I wrote this five years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. I think the main point is still relevant although I would add that of course a great deal has changed for the Chinese people since 1989 - economic reforms have transformed much of the country and brought the kind of growth in prosperity that took the west over a century to achieve. And in some very real ways, people in China are more free than people in the US (they don't have crazed drug warriors and people with badges routinely assaulting people in their homes and on the...
"People don’t want to confront... that their government could have done something like this unless it was absolutely necessary. ...it’s almost like people find some sort of relief in the idea that sometimes you have to just mass murder tens, hundreds of thousands of innocent people... that it’s unrealistic to think the world could work differently." ~ Anthony Gregory In the summer of 1963, Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe was asked to go to Hiroshima to write about the Ninth World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. Oe covered the conference and also met with some of the bomb’s surviving victims and...
I remember when I pushed Genelle Grossman over. I was four or five, it was recess and we were all outside playing in the grass near some trees. She was walking with some friends and I thought they were all acting “girly.” I didn’t like “girly”. So I pushed her and she fell. There was crying and shouting and they all went and told the teacher and she came and found me sitting near the trees. The teacher asked me why I had done it and I couldn’t answer. All I could do was sit and push a stick...
I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of “punishment” for teaching children. Early on, when our son was probably around two, and against my better judgement, my husband and I decided to try out having a “naughty spot” for our son to go when he had done something naughty. The night we tried it out I don’t even remember what his offense was - only that he stepped happily over to the “naughty spot” as if it were a game, and then looked over at us with a smile. I felt sick with myself. I could see what introducing “punishment”...
My husband's new green card arrived the other day and I was a little surprised to see the above printed on the handy little (presumably wi-fi blocking) carrying case that came with it. I was surprised because back in 2009, when there was a lot of concern about the US government putting RFID chips in passports, U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, Paul Hunter, downplayed concerns about the technology. According to an article in WiFi Planet: "...Hunter says, the same technology has already been in use for over ten years in the government’s SENTRI and NEXUS trusted traveler programs. 'And we have not had one reported...
Writes Betsi Fores at Rare: State Rep. Carly Melin has led the charge in her state to legalize medical marijuana, but has found resistance and stonewalling when it comes to the state’s law enforcement “It’s like negotiating with a brick wall. All along I have said that I am willing to amend the bill. But they won’t move at all,” said Melin, reports Politicsinminnesota.com. So why such staunch opposition? Drug enforcement stands to lose a lot of funding should marijuana become legal. Federal funding through the Department of Justice gives police task forces money specifically aimed to target drug crimes from a fund...
As a parent of a child who has had seizures, it enrages me that there is a gang of people who believe they have the right to deprive other people of potential treatments for their children's debilitating afflictions. It has always made me angry that this gang believes it can dictate to others what they may or may not put into their own bodies for whatever reason they choose. But this absolutely enrages me. I hope it enrages other parents too. Fortunately for Charlotte Figi, she lives in a state that has decriminalized Marijuana. But how many other children and adults...
I’m not, of course. I am a wife and mother, I’ve never served in the US or any other military. I’ve never even listened to Lady Gaga, and I’ve never risked my life, liberty and personal well-being in order to expose government wrongdoing. And I wasn’t born with the body of a man. When the soldier and whistleblower known as Bradley Manning announced last month that she identified as a woman and not a man, that she wished to be referred to as “Chelsea” and with the feminine pronoun, it caused a stir, even among her supporters. I’ve seen a number of...
The always insightful Ryan McMaken has a blog titled "The 'Little House' Books as Libertarian Fables." He cites an article in the Boston Globe noting the strong influence of Rose Wilder Lane in authoring the books, and asking if the beloved tales were written as (gasp!) "...an anti-New Deal fable?": "...if those fables sound like a perfect expression of Libertarian ideas—maximum personal freedom and limited need for the government—that’s no accident. Lane, and to an extent her mother, were affronted by taxes, the New Deal, and what they saw as Americans’ growing reliance on Washington. Eventually, as Lane became increasingly antigovernment, she would pursue...
It's funny how complete untruths can be transformed into the kind of certainties that become the foundation for an entire generation's faith in the state. Here, Larry Schweikart and Burton Folsom happily demolish one of the most pervasive of these certainties: "...the makers of autos, tires and headlights began building roads privately long before any state or the federal government got involved. The Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway for cars, pieced together from new and existing roads in 1913, was conceived and partly built by entrepreneurs—Henry Joy of Packard Motor Car Co., Frank Seiberling of Goodyear and Carl Fisher, a...
There's a poster up at the front of the room with a cartoon mouse painting at an easel, and the words "Express Yourself!" But every time the little boy in glasses starts to ask questions that stray too far from where the teacher is taking the class, his "aide" shushes him. It's a good class, and the teacher has a lot to offer the kids in terms of technique, discipline and approach to work. But it really makes me appreciate the Montessori paradigm so much more. You could have the same teacher, conveying the same information and skills but in...
A while ago, my dad posted about the famous "Christmas Truce" during World War I. My uncle (on my mother's side) responded with his recollection of my grandfather's experience: This reminds me of an account my father related from his World War I experience during the trench warfare of the summer and fall of 1918. He and a French soldier were stationed in a foxhole close to the German lines and the French soldier, noticing that Daddy didn't smoke, suggested that he crawl out into "No Man's Land" after dark and leave his cigarette allowance in clear sight. He did, and then...
In 1988, I fled college without having graduated, saved a little bit of money and got on an airplane for Taiwan. Martial law had just been lifted and back then, to enter on a tourist visa, you had to show a return-trip ticket. So that's what I bought, even though I had no intention of returning to the US after my three-month-one-time-renewable stint was up. My plan was to sell my ticket to someone else and use the money to buy a ticket to wherever I was going next. So I put an ad in a local English-language paper and...
I wouldn’t have expected a conference on therapy for children with autism and related disorders to have much to say about politics, but in a country where the state’s tentacles reach into pretty much every aspect of human life, I should have known better. My daughter is developmentally disabled and I am pursuing more child-centered therapies for her than the more widely recognized ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) method, so last fall I attended the DIR Floortime Conference on Floortime, a more play-based form of therapy. As soon as I walked in, I was struck by two phrases: “Parent Choice” and “Advocacy.”...
So I'm looking up more information related to the short story I'm working on and I come across this interesting fact. It's something you'd expect any journalist writing about the infamous "suicide factories" in China where Apple's iPads and iPhones are made to mention, but surprisingly most do not. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I spent some time visiting factories in China - both foreign joint ventures and local enterprises. I also visited villages and farms and have some sense of the context within which these factories exist and just how crappy rural life in China can be. I've also...
I wrote this soon after Hong Kong's handover to Chinese rule. The lessons are still relevant. From the paper: For over a hundred and fifty years, Hong Kong has had few of the regulations and government programs that dominate economic life in America. While the territory does have minimal welfare assistance schemes, these are genuine safety-net programs, aimed at helping those who are truly in need. The level of welfare payments in Hong Kong historically have not encouraged dependence, nor have they been attractive enough to compete with work and business opportunities. Likewise, the level of regulation in the name...
Last week, a group of lawyers, plaintiffs and activists involved in the lawsuit against the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) and its indefinite detention provisions held a live chat on Reddit. This group included Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg and Tangerine Bolen (plaintiff and lawsuit coordinator, director of RevolutionTruth) among others. I'm just posting some of the highlights here, because I think they are worth hearing - and not everyone wants to wade through the entire chat log. (But you can if you want to.) Here are some of the highlights: Question: "I recently read that Julian Assange has been designated an enemy by the US military(...) doesn't this...
"Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks." ~ Will Durant The Story of Civilization On the day I sat down to write this, a video was released showing one man slowly cutting off the head of another, allegedly in retaliation for abuses perpetrated against prisoners in the first man’s...
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