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Name: Phillip
Country: United States
State: District of Columbia
Gender: Male
Interests: I like to eat when I'm hungry
Expertise: I can eat purty well... haven't choked to death yet
Occupation: Education Research Analyst
Industry: Government/Nonprofit
Message: message me
Member Since:
10/15/2002
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| At 14th and V Streets NW, in my hood in Washington, DC, a raucous of celebration has ensued.
Yes We Did.
At 14th & U St NW
Folks climbed up on the roof of the bus stop and started dancing
It's hard to see, but the dude on the left is wearing a Hebrew skullcap, and he was dancing with the brown-skinned, Latino guy on the right
Also hard to see, but a drum/conga line in front of the tent
Bananas for Obama?
In front of Busboys and Poets
I have to admit that I haven't been excited by the election for the last few months. Maybe my faith that Obama would win was so strong I felt no need to follow day-to-day news; or maybe I've read so much news that apathy has set in as I've become yet again bewildered by all the nuances of all the issues facing us.
">Obama wins North Carolina!
As Brian Williams has been stating all night, tonights winner faces an un-enviable, daunting task of two wars and a giant, stinking, global economic mess, plus health care, social security, huge national debt, rising and competing powers in China and Russia... and the list goes on.
But I guess that's why Barack Hussein Obama will be President, and I will not.
Still, I can't help but feel that us Obama supporters are a little too hopeful, a little too naive - that we are heaping far too many expectations on this man. How much can Obama really affect change in this country over the next four years? Will he really bring our troops home, fix health care and shore up our economy? Or will his failure to live up to our perhaps unreasonable expectations make us just as disillusioned with politics as many of us were before the name Obama became a synonym for change?
What may be more important than achievements, though, is Obama's potential to not polarize folks the way Clinton and W. Bush did, and even more importantly, to get more Americans involved in politics again. The way Obama won this election is a testament to the importance of grass-roots organization, of the average man and woman feeling that they are empowered enough to have their voices heard on even the national stage, so much so that they are willing to wait 6 hours in line just to cast one vote that by itself will not tip an election either way, to post in their Facebooks and MySpaces and Xanga blogs the new facts they've learned, the latest biased slants from Fox News, or the latest Youtube exposé. This mastery of ground-up support is proof of Obama's shrewdness, his intelligence, his ability to run a campaign. Beyond that, I can only hope that it indicates more, not just smarts, not just the siezing of opportunity, but a real change - politics as our grade school teachers tell us ought to be; politics of, by, and for the people. | | |
| "This is a strange thing to occur in what is called a civilized country.''
In 1949, the civil war in China drew to a close as Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) forces retreated to the island of Taiwan, leaving Mao Zedong and the Communist party in control of the country that the U.N. would later officially recognize, and continues to officially recognize, as the only legitimate Chinese state.
As a child, I was taught, both through the nationalism acquired from being born and raised in America, as well as a good deal of KMT propaganda passed down to me by my parents, which was of course passed down to them by the KMT in Taiwan, that communism and Communists were evil. From that viewpoint, China was something of a quagmire; on one hand, I loved China, if for no other reason than because I was Chinese. On the other hand, China, after six thousand years of continuous civilization, after several millennia of glorious history (not the kind referred to on the backs of disposable chopsticks sleeves), was ultimately being ruled by evil. I think more than once my cousin and I enacted fantasy war scenarios where the great armies of Taiwan, who in our imaginary games flew American planes, defeated the evil Communists and made things right - China, after all, was good, and the only good form of government in the Cold War world was democracy.
I still wondered, though, how China could fall to the Communists, especially given that they were on America's side during World War II. I never had a problem accepting that China was weak for a period of time, and being American, had no problem with America being the most powerful nation in the world. But how could America allow the Communists to win in 1949 - a mere four years following the conclusion of World War II - with so much power at their fingertips?
One big reason, I read last night on Wikipedia, was our government's failure to heed the calls of our foremost experts on China at the time. Known as the "China Hands," these men saw the changes in China as they were occurring, and correctly assessed the relative popularity and strength of the Communists compared to the KMT. Given this fact, it would be in America's best interests to work with the Communists somehow, which could at least give China some incentive not to diametrically align with Stalin and the Soviet Union.
However, this view was not supported by the ambassador to China at the time, who had the diplomats espousing this view recalled from service. Furthermore, once the Communists did gain the upper hand and expel the KMT, the China Hands were simultaneously slandered as pro-Communist for having believed that the Communist Party in China was more popular and impressive than the KMT, and blamed for the "loss" of China to the Communists. It seems odd that one could acknowledge the clarity of view these men had in understanding that the Communists were the stronger party, while at the same time claiming that the Communists' subsequent victory was their fault. However, McCarthyism being the prevailing trend of the times, this logical flaw was not garner much attention.
Over twenty years later, with McCarthyism long dead, and as China re-opened its doors to foreign relations with the U.S., the China Hands were invited to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whose chairman remarked:
''It is a very
strange turn of fate that you gentlemen, who reported honestly about
conditions, were so persecuted because you were honest about it. This
is a strange thing to occur in what is called a civilized country.''
Finally, an interesting quote from a book written by one of the China Hands, John Paton Davies, which I have not yet read:
"The truth of the matter is that China has been since the fall of the
Empire a huge and seductive practical joke. The Western businessmen,
missionaries and educators who had tried to modernize and Christianize
it failed. The Japanese militarists who tried to conquer it failed. The
American government, which tried to democratize and unify it, failed.
The Soviet rulers who tried to insinuate control over it failed. Chiang
failed. Mao failed.'' | | |
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| Former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan's memoirs were previewed by the Washington Post. Regarding the Iraq war:
"Over that summer of 2002," he writes, "top Bush aides had outlined a
strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to
aggressively sell the war. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was
all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's
advantage."
McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war from the podium, comes
to a stark conclusion, writing, "What I do know is that war should only
be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."
When an administration insider calls the war a mistake, it seems pretty clear that it was one.
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| Came across this on angryasianman.com: a movie idea so steeped in white supremacy that Hollywood might actually make it. It reminds me of Paul Mooney's segment on Chappelle's Show where he reviews The Last Samurai. "I mean Hollywood is crazy, The Last Samurai starring... Tom Cruise? He's the last samurai? Give me a break, that movie was offensive, I mean Hollywood is crazy. First they had The Mexican with Brad Pitt and now they have The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. Well I've written a film, maybe they'll produce my film. The Last N*gger On Earth starring Tom Hanks, how about that." - - - - BAO PHI'S IDEAS FOR RACIST HOLLYWOOD 5: IMMORTAL KICKBOXER Tagline: When you know your fate, high kick. When you don't... high kick anyway. THE PITCH: Spencer Whidmore is just your average middle-class white Blockbuster clerk with an affinity for anime, Johnny To films, and pad thai from that greasy spoon around the block. But when a mysterious stranger returns a damaged copy of Tony Jaa's Ong Bak late and forgets to pay the $1.50 re-stocking fee, Spencer chases him down the block, tugs on his shoulder and is knocked out when the stranger (cameo by Chuck Norris) mistakes him for a mugger and spin-kicks him in the head. Spencer wakes up to find that he has magically been transported back in time to Thailand, where a cruel warlord named Jo Jafar is oppressing the good, hardworking, pious, humble, communal, defenseless Thai peasants in the kingdom. Spencer is shocked to learn that, at this point in time in Thailand's history, kickboxing has not yet been invented--but the Thai shamans and holy men whisper of a prophecy: a savior will come deliver the good people of Thailand from their oppressors and teach them the martial arts. Conveniently, an emasculinated Asian male buddy named Toofo befriends Spencer for no reason--and as they are cornered in the jungle by Thai ruffians, in a flurry of martial arts mayhem Spencer discovers that HE is the storied hero that the Thai people have been waiting for, that he is the great teacher who brought Thai kickboxing to the Thai people: he is no longer Spencer Whidmore, he is the IMMORTAL KICKBOXER. At first, Spencer revels in his new and wholly un-earned skill in kickboxing, showing off for the locals and enjoying his white saviour celebrity status. But then, when his emasculinated sidekick Toofo returns home to his village without Spencer and is killed in an ambush by thugs, Spencer throws his arms to the heavens over the body of his humble brown friend and screams "WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" He has paid a terrible price to learn that brown men must die so that great white men can learn responsibility. ABOUT THE FILM: The producer of the film claims that there were no qualified Asian actors to be in this film, so they picked a random white guy with no experience for the role and asked Josh Whedon to write in the time traveling plot. When asked about whether or not people would be offended by the issue of appropriation, the producer replied, "well, my best friend is Thai and he took some kickboxing lessons, and he loved the idea and says race is not an issue, so I don't think anyone will have a problem with it." | | |
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