From Salon.com
I’m pro-life and I support Planned Parenthood
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
From the Guardian:
With its deadly drones, the US is fighting a coward's war
As technology allows machines to make their own decisions, warfare will become bloodier – and less accountable
These power-damaged people have been granted the chance to fulfil one of humankind's abiding fantasies: to vaporise their enemies, as if with a curse or a prayer, effortlessly and from a safe distance. That these powers are already being abused is suggested by the mendacity of those who are deploying them. The CIA, which is running the undeclared and unacknowledged drone war in Pakistan, insists that there have been no recent civilian casualties. So does Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan. It is a blatant whitewash.
As a report last year by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism showed, of some 2,300 people killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan from 2004 until August 2011, between 392 and 781 appear to have been civilians; 175 were children. In the period about which the CIA and Brennan made their claims, at least 45 civilians have been killed.
At the risk of stating the obvious, it might be worth comparing this to what would have happened if American citizens had been killed in the same way, and by doing so get a sense of how much a Pakistani life is worth these days.
If these had been American civilians killed, I think someone would have gone to jail for involuntary manslaughter at the very least, not to mention several people losing their jobs.
During the Vietnam War, it was quite obvious that the lives of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian civilians were not important to US government policy makers.
Now are we seeing the same thing with the new war?
With its deadly drones, the US is fighting a coward's war
As technology allows machines to make their own decisions, warfare will become bloodier – and less accountable
These power-damaged people have been granted the chance to fulfil one of humankind's abiding fantasies: to vaporise their enemies, as if with a curse or a prayer, effortlessly and from a safe distance. That these powers are already being abused is suggested by the mendacity of those who are deploying them. The CIA, which is running the undeclared and unacknowledged drone war in Pakistan, insists that there have been no recent civilian casualties. So does Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan. It is a blatant whitewash.
As a report last year by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism showed, of some 2,300 people killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan from 2004 until August 2011, between 392 and 781 appear to have been civilians; 175 were children. In the period about which the CIA and Brennan made their claims, at least 45 civilians have been killed.
At the risk of stating the obvious, it might be worth comparing this to what would have happened if American citizens had been killed in the same way, and by doing so get a sense of how much a Pakistani life is worth these days.
If these had been American civilians killed, I think someone would have gone to jail for involuntary manslaughter at the very least, not to mention several people losing their jobs.
During the Vietnam War, it was quite obvious that the lives of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian civilians were not important to US government policy makers.
Now are we seeing the same thing with the new war?
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
14 must-read books for the college rebel (and me)
Ran across this article in my Internet surfing:
14 must-read books for the college rebel
Although no longer in college, just for fun (and for the sake of wasting time on this sunny afternoon) I thought I'd see how well my reading list would stock up as a college rebel. And if anyone else is up for this, maybe we can make a little blogging game out of this list. Tell me how many of these books you've got under your belt.
Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book
Read it back in freshman year of college. Don't remember it all that well now years later, but remember enjoying it at the time.
(In fact I even quoted from this book in this Chimes article I wrote. Although re-reading it now, I wish I hadn't because that quote isn't really on topic, and just looks stupid.)
Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader
Um, never read the Chomsky Reader per se, but I've certainly read plenty of Chomsky over the years. Does that count?
Howard Zinn, A People’s History Of The United States
As I mentioned in this post, I never actually got around to reading this book cover to cover, although I've read large sections of it at different times.
William Powell, The Anarchist Cookbook
Never read it, don't plan to. I certainly remember this book popping up in a lot of conversations back in college, but if you don't have an active interest in manufacturing explosives it sounds like it would be pretty boring reading.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Never read it. Don't particularly plan to.
I'm more of a history nut than a philosophy nerd, and too much philosophy hurts my brain. Plus I tend to associate Nietzsche too much with a Freshman philosophy major. (Although Emma Goldman did mention in her autobiography how much she loved Nietzsche, so maybe I should read him one day.)
Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works
Haven't read this yet, but may someday. Maybe. Or maybe not.
I'm a little bit too much of a philistine to enjoy poetry, but Rimbaud does strike me as an interesting guy. And he lived during a period of French History that I'm interested in. (Rimbaud was around during the Paris Commune days, and although he didn't have much of an active role his name occasionally pops up in history books on the Paris Commune).
May have read some Rimbaud back in college literature classes actually. Don't remember. Tend to get him mixed up sometimes with Baudelaire.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
Haven't read it. Don't plan to.
It seems most 17 or 18 year olds go through a period when they're fascinated by drug culture.
(At least for men anyway. From my own observations it doesn't seem to be such a big fascination to most girls, for whatever reason. Or am I going out on a limb here?)
Despite not using a lot of drugs, I was fascinated by drug culture. Perhaps those of us who are too cautious to do our own experimenting tend to be all the more interested in doing it vicariously through books. And so I read with great fascination books like "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe.
However having moved on from that stage of life, I have now lost all interest in it, and don't imagine I'll be reading this book anytime soon.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Haven't read it. Don't plan to.
At the risk of reinforcing stereotypes, all of my knowledge of Sylvia Plath just comes from talking to girls who were big fans--the type of girls who thought that they experienced feelings deeper than the ordinary person did. It turned me off of it.
Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible
Haven't read it. Don't plan to.
(I probably shouldn't say this without having read the book, but I'm of the opinion that Satanism is not so much a real philosophy as it is a boogey-man created by Church Evangelicals on the one hand, and by metal fans who want to shock their parents on the other hand. But if someone out there can convince me that this book is worth reading, I might reconsider.)
Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Never even heard of it.
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
Read it. Reviewed it on this blog. And wasn't overly impressed with it.
(I must be a bit out of it, but at the time I read this book I didn't realize this was a classic back-packers' book. I was just looking to learn a little bit more about Buddhist mythology.)
Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
Haven't read it. Because Siddhartha failed to make a big impression on me, I doubt I'll be checking out any books by the same author.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Read it. Reviewed it on this blog. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
This book used to be on my reading list back when I was 18 and really into the beat poets, but I never got around to it at the time and my interests have since moved. Now I doubt I'll ever go back for it.
I did however read "On the Road", and "The Subterraneans" by Jack Kerouac and tried to struggle my way through a couple books of Ginsberg's poetry. Also read "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" by Ken Kesey and (as mentioned above) "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". Do I get any points for any of those?
Actually a book like "On the Road" really should be on this list. Which just illustrates once again how random and utterly subjective these kind of Internet lists really are.
So let me make a couple suggestions of my own. (Since my own brain is much more interested in politics and history than poetry and philosophy, my own list would weigh heavily towards those genres. A different person with different interests might create a different list, but that's all part of the fun isn't it?)
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
In my experience hanging out with anarchist groups, this book comes up frequently in conversation. In any group of anarchists guaranteed there's at least one of them who's read this book.
If you're hanging out with Trotskyists, the preferred book seems to be "10 Days that Shook the World" by Jack Reed (something I haven't read yet but plan on doing someday.) Just don't get into a conversation with them about what happened after those 10 days. They don't like talking about that part nearly as much.
"1984" gets honorable mention. It's a little bit too mainstream to be hip, I know. (Anything your high school English teacher is likely to assign to you doesn't get written up as a rebellious book.) But for anyone who's trying to position themselves as anti-establishment, it's always useful to be able to quote from this book and compare it to the current government.
All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The ultimate anti-war book. Plus it gets bonus cool points for being banned by the Nazis.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller gets honorable mention.
Anything by Marx. (Really, what is a book list for college rebels without any Marx?)
Personally I find his political writings to be much more readable than his philosophical writings.
Ditto for Bakunin.
I'm tempted to add classic leftist history books here like, History of the Paris Commune by Prosper Oliver Lissagaray, but that's probably too obscure. The point of a list like this is to highlight the classics, not list every last book on the subject.
Okay, let me know what I missed, or what other books you would add.
Update: Someone criticized this list for being too white (over in the comments section over at the original post). That's probably a fair criticism. The two big books connected with Black Radicalism that come to mind are:
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
(Which I've read)
And Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
...Which I haven't read. Although back when I was a college student I did try to track this book down. Calvin College library didn't have it, and none of my local bookstores had it.
Which raised the question: Does anyone still read "Soul on Ice" anymore or is it purely a time piece from the 60s now?
If memory serves, Calvin's library didn't have "Soul on Ice" but they did have Cleaver's born again Christian novel "Soul on Fire". You could make some sort of cheap jibe here about how this is just what you would expect from a conservative Christian college like Calvin, but actually their library wasn't half bad when it came to books on black radicalism. They had several books sympathetic to the Black Panthers, like A Panther is a Black Cat by Reginald Major
They also had "Die Nigger Die!" by H. Rap Brown (A), which I read. And "The Autobiography of Angela Davis" (A), which I also read. And the Autobiography of David Hillard (A) (which I never did get around to reading at the time, unfortunately).
All of those books should probably get honorable mention on this list although probably none of them are famous enough to warrant their own entry.
Okay, what else did I miss?
Link of the Day
Mirror Crack'd
14 must-read books for the college rebel
Although no longer in college, just for fun (and for the sake of wasting time on this sunny afternoon) I thought I'd see how well my reading list would stock up as a college rebel. And if anyone else is up for this, maybe we can make a little blogging game out of this list. Tell me how many of these books you've got under your belt.
Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book
Read it back in freshman year of college. Don't remember it all that well now years later, but remember enjoying it at the time.
(In fact I even quoted from this book in this Chimes article I wrote. Although re-reading it now, I wish I hadn't because that quote isn't really on topic, and just looks stupid.)
Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader
Um, never read the Chomsky Reader per se, but I've certainly read plenty of Chomsky over the years. Does that count?
Howard Zinn, A People’s History Of The United States
As I mentioned in this post, I never actually got around to reading this book cover to cover, although I've read large sections of it at different times.
William Powell, The Anarchist Cookbook
Never read it, don't plan to. I certainly remember this book popping up in a lot of conversations back in college, but if you don't have an active interest in manufacturing explosives it sounds like it would be pretty boring reading.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Never read it. Don't particularly plan to.
I'm more of a history nut than a philosophy nerd, and too much philosophy hurts my brain. Plus I tend to associate Nietzsche too much with a Freshman philosophy major. (Although Emma Goldman did mention in her autobiography how much she loved Nietzsche, so maybe I should read him one day.)
Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works
Haven't read this yet, but may someday. Maybe. Or maybe not.
I'm a little bit too much of a philistine to enjoy poetry, but Rimbaud does strike me as an interesting guy. And he lived during a period of French History that I'm interested in. (Rimbaud was around during the Paris Commune days, and although he didn't have much of an active role his name occasionally pops up in history books on the Paris Commune).
May have read some Rimbaud back in college literature classes actually. Don't remember. Tend to get him mixed up sometimes with Baudelaire.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
Haven't read it. Don't plan to.
It seems most 17 or 18 year olds go through a period when they're fascinated by drug culture.
(At least for men anyway. From my own observations it doesn't seem to be such a big fascination to most girls, for whatever reason. Or am I going out on a limb here?)
Despite not using a lot of drugs, I was fascinated by drug culture. Perhaps those of us who are too cautious to do our own experimenting tend to be all the more interested in doing it vicariously through books. And so I read with great fascination books like "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe.
However having moved on from that stage of life, I have now lost all interest in it, and don't imagine I'll be reading this book anytime soon.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Haven't read it. Don't plan to.
At the risk of reinforcing stereotypes, all of my knowledge of Sylvia Plath just comes from talking to girls who were big fans--the type of girls who thought that they experienced feelings deeper than the ordinary person did. It turned me off of it.
Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible
Haven't read it. Don't plan to.
(I probably shouldn't say this without having read the book, but I'm of the opinion that Satanism is not so much a real philosophy as it is a boogey-man created by Church Evangelicals on the one hand, and by metal fans who want to shock their parents on the other hand. But if someone out there can convince me that this book is worth reading, I might reconsider.)
Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Never even heard of it.
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
Read it. Reviewed it on this blog. And wasn't overly impressed with it.
(I must be a bit out of it, but at the time I read this book I didn't realize this was a classic back-packers' book. I was just looking to learn a little bit more about Buddhist mythology.)
Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
Haven't read it. Because Siddhartha failed to make a big impression on me, I doubt I'll be checking out any books by the same author.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Read it. Reviewed it on this blog. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
This book used to be on my reading list back when I was 18 and really into the beat poets, but I never got around to it at the time and my interests have since moved. Now I doubt I'll ever go back for it.
I did however read "On the Road", and "The Subterraneans" by Jack Kerouac and tried to struggle my way through a couple books of Ginsberg's poetry. Also read "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" by Ken Kesey and (as mentioned above) "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". Do I get any points for any of those?
Actually a book like "On the Road" really should be on this list. Which just illustrates once again how random and utterly subjective these kind of Internet lists really are.
So let me make a couple suggestions of my own. (Since my own brain is much more interested in politics and history than poetry and philosophy, my own list would weigh heavily towards those genres. A different person with different interests might create a different list, but that's all part of the fun isn't it?)
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
In my experience hanging out with anarchist groups, this book comes up frequently in conversation. In any group of anarchists guaranteed there's at least one of them who's read this book.
If you're hanging out with Trotskyists, the preferred book seems to be "10 Days that Shook the World" by Jack Reed (something I haven't read yet but plan on doing someday.) Just don't get into a conversation with them about what happened after those 10 days. They don't like talking about that part nearly as much.
"1984" gets honorable mention. It's a little bit too mainstream to be hip, I know. (Anything your high school English teacher is likely to assign to you doesn't get written up as a rebellious book.) But for anyone who's trying to position themselves as anti-establishment, it's always useful to be able to quote from this book and compare it to the current government.
All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The ultimate anti-war book. Plus it gets bonus cool points for being banned by the Nazis.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller gets honorable mention.
Anything by Marx. (Really, what is a book list for college rebels without any Marx?)
Personally I find his political writings to be much more readable than his philosophical writings.
Ditto for Bakunin.
I'm tempted to add classic leftist history books here like, History of the Paris Commune by Prosper Oliver Lissagaray, but that's probably too obscure. The point of a list like this is to highlight the classics, not list every last book on the subject.
Okay, let me know what I missed, or what other books you would add.
Update: Someone criticized this list for being too white (over in the comments section over at the original post). That's probably a fair criticism. The two big books connected with Black Radicalism that come to mind are:
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
(Which I've read)
And Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
...Which I haven't read. Although back when I was a college student I did try to track this book down. Calvin College library didn't have it, and none of my local bookstores had it.
Which raised the question: Does anyone still read "Soul on Ice" anymore or is it purely a time piece from the 60s now?
If memory serves, Calvin's library didn't have "Soul on Ice" but they did have Cleaver's born again Christian novel "Soul on Fire". You could make some sort of cheap jibe here about how this is just what you would expect from a conservative Christian college like Calvin, but actually their library wasn't half bad when it came to books on black radicalism. They had several books sympathetic to the Black Panthers, like A Panther is a Black Cat by Reginald Major
They also had "Die Nigger Die!" by H. Rap Brown (A), which I read. And "The Autobiography of Angela Davis" (A), which I also read. And the Autobiography of David Hillard (A) (which I never did get around to reading at the time, unfortunately).
All of those books should probably get honorable mention on this list although probably none of them are famous enough to warrant their own entry.
Okay, what else did I miss?
Link of the Day
Mirror Crack'd
Monday, January 16, 2012
The 6 Characters You’ll Meet At Every Expat Bar
This has been making the rounds on friends' facebook pages, so I thought I'd steal it and post it here with the following comments.
1). Pretty spot on. More or less.
2). Ouch. Number 2 is a little bit too spot on for comfort. The truth stings a bit.
3). Despite the introduction, I'm not sure this is entirely universal. It's probably true around the world in developing countries but in Japan, for example, many of these characters were absent. (Not much need for overpaid aid workers in a country like Japan.)
Also if I had to add one category, in Cambodia I seem to run into the "pretentious back-packer" a lot. The kind of person who believes that because they have traveled to the far corners of the earth and because they appreciate literature in a deep way, they are somehow better than us ordinary slobs. If you try and talk to them in a bar, they'll quickly try and size you up to see if you're as deep and cultured as they are, and then dismiss you and move on to someone else.
(Perhaps this is just bitterness talking.)
This type of person will also often have trendy tattoos--often Kanji characters that they actually can't read, and will sometimes get defensive if you try and make conversation to them about what their tattoos really mean.
This has been making the rounds on friends' facebook pages, so I thought I'd steal it and post it here with the following comments.
1). Pretty spot on. More or less.
2). Ouch. Number 2 is a little bit too spot on for comfort. The truth stings a bit.
3). Despite the introduction, I'm not sure this is entirely universal. It's probably true around the world in developing countries but in Japan, for example, many of these characters were absent. (Not much need for overpaid aid workers in a country like Japan.)
Also if I had to add one category, in Cambodia I seem to run into the "pretentious back-packer" a lot. The kind of person who believes that because they have traveled to the far corners of the earth and because they appreciate literature in a deep way, they are somehow better than us ordinary slobs. If you try and talk to them in a bar, they'll quickly try and size you up to see if you're as deep and cultured as they are, and then dismiss you and move on to someone else.
(Perhaps this is just bitterness talking.)
This type of person will also often have trendy tattoos--often Kanji characters that they actually can't read, and will sometimes get defensive if you try and make conversation to them about what their tattoos really mean.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Rest in Peace Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens, militant pundit, dies at 62
No doubt this is one of many similar entries all over the blogosphere right now. So be it.
I don't know if I should admit this, but I've actually read very little of Christopher Hitchens. (The only book of his I've read cover to cover is "The Trial of Henry Kissinger".) I find his verbose style a little bit hard to swallow in writing, and I much prefer hearing him speak than reading him. This probably says something about my limited intellect and limited reading abilities.
But I love hearing Hitchens speak. There was about a 2 year period in Japan (when my social life was a bit slow) when I became addicted to listening to him on youtube. In fact over a two year period I spent more hours watching his debates on youtube than I care to admit. Agree with him or disagree with him, he's got a razor sharp tongue and it's always a pleasure to see what biting comeback he will have to whatever remark is thrown at him.
I don't think there's anyone out there who agrees with Christopher Hitchens about everything. He's made a career of not towing the party line, and probably everyone has some dearly held issue he's trampled on.
I passionately disagreed with him on the Iraq War, and wondered how someone so smart could advocate for such a stupid war.
I've heard him recite his reasons for supporting the war ad infinitum, but I never really bought them. I know totalitarian Islamic societies have their problems, but Hitchens has forgotten Robespierre's quote
"The most extravagant idea that can arise in a politician's head is to believe that it is enough for a people to invade a foreign country to make it adopt their laws and their constitutions. No one loves armed missionaries."
Call me cynical, but I still suspect Hitchens was motivated to support that war partly just because of a love off all the attention it brought him. It's the only explanation I can think of to explain the motives behind a man who, in his earlier writings, appeared to clearly understand just how little genuine humanitarian concerns motivate foreign wars.
On the plus side, I found Hitchens thoughts on Jefferson and Trotsky fascinating to listen to. I loved his take downs of Mother Teresa and Billy Graham. And I loved listening to him debate on religion. In fact I think hours of watching Hitchens talk about religion have helped me to move from an ambivalent agnosticism to a more militant agnosticism, so I can claim him as an influence on my own thoughts. I'll miss hearing about him.
Update: Back in this post, I stated that based on my own personal experience talking to Brits, many of them don't even know who Christopher Hitchens is.
At my new place of work, this continues to be true. When news of Christopher Hitchens' death went around the office, all the Americans and Australians knew who he was, but none of the British people I talked to did. Granted this is a completely unscientific survey, but it just may indicate that Christopher Hitchens was much better known across the sea than in his native land.
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston
No doubt this is one of many similar entries all over the blogosphere right now. So be it.
I don't know if I should admit this, but I've actually read very little of Christopher Hitchens. (The only book of his I've read cover to cover is "The Trial of Henry Kissinger".) I find his verbose style a little bit hard to swallow in writing, and I much prefer hearing him speak than reading him. This probably says something about my limited intellect and limited reading abilities.
But I love hearing Hitchens speak. There was about a 2 year period in Japan (when my social life was a bit slow) when I became addicted to listening to him on youtube. In fact over a two year period I spent more hours watching his debates on youtube than I care to admit. Agree with him or disagree with him, he's got a razor sharp tongue and it's always a pleasure to see what biting comeback he will have to whatever remark is thrown at him.
I don't think there's anyone out there who agrees with Christopher Hitchens about everything. He's made a career of not towing the party line, and probably everyone has some dearly held issue he's trampled on.
I passionately disagreed with him on the Iraq War, and wondered how someone so smart could advocate for such a stupid war.
I've heard him recite his reasons for supporting the war ad infinitum, but I never really bought them. I know totalitarian Islamic societies have their problems, but Hitchens has forgotten Robespierre's quote
"The most extravagant idea that can arise in a politician's head is to believe that it is enough for a people to invade a foreign country to make it adopt their laws and their constitutions. No one loves armed missionaries."
Call me cynical, but I still suspect Hitchens was motivated to support that war partly just because of a love off all the attention it brought him. It's the only explanation I can think of to explain the motives behind a man who, in his earlier writings, appeared to clearly understand just how little genuine humanitarian concerns motivate foreign wars.
On the plus side, I found Hitchens thoughts on Jefferson and Trotsky fascinating to listen to. I loved his take downs of Mother Teresa and Billy Graham. And I loved listening to him debate on religion. In fact I think hours of watching Hitchens talk about religion have helped me to move from an ambivalent agnosticism to a more militant agnosticism, so I can claim him as an influence on my own thoughts. I'll miss hearing about him.
Update: Back in this post, I stated that based on my own personal experience talking to Brits, many of them don't even know who Christopher Hitchens is.
At my new place of work, this continues to be true. When news of Christopher Hitchens' death went around the office, all the Americans and Australians knew who he was, but none of the British people I talked to did. Granted this is a completely unscientific survey, but it just may indicate that Christopher Hitchens was much better known across the sea than in his native land.
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston
Sunday, December 11, 2011
I Yell at Someone in the Streets over a Chomsky Article
Yesterday I was eating lunch with a friend at restaurant in Phnom Penh at a table out on the sidewalk. Another expat walked by and handed us a small little magazine booklet ("This Week" [LINK HERE] published by Lady Penh [LINK HERE]).
I leafed through it. Most of the booklet consisted of advertising. There were movie times for the local cinemas, and a calendar of events for local expat bars. The content of the magazine consisted of two articles: the best places to get coffee in Phnom Penh, and an editorial on Chomsky.
The PDF for this publication, including the article in question, can be read online [LINK HERE].
I read the Chomsky article first, and just sighed. “Look at how terrible this article is,” I said, pushing the booklet across the table to my friend.
“It is pretty bad,” my friend agreed.
Just around that time, the guy who had given us the booklet in the first place came back down the street. “You guys need another one?” he asked us.
“Look at this,” I said, calling him over to our table. “You’ve got an editorial here on Chomsky by someone who admits she hasn’t ever read any Chomsky.”
“So?”
“So it’s a waste of paper! Why would I want to read what she thinks about Chomsky when she hasn’t read anything by Chomsky.” (I may have raised my voice at this point.)
“Okay, wow, um…”
“Look, there are about 3 or 4 articles Chomsky wrote on Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge time. You can find them all on-line. Go look them up and read them. Chomsky didn’t say any of this.”
“That wasn’t actually me that wrote that article.”
“Well tell her then. She’s got her facts all wrong. Chomsky never said any of this.”
“He has.”
“No he hasn’t”
“Yes he has. Recently.”
“No he hasn’t. Get your facts straight.”
He tried to change the subject at this point. “Okay, well you should check out her website. There are a lot of other interesting things there.”
As he walked away, I called out after him, “Go and read the original articles.”
After the guy walked away, my friend looked at me, put his drink down, and said, “Wow.”
“Was I a little bit too hard on the guy?” I asked.
“You sir, are a history bully,” my friend said to me.
“I probably was a bit over the top just then.”
“In that guy’s defense, there was a picture right above the article of the girl who wrote it, and it clearly was not him.”
“Yeah, I know, I just wanted to yell at someone and he was right there. But he was distributing a magazine in which the only other article was about coffee, so he’s got to take some of the responsibility.”
“You’re probably going to call him back and yell at him about the coffee article next?”
He added, “You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you get upset. And it’s over a history article. Well, I guess we all have our buttons. Some people yell at bad waiters or bartenders, you apparently like to yell at people in the streets over Chomsky articles.”
Okay, so I was probably a bit over the top. And it is always counter productive to yell at people. Calm, well reasoned arguments win people over to your side, not raised voices. If I ever see that guy again, I owe him an apology.
So let me take a few minutes to calmly explain my specific objections to the article in question. The Chomsky article in question appears on her blog here [LINK HERE]. If this was just someone’s blog, I wouldn’t bother. The fact that a print version of this article was being handed out up and down the streets of Phnom Penh makes me more motivated to write a rebuttal. (The print version of this article is slightly different than the blog form, but I’ll get into that more below.)
Let me start with a bit of background. Among the expat crowd in Cambodia it’s impossible to mention Chomsky’s name without someone bringing up the Khmer Rouge. I was recently discussing Chomsky’s theories with a co-worker, when another woman 3 desks down (who wasn’t even part of the conversation) yelled out, “Never forget he supported the Khmer Rouge. Never forget that.” And this is fairly typical.
Figuring out what Chomsky actually said about the Khmer Rouge is a bit of a headache. On the internet you can find lots of articles attacking Chomsky for his supposed support of the Khmer Rouge, and lots of articles defending him. For example you can read any number of articles by David Horowitz accusing Chomsky of supporting the Khmer Rouge. You can also read Christopher Hitchen's article "The Chorus and Cassandra" [LINK HERE] which defends Chomsky against Horowitz. Then you can read this article "The Chorus and Cassandra: A Response" [LINK HERE] rebutting Hitchens. There's also a very detailed article here which appears to go through everything Chomsky ever said on Cambodia with a fine tooth comb, "Averaging Wrong Answers" [LINK HERE]and Chomsky's response to that article [LINK HERE] and the author's response to Chomsky's response [LINK HERE].
Reading through all these articles and trying to figure out what Chomsky said when, what footnotes he used, and how reliable Chomsky’s sources were is a big mess. I was really having a hard time trying to make heads or tails about it.
Until I got a simple idea: go back and read the actual articles that Chomsky wrote about Cambodia during the 1970s. These articles are all available on line and easy enough to find, and in a couple hours you can read everything Chomsky ever wrote on Cambodia during the 1970s. You can read for example, “Cambodia” (1970), [LINK HERE] “The Cynical Farce that is Cambodia” (1978) [LINK HERE], and the one that Chomsky’s critics most frequently mention, “Distortions at Fourh Hand” (1977) [LINK HERE]. As for recent statements, you can find this 2009 interview with Chomsky on the Khmer Rouge [LINK HERE]. This blog here, which simply reprints without comment articles Chomsky has wrote on Cambodia over the years, is very useful [LINK HERE].
Once I had actually read these articles, I had a much clearer understanding of what Chomsky’s position had been.
You would be surprised how few people actually do this. 99% of the time whenever someone is going off about how Chomsky supported the Khmer Rouge, they’ve never read the actual articles by Chomsky. They just read in somewhere in a Wall Street Journal editorial that Chomsky once supported the Khmer Rouge. (And the Wall Street Journal writer himself never read any Chomsky either. He just read somewhere that someone else said Chomsky supported the Khmer Rouge and on and on it goes.)
Not surprisingly, this is the way distortions happen over time. The accusation goes from “Chomsky was insufficiently critical of the Khmer Rouge” to “Chomsky actively supported the Khmer Rouge” to “Chomsky still supports Khmer Rouge and believes they never did anything wrong.”
This last position is the one taken by Ms. Greenwood in her editorial. Despite the fact that Ms. Greenwood has not actually read anything written by Chomsky, as she admits in her 3rd paragraph.
“I have not bothered to read any of Chomsky’s work previously, and judging from Thayer’s description of his opinions, I doubt I will do so in the future.”
Okay, so she gets points for honesty by admitting this upfront. But why she would then feel the need to write an editorial on Chomsky I can’t fathom. And again, if this were just her blog, I would let it go. (I’m not proud of it, but if you search the archives of my blog, you’ll find me frequently spouting off about topics I’m ill informed on.) But this article was in print form as part of a professional publication being handed out on the streets.
Look, we’ve all talked jive about topics we were ill-informed on. But who takes the time to write up and distribute on the streets an editorial that essentially begins with “I’ve never read anything by this guy, but based on what so-and-so said he sounds like a real jerk.”
Then, based on her interpretation about what some other guy said about Chomsky, Ms. Greenwood goes on to make following claims, “He [Chomsky] still believes the Khmer Rouge atrocities were a mass fabrication, and he still believes that a vast media-and refugee?- came together to demonize the Khmer Rouge.”
Speaking as someone who has actually read what Chomsky wrote on the Khmer Rouge, I think if Ms. Greenwood were to actually read Chomsky she would find he had written nothing of the sort.
And then there’s the headline to this article. Noam Chomsky: “The Khmer Rouge Were Actually Pretty OK, Guys”
Now, this is serious. This would actually be a pretty damning quote if Chomsky had actually said this. But a Google search for these exact words indicates the only place they appear is on Ms. Greenwood’s blog. Which means this isn’t an actual Chomsky quote. This is her interpretation of what she thinks Chomsky believes (based on someone else’s editorial) which she decided to put in quotation marks next to Chomsky’s name.
To be fair, there is actually a difference here between the print version and the blog version. On her blog it’s not in quotation marks. In the print publication being distributed on the streets, it is. I suppose the charitable explanation would be that this was a mistake the printer made.
The less charitable explanation is that Ms. Greenwood does not understand that it goes against the ethics of journalism to make up quotes and attribute them to someone else.
Now this kind of mis-attribution is how rumors get started. Given how few people seem to read Chomsky’s actual articles, it means that there’s going to be several people on the streets of Phnom Penh who believe Chomsky actually said this. And perhaps will take Ms. Greenwood’s opinion that Chomsky is not worth checking out, and never read anything by Chomsky themselves. (Again, if this were just a blog article I would let it go. But this is in an actual magazine being actively distributed.)
It is true that Chomsky has refused to apologize for his media analysis articles written in the 1970s. That is, Chomsky still believes that in specific incidents reporters fabricated or exaggerated information about the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. And Chomsky still believes that the specific incidents of fabrication he mentioned in "Distortions at Fourth Hand" have not yet been proven false. This is what Chomsky is referring to when he says to the best of his knowledge no errors have been found in his writings.
This may be debatable. In some of the articles linked to above there are some questions raised about the accuracy of some of Chomsky's sources. (Go and read the articles yourself and make up your own mind.) But this is a separate discussion.
Ms. Greenwood misinterprets this to mean that Chomsky believes that the Khmer Rouge atrocities never took place. And this is plain wrong.
If a prominent intellectual did still believe that no Khmer Rouge atrocities took place, it would be quite something. This is the type of accusation you would think a person would want to double check very carefully before printing it off into fliers and passing it out to random people in the streets.
So what did Chomsky actually say about the Khmer Rouge? Well the best thing to do is not to take either my word or Ms. Greenwood’s word for anything, but to go read the actual articles Chomsky wrote at the time. To a certain extent I would only be adding to the white noise on this controversy by putting in my own opinion instead of simply redirecting people to the original articles.
However, that being said, my own reading of the whole controversy is as follows: when the Khmer Rouge were actually in power, Western journalists were not actually allowed into the country. Therefore Western Media had to rely mostly on second hand accounts and speculation as to what was actually going in the country. Noam Chomsky was critical of what much of the Western Media was reporting, and of their methods of obtaining information. He believed it was popular to exaggerate atrocities in Cambodia as a way to retroactively discredit the anti-war movement, and that at the same time the media was ignoring comparable atrocities going on in East Timor.
When the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 it turned out that the reports had not been exaggerated, and that things had actually been worse than people thought it was. So Chomsky was wrong.
But if you actually read the articles Chomsky wrote at the time, you will not find an endorsement of the Khmer Rouge. Read, for example, “The Cynical Farce that is Cambodia” and you’ll find him acknowledging that things my well be as bad as everyone says they are. Or if you read his much criticized article “Distortions at Fourth Hand,” you’ll find he has a lot of good reasons for being skeptical about the media reports. In the light of history we now know he was wrong, but he was wrong for some of the right reasons.
But don’t listen to me. Go and read his actual articles and form your own opinion.
The gentleman I met on the streets asserted to me that recently Chomsky has been saying all the things Ms. Greenwood has attributed to him. If so, I can’t find any examples on the Internet. If either of them are reading this, I would be happy to revise my position if you can show me where he Chomsky has actually said this. But don’t point me to an editorial someone else has written about Chomsky. Show me the actual Chomsky article or interview where he says all these things you’re attributing to him.
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy: If We Want a Chance at a Decent Future, the Movement Here and Around the World Must Grow
I leafed through it. Most of the booklet consisted of advertising. There were movie times for the local cinemas, and a calendar of events for local expat bars. The content of the magazine consisted of two articles: the best places to get coffee in Phnom Penh, and an editorial on Chomsky.
The PDF for this publication, including the article in question, can be read online [LINK HERE].
I read the Chomsky article first, and just sighed. “Look at how terrible this article is,” I said, pushing the booklet across the table to my friend.
“It is pretty bad,” my friend agreed.
Just around that time, the guy who had given us the booklet in the first place came back down the street. “You guys need another one?” he asked us.
“Look at this,” I said, calling him over to our table. “You’ve got an editorial here on Chomsky by someone who admits she hasn’t ever read any Chomsky.”
“So?”
“So it’s a waste of paper! Why would I want to read what she thinks about Chomsky when she hasn’t read anything by Chomsky.” (I may have raised my voice at this point.)
“Okay, wow, um…”
“Look, there are about 3 or 4 articles Chomsky wrote on Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge time. You can find them all on-line. Go look them up and read them. Chomsky didn’t say any of this.”
“That wasn’t actually me that wrote that article.”
“Well tell her then. She’s got her facts all wrong. Chomsky never said any of this.”
“He has.”
“No he hasn’t”
“Yes he has. Recently.”
“No he hasn’t. Get your facts straight.”
He tried to change the subject at this point. “Okay, well you should check out her website. There are a lot of other interesting things there.”
As he walked away, I called out after him, “Go and read the original articles.”
After the guy walked away, my friend looked at me, put his drink down, and said, “Wow.”
“Was I a little bit too hard on the guy?” I asked.
“You sir, are a history bully,” my friend said to me.
“I probably was a bit over the top just then.”
“In that guy’s defense, there was a picture right above the article of the girl who wrote it, and it clearly was not him.”
“Yeah, I know, I just wanted to yell at someone and he was right there. But he was distributing a magazine in which the only other article was about coffee, so he’s got to take some of the responsibility.”
“You’re probably going to call him back and yell at him about the coffee article next?”
He added, “You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you get upset. And it’s over a history article. Well, I guess we all have our buttons. Some people yell at bad waiters or bartenders, you apparently like to yell at people in the streets over Chomsky articles.”
Okay, so I was probably a bit over the top. And it is always counter productive to yell at people. Calm, well reasoned arguments win people over to your side, not raised voices. If I ever see that guy again, I owe him an apology.
So let me take a few minutes to calmly explain my specific objections to the article in question. The Chomsky article in question appears on her blog here [LINK HERE]. If this was just someone’s blog, I wouldn’t bother. The fact that a print version of this article was being handed out up and down the streets of Phnom Penh makes me more motivated to write a rebuttal. (The print version of this article is slightly different than the blog form, but I’ll get into that more below.)
Let me start with a bit of background. Among the expat crowd in Cambodia it’s impossible to mention Chomsky’s name without someone bringing up the Khmer Rouge. I was recently discussing Chomsky’s theories with a co-worker, when another woman 3 desks down (who wasn’t even part of the conversation) yelled out, “Never forget he supported the Khmer Rouge. Never forget that.” And this is fairly typical.
Figuring out what Chomsky actually said about the Khmer Rouge is a bit of a headache. On the internet you can find lots of articles attacking Chomsky for his supposed support of the Khmer Rouge, and lots of articles defending him. For example you can read any number of articles by David Horowitz accusing Chomsky of supporting the Khmer Rouge. You can also read Christopher Hitchen's article "The Chorus and Cassandra" [LINK HERE] which defends Chomsky against Horowitz. Then you can read this article "The Chorus and Cassandra: A Response" [LINK HERE] rebutting Hitchens. There's also a very detailed article here which appears to go through everything Chomsky ever said on Cambodia with a fine tooth comb, "Averaging Wrong Answers" [LINK HERE]and Chomsky's response to that article [LINK HERE] and the author's response to Chomsky's response [LINK HERE].
Reading through all these articles and trying to figure out what Chomsky said when, what footnotes he used, and how reliable Chomsky’s sources were is a big mess. I was really having a hard time trying to make heads or tails about it.
Until I got a simple idea: go back and read the actual articles that Chomsky wrote about Cambodia during the 1970s. These articles are all available on line and easy enough to find, and in a couple hours you can read everything Chomsky ever wrote on Cambodia during the 1970s. You can read for example, “Cambodia” (1970), [LINK HERE] “The Cynical Farce that is Cambodia” (1978) [LINK HERE], and the one that Chomsky’s critics most frequently mention, “Distortions at Fourh Hand” (1977) [LINK HERE]. As for recent statements, you can find this 2009 interview with Chomsky on the Khmer Rouge [LINK HERE]. This blog here, which simply reprints without comment articles Chomsky has wrote on Cambodia over the years, is very useful [LINK HERE].
Once I had actually read these articles, I had a much clearer understanding of what Chomsky’s position had been.
You would be surprised how few people actually do this. 99% of the time whenever someone is going off about how Chomsky supported the Khmer Rouge, they’ve never read the actual articles by Chomsky. They just read in somewhere in a Wall Street Journal editorial that Chomsky once supported the Khmer Rouge. (And the Wall Street Journal writer himself never read any Chomsky either. He just read somewhere that someone else said Chomsky supported the Khmer Rouge and on and on it goes.)
Not surprisingly, this is the way distortions happen over time. The accusation goes from “Chomsky was insufficiently critical of the Khmer Rouge” to “Chomsky actively supported the Khmer Rouge” to “Chomsky still supports Khmer Rouge and believes they never did anything wrong.”
This last position is the one taken by Ms. Greenwood in her editorial. Despite the fact that Ms. Greenwood has not actually read anything written by Chomsky, as she admits in her 3rd paragraph.
“I have not bothered to read any of Chomsky’s work previously, and judging from Thayer’s description of his opinions, I doubt I will do so in the future.”
Okay, so she gets points for honesty by admitting this upfront. But why she would then feel the need to write an editorial on Chomsky I can’t fathom. And again, if this were just her blog, I would let it go. (I’m not proud of it, but if you search the archives of my blog, you’ll find me frequently spouting off about topics I’m ill informed on.) But this article was in print form as part of a professional publication being handed out on the streets.
Look, we’ve all talked jive about topics we were ill-informed on. But who takes the time to write up and distribute on the streets an editorial that essentially begins with “I’ve never read anything by this guy, but based on what so-and-so said he sounds like a real jerk.”
Then, based on her interpretation about what some other guy said about Chomsky, Ms. Greenwood goes on to make following claims, “He [Chomsky] still believes the Khmer Rouge atrocities were a mass fabrication, and he still believes that a vast media-and refugee?- came together to demonize the Khmer Rouge.”
Speaking as someone who has actually read what Chomsky wrote on the Khmer Rouge, I think if Ms. Greenwood were to actually read Chomsky she would find he had written nothing of the sort.
And then there’s the headline to this article. Noam Chomsky: “The Khmer Rouge Were Actually Pretty OK, Guys”
Now, this is serious. This would actually be a pretty damning quote if Chomsky had actually said this. But a Google search for these exact words indicates the only place they appear is on Ms. Greenwood’s blog. Which means this isn’t an actual Chomsky quote. This is her interpretation of what she thinks Chomsky believes (based on someone else’s editorial) which she decided to put in quotation marks next to Chomsky’s name.
To be fair, there is actually a difference here between the print version and the blog version. On her blog it’s not in quotation marks. In the print publication being distributed on the streets, it is. I suppose the charitable explanation would be that this was a mistake the printer made.
The less charitable explanation is that Ms. Greenwood does not understand that it goes against the ethics of journalism to make up quotes and attribute them to someone else.
Now this kind of mis-attribution is how rumors get started. Given how few people seem to read Chomsky’s actual articles, it means that there’s going to be several people on the streets of Phnom Penh who believe Chomsky actually said this. And perhaps will take Ms. Greenwood’s opinion that Chomsky is not worth checking out, and never read anything by Chomsky themselves. (Again, if this were just a blog article I would let it go. But this is in an actual magazine being actively distributed.)
It is true that Chomsky has refused to apologize for his media analysis articles written in the 1970s. That is, Chomsky still believes that in specific incidents reporters fabricated or exaggerated information about the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. And Chomsky still believes that the specific incidents of fabrication he mentioned in "Distortions at Fourth Hand" have not yet been proven false. This is what Chomsky is referring to when he says to the best of his knowledge no errors have been found in his writings.
This may be debatable. In some of the articles linked to above there are some questions raised about the accuracy of some of Chomsky's sources. (Go and read the articles yourself and make up your own mind.) But this is a separate discussion.
Ms. Greenwood misinterprets this to mean that Chomsky believes that the Khmer Rouge atrocities never took place. And this is plain wrong.
If a prominent intellectual did still believe that no Khmer Rouge atrocities took place, it would be quite something. This is the type of accusation you would think a person would want to double check very carefully before printing it off into fliers and passing it out to random people in the streets.
So what did Chomsky actually say about the Khmer Rouge? Well the best thing to do is not to take either my word or Ms. Greenwood’s word for anything, but to go read the actual articles Chomsky wrote at the time. To a certain extent I would only be adding to the white noise on this controversy by putting in my own opinion instead of simply redirecting people to the original articles.
However, that being said, my own reading of the whole controversy is as follows: when the Khmer Rouge were actually in power, Western journalists were not actually allowed into the country. Therefore Western Media had to rely mostly on second hand accounts and speculation as to what was actually going in the country. Noam Chomsky was critical of what much of the Western Media was reporting, and of their methods of obtaining information. He believed it was popular to exaggerate atrocities in Cambodia as a way to retroactively discredit the anti-war movement, and that at the same time the media was ignoring comparable atrocities going on in East Timor.
When the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 it turned out that the reports had not been exaggerated, and that things had actually been worse than people thought it was. So Chomsky was wrong.
But if you actually read the articles Chomsky wrote at the time, you will not find an endorsement of the Khmer Rouge. Read, for example, “The Cynical Farce that is Cambodia” and you’ll find him acknowledging that things my well be as bad as everyone says they are. Or if you read his much criticized article “Distortions at Fourth Hand,” you’ll find he has a lot of good reasons for being skeptical about the media reports. In the light of history we now know he was wrong, but he was wrong for some of the right reasons.
But don’t listen to me. Go and read his actual articles and form your own opinion.
The gentleman I met on the streets asserted to me that recently Chomsky has been saying all the things Ms. Greenwood has attributed to him. If so, I can’t find any examples on the Internet. If either of them are reading this, I would be happy to revise my position if you can show me where he Chomsky has actually said this. But don’t point me to an editorial someone else has written about Chomsky. Show me the actual Chomsky article or interview where he says all these things you’re attributing to him.
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy: If We Want a Chance at a Decent Future, the Movement Here and Around the World Must Grow
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Why Labour are calling David Cameron 'Flashman'
(Also, for comparison's sake, it's interesting to see how the British version of this same article feels very little need to explain who Flashman is. Cameron like bully Flashman, says Miliband.)
(Also, for comparison's sake, it's interesting to see how the British version of this same article feels very little need to explain who Flashman is. Cameron like bully Flashman, says Miliband.)
Monday, November 28, 2011
Best. Controversy. Ever.
Teen tweeter won't apologize to Kan. governor
The Shawnee Mission East senior was taking part in a Youth in Government program last week in Topeka, Kan., when she sent out a tweet from the back of a crowd of students listening to Brownback's greeting. From her cellphone, she thumbed: "Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person (hash)heblowsalot."
She actually made no such comment and said she was "just joking with friends." But Brownback's office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor's name, saw Sullivan's post and contacted the Youth in Government program.
....
Sullivan's mother, Julie, said she isn't angry with her daughter, even though she thinks she "could have chosen different words."
I don't know which I find funnier: the fact that the Governor's office thought it was a productive use of their time to complain about a high school student who said the Governor "blows a lot" ...
Or the fact that the high school student in question is stubbornly refusing to back down. (I said he blows a lot and I stand by that.)
Teen tweeter won't apologize to Kan. governor
The Shawnee Mission East senior was taking part in a Youth in Government program last week in Topeka, Kan., when she sent out a tweet from the back of a crowd of students listening to Brownback's greeting. From her cellphone, she thumbed: "Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person (hash)heblowsalot."
She actually made no such comment and said she was "just joking with friends." But Brownback's office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor's name, saw Sullivan's post and contacted the Youth in Government program.
....
Sullivan's mother, Julie, said she isn't angry with her daughter, even though she thinks she "could have chosen different words."
I don't know which I find funnier: the fact that the Governor's office thought it was a productive use of their time to complain about a high school student who said the Governor "blows a lot" ...
Or the fact that the high school student in question is stubbornly refusing to back down. (I said he blows a lot and I stand by that.)
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia by Milton E. Osborne
(Book Review)
There are unfortunately not many English language books available on the French colonial period in South East Asia, and the few books published can sometimes be difficult to track down.
This book was originally published in 1969, and then re-published in 1997 by White Lotus, a small publishing company in Thailand apparently dedicated to republishing classic works on South East Asian history.
When I was still in the US, I tried to order this book off of Amazon, but was not able to track down a reasonably priced copy.
(In Cambodia, White Lotus history books--or ripped-off photo copied versions of them-- are much easier to find.)
File this book under: dry, but readable. It’s not the most exciting book I’ve ever read, but if you’re interested in the subject material there’s not a lot of other books to choose from.
This book starts out almost immediately where John Cady left off in “The Roots of French Imperialism in Eastern Asia” so the two books compliment each other nicely if you read them in succession.
This is not a coincidence. As a scholar, Milton Osborne is less concerned with history as story telling than he is with trying to fill in gaps in the literature, so he states quite clearly in the footnotes his reluctance to retell what John Cady has already covered.
Also this book is not meant to be a popular history. Instead of trying to tell a compelling story, Milton Osborne wants to examine the nature of colonialism. As such there are a lot of chapters heavy on analysis of colonial systems, and very few chapters dedicated to narrative events.
As someone who prefers narrative rather than analytical history, I found several of these chapters quite boring, and it was a bit of a struggle to force myself to finish this book.
For example Milton Osborne spends several chapters detailing the French efforts to change the Vietnamese written language from one based on Chinese characters to being one based on the French alphabet.
This is interesting to a degree. (On my recent trip to Vietnam, it was astonishing to see how the Western alphabet had been so completely adopted to the local language, in contrast to just about every other Asian country which have all maintained their traditional writing systems.) But I wasn’t interested in it enough to go into all the detail that Osborne does.
In the same way, Osborne goes into great detail describing how the French Colonial authorities attempted to set up a legal system in Vietnam that compromised between local traditions and French judicial ideals. Again this is interesting to a point, but not to the detail that Osborne goes into.
All that being said, this book avoids academic speak, and is written in ordinary English prose. So assuming you’re interested in following Osborne through all this analysis, it is easy to read.
The book is divided into two sections, half dealing with Vietnam, and half dealing with Cambodia. Osborne contrasts the different approaches taken by the French to each country.
Vietnam was administered as a proper colony, with the pre-existing government in South Vietnam completely removed, and a new colonial government instituted.
Cambodia was administrated as a protectorate, with the pre-existing monarchy left intact, but forced to surrender much of its power to the French authorities.
The section on Cambodia, partly because it deals with the history of the relationship between the Cambodian king and the French authorities, reads much more like a narrative, and for that reason I found it more interesting than the section Vietnam. But this is a personal taste.
*****************************************************
Further thoughts:
1). This book was originally published in 1969, and it’s not hard to imagine that Milton Osborne must have had in mind the American efforts in Vietnam as a parallel to the French colonialists he was writing about.
Nevertheless, reading it today it’s impossible not to think of the occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So many parallels between the French effort to establish a stable government in Vietnam, and the American effort to establish stable governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, just leap right off the page at you.
There is for example the assumption by French intellectuals that colonization was good for the native peoples because they were liberating the Vietnamese people from a corrupt and oppressive government. (And actually the 19th Century Mandarin government of Vietnam actually was in some ways corrupt and oppressive, but as Milton Osborne shows the French attempts to colonize Vietnam and set up a new government created more problems than it solved.)
Osborne also details the various headaches involved in trying to create a judicial system that both respected local tradition and was acceptable to the French.
And Osborne goes into the trouble the French had in administrating a colony where they did not speak the language, and where there was a shortage of qualified translators.
Osborne describes the discrepancy between the vast majority of the population, which was hostile or indifferent to French rule, and the small number of collaborators who welcomed the French and actively worked with them. Osborne shows how the French government tried to represent the views of this small minority of collaborators as being representative of the whole population, and used this to discredit the idea that the vast majority of the Vietnamese wanted the French out of Cochinchina.
This brings me to thought number 2.
2). Writing in the post-colonial period, Osborne takes a somewhat negative view of the Vietnamese and Cambodian colonial collaborators. Although he repeatedly emphasizes his desire to understand them rather than to condemn, it is obvious he regards them as a problem that needs to be explained.
Something Osborne never touches on, but perhaps should have, is that during this same time period other leading figures in Asia were advocating learning from Western thought and culture.
Figures such as Sun Yat Sen in China, or Sakamoto Ryoma in Japan are still today regarded as national heroes in their respective countries because of the role they played in modernizing their nations, even though they advocated adopting Western institutions.
It could be that the colonial collaborators in Vietnam and Cambodia also sought to make their nations stronger through adopting Western institutions, and thought the best way to do this at the time was by working closely with the French.
This is an oversimplification of course, but I wish Milton Osborne would have explored the comparison between the pro-French Vietnamese intellectuals to the pro-Western intellectuals in Japan and China.
3) And finally, an interesting note on tropical diseases in Cambodia, that makes one worry a little bit.
Not the least of the difficulties that the French faced was the high rate of disease among the troops that they committed against the Cambodian insurgents. Sudden death from disease was a normal part of life for Europeans in the tropics during the nineteenth century, but the scale on which the diseases affected the troops in Cambodia was extraordinary. None of the columns sent against the insurgents seems to have been exempt. In one notable instance, 75 of a detachment of 120 men had to be hospitalized on their return from an operation. The chief French doctor described the situation following the beginning of the monsoon rains:
The onset of the rains has reawakened malarial infections and intestinal disorders which have assumed a gravity which, up until now, I have never seen before….
(p. 217-218).
Link of the Day
The Pentagon Papers and U.S. Imperialism in South East Asia
The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia: Rule and Response 1859-1905 by Milton E. Osborne
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Conspirator: Lenin in Exile by Helen Rappaport
(Book Review)
There are a million and one books about Lenin.
What recommends this book in particular is how well it’s written. Helen Rappaport is one of those rare historians who makes history sound like a story.
I’ll just quote a couple paragraphs to illustrate this. In this chapter, Lenin is travelling across Finland, and being housed along the way by the Finnish underground railroad for Russian politicals. He was supposed to get off the train at Abo railway station, where he would be met by the Borg family. However when he didn’t show up, the Borg family assumed he had been picked up by the political police.
By 2.00 a.m. there was only one logical conclusion that could regretfully be reached: the gendarmes had picked him [Lenin] up en route. And then, suddenly, came a soft thud at the window. Down below, standing in the soft white glow of the snow, stood a lonely figure, clutching a small suitcase. Lenin, fearful of knocking at the front door at this time of night, had thrown a snowball up at Borg’s window to attract his attention.
He had indeed almost fallen into the hands of the Okhrana [Tsarist Police]. Leaving Helsingfors by train he soon spotted that he was being tailed by two agents. When he got off the train at Karis to have some supper in the station buffet the men followed and watched him closely. He had to get away from them; they would arrest him the minute he got off the train at Abo, the end of the line. So, as the train gathered speed out of the tiny station of Littois (Littoinene), the last before, Abo, he slipped out on to the running board, threw his suitcase ahead of him and leaped from the train. Luckily, a deep snowdrift broke his fall. The two agents decided it was not worth risking their necks to follow, and as he watched the red of the train’s tail lights disappear into the night, Lenin heaved a sigh of relief. He picked himself up and trudged off in the crackling frost the seven miles of country road into Abo, his only point of reference in the dark, looming pine forest on all sides.
At Borg’s apartment, seeing that he was frozen, hungry and exhausted, the Finns removed Lenin’s coat and boots. As he lay on the divan to recover, Borg’s wife Ida fed him hot milk with cognac and rubbed spirit on his hands and feet to get the circulation going. By now extremely agitated at the thought of being captured, as soon as Lenin heard there was still a chance of catching the Bore I [the ship], he insisted on being found a sledge so that he could leave straight away. Ludwig Lindstrom, who was to be his guide, told him that it would be very hard finding the way in the snow and the dark and they would have to wait till morning. Lenin was hysterical that the spooks would catch up with him before then. “I’ve already been in Siberia and I don’t want to end up there again!” he exclaimed. If Lindstrom wasn’t prepared to take him, he would set off on foot, alone and head north for the Gulf of Bothnia. He’d walk all the way to the northern border with Sweden at Torneo if he had to: “I’ve walked further distances in Siberia.”
That wonderful storytelling alone is enough reason to just lose yourself in this book for hours at your local coffee shop.
The subject material of this book is fascinating as well. Rappaport makes the decision to cover the beginning of Lenin’s life only very briefly, and to skip the end of his life when he was in power. As the title suggests, Rappaport focuses only on his years as a political exile in Europe.
This was a wise decision. Not only is this the period usually neglected by other writers, but it’s arguably the most fascinating part of Lenin’s life. The games of cat and mouse with the police, the fierce political squabbling among the exiled Russian community in Europe, and the idealistic pre-revolution socialist community in Western Europe are all fascinating.
Although Lenin is the most well-known of the Russian socialists, in some ways his story is the least interesting, and Rappaport will sometimes use Lenin’s life as a jumping off point to describe some of the various adventures of the Russian socialist community at the time (dodging police while smuggling in illegal literature or gun running).
Rappaport is particularly interested in highlighting some of the women in the Russian underground, who have largely been left out of history, but about whom she has fascinating stories to tell.
As for Lenin himself:
For the amateur historian, it’s hard to get an accurate picture of a polarizing figure like Lenin. Every book I’ve read on Lenin has given me a completely different picture of the man than the one before it, to the point where I’m not sure what to believe.
In this book, he is portrayed as an obsessive intellectual who spends hours in the library everyday, and who sometimes ignores the political events in the real world around him because he is so obsessed with working out his theories. (Rappaport writes that both the 1905 Revolution and the 1917 Revolution caught Lenin off-guard).
In today’s world, where politicians are thought of as almost anti-intellectual, it is surprising to think that Lenin, so obsessed with books and having such poor social skills, was able to manipulate his way into being the leader of a large country.
Which is not to say Lenin wasn’t a politician. The Lenin in this book is a Machiavellian type personality who uses all sorts of dirty political tricks to get his way. He splits the Russian Socialist movement into two parts—Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, then fights bitterly to make sure his Bolshevik faction gets into control. He demands total obedience from those in his faction, and won’t tolerate any views dissenting from his own. Based on the picture Helen Rappaport paints of him, it’s not hard to see how this would be the same Lenin who would go on to create a very authoritarian regime. At one point in the book Lenin is having a talk with a constitutional democrat, and he ends by saying, “Someday we’ll be hanging people like you off of the lampposts.”
Rappaport also highlights the women in Lenin’s life such as his long suffering wife and mother-in-law (who accompanied Lenin on his travels all over Europe) and a woman Lenin appears to have had an affair with—Inessa Armand. Rappaport tries to counter decades of hagiography which make Lenin into some sort of asexual revolutionary monk and instead portrays him as a man with sexual desires who might well have looked for satisfaction outside of his marriage.
A very well-written book, well worth checking out.
Link of the Day
Status of Forces Agreement
Conspirator: Lenin in Exile: The Making of a Revolutionary by Helen Rappaport Book Review (Scripted)
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