Helena – Page 325 – Just World News with Helena Cobban

The (Great) Wall that Failed

So yesterday I finally got to see, and climb along, a section of the
edifice of which Richard Nixon memorably said after seeing it, “Why, it sure
is a great wall!” My Australian colleague Andrew Vincent and I had
signed up for an all-day tour that promised us visits to the Wall, the Ming
Tombs, a jade factory, and a center for Traditional Chinese Medicine; a Chinese
lunch; and sundry other delights.

We ended up in a small bus along with five Chinese people visiting the capital
from other parts of the country, two Korean men, and an incredibly talented
and energetic bilingual guide who told us her ‘English’ name was Alexandra
“but please call me Alex.”

It was a longish ride out to our first destination, the jade factory, but
driving through morning-rush-hour Beijing and then its suburbs was interesting
in itself. The city is enormous, with countless clusters of 25- to
35-story high-rises and a sky full of cranes hard at work building yet more.
The traffic moved fairly well– plus, our driver had nerves of steel
and seemed to win every contest of fast-traffic ‘chicken’ that he engaged
in. (Save one. On that occasion, the bus crunched to a halt just
two inches shy of a small passenger car and all of us got tipped off our
seats.) Alongside the motor traffic, streams of bicycles, pedi-carts,
and the occasional bike-ricksha plied endlessly along the bikeways, clustering
to a stop at some interesections then streaming over them when their own
separate traffic lights showed green…

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First explorations, Beijing

Yesterday I managed to get out of our conference hotel here on Jianguo Men
Nei Da Jie [that’s a street name], for a couple of great, if short, excursions.

At lunchtime, I walked with a colleague for two kilometers along this big
boulevard, past massive glossy new shopping malls, hotels, other huge edifices,
until we arrived at Tienanmen Square. The Israeli President is visiting,
so all the large red flags waving outside the Tienanmen Gate to the Forbidden
City were twinned with equally large Israeli flags. (Photo of me in
front of flags to be posted later, I hope.)

Anyway, it was a great walk through what is clearly a busy and rapidly developing
major world metropolis. There are about six or eight lanes of busy traffic
on these big boulevards, flanked on each side by broad bike-ways and
even broader, tree-shaded sidewalks. Everything was immaculately clean
and well-swept, and the sidewalks had a very healthy and lively bustle. There’s
a subway line runs under the street, and around the two or three stations
we passed were clustered hundreds of parked bikes.

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The trials of trying Saddam

There’s a possibility that by October-November 2004 the capture of Saddam Hussein,
which today looks like such a valuable political ‘prize’ for the Bushies,
may look like a difficult political liability. The central question
of who is to control the process of trying and punishing him may have
become so hotly contended by then that many in the administration might wish
that rather than capturing him alive, the forces that stormed his bunker
had somehow allowed him to “be shot while fleeing arrest”.

Hey, they might even come to wish, rather wistfully, that they could simply
have handed him over to the jurisdiction of an “International Criminal Court”
which could take all the decisions around trying the guy–and all the associated
political heat–quite out of their hands!

The “who gets to do it” question around the trying of Saddam Hussein is by
no means as easy or straightforward as it looks…

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The UN, Palestine– and Beijing

The UN and Palestine–view from Beijing

I’m here in Beijing as an Expert Speaker at the “UN Meeting for Asia and
the Pacific on the Question of Palestine”. The UN’s Division of Palestinian
Affairs holds these conferences periodically in different places around the
world– I’ve been invited a few times before, but was only previously able
to go to one of them– in Malta, 1992.

I think this may be the first one in Beijing: significant both because China
is a member of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council, and because
of China’s steadily rising role in world affairs. Remember, this time
30 years ago, the PRC was still not allowed even to be in the United Nations,
since the US still insisted on giving China’s seat in the UN to Taiwan. Last
week, when Chinese Premier Wen was in Washington, he scored a notable political
success by getting Dubya to publicly warn Taiwan that it should do nothing
to antagonize Beijing on the question of the eventual unification of Taiwan
and China– such as, for example, holding a Taiwan-wide referendum on “independence.”

As a democrat, I’m not sure feel totally comfortable with Beijing’s gruff
insistence on majoritarian PRC control over the political destinies of Chinese-peopled
polities around its periphery like Hong Kong, Macao, or Taiwan. (Though
Hong Kong’s situation under its gradual re-unification process with Big China
is not totally bad, either, far as I can see.)

As a U.S. citizen who is eager to see a right relationship between US power
and that of the rest of the world, I am intrigued by the steady growth in
Chinese influence. (And as a democrat, I have to note that China’s population
is some 4.5 times that of the US. So if we go with a one-peron-one-vote
approach its influence should be much greater than Washington’s.)

Anyway, here I am. There I was yesterday, in a slightly Stalinoid-decored
conference hall– logistic arrangements, including simultaneous interpretation
among the three conference languages of Chinese, French, and English, all
working almost perfectly. In the morning we had a welcome address from
Deputy Foreign Minister Mr. Dai Bingguo. I noted that though he and
the Chinese official who spoke in the afternoon, China’s Special Envoy to
the ME Peace Process Wang Shijie, both spoke in Chinese, they both also seemed
quite able to communicate very well in English, as well. The inverse
could hardly, of course, be said of their counterparts in Washington!

Dai noted the importance of the Palestinian issue in world affairs and stressed
that “only peaceful means” of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
can work. He urged the greater promotion of the UN’s role in peacemaking.
He stressed that there should be justice in international mediation
efforts– and that there should not be “bias” in mediation. He said
all the rights of the Palestinians including their right to create an independent
Palestinian state should be assured. He said that suicide bombings
should be “checked effectively.” (An Israeli peacenik sitting next
to me, MK Zahava Gal-On, got a little exercized over her understanding of
that phrase. “They want to see the effectiveness of suicide bombings
checked?” she asked me. I told her I understood that “checked” in the
context of Dai’s speeech most likely meant “stopped”. Of such linguistic
misunderstandings can major crises be born.)

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Sistani calling for UN role

Two great pieces by Juan Cole that pick up on Arab press reports that Ayatollah Sistani is saying that the US-dominated doesn’t have the legitimacy to make the determination that full-scale elections aren’t feasible inside Iraq for now.
But that he might accept a determination from the UN on this matter.
On Saturday Cole cited a report in the Gulf Daily News as saying that Sistani,

stands by his ruling that Iraq should go to early general elections on a one-person, one-vote basis. According to IGC member Muwaffak al-Rubaie, however, Sistani has indicated that he would back down on one condition. If Kofi Annan appoints a UN commission that concludes that early general elections are impractical because of security concerns, then he would accept some other mechanism for achieving a transitional government.

It is extremely interesting and significant that the Ayatollah is making an appeal for UN help on this issue. This will only add to the pressure that’s already mounting on the Bushies to give the UN a much larger role in the handling the transition to self-government in Iraq than they have been prepared to give to it up until now.
Why does all the really interesting stuff have to happen while I’m traveling elsewhere and have huge problems getting online, getting news etc?
Here in Incheon Airport (Seoul) I’m using a computer in the airline’s lounge that works mainly in Korean script… Plus, whenever I click on “blogspot” links in the JWN link-list, some Korean-language gremlim gets into the process and brings up Korean-language site instead. I can’t even figure out what’s happening there. Oh well. On to Beijing soon enough. Who knows what the internet situation will be like there?

Saddam captured

I was flying west with the night for the past 24 hours, arrived in Incheon Int’l airport, Seoul, S. Korea at 6 a.m. their time to discover that while we flew Saddam was captured.
There’s a fine piece on Juan Cole’s blog already that starts with a lengthy catalogue of Saddam’s acts of brutality and violence. (Sorry I can’t do the link since all the browser instructions on this computer here are in Korean.)
I would describe some of Saddam’s acts im even starker terms than Juan does: “fencing” with the Kurds in the 1970s doesn’t to my mind quite capture it. I would call draining the marshes that the Marsh Arabs lived in for untold generations a clear act of cultural genocide. I would list not only the assassinations but also the mutilations and, perhaps worst of all, the systematic attempt to destroy social trust in Iraqi society by urging children to inform on their parents, relatives on relatives, co-workers on co-workers, etc etc…
But still, Juan’s list was pretty good and extremely sobering. Since I can’t link to it, let me paste it in here:

I remembered the innocent Jews brutally hung in downtown Baghdad when the Baath came to power in 1968; the fencing with the Shah and the Kurds in the early 1970s; the vicious repression of the Shiites of East Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala in 1977-1980; the internal Baath putsch of 1979, when perhaps a third of the party’s high officials were taken out and shot, so that Saddam could become president; the bloody invasion of Iran in 1980 and the destruction of a whole generation of Iraqi and Iranian young men in the 1980s (at least 500,000 dead, perhaps even more); the Anfal poison gas campaign against the Kurds in 1987-88; Halabja, a city of 70,000 where 5,000 died where they stood, their blood boiling with toxic gases, little children lying in heaps in the street; the rape of Kuwait in 1990-91; the genocide against the Shiites that began in spring of 1991 and continued intermittently thereafter; the destruction of the Marsh Arabs; the assassinations, the black marias, the Fedayee Saddam. Yes, the United States was not innocent in some of this. Perhaps they cooperated in bringing the Baath to power in the first place, as an anti-Communist force. They certainly allied with Saddam against Iran in the 1980s, and authorized the purchase of chemical and biological precursors. But the Baath was an indigenous Iraqi phenomenon, and local forces kept Saddam in place, despite dozens of attempts to overthrow him…

He goes on to write:

Well, it would be interesting if we were to see the “two” nations’ dirty laundry all exposed, but somehow I doubt it will happen…
Halabja? Undertaken in almost exactly the same period Bombs-Away Don was visiting Baghdad and giving Saddam a green light to do whatever it might take to contain the Iranians and their Iraqi-Kurdish friends… I’m not sure we’re about to see all that kind of dirty laundry being exposed in any court that is controlled by either the US’s CPA or its creature, the IGC…
You have to know that somewhere in a vault in a Swiss bank or someplace Saddam and his cronies have stored numerous enormous wads of documents that are the records of all their interactions over the years with Bombs-Away Don and others from the Reagan administration; with the Saudis; with the Brits as well as other European governments including of course the Russians and the French; with the Chinese–hey, just to get a “Royal Flush of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council…
And you have to believe that in the case of anything like a decent, recognizable trial process, the defense would have to have access to those records. (Slobo has been trying to do exactly this at the ICTY in The Hague. But he had far less of a record of world-power connivance in his misdeeds to build on than Saddam has.)
Actually, the issue of what to do with Saddam now that the US forces have him is quite a tricky one.

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Peace activities, C’ville: the photos

Thanks to C’ville “Editor Ludorum” George Loper, here are two photos from early on in our pro-peace demonstration, Thursday:

George actually had to leave soon after we got started setting up, so you can’t see the group at its peak. In these photos, though, you can see the minister of the local Lutheran church, and (in a red jacket) my friend Gladys Swift who’s 80 years old and who got arrested back in March for participating in a pro-peace sit-in at our local Congressman’s office.
A person you can’t see is the strange, very “inquisitive” guy who kept hanging around us for no particular reason. I don’t know his name, but I think he’s one of the people who last winter sometimes used to stage counter-demonstrations to ours on another corner of that intersection. I wonder if he’ll be there next week?

Peace demonstration, Charlottesville

It was a bright, windy afternoon yesterday on the corner of McIntyre Rd. and Main Street as thirty of us gathered to launch the resumption of our small town’s weekly public peace demonstrations.
The Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice had been holding antiwar
demonstration/vigils on this corner for several years up until April or Mayof this year. After September 11, and as our country went through the war in Afghanistan and the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, the numbers of participants grew.
But in the spring, once it became clear that the peace movement’s efforts to prevent the launching of the invasion had failed, many people became despondent and a bit discouraged. Plus, after all the energy we expended in the build-up to March 19, many of us were tired, too… Well, whatever the reason, that weekly, rush-hour presence of people with signs and banners–right outside the small Federal Office Building in our town– just petered out at around that time.
But now, it’s back.

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Dec 11 CSM column now on web

My latest Christian Science Monitor column is now up on the CSM website. You can read it here.
It’s titled ‘Made in Israel’ crackdowns in Iraq won’t work, and it starts:

Actually, I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out. I make a bunch of other important points in there, too.

Beijing, here I come

I’m really rushed this week. This weekend, I’m leaving for a quick trip to China, to take part in a UN conference on Palestine that’s being held there.
I’ve never been to China before, so it’s really exciting. They only invited me ten days or so ago, and what with Christmas coming up it’s all a bit rushed.
It’ll be an interesting time to be there, though. I’ve been reading a lot of news articles recently saying that the new Chinese leaders have been doing really well at expanding their country’s friendships all around Asia– that, at a time that many Asian countries have become incresingly irritated with Prez Bush’s johnny-one-note focus on the “war against terror”.
Plus, this week Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was in DC, where he succeeded in winning a public statement from the Prez to the effect that he would not support Taiwan’s leaders in any attempt to change the delicate status quo with China.
That’s a big change from April 2001, when Bush uttered some fairly bellicose threats against China in the wake of the incident in which the Chinese brought down in their southern Hainan province a big US spy-plane with all its instrumentation, etc. (Much of which they were apparently able to check out carefully before they returned it.)
The conference I’m speaking at is a UN Asian Meeting on Palestine. I think there should be people from many Asian countries there, in addition to our hosts from the Chinese MFA. So I’ll be really interested to hear what ALL those people have to say about the situation in Israel/Palestine, and in the Middle East more broadly.
Before I leave, though, I’m helping some friends from the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice to organize some pro-peace public activities here in town tomorrow. I hope I get time to post a quick report here on how it goes. Hey, maybe even pictures?
Today, Bill and I wrestled our 2003 Christmas/holiday cards into place– all put in envelopes, stamped, and ready for the mailman. I don’t think we’ve ever managed to get them organized so early before! I’ll be back in the US for Christmas, which we’re spending with Bill’s 97-year-old mother in northern California…