Rama Yade, secrétaire d'état des Droits de l'Homme

Selon la secrétaire française des Droits de l’Homme, Rama Yade, Hu Jia est un militant qui doit aujourd’hui être libéré. Alors que l’opposant chinois vient de recevoir le prix Sakharov, cette prise de position française va t-elle à nouveau brouiller les relations sino-françaises ?

«Nous pensons que c’est un militant des droits de l’Homme qui doit aujourd’hui être libéré» a déclaré la secrétaire française des Droits de l’Homme Rama Yade en marge de l’attribution du prix Sakharov au dissident chinois Hu Jia par le Parlement Européen, hier.

La secrétaire d’état a également ajouté que «le Parlement européen a fait là un geste fort pour les droits de l’homme. Il est important que la Chine assume aussi les devoirs et les responsabilités inhérentes à la puissance économique, à la puissance politique».

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.

So this has already been consumed by a media firestorm, but as my political coverage has been lacking this semester, I figure I owe it to the blog to weigh in with my expert opinion.

On Friday, President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

….What?

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

Speculation had focused on Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman’s rights activist.

The Nobel committee praised Obama’s creation of “a new climate in international politics” and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage. The plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama’s predecessor for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Fact: Al Gore invented the Nobel Prize for Not Being George W. BusSh

Subject: Barack Obama

President of the United  States of America
Recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
Story so far:
- set a January 2010 deadline to close Guantanamo Bay…experts doubt that deadline can be met
- declared an end date for the Iraq War: all troops out by the end of 2011
- considering whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, a war without an end date
- has not revoked “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy barring open homosexuals from military service
- has retained the right for the Executive Branch to determine when releasing “state secrets” would harm national security
- has declared that some terrorism suspects detained without trial shall receive due process, while those classified as too dangerous will not
- successfully stopped the potentially wasteful missile defense shield in Eastern Europe…Russia follows by scrapping its own missile escalation in Poland
- has proposed a public option for healthcare reform…met with stiff opposition
- has kept Bo the dog alive for six months
Links: Wikipedia: Barack Obama
WhiteHouse.gov
FactCheck.org: Barack Obama

Subject: Nobel Peace Prize

Prize to be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Created, along with four other categories, by Alfred Nobel, an arms manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite. He reportedly wanted to leave behind a better legacy.

Awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, composed of five members nominated by the Norwegian parliament. It’s understood that the committee often represents the politics of the parliament.

2009 awarded to Barack Obama
Other potential recipients:
- Sima Samar, head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and advocate of women’s rights
- Piedad Cordoba, Colombian senator that helped negotiate the release of guerilla hostages and is currently being harassed by the Colombian government (also, my homegirl, represent)
- Hu Jia, Chinese dissident and advocate for people suffering of HIV/AIDS, serving 3.5 years in prison for opposition to Chinese government
Links: NobelPrize.org
List of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates

—-

So this entire situation is raising two conflicting feelings in Phil:

1. Disappointment in seeing politics interfere with a potentially significant statement for civil rights campaigners across the globe
2. Nausea at the idea of being associated with wingnut commentators who are going to pounce on this to blindly attack Obama

Welp, good job criticzing Obama for losing the Chicago Olympic bid, I wonder what's....Wait, what? Really? You're not joking? Oh, hee hee hee hee hee hee hee!

Well, first, let’s make sure it’s abundantly clear: Obama didn’t ask for this. Or, if he was his own secret nominator, he was really stupid. What this does is highlight his shaky track record. Would you rather get paraded on stage before or after you’ve had the chance to push some difficult policies? Or at least had the chance to politically spin it more in your favor? Right now, speculation on his presidency is dominated by the right wing and they’re loving it. I’m sure Obama would have loved to had the chance to shut them up before receiving the prize (not that the extreme right wing knows how to stop running its collective trap).

I wouldn’t be surprised if a neoconservative organization didn’t nominate Obama itself, hoping the good ol’ liberal Norwegians would pick their man and basically embarrass American Obama-supporters.

So, no, I don’t think Obama’s guilty of grandstanding or glory-hogging. Hell, if he refused the prize, that would unfortunately just make the situation worse by “denying America a great honor” and coming off as if he had no confidence in his abilities to accomplish this so-called peace. He can’t win.

Now, I voted for President Obama. Obama is still my man, albeit my increasingly frustrating man. But I don’t think he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Honestly, the way things are going, I doubt he would ever deserve the Peace Prize.

Only two other sitting Presidents have received the prize. Teddy Roosevelt won it for stopping a conflict between the Russians and the Japanese. Woodrow Wilson won it for the formation of the U.N.’s predecessor, the League of Nations. Ironically, both were involved in wars: the Spanish-American War and World War I respectively. But at least there were observable, global-scale accomplishments on their record.

It is rumored that the Committee didn't want to risk angering Roosevelt, for fear of getting clubbed over by his Big Stick.

And even taking that into consideration, I don’t think a sitting President should ever be eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize. Why? Because he commands  a f***ing huge army. Kind of goes against Nobel’s proclaimed goal of abolishing or reducing standing armies, doesn’t it?

Listen, I acknowledge the need to have the President be Commander in Chief and also the difficulty of that position. Progressive that I am, I can’t deny that we would be thoroughly screwed in global politics if we didn’t have the military that we did. But on most days, I almost think it’s worth it to completely slash its power in favor of diplomacy and aid missions. But you and I know that that won’t happen in our lifetimes, not with the stranglehold defense interests have over our government. So I acknowlege that it’s not like Barack Obama can just bring all the troops back home and bow out from the wars his predecessors started.

I’m just saying that it unfortunately means that neither he, nor any other sitting U.S. President, should win the God damn Nobel Peace Prize.

For all the good a President can do, the forces that respond to him unfortunately do plenty of damage to counter it. Since Obama’s been President, how many civilians have died in predator drone attacks on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border? How many falsely imprisoned detainees are still sitting in a cell without official charges? How have we been treating Iran, who had the gall of trying to develop another nuclear power facility with its scary nuclear technology which would be completely obliterated by our own nuclear arsenal?

Obama has talked big and he has made some marked improvements over Dubya…but talking isn’t enough. And there is still much, much, much more work to be done before we can fully atone for our wrongs. Meanwhile, there were several nominees who needed support and were dedicating their entire lives to peaceful causes, rather than balancing their vision of peace with the practical needs of a global superpower.

Now, many people take their opportunity to be smug pricks and say that the Nobel Peace Prize hasn’t been a big deal, especailly since Laureate X got chosen. It’s always been simply a political tool and a poorly veiled one. Stop making such a big fuss about it, you silly establishment followers.

To them, I say shut it.

Yes, I appreciate the irony of a Peace Prize named for an arms manufacturer. I’m aware that choices are heavily influenced by that five-member committee’s values. But I don’t think that means you should completely throw away whatever credibility or significance the Prize has left. Really influential people have been laureates in the past: the Dalai Lama, Desdmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Jr. and the fourth President to receive the prize, Jimmy Carter, who received it almost thirty years after his term.

Reaganites love to scoff at the Carter award (almost as much as they Roffle at Al Gore’s 2007 reception). But they’re ignoring the fact that unlike their favorite Leader of the Free World, Carter dedicated his civilian life to helping people at home and abroad, trying to solve conflicts in North Korea, the Middle East, Africa, Cuba, Venezula, and my family’s country of origin, Colombia. He established the Carter Center for human rights in Atlanta. Once he shed off the nastiness of politics and bureaucracy, he was able to actually accomplish more than the office of President would ever allow him to do.

He was doing this before Japanese tourists made it fashionable.

Carter deserved to be recognized, as did most past Laureates. So I don’t buy the claim that the Prize is meaningless. Nor do I accept that this is the same as honoring past Laureates who haven’t actually brought about the change they’ve been tryin to enact, Rachel Maddow. Civil rights abuses may still be going on in China, the climate may still be changing, and poverty and sufering may still exist, but the people who are the ground soldiers in that battle are accomplishing more than the figurehead of the World Police can at this point. I don’t buy the claim that Obama’s simple change in tone is enough to raise him to that caliber of accomplishment.

Are there times when I see him as a potentially revolutionary President? Yes. Do I think he’s improved our diplomacy and foreign policy approaches? Yes. But, then again, just because George W. Bush set the standards  so low, doesn’t mean the international community should idolize Obama for making reasonable improvements. Much, much more should be done before a sitting U.S. President can deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Especially in this environment of bloody wars, civil rights abuses, and general global chaos.

Let the Preisdent do his job. And stop belittling efforts to honor peace advocates to patting your favorite political celebrities on the back. There’s too much at stake.

Well, what’s done is done and I’m sure Fox News will have something else to rail about in the coming weeks.

Maybe Obama will dress up as Stalin for Halloween.

“So soon? Too early. He [Obama] has no contribution so far.” — Lech Walesa, dissent who opposed Soviet occupation of the Poland and 1983 Peace Prize winner.

In basketball, the sport that Barack Obama and many others enjoy, a key statistic is the “assist.” Many times an easy basket is scored because a player, typically a point guard, makes an quick astute pass to an open player. Former President George Bush can now be safely said to be the most accomplished Nobel point guard, assisting many in scoring a Nobel. The latest beneficiary of this is President Barack Obama who was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Even the most ardent Obama supporters recognize that, at best, any such award is premature. Indeed, he was formally nominated just after reaching office. The Nobel Committee selected Obama because: “Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.” This is a clear slap at Bush, whose foreign policy was caricatured as being unilateral. The London Times observed as much: “Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration.” Assist Bush.

This assist was not Bush’s latest, not his first. In 2001, one month after the attack of September 11, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Kofi Annan and the United Nations the Peace Prize. The US was formulating its reaction to these attacks, and there was concern that the US might act without specific UN authorization, the Nobel Committee used the award to boost the moral authority, such as it is, of the UN. Of course, we would later come to realize that the UN was implicated in a corrupt Food for Oil program that undermined sanctions against Iraq and enriched intermediaries associated with the UN. Assist Bush.

In 2002, in the lead up to the liberation of Iraq, former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Carter’s record is at best mixed: Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviets during his watch and Americans were held hostage by the Iranians after the Shah, a US ally was overthrown. However, Carter was instrumental in providing a forum for Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin to workout a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1978. The Nobel Committee overlooked this for two and half decades until is was convenient to use Carter as a bludgeon against Bush. Indeed, the Nobel Prize Committee Chairman, Gunnar Berge, openly explained the Prize “should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the [Bush] administration has taken… It’s a kick in the leg to all that follow the same…” Assist Bush.

The former Vice-President Al Gore case is roughly similar to the Carter case. There could be an argument made that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should be recognized by the Nobel Committee. Al Gore had been burning fuel proselytizing the necessity of eschewing carbon use to avert global climate change. But giving the same PowerPoint presentation in many venues, does not quite seem to rise to the level of a Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, Al Gore was involved in a close a election with George Bush, which many used to routinely dispute Bush’s legitimacy — even after a clear Bush re-election in 2004. By this time, Gore had turned angry, shouting that Bush: “… played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place.” That was good enough for the Nobel Committee in 2007. Assist Bush.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee is not the only one to play political games. There is a plausible argument that Dr. Paul Krugman of Princeton University should win the Nobel Prize in economics based on his trade studies early his career. However, Krugman had spent most the Bush term as a regular, relentless, and often rabid critic of the Bush Administration. Awarding Krugman the prize was just too tempting in this context. Assist Bush

It is not as if there are too few potential recipients that the Nobel Peace Prize can be awarded frivolously to score political points. The Weekly Standard cites Sima Samar, an activist who has pursued women’s rights in Afghanistan at personal risk; or Hu Jia, a human rights activist jailed by the Chinese; or Dr. Denis Mukwege, who has “dedicated his life to helping Congolese women and girls who are victims of gang rape and brutal sexual violence” as those who could have be recognized. The award could have gone to the dissidents in the streets of Iran for protesting a stolen election.

It appears that Obama has a tin ear, as he doesn’t appear to realize that he will be easy to mock for accepting a prize he doesn’t deserved. He could demonstrate integrity, mute criticism by political opponents, and provide counter evidence to the charge that he is self-aggrandizing by respectfully declining the prize. Better yet, he could accept the prize as Commander and Chief on behalf of the US military, particularly General David Petraeus, for their heroic efforts to bring freedom and security to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Consider that advice that will not likely be followed.

In a somewhat controversial decision, President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday. He beat off competition from 204 other nominees including activists such as Hu Jia of China, Sima Samar of Afghanistan, Piedad Cordoba, and pre-competition favourite, Morgan Tsvangirai.

While the reward was certainly unexpected it is another glittering crown in the President’s glowing achievements. Yet it is clear to many that it may have come too early in the career of a man who with aspirations to be the President of the most powerful nation in the world for eight years, has only served a mere 8 months.

Indeed, while his ambitions cannot be faulted, at present it remains to be seen if there has been much concrete progress in his aspirations.

The following are some of the presidents goals and current progress:

“A world free of Nuclear Weapons” was the iconic sentence said in his visit to Prague. Certainly some progress has been made through UN Security Council Resolutions (1887) and his demands on the Senate to ratify a test ban treaty. Furthermore negotiations with Russia has resulted in the reduction of the number of warheads to a figure around 2,200.

Yet it is not just the old enemy which is of concern. Various other nations are in possession of nuclear weapons, China, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, and Israel currently have various degrees of nuclear power. However the spectre of Iran and North Korea with ambitions to have nuclear warheads remains. Surely so long as these threats remain, so will the arsenal of nuclear weapons the United States holds.

Climate Change: As opposed to the hostility shown by former president George W. Bush signified by his regimes lack of intention to implement the Kyoto protocol, Obama has shown an open hand towards the reduction of greenhouse gases.

But with multiple lobbyists having political sway on the senate and on congress, to reach realisation and implementation, it is clear that Obama still has a minefield to navigate.

Human Rights: Under the Bush administration, 9/11 was used as justification, rightly or unrightly to open Guantanamo Bay. Gitmo became a rallying cry for all those who decried the rough handed approach of the United States authorities. Countless human rights abuses were rumoured to have occurred there turning the detention camp into a symbol of hypocrisy. How can a country be fighting for the rights of others when the very rights of others are being defiled in their property?

However under Obama it is clear that sooner rather than later the camp will close. Although his decision not to punish those in charge came under scrutiny, there has been concrete progress.

Iraq: Combat operations will cease by August of next year although a small contingent of American forces are poised to remain to train Iraqi security forces and combat Al-Qaeda influenced insurgents.

Obama’s intentions of relieving the military of Iraqi duties will eventually be achieved although many will look at America’s involvement in Iraq as a failure.

Middle East: This region is a mixed bag. Obama firmly opposes the construction of further Israeli settlements but is yet to give adequate support to Palestine, perhaps further sign of lobbying at home restricting his hands. The crisis that is Iran continues to gain more and more attention through either blatant electoral fraud or their increasingly dangerous nuclear weapon programme. It is clear that Obama’s ’soft-hand’ approach is definitely not working with the Revolutionary Guard.

Afghanistan: Obama has faced demands for increased troop levels in Afghanistan, hardly encouraging for a Peace Prize winner, yet as opposed to Iraq, it is clear that there is indeed justification in this action as Afghanistan is a hotbed for Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents.

Ultimately perhaps it has been Obama’s Weltanschaung as opposed to his actual achievements as president. Indeed the committee attached ’special importance to Obama’s vision.’

But is this a blessing or a curse? Obama is a truly charismatic and inspiring individual and has been portrayed as a symbol of hope, bordering on that of a messiah figure. But with an already huge burden of promise and responsibility, not just from his own country, but from the wider world already on his shoulders, the glory of a Nobel Peace Prize will only surely add to the unimaginable weight of expectations.

-MP

Alfred Nobel

Pouah… Etre chômeur c’est dur ! Faut se lever tard… Ben oui, levé aujourd’hui à 9h un peu dans le gaz, puis ensuite douche et vient le temps du petit-déjeuner. J’allume la télévision. Je zappe quelques chaînes puis j’arrive finalement à BFM TV, où les journalistes parlaient de l’imminence de la nomination du Prix Nobel de la Paix de cette année. Parmi la bonne centaine de candidats, les (légèrement) favoris étaient Morgan Tsvangirai (opposant zimbabwéen), Denis Mukwege (un médecin congolais qui accueille dans son hôpital des femmes violées et les aide à reconstruire leur vie) ou encore l’un des favoris de l’année dernière : le dissident chinois Hu-Jia. La chaîne parlait également du président français Nicolas Sarkozy (ça m’a fait rire sur le coup), la franco-colombienne Ingrid Bétancourt et de Helmut Kohl (ancien chancelier allemand des années 80-90).

Bon, après ce zappage rapide, je m’en vais chez un ami faire de la musculation. Faut entretenir son corps, baby… Une heure et demie plus tard, je rentre chez moi, j’allume mon PC et lance Firefox qui m’affiche ma page iGoogle (j’ai jamais accroché à Netvibes) et LA, je vois en premier article sur lemonde.fr : Barack Obama Prix Nobel de la Paix. Alors là, pour une surprise, c’est une surprise… Ce matin, j’apprenais que le Prix Nobel de la Paix allait être décerné, et je savais encore moins que Barack Obama était parmi les prétendants ! BFM TV n’en a d’ailleurs pas parlé, si mes souvenirs sont bons.

Je m’empresse de cliquer sur le lien, et je vois les raisons du choix du jury : “Le prix Nobel de la paix 2009 a été attribué, vendredi 9 octobre au président américain Barack Obama, “pour ses efforts extraordinaires en faveur du renforcement de la diplomatie et de la coopération internationales entre les peuples”". Bon d’accord, il essaie d’apaiser le conflit israélo-palestinien mais quand même ! Et j’ai lu aussi qu’il voulait un monde sans bombe nucléaire, alors qu’il détruise déjà la sienne… Je l’aime bien Barack Obama, mais je trouve que d’autres personnes méritaient plus que lui ce Prix Nobel.

Enfin, c’est la vie… Ca m’empêchera pas du tout d’aller voir ma petite amie à Amiens ce weekend. Loin de là

Today is Hu Jia’s 36th birthday.  He is spending it in his cell in the Beijing municipal prison.  His wife Zeng Jinyan and their daughter were granted a visit on 21 July 2009.  Ms Zeng posted this poem on her blog afterwards:

Each day I save up a minute, so that each month we can meet for 30 minutes.

A glass panel several centimetres in thickness separates us: I am on this side. He is on the other side.

I stretch my hands as close to the glass as I can, and yet I cannot feel the warmth on his slender face.

He is calm, and occasionally smiles.

I give him a birthday wish ahead of time.

He reminds me that he has to spend another birthday in jail.

When we depart, he turns around and says, “I love you.”

That invites a chuckle from the prison guard.

On the way home, I find Beijing under a shroud of fog. Overcome by a lingering sense of melancholy,

I start to wonder if what happens this Tuesday afternoon is, after all, just another dream.

Hu was arrested on 27 December 2007 on a charge of "inciting subversion of state authority”.  He was tried and found guilty on 18 March 2008 for posting information about matters of state on websites based abroad. The court sentenced him on 3 April 2008 to three and a half years in prison. 

Reporters Without Borders reiterates its call for Hu Jia’s release: Hu has already spent 20 months in prison in very trying conditions.  It is shocking to see how a man whose only crime was to write articles and give interviews is being kept in prison by certain stubborn officials. The government should demonstrate a desire to improve respect for free expression by freeing Hu and his colleagues, Liu Xiaobo and Huang Qi.

You can sign a petition for Hu’s release HERE.

Today’s The Australian published Liu Xiaobo’s last interview with foreign press shortly before his arrest:

www.pen.org

China’s most famous dissident, the courtly, professorial Liu Xiaobo, 53, was taken by security officers from his home in Beijing last December and held incommunicado for six months, mostly in a room without windows at a secret location.

Last week he was shifted to a detention centre and charged with inciting subversion of state power, the crime for which other dissidents, such as activist Hu Jia, also have been sentenced. For those found guilty, the maximum penalty is 15 years.

His plight was highlighted by the Australian government at its annual human rights dialogue with China and, since his formal arrest, Australia has joined the EU, the US and other nations in risking Beijing’s wrath by calling for his release.

Liu’s last interview before his arrest was with The Australian. “No matter how rich a society is, as long as it is ruled by a privileged class (that) gains its wealth from an unbalanced and opaque system, there will be strong discontent,” he said.

“And any defence of this group’s economic interests will evolve into a defence of its political rights.”

Please follow this LINK to the full report.

UPDATE

Radio Free Asia confirms that Liu Xiaobo’s bail application has  been formally refused by the Beijing Security Bureau.

]]> http://chinaview.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/china-dissident-hu-jia-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize-again/ Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:06:01 +0000 chinaview http://chinaview.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/china-dissident-hu-jia-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize-again/

Epoch Times Staff,  Jun 26, 2009  -

Chinese dissident Hu Jia, who was nominated for last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has once again received a nomination for this year. The decision has aroused much attention around the world.

In December 2007, Hu Jia participated in many social and human rights movements.  He was detained by the Chinese regime on charges of “overthrowing state power”, and was sentenced to three years and six months in prison in March 2008.  According to a report from AFP on Oct 9, 2008, when Hu received his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in September 2008, the Chinese regime pleaded the prize committee not to consider awarding the prize to a “criminal.”

In 2008, the Nobel Foundation granted a nomination to another Chinese person, human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng.  However, when the prize was finally awarded to former Finland President Martti Ahtisaari, criticism arose that the Nobel Foundation failed to put enough emphasis on the Chinese regime’s suppression of Tibet and human activists.

According to The Nobel Foundation on June 22, the winner of the Nobel Prize Peace will be announced between October 5 to 12.  This year, 205 people and associations have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, setting a record.  Competitors for the Nobel Peace Prize include U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Ingrid Betancourt, a former French hostage in Colombia.

- The Epochtimes

I do of course support it.

Last year, Reporters without Borders launched the first Online Free Expression day on March 12. This year, Amnesty Norway has launched a huge freedom of speech-campaign (only Norwegian) and they give you a list of 12 different things you can do on March 12 (several of them social media related, but not only) to support the campaign (one of them is to try the Chinese version of Google).

Neat.

Their main focus is four international bloggers, Chinese Hu Jia (who received The European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, I’ve written about him before), Vietnamese Truong Quoc Huy, Egyptian Karim Amer, and Tunisian Mohammed Abbou.

It looks like a good campaign, but why isn’t it international? Why is not Amnesty International doing this as well? Why isn’t there info in English about this? To spread campaigns like these, you need to cross (language)borders.

Reporters Without Borders has today issued it’s annual report, Enemies of the internet, and they say that:

“The 12 ‘Enemies of the Internet’ – Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam – have all transformed their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information.”

Another interesting freedom of speech-campaign is circulating. Italian bloggers have run into deep problems. As part of the Italian government’s attempt to control the internet (since rest of Italian media is controlled), there is now a proposal to force Italian bloggers to be licensed by the state. You can support the campaign by sending an image of yourself with the text “Free Blogger”.

Speaking of campaigns, the most visible campaing out there these days is the Red Nose Day. Incredible, those red noses are all over the place, especially on Twitter. The man-turned-into-broadcaster Stephen Fry (with 292,868 followers!) is all dressed up, of course. The campaign that gets him on-board is lucky, with all his followers. The official campaing day is tomorrow, March 13, and the idea is to combine funny famous people and fundraising to fight powerty  in the UK and abroad.