Chinese Authorities Arresting Critics

According to these reports in The New York Times, Chinese authorities are more or less systematically detaining critics, notably artists and writers. Prominence seems no longer to afford any protection, as the regime has detained even the very visible artist Ai Weiwei. (This helpful post at The New Yorker provides some context. This is not the first time he has had run-ins with the authorities - you can find a digest here at The Guardian.)

Lessons of Wikileaks

A system of free expression and other political rights is a pubic good. That means that for most participants in that system - say, corporations - there always is a powerful incentive not to pay the costs required to sustain that good. So when, as Paypal reportedly has admitted and other companies predictably soon also will*, the U.S. Government pressures them to toss commitment to free expression overboard, they will do so with alacrity. Principle goes by the board quickly when profits or legal exposure seem threatened.

The problem is that as Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, Amazon, Everydns.net and PostFinance (the Swiss bank handling funds for Julian Assange's legal defense fund) cut services to Wikileaks, they are acting on the government's allegation that Assange and/or Wikileaks may have committed a crime. To date there are no actual legal charges, let alone convictions in the fracas. And while Joe Lieberman is stomping around demanding that we simply dispense with the first amendment altogether it is not at all obvious that Assange and his compatriots have actually broken any law.

I am not big on conspiracy theories. But as the corporate world capitulates to government demands like this, I am tempted to reassess that propensity. And I wonder why it is that the companies are not nearly so interested in falling into line on say, tax compliance or environmental protections or whatever when the government stops by and says 'pretty please.'

It is important to note that not all the companies that the U.S. Government is pressuring in the anti-Wikileaks campaign have capitulated. According to this report The Guardian, the Swiss firm Switch, which now hosts the Wikileaks web site, is resisting the pressure. Just when one starts to think that all corporations are simply craven here comes a surprise.
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Update (later that same day): *I highly recommend this post by Henry Farrell - who, unlike me, actually knows a lot about this general topic of government interference with the Internet - over at Crooked Timber. No need to take my data free speculation for anything more than what it is.

There is an interview with Margaret Atwood . . .

Margaret Atwood. Photograph © Lluis Gene / AFP / Getty.

. . . here at The Guardian. In the course of the conversation Atwood nicely notes the central role of creativity and imagination in both art and science. She seems to have a clear-eyed view of political leaders, but it is perplexing to think about the opposition she seems to see between environmentalism and political protections for humans.

"It's become a race against time and we are not doing well. The trouble with politicians [at events like the Copenhagen summit of 2009] is that no one wants to go first, go skinny dipping and take the plunge. Oh, and then you have people arguing about fatuous things like the environment and human rights. Go three days without water and you don't have any human right. Why? Because you're dead. Physics and chemistry are things you just can't negotiate with. These, . . . these are the laws of the physical world."

The opposition cannot be anywhere near that stark, and Atwood herself knows it. Here is her view of the environmental problem:

"We shouldn't be saying 'Save the planet'; we should be saying: 'Save viable conditions in which people can live.' That's what we're dealing with here."

Just so. And the "viable conditions" necessary for human flourishing include matters like robust, enforceable rights and principles, claims that people can make - that they can use - in the face of feckless or predatory political leaders or of exploitative, oppressive political-economic conditions. It seems to me that the task of implementing (institutionalizing) such claims requires just the same sorts of imagination and creativity. Only this time the domain is politics. The fix that Atwood rightly calls for is not, in other words, going to be technological in the narrow sense. We don't need to save "viable conditions," we need to create and sustain them.

Keeping Your Eye on the Ball: Burma

Harn Lay (2010). Photograph © Platon, for Human Rights Watch.

It has been roughly a week since the military junta in Burma released Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. At the time I noted here that while this was a welcome turn of events, it represented a quite minimal step by the authorities. There are many prisoners being held and many others who have been driven into exile. Cartoonist Harn Lay is among the latter group. He has been in exile in Thailand since 1988. Human Rights Watch has commissioned photographer Platon to portray some of the many others who have born (and continue to bear) the brunt of military rule in Burma. You can find the results of his work on this project here.

The upshot? It is important that we outside of Burma continue to speak out against the junta and its authoritarian policies. And it is more important still to devise policies that might bring pressure to bear on the junta. Many observers think that is impossible given their intransigence. For example, here are remarks (part 1, part 2) made by Amartya Sen at this conference coordinated by Human Rights Watch last month. What is called for is not just moralizing, but concerted political action.

Indifference to Democracy

"The international aid system has a dirty secret. Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, the nations and organizations that donate and distribute aid do not care much about democracy and they still actively support dictators. The conventional narrative is that donors supported dictators only during the cold war and ever since have promoted democracy. This is wrong.

[. . .]

In any case, dictators have received a remarkably constant share—around a third—of international aid expenditures since 1972. The proportion of aid received by democracies has remained stuck at about one fifth (the rest are in a purgatory called “Partly Free” by Freedom House). As for US foreign aid, despite all the brave pronouncements such as the ones I’ve quoted, more than half the aid budget still went to dictators during the most recent five years for which figures are available (2004–2008)."

This, from William Easterly, "Foreign Aid for Scoundrels," NYRB (25 November 2010). So, why the discrepancy between this pattern and what economists like Amartya Sen and Dani Rodrik and Pranab Bardhan would tell us about the ways democracy contributes to development? And, worse, why the discrepancy between this pattern, and the neo-conservative blather about spreading democracy by waging illegal wars?

Nobel politics and Liu Xiaobo

Liu Xiaobo. Photograph: Liu Xia.

I have posted here several time about Liu Xiaobo, currently imprisoned Chinese regime for his political activities. Today has won the Nobel Peace Prize. You can find reports here and here. I think this is a very worthy choice.

There has been a relatively high visibility campaign on Liu's behalf over the past year. Most notably, a group of prominent political figures circulated this statement, with another group following with this letter, publicly urging the Nobel committee to award the prize to Liu. The campaign has itself reportedly prompted an extremely negative response from the Chinese government. And it generated conflict among Chinese dissidents, with some endorsing the candidacy with others opposing it. With all due respect, I think the opponents are shortsighted. What is at issue here is not Liu's personality - whether he is flawless, a saint rather than a political actor - but the extension of democratic principles in the face not just of authoritarian politics but of market forces as well. On this point I recommend this essay by Chinese novelist Ma Jian. And disagreement is just what those principles countenance. In a sense the Nobel committee has created some political space. To the extent that the Chinese people are able to get the news it, of course, offers them encouragement. But the prize can and should be seen not just as holding the Chinese government to account but also, and importantly, as placing pressure on "our" democratic governments to endorse their own principles by speaking out on the prize. It will be interesting to see if any intrepid Western leaders take advantage of the opportunity the committee has afforded them! Any leader who speaks out would not just potentially jeopardize relations with an important trading partner, but open whomever speaks out to scrutiny of their own political practices. I am not holding my breath. Are you?

Daniel Hernández-Salazar ~ Memoria de un ángel ("Memory of an Angel")

I have, on a couple of occasions, posted on the work of Guatemalan photographer Daniel Hernández-Salazar. You can find those posts here and here. I think his work is remarkable for the way it traverses conventional photographic genres - art, documentary, forensics, photojournalism; because it ignores the boundary between each of those genres and politics; and because he insists on pushing for international recognition of the Guatemalan genocide beyond the local or regional. While I worry about this third aspect of his work - in particular, I have concerns that it may transform what in Guatemala is a truly and deeply political undertaking into a less pointed humanitarianism when he moves his work to distant locations - I nevertheless find his angel a powerfully evocative image.

Having said all that, I received an email from Hernández-Salazar late last week calling my attention to his blog and specifically to this post he has made (Spanish/English) on his more recent installations and interventions at the memorials to those who perished at the Nazi extermination camps at Treblinka, Plaszów, and Auschwitz. I still have my qualms; but I also admire Hernández-Salazar and his work immeasurably. I hope you will visit his blog and see his new works.
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P.S.: You can find Daniel Hernández-Salazar. 2007. So That All Shall Know/Para que todos lo sepan. University of Texas Press, here.

Their Criminals, and Ours

"China has no 'dissidents' . . . There is only the difference
between criminals and those who are not criminals."
~ Ma Zhaoxu, Spokesman Chinese foreign Ministry

This is a remark, reported here at The Guardian, by a Chinese government official commenting on the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo. It might seem comical to hear regime mouthpieces, with a straight face, parsing words in hopes of rationalizing their oppressive actions. But, as I have noted here repeatedly, it makes a difference. It makes a difference to individuals like Liu Xiaobo. It has consequences for the debasement of language and thereby of politics. And it does not, of course, happen only in those despicable far away authoritarian places like China. After all, just this week David Margolis, an official at the U.S. Justice Department, engaged in the very same practice. He announced that when John Yoo and Jay Bybee flouted - systematically and knowingly - domestic and international law in their quest to rationalize the torture of people being held in U.S. custody under suspicion of partaking in terrorist activity they simply exercised 'poor judgment' instead of professional misconduct. The distinction Margolis draws basically is between being morally obtuse and being legally culpable. The news reports are here and here. We don't have war criminals in the United States, we just have eager, if slightly flawed, public servants operating under circumstances of extreme stress.*

Just to be clear about the political consequences of all this - Margolis not only lets the Bush minions off the hook here, he gives cover to the 'let's ignore the past and hope for the future' strategy that Obama is pursuing on this matter. And, not to be overlooked, he allows countries like China to continue thumbing their noses at sanctimonious rhetoric from Americans.
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* But of course, as subsequent news reports make clear, we have dramatically incomplete record for making that assessment because large numbers of official emails to and from Mr. Yoo during the relevant time period mysteriously are missing and unrecoverable.

P.S.: And if you want to see that this language game is being played not just in the halls of justice but in the mainstream media, see this post and this follow-up by Glen Greenwald at Salon.com . . . We don't have Terrorists in the U.S., we just have deranged 'tax protesters.' (Meaning, presumably, that we cannot torture the latter if they are captured?) Just ask the folks at Newsweek. Pretty remarkable!

Liu Xiaobo - Update

Well, the Chinese authorities have said "No, We really mean it!." According to this report in The New York Times an appeals court has upheld the guilty verdict and prison sentence recently imposed on Liu Xiaobo. While this would be troubling if Liu had simply been exercising his individual right to free speech, it is to my way of thinking especially problematic insofar as his "subversive" acts involved composing the list joint demands that have appeared under the title Charter '08. In short Liu and the other signatories top the Charter are not just demanding democracy in some future China, but acting democratically in the actually existing China. The report in The Times makes plain how difficult and necessary such prefigurative action remains - it notes two other cases, those of Huang Qi and Tan Zuoren, who independently have been convicted and imprisoned for speaking out critically about the government.