are basically nothing, but then, 100 billion galaxies is also presumably nothing relative to something proportionally larger, so don't feel bad!

Anyway, watch! It's fascinating.

The Big Big Picture: Jeffrey Sachs on climate change as an economic constraint

An Exercise In Soft Power: What The Beijing Olympics Really Mean To China

Within China, images of the coming 2008 Olympic Summer Games in Beijing have been absolutely pervasive for several years. Since 2004, when a 14-meter countdown-clock was planted in Tian'anmen Square to date, the presence, image and promotion of the Beijing Games has grown through every part of Chinese public life. In Shanghai, replicas of the Olympic torch serve as lamp-posts lining major boulevards, the five bobble headed "friendlies" greet you on virtually every spare public placard, a plethora of commemorative items are sold in gift shops, sponsorships have been sold for every conceivable product, and events are staged to lardmark even seemingly insignificant occasions.

To the average Chinese citizen, the Olympics has been billed as far more than sport, but is recognized as China's so-called "national coming-out party" and viewed as an immensely important event, signifying China's rise, prestige in the world, and perhaps a means of shedding the national sense of "humiliation" that is common in Chinese public discourse and education. In economic terms, the cost of the 17-day event has been frequently estimated around US$40 billion, which probably does not account for the disruptions in economic activity (temporarily shutting-down factories, power plants, limiting traffic to improve air quality, air-quality monitoring, etc.) or the elaborate and occassionally comical security efforts to ensure the games are secure from "anti-China" elements. No chances are being taken and no expense is being spared to ensure the success of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

This why I was recently baffled by the second paragraph of April Rabkin's otherwise righteous New York Times editorial piece China's Inside Game wherein she claims,

"What the (International Olympic Committee) and the rest of the world don’t realize is how little China cares what they think. Here in Beijing, the Olympic Games are primarily for domestic consumption, justifying the government’s new global power to its own people."

and then concludes the article in somewhat contradictory terms by reiterating Beijing's claim to the largest-ever viewing audience in language that suggests that international opinion is part of the the so-called "mandate of heaven."

"This August a few world leaders may boycott the opening ceremony. But the Games will go forward and be televised to what China will most likely declare is the largest worldwide audience ever. The Chinese government will have pulled off a modern Olympics — as close to a mandate from heaven as could be imagined by any dynasty of any era."

As an aside — in regard to the size of the audience, I suspect that Beijing's estimate is quite correct as more people have (Chinese-made) televisions, satellite and internet connections than ever before, and with about 20% of the world's eyeballs — heavily primed ones at that — on their turf, one wonders how many Chinese TV channels will be dedicated to the Olympics. Given that all channels were allocated to coverage of the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province, presumably a good number of the 40 or so standard television channels will carry the games.

While the Chinese audience has been preparing for the games for years, the rest of the world will also be watching with great interest, and the Chinese government and its sophisticated propagandists are keenly aware of this. In fact, Beijing estimates that the games will have about 4 billion viewers worldwide, the broadcast rights to which were sold for around US$1.7 billion. Additionally, foreign attendance in the various cities with Olympic venues is large enough that the Chinese government broadcasting public service messages on proper proper etiquette (which is a serious problem in China) and verse taxi drivers and other public service personel in basic spoken English.

The truth is that China does care a great deal about what impressions foreigners gain from the Olympics, and it is eager to ensure that they receive the proper messages. This point of view was positively asserted in an interview with Susan Shirk (author of the recently acclaimed book China: Fragile Superpower: How China's Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise) at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

"You know, China wants to believe that it can rise peacefully, China's leaders want to believe they can rise peacefully, without provoking a conflict with the United States. But if, every time they do something they feel that they are the target of criticism, it breeds all sorts of suspicions that the United States, and Americans, will never accept China as a legitimate player in the world. Let us remember, the United States Congress had votes to deny the Olympics to China when it was competing for the 1994 Olympics because of its human rights record, and it did not get those Olympics. So getting the nod to host the 2008 Olympics was huge for China as a kind of respect and legitimacy. You know, China is more concerned about its international reputation than any country I can think of in the world, because of this kind of insecurity." (emphasis added)

So in August, with roughly 4 billion viewers tuning their sets to the games, the images and stories that are broadcast are very much part of Beijing's calculus in creating a successful games. For as it stands, outsiders still know very little of China, and without first-hand experience, one's preconceived notions are inevitably way-off, as anyone who has spent time there will tell you.

Thus, in China, under of government so deeply concerned with image, information, and ultimately mind-control, the large foreign audience presents a highly impressionable target, which it will attempt to bedazzle with it's futuristic venues, material wealth, technical prowess, organizational competence, and human performance. These narratives will be artfully presented through the media to project the power of Chinese state, the richness of Chinese culture, and the greatness of its people, ideas which Beijing hopes will take root in the minds of the viewership. In effect, it is to be the most broad-based propaganda effort in world history, and more directly, an attempt to plant the "official version of China" into as many minds as possible. It is, in a nutshell, a great psychological power play, an exercise in "soft power."

Of course, this is not to deny the realities of the progress that has taken place in China since its opening to the world about 30 years ago. However, it does expose the extraordinary disingenuousness of China's insistence that the game not be politicized. Although it is technically a sporting competition, the Olympics is also a contest among nations, which is inherently political. What events other than direct armed conflict could inspire greater mass nationalism than head-to-head competition between national teams? Of course, China is very much aware of this, and is making every effort to take advantage of the opportunity, which it hopes will translate into greater power and prestige for it's government, corporations, and citizens, while it tries to keep a lid on any elements that undermine this ambition. The public presentation of these 17-days are in fact the great drama of the 2008 Summer Olympics: the competing agendas of the official version, versus attempts by various disaffected, dispossessed and oppressed groups to disrupt the games and claim attention, and the reality of China, which lies somewhere in between.

Through the course of the Olympic torch-relay, the public display has been something of a PR disaster for China, as protest groups were effective in gaining attention or at least tarnishing China's image, as the recent Pew Global Attitudes Project reveals:

"Overall the current survey, which was conducted at a time when China was coming under harsh criticism for its crackdown on political dissent in Tibet, once again finds favorable ratings of China slipping in many countries. Positive views fell significantly in nine of 21 countries in which polls were taken in 2007, as well as in the current survey. Opinions of China tumbled the most in France (47% to 28%) and in Japan (29% to 14%). Favorable ratings of China are highest in Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania and Russia"

Inevitably, the unfolding those 17-days in August will be historic. Some businesses will reap a windfall from the games, as many have already in the build-up to the events. During the games, China will have the world's attention and an unprecedented opportunity to shine, and in all likelihood, after years of intensive development, China's teams will win the overall medal count. However, the way in which the Beijing Olympics is presented to world and the public perceptions and attitudes that it creates will determine the longer-term ramifications for China, and therein lie the real stakes.

Fire Dancing On Ko Chang, Thailand

Uzbekistan: Shades of oppression

Of the places that I've visited, Georgia is positively the most open, democratic, and capitalist, followed only by Kyrgyzstan in distant second. Georgia is the most tourist and business-friendly place I've been, where (at least in Tbilisi), the police are not intimidating, and there is some measure of free expression. Sure the protests of early November were violently and probably inappropriately broken-up, but they simply could not have occurred in any other place in this region -- certainly not some of the more extreme expressions of public dissatisfaction, such as decrying the president by shouting "Misha!" and saluting sig heil. Elsewhere, I have been told that even lesser criticisms would result in beating, fines, job-loss, and/or prison. And when it comes to oppression, topping the list, there's no place like Uzbekistan! While I must admit that Turkmenistan was a very close second, since the passing of Turkmenbashi, by all appearances it seems things are improving there.

Uzbekistan's situation as only one of two doubly-landlocked countries in the world (the other is Liechtenstein), bespeaks it's isolation and the oppressive system that binds the country. And while Uzbekistan's police have been reformed in recent years and they no longer seem to shake-down tourists, they were swarming on every corner of the cities that I visited, checking documents on the street, stopping vehicles at checkpoints that appear every 10 km or so on major highways, and one can only imagine how invasive the police presence must be in the daily lives of the nearly 28 million Uzbekistani nationals. For instance, according to people I've spoken to, it is extremely difficult to start a business there, as the state bureaucracy tends to arbitrarily tax and regulate small businesses to death. The oppressive police force is, in effect, a parasitic organ of the state that feeds off of living cultural and economic activity only to perpetuate its own existence and that of the ruling party. "Stalin would have probably been jealous if he’d found out that there are people in this world even better than him at frightening people," testified Uzbek asylum-seeker Mukhammadsolykh Abutov from Russia.

According to Transparency International 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index, "which ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians," Uzbekistan ranks at the very bottom, rated at 175 of 179 countries and is exceeded only by Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar (Burma), and Somalia. When a group college students in Tashkent -- some recently graduated and unemployed -- were asked how to get rich in Uzbekistan, they immediately replied "drugs, gambling and prostitution." And according to two reports written by the former British Ambassador Craig Murray on Uzbekistani billionaire Alisher Usmanov, those students are exactly right. According to one of the reports,

When Usmanov negotiated a major oil and gas deal with Uzbekistan on behalf of Gazprom, the Russian state-owned company, $88m was paid in cash to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the Uzbeki president. Murray has since repeated that allegation in his book, Murder in Samarkand, an account of his time as the ambassador to Uzbekistan.

So if we can learn anything at all from this, we can be certain that it is good to live at the largess of an autocracy. However, for an ordinary Uzbekistani, it would seem that life's aspirations are much more modest with very few avenues of opportunity. Naturally, any discussion relating to politics is extremely dangerous for the average Uzbekistani, and although it is not impossible to find people who "will talk," the average person seems frightened and oppressed. While ethnic Uzbeks (comprising about 80% of the population) are markedly warm, kind, family-oriented people, ordinary life in Uzbekistan seems a dull shade of gray, with little evidence of any living culture, intellectualism, arts, or creativity. Rather, the Uzbekistani people seem frightened and in some sense, dumbed-down, as if they are the end product of a society which has long hammered-down "the nail that sticks out." And it is not uncommon to find Uzbeks -- particularly young men -- staring off into infinity with a stupefied, wall-eyed, bovine stare that seems to signify something like spiritual defeat.

One assumes that this descends from the governing system, which instead of facilitating growth and progress, appears designed to make life impossible. Everything -- from the poor banking system, the absurdly denominated currency (time spent "counting money" is a significant activity in virtually every transaction), poorly maintained highways, the routine police checks everywhere, the internet crawls where it exists, censorship is pervasive, the food shops are pitifully understocked in some places, economic opportunity is extremely limited, and the dense, inevitable bureaucracy overhangs virtually every part of public life -- whether by necessity or design, all of this serves to make daily life more difficult and the disempowers the people.

Likewise, religious activities are severely curbed, and religious oppression in this Sunni Muslim nation again serves to prevent and viable opposition or organization. Religious organizations, parties, and radicalism is perhaps the force the Uzbekistani government fears most, and all mosques and madrasahs are sanctioned and monitored by the state. This religious oppression culminated in April of 2005 at the infamous Anijon Massacre, when as many as 5,000 ordinary citizens were slaughtered by Uzbekistani security forces in the town of Andijon in the Fergana Valley. In an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, an obviously terrified Mukhammadsolykh Abutov writes,

[The] people shot at on the square in Andijon were not terrorists or extremists. And we don’t even have such an organization! All of those accused of being involved in extremist organizations are there because of trumped up charges from the security service. It’s a pretext for repression, for crushing dissent among the people! Those who are in prison – thousands and thousands of people were not terrorists, and couldn’t have been! Our people are simply unhappy with the leaders of the republic. The disgruntlement is of a social nature, nothing else. The people are poor and hungry!

Academic Justifies Slaughter of Unarmed Demonstrators


Is this any surprise from a government that has reportedly boiled people alive in oil and has (appropriately, perhaps) adopted Amir Timur (Tamerlane) as their national symbol? While history has no shortage of butchers, Timur distinguished himself in the realm of genocide, killing an estimated 17 million in the course of his military campaigns, and after the conquest of Baghdad in 1401, 22 pyramids were constructed outside of the city from the severed heads of 90,000 people.

Here are some videos that further explicates the darker side of Uzbekistan through the fascinating story of former British Ambassador Craig Murray.

Warning: These videos contain extremely graphic content.

Life and Death under Karimov (Part I)


Life and Death under Karimov (Part II)


Life and Death under Karimov (Part III)