Dear Fellow Secular Humanists of Santa Cruz County,
Please join me, the Santa Cruz and Monterey County Atheists, the Santa Cruz Brights, and the UC-Santa Cruz Secular Student Alliance in marching in the annual Santa Cruz Holiday Parade, Saturday, December 4, 2010, behind our Reason's Greetings banner. Assemble in the parking lot for the Saturn Cafe, which is at the corner of Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street in downtown Santa Cruz, by 8:30 AM. Please wear festive attire, such as Santa hats, and any T-shirt or sweatshirt that identifies you as a member of SHSCC, the American Humanist Association, or as a humanist in general. Feel free to bring jingle bells to ring as accompaniment to us singing secular carols, such as Deck the Halls, and so on.
Sonya Newlyn
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Obama's Loyalty Oath
Before this country’s next President settles in to the Oval Office and gets down to business, he’s required to jump through a few hoops — walk in processions, attend a long parade and numerous balls, shake 1,428 hands and kiss 98 babies. Obama will perform some of these to meet the people’s supposed demand for pageantry, others to affirm his loyalty to the Constitution, and others to pretend his true loyalty is to a Christian nation.
Read the rest of this entry...
Read the rest of this entry...
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Abolish State Sanctioned Marriage
With the nomination of Sarah Palin as VP by the Republican Party, and the upcoming vote on an anti-gay marriage proposition in California the question of gay marriage has once again come to the fore. Everyone from Obama to McCain seems to have a problem with gay marriage except for the people most directly involved who, of course, are firm advocates thereof.
There is a way, however, to resolve the issue once and for all, abolish marriage as a state sanctioned institution. Marriage as presently constituted is a contractual agreement between two parties. Until recently these parties have been restricted to one male and one female. But why should this be the case? Under most circumstances a contract, whereby the rights and obligations of the signatories are delineated, should be universally applicable. Why not then establish civil unions as the contractual agreement by which the rights and obligations of two parties who enter into a relationship of cohabitation are codified? In this fashion everyone is treated equally. Once a couple enters into a civil union, which would convey the rights and obligations presently given to married people, they could then have that union sanctified by whatever religious or secular ceremony they wish. The status of marriage would thus no longer to certified by the state but would be something that would be bestowed upon the couple by whatever institution is willing to sanctify it. Thus the Catholic Church could grant or deny a certificate of marriage to whomever they want. The couple nevertheless would have a legally constituted civil union with the same rights and privileges as any other. To be married by the church or any other institution would require the legal standing of having entered into a civil union but having done so would not obligate the body that sanctifies the relationship to concur. Marriage would henceforth not be a legally recognized institution and the controversy would cease to exist, other than within the ranks of whatever group by which the couple wishes to be sanctified.
PS: I'm apparently not the only one to put forth this argument. For instance, see Michael Kinsley at Slate.
There is a way, however, to resolve the issue once and for all, abolish marriage as a state sanctioned institution. Marriage as presently constituted is a contractual agreement between two parties. Until recently these parties have been restricted to one male and one female. But why should this be the case? Under most circumstances a contract, whereby the rights and obligations of the signatories are delineated, should be universally applicable. Why not then establish civil unions as the contractual agreement by which the rights and obligations of two parties who enter into a relationship of cohabitation are codified? In this fashion everyone is treated equally. Once a couple enters into a civil union, which would convey the rights and obligations presently given to married people, they could then have that union sanctified by whatever religious or secular ceremony they wish. The status of marriage would thus no longer to certified by the state but would be something that would be bestowed upon the couple by whatever institution is willing to sanctify it. Thus the Catholic Church could grant or deny a certificate of marriage to whomever they want. The couple nevertheless would have a legally constituted civil union with the same rights and privileges as any other. To be married by the church or any other institution would require the legal standing of having entered into a civil union but having done so would not obligate the body that sanctifies the relationship to concur. Marriage would henceforth not be a legally recognized institution and the controversy would cease to exist, other than within the ranks of whatever group by which the couple wishes to be sanctified.
PS: I'm apparently not the only one to put forth this argument. For instance, see Michael Kinsley at Slate.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Sarah Palin's Family Values
Our potential VP, Sarah Palin, has a set of well-articulated first principles regarding childbirth and raising families. She has put forth these believes without hesitation and they provide her ideological appeal to the right wing Evangelical base of the Republican Party. These first principles are 1) abstinence only education, 2) a ban on secular sex-education in the public schools, 3) prohibition of abortion except in the case of an imminent threat to the life of the mother (and this seems to be only grudgingly accepted), and 4) disapproval of any means of contraception.
These positions basically entail the following – if an underage child becomes pregnant she should carry the fetus to term. A further corollary of this way of thinking is that the father of the child should take responsibility for his behavior, marry the mother and support the family. Without passing judgment on the appropriateness of any one of these believes lets look at the consequence of their articulated acceptance. Given the biological realities of adolescence, promotion of abstinence only sexual behavior, without recourse to any other form of sex education and with an aversion to the use of condoms or other birth control devices will willy-nilly produce a significant number of teen pregnancies.
Under Palin’s ideology the prohibition of abortion precludes the teenage mother from any real choice as to whether or not to proceed with the pregnancy. The infant hence will be brought to term. After birth the pressure will be for the family to rally around the mother and child and force the young father to marry the mother, promoting the notion that the mother should for-go her education and rear the child at home. The only alternative would be to give the child up for adoption, in which case the teen mother has basically served as a baby factory, enslaved to produce the infant as a commodity to be dispensed with after birth.
For Palin and her ilk this would seem to be an unlikely outcome. The young family will then have to either rely on the resources of the adults to survive or the father will have to seek employment in a low paying job. In order to make ends meet there would be a great incentive for the young husband and father to enlist in the armed forces for the benefits that would accrue to the young couple.
When you combine Palin’s evangelical belief’s regarding abortion, contraception, and family values with her staunch support of the NRA and other similar stands, the picture that emerges is a tacit endorsement of teenage pregnancies and teenage marriages, with stay at home mom’s home schooling their children in creationism and other biblical fantasies while the fathers go off to wage war in the Middle East against the diabolical heathens, in preparation for the end days. These are the type of family values implicit in Palin’s ideology, which might find residence in the White House if worse comes to worse.
More on this topic can be found at Slate.
These positions basically entail the following – if an underage child becomes pregnant she should carry the fetus to term. A further corollary of this way of thinking is that the father of the child should take responsibility for his behavior, marry the mother and support the family. Without passing judgment on the appropriateness of any one of these believes lets look at the consequence of their articulated acceptance. Given the biological realities of adolescence, promotion of abstinence only sexual behavior, without recourse to any other form of sex education and with an aversion to the use of condoms or other birth control devices will willy-nilly produce a significant number of teen pregnancies.
Under Palin’s ideology the prohibition of abortion precludes the teenage mother from any real choice as to whether or not to proceed with the pregnancy. The infant hence will be brought to term. After birth the pressure will be for the family to rally around the mother and child and force the young father to marry the mother, promoting the notion that the mother should for-go her education and rear the child at home. The only alternative would be to give the child up for adoption, in which case the teen mother has basically served as a baby factory, enslaved to produce the infant as a commodity to be dispensed with after birth.
For Palin and her ilk this would seem to be an unlikely outcome. The young family will then have to either rely on the resources of the adults to survive or the father will have to seek employment in a low paying job. In order to make ends meet there would be a great incentive for the young husband and father to enlist in the armed forces for the benefits that would accrue to the young couple.
When you combine Palin’s evangelical belief’s regarding abortion, contraception, and family values with her staunch support of the NRA and other similar stands, the picture that emerges is a tacit endorsement of teenage pregnancies and teenage marriages, with stay at home mom’s home schooling their children in creationism and other biblical fantasies while the fathers go off to wage war in the Middle East against the diabolical heathens, in preparation for the end days. These are the type of family values implicit in Palin’s ideology, which might find residence in the White House if worse comes to worse.
More on this topic can be found at Slate.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
That "God Forum"
I felt like writing volumes on this non-debate debate, but managed to keep it pithy. "'God Forum' Pits Candidates Against Truth - McCain Wins."
An Athiest In 10 Downing Street?
Our brethren in the UK are leagues ahead of US in the promotion of rational thought. While they still have hidebound proponents of religiosity stalking the corridors of power such as the discredited Tony 'God and Country' Blair, when surveyed more than half of the current Labour government cabinet members expressed their non-belief. Read AC Grayling's take on the issue which recently appeared in the Guardian.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
All Hail Our Righteous Leaders!
Well, as we all know Rev. Rick, that is Rick Warren, the mega-church huckster, conducted a bogus sit-down with Barack Obama and John McCain. This was one of the most absurd two-hours that I’ve ever witnessed especially when the topic came around to exchanges about "evil".
As Marwan Bishara notes:
As Marwan Bishara notes:
When asked how they would deal with evil if they were elected president - would they ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it, or defeat it - Obama said he would "confront it" while McCain said unflinchingly that he would "defeat it".Well, well, well, once elected our dauntless crusaders will be tilting against the windmills of evil! I certainly hope they will be victorious! Imagine our chivalrous Lancelots clad in impenetrable armor (made in China?) confronting the devil incarnate in the guise of evil. Evil lurks everywhere in the hearts of man (and woman I can assure you). Smite that bastard evil oh you righteous McCain! Stare down that intractable evil oh Saint Barack. How lucky we are to have two such heroic figures leading us to a bright and gracious future!
After this "civil forum" was broadcast on CNN, the network's so-called "best team on television" commented on the candidates' performance.
This only managed to add insult to injury.
One pundit commended McCain's steadfastness and courage in wanting to defeat, not merely confront, evil if elected president.
For the Republican contender evil is embodied in communism, Islamic fundamentalism and notably Osama Bin Laden, who he promised to hunt down.
Obama was also praised for acknowledging the existence of evil. He thought it present in Darfur but also on the streets of the US as well as in homes where parents abuse their children, and so on.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Gulag Americana
Alexander Solzhenitsyn made famous the phrase "Gulag Archipelago" to describe the system of penal servitude and internal exile instituted by the old Soviet Union. Millions of Soviet citizens, quite frequently innocent of any crime, or honest revolutionaries who crossed an invisible ideological Rubicon, were capriciously ensnared in this vast and degrading enterprise.
Anybody who has watched the recurring MSNBC series "Lockdown" knows that over the last 30 years we have initiated our own internal Gulag, what may be aptly called "Gulag Americana." This nation of prisons is spread throughout our country, from sea to shining sea. Of course, many who deserve incarceration, dysfunctional criminals who have victimized law-abiding citizens, populate it. There is, however, a base line that can be established for western industrialized nations regarding the proportion of their citizens jailed at any given time, which is approximately 1 in 1000. That was the historic rate in the U.S. until the 1980s, and the current rate in most European countries. Based on that statistic we should have approximately 300,000 people in our prisons. In point of fact, we have a nationwide inmate population of about 2.1 million, a rate 7 times greater than should be the norm. This is a result of our "war on drugs" which has had a disproportionate effect on minority, in particular, African-American, males. As a result nearly one third of all young African American males 20-35 year of age will have spent time in jail during their lifetime, with all the stigma and trauma associated with that experience. This criminalization of a whole demographic is unprecedented in the annals of modern civilization. The Prison-Industrial Complex, which has been spawned by the “war on drugs” profits enormously from the vast outpouring of public funds needed to maintain and expand our homegrown gulag. The article referenced by the above link was written in 1998 and a decade later things have only gotten worse with an increase in the prison population of 300,000 (16%) from 1.8 to 2.1 million. During the same decade our total population has grown at an 11% clip from 270 to 300 million. In other words, the problem is becoming ever more acute as our prison population continues to grow at an ever increasing rate relative to total population growth.
As reported at ScienceDaily, "The mammoth increase in the United States' prison population since the 1970s is having profound demographic consequences that disproportionately affect black males.” Obviously the ramifications of our insane system of criminal injustice are having profound societal effects. It means that at present there is an excess of 1.8 million inmates incarcerated in our jails. People who under any regime of human and civil rights should be getting treatment for their addiction and given gainful employment. If the number of non-violent inmates housed in our jails is factored into our unemployment statistics it would raise our unemployment rate from the current 5.7% to nearly 7%. Of course, when the true unemployment rate is calculated using the parameters employed in the 1960s it’s more on the order of 12% or 13% if convicts are factored in as well. It can be readily seen that the burgeoning prison population particularly amongst young adult African American males is a convenient release valve for chronic unemployment in our county’s inner cities. Better to have the proletariat languish in jail than be on the streets “looking for trouble.”
So what are the implications of the “Gulag Americana?” They are that our gulag is a systemic part of our socio-political order. It is as much an assault on human rights as the Soviet system ever was and the devastating impact it is having on untold millions of our citizens is for all intents an untold story that our candidates for office will not even discuss.
Anybody who has watched the recurring MSNBC series "Lockdown" knows that over the last 30 years we have initiated our own internal Gulag, what may be aptly called "Gulag Americana." This nation of prisons is spread throughout our country, from sea to shining sea. Of course, many who deserve incarceration, dysfunctional criminals who have victimized law-abiding citizens, populate it. There is, however, a base line that can be established for western industrialized nations regarding the proportion of their citizens jailed at any given time, which is approximately 1 in 1000. That was the historic rate in the U.S. until the 1980s, and the current rate in most European countries. Based on that statistic we should have approximately 300,000 people in our prisons. In point of fact, we have a nationwide inmate population of about 2.1 million, a rate 7 times greater than should be the norm. This is a result of our "war on drugs" which has had a disproportionate effect on minority, in particular, African-American, males. As a result nearly one third of all young African American males 20-35 year of age will have spent time in jail during their lifetime, with all the stigma and trauma associated with that experience. This criminalization of a whole demographic is unprecedented in the annals of modern civilization. The Prison-Industrial Complex, which has been spawned by the “war on drugs” profits enormously from the vast outpouring of public funds needed to maintain and expand our homegrown gulag. The article referenced by the above link was written in 1998 and a decade later things have only gotten worse with an increase in the prison population of 300,000 (16%) from 1.8 to 2.1 million. During the same decade our total population has grown at an 11% clip from 270 to 300 million. In other words, the problem is becoming ever more acute as our prison population continues to grow at an ever increasing rate relative to total population growth.
As reported at ScienceDaily, "The mammoth increase in the United States' prison population since the 1970s is having profound demographic consequences that disproportionately affect black males.” Obviously the ramifications of our insane system of criminal injustice are having profound societal effects. It means that at present there is an excess of 1.8 million inmates incarcerated in our jails. People who under any regime of human and civil rights should be getting treatment for their addiction and given gainful employment. If the number of non-violent inmates housed in our jails is factored into our unemployment statistics it would raise our unemployment rate from the current 5.7% to nearly 7%. Of course, when the true unemployment rate is calculated using the parameters employed in the 1960s it’s more on the order of 12% or 13% if convicts are factored in as well. It can be readily seen that the burgeoning prison population particularly amongst young adult African American males is a convenient release valve for chronic unemployment in our county’s inner cities. Better to have the proletariat languish in jail than be on the streets “looking for trouble.”
So what are the implications of the “Gulag Americana?” They are that our gulag is a systemic part of our socio-political order. It is as much an assault on human rights as the Soviet system ever was and the devastating impact it is having on untold millions of our citizens is for all intents an untold story that our candidates for office will not even discuss.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
As the Air is Slowly Let Out of the Tire...
Well it looks like political expediency has derailed the Obama campaign, at least as far as I'm concerned. First the dissing of the 4th amendment with his backsliding on telecom immunity, then his acquiescence to the SCOTUS ruling on gun control and his equivocation on the death penalty. Now the straw that broke the camel's back with his support for "faith-based" initiatives. Looks like Bush in sheep's clothing to me. I'll still vote Democratic, but once again as the "lesser of two evils." quite a come down from some earlier wishful thinking.
Below is the full text of the Council on Secular Humanism's response to Obama's recent address on faith:
Below is the full text of the Council on Secular Humanism's response to Obama's recent address on faith:
PRESS RELEASE
July 01, 2008
Senator Obama’s Concession to Faith-Based programs unfortunate, says Council for Secular Humanism
The Council for Secular Humanism regrets that Senator Barack Obama has seen fit to affirm a willingness to extend the unconstitutional faith-based diversion of tax dollars to religious institutions as begun by President Bush. “This is basically religious pandering,” said Ronald A. Lindsay, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism.
In a speech delivered today in Zanesville, Ohio, the Democratic candidate for president proposed that federal money diverted directly to churches, mosques and synagogues would promote a “bottom-up” approach to serving the nation’s underprivileged, regardless of the fact that the money taxed from the public is meant for secular purposes. And although he stressed that the money can only be used for secular programs, the result will be the same, as regular contributions not used for these programs are freed to proselytize, make building improvements and grow the faith community—a clear favoritism of believers over nonbelievers.
“We find it regrettable that the current climate in the United States requires candidates, who obviously should know better, to promise grave compromises of the wall of separation between religion and government in order to even stand a chance of being elected to high office,” continued Lindsay
The Council is disappointed that Obama’s plan appears to allow federal funds to flow directly to houses of worship. "Not only does this impermissibly entangle religion and government, Obama's plan threatens the autonomy of religious bodies by allowing government intrusion directly into the activities of the house of worship," said Lindsay. "The audits, compliance reviews, and reporting requirements that the government will have to perform to account for the funds will threaten the autonomy and integrity of the house of worship."
Monday, June 23, 2008
We Lost A Great One - RIP George Carlin
He set the stage and had a great follow through. Hey Georgie give the big guy a whack on the tushy, he's obviously been jerking off for all eternity. Tell it like it is George:
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Taking God out of Politics?
Godless. That’s the title. No subtitle. A major newspaper allowed the printing of such free speech (in an op-ed), calling for God to be removed from Presidential politics. This is a rare event, even in the supposedly Godless offices of the New York Times. We may just be standing on the cusp of a new era in American media.
All I can say is, it's about time! Well actually, I said a bit more - take a look at my post about the article, or read the article itself.Thursday, June 5, 2008
In Defense of Bridget Bardot
According to the Huffington Post blog site Brigitte Bardot was convicted Tuesday of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France by their imposition of blood rites associated with the slaughter of sheep for the Muslim feast of Aid el-Kebir. Her comments, written in a December 2006 letter to the then-Interior Minister, now French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, contravenes French anti-racism laws that prevent inciting hatred and discrimination on racial or religious grounds. Bardot had been convicted four times previously for inciting racial hatred. Bardot, a long-time animal rights activist, should be applauded, not condemned for her conscientious stand and outspokenness. Confounding criticism of religious practices with racial hatred is a misguided policy. All citizens should have the right to expose bogus religious practices of whatever sort, practiced by whatever denomination. Don’t keep the faith, Bridget!
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
China Visit - Part 3
Well, those are some of my observations. Hope they’re of interest, more thoughts to come.
China Visit – Part 2
While in China I had the opportunity to talk with friends and relatives about the current situation there, as well as make my own observations. There are a number of issues that have garnered a large amount of press play dealing with China. I will address a number of these below.
1. The situation in Tibet. China is a multinational country with 58 recognized national minorities. These minorities all have well delineated rights and privileges based on their special status. These involve a heightened degree of autonomy and exemption from certain obligations (for instance, the one child per family policy). Tibet is recognized as an Autonomous Region of the PRC and on paper, at least, has a considerable amount of autonomy. In practice the central government has full control, but is nevertheless constrained in certain ways by its constitutional limits. As in this country what’s written in the constitution is not always applied as it should be, and there is a legitimate demand by Tibetans for the full implementation of their national rights. Both the Communist and Nationalist parties consider Tibet an integral part of China. There is a long history of interaction between the two. The Dalai Lama also recognizes that Tibet is part of the PRC. The Dalai Lama of course, from a secular humanist perspective, is as much of a fraud as a Moslem Grand Ayatollah or the Christian Pope. They all sugarcoat their superstitious ideology with a façade of pious reasonableness. The history of Lamist Buddhism is, however, replete with all sorts of horrors, from the abject enslavement of the peasantry, to the sequestration of whole generations of males in austere disciplinarian monasteries and the adulation of each new Dalai Lama, chosen at random from amidst the population, as a child god-king. No matter what the historical exigencies may have been, maintenance of China’s territorial integrity, a legacy of its imperial past, must be accepted as a starting point for any discussion regarding Tibet’s future. It may be argued that the Soviet Union was likewise a product of Russian imperialism and that its breakup can serve as a prototype for the dismemberment of China. The Soviet Union was, however, just that, a voluntary Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and its peaceful breakup basically bore out that reality. China has a different history and its constituent parts are not free to disengage in the same fashion. In this regard it is no different from any other nation sate. There should be no greater onus put on China than any other state to voluntarily commit suicide. China has problems regarding the proper treatment of its minority peoples, just as we do. Let the Chinese work out their own problems without undue interference. This attitude does not preclude criticism of how the central government behaves, but protests such as those directed against the Beijing Olympics, in my opinion are unwarranted.
2. The Beijing Olympics. The Chinese people throughout the world are proud to host the 2008 Olympic games, just as citizens anywhere else would be. China has gone all out to create new ultra-modern sports venues in Beijing, some of which I saw. The “controversy” surrounding the Beijing Games is a non-starter. China cannot be compared to Nazi Germany and the 2008 Beijing Games cannot be compared in any fashion to the infamous Berlin Games of 1936 or the Moscow Games of 1980. China does not adhere to a racist ideology and China is not an expansionist power as was Germany in the 1930s or occupying a foreign nation as the Soviets did in Afghanistan (and isn’t it ironic that we now occupy both that country and Iraq!). The protests against the Olympic flame relay were to my mind totally inappropriate. They were ostensibly directed against Chinese repression in Tibet and Chinese support of the Sudanese government and its involvement in the Darfur genocide. These protests are extremely disingenuous. Where were the protests against the continuing abuse of our native peoples when we held the Olympics in LA or Atlanta? Where were the protests of the 1992 Spanish Olympics in Barcelona against their policies in the Basque region or the 2000 Australian Olympics in Sidney against their policies towards their aboriginal populations? How can anyone protest Chinese behavior in Sudan when compared to our aggression against Iraq? It is again, holding China to a higher standard than we expect of other countries or ourselves, for that matter.
3. China’s Industrialization and Outsourcing. China’s economy has been growing at a double-digit rate for nearly two decades. If that pace continues into the future China will be an advanced, middle-income industrial nation by mid-century. A lot of baggage (Made in China) and manifold abuses come with that remarkable achievement. Our Chinese counterparts are now confronting many of the problems that we have encountered and addressed with varying degrees of success or failure over the last century. China achieved its economic transformation at break neck speed and is still in the throes of remarkable economic and social upheavals. These changes took the West centuries to achieve and have occurred in China over mere decades. I could delineate a litany of problems that China confronts. These include environmental degradation, mine safety, lead-based paints, fraudulent goods, sweatshop abuses, corporate corruption, etc., etc. All industrializing countries have faced similar problems as we have and still do. Along with these problems have come both governmental and non-governmental responses. The Chinese government is accountable to public opinion. Its legitimacy is predicated on public acceptance and acquiescence. When the Chinese people feel that the government is no longer responsive they do not hesitate to rebel. How can the Chinese people’s propensity to rebellion and resistance be squared with their supposed passivity in the face of government repression? It can’t. The Chinese accept their government because it has maintained its mandate.
4. Slave wages. Quite frequently it’s alleged that Chinese employees work for “slave wages”. I had a number of discussions about living conditions while in China. The bottom line is that Chinese wages have to be viewed relative to living costs. The Chinese Yuan is equivalent to the US Dollar. In many respects there’s a good correspondence. The average Chinese wage is about 3000 Yuan/month, similar to the average US wage of $3000/month. Living costs can be evaluated in light of this correspondence. For instance my son is renting a two-bedroom apartment in Xiamen for Y1300/month (US $195.00), similar to what a similar apartment would cost in the U.S. in U.S. dollars ($1300.00). Obviously the Chinese apartment is very cheap in US dollars. The apartment can easily accommodate three adults (there is a spare room that can serve as a third bedroom) at a cost of approximately Y450/month (US $30.00). As can be seen the Yuan is valued at about US $0.15. So a monthly wage of Y3000 is equivalent to US $450. That’s about $112.50/week or $2.80/hour. Some low-skilled migrant laborers from the countryside make about $1.00/hr. They tend to live in dormitories and send much of their income home (like American migrant workers). $1.00/hour is about 1/7 the prevailing US minimum wage rate, about what a US worker made 40 years ago (I remember making $2.00/hr working at a warehouse in Boston in 1971). By Chinese standards the average wage in China is equivalent to what an average worker makes in the US today. Of course a US manufacturer will prefer spending $2.00/hour rather than $20.00/hour, hence outsourcing. Its ridiculous to say that the Chinese worker has a slave wage, not when public bus transportation costs 20 Chinese cents, the equivalent of $0.03. So it’s important to keep things in perspective when comparing Chinese apples with US oranges.
To be continued…
1. The situation in Tibet. China is a multinational country with 58 recognized national minorities. These minorities all have well delineated rights and privileges based on their special status. These involve a heightened degree of autonomy and exemption from certain obligations (for instance, the one child per family policy). Tibet is recognized as an Autonomous Region of the PRC and on paper, at least, has a considerable amount of autonomy. In practice the central government has full control, but is nevertheless constrained in certain ways by its constitutional limits. As in this country what’s written in the constitution is not always applied as it should be, and there is a legitimate demand by Tibetans for the full implementation of their national rights. Both the Communist and Nationalist parties consider Tibet an integral part of China. There is a long history of interaction between the two. The Dalai Lama also recognizes that Tibet is part of the PRC. The Dalai Lama of course, from a secular humanist perspective, is as much of a fraud as a Moslem Grand Ayatollah or the Christian Pope. They all sugarcoat their superstitious ideology with a façade of pious reasonableness. The history of Lamist Buddhism is, however, replete with all sorts of horrors, from the abject enslavement of the peasantry, to the sequestration of whole generations of males in austere disciplinarian monasteries and the adulation of each new Dalai Lama, chosen at random from amidst the population, as a child god-king. No matter what the historical exigencies may have been, maintenance of China’s territorial integrity, a legacy of its imperial past, must be accepted as a starting point for any discussion regarding Tibet’s future. It may be argued that the Soviet Union was likewise a product of Russian imperialism and that its breakup can serve as a prototype for the dismemberment of China. The Soviet Union was, however, just that, a voluntary Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and its peaceful breakup basically bore out that reality. China has a different history and its constituent parts are not free to disengage in the same fashion. In this regard it is no different from any other nation sate. There should be no greater onus put on China than any other state to voluntarily commit suicide. China has problems regarding the proper treatment of its minority peoples, just as we do. Let the Chinese work out their own problems without undue interference. This attitude does not preclude criticism of how the central government behaves, but protests such as those directed against the Beijing Olympics, in my opinion are unwarranted.
2. The Beijing Olympics. The Chinese people throughout the world are proud to host the 2008 Olympic games, just as citizens anywhere else would be. China has gone all out to create new ultra-modern sports venues in Beijing, some of which I saw. The “controversy” surrounding the Beijing Games is a non-starter. China cannot be compared to Nazi Germany and the 2008 Beijing Games cannot be compared in any fashion to the infamous Berlin Games of 1936 or the Moscow Games of 1980. China does not adhere to a racist ideology and China is not an expansionist power as was Germany in the 1930s or occupying a foreign nation as the Soviets did in Afghanistan (and isn’t it ironic that we now occupy both that country and Iraq!). The protests against the Olympic flame relay were to my mind totally inappropriate. They were ostensibly directed against Chinese repression in Tibet and Chinese support of the Sudanese government and its involvement in the Darfur genocide. These protests are extremely disingenuous. Where were the protests against the continuing abuse of our native peoples when we held the Olympics in LA or Atlanta? Where were the protests of the 1992 Spanish Olympics in Barcelona against their policies in the Basque region or the 2000 Australian Olympics in Sidney against their policies towards their aboriginal populations? How can anyone protest Chinese behavior in Sudan when compared to our aggression against Iraq? It is again, holding China to a higher standard than we expect of other countries or ourselves, for that matter.
3. China’s Industrialization and Outsourcing. China’s economy has been growing at a double-digit rate for nearly two decades. If that pace continues into the future China will be an advanced, middle-income industrial nation by mid-century. A lot of baggage (Made in China) and manifold abuses come with that remarkable achievement. Our Chinese counterparts are now confronting many of the problems that we have encountered and addressed with varying degrees of success or failure over the last century. China achieved its economic transformation at break neck speed and is still in the throes of remarkable economic and social upheavals. These changes took the West centuries to achieve and have occurred in China over mere decades. I could delineate a litany of problems that China confronts. These include environmental degradation, mine safety, lead-based paints, fraudulent goods, sweatshop abuses, corporate corruption, etc., etc. All industrializing countries have faced similar problems as we have and still do. Along with these problems have come both governmental and non-governmental responses. The Chinese government is accountable to public opinion. Its legitimacy is predicated on public acceptance and acquiescence. When the Chinese people feel that the government is no longer responsive they do not hesitate to rebel. How can the Chinese people’s propensity to rebellion and resistance be squared with their supposed passivity in the face of government repression? It can’t. The Chinese accept their government because it has maintained its mandate.
4. Slave wages. Quite frequently it’s alleged that Chinese employees work for “slave wages”. I had a number of discussions about living conditions while in China. The bottom line is that Chinese wages have to be viewed relative to living costs. The Chinese Yuan is equivalent to the US Dollar. In many respects there’s a good correspondence. The average Chinese wage is about 3000 Yuan/month, similar to the average US wage of $3000/month. Living costs can be evaluated in light of this correspondence. For instance my son is renting a two-bedroom apartment in Xiamen for Y1300/month (US $195.00), similar to what a similar apartment would cost in the U.S. in U.S. dollars ($1300.00). Obviously the Chinese apartment is very cheap in US dollars. The apartment can easily accommodate three adults (there is a spare room that can serve as a third bedroom) at a cost of approximately Y450/month (US $30.00). As can be seen the Yuan is valued at about US $0.15. So a monthly wage of Y3000 is equivalent to US $450. That’s about $112.50/week or $2.80/hour. Some low-skilled migrant laborers from the countryside make about $1.00/hr. They tend to live in dormitories and send much of their income home (like American migrant workers). $1.00/hour is about 1/7 the prevailing US minimum wage rate, about what a US worker made 40 years ago (I remember making $2.00/hr working at a warehouse in Boston in 1971). By Chinese standards the average wage in China is equivalent to what an average worker makes in the US today. Of course a US manufacturer will prefer spending $2.00/hour rather than $20.00/hour, hence outsourcing. Its ridiculous to say that the Chinese worker has a slave wage, not when public bus transportation costs 20 Chinese cents, the equivalent of $0.03. So it’s important to keep things in perspective when comparing Chinese apples with US oranges.
To be continued…
Monday, June 2, 2008
China Visit – Part 1
I've visited China multiple times over the last 25 years and speak serviceable Mandarin. I've seen vast transformations in the socioeconomic system practiced there. When I first arrived in Beijing in the early 1980s the Beijing Airport was straight out of Casablanca and we drove into the capital on a long, straight single lane road through the Chinese countryside, which eventually flowed into Chang'an Ave and past the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. There were hardly any cars on the streets, and men and women dressed in plain, austere, monochrome clothing whizzed past on a blizzard of bicycles. The Friendship Hotel where I stayed was one of the premier hotels in town and would have been considered rather dingy by Soviet standards of the time. Being married to a Chinese woman I eventually arranged to stay at the family residence in the section of Beijing reserved for members of the Academia Sinica. It was a spacious yet non-ostentatious apartment. Life was very quiet and serene, the daily routine almost bucolic. Socialist morality prevailed. If you left a hairbrush behind in your train compartment it would be returned to you at your next hotel room. Food stables, health care, apartments and most everything else was subsidized and unbelievably cheap. I could get by in China on a few dollars a month. Consumer goods were very utilitarian but readily available. Socialist ideology was still spoon fed on the 2 or 3 broadcast stations that were available, although the excesses of the Cultural Revolution were quickly receding. Over the next decade and a half, China slowly began to change as it opened up to the West. By 1989 there was foment in the air. The Soviet Union and the Communist bloc were disintegrating. The status of China as a communist led nation hung in the balance. Reforms had begun but many half measures only whet the appetite for more substantive change. I was in Beijing to witness this and was staying at the Xiyuan Hotel with colleagues from UC Berkeley, just blocs away from the location of the most severe actions taken during the Tiananmen incident. China slowly recovered from the shock of those days, eventually leading to the initiation of a full-fledged market economy and the vast growth and modernization seen in its urban areas. I hadn't returned to China for a decade, until last month. The China I saw was totally transformed. The Beijing Airport is a massively efficient, ultramodern edifice that seems to engulf the countryside. A multilane superhighway connects the airport to a network of expressways that gird the city. We drive by row after row of high-rise apartment buildings. When I arrive at Zhongguancun (the Academia Sinica zone) I can't recognize the area, its full of glittery, new office buildings and thoroughfares. I also get to see similar changes in Wuhan the capital of Hubei province in central China. We travel from Wuhan, at the confluence of the Han and Yangtze Rivers in eastern Hubei, to Yunxian, the archeological site in the Chinese countryside towards the provinces far west, not far from Sichuan where the recent earthquake struck. The last time I traveled there, over a decade ago, it took nearly two days over a single lane highway, similar to a back country road here in the U.S. Now we travel along a multi-lane superhighway, identical to an Interstate and make the same journey in six hours. China is now crisscrossed with similar expressways, stitching together the country’s length and breadth. While China in the 1980s and early 1990s was characterized by the break up of the communes, the “responsibility system” and a rural resurgence, the more resent trend has been for the cities to outstrip the farmlands in the pace of development, with a widening urban/rural income gap and the migration of tens of millions of itinerant workers to China’s cities. Nevertheless, new two and three story farmhouses are seen throughout the countryside and county-level towns are thriving. This is all reflected in the recent tragedy surrounding the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan. I’ve been in many similar areas in China and construction standards are not uniformly adhered to. Especially during the early boom years of the late 1980s and 90s many corners were obviously cut. China builds with brick, concrete and tile. In the rugged, mountainous region of Sichuan, where towns have populations in the tens of thousands, vs. the few hundred you’d find living in similar areas sate-side, it’s no wonder that casualties were high. For China is no paradise. There are inequalities and abuses that occur. And the citizenry can be scathing in their criticism of authorities in power. Many schools that cater to the less privileged collapsed during the earthquake, killing thousands of China’s daughters and sons. This should never have been allowed to happen. But China responded as one. The whole country rallied and troops and other first responders rushed to the rescue. State leaders, especially Premier Wen Jiabao, took personal command and were camped on the scene, consoling the victims. Concerts were held nationwide to raise funds and a lively competition ensued as China’s newly wealthy celebrities were challenged to contribute large sums of money to aid the relief effort. Foreign help was solicited and welcome. This was truly the New China functioning at its best.
To be continued…
To be continued…
Monday, May 5, 2008
Hillary Clinton's Fascistic Religious "Connection"
For 15 years, Hillary Clinton has been part of a secretive religious group that seeks to bring Jesus back to Capitol Hill.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Another victim of the inquisition
Be it suicide or murder the death of the so-called “DC Madam,” Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is a tragedy. To think that consensual sex between adults is still considered a criminal offense in our society is nearly beyond belief. Like the criminalization of drugs, the criminalization of adult sex allows abusive practices to develop and flourish. The drug dealer and the pimp are manifestations of criminalizing normal human behavior. People have been utilizing psychotropic drugs for millenia as a means to alter states of consciousness for both religious and purely hedonistic reasons. Prostitution in various guises has been an integral part of human society from time immemorial. These are human behaviors that must be accepted but regulated to ensure public safety.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Religion in the Military
Here's a recent New York Times article about a free-thinking soldier sent home from Iraq because of threats leveled against him from religious soldiers. NYT article
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Democrats' Religion "Debate"
In case any of you missed it, like I did, here's a transcript of the April 13 "religion debate" between Clinton and Obama. (Actually it wasn't a debate; they answered questions separately.)
Like the ABC debate more recently, little of substance flowed from this media creation. Questioners asked about the candidates' beliefs and how they might influence their decisions, but they clearly knew there was little to gain that night and everything to lose by a verbal slip-up or perceived insult to the faithful. If either candidate harbors any doubts or anti-religious beliefs, they certainly weren't going to air them on the road to the Presidency.
The fact that a much lower portion of Congress admits to being non-theists (just over zero percent)
So both Democrats carefully walked that wide line between not appearing as blindly religious as President Bush and not saying anything significant that might offend (or challenge) the assumptions of anyone.
Clinton's answers seemed more vague and focus-group tested ("I think it's important that we make clear that we believe people are people of faith because it is part of their whole being..."), yet both candidates' answers seemed rather incredible and inconsistent with a belief that I would suspect both Clinton and Obama hold - that human suffering suggests the absence of a loving God, and an hour praying for mercy is less fruitful than an hour working to relieve the suffering that persists regardless of his existence.
Though the audience laughed during some of the lighter moments - e.g., Obama: "And should it be part of God's plan to have me in the White House, I look forward to our collaboration." - no one laughed at one of the truly amusing moments.
The questioner asked how Obama would respond if one of his daughters asked whether God really made the world in six days. Obviously aware that the idea of a six-day construction timeframe for the Earth is preposterous, he hedged that they might not be true "24-hour days." Yet he saw nothing fantastical about telling his child that an invisible lord created the entire universe.
Of course, Obama also said that the story of God creating the Earth "is fundamentally true." I didn't see the video - perhaps when he said the word "fundamentally" there was a twinkle in his eye.
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