To give you an idea of how important this is, I just stopped making hand turkeys in order to devote my attention to blogging. I think I’m having a revelation, but I don’t know what it is yet.

Out upon your guarded lips…
and say to-morrow what to-morrow thinks in hard words again.

I was reading my favorite flatmate’s Facebook note on being thankful. (With 7 flatmates, of course I have favorites.) Normally stuff like that doesn’t phase me, and I’d typically find it borderline contemptible. HOWEVER, I cried. Maybe it was her verbally coming to terms with the terrible things that have happened to her in the past, the fact that I’m 5000 miles away from my entire world, I just got off of a Skype date with Liz who is living just fine without me, or that I was listening to Iron and Wine. A combination. Something in me has either broken or been fixed, if I can cry like a normal female in this hemisphere.

I guess misery and despair are also important parts– important enough to document as a move toward containment. (Get out of my head!) There are pressing theological things I’d say about this, but they don’t quite have a place here yet.

I’m thankful for being here, but at the same time, I don’t mean it like everyone else will say once we have our “family” dinner tomorrow night. Naturally, I have to make it far more complex.

It’s great to sit in a bedroom I claimed as “mine” in a foreign country, but I worked all year until I felt that I deserved this. I’m completely thankful for my mom’s help with paperwork and financial aid, and that my parents’ credits are good enough for me to snag a loan. This should be said, definitely.

Primarily, I’m thankful for what’s been happening in my little head. Even if it scares me nearly half the time. I feel that I can come back to the United States as a better person. (What does that even mean?) Just like you’d want in your government, I think I can conduct my life with a little more transparency. Less shiftiness, more honesty. Saying no and meaning “no.” Saying yes and meaning “absolutely!” Saying “thanks” and meaning just that.
Basically, I’ve been a shit friend and a shit lover.

As Devendra Banhart says,
Years away finds me here today,
On my own and knowless of my way now.
So I send my friends gifts from where I’ve been,
something for the hand I’m never there to lend.Being in a new location has allowed me to backtrack to years of errors and shine a light on the tangling of strings. (Insert sordid ball of yarn.) I’m untangling now. I want to flush everything out, perform an OCD bleach cleaning on my soul and return a minimalist.

I never thought it’d be this way, but coming back to the US will be even more difficult because of the English mindset and the differences in taboos. Not because I love EVERYTHING here or that I’ve found the ideal British mate to stay with forever and ever. (Former being true regardless, the latter would be a baldfaced lie.)
Yes, the British are uptight . . . when it comes to public comportment. Thank God. However, I dare to say that America is a terrible place to raise your children in, physically, mentally and/or sexually. Terrified of death AND being sorted into one of three Puritanical categories: mother, child, or whore? No small wonder that girls/people in America perpetuate their own stereotypes.
This is Europe. Be who you are.
I can say “I love you” to someone because it can be about who they are, rather than what they can do for me on a scale of 1-10.

(If this all means that I ought to take out my nose ring and tongue ring to be able to deal honestly with my parents, then I can do that too. Tattoos are a different story.)

This will all become more clear to me once I’m done with the hand turkeys. You have a lot of time to think about nothing when you’re cutting out the fingers.
I’m just somebody that you used to knowww.

I still hope this whole shebang doesn’t sound idiotic. I feel like, despite my best efforts, everything ends up sounding like it was written by someone who looks like this:

. . . I’ll be thankful if it doesn’t.

What is a Jew?  The oldest document known to Man, written on that subject, is still with us today.  It is called the Old Testament of the Bible!  It explains the only criteria for being a Jew.

The Bible states, a Jew is a human being that believes in the One God, the same God that Abraham believed; and that person, if he is a male of the species, will have to have the foreskin of his penis circumcised on the eighth day after he is born.

Whether he is a foreigner or born of Jewish parents makes no difference in the covenant God made with Abraham.  He must use judgment and justice as a life style and teach his family likewise.  The last part of the criteria is to teach his family judgment and justice.  Let me put them into a list for easy reference:

1.  Believe in one God who created all things.
2.  All male children must be circumcised on the eighth day after birth.
3.  Husbands must teach their family judgment and justice.
4.  Foreigners must be allowed to join the nation.

Let me clear up two important points here:

One:  The Bible goes on to state that anyone born into the nation of Jews, or a stranger joining the nation of Jews, who does not keep the rules, is automatically rejected by God from being a member of the nation and God will kill that person.

Two:  Today’s nation of Israel has laws on their books concerning, Who is a Jew!

The law of Israel totally bypasses the laws outlined in the Jewish Bible and circumnavigates the rules of God.  The nation of Israel will only accept a person as a Jew, if his or her mother was born a Jew.  Therefore, a Gentile mother married to a Jewish father does not spawn a Jewish offspring.  Only two Jews or a Jewish mother and a Gentile father can give birth to a Jewish child.

This is not only absurd, but also contrary to the rules of the Bible.  Their reasoning is, a child adheres to the teachings of its mother and not its father.  Therefore, a Jewish mother will instill Jewish belief into the child.  Whereas a Gentile mother will instill non-Jewish beliefs into her child, which makes the child a Gentile.

The Bible is clear on this point.  It states both parents can be foreigners and become Jewish.  Therefore, their offspring will be Jewish.  So, the Jewishness of a child is solely dependent upon the decision of the parents to become Jews and live as Jews, and the child’s decision when it reaches adulthood to continue believing in the one God of creation.  In this light, even a Jewish mother, born of two Jewish parents, could have decided to reject her Jewishness and live as a Gentile; which would render her children Gentile and not Jews.

The fact is, the covenant was given to Abraham and not Sarah; and it was Abraham’s virtues the Lord cited, which rewarded Abraham’s children by allowing them to be God’s children; and not because of Isaac’s mother, or her being Jewish; because Sarah was also a Gentile like Abraham!

To be continued…

So, I had wanted to have a dinner for thanksgiving, but I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to work out all the little details, I didn’t know where to buy a Turkey, I didn’t have a oven, I wasn’t even sure I knew how to cook anything. As you all know, Thanksgiving is this Thursday, but several people couldn’t come, and then I found I would have to work on Thursday, so I couldn’t make it anyways. However, Monday was a National holiday in Japan, so I figured people would be more available.

We stayed out late on Sunday, and on Monday I realized I would need to get up really early in order to make it all the way into Tokyo to the import store where I would buy all the materials. I dragged Harrison along, and we made it to the store in Hiroo around 10am. As Thanksgiving was coming up, all the good foods were out, so it wasn’t hard to find. We bought a Turkey Breast that was boneless, two turkey legs, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and all the fixings. I also grabbed some Carrots from the local grocery, and we were on our way home. When we got home, I got to cooking. I tossed the Turkey in the oven and then set about preparing the other foods. Another American, Jacqueline, had cooked up a bunch of food, but was going to Church, so she donated the food to our cause. My Korean friend Jang EunHye came over and helped me prepare the food, though she had a bit of trouble reading all the English instructions. =P The food was all prepared and brought to the room. 16 people showed up and we had quite the feast. Surprisingly, the food wasn’t too terrible =P I actually thought it was pretty good. The Gravy was delicious, I was so happy with how it turned out. I guess cooking isn’t too terribly hard. The Swedes brought some Swedish meatballs which I gleefully destroyed in a matter of minutes (You know how much I like Swedish Meatballs…) Afterwards we all headed up to my room to hang out, and one by one people headed out, and when only three or four of us were left, we popped in a movie and just chilled out for a while. It was such a relaxing day and totally evaporated any of the homesick feelings I had. I mean, I still miss my family (especially my beloved sister =P) but last night, I was truly appreciative of my new family I’ve found here at Saidai.

Also, Koreans with fillet knifes are really scary.

It totally throws your life in relief when people visit; DeLillo’s right yet again. Small tics, foot shuffling, unnecessary explanations, a slip into dialect, compulsive cleaning, one random wet towel. Whatever.
Our 48 hours together were a crash course in London’s great sights.

Yesterday was her only whole day in London, so: we had English breakfast; caught the end of a mass in St Paul’s Cathedral (I lit a candle for my family and cried, like I did in Sacre Coeur); walked the Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern; made fun of their modern art; ate a pasty in Waterloo; South Bank for the Cologne Christmas festival; drank mulled wine and took pictures of the Eye/Big Ben/Parliament; Parliament to Trafalgar; Covent Garden; British dinner at one of my favorite pubs and introduced her to Strongbow-with-black; “scenic” bus ride back to New Cross;  drank at Amersham Arms with Chris; finished with a box of Square Pizza.
She explored by herself today when I was busy nodding off in classes.
I hope she enjoyed herself, despite my need to spit out every historical tidbit I’ve learned about places here.

And I’ll be spinning in my skirts
and knitting tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little hats.
And when my breath becomes an island,
I won’t be dancing on that roof anymore or wearing these crazy boots.

I just saw Emily off at the railway station on Liverpool Street and made the 40-minute trip home at my leisure. I made a conscious effort to walk as slow as possible. People looked at me funny.

Felt tears prickle when I got back in my room. I felt this way in the days following our return from the 11-day trip abroad: GREAT and then slightly wretched. I spend so much time with people in intimate situations and close quarters for days. You can comfortably lapse into silence and forget where you end and they begin. And then I’m alone.
I’m lonely, not homesick.
I am so lucky to be here.

And we was running, running, running.
We was climbing, we was fighting.
We was breathing fast, praying please.

Funnily enough, despite all the musical experiences I have here (another time), I’ve been playing Alela Diane over and over. Like I need an American folk singer to remind me what it’s like to drive down Summerhill Road in the summer heat.

Chris and I are organising Thanksgiving for this Thursday to honour our heritage. We hope we’ll do it up right, but it’ll be a lot of effort and money.

Four of us are going to Liverpool this weekend. It’s costing me more money than it’ll be worth, I guarantee, from the round-trip train, hostel, Beatles tour, and food combined. I NEED to go to Wales. I need to make that pilgrimage within the next 24 days.

The Mirror, Vol. 13, No. 640

“There had been several reports that information about confidential flight plans by the Cambodia Air Traffic Service (CATS) controlled by Thai people were leaked. The opposition party has demanded that the government should take control of the air traffic control itself, but there is no response. And now everything seems somewhat too late.

“The spokesperson of the Sam Rainsy Party, Mr. Yim Sovann, spoke to the media late last week, saying that the government should take the CATS company under its control to ensure that there is no economic loss, and it would be easier for the government to control national secrets. Mr. Yim Sovann said, ‘The Sam Rainsy Party had mentioned this case many times before, suggesting that all these important tasks should not be given to foreigners, and the government should control it by itself. But the state does not care.’

“In January 2001, the State Secretariat of Civil Aviation of the Cambodian government signed an agreement with the [Thai] Samart Corporation, providing an exclusive license for 22 years to this company, to organize, operate, and maintain a system for air traffic routing for civil aviation companies in Cambodia, and this company is also required to conform to the technical standards of BCT [an aviation maintenace company]. After receiving the license from the Cambodian government, Samart very quickly prepared the bidding procedure for the radar system and set up the necessary tools needed for its effective air traffic control operations.

“A parliamentarian from the Cambodian People’s Party, Mr. Cheam Yeap, agreed that it would be very good if the government would reconsider the air traffic control agreement with the Thai side. He added that Cambodia should have the ability to control this company, rather than allow foreigners to continue to control it. He said, ‘We should recheck that investment agreement, and we should check whether our human resources can take the place of the foreigners.’ He explained that Cambodia jointly created the company CATS with Thailand, because, at that time, Cambodia did not have sufficient experts, and air traffic was not so busy [like it is at present]. Mr. Cheam Yeap went on to say that to continue to let foreigners do the air traffic control affects the security of our nation through the secret release of confidential information to their government, adding that foreigners are not honest to us. He said, ‘Do not trust foreigners but only those having the same blood as Khmers. If we let them be at that place, they might release confidential information about national security, as one Thai person did already. They are not 100% honest towards us.’

“Mr. Cheam Yeap continued to say that according to new Article 90 of the Constitution of Cambodia, the Royal Government can make a request to the National Assembly ["The National Assembly shall approve the national budget, State planning, loans, financial contracts, and the creation, modification and annulment of tax."]. Then the National Assembly will exercise its right to cancel any contract that can affect the national interest. The Thai spy can be considered as proof to cancel that contract. Another Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian, Mr. Son Chhay, said that the opposition party had expressed concerns since the beginning about problems of national security. Now, it happened as the Sam Rainsy Party had been concerned. He said he will write a letter to the government, because it is related to national security.

“He said, ‘I also saw information about the arrest of the Thai spy. I think it is an opportunity to respond to the Ministry of Defense and the Council of Ministers which had claimed that there would be no problems, but the problem exists now, and I want to know what measures they take.’ He emphasized that he will write a letter this week to the government to request it to check the control over the CATS company.

“Because of the secret copy of the flight plan of Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra, the Cambodia government ordered all Thai [CATS] personnel to stop working, after Mr. Siwarak Chutiphong, 31, had been arrested for spying, while the eternal friend of Prime Minister Hun Sen, Thaksin Shinawatra, visited Cambodia, to give a lecture about the Cambodian economy, as he is now an economic advisor of Cambodia.” Sereypheap Thmey, Vol.17, #1817, 23.11.2009

Newspapers Appearing on the Newsstand:
Monday, 23 November 2009

Deum Ampil, Vol.3, #343, 23.11.2009

• Forty Eight [not well-known] Civil Society Organizations Support the Suspension of Mr. Sam Rainsy’s Immunity [according to their joint statement]
• The Ministry of Information Asks All Television Stations to Accept to Broadcast Advertisements for Khmer Sports and to Stop Broadcasting Foreign Sports
• Forty Two People Died, Sixty Six Are Missing, and More Than 100 Were Injured through an Explosion in a Coal Mine [in China]

Kampuchea Thmey, Vol.8, #2105, 22-23.11.2009

• A Lawyer Will Request Bail for Siwarak Chutiphong on Monday [this Thai engineer was arrested for copying the flight plans of Prime Minister Hun Sen and Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra to send them to Thailand]

Khmer Machas Srok, Vol.3, #436, 22-23.11.2009

• The Government Recognized that there Is Waste of National Resources and there are Wrongly Allocated Expenses

Koh Santepheap, Vol.42, #6812, 23.11.2009

• The Three Samdechs [Samdech Hun Sen, the Prime Minister; Samdech Heng Samrin, the President of the National Assembly, and Samdech Chea Sim, the President of the Senate] Responded to Samdech Euv [the former King] that the Setting of Border Markers and of the Border Line Is Done Based on the Map Deposited at the United Nations in 1964
• 40,000 Red-Shirt Demonstrators [supporters of Thai ousted and fugitive Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra] Prepare to Demonstrate against [Thai Prime Minister] Abhisit Vijjajiva in Chiang Mai, while 1,000 Yellow-Shirt Demonstrators Rallied to Demand the 4.6 Square Kilometer Land [near the Preah Vihear Temple]
• A Man like an Animal Raped His 10-Year-Old Daughter Three Times, and then He Was Arrested [Kandal]
• A French Man Took an Underage Girl to Have Sexual Relations into a Guesthouse and Was Arrested [Phnom Penh]

Phnom Penh Post [Khmer Edition], Vol.1, #51, 23.11.2009

• A Thai Engineer Acknowledged that He Provided Information [about the fight plans of Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra] to the [Thai] Embassy [in Phnom Penh]
• Vietnam Has Invested US$600 Million in Rubber Plantations in Cambodia [it plans to plant rubber trees on 100,000 hectares of land in Mondolkiri, Kompong Thom, Kratie, and Ratanakiri by 2012]
• Supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra Warned to Kill [Thai Prime Minister] Abhisit Vijjajiva [by blowing up his car during his visit to Chiang Mai]

Rasmei Kampuchea, Vol.17, #50, 22-23.11.2009

• Former US President [Jimmy Carter] Helped to Build 21 New Houses for Poor Cambodians [Kompong Speu]
• [Two] Robbers Shot at a Student to Rob His Motorbike, but the Bullets Ricocheted and Hit and Injured Two Children [who were playing in front of their house during the robbery; the robbers escaped - Phnom Penh]
• The Number of Deaths from Swine Flu [A/H1N1] Has Increased to 6,660 [worldwide, according to the World Health Organization]

Sereypheap Thmey, Vol.17, #1817, 23.11.2009

• An Opposition Party: The Government Should Control the Cambodia Air Traffic Service Itself

Samleng Yuvachun Khmer, Vol.16, #3,500, 22.11.2009

• Cambodian Expands Diplomatic Ties in New York [the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation is responsible to organize documentation to establish diplomatic ties with some countries that have not established contacts with Cambodia]

Have a look at the last editorial – you can access it directly from the main page of the Mirror.
And please recommend us also to your colleagues and friends.

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It’s dead. But some people refused to accept it. The idea, discarded after the Rumsfeldian use of militias “went South,” was again dug up in late 2007. But one year ago many people pieced together the obvious fact that it was still dead. The consolation at the time for advocates seems to have been the Pashtun Tribal Militia “Hazaras with guns” in one district in Wardak. Weak soup, for sure.

Every time I hear the idea brought up I would just shrug, sure that it would go nowhere. But in the last couple of days two prominent publications have been talking about…yeah, tribal militias. First up, from WaPo:

While military officers wait for President Obama to conclude his agonizingly slow review of Afghanistan policy, they’ve been reading a paper by an Army Special Forces operative arguing that the only hope for success in that country is to work with tribal leaders.

This tribal approach has widespread support, in principle. The problem is that, in practice, the United States has often moved in the opposite direction in recent years. Rather than supporting tribal leaders, American policies have sometimes had the effect of undermining their ability to stand up to the Taliban.

The paper by Maj. Jim Gant, “One Tribe at a Time,” has been spinning around the Internet for a month. It contends that in an Afghanistan that has never had a strong central government, “nothing else will work” than a decentralized, bottom-up approach. “We must support the tribal system because it is the single, unchanging political, social and cultural reality in Afghan society,” he insists.

Funny thing, anthropologists and area studies scholars are in universal disagreement with that last sentence. The idea of some primordialist tribal society – with political, social and cultural significance – that has gone unchanged will get you laughed out of any grad level seminar on ethnicity, nationalism, identity, etc… And I’m am not taking about some crack head post-modernists, just in case you think his is where I’m heading.

The article in WaPo continues:

But will this tribal strategy work? The United States thought so in 2003 and 2004, when Gant and many others were sent out with small teams to chase al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents. Back then, I’m told, the Special Forces teams had more than 5,000 tribal fighters under arms.

But U.S. officials began to worry that by arming the tribes, they were encouraging Afghanistan’s old curse of warlordism. So after Hamid Karzai’s election as president in 2004, they focused instead on developing Afghanistan’s national army and police. They persuaded the Tajik tribal militia known as the Northern Alliance, a key ally against al-Qaeda, to lay down its weapons.

“Tajik tribal militia”? Seriously? I’m at a loss for words. Actually, I’m not. It’s just appallingly clear that many people have no idea how to use “tribe” and “tribal” in a correct or even consistent manner. But that’s beside the point.

A couple of days ago there was a rather sensationalist article in the NYT. Wherein it was written:

American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban.

The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the Taliban, officials say.

Well, hooray for the NYT running US military PAO gibberish. They also relay Afghan government propaganda:

“What we are talking about is a local, spontaneous and indigenous response to the Taliban,” said Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister. “The Afghans are saying, ‘We are willing and determined and capable to defend our country; just give us the resources.’ ”

“Victory is at hand! Just give us some money and some goodies.” Yeah right.

It continues:

In the Pashtun-dominated areas of the south and east, the anti-Taliban militias are being led by elders from local tribes. The Pashtun militias represent a reassertion of the country’s age-old tribal system, which binds villages and regions under the leadership of groups of elders.

The tribal networks have been alternately decimated and co-opted by Taliban insurgents. Local tribal leaders, while still powerful, cannot count on the allegiance of all of their tribes’ members.

OK, “decimated” and “co-opted”…..but “still powerful.” That makes perfect sense in the not-at-all sense. And funny thing that the NYT drinks the same primordialist kool-aid that WaPo does. Seriously, go out and try to find the “tribal leadership.” You will find that there is no clear, stable leadership. Things are in flux, and always have been. Especially since 1979. You will end up with a bunch of squabbling locals trying to call in air strikes on their rivals. Anyways, the article was savaged over at Free Range International [where you will also find that there is some serious disagreement over which local leader to go with].

The NYT goes on:

…Kunduz. In that city, several armed groups, led by ethnic Uzbek commanders as well as Pashtuns, are confronting the Taliban.

“In Kunduz, after they defeated the Taliban in their villages, they became the power and they took money and taxes from the people,” Mr. Atmar, the interior minister, said. “This is not legal, and this is warlordism.”

Colonel Kolenda said, “In the long run, that is destabilizing.”

Really? They were interested in more than just valiantly defending their communities? I’m so shocked.

Also, in the Guardian:

US special forces are supporting anti-Taliban militias in at least 14 areas of Afghanistan as part of a secretive programme that experts warn could fuel long-term instability in the country. The Community Defence Initiative (CDI) is enthusiastically backed by Stanley McChrystal, the US general commanding Nato forces in Afghanistan, but details about the programme have been held back from non-US alliance members who are likely to strongly protest. [...]

The US has shared few details of its plans with its allies. The programme is controlled by a newly created special forces group that reports directly to McChrystal as head of US forces in the country, but which sits outside the authority of the International Security Assistance Force, the Nato mission in Afghanistan.

As per the details, who knows. It’s the Guardian. But anyways, the CDI exists. And a “special forces group that reports directly to McChrystal”? Sounds familiar.

Back to the paper written by Major Gant, I won’t spend much time on it as I’m satisfied with Judah Grunstein’s criticisms over at the Small Wars Journal. I agree with what he says. All I want to add is that I’m astonished that SF participated in putting the nail in the coffin of some state-supported localized human cleansing:

The highland people had taken and were using some land that belonged to the lowland people. The Malik told me the land had been given to his tribe by the “King Of Afghanistan” many, many years ago and that he would show me the papers. I told him he didn’t need to show me any papers. His word was enough.

I made the decision to support him. “Malik, I am with you. My men and I will go with you and speak with the highlanders again. If they do not turn the land back over to you, we will fight with you against them.” With that, a relationship was born. [...]

Without going into further detail, suffice it to say that the dispute with the highlanders was resolved.

Well, congratulations! You have just participated in ethnic/sectarian/tribal cleansing! But hey, if Zahir Shah’s uncles saw fit in the 1950s to give your friends other people’s land, then fair game: “pack up your belongings and run to the hills, run for your lives! We have a piece of paper that says so (plus the ability of our American SF friends to rain down punishment from above). And yes, you may take your women with you. We’re in a charitable mood today.”

It’s also nice to know that SF were given the freedom to decide on their own whether or not to engage in ethnic cleansing without having to consult those REMF pansies at Bagram or CENTCOM [that's sarcasm]. If I was in that group of “displaced” Kohistanis, whoever the hell they were (Safis? Pashai speakers?), I would join the Taliban or Hizb post-haste. I bet their young men are killing Americans right now. Brilliant, just brilliant. Your strategy for pushing your buddy’s local rivals into the insurgency was flawless!

But please don’t let this anecdote draw away attention from how bad Gant’s paper is when considered in its entirety. The blind embedded, hyper-localized “adopted son” mentality he shows should be a warning to all. Anthropologists do their best to not “join the tribe.” So should soldiers. No bonus points for serving and protecting your country, sorry.

So why do these ideas go nowhere? Why has a broader tribal strategy been consistently rejected? Because the military leadership has made inquiries on the subject. The result? One of the more recent answers:

‘My Cousin’s Enemy is My Friend: A Study of Pashtun “Tribes” in Afghanistan’, Afghanistan Research Reachback Center White Paper. TRADOC G2 Human Terrain System. United States Army. Fort Leavenworth, KS. September 2009. Download PDF.

Anyways, I didn’t leak this. Captain’s Journal dug it up from scribd a couple of weeks ago. And it says “Unclassified.” So I’m OK.

For every amateurish pontification on the power of the “tribes” and their potential for routing the Taliban, there is a pro-level smack down. Doubt the source above? Perhaps you’ve got some great ideas based on the folks in the hills out east? Check this out:

Susanne Schmeidl and Masood Karokhail. 2009. ‘The Role of Non-State Actors in ‘Community-based Policing’: An Exploration of the Arbakai (Tribal Police) in South-Eastern Afghanistan’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 30, No. 2.

From the abstract:

…the community-based policing structure in south-eastern Afghanistan (arbakai) is explored in this article. We conclude that it is important to understand the context-specificity of ANSA before promoting overarching policies such as advocating a transferability of the arbakai outside their unique cultural and regional context. We also caution against the use ANSA beyond their capacities, such as for counter-insurgency purposes…

Email me if you want a copy for collaborative research purposes as per copyright warning *giggle*.

Can’t stop mumbling ”Al Anbar… Awakening….. Sons of whatever…”? Read this:

Carter Malkasian and Jerry Meyerle. 2009.  ‘How is Afghanistan Different from Al Anbar?’, CNA Report. February 2009. PDF.

But again, you should really read the report from Ft. Leavenworth (Download PDF).

It’s desperation time. Will a policy that was rejected last year rise from the dead? Or will someone buy the snake oil and start trotting out the tribal militia strategy at a national level under a disguised non-tribal name in all of its Weekend at Bernie’s glory? Maybe: the tribal militia strategy is dead, long live the tribal militia strategy. And all hail its court vizier, the Community Defense Initiative!

For years we have been subjected to odd debates about whether the government should permit, encourage, or attempt to prevent the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada.  Seniors love it; they want to be able to drive across the border and save money.  The drug companies hate it; they want to charge American prices.

That the entire debate happens offends good sense.  Drugs that are researched, tested, trialed, and manufactured in central New Jersey do not magically become cheaper from a round-trip drive along the New York Thruway.  If we are to discuss prescription drugs, the only policy question should be whether the US should do something to use the purchasing power of its 300mm person market to drive down the cost of drugs, not whether scattered northern seniors should be left to try to free ride on the purchasing power of 30mm Canadians.

I thought of this when looking at Dean Baker’s novel paper at the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggesting the globalization of Medicare and Medicaid.  He proposes a radical concept for America – considering outflow as well as inflow when looking at migration.

The idea of extending government benefits to people who are abroad is not that rare, although completely foreign to Americans.  The Australian government has expedited work visa arrangements with a variety of countries to allow college-aged Australians to travel and easily find employment; just ask any ski lift operator.  A fifth of New Zealanders are outside of New Zealand at any point in time, the product of a country that encourages outbound travel.  The Mexican government famously does everything it can to provide documents and services for the millions of Mexicans in the US who are one of the largest sources of capital inflow for the nation.

Baker suggests that the US address the cost imbalance between American medical care and the medical care of other OECD nations – nations that deliver higher quality care, by life expectancy – by contracting with other nations to put Americans on those nations’ health systems.  For example, if an American retiree moved to France, the US would fund his participation in the French medical system, and the savings from the cost difference would be split between the retiree, Medicare, and the French state.  Basically, seniors would get paid to move (barring Switzerland and Norway, where exchange rate/purchasing power parity currently would leave seniors with a small out of pocket).

There is one small quibble with Baker’s paper that it probably petty to mention: there is limited evidence that other nations’ health care systems are better than the American system for retirees.  That is to say, the life expectancy at 65 isn’t terribly different in the US from the rest of the OECD; some studies suggest it is higher.  Once Americans get on socialized medicine, we seem to be just as healthy as other people on socialized medicine (we spend more money on being healthy, but that’s a legitimate policy decision).  The lousy mortality issues arise from the stuff that happens before people turn 65, when Americans have a bizarre corporatist/free market system that flat-out doesn’t work.  So it’s far from clear that switching a retiree to another nation’s plan is going to improve his health.

Still, it won’t hurt, and it will save money.

Except it won’t.  Or, at least, it probably won’t.

Baker calculates the savings to Medicare, which are substantial, and to Medicaid for low-income retirees, which are enormous (the program goes away for those who move, since Medicare alone is able to cover all the costs and more).  But here’s the problem: the retiree is now in another country.

If Joe Smith pulls stakes and moves to France under the Baker Plan, the Medicare line of the Federal budget goes down by the US’ savings.  But now when Joe Smith goes to buy a cup of coffee, his 17% VAT goes to the French state, and the rest of the money goes to the cafe’s supply chain.  He will slowly but surely liquidate his assets in the US – real property, retirement accounts, claims on the US government such as Social Security and Medicare – for consumption in France.  What a great deal for France – it gets a new resident who is externally funded by a decent credit and does not pick up any of the obligations and responsibilties of taking care of a new citizen.

An expatriate Joe Smith who did not expect to return to the US would also have a curious set of voting interests.  To the extent that health care migration were a significant phenomenon – which it would have to be to save a significant amount of money – we could expect many retired Americans to move their US domicile to Wyoming or another state without an income tax.  It doesn’t take a lot of people to make a major voting block in Wyoming.  Why wouldn’t the expats vote for the candidate who would let the roads and schools rot in the name of low costs?  Why wouldn’t they vote for senators and congressmen who would be laser-focused on reducing taxes and maximizing Medicare expenditures?

You know, maybe it wouldn’t make such a difference after all.

Baker’s paper is flawed in its methodology, but it leads to a useful point about social cohesion.  The US would benefit tremendously from sending Americans to other countries, preferably without a rifle.  Immigrants to the US need to assimilate to American culture; the process is legendarily difficult, and in the case of the migrating generation, often does not happen at all.  Americans returning from time abroad bring with them the distilled experiences of their time away, without nearly the cultural baggage of someone who has never lived in the US.  Bill Bryson has a fantastic take on this. 

This benefit only happens when the Americans return.  By putting the elderly out to government-sponsored pasture abroad, we would be furthering our forty year experiment in lavishing governmental largesse on the least-deserving chunk of society.  Maybe it will happen.

Over the last few class sessions I showed the Michael Moore movie Sicko to the spoken English class of doctors. They seem fascinated with the American health system, so I thought they might like it; on the other hand, I worried it would be beyond their English comprehension abilities. So I played it with English subtitles and wrote down words and phrases to discuss after the movie finished. Many of these were insurance-related: deny, co-pay, deductible, pre-existing condition. Others were political: lobbyist, campaign, tax dollars.

Sometimes I was surprised at what the doctors already knew. They didn’t need to be told that “the Hill” means Congress, or who Richard Nixon was (“Watergate!” someone said immediately). They knew about the Cold War and the Third World and didn’t need any explanation about Guantanamo Bay. By comparison, no one knew that cab is another word for taxi, and they were unfamiliar with the expressions “put [someone] on [a medication]” and “take [someone] off [a medication].” I wasn’t surprised to find that educated Chinese knew about the less-savory bits of recent American history, just that this education was so thorough as to include English terminology.

At one point Moore pokes fun at American attitudes toward Cuba by saying that the island is “where Lucifer lives.” Later, when I asked the class whether anyone knew what Lucifer was, several immediately said “Fidel Castro!” Not exactly the point Moore was trying to get across.

When working with International clients, it is imperative that you become familiar with the ways other countries practice real estate.  Today, I will focus on working with clients who are looking to purchase real estate abroad. 

1.  First step is to become familiar with the “ownership regulations“ of other countries. Know, what, if any restrictions are placed on foreigners buying real estate in that country.  Check back to my blog as I discuss this in greater detail.

2.  Next, amass your team of experts in the other country who will help facilitate the real estate transaction.  These experts include, but are not limited to, a Public Notary, a Real Estate Attorney, a Translator, an Inspector/ Surveyor. 

Please be aware that all contracts must be written in the native language of the country that the property is located. 

Please note that a Public Notary is an important State Official, usually an attorney, who is a neutral party in the transaction.  (S)he will prepare the documents needed to purchase property. The contract is not valid unless it is signed in the presence of a Public Notary. 

The real estate attorney will read over the contract and all other relevant documents to protect your interest in the property.  The attorney or the Public Notary will also be responsible for insuring the seller has the right to sell and that there are no outstanding debts on the property.  (S)he will also determine that the construction was completed in accordance to all planning and building permits and the property does not encroach on another’s land. After closing, they will also register the property in the buyer’s name.

***  Did you notice that I did not mention finding  a title company to do business?  Title companies are largely an American Phenomenon, but other countries are slowly starting to use them. Check and see if the country you are selling property in does business with title companies. ****

3.  Your client will need to obtain the country’s ID number for its citizens, much like our Social Security Number.  It is best to complete this task early in the process in case of delays.  When your client tries to fund the transaction, they will need to do so out of a foreign bank account, and the only way to open the bank account is with that number.  The ID serves a multitude of purposes.

Check back to my blog often for more information on international real estate.    www.HotOnProperty.com coming soon.  Check me out on twitter as well…HotOnProperty 

The caveat here is that, for the most part, the foreign contingent from America are without qualifications; they are in China to travel and only teach to make money. They possess a Bachelor’s degree and are native English speakers. That is all the qualification they need to find a job in China, jobs that, because of them, are a dime a dozen and, so, the pay is accordingly low. Albeit that housing is included into the bargain. They give, by their incompetence and uncaring attitude, the rest of the foreigners who really are qualified a bad name.
One of the reasons this situation exists is that incompetency is liked in Chinese universities. It is the going thing amongst the Chinese themselves. Of less satirical nature is the need for warm bodies to fill slots to show the government that the university is really employing foreigners teaching oral English and the ubiquitous and totally meaningless Western culture. Sometimes, they will attempt other courses but their incompetence is usually too glaring even for the Chinese. So, foreigners are seen as teachers of oral English and culture, c’est finis. I was cut out of teaching writing at one college because “a Chinese teacher can teach Chinese how to write better than a foreigner.” Never mind my credentials or my 40 years’ experience or the fact that the college’s student performance was not very good. And never mind that my students score higher on the almighty test or post better written theses or show all-round improvement in their English abilities. A Chinese knows better.
Oral English is a throw-away course since there is no need to speak English well and certainly there are no oral English components to any nationally standardized tests until the frightening, to the student, TEM-8, the final test of English competency for English majors. The national fail rate is 60% on this test. The oral component to the test is a very small percentage of the whole, however.
The method of attacking such a failure rate in many colleges is to do more of the same by teachers who may be able to speak English but teach in Chinese. Beating a dead horse? The students are lectured to. They are told how to write, how to memorize scads of information that can only satisfy test-makers but has, in truth, nothing to do with English competency. There is no vocabulary component to the TEM-8 but they are pushed, pushed, pushed to memorize 10,000 words. Most of the students run around with an ultra-thick pocket-sized book of “10,000 words you need to know for the TEM-8.” No one actually encourages these students to read more.
I did a study of English testing in China and the TEM-8 is the only test I came across that had no mistakes in it. Not only no mistakes in answers but no mistakes in grammar and word usage in the directions. The only one. All of the other tests are defective in both answers and English usage in directions, as if the country wants its students to be incompetent or deficient. The TEM-8 corresponds to an SAT or ACT verbal component. The only time a Chinese major in English can take the test is during the last semester of college. They get two more tries.
Note that passing the TEM-8 is not a requirement for teaching.
I have had good success with my approach to teaching writing, resulting in higher test scores. But it is of no account. I am a writer. But this, too, is of no account. I am an editor. This is not worthy of consideration. I am a foreigner: what am I doing here? And it is by way of this question that foreigners are bashed and held to be incompetent, whether they are or not.
It works this way: if you have a higher degree–that is not TESOL–and you are in China, you are in China because you are incompetent to teach in your own country. This isn’t just an unwritten law or unstated attitude, we will be asked this outright. I was even asked this question by a Canadian private International school! The Chinese do not understand that there might be other reasons, including personal choice, because they are fully aware of how low their educational status is in the world. They’re not, however, into improving themselves, just maintaining the unthreatening status quo. When I tell people, no one understands but they say, anyway, “Oh. I know.” (This actually corresponds to “I see” but the Chinese translate the Chinese我知道wo zhi dao literally, “I know.”)
We’re also tagged as being stupid: stupid foreigner knows nothing about China and Chinese institutions and Chinese bureaucracy and Chinese ways of doing things and Chinese. . . . We are continually condescended to, even to the point of not understanding our own language. More than once, I’ve been instructed in how English works, why I don’t speak it properly and why I can’t understand my Chinese peers. These people never attend my lectures on English language; in one case, one of these kinds of people actually arranged the lecture.
We foreigners are constantly battling this “stupid foreigner” label and the Chinese Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) personnel deem us to be without resources when they treat us badly or break contract. Indeed, just recently, I received an e-mail from the FAO telling me they would be not fulfilling their end-of-contract monetary obligations. That is, she wrote to tell me she would be breaking contract. The audacity of such behavior is beyond my ken. However, I do know what to do and had already taken steps via another route over this woman’s behavior. I’d had occasion to try this route several years before. It is the legal route. The problem is that many universities have such a reputation within the community that they can pressure the lawyers and nothing happens. The US Embassy’s American Citizens Bureau is useless: when you contact them with these illegalities, they send you a long list of lawyers and tell you this is all they can do. In fact, they are not in the business of protecting or helping American citizens; they are in the business of protecting Embassy personnel.
For this individual FAO secretary, Hu Jia, at Hefei University of Technology, there is another problem that she is not aware of. Even after my troubles with these people over my seven years here, I was not aware of this: it is not legal for her to tell me I’m not going to have my contract renewed via e-mail, she must do it on letterhead paper. I was very pleased to have this information. But now, with her stated intent to not fulfill contractual obligations, my situation is doubly viable. (I am going with a major firm that does an immense amount of international business.)
This particular person, Hu Jia, embodies all of the worst characteristics of the Chinese in relation to the foreigner. She is rude, she is inappropriate, she is condescending, treating us as if we’re stupid beyond belief–and we all avoid her. In truth, she does not do her job: she sits in her office and has her hired graduate student help do it all. They all dislike her, 100% across the board: not one of them likes her or will work for her past the end of their work-study obligation. That she lets her personal dislike color her decision-making is evident in my being at this university. From the day I arrived she has been rude and sought to cause me trouble. Indeed, she decided that not only could I not have, much less understand, contacts in China but that my nice recommendation from a college I’d been with for three years was not acceptable because there was no problem there. In her own words, she was “looking for trouble.” In her bid to discredit me, she let my visa expire. Without resource to her contacts, the university would have been liable for the fine: 400 RMB/day. I’m the one who came up with the argument to get around this problem (that she caused, in the name of finding trouble with me). The grad students who were with me at the Public Security Bureau (PSB, police) relayed the reasoning to her and it was followed. Since then, the needed repairs to my apartment have not been undertaken despite repeated requests: her excuse is that she’s “just an office and can do nothing.” Promises made to me, that enticed me to choose this school, have yet (8 months later) to be kept. Yet I am the one who is rude and uncooperative.
Let us look at this “cooperation” concept a little. Chinese society is known as a society of harmony and cooperation. The foreigner is inveigled with this and told to learn cooperation, for they are dealing with Chinese. That is to say, all adjustment to culture is from the foreign side and none from the Chinese side. Why should they adjust to the foreigner, to any slight degree, as they are Chinese and this is their country. There is no conception that they are dealing with a foreigner and that some knowledge of foreign culture and behavior might be in their favor. No. They are Chinese and this is China and the foreigner is dealing with Chinese. About the only concession is the contract: Chinese get no contract. They are kind of held in thrall and if they are dismissed they are screwed for the rest of their lives. So it goes.
Being culturally sensitive after several years in Japan and China, I am aware of the vagaries of the Chinese way of doing things, though I’m constantly beset by Chinese telling me I know nothing: after all, I’m a stupid foreigner. I am told I must adjust, I must give. No Chinese has any idea how much a foreigner gives in this equation. We must sift through their faulty use of English before we decide to be insulted or not, for half the time they do not know what they are saying when they speak. We must sift through their use of our language in order to make sense of what it is they want or intend before we can appropriately respond. That they are forever not understanding us is not their fault, it is our fault for not adjusting and cooperating with them.
There is a belief that English is an informal language and is not polite, as Chinese is: polite and refined. This is, of course, not at all true. English is an understated language at its best and very polite: an inappropriate level of politeness in a business situation will get you no business association. The Chinese use “want” for just about everything and certainly for every situation where English would use “I would like” or “may I have” or “would it be possible” or other soft and polite phraseology. Everything is want, want, want in Chinese–unless subjective feeling is involved. Or so I’m told, for in restaurants Chinese say “I want” where we’d say “I’d like.” The Chinese do not say “thank you” very much, certainly not to the extent that an American does. I’ve been told more than once to stop saying “thank you,” for it sounds like an insult.
Every time I have used polite English, I have been misunderstood. It hurts me to be grossly forward and demanding, using “I want” and “give me” where I feel I shouldn’t. My mother raised me well, I suppose you could say. “I’d like to see. . .” = “I want” whatever it is. My teeth are on edge just writing this! When they are this kind of foreign impolite, we foreigners must decide whether they are being rude or demanding or just culturally dependant; that is, they know no other way to speak. This sure points up the interference of native language in learning a second language. But. . .the problem isn’t theirs: it’s the foreigner’s. We’re in China: adjust!
It also points up a profound attitude problem that smacks of Houyhnhnm-reasoning. The Chinese have a cherished belief in foreigners, particularly Americans. They see us all through this filter, preferring not to hear or not believe anything to the contrary, even their experience. As if to say, because I believe it is so, it is so. As in: because the Houyhnhnm didn’t believe there was an island across the sea, it didn’t exist and therefore Gulliver as speaking untruth. End of subject.
Foreigners can’t win at this level and they can’t win at the cultural level. No matter how long a foreigner is in China, the Chinese will always have the advantage in any kind of bureaucratic or legal dealings since they know the slippery ins and outs. They are forever telling us we can never fully learn Chinese culture–but we must adjust 100%. And, though we also can garner guanxi关系, they are much more adept and much more capable of using it to their advantage and another’s disadvantage. I’ve never used mine except for personal benefit, thus creating owed guanxi.
The dictionary defines guanxi as “relations.” But there is far more to it than this. I think it is an untranslatable concept, though something similar to “the old boy system” comes moderately close. You build up guanxi and you give it away (owing guanxi). It’s a must in politics. Resource building might be another way of looking at it, though with resource building there’s no influence-type pressure being exerted at any time. Right now, I have no guanxi but I am ending up owing alot, for people are helping me in ways I do not know how to thank them for–and I will certainly pay them back with whatever I can do.
Guanxi: I was personal friends with the head of orthopaedics at a hospital. Whenever I went in about one problem or another, I could just bypass registering (a mighty one yuan per visit) and go directly to his office to be seen. He had other contacts that he used to help me. Guanxi. Sometimes, I would be seen before people who were in the clinic before me simply because I’m a foreigner. I do not like this and turn it down; doctors, though, can be very insistent. However, I gain an immense reputation for being thoughtful and considerate. Hefei University of Technology gives us the ability to travel to our apartment house by taxi; no Chinese staff in a taxi can take the taxi past the campus entry gate. We don’t use this very often. But these kinds of favor are looked on as giving guanxi and we ought to be thankful.
Guanxi is part of harmony. . .and foreigners are always disharmonious because we don’t understand Chinese culture and we don’t know how to communicate, especially inter-culturally. Never mind that we might already have experience in more than one cultural context: this is China. The Chinese believe this is the defining characteristic of their culture, their society, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. It is, however, more correct to say that they want it to be the defining characteristic with such intensity that they will not see it’s vast disharmoniousness.
Harmony is equated to balance, evenness, such that any action that causes an imbalance one way or another, is unwanted, bad. That is, Chinese believe that flatness equals balance and harmony. No emotion, up or down. Getting upset at injustice, for instance, and doing something about it is injurious to balance and harmony, for everything was fine before you raised up your ugly head. And it is right here that bullies and people like Hu Jia with even the slightest amount of authority or power gain the upper hand. They abuse their culture, society’s wish for ideal harmony. Never mind that in life, as in a chemical reaction, there is a constant shifting back and forth from one side of the equation to the other in order to find and maintain balance as the conditions are always changing. Nothing in nature is constant or flat, except the line on the monitor when you die.
This is how the Hu Jia’s of China abuse their culture. They get rid of someone they don’t like for some unfounded reason, no matter how outrageous, no matter how unsubstantiated, and no one does anything. They will not move from their position (they will not cooperate, I think this might be called). Now, if anyone confronts them in order to right the wrong, they are seen as making waves when, in fact, it is the Hu Jia type of individual who has begun the wave-making because everything was fine before they stuck their fingers in the mix. As she is challenged, she must rise to the defense, which is upsetting the balance–which was fine with the unilateral decision, she shouts–and that makes the justice-seeker a disturber of harmony. In actuality, it is the original decision that is disharmonious in motion. But, because someone is confronting the original decision, they are disharmonious. It is a no-win situation. A Mexican stand-off. And, so, nothing is ever accomplished allowing the Hu Jia’s of China to control their world, their fellow Chinamen. In this perversion of balance and harmony, the foreigner is forever on the losing end. Because the foreigner doesn’t understand anything about how Chinese culture, Chinese society works. Simply by being, a foreigner is disharmonious. It stands to reason: a foreigner is not Chinese. Because of harmony, no one will move to help the foreigner. In the educational world, being disharmonious is the end of any kind of advancement of career. And getting somewhere, becoming somebody is the driving force in Chinese society.
In a society that is based solely on getting, on the economic well-being of the individual, meaning is in having more. And more. Without this, people are nobodies. Nobody wants to be a nobody. In Chinese society, people are basically without power, power or control over their own lives, or a sense of purpose: there is no other ethico- moral basis for guiding life than the economic material well-being (thank you Marx). Which translates to the bottom line. Thus, any amount of control, any amount of power one can grasp is a heady cup and those people, those who feel they are nobodies, go overboard when they get it. (That they may be incompetent is only added color to nobodyhood.) They must prove to all and sundry that they are somebody, that is, that they are indeed important: Look at me! Look at me! And so Hu Jia’s abound in society. For some reason or other, especially in the educational sector. As the feeling of power, of being somebody is easiest to gain by victimizing, it is obviously in their favor to victimize those who have no recourse for revenge–and then subsidize their bloated heads with abuse of their socio-cultural idiom (harmony). The easiest to abuse and, therefore, the easiest bully-boy technique to get away with is abuse of the hapless foreigner. As Hu Jia so succinctly put it, “That’s life.”
And so it is that Hu Jia can engage in that audacious announcement that she is not going to honor the obligations of my contract at term’s end. Why? Because, quite simply, what am I going to do about it? (Let’s not question where that already allotted money is going, okay?)
In her rush to exert power and control and her self-righteous hatred, she is placing herself above the interests of her employer (Hefei University of Technology) and the students, of which she used to be one (her oral and culture teacher–an eminently qualified individual–reports she was never in class. She is denying the best education to others in order to crow and strut about.
Hubris is a kind of blowback.

Despite all my ranting and criticism, analysis and sardonic humor about Chinese education, specifically college/university education, there is a logic to it. To some Americans–or many Westerners in their generalized conglomeration?–this could be seen as balanced reporting. That weird argumentative genre that believes in equal time and no comment, no opinion, no judgment. . .in the name of objectivism so that there’s a blurring (to be polite) of what is acceptable and what is not, what is edifying and what is destructive.
This article isn’t balanced journalism. It isn’t without comment or a position. And it isn’t objective, the state of being neither this nor that and of less of a mind than Hamlet–a state of being that, in fact, does not exist. It is, indeed, not reporting, which is no more than he said-she said and comes very close to rumor, though closer to propaganda these days with planted stories or bought reporters, faux news. No. This article is an insightful assessment, an analysis of a disease inflicted with malice aforethought written by someone who has been involved in this educational system for the past seven years. I did not say “taught” because I would have to use “trying” to properly qualify the verb and the action.
I actually believed, in my naïveté, that China’s need for English teachers was a call for qualified, competent, knowledgeable teachers. In fact, it was (is) not. It was a call for warm bodies. These warm bodies are honored, behind snickers behind hands, with the euphemism of “expert” because they are native speakers. These people teach oral English to anywhere from 50-70 students/class and though they laugh at the pitiful job they can’t help doing and feel as if they’re taking the Chinese for the salary they come away with, they are the fools in their arrogance. They also teach what’s called culture but comes closer to 1960’s HS civics from a book that glorifies the top down nature of a government that knows all about what the people need and, in its wisdom, gives it. That is, they help the Chinese government disseminate the idea that all government is like their government. . .and that government is good and right. Propaganda. They teach, sometimes, writing, a skill that they themselves possess at a level comparable to a HS graduate or, best, a college freshman, and know next to nothing about language and its use, following a textbook, lecturing with occasional one-page “papers.” All give high grades. A necessity if they want to be seen as good teachers, teaching in China being a popularity contest. Occasionally, I’ve seen these native speakers, the great majority from the US, have a go at literature, basically reading the textbook and “teaching” the ideas and meanings the textbook proscribes, the students not bothering to read the assignments because, later, they’ll just memorize what’s in the book, which is where the test comes from, must come from. . . unless they take my literature course. Then they must think and produce a paper which, I’ve been told, is not teaching literature but teaching writing. Literature, in the Chinese university, is no more than “here is the story and this is what it means and this is what you need to know about the writer and this is how it fits in with socialist- communist theory.” The unqualified native speaker teaches this, too, and laughs all the way to the bank, he thinks, because of the next-to-no amount of work required. The laugh’s on him, not only because of the salary in comparison to all the Chinese staff get, but, even more grotesque, he is doing the government’s job of propagandizing the youngsters.
[The salary thing goes like this: the foreigner gets a higher salary than the Chinese professor and is also housed for free; but the Chinese teacher gets extra pay for holding one or another position (like dean or asst dean or dept head) and gets bonuses more than once a year--vacation bonuses, end of semester bonuses, bonuses based on teacher ratings--and is given, according to professorial status, a large housing allowance toward buying a house, sometimes, for full professors, enough to actually pay for the house outright. But the Chinese misdirect the foreigner by concentrating on "the salary" and, so, the foreigner is fooled into believing he's high paid.]
Warm bodies are necessary to satisfy the government’s demand that English be taught by native speakers. All the government–and the college/university–is interested in is numbers: how many foreigners. As if this is an indicator of quality, as if quantity equals quality. As odd as this might strike some, this is the same attitude that defines education in general: more = better. Not more facts as such, more information, but more and more of the same over and over again and tested into infinity.
Carolyn Baker notes in her interview with Frank Smecker (Beyond Statecraft; Navigating The Collapse Of Industrial Civilization), “Wouldn’t you agree that an educational system that can only produce standardized children by forcing them to take standardized tests five hours a day, four days a week, is functioning in a state of abject disintegration?” However, the State does not believe it is in a state of disintegration. The State believes that in controlling the amount of information that its youth are forced to suck up and the process to make sure they are sucking up just what they’re supposed to, it is protecting itself, the power hegemony. The State is engaging in autopoiesis, the eternal recreation of itself (Cf. Humberto Maturana, Autopoiesis, Culture and Society).
It is this point, the control of knowledge and the way it is learned and classified, that this little essay is intended to present as the end-all and be-all of college and university education in China. That the Chinese State is engaging in this kind of behavior is a sign that it is in decline, that it is engaging in self-destruction believing that, instead, it is creating a situation that will enhance the continuation of itself into the unknown future, kind of like a perpetual motion machine based on the overall ignorance–especially ignorance of what’s happening in the outside world–of the populace; for the same process is elementary and middle school education. The problem with those who believe in perpetual motion machines is that they see energy as being linear when, in fact, it is a two-way street, especially considering that mass and energy are interchangeable. . .and chemical reactions are never stable, one-way affairs.
From the moment the children graduate into third grade, they have no free time. By the time they are in upper middle school, they are being educated 80 hrs/wk. I guess you could say this kind of education is pandemic, a pandemic that feeds on itself. The reason this is a sign of a state in decline is that the State finds it necessary to engage in such skullduggery, such deception of its populace in order to maintain its power and glory. If you want to control someone, you must lie to them. In China, the populace is aware they are being lied to; in the US this is, at best, a debatable point. The Chinese are aware that everything the government says is propaganda; the Americans, even when shown the lies, is not so aware. But the Chinese educational system lies about what it’s offering and most students accept this at face value, though they complain bitterly. Some, in college, actually are aware they are getting nothing.
Chinese textbooks are small, not very thick paperbacks that tell the student what they are learning and what it (all) means. In math, this is to be expected: there is only one right answer and the proofs only go in one direction. If you do it this way, you will always get the answer. But the teacher never makes up examples to let the students practice, they simply memorize the equations in the book and spit them back out on a test. With the sciences, there is no experimentation: the classes are lectures. All the students need do is memorize what the teacher tells them, which is just exactly what is in the textbook. There are descriptions but no pictures in art books. . .and some culture books. If a Chinese teaches writing–and many foreign language departments believe that only a Chinese can teach a Chinese how to write English–it is a lecture from a book with definitions I have found to be wrong. For instance, the definition of metonymy as given is actually the definition of euphemism (euphemism not being taught). But it’s of no account: this is what’s to be memorized for the test. There is no writing test. Writing itself is expressed as a 3-paragraph essay: introduction and telling of what it is you’re going to say, what you’re saying, a summary of what it is you’ve said. In other words, three paragraphs of the same information, often second-hand, generalizations and clichés. This is why they must study extra in order to pass the tests necessary for admittance to a Western university–and most never make it anyway, their writing is so poor.
The Chinese are involved in a mad, passionate love affair with clichés. Short-cuts to thinking for the mentally challenged. The one that is cast about most often and used insidiously in these essays (and everyday life) is, “every coin has two sides.” Make me puke! What a way to kill all argument and discussion: you have your opinion and I have my opinion and we are equal so they are both right. The end. How utterly safe! Not only for thoughtless students but for the State that wants no discussion, no criticism, no questioning of the power hegemon. This is also the way students are taught to write in Chinese: it is not a language-specific methodology. Not any more. Most don’t even know where and how their language developed. With the simplified forms mandated by Mao, all sense of pictograph, which helps immensely with learning, is gone: east, once a sun rising up in the middle of a tree (東), is now. . .I don’t know what (东); a car used to look like a wagon (車) but now I’m not sure (车) what it is.
All language is now utterly discursive and has a meaning, a meaning that the State has predigested for its students. There is no thought to words being anything more than black smudges on paper with strict, well-defined meanings, one for each word. The loss of the beauty and subtlety of ancient literature is not even felt, for standard interpretations are given for each poem, each story–just in case students get the wrong idea. Language, especially English, is no more than a tool. You use a wrench for a wrench job, you use a screw diver for a screw job.
Warm bodies, then, are not a threat. Well-qualified, competent foreign individuals are a threat. There exists with them the very real possibility that they will actually teach their students how to think, how to analyze and criticize. They will make their students work and will not arbitrarily give high grades. High grades not only indicating how well-liked the foreign teacher is but how wonderful the university is: look, see, how high our students score! Go to X University. It is good. Look how high its students score! And everyone must graduate. If not, it’s the university’s fault and their reputation is blackened. Even if the senior thesis or the Master’s thesis or the Doctoral dissertation is 100% plagiarized.
There is no thought to actually having students master their English. They will, after the foreigner, be ridden mercilessly on how to pass the next proficiency test and then this other one and anything they might have learned will be wiped out. Is it any wonder the countrywide fail rate for the final English proficiency test, the TEM-8, is 60%? With English being no more than a tool, there is little possibility that the student will understand how the language works, how it is so amazingly expressive and how unbelievable it is to them that they are not comprehended. . .or comprehend what’s said (and implied) to them. Words are words. They are utilitarian. There is no ambiguity, no extended metaphor, no transcendence. No imagination necessary. If you cannot think with your language skills, you are of no threat to anyone, especially the powers-that-be. . .the business that hires you.
This predigested meaning is not limited to English; there is a decided lack, in today’s world, of the ambiguity and depth of meaning that is the ear-mark of ancient Chinese. Modern Chinese is not even polite: I want, I want, I want. It’s an order: give me. 要 要 要 给我 (yao yao yao gei wo: want want want give me). Students are told just what this or that poem or story means. Metaphor is of no account. It might even be dangerous. There might be an understanding uncomfortable to the controlling regime. And the teacher may not be able to answer a question–if ever a question is asked (not likely).
The greatest early modern writer, Lu Xun, has been perverted and rerouted as being Communist when, in fact, Lu Xun was a vicious social critic and satirist and had no association with Communism or any other ~ism. Quotes are pounded into children’s heads and they learn not only to hate Lu Xun but to believe, as they are told, that his writing is all imagination and, thus, very difficult to understand, having no relationship with reality. Understanding him appropriately would be dangerous to the government, for Lu Xun’s take on governments and ~isms is well-illustrated in his The True Story of Ah Q, which the propagandists have made relate to only one isolated instance of such a perversion of justice: the Republican government of the guy who’s known in the West as Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jeishi), the warlord devil incarnate to the Communists, the bloodless Triad hit man the US supported in its sagacity as being the leader of worth. A man who makes John McCain’s temper tantrums dim to child’s play. A leader who sold out to the Japanese.
Ancient classical poetry, students are instructed, is of one kind only, one style, which discounts the other styles the great Du Fu wrote, some appearing to look like prose poetry. The Chinese government teaches, adamantly, that “it is this way this way this way!” There’s little corporal punishment at the college and university level but it is still practiced in elementary and middle schools in order that students learn their lessons–to the point that students must be taken to the hospital for treatment. (Not rumor: I was there. My office mate being that teacher, having beaten a boy about the head. Another teacher crowed about how he enjoyed whipping his students’ legs and making them cry and beg for mercy.)
Education in China is for domination and control. And, as with all control, this requires lying by those wishing to dominate and control. What is the lie? That students are getting an education. Even more than the US’s deconstruction of university education to a vocational school, Chinese education is no more than preparation for a job, a job with a higher salary–what’s ubiquitously called “a better job.” To hell with desire or liking or satisfaction. It is necessary to get that better, higher paying job. Because, in a Marxist dictatorship, no matter how true to form or perverted, economic gain is what it’s all about. Interestingly, this is also what a Capitalist society teaches. What a conundrum. Father Thomas Berry makes it clear when he writes, “both liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism committed themselves totally to the vision of industrial progress. . .” (The Dream of the Earth, as quoted in Carolyn Baker). And industrial progress ad infinitum as the end-all and be-all of society and civilization is a superhighway to collapse, to self-destruction. As we are witnessing at the moment.
Chinese education may be, for the Chinese State, a case of “be careful what you wish for,” for the proscribed world is changing and beginning to unravel (Cf. the writings of Li Datong at www.opendemocracy.com). The State wants faux knowledge because ignorance will work to maintain the State’s continuation. Such a kind of knowledge, utilitarian and limited, will end up stultifying society because there is no thought, no imagination allowed. And the people will become restless because, like genocide, there will always be some knowledge left, some knowledge ready to wreak its vengeance, someone who feels the loss as there is never any way to wipe out all of one’s enemy. In their discomfort, their ennui, people will want something more. As is already evident by the rise of unrest, protest and rebellion and the openly expressed knowledge by some students that Chinese education is wanting and want to get further education overseas. Most students, though, are quite satisfied with knowing next to nothing, for putting out the least amount of work is an ethical prerogative and something to be proud of. They will, after all, be graduated regardless. Knowledge is unimportant to that pie-in-the-sky better job. The piece of paper, however, is.
A false bottomed boat to advancement and improvement.
As US education is more and more being reframed as utilitarian and test-based, it is not too far out of bounds to see that US civilization is sliding right into a new Dark Ages where all shining examples of intellectual greatness will be something to be found somewhere else. And there will be no advancement, except down, down, down into a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It must be admitted that Deng Xiaoping realized this when he opened up the country to the rest of the world after the rigid, unyielding oppression by his predecessor. But, then, he shut the system down with Tiananmen Square. After that debacle (Cf. Sage Publications’ Encyclopedia of Social Activism), Deng imposed great restrictions on education, mostly by way of overloading students with required coursework and highly structured out-of-class activities (not extra-curricular, as such courses are required and graded) and proscribed government textbooks and more testing to make sure that the disorderly students learn appropriately, learn their place appropriately. . .or they will have their funding rescinded. The situation is somewhat less obsessively repressive today but, in truth, not by much.
No Child Left Behind. In two countries.
The rich, of course, get a better education so they can continue to dominate the government. They, like the US dilettantes, can afford to pay for it.

Yes, Sass-fans, in that order.  I awoke to this bright, crispy Fall morning and began it the RIGHT way — discussing Jews and whoredom.  Because I’m generous, I am going to share it with all of you, my dear loyal readers. 

1st:  Luker = Best friend who lives in Brooklyn.  We met in England and, despite a pesky 900 mile difference, are inseparable.  She does not, it should be noted, usually look like a whore.  On purpose. 

2nd:  This post proves the validity of my category, “Jews.”  It also says something about this blog that when I tried to save a picture, calling it, simply, “jew,” my computer told me that there was already a file by that name.  And “jew1.”  I had to make it plural. 

 3rd:  The following IM session has NOT been altered.  I just copied and pasted.  I only took out one name, since an innocent bystander didn’t need to be slandered this early in the AM.

LAST NIGHT:

LUKER    Gah srsly? Want to chat. Am playing spin thebottle diddywhat?

LUKER 9:49 pm
    Are you there? A hassidic jew just asked me to HAVE SEX WITH HIM FOR.MONEY

 TODAY:
 LUKER is available 7:24 am [Sorcia note:  in retrospect, I find this pretty fucking funny]

LUKER 7:25 am
    Woopl
LUKER 7:37 am
    hey-first off, sorry for those bizarre IMs yesterday
    and for that last one i sent you–totally a keyboard mash. i was using my phone

Sorcia 7:38 am
    LOL  Why did you not have sex with the hasidic jew?
    Oh, “woopl?”

LUKER 7:38 am
    lol yup
    sorcia the jew thing was so fucked up
    i was walking home alone

Sorcia 7:38 am
    HAHAHAH  That’s when those jews come out

LUKER 7:39 am
    well i heard these hurried footsteps behind me
    and was like FML

Sorcia 7:39 am
    Did he shake his forelocks and non-foreskin at you?

LUKER 7:39 am
    then they slowed down and he asked me for directions, and they were really bizarre directions, like he knew the answer and just needed a reason to talk to me
    so then he started walking along side me for a block
    and was like “do you like to meet boys”?”

Sorcia 7:40 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHA
    You. are. kidding.

LUKER 7:40 am
    NO I WISH I WAS
    and he was all soft spoken
    and had an accent
    i was like “uh, sometimes”

Sorcia 7:40 am
    Ewwww!!!!  Soft spoken, asking that question?!  Did he also offer a Jewish Van full of kittens?  Jewttens?

LUKER 7:40 am
    then he was like “what about tonight?”

Sorcia 7:40 am
    SHUT THE FUCK UP

LUKER 7:40 am
    I KNOW
    i might have asked him to repeat himself

Sorcia 7:41 am
    You’d have to do it with a sheet between you.  Those hasids are CRAZY

LUKER 7:41 am
    then, i took a huge step away and asked him to repeat himself
    and he was like
    ”will you be with me…..for money”

Sorcia 7:41 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

LUKER 7:41 am
    FML

Sorcia 7:41 am
    Please, please, PLEASE tell me you said yes
    Will you be with me…. for money.  That’s my new AIM status [Sorcia note:  Still is.]

LUKER 7:42 am
    i said “i’m not that kind of girl [glance down at my outfit] though apparently i look like one”
    THEN
    it gets more fucked up

Sorcia 7:42 am
    APPARENTLY

LUKER 7:42 am
    bc this hispanic guy and his gf come by and he shouts, “Hey, do you speak english?”
    at the jew
    obvs

Sorcia 7:42 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
    Well, it’s your night.  Maybe you look like a multi-lingual whore

LUKER 7:43 am
    loollolol
    well in that area the hassids own a lot of the property

Sorcia 7:43 am
    Not ALL.  Not, for example,the LUKER building

LUKER 7:44 am
        but its a largely puerto rican/hispanic population
    so THEN
the guy was all like, “Hey man, maybe you can answer a question for me. why the fuck is the rent so expensive? we just got kicked out, my girlfriend’s 2 months pregnant, etc etc”
    THEN HE ASKED THE JEW FOR MONEY SO THEY COULD GET FOOD
    AND THE JEW ALL AWKWARDLY TOOK OUT HIS WALLET

Sorcia 7:44 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Well, he had to be prepared, since he was anxiously awaiting to give you cash.  FOR YOUR VAGINA
    I would have seen that through

LUKER 7:45 am
    AND I WAS LIKE “I GOTTA GO” AND I BOOKED IT
    yeah im kind of sad i never heard what his offer was

Sorcia 7:45 am
    I know!
    It might have been totes worth it
    Just to have in your repertoire     

repartoire?

LUKER 7:46 am
    i totally left a drunken message on your machine about it
    i might sound hysterical
    bc i was laughing
    and also trying not talk loudly in the message

Sorcia 7:46 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

LUKER 7:46 am
    ”This JEW offered me MONEY for SEX”

Sorcia 7:46 am
    The dog just ran away because of my wild maniacal laughter
    I can hardly type

LUKER 7:46 am
    hahahahahah
    i had to tell you

Sorcia 7:47 am
    This is the greatest day of my life
    You ARE my blog today

LUKER 7:47 am
    YES!

Some nights I would get stomach sick. It would come a few days after a bender—bad pain from too much alcohol and kimchi. I would wake up in the night moaning, in a sweat and thrashing in my sheets. Most of the time I would have to fight through the spasms—none of the medicine I took would calm the pain.

It started up on a Tuesday I was supposed to meet Soo for dinner. I drug myself down to meet her at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf near Hongdae University. She had a carry-on size piece of luggage from a trip to Busan she had just returned from. We hugged and I rolled her luggage behind me up the hill toward my apartment. I was sick but I needed to eat, so we went into a jjuk restaurant and sat down. We both ordered vegetable and rice porridge.

“How was your trip?” I asked.

“Some boring.”

“Busan is a nice city.”

“I don’t think so. Seoul like.”

Then there was silence. She took out her phone and took a picture of herself and looked at it. Then she sent a text message.

“Sorry I’m not really talking,” I said. “I’m sick.”

“OK,” she said. She took another picture of herself.

I have been taught to be terrified of silence. I have turned on radios, iPods, computer radio shows, electric fans. I have sung to myself at quiet tables. I have quietly despaired at the room without sound. But there was nothing we could say.

Strolled around The Pearl yesterday and it’s a great place to dawdle in, there were people performing, as well as the many cafes and the high-end stores were plenty.

lol this guy reminds me of Chris Carrabba :p

I liked the way this fella danced with his electric guitar.

Without communication, without language we are grunting, smiling, frowning animals. We lose all subtlety, all nuance when we cannot speak with the words we know. It is a struggle to express ourselves completely among the people whose intellect we already trust, but sit across the table from a shallow, materialistic Korean woman who knows only elementary English and your soul withers.

I met Soo at the main gate in front of Hongdae University. She wore a pink and purple patterned dress and a silver Tiffany bracelet with matching earrings. I handed her a lily.

“Oh, thank you. My first time,” she said. “My first flower.”

She smiled and stuffed it into her purse. We walked down to an Italian restaurant on the other side of the park. We took a table on the terrace and sat down. There was silence.

We looked through the single menu and decided on basil mozzarella pizza. She wasn’t drinking; I ordered a glass of red wine. Then we just sat there, looking around at the restaurant. We waited for the food, finally making obvious observations in the language of stunted five-year-olds who have just learned to read.

“I like that color,” I said, pointing to a cobalt blue water glass on the table.

“Color?”

“Color.”

“Blue color?”

“It’s a good color.”

“Good color.”

Our food came, finally, and we had something to do with our mouths. I devoured the pizza with the intention of finishing the meal quickly and getting out of there. It took about 15 minutes. She went to the bathroom and I paid the bill. When she came back I was holding her jacket at the door.

We went down the street to a rock club. I chose a table close to the stage where it would be too loud to talDek, even if we could have properly talked. In fact, for a moment it was good. We sat there with our drinks and listened to the music. If the band was better, and they weren’t playing bluegrass, it could have been close to bearable. We had a few more black Russians and then she came home with me.

My neighbor told me a man had died in my apartment. He said the man and his girlfriend were cutters. After big nights of Korean barbecue and soju, dancing in the clubs, they would come home, back to my little room, and cut the clothes off one another. The night it happened it began like it always did—a nick on the arm across a taut bicep, the skin splitting open, a short red line. Then her, who liked to be cut across the collarbone and on the top of her thighs. She took the knife off the nightstand and with every thrust she pushed farther into his side. She wanted them to both have something going in at the same time. She wanted him to feel the same sharp stab. There was blood. They would collapse in the sheets, wake up and super glue their cuts shut. The cuts would heal into white scars that felt good under fingertips, the texture tangible evidence of moments, of a history, of the emotional tracks they left on each other. They were drunk that night. They fell asleep and forgot the glue. When she woke up there was too much blood. He wouldn’t wake up. She called her friend who called 119, and she kept shaking him. He was still breathing when she hung up the phone.

On a Sunday night I took the subway home, standing by the door, reading and listening to my headphones as I always did. I thought about the dinner conversation from the night before, sitting on the floor around Geoff and Claire’s table.

“The thing that I’ve noticed about getting older,” Geoff said. “Is that I don’t feel as if I’ve changed at all.”

I got off at Sinchon station and walked into the grocery store. I put my copy of The Dangerous Summer in the basket and walked through the produce, not feeling old but not feeling young either. Still I felt better than I felt three days earlier, when nothing I did could ease my fatigue. I stopped and tore off a clear plastic bag and filled it with cherry tomatoes. I walked past two girls to get to the scale and have the worker tag it. I picked up mushrooms and eggplant and put them in my basket. I was over by the cucumbers when a girl of about 20 came up to me.

“Hi,” she said. She was dressed attractively, in a florid top and skirt. I took out my headphones.

“Hi there,” I said.

“Where are you from?”

“America.”

“My friend thinks you are cute. She wanted me to say hi.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“My name is Ping. Are you a student?”

“No. I work for a newspaper. Where are you from?”

“China.” She handed me her business card. It said Ping Zeng. I gave her mine.

“I thought you were a student because I saw your book.”

“Nope. That’s just for fun. Email me sometime,” I said.

“OK, I have to go now.”

I finished my shopping and on the way home she sent me a follow up text message.

it wasn’t my friend who thinks you are cute. it’s me! call me sometime! ^^

Back on the underground train, I wrote a letter to James on a notebook on my lap, my ankles crossed. A man looked out the window, talking on his cellphone, in a navy shirt with turquoise and purple flowers. I sat across from two women. Their faces were worn and tired but they smiled and laughed. One rested her hand on a lime green umbrella. The other held a pink bag in her lap. She wore strapped pink and tan shoes. They both had marks on their legs that looked like bruises.

An old man in an orange cap with tufts of black hair curling out stumbled toward me, the train car lilting and jumping, and clutched the pole next to me and then collapsed on the steel bench.

I got out to transfer trains. On the platform a young man fought with his girlfriend on the phone. He took it away from his ear to yell into the microphone. When we got on the train he sat down next to me with his legs crossed at the knee, shaking his foot. A tired, red-faced woman stared from the other side. I looked up and she looked at my arms to avoid my eyes. Like all of us I only wanted to be home. It was a hot night and the yellow lights along the highways reflected on the river. Everyone looked so tired.

• I’m in an electronica kinda mood
• Coffee talk
• Does anyone still buy CDs?
• Cheryl Merkowski reads the craigslist ads, m’kay?
• Drama with selling my iMac. (please spam ivonvalentine@gmail.com)

Today’s music provided ioda PROMONET

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