Farideh Farhi
HONOLULU, Hawaii, Aug 10 (IPS) - With the confirmation of his re-election by Ayatollah Khamenei and his oath of office taken, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will begin his second term facing much steeper challenges than any of Iran’s previous second-term presidents.
In fact, despite the proclaimed support of 24 million Iranians, his government is by far the weakest post-revolutionary government. Ironically, it is this weakened position that tempts him to be a force of constant agitation and confrontation.
Challenges facing Ahmadinejad include open hostility from a large section of the Iranian elite which Ayatollah Khamenei characterised in Ahmadinejad’s confirmation speech as "angry and wounded"; highly charged criticisms of his appointments and policies from within the conservative ranks; continued civil disobedience; a public mood that has turned from mostly inattentive and apolitical to concerned and angry; general unhappiness among the clergy about the harsh crackdown; and a much more hostile international environment.
The rest of this piece can be found here.
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Monday, August 10, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Suryanarayanan: India: Climate Diplomacy
As the countdown to the Copenhagen UN Climate Summit begins, India’s role in building a framework for the new global climate change regime becomes pertinent for two reasons. First, India is the fourth largest carbon dioxide emitter after United States, China and Russia. Hence, with rising global temperatures, the pressure is mounting on India to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Any binding emission reduction measures will have a significant impact on India’s economy given the strong linkages between energy consumption, economic growth and environmental pollution. Second, the impact of climate change will be detrimental on the livelihoods of people and on food security. Given this conundrum, what are India’s options to effectively mitigate greenhouse gases and at what costs to the economy?
India has already adopted some mitigation strategies. For instance, one of the important missions of the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) is to harness solar energy on a large scale in the next 20-25 years. A change in energy strategy is pertinent for India as its energy sector is highly dependent on coal. More than 80 per cent of all generated power comes from coal and it accounts for one-third of India’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. Besides harnessing solar energy, India can also decrease its dependency on fossil fuels by developing its nuclear energy. With the Indo-US nuclear deal in place, India is looking to generate 60,000 megawatts by 2030 and 250,000 megawatts by 2050.
It will be beneficial for India to invest in energy efficient technologies now since its economic sectors are still developing. In the long run, cleaner technology will help the country to move to a low carbon economy. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report on Climate Change and Development, with a low carbon energy strategy, a cumulative carbon emissions reduction by 30 per cent without any annual reduction targets over a period of 30 years, will reduce India’s GDP by 1.4 per cent and the number of poor people in the country will increase by 6 per cent. Hence, in the absence of a global financial architecture and transfer of clean technology from industrialised countries the cost of change in energy strategy is going to be heavy for India.
It is clear that the climate change process cannot be halted and mitigation strategies will only reduce or postpone future vulnerabilities. Also, the incentive to adopt mitigation strategies is low in the absence of external financial assistance. For India, the effects of climate change on agriculture and livelihood is going to be significant. Sea level rise and increased occurrences of extreme weather events can cause displacement of millions of people. Given this, will adaptation to the adverse affects of climate change be a better development strategy for India in the short term?
Climate change studies have estimated that even with farm level adaptations, an increase in temperature by 2 degree Celsius and precipitation increase of 7 per cent, the total net farm level revenue would fall by 9 per cent. The socio-economic cost of climate change without adaptation strategies is likely to be even greater for a developing country like India. However, implementation of adaptation measures on a large scale will not be simple as it depends on the level of development of economic sectors. In addition to this, external funding would play a key role in implementing adaptation measures. According to the recent Annual Economic Survey, India is already spending over 2 per cent of its gross domestic product to adapt to climate change.
In summary, India has taken voluntary policy initiatives to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. However, it cannot implement its mitigation and adaptation strategies on a large scale since it will have an overbearing impact on its balance of payments. India’s stand on the climate change debate has always been guided by the principle of equity. The uncomfortable reality faced by India is that global climate change policies are moving towards effectiveness rather than equity. The climate change talks held at the G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy, from 8 to 10 of July 2009, saw consensus among countries that the global temperatures should not increase above 2 degree Celsius or 3.6 degree Fahrenheit. Although there have been no emission binding cuts imposed on the developing countries like India and China, they will be expected to mitigate their greenhouse gases.
Therefore, at the domestic level, India must continue to implement policies that are economically feasible to reduce emissions growth. In addition to this, a concrete and transparent mechanism must be established to regulate, monitor and evaluate the climate-related projects. At the international level, India must work towards initiating and strengthening bilateral and multilateral partnerships to enable investment in research and technology transfer. For this an international framework must be developed, which is not just limited to transfer of technology and finance, but also disseminates information and provides training in specific areas to enable people to adapt to future climate changes.
India must participate in the Copenhagen UN Climate Summit in December with a clear and precise negotiating agenda as an environmentally responsible actor. In addition to this, it must excise its bargaining power as a country most vulnerable to climate change so that the new climate change agreement set to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol in 2012 reflects its social and economic concerns as a developing nation.
Ms. Sowmya Suryanarayanan is a research analyst at Strategic Foresight Group, a political think tank based in Mumbai – India.
Read more on this article...
India has already adopted some mitigation strategies. For instance, one of the important missions of the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) is to harness solar energy on a large scale in the next 20-25 years. A change in energy strategy is pertinent for India as its energy sector is highly dependent on coal. More than 80 per cent of all generated power comes from coal and it accounts for one-third of India’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. Besides harnessing solar energy, India can also decrease its dependency on fossil fuels by developing its nuclear energy. With the Indo-US nuclear deal in place, India is looking to generate 60,000 megawatts by 2030 and 250,000 megawatts by 2050.
It will be beneficial for India to invest in energy efficient technologies now since its economic sectors are still developing. In the long run, cleaner technology will help the country to move to a low carbon economy. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report on Climate Change and Development, with a low carbon energy strategy, a cumulative carbon emissions reduction by 30 per cent without any annual reduction targets over a period of 30 years, will reduce India’s GDP by 1.4 per cent and the number of poor people in the country will increase by 6 per cent. Hence, in the absence of a global financial architecture and transfer of clean technology from industrialised countries the cost of change in energy strategy is going to be heavy for India.
It is clear that the climate change process cannot be halted and mitigation strategies will only reduce or postpone future vulnerabilities. Also, the incentive to adopt mitigation strategies is low in the absence of external financial assistance. For India, the effects of climate change on agriculture and livelihood is going to be significant. Sea level rise and increased occurrences of extreme weather events can cause displacement of millions of people. Given this, will adaptation to the adverse affects of climate change be a better development strategy for India in the short term?
Climate change studies have estimated that even with farm level adaptations, an increase in temperature by 2 degree Celsius and precipitation increase of 7 per cent, the total net farm level revenue would fall by 9 per cent. The socio-economic cost of climate change without adaptation strategies is likely to be even greater for a developing country like India. However, implementation of adaptation measures on a large scale will not be simple as it depends on the level of development of economic sectors. In addition to this, external funding would play a key role in implementing adaptation measures. According to the recent Annual Economic Survey, India is already spending over 2 per cent of its gross domestic product to adapt to climate change.
In summary, India has taken voluntary policy initiatives to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. However, it cannot implement its mitigation and adaptation strategies on a large scale since it will have an overbearing impact on its balance of payments. India’s stand on the climate change debate has always been guided by the principle of equity. The uncomfortable reality faced by India is that global climate change policies are moving towards effectiveness rather than equity. The climate change talks held at the G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy, from 8 to 10 of July 2009, saw consensus among countries that the global temperatures should not increase above 2 degree Celsius or 3.6 degree Fahrenheit. Although there have been no emission binding cuts imposed on the developing countries like India and China, they will be expected to mitigate their greenhouse gases.
Therefore, at the domestic level, India must continue to implement policies that are economically feasible to reduce emissions growth. In addition to this, a concrete and transparent mechanism must be established to regulate, monitor and evaluate the climate-related projects. At the international level, India must work towards initiating and strengthening bilateral and multilateral partnerships to enable investment in research and technology transfer. For this an international framework must be developed, which is not just limited to transfer of technology and finance, but also disseminates information and provides training in specific areas to enable people to adapt to future climate changes.
India must participate in the Copenhagen UN Climate Summit in December with a clear and precise negotiating agenda as an environmentally responsible actor. In addition to this, it must excise its bargaining power as a country most vulnerable to climate change so that the new climate change agreement set to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol in 2012 reflects its social and economic concerns as a developing nation.
Ms. Sowmya Suryanarayanan is a research analyst at Strategic Foresight Group, a political think tank based in Mumbai – India.
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Saturday, July 25, 2009
THE AMERICAN PRISM OF RACE
Commentary by Philip Cunningham
Looking at the world through the prism of race is something of an American obsession, one that other countries would be wise not to emulate.
The brouhaha over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley has been marketed from the start as a story about race, which says much about how the American media works and how it feeds off predictable fault-lines in America’s racially fractured society.
But the instant freeze-framing of an ambiguous incident in racial terms, be it a trivial scuffle on a tree-lined street abutting an Ivy League campus or the more serious "racial" tensions that wrack the world, --the most recent manifestation being the deadly rioting in Xinjiang-- serves to obscure rather than elucidate and can end up shedding more heat than light.
Taking sides in a race conflict is a patterned reflex, stoked by the media inculcation. The public takes cues from way the media frames a case to posit good and bad, or in the case of more incendiary dust-ups, to feed the flames of identity politics.
That’s not to say there aren’t cases in which the examination of racial antagonisms, real and perceived, is ultimately necessary to get at the root of a problem, but race, scientifically baseless concept that it is, makes for a very bad starting point of inquiry.
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Lines Are Drawn in Iran
Farideh Farhi
HONOLULU, Jul 22 (IPS)- With the historical Friday Prayer sermon given by former president and current chair of the Council of Experts and Expediency Discernment Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Jul. 17, and the riposte by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei three days later, lines have been drawn in unprecedented ways in Iran.
It is now clear that the Islamic Republic's ever-present political frictions and cleavages can no longer be managed in ways they have been in the past, either through behind-the-scenes lobbying at the top or selective repression or some combination of the two.
The rest of this piece can be found here. Read more on this article...
HONOLULU, Jul 22 (IPS)- With the historical Friday Prayer sermon given by former president and current chair of the Council of Experts and Expediency Discernment Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Jul. 17, and the riposte by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei three days later, lines have been drawn in unprecedented ways in Iran.
It is now clear that the Islamic Republic's ever-present political frictions and cleavages can no longer be managed in ways they have been in the past, either through behind-the-scenes lobbying at the top or selective repression or some combination of the two.
The rest of this piece can be found here. Read more on this article...
Saturday, July 11, 2009
THE SHOE ON THE OTHER FOOT
Commentary by Philip J Cunningham
The recent ethnic riots in Xinjiang are a tragic development for the world’s most populous country. Ethnic strife, probably as old as humankind, is as cruel as it is unnecessary. Part of what makes it so potent are unchallenged habits of mind coupled with the nearly universal human tendency to divide the world into “we” and “them.”
A lack of empathy for those who are “different” is clearly part of the problem. So, too, is the failure to better appreciate the complex, conflicted reality of those close to a tragedy, a tragedy which has become a spectacle for the international news consumer. Behold the Schadenfreude with which the post-1949 “other” is now pitted against the post-911 “other.”
In the old days, rumors traveled narrowly at the speed of sound through word of mouth whispers, while today, electronic communications spread malicious misinformation far and wide at the speed of light, increasing the potential for flash mob action.
Given the global reach of today’s media, one country’s grievous problems can become a spectator sport for the rest of the world. When something big happens in China, US interest is piqued, especially if the big news is bad news.
Politicians and pundits weigh in with quotable quips, often in utter ignorance, and far more often than is prudent. The hungry maw of the 24/7 media machine demands a constant flow of words and images. This free flow of information, including bad, biased and incorrect information, is celebrated as a basic American right.
Of course, free speech is important to the health of any society. But let us just consider, in a make-believe role reversal, what it might be like if the shoe was on the other foot.
please use this link to continue reading Read more on this article...
The recent ethnic riots in Xinjiang are a tragic development for the world’s most populous country. Ethnic strife, probably as old as humankind, is as cruel as it is unnecessary. Part of what makes it so potent are unchallenged habits of mind coupled with the nearly universal human tendency to divide the world into “we” and “them.”
A lack of empathy for those who are “different” is clearly part of the problem. So, too, is the failure to better appreciate the complex, conflicted reality of those close to a tragedy, a tragedy which has become a spectacle for the international news consumer. Behold the Schadenfreude with which the post-1949 “other” is now pitted against the post-911 “other.”
In the old days, rumors traveled narrowly at the speed of sound through word of mouth whispers, while today, electronic communications spread malicious misinformation far and wide at the speed of light, increasing the potential for flash mob action.
Given the global reach of today’s media, one country’s grievous problems can become a spectator sport for the rest of the world. When something big happens in China, US interest is piqued, especially if the big news is bad news.
Politicians and pundits weigh in with quotable quips, often in utter ignorance, and far more often than is prudent. The hungry maw of the 24/7 media machine demands a constant flow of words and images. This free flow of information, including bad, biased and incorrect information, is celebrated as a basic American right.
Of course, free speech is important to the health of any society. But let us just consider, in a make-believe role reversal, what it might be like if the shoe was on the other foot.
please use this link to continue reading Read more on this article...
Friday, July 10, 2009
People & Power: Iran - Inside the Protest
This is a very well done documentary about what transpired immediately after the June 12 election with striking pictures and interviews.
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Saturday, July 4, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Failure of the Iranian Model
Twelve years ago, with the election of Khatami as President of Iran, it became obvious that in large cross sections of the Iranian society the revolutionary zeal has petered out. The clergy was determined to keep the revolution that brought it to power alive and prevent its moderation and for that aim went to great length to limit free elections and democracy. With Ahmedinejad’s first (and only) election there was an attempt to revive its zeal internally and, as is customary with revolutions, project it outwards by linking it with local grievances, in this case, in Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The rigging of the elections and the violent clampdown on peaceful protestors that began today, demonstrates that the uneasy combination of an Islamic state and democracy has failed. By choosing revolution over the remaining vestiges of democracy, the clergy ensured that Iran will no longer serve as a model of mass supported Islamic Revolution. While internally the revolution has been saved, its foreign influence is likely to vane. Nor, as we learned, is it possible to make a peaceful transition from an Islamic to a democratic state, as happened in the aftermath of communism. Instead, Iran is coming to resemble the authoritarian regimes of the region.
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Friday, June 12, 2009
State of Decay
My new piece is up at The Review (National), State of Decay. It argues, by taking a longer historical look at the idea of Pakistan, that the relationship between the provinces and the federal govt. determine what the future for Pakistan holds :
X-posted at CM. Read more on this article...
Twenty years of military dictatorships, under Ayub Khan and Zia ul Haq, cemented the rule of the few over the many. Their policies led to the emergence of specific grievances by sub-nationalist groups in Baluchistan and Sindh. In the decade of Pervez Musharraf’s rule, these tensions grew dramatically, and pushed the state into a greater alienation from its own citizens.
Musharraf’s dictatorial regime sought to polish over any internal incoherence with a unified foreign front aimed primarily at operating militarily in Afghanistan, NWFP and Baluchistan. The influx of cash, some $6 billion, into the coffers of the military propelled the army to new-found heights as the country’s largest landlord, largest employer and largest business. But maintaining this new oligarchy came at a steep price for Pakistan.
X-posted at CM. Read more on this article...
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
THE SPECTACLE OF COMPARISON
BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
“Tiananmen’s anniversary unimportant to China’s youth,” laments the Los Angeles Times. “Tiananmen now seems distant to China’s students," opines the New York Times.
With the approach of the twentieth anniversary of June 4, 1989, there have been a spate of news stories comparing young people in China today with the students who protested at Tiananmen, and the comparison is usually not a flattering one. Apathy has replaced activism. Propaganda has replaced knowledge. Today’s youth are characterized as the “stupid generation,” or at best, “hip but clueless.”
I think such comparisons are unfair.
First of all, twenty years is a long time. Why should young people today be compared to aunts and uncles who were on the march when they hadn’t even learned yet to walk?
The students in 1989 in their day were no different in this respect. They did not spend a huge amount of time pondering why they were or weren’t like the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution.
If anything, it was precisely because they had little or no first-hand contact with the horror of Mao’s social experiment gone awry that they could in good faith and unremitting optimism write provocative wall posters and take to the streets, naively hoping for positive results.
It seems student activism, to really get off the ground, and to have any integrity at all, requires forgetting the past, --or at least not being beholden to it-- as much as invoking it.
Referencing the past as a guide to one’s actions, especially in a place where the past weighs as heavily as it does in China, is intimidating to the point of despair.
The conditions under which the 1989 generation came of age are not repeatable, nor desirable. China is in many important respects a better country today, much more liberal in terms of lifestyle and individual choice, though politics remains hemmed in as before.
China is also incontestably more prosperous, more open and open to much more information, though media controls remain. One glaring gap in an otherwise improving picture, is that Tiananmen remains a taboo in China today.
It is fully understandable that older observers might get periodically nostalgic about the euphoric burst of people power that erupted on the streets of Beijing during the Sino-Soviet summit twenty years ago. For anyone who was there, or felt a part of it from media immersion; it will always be a part of them.
It was a time in which ordinary people found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. But students were reacting to a unique environment, not inventing it.
There was a perfect storm of campus restiveness, Western media readiness (thanks largely to the expected pomp and circumstance of the Gorbachev visit) and a win-or-die Politburo impasse; all of which conspired to allow something small, narrow, and local to snowball into something large, broad and universal, over many weeks involving millions of people.
No wonder those of us who were there were swept away by the cyclone-like force of it. But one can’t help but notice how quickly the West’s willingness to identify with the cause of Chinese protests waned, when, in subsequent years, the crowd turned its angry gaze first to the US, and later, Japan.
Demonstrations subsequent to Tiananmen tend to be dismissed as phony demonstrations, reeking of government interference. But there was ample evidence in 1989 that one faction or other of the government was ever trying to play the crowd, infiltrate and direct the course of the protests as well.
The hyper-nationalistic students I interviewed after the anti-American and anti-Japanese demonstrations in 1999 and 2005 were not that different from the impulsive, idealistic and overly excitable students I marched shoulder to shoulder with in 1989.
The forward rush of feet, the billowing red flags, the hypnotic cadences of slogan and song chanted over and again in concert with the reckless enthusiasm of youth were in evidence in each instance, though there were differences in quality and scope.
The Tiananmen demos were rigorous but peaceful, politically daring, but welcomed in open arms by ordinary citizens. The 1989 protests endured for weeks and laid claim to revolutionary iconography in the central plaza of the Central Kingdom’s capital, making for unforgettable symbolic spectacle. It gave one the feeling of being in the center of the world.
But that was then, this is now. Different conditions call for different strategies and different solutions. Some of today’s battles may be fought out entirely on the internet or in courts or in civil society forums. Other little insurrections will, tragically, fail to get the attention they deserve until things take a violent turn, and then we’ll hear about them.
Nowadays, there’s plenty of unrest going on in every part of China, but if it doesn’t happen in a convenient place under the nose of the media, it may as well be deemed a non-event. China’s Public Security Bureau routinely releases shocking statistics that suggest China hardly goes a day without dozens of demonstrations or “mass incidents” erupting somewhere or else in the provinces, to the tune of thousands of little insurrections a month.
Demonstrating in a country as obsessed with stability as China is not a surefire course of action and is often counter-productive, but it continues to happen to an alarming degree. It’s not desirable politically, but today’s China is built on the back of innumerable mass incidents, the revolution culminating in the 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic being the biggest one of all.
So is it not just a bit smug to say Chinese today are apathetic, that they are victims of propaganda and know nothing of the spirit of Tiananmen? The spirit of ’89 is alive and well every time someone, somewhere peacefully asserts a basic right or speaks out on a trying issue or pleads for a little more justice.
Read more on this article...
“Tiananmen’s anniversary unimportant to China’s youth,” laments the Los Angeles Times. “Tiananmen now seems distant to China’s students," opines the New York Times.
With the approach of the twentieth anniversary of June 4, 1989, there have been a spate of news stories comparing young people in China today with the students who protested at Tiananmen, and the comparison is usually not a flattering one. Apathy has replaced activism. Propaganda has replaced knowledge. Today’s youth are characterized as the “stupid generation,” or at best, “hip but clueless.”
I think such comparisons are unfair.
First of all, twenty years is a long time. Why should young people today be compared to aunts and uncles who were on the march when they hadn’t even learned yet to walk?
The students in 1989 in their day were no different in this respect. They did not spend a huge amount of time pondering why they were or weren’t like the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution.
If anything, it was precisely because they had little or no first-hand contact with the horror of Mao’s social experiment gone awry that they could in good faith and unremitting optimism write provocative wall posters and take to the streets, naively hoping for positive results.
It seems student activism, to really get off the ground, and to have any integrity at all, requires forgetting the past, --or at least not being beholden to it-- as much as invoking it.
Referencing the past as a guide to one’s actions, especially in a place where the past weighs as heavily as it does in China, is intimidating to the point of despair.
The conditions under which the 1989 generation came of age are not repeatable, nor desirable. China is in many important respects a better country today, much more liberal in terms of lifestyle and individual choice, though politics remains hemmed in as before.
China is also incontestably more prosperous, more open and open to much more information, though media controls remain. One glaring gap in an otherwise improving picture, is that Tiananmen remains a taboo in China today.
It is fully understandable that older observers might get periodically nostalgic about the euphoric burst of people power that erupted on the streets of Beijing during the Sino-Soviet summit twenty years ago. For anyone who was there, or felt a part of it from media immersion; it will always be a part of them.
It was a time in which ordinary people found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. But students were reacting to a unique environment, not inventing it.
There was a perfect storm of campus restiveness, Western media readiness (thanks largely to the expected pomp and circumstance of the Gorbachev visit) and a win-or-die Politburo impasse; all of which conspired to allow something small, narrow, and local to snowball into something large, broad and universal, over many weeks involving millions of people.
No wonder those of us who were there were swept away by the cyclone-like force of it. But one can’t help but notice how quickly the West’s willingness to identify with the cause of Chinese protests waned, when, in subsequent years, the crowd turned its angry gaze first to the US, and later, Japan.
Demonstrations subsequent to Tiananmen tend to be dismissed as phony demonstrations, reeking of government interference. But there was ample evidence in 1989 that one faction or other of the government was ever trying to play the crowd, infiltrate and direct the course of the protests as well.
The hyper-nationalistic students I interviewed after the anti-American and anti-Japanese demonstrations in 1999 and 2005 were not that different from the impulsive, idealistic and overly excitable students I marched shoulder to shoulder with in 1989.
The forward rush of feet, the billowing red flags, the hypnotic cadences of slogan and song chanted over and again in concert with the reckless enthusiasm of youth were in evidence in each instance, though there were differences in quality and scope.
The Tiananmen demos were rigorous but peaceful, politically daring, but welcomed in open arms by ordinary citizens. The 1989 protests endured for weeks and laid claim to revolutionary iconography in the central plaza of the Central Kingdom’s capital, making for unforgettable symbolic spectacle. It gave one the feeling of being in the center of the world.
But that was then, this is now. Different conditions call for different strategies and different solutions. Some of today’s battles may be fought out entirely on the internet or in courts or in civil society forums. Other little insurrections will, tragically, fail to get the attention they deserve until things take a violent turn, and then we’ll hear about them.
Nowadays, there’s plenty of unrest going on in every part of China, but if it doesn’t happen in a convenient place under the nose of the media, it may as well be deemed a non-event. China’s Public Security Bureau routinely releases shocking statistics that suggest China hardly goes a day without dozens of demonstrations or “mass incidents” erupting somewhere or else in the provinces, to the tune of thousands of little insurrections a month.
Demonstrating in a country as obsessed with stability as China is not a surefire course of action and is often counter-productive, but it continues to happen to an alarming degree. It’s not desirable politically, but today’s China is built on the back of innumerable mass incidents, the revolution culminating in the 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic being the biggest one of all.
So is it not just a bit smug to say Chinese today are apathetic, that they are victims of propaganda and know nothing of the spirit of Tiananmen? The spirit of ’89 is alive and well every time someone, somewhere peacefully asserts a basic right or speaks out on a trying issue or pleads for a little more justice.
Read more on this article...
Sunday, May 17, 2009
ZHAO ZIYANG AND TIANANMEN
(from the Bangkok Post, May 18, 2009)
Zhao spotlights all of the culprits
By: PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
The release of Zhao Ziyang's memoirs may not settle, once and for all, the degree of culpability, if any, that 1989 Beijing student activists bear for the tragic outcome of an otherwise uplifting and peaceful movement.
But the former secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party's last words on the topic serve as a powerful reminder that the lion's share of blame for the brutal and completely unnecessary military crackdown in June 1989 falls on Li Peng and a handful of party hardliners who, as Mr Zhao tells it - and as observers have long surmised - gunned for unnecessary violent intervention.
This revelation serves to balance the public discussion about Tiananmen, a debate long hampered by the paucity of verifiable information from the government side and rather too much information from the student side. The student side of the equation, rich in its tabloid complexity, faults, foibles and all, is well documented, thanks in part to the unblinking glare of the media, and the general accessibility of key personalities, most of whom escaped to the United States.
To a lesser extent, the street-level story of what happened in Beijing in the spring of 1989 can be understood in general terms; multitudinous facets of it have been captured in texts, photos, music, memoir, drama and video footage, with enough over-lapping documentation and corroborative detail to map out a basic chronology, even though interpretations differ and divisive views are not entirely settled.
The iconic image of a man standing in front of a tank has exactly that sort of built-in redundancy; it was filmed simultaneously by several photographers and cameramen - one angle on it was taken from my room at the Beijing Hotel - but who the man is, or what meaning can be drawn from the sight of him venting his anger in front of a tank slowly withdrawing from Tiananmen Square remains open to debate.
But if our knowledge of what went on in the streets and behind the closed doors of student strategy sessions is incomplete, it is meticulously documented in comparison to what we know of the government's position. This uneven access has led to a media tendency to put undue emphasis on student agency, both in terms of heroics and assigning guilt.
Given the timid but intransigent stance of China's information guardians who are so far unwilling to pin blame anywhere near the late, great Deng Xiaoping, a variety of intellectual contortions and political postures need be put into play to avoid facing the truth. The most effective obfuscations serve to divert attention elsewhere, but the one that is most distressing to me as a witness and participant is "blame it on the students".
The students were indeed imperfect, and in unwitting ways mimicked the best and worst tendencies of their communist elders. But they did not carry out the bloody crackdown, rather certain units of the PLA did. As for the units of the PLA that refused to join the crackdown, they should be considered people's heroes on a par with the man in front of the tank.
I marched with the students and know most of the student leaders. During the 1989 uprising, I interviewed Chai Ling, the so-called student commander-in-chief, on several occasions. The May 28, 1989 interview seemed of great portent; was she going to run away or stay around until blood started to flow? In a tearful outpouring of words recorded to low-quality videotape, she explored both possibilities and has been both applauded and roundly criticised for this and other provocative statements ever since. I interviewed her again on June 2, 1989 after which she returned to Tiananmen Square where she and hundreds of other fellow students made a last stand followed by a peaceful, PLA-negotiated exit on the dawn of June 4, 1989.
Only then did Chai Ling run away, and to this day the details of her escape from China remain sketchy, though secret diplomatic assistance was the likely route.
By making available to the media, with Chai Ling's express permission in writing, the May 28, 1989 interview, I inadvertently contributed to a media process that put far too much focus on a vivid personality with very little actual power, though she was the titular leader of the students at the time and thus in the mind's eye in charge of tens of thousands of followers.
The charged rhetoric she has subsequently been vilified for was not unique to her; one could hear it in the whispers and shouts of marchers; one could see ink-brush portents of it in poems scribbled on university walls that spoke of "blood flowing down Chang'an Boulevard" a full month before the massacre.
Talk of bodily, if not bloody sacrifice, along with the melodramatic last wills and testaments of the sort that Chai Ling handed me on May 28 were part and parcel of a mass hunger strike, an uncannily effective crowd precipitant that caused the square to swell with well-wishers beyond expectation.
Yet despite crowds a million strong and an abundance of over-the-top rhetoric, the hunger strike ended quietly without a single casualty.
For 20 years the official voice of China, and to a surprising extent, many of its foreign interlocutors, has found it expedient to sweep the basic facts of the crackdown under the carpet, by quibbling about details, cooking up various arguments about the overarching need for stability, or by giving it the silent treatment, in counterpoint to readily available lurid descriptions of what rascals and opportunists the student activists were.
To blame it on the students, as many young people in China do today, is to fall for a propaganda line, to take one's eye off the ball.
The so-called student leaders of 1989, crowd facilitators at best, not unlike the enthusiastic student volunteers who helped manage crowds at the Olympics last year, were at once hailed as abstract heroes in a way they were decidedly undeserving of, and then later cast as villains, in a way they were also decidedly undeserving of.
As best I could judge, from studying the crowd every day for a month on the square, is that the ever-shifting crowd largely organised and ordered itself, at once subject to the vagaries of mass psychology and the kinetics of crowd dynamics, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Countless individuals poured into Beijing's most central plaza to create a vivid living tableau with their passion and dedication to peaceful change; they became part of a whole beyond individual control yet coherent and compelling.
While the possibility that there were indeed "black hands" cannot be dismissed, whether it be communist party factions trying to play the student movement to their own political advantage, or the question of clandestine support lent to protesters by foreign embassies, or even the tango between Western media and the protesters, the revelation of influences and interactions is not the same as culpability.
The only real crime was demanding a military solution and then turning the guns on unarmed civilians.
The value of releasing Mr Zhao's belated memoir, which goes for the jugular by singling out a hard-line clique within the CCP, on this, the 20th anniversary of an unnecessary tragedy, is to get the public eye back on the culpability of those most culpable.
Philip J Cunningham is a free-lance writer and political commentator
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Zhao spotlights all of the culprits
By: PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
The release of Zhao Ziyang's memoirs may not settle, once and for all, the degree of culpability, if any, that 1989 Beijing student activists bear for the tragic outcome of an otherwise uplifting and peaceful movement.
But the former secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party's last words on the topic serve as a powerful reminder that the lion's share of blame for the brutal and completely unnecessary military crackdown in June 1989 falls on Li Peng and a handful of party hardliners who, as Mr Zhao tells it - and as observers have long surmised - gunned for unnecessary violent intervention.
This revelation serves to balance the public discussion about Tiananmen, a debate long hampered by the paucity of verifiable information from the government side and rather too much information from the student side. The student side of the equation, rich in its tabloid complexity, faults, foibles and all, is well documented, thanks in part to the unblinking glare of the media, and the general accessibility of key personalities, most of whom escaped to the United States.
To a lesser extent, the street-level story of what happened in Beijing in the spring of 1989 can be understood in general terms; multitudinous facets of it have been captured in texts, photos, music, memoir, drama and video footage, with enough over-lapping documentation and corroborative detail to map out a basic chronology, even though interpretations differ and divisive views are not entirely settled.
The iconic image of a man standing in front of a tank has exactly that sort of built-in redundancy; it was filmed simultaneously by several photographers and cameramen - one angle on it was taken from my room at the Beijing Hotel - but who the man is, or what meaning can be drawn from the sight of him venting his anger in front of a tank slowly withdrawing from Tiananmen Square remains open to debate.
But if our knowledge of what went on in the streets and behind the closed doors of student strategy sessions is incomplete, it is meticulously documented in comparison to what we know of the government's position. This uneven access has led to a media tendency to put undue emphasis on student agency, both in terms of heroics and assigning guilt.
Given the timid but intransigent stance of China's information guardians who are so far unwilling to pin blame anywhere near the late, great Deng Xiaoping, a variety of intellectual contortions and political postures need be put into play to avoid facing the truth. The most effective obfuscations serve to divert attention elsewhere, but the one that is most distressing to me as a witness and participant is "blame it on the students".
The students were indeed imperfect, and in unwitting ways mimicked the best and worst tendencies of their communist elders. But they did not carry out the bloody crackdown, rather certain units of the PLA did. As for the units of the PLA that refused to join the crackdown, they should be considered people's heroes on a par with the man in front of the tank.
I marched with the students and know most of the student leaders. During the 1989 uprising, I interviewed Chai Ling, the so-called student commander-in-chief, on several occasions. The May 28, 1989 interview seemed of great portent; was she going to run away or stay around until blood started to flow? In a tearful outpouring of words recorded to low-quality videotape, she explored both possibilities and has been both applauded and roundly criticised for this and other provocative statements ever since. I interviewed her again on June 2, 1989 after which she returned to Tiananmen Square where she and hundreds of other fellow students made a last stand followed by a peaceful, PLA-negotiated exit on the dawn of June 4, 1989.
Only then did Chai Ling run away, and to this day the details of her escape from China remain sketchy, though secret diplomatic assistance was the likely route.
By making available to the media, with Chai Ling's express permission in writing, the May 28, 1989 interview, I inadvertently contributed to a media process that put far too much focus on a vivid personality with very little actual power, though she was the titular leader of the students at the time and thus in the mind's eye in charge of tens of thousands of followers.
The charged rhetoric she has subsequently been vilified for was not unique to her; one could hear it in the whispers and shouts of marchers; one could see ink-brush portents of it in poems scribbled on university walls that spoke of "blood flowing down Chang'an Boulevard" a full month before the massacre.
Talk of bodily, if not bloody sacrifice, along with the melodramatic last wills and testaments of the sort that Chai Ling handed me on May 28 were part and parcel of a mass hunger strike, an uncannily effective crowd precipitant that caused the square to swell with well-wishers beyond expectation.
Yet despite crowds a million strong and an abundance of over-the-top rhetoric, the hunger strike ended quietly without a single casualty.
For 20 years the official voice of China, and to a surprising extent, many of its foreign interlocutors, has found it expedient to sweep the basic facts of the crackdown under the carpet, by quibbling about details, cooking up various arguments about the overarching need for stability, or by giving it the silent treatment, in counterpoint to readily available lurid descriptions of what rascals and opportunists the student activists were.
To blame it on the students, as many young people in China do today, is to fall for a propaganda line, to take one's eye off the ball.
The so-called student leaders of 1989, crowd facilitators at best, not unlike the enthusiastic student volunteers who helped manage crowds at the Olympics last year, were at once hailed as abstract heroes in a way they were decidedly undeserving of, and then later cast as villains, in a way they were also decidedly undeserving of.
As best I could judge, from studying the crowd every day for a month on the square, is that the ever-shifting crowd largely organised and ordered itself, at once subject to the vagaries of mass psychology and the kinetics of crowd dynamics, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Countless individuals poured into Beijing's most central plaza to create a vivid living tableau with their passion and dedication to peaceful change; they became part of a whole beyond individual control yet coherent and compelling.
While the possibility that there were indeed "black hands" cannot be dismissed, whether it be communist party factions trying to play the student movement to their own political advantage, or the question of clandestine support lent to protesters by foreign embassies, or even the tango between Western media and the protesters, the revelation of influences and interactions is not the same as culpability.
The only real crime was demanding a military solution and then turning the guns on unarmed civilians.
The value of releasing Mr Zhao's belated memoir, which goes for the jugular by singling out a hard-line clique within the CCP, on this, the 20th anniversary of an unnecessary tragedy, is to get the public eye back on the culpability of those most culpable.
Philip J Cunningham is a free-lance writer and political commentator
Read more on this article...
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
BEIJING HUNGER STRIKE 1989
Twenty years ago Beijing students launched a hunger strike which changed the course of Chinese history. For more photos and narrative, please see TIANANMEN MOON.
Read more on this article...
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Pakistan is not a failed state
I.
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez were kind enough to host me this morning on their show, Democracy Now!: Manan Ahmed on the Politics of US “Hysteria” over Pakistan
II.
The excellent UAE National gave me space to develop my argument about the Pakistani "failed state": Legends of the Fail Manan Ahmed examines the decades-old tradition of experts predicting that Pakistan is sure to collapse any day now. Read more on this article...
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez were kind enough to host me this morning on their show, Democracy Now!: Manan Ahmed on the Politics of US “Hysteria” over Pakistan
II.
The excellent UAE National gave me space to develop my argument about the Pakistani "failed state": Legends of the Fail Manan Ahmed examines the decades-old tradition of experts predicting that Pakistan is sure to collapse any day now. Read more on this article...
Monday, May 4, 2009
TWENTY YEARS AGO IN BEIJING
Photos and narrative about the May 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square will be updated daily. Please see TIANANMEN MOON. --Phil
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Friday, May 1, 2009
HISTORIC STIRRINGS OF BEIJING CAMPUS UNREST
As part of a twenty year retrospective, I have posted a narrative describing the mood in Beijing on the eve of the May 4, 1989 march to Tiananmen Square. Please see TIANANMEN MOON for the full post and additional photos. --Phil Cunningham Read more on this article...
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