China

This letter was faxed to the embassy today, in anticipation of a protest next week.

Dear Sirs and Madams,

As a peace activist who has witnessed the tragedy of avoidable loss of life in war zones, I offer you and your people my heartfelt condolence for the suffering caused by the recent earthquake in your country. As a parent, I am especially sympathetic to all those Chinese parents whose children were injured or killed.

It is my desire to spare other parents this same agony that inspires me to write to you today. In December 2004, as a member of a Catholic Worker Peace Team, I visited Darfur, Sudan where I witnessed enormous harm inflicted on hundreds of thousands of civilians by the Sudanese army and its militias. We delivered food to many in pitiful camps for internally displaced people, but realized that only an end to the Sudanese government’s genocidal campaign against its African citizens could truly restore those victims to health and safety. When we asked Sudanese human rights activists what was the most effective nonviolent action we could take to end genocide in Darfur, we were told to protest at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC. We have done this several times since then, but have become increasingly aware that diplomatic efforts to end the genocide have been frustrated by the continued economic, military, and political support being given to the Sudanese government by the government of China.
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Join a nonviolent march, in Washington, DC, from the Chinese to the Sudanese Embassy on Tuesday, May 20th from 9 AM – noon. Despite international criticism, China remains the largest economic and military supporter of the government of Sudan which is widely held as responsible for the deaths or displacement of over a million civilians in Darfur. Because of China’s purchases of Sudanese oil and through China’s sales of arms to the Sudanese government, international efforts to end the bloodshed in Darfur and establish security for its people have largely failed. So long as the Sudanese regime is propped up by China, the killing in Darfur will continue.

Please gather with us at midday at the Chinese Embassy, 2201 Wisconsin Ave., NW, to hold signs which say, “China’s Support for Sudan is an Olympic Mistake” and “STOP THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR NOW.” Some of these signs have enlarged photos of victims in Darfur. We will have a limited number of t-shirts available with the same message for those who wish to join the rally and 1.3 mile march to the Sudanese Embassy at 2210 Massachusetts Ave. NW.

Please contact us now for details and for information about rides from Massachusetts (leaving at noon on May 19th), as well as about lodging in Washington, DC for the night of the 19th. With the Olympics less than 100 days away, the media and Chinese government are paying greater attention to the Darfur issue. For the sake of those Darfurians whose lives are still risk, please consider spending a half a day in the nation’s capital. RSVP ASAP!

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy
Saints Francis & Therese Catholic Worker
52 Mason Street, Worcester, MA 01610
508 753-3588
theresecw@gmail.com

Zhèng Xiè 鄭燮, commonly known as Zhèng Bǎnqiáo 鄭板橋, was a Chinese scholar of the Qīng Dynasty who fluorished during the reign of the Qiánlóng Emperor. His “Letter to younger brother Zhèng Mò” 寄弟墨書, which I translate below, was included in my textbook for classical Chinese when I was in high school in Taiwan(!). Rumour has it that the famous Lin Yutang had also translated the same letter into English, which I fear is still in copyright. In any case, I loosely translate/paraphrase here, with the benefit of having read some Karl Marx, John Seymour, and Derek Wall. It is an essay that affirms the primacy of primary production (agriculture) for self-sufficiency and food sovereignty, equitable land management, and indigenous eco-socialism in China.

Dear Mò,

I am very glad to read, in your letter of the 26th day of the tenth month, that our newly-bought field yielded 25 tonnes of grain in the autumn. Now we can be farmers until we leave this world.

I think that farmers, the primary producers, are first-class people between the heaven and the earth. In contrast, we scholar-bureaucrats should be the last among the four classes, ranking after farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Reeves:

The full-scale launch of a large, organized campaign to highlight China’s complicity in the Darfur genocide appears likely to begin soon.

This campaign has to spread.

The Guardian has a thread of reports on arms trade being investigated by the (British) Serious Fraud Office. Readers might also want to check out the Campaign Against Arms Trade.

I have not read MLK’s autobiography; nor have I read M. K. Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth or Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom.

New Left Review 42 (November/December 2006) is out. Au Loong-Yu of Globalization Monitor said therein: “Chinese peasants can endure a tremendous amount. If they do become violent and burn your property, it is nearly always your fault.”; “Filipinos and Indonesians working in Hong Kong can mobilize in far greater numbers than local Chinese, which is rather shameful.”; and

In my view, supposed gains such as in the case of Wal-Mart are largely meaningless. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions pockets union dues without providing the workforce with any bargaining power. It presents a very convincing façade to organizations such as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, but does not permit workers to speak freely to foreign delegates. The official unions are not run for the benefit of the workers. Their Western counterparts should really oppose recognition of the ACFTU, and refuse to talk to them unless they allow people independent trade union rights.

JoAnn Wypijewski’s review on Louis Uchitelle’s book Disposable Americans is one of the many articles worth reading, as readers can expect from any issue of NLR.

All this (and today’s committee meeting of the local of my trade union, the University and College Union) reminded me: Our esteemed regular contributor, Adam Neil Maximilian Villani, was in a band that wrote the hymn “God Bless the Labor Movement”. I wonder if I should get permission to reprint it here. I am not praying for the Movement nearly enough!

Greetings from the Mid-Ohio River Valley, where the excitement never stops.

Bunnie Huang, on China: “It’s also obvious (to an outsider) that the press is government controlled and biased. The writing style and headlining of the China Daily reminds me a lot of The Onion.”

The Parkersburg News isn’t government controlled, but it’s a lot like The Onion, too:

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WoMag blog? http://worcestermag.blogspot.com/ is listed in the blog log this week, but it doesn’t exist. In fact, the name worcestermag.blogspot.com is still available! What hoodlum will grab it first?

Update: Two seconds of sleuthing reveals it shoulda been http://worcesterma.blogspot.com/. Typos in URLs are serious things.

Next SMOC meeting: Monday, there’s another public meeting with SMOC about the June Street program. A judge will be the moderator.

You’ll recall that this June Street dispute prompted the classic line: “I will be the neighbor from hell.”

You gotta ask yourself: is being the neighbor from hell going to accomplish your goals, or just make your neighborhood more hellish?

Downtown Worcester: The Worcester Regional Research Bureau is sponsoring an online survey about Downtown Worcester.

Winslow Street Park: Note that the future Winslow Street Park is right next door to Ed Hyder’s market, one of the finest groceries food stores in the city.

It’ll be so sweet to grab some olives and baked goods and sit in the park with a young lady snacking and watching the passersby on Pleasant Street.

When Clive McFarlane sees this, he thinks:

. . . it is difficult to see how a park of leisure and peace can long endure in a neighborhood where many people live lives patched together by welfare, drugs and alcohol, and to which those who are lucky to escape with a college education seldom come back.

I think: “Picnic heaven.”

China slaughtering dogs over 35cm tall: Part of their one dog policy. Washington Post:

Keeping pets has been controversial in China for decades. Banned as a middle-class habit during the radical Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, dog-raising surged anew with the introduction of free-market reforms.

The government line is that this is about stopping rabies. Are bigger dogs bigger rabies risks?

Here’s the article.

It only applies to employers with over $1 billion in annual sales and stores of 90,000 square feet or more. It’s aimed at Wal-Mart, but I’m not sure who else would fall into that category; the article doesn’t say if it actually applies to any existing businesses in the city.

The wage under this ordinance is $10.00, plus $3.00 in fringe benefits. Much better than minimum wage, but still under the $15.00 (under the table, presumably) that day-laborers in Agoura Hills, California are getting.

Also, of course, it only applies within the city limits; the article notes that Wal-Mart recently opened a store just outside the boundary of the city.

Incidentally, I had no idea Chicago had 50 people on its City Council. Wow!

Rudi Cilibrasi recently came to visit me from Amsterdam. On a punt gently chauffeured by a budding political-economist, in the serene surroundings of Oxford, we had fun talking about hoarding gold and the imminent collapse of world economy, amongst other things; and I found myself saying radical things like “houses and land should not have prices”. But more practically:

In the last few years, I have found more and more affinity with Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Chinese revolution of 1911. Read the rest of this entry »