Three Body Blood Libel Narrative

 

Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem is one of my favorite works of science fiction. I have just started watching the Netflix adaptation so I do not yet have a firm opinion of it. One of the things that I admire about the book is its exploration of the insidious power of propaganda. At the beginning of the novel, we are treated to a mob of Cultural Revolution students calling for the blood of a professor for teaching the "heretical" theory of relativity. This raises the question of how one goes about creating such fanatics. We are given a possible answer later in the story with the Trisolaran video game. 

(Spoiler Alert)

The alien Trisolarans, in order to prepare the way for their invasion of Earth, are recruiting human followers. Their method is through a video game. The game appears innocent at first. What players do not realize until they are well advanced into the game is that they have been learning the history of the Trisolarans and that these Trisolarans are not fiction. Having absorbed Trisolaran propaganda, the human players come to believe that the beauty of the game indicates that the Trisolarans must be virtuous and that it would be a good thing if they took over the Earth. To be clear, what makes the Trisolarans so interesting as villains is that, throughout the series, the reader is repeatably tempted to believe that the Trisolarans actually are good at heart, despite what they do, because of their artistic talent. 

The obsessed game players come to form a society to help the Trisolarans, the Earth Trisolaris Organization (ETO). Having come to completely identify with the Trisolarians, members of the ETO turn into utter fanatics in their desire to betray humanity. They hate humanity and believe that the only way they can redeem themselves and become truly Trisolaran is by destroying the human race. As such, members of the ETO have this schizophrenic view of the Trisolarans. Much like Jewish supporters of the Palestinians, they simultaneously believe that the Trisolarans will bring about a golden age where both species live in peace together and that the Trisolarans will wipe out humanity because humans do not deserve to live.         

Considering this idea that you can create fanatics by surrounding people with a propaganda narrative, I was struck by the Time review of the series. Normally, you would think that a review of a show based on a book written in Chinese nearly twenty years ago would find no need to bring in contemporary Western politics. Instead, we are treated to the following paragraph:     

What resonates most about the series is its ambivalence about the prospect of an alien civilization annihilating humanity. The Oxford Five’s debate on the matter does seem timely, in a world where, in a state with anti-trans policies, a non-binary teen dies a day after being beaten at school; and the massacre of 1,200 people in one country is answered by the killing of 30,000 people and counting next door. Even without extraterrestrial meddling, scientists’ decades of warnings about the climate crisis didn’t prevent 2023 from setting a record for carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

One is struck by the dishonesty of the claims being made. The student in Oklahoma did not die from injuries sustained in a fight that it seems they started so it is absurd to fault State officials (or, for that matter, Chaya Raichik). Israel is not simply killing people out of revenge. They are attempting to go after members of Hamas who carried out the massacre even as the fact that Hamas has embedded itself among Gazan civilians guarantees that many innocent Gazans will die as well. The main reason why carbon emissions continue to rise is that people outside of the West, particularly in China, have been making economic progress and can now afford cars. 

The point of throwing these comments in the middle of a review is to serve a narrative that closely parallels that of the ETO. There are these terrible people, religious Christians and Zionists, who are out to murder trans-kids and Palestinians. They are also responsible for global warming. Clearly, if we do not form mobs and murder these people, the whole Earth is going to be destroyed. As with all good propaganda, the point is not to make arguments as arguments require evidence and can be countered. What you want is a narrative as you cannot argue with a narrative. It is simply what “everyone” already knows to be true  

Genocide, Ecocide, and, Christopher Columbus

  

I was recently helping a student with an assignment on putting Christopher Columbus on trial. The student struck me as reasonably intelligent and without any strong political axes to grind. My basic pitch to them was that there are good arguments to make against Columbus but he was not a simple cartoon villain. I asked them if they had ever heard of Howard Zinn, the primary influence for this particular assignment. They had not. This is in keeping with my general experience with students. They do not know who Zinn was even when copies of his People’s History of the United States are on their classroom bookshelves and posters with his quotes are on the walls. As counter-intuitive as this may sound, I do not take this as good news. These students are so thoroughly in Zinn classrooms that they are unable to imagine an alternative. Zinn as the author of a book can be countered by simply pointing out that there are other perspectives. Admittedly, this is assuming that the individual has not turned Zinn into scripture. Part of what makes Zinn so dangerous is that he presents himself as offering Gnostic knowledge as to the “true” nature of the United States. This means that, if you disagree with Zinn, you are by definition, one of the “unenlightened” or even the “Satanic” so your arguments can be dismissed out of hand.

What struck me as particularly interesting was that the text framed the charges explicitly in terms of modern concepts like genocide and ecocide as opposed to charges that would have meant something to someone in the sixteenth century like the violation of Natural Law and just war theory. Genocide and ecocide are such new concepts that we are still in the process of establishing what they even are. To be clear, this does not mean that these concepts are illegitimate. On the contrary, much hinges on our ability to incorporate them into a meaningful legal framework. This takes time and careful thought as opposed to throwing these terms around to make yourself sound sophisticated and socially conscious. 

No one has made any serious attempt to prosecute someone for ecocide so we really have no idea what such a charge would look like if brought to a court of law in the twenty-first century let alone to accuse someone in the sixteenth century, before anyone even thought in terms of humans being able to harm something as abstract as the environment. Even in the case of genocide, we are still in the beginning stages of establishing precedents to make it a meaningful crime. Contrast this with an established crime like first-degree murder, where all parties basically agree with the meaning of the charge, leaving the only question as to what the facts are. No defendant is going to get away with claiming that murder is legal.

Making sure that even the defendant recognizes that what they are accused of is actually a crime is important in order to establish a mens rea, a guilty mind. To get a conviction, the defendant needed to have known that what they were doing was illegal in some sense. For example, an essential part of the Nuremberg Trial was that the Nazi defendants knew that what they were doing was in violation of standards and norms of conduct and would invite retribution from the international community if they were caught. Otherwise, they would not have covered up their atrocities during the war and then denied any knowledge of them happening afterward. Without this, prosecutors could not have gotten around the fact that the entire trial was in violation of the principle of ex post facto as the defendants had not violated any clearly defined statutes.   

The recent ICJ charges against Israel are a good example of the problems facing anyone trying to make genocide a meaningful crime. Putting aside what one thinks about Israel’s actions in Gaza, does anyone honestly believe that this trial is really about the war with Hamas as opposed to the question of Israel’s right to exist? Until you can distinguish the two, no genocide trial is going to carry legitimacy.

Murder is a meaningful concept because it is an objective claim that can be disconnected from what anyone thinks of the rightfulness of the perpetrator’s action. For example, I may believe that it is moral to shoot an actual white supremacist like Richard Spencer and not simply punch him. That being said, such an action would be murder, however noble the cause. As such, as a juror, I would be obligated to vote guilty even though I would find myself agreeing with the defendant.

If legal professionals are still working out the details as to what counts as genocide and to distinguish it from what they personally think of the defendant, how are high school students supposed to do any better? One suspects, that part of the point of this exercise is to ingrain into students the anti-law belief that being guilty of a crime is all a matter of whether you like someone and agree with their morality. This is the natural way for humans to think. Unless it is actively educated out of people, we are left with not a legal system but a collection of warring tribes pursuing vendettas against each other. 

This use of contemporary terms to denounce Columbus is all the more frustrating because, if you want to teach students about Spanish atrocities in the New World in a meaningful way, there is no need to bring in concepts that we, let alone sixteenth-century Spaniards, do not yet understand. Instead, we can bring in concepts such as Natural Law and just war theory, which were widely understood at the time.

Sixteenth-century Europeans did not simply believe that they were superior to everyone else and could do with them as they pleased. Medieval Natural Law Theory, which Christians developed out of the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, took as its starting point that ethics, while of divine origin, was something distinct from Christianity. As such, non-Christians had rights even to the point that non-Christians could be legitimate rulers with the ability to demand the obedience of Christians. For example, Jesus implied that one should pay taxes to the Romans. While medieval Natural Law assumed hierarchy with a king at the top and everyone else their subjects, the king had obligations to his subjects. As for foreigners, the king could not simply wage war, even against non-Christians, without a legitimate cause and once he conquered a land, the people, once they submitted themselves, became his subjects whose rights must be protected.

This is a useful lens to understand Spanish activity because it quickly became clear that the actions of many Spaniards in the New World violated Natural Law and many Europeans were horrified by what they heard. This included Ferdinand and Isabella, who saw Native Americans as their subjects whom they were obligated to protect both physically and spiritually. Far be it for me to want to defend Ferdinand and Isabella who were morally responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews during their expulsion from Spain in 1492. That being said, it is difficult to hold them responsible for what happened to Native Americans.

Introducing students to Natural Law and just war theory would have the advantage of helping them get into the heads of early modern Europeans so we could have a meaningful conversation as to what it meant to move from a medieval framework to the Enlightenment without falling into the Whiggish trap of assuming that this meant going from religious fanaticism to becoming a rational tolerant individual. 

Imagine that you are an educated European hearing about Native Americans for the first time. You might ask if they have governments, property, and marriage, which would establish them as “civilized” even if they are not Christians and greatly limit the right of Europeans to colonize their lands. For example, the Japanese, whom Europeans are soon going to encounter for the first time, are, even if they are not Christians, obviously civilized and, unlike Muslims, have no history of making war against Christians. As such, beyond sending missionaries and merchants, Europeans need to leave Japan to the Japanese.

Even if Native Americans are not civilized and cannot claim ownership over their land this does not mean that they are subhuman and can be abused at will. On the contrary, it is clear that they deserve protection and Europeans should help them become civilized. It would be difficult to teach them about Christianity unless they have already embraced the framework of European civilization and understand Natural Law, without which Christian doctrines like Original Sin make no sense.

It quickly becomes clear that not all Native Americans are the same. Some are warlike and brutal, a threat to Europeans and natives alike. The obvious solution is to fight the “bad” natives and protect the “good” ones. Unfortunately, it also becomes clear that many of the Spaniards who have come to the New World are nothing better than thieves and murderers. (The fact that people in the sixteenth century violated the moral code as they understood it on a regular basis should be no more surprising than seeing people today violate the moral code as we understand it.) Acknowledging the existence of  “bad” Spaniards means that it is hard to tell the difference between the “good” natives who are merely fighting to protect themselves and the “bad” natives motivated by greed and a desire to kill. How about we send godly friers to help form native communities? The good intentions of these friars can be seen from the fact that they are risking their lives to come to America and preach the gospel to the natives without any hope of material gain. The friers will control the soldiers by reminding them of their Christian duty. The friendly natives should want to join of their own free will to learn European ways and become Christians. Those who do not want to join can assumed to be hostile.

All of this sounds reasonable until you realize that the biggest threat to Native Americans was never European guns and steel but the germs Europeans unknowingly carried. An important lesson that I want my students to take away is that millions of Native Americans died despite European good intentions. My students may mean well and their ideas might still end up killing millions for reasons that are beyond their comprehension.    

Contrary to popular myth, pre-modern Europeans did not believe that they were superior to other people. They knew better. It was the Enlightenment that pretended to have discovered the fact that China was an advanced civilization that had developed useful insights regarding ethics. This was somehow supposed to refute Christianity even though Christians had never denied this fact. One could not have been a scholastic who admired Greco-Roman thought without being aware of this. On the contrary, Natural Law is premised on the assumption that one can develop an advanced society with an ethical system without Christianity. It was because our ancient Greco-Roman pagans were basically decent people that they recognized that they fell short of the ethical principles that they knew were true. This led many of them to become Christians in the first place as they felt they needed atonement. It should be noted that Protestants are going to turn against this Natural Law tradition precisely because it so readily conceded that humans could be good, at least a little bit, without believing in Jesus. In this, Protestants ended up accidentally bringing about the Enlightenment.

The only advantage that pre-modern Europeans believed they had was Christianity, which allowed them to go to heaven. They knew that they were not more advanced than other people. It was only once we get to the eighteenth century that Europeans have a decisive edge over everyone else. It is only at this point that Europeans could even begin to ask the question of why they had this advantage and conclude that it actually had something to do with them being somehow superior. It should be noted that for Adam Smith the European advantage was solely due to social and legal systems and not any innate European abilities.

If you were a Native American running into a European who was in the process of dropping the medieval Natural Law model in favor of the Enlightenment, there might be certain advantages but also risks. Our Enlightened European may be in the process of developing a notion of human rights that is unconnected to being part of a political system. Under the influence of Rousseau, our European might look to you as a model of innate human goodness untainted by civilization or Christianity. On the flip side though, unmooring our European from Natural Law and its emphasis on personal relationships is going to limit their sense of obligation to those they have power over. If Native Americans are suffering it must be because they are "unenlightened savages," something that Europeans bear no responsibility for. Prioritizing natives as economic assets or, worse, bodies occupying useful land over souls in need of salvation is going to limit any incentive to treat Native Americans with decency. Most importantly, the Enlightenment had not yet solved the epidemiological problem that turned first contacts into death traps for Native Americans.   

 

History 111: How to Start Your Own Religion (Part I)

So I have decided to put my dissertation research to some practical use and will be starting my own messianic cult. I figure that, considering my knowledge of the history of religion I should be able to learn from the mistakes of other would-be Messiahs and prophets. (Note to readers; being a Messiah is a difficult and dangerous task to be left to those with years of professional graduate school experience.)

Now in making claims of supernatural revelation, there are three levels, forming a very wide pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, throughout history who claimed supernatural revelation. Such people stood around on street corners and were, for the most part, ignored. The more successful of them might have been mocked by those passing by or even arrested by the Inquisition on charges of heresy. We tend to call such people cranks and lunatics. Obviously, as a would-be Messiah of my talent, I think I can do significantly better than this.

The next level up were those who managed to form small groups of followers around themselves; in other words, they are cult leaders. Such people are relatively rare, perhaps a few thousand in all of history, as this actually requires, as we shall see, a very specific set of skills. Examples of such people would be David Koresh, Rev. Moon of the Unification Church, Hong Xiuquan from nineteenth-century China, who claimed to be the brother of Jesus and started the Taiping rebellion which caused the deaths of some twenty million people, and my beloved Sabbatai Sevi. Such a path, while offering minor celebrity status, carries with it a serious risk of sudden violent death due to government officials not appreciating your message of peace, love, and killing the unbeliever. Of course, Sabbatai did leverage his messianic career into a nice honorary position in the Ottoman civil service.

At the top of the pyramid were those very rare individuals who, with a mixture of talent and the right historical circumstances, managed to become the heads of major religions, with millions, even billions, of followers willing to start wars in their name, billions of dollars, and massive houses of worship to gladden the heart of even the most humble Messiah. The all-time most successful person in this elite group was Jesus, with some two billion Christians. With over a billion Muslims, Mohammad comes in second. Even I, in my great humility, do not believe I can play in the same league as Jesus or Mohammad, but perhaps I can match the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, and create a religion with a few million followers and a Broadway show.

Entering this field is about as easy as becoming a struggling artist as it does not require any actual talent or job experience. All you need to do is claim a supernatural revelation, a visit from say God, the angel Gabriel, Elijah the Prophet, Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and a message, something about peace, God's love, his kingdom is coming and everyone is going to die unless they repent very soon. While it may require no talent, it is necessary for even the most talented Messiah to start at the bottom so the position is not to be mocked. Being a divine messenger has the advantage over being an artist in that, by virtue of just the job title, you can automatically catapult yourself over all those theologians with years of theoretical experience in the field; artists have to walk in the shadow of those more established in their field. Of course, being an artist has the advantage of allowing you to sit around coffee shops, safe from the elements and the mob, instead of street corners. Note to self; make sure to do research into the feasibility of becoming the first Starbucks Messiah.     

(To be continued ...)

Alice in Pretentious Artsy Self-Satisfied Modern Bigotry Land (Part II)

(Part I)

I wanted to scream at the audience around me: don't you people understand. This society of nineteenth-century Victorian England was one in which the vast majority of people, except for a narrow elite, lived in a poverty that we cannot even imagine. Do you know what it means to have a society in which starving to death is a real issue? The only thing saving our elites from falling in with the wretched masses is the force of tradition. Anyone who plays with convention is pulling at the spider's web that keeps not only them feed but everyone around them. I would like to see you tolerate such a person. This was particularly true for women, who were limited in their labor prospects and lacked the sort of education that might have allowed them to hold well-paying jobs even if society let them. Can you imagine the position of a widowed mother, living with the trappings of wealth and its expectations, knowing that without her husband to support them there is nothing to stop her and her daughter from sinking into abject poverty? And by poverty we do not mean food stamps, but the slow demise over years due to malnutrition and disease as you work yourself to death. The only thing saving this person is the prospect of a good match. How dare you any of you smirk or feel superior when such a person decides that whether her daughter is in "love" might not be of utter importance.

We now move from the film's pointless introduction to having Alice fall down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. My father often likes to say that comedy is the hardest genre to perform. Comedy is an either/or proposition. Either you are funny or you are not. There is no in-between or partial success. With drama you can always hope to salvage something even if the project fails as a whole. Humor is not a science; it is something that happens sometimes, but cannot be created at will. You can have genuinely talented people who get out there and, through no one's fault, the material just does not work. Without a question, there were some talented people in this production. The team of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Helen Bonham Carter is nothing to be laughed at. (Just watch Sweeny Todd.) There is no logical reason that this team should not have once again produced something absolutely magical. Except that for some unfathomable reason the material just failed to click.

This failure may have had something to do with the fact that, as Lionel put it, they tried to mix whimsical fantasy with epic fantasy. It was not enough that Alice should explore this strange and downright psychedelic world; the film also had to have her go on a quest to defeat the Red Queen, restore the White Queen to her rightful place and defeat the Jabberwocky. Tolkien just does not go with Carroll. This could have still worked as tongue and cheek. The problem is that of all comedy, I would argue that tongue and cheek is the hardest. For tongue and cheek you have to succeed on two counts. In terms of comedy, you still have to actually be funny and as drama you still need to produce characters who make sense and whom the audience connects with on a deep emotional level. One can always try to cover trash by saying that it is only meant tongue and cheek. Saying that something is meant only tongue and cheek can in no way be an excuse for bad writing. I have so much respect for people like Joss Whedon, J. K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer who use tongue and cheek and make it work. To all those who turn their noses up at their work as popular entertainment that "anyone" could do, I say give it a try.

I could not end this without saying something about what happens back on the top side of the rabbit hole once Alice comes back to her Victorian world. She rejects her upper-class twit of the year and approaches her father's old partner about a really radical business venture, trading with China. Someone needs to offer the writers a history lesson and explain that even our stuffy Victorians were up to trading with China; there was nothing radical in the nineteenth-century about such a prospect. The West even fought several opium wars to open China to western trade. Even people in the Middle Ages were imaginative enough to try trading with China. This was how we got Columbus accidentally discovering America in the first place.

I really wanted to like this movie. I was waiting for it since I heard about it this past summer. I even had a poster of it up as my desktop background. (This proved to be a mistake as some of my little Haredi cousins wanted to use my laptop and started screaming about the not "tznisudic," immodestly dressed, girl in the picture.) However much I respect the people behind this film, it was a failure and not even having it in 3-D could save it.

History 112: World War I

For the class on the First World War, in addition to the usual reading form Norman Davies, I also assigned a piece written by Ohio State’s own Stephen Kern. Kern examines the role of the nineteenth century communications revolution, particularly the telegraph, in the breakdown of diplomacy in the summer of 1914. Kern argues that the new speed in communication encouraged an aggressive style of diplomacy built around extreme ultimatums; comply to all of our demands within the next week or we will declar war.

1. Was WWI avoidable? For example, if all these alliances hadn't been made, would it have remained a small conflict?

The interesting question is did these alliances make war inevitable. Once alliances were being made everyone had follow suit or risk being vulnerable. What we have here are a lot of good intentions gone completely to pot.


2. The July crisis seems like something that could never have happened without the new technologies allowing rapid communication, but at the same time it seems like rapid communication should allow for better negotiating due to the fact that it doesn't take days to relay messages from one side to the other. Perhaps the time delays for slower communication methods allowed for a cool down period, but they could also allow for more time to prepare for war during the process, so how significant is it really that new technology allowed increased speed of communication between the various sides? This is leaving aside the issue of more widespread and public knowledge of events which I view to be a mostly separate issue, though it does tie in of course.
3. Kern said in "July Crisis" that "this telegraphic exchange at the highest level dramatized the spectacular failure of diplomacy, to which telegraphy contributed with crossed messages, delays, sudden surprises, and the unpredictable timing," (268). How can he attribute it all to the failure of diplomacy when Germany pressured Austria to mobilize troops before the ultimatum was even sent to Serbia? If blame is going to be placed, couldn't it also be placed on Germany, who pressured Austria into war out of self-interest? Or am I getting this all wrong?

The timetable for mobilization is one of the main causes of World War I. The general staffs of all the countries involved had detailed war plans in place and everyone knew that the other side also had detailed plans. Everyone knew that victory depended on who could get the first jump, that precious day or two to get their armies in motion. This being the case no one could afford the luxury of sitting back trying to negotiate and make the good faith effort for peace.
The question of German responsibility is quite real. Part of the problem is that because the Versailles treaty went to such extremes it has become common to accept the German apology that everyone was equally responsible. Without question Germany was the aggressor in this war. Their biggest sin being that they trampled over Belgium’s neutrality; a treaty that they themselves had signed on to. Kern, if I am not mistaken, does acknowledge the aggression issue. The German high command made the decision to push for war based on the calculation that by 1917 Russia would have completed its rearmament program, making German war plans obsolete.

4. I was wondering, why are the telegram messages in our reading so short? Were all telegrams short? And if so, is there a reason for this? Perhaps they paid for telegrams based on the number of words? It seems like to me, longer messages would be more appropriate in determining whether to declare war or not!

Telegrams are electronic messages sent across wires using Morse code. The process is expensive and every word costs money. Think of telegrams as an early version of text-messaging; they encourage a similar thought process. Last I checked the consensus about texting is that it does not exactly encourage responsible behavior. Imagine Kaiser Wilhelm texting Czar Nicholas: “WTF! Y r dead cuz." At least the leaders of Europe were not sending nude pictures of themselves through telegraph wires.


5. If Russia had no commitment to side with Serbia, why did they do it? What would make a country want war, was it stimulating to their economy, as World War II was during the depression? Or were there other factors?

Russia saw itself as the “big brother” of all Slavs. So they wished to protect their Serbian “brothers” from the Germanic Austrians. The Serbs would not usually be inclined to accept such “brotherly assistance, otherwise known as a takeover, but in this case they were in desperate need of help.

6. Why were Germany and Great Britain so protective over defending the interests of Austria and Belgium, respectively?

Austria was allied with Germany. This was in large part due to the brilliant diplomacy of Bismarck, who made a point of giving Austria a very generous peace treaty after Germany defeated them. Both Germany and England had signed a treaty guarantying the neutrality of Belgium. Germany, under the very un-Bismarck like leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm decided to ignore this very inconvenient fact and invaded Belgium. Great Britain on the other hand kept to the treaty so they came to the defense of Belgium. They were helped in this matter in that they had an understanding with France about coming to their aid in the event of being attack by Germany. How much did Kaiser Wilhelm have to antagonize people to drive even the British into siding with the French.

7. Which side was the first to use air planes in WWI and when was the first air battle?

Airplanes were already in use before World War I. World War I certainly marked the first large scale use of airplanes. Keep in mind that airplanes had, at this point, been in existence for a little over a decade so they were still highly experimental.

8. I am a little confused, In the Davies text it says Japan declared war on Germany, and Japan was an Asian associate of the allies, but Japan had issues with China, and China joined the allies. How does this work?

For one thing China did not enter the war until much later. Countries are usually very willing to put aside long running conflicts, at least temporarily, in the face of more immediate danger. So Japan and China were willing to take a break from each other to pursue their designs on German holdings.



9. In relation to all other wars leading up to America's involvement in World War I, was this a hard decision for America to make, in terms of lives to be potentially lost, man power, and resources in general?

America, for most of the war, strongly supported neutrality. Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916 based on the campaign promise to keep America out of war. This failed to take into account Kaiser Wilhelm ability to antagonize the American public with his decision to wage unrestricted submarine warfare. By the time America entered the war, the American public was gripped by a xenophobic hatred of everything German to the extent that ethnic Germans were being lynched in the streets by angry mobs.

History 112: Imperialism and the New City

1. The readings on the Belgian Congo show that what was going on was freely admitted to be a horrible situation. Was anything done to change this after the printing of these two articles?

The main problem with the Congo was that it was under the personal control of King Leopold II of Belgium so he was free to do as he wished. No series action to remedy the situation is done until Leopold II was removed in 1908, several years after the pieces discussed in class.

2. Where these atrocities in Belgian Congo committed based more on orders of elected or crown-appointed officers or whether it was more of the appointed bureaucracy who carried the real responsibility for these actions?

When assigning blame for an atrocity one is usually faced with two different types of defenses, from the bottom and from the top. Those at the bottom will claim that they were just following orders. If one were to follow this logic the blame would go all the way to the top, in this case, Leopold II, and will remain solely with him. The defense from the top will claim that what happened was simply a matter of soldiers at the bottom getting out of control. The classic example of these two defenses is the Nuremberg trial with Nazi Germany. In the case of the Congo, as with Nazi Germany, there is clearly enough blame to go from top to bottom. This includes not just the European officials but the native soldiers who carried out many of the massacres as well.

3. In the Congo reports, why was so much of the abuse inflicted on women? I understand the populating factor, but is this when genital-mutilation started happening to women?

To the best of my knowledge female circumcision is a practice that goes back long before this and appears in many cultures. Women are useful targets because they are seen as defenseless. Keep in mind that a rampaging army is full of young men out to rape anything with a skirt on; that means women.

4. I was a little confused on the China situation. In the Davies text it says China wasn't sought after for control like Africa. Why was this? If they could not rule over China what were their intentions there?

China had a long history of imperial rule. The Chinese state might have been corrupt and grossly incompetent, but at least they had some sort of government that Europeans would recognize. China has a far older political tradition than any European state. Statehood is something that European governments were going to respect for self-interest if nothing else. If you are the head of a European state you do not want to send the message to your people that states with long-established political traditions could be casually overthrown. Keep in mind the long list of political revolutions that have engulfed Europe over the course of the nineteenth century.


5. Was spreading religion (i.e. Catholicism) ever part of the original plans to establish colonies?

The countries leading the new imperialism are either Protestant, as with England and Germany, or secular, like France. So spreading Catholicism does not play a major role. There is certainly a strong missionary drive, but it is not nearly comparable to the imperialism of the sixteenth century.

6. The description of Paris's endless melancholy smog is an aesthetic criticism. Was there any awareness of the environmental and public health dangers of smog? If there wasn't, when did this become a governmental concern?

During the nineteenth century there is a major scare over miasmas, pockets of bad odors, being a threat to public health. This was a major driving force behind the nineteenth century drive for cleanliness. The irony of this is that this whole panic was built around faulty science. There is nothing intrinsically dangerous about bad odors.

A Call for Buddhist Jihad

Apparently, South Africa has decided not to grant the Dalai Lama a visa for the upcoming peace conference this week. As reported by CNN, the South African government is concerned that allowing the Dalai Lama would shift the focus away from the upcoming World Cup and to China, which South Africa has no interest in offending.

To move away from inanity of all this; obviously, a peace conference where a game of soccer is more important than the suffering of millions of people at the hands of an authoritarian regime is not much of a peace conference. This is the same South Africa that hosted the Durban conference on racism and we know how much that had to do with racism. Are we seeing a pattern here? I would actually like to focus my criticism here on the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is one of the truly great spiritual leaders of the world (everything that the Haredi gedolim are not). That being said, this incident is just one further example of something that I have often said, that the Dalai Lama is a rather pathetic creature. His continued decision to put his pacifist scrupulous over pragmatic reality has made him completely irrelevant and has cost his people a country.

In the lead up to last summer’s Olympics in Beijing (which I wanted America to boycott) many Tibetans rose up in revolt against the Chinese. The Dalai Lama not only denounced the violence and threatened to resign he even refused to call for a boycott of the Olympics. I am reminded of a different group, the Palestinians, which took a different attitude toward the Olympics. During the 1972 Olympics in Munich, members of the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September kidnapped and murdered Israeli Athletes. This did not harm the Palestinian cause on the contrary within several decades Yasser Arafat was on the White House front lawn being handed a Palestinian state. Arafat even received a Noble Peace Prize for his efforts. Where would the Tibetan cause be if only the Dalai Lama was willing to put aside his moral scruples and become a terrorist like Arafat? What if this past summer the world had witnessed Buddhist suicide bombers crashing China’s glorious opening ceremony? What if images of China’s adorable “under sixteen” women’s gymnastics team having being beheaded were seen across the internet? I am sure the world would have expressed its moral indignation, but soon there would be a call by modern liberals to understand the root causes of these acts of terrorism and the frustrations of Tibetans and those of the Buddhist faith as China continued its cultural hegemony over them. To help this along, Buddhist “militants” could extend their reach beyond China. Why attack China and ignore countries like the United States whose love for cheap manufactured goods supports Chinese rule over Tibet? It would take just a few embassy bombings and some attacks on American soil before the United States would begin to rethink its trade deals with China.

Under such circumstances, the Dalai Lama would not be lacking a visa to come to any peace conference in South Africa. I suspect he would be made the opening speaker. He could harangue the Chinese for their oppression and call for the end of the cycle of violence as the nations of the world would rush to pledge money and support for his Tibetan state. Those who proved to be the most compliant would be able to count on being spared the wrath of the Buddhist Jihad.
I wished we lived in a world where terrorism was not rewarded; where any cause that was tainted by adherents who turned to terrorism would be forced to the back of the line particularly if this was terrorism targeted against civilians. In such a world, Palestinian terrorism would have gotten the Palestinians nothing and we might actually have peace in the Middle East with the states of Israel and Palestine living together side by side. In such a world a man of true moral courage such as the Dalai Lama would be rewarded for his decision not to turn to violence with a peace conference where peace actually did come before soccer and where he could arouse the world’s moral indignation against China causing countries such as the United States to decide that the freedom of the people of Tibet was more important than Chinese manufactured products.

Until we live in this world my advice to those with a cause, whatever the cause might be, is to turn to terrorism. Blow up some buildings, kill some people, the more grisly the deed the better. Until we live in a world where modern liberals no longer fall over themselves to make excuses for those who turn to violence, taking attention away from those who do not use violence, than terrorism must be the choice of every reasonable and rational person.

My Optimistic Scenario for the Next Four Years

So the election has come and gone and as expected John McCain lost and Barack Obama won. I supported McCain and continue to have serious reservations about Obama, both in terms of the American economy and in terms of Israel. The Democrats now control the presidency and have greatly strengthened their hold over Congress and the Senate. The radical left is triumphant and no doubt they will push their advantage for all it is worth. That being said I am willing to be cautiously optimistic. For one thing, despite my disagreements with Obama, I respect the man; he has always struck me as a highly intelligent individual who, despite his personal liberalism, honestly desires to reach out and cut across the traditional ideological lines. Here is my optimistic scenario for the coming four years.

I do not believe that Obama is going to turn tail and run neither in the War in Iraq, specifically, or in the War on Terror, in general. Obama has nothing to lose and everything to gain from pursuing an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East. If he fails it will be blamed on the Bush administration and if he succeeds he will be able to take the credit for himself. I suspect that the Left in this country and the European Union will be far more willing to support an aggressive foreign policy now that it is no longer the Bush administration taking the lead. Obama may, in fact, be better suited than George W. Bush to pursue an aggressive foreign policy because he will not be caught up in the us versus them in the liberal establishment trap; Obama will have no need because the establishment will be on his side. Just as it took Richard Nixon to go to China so to it might very well require an Obama to fight the War on Terror.

Personally, my number one reason for supporting Republicans is in order to make sure that strict constructionist judges are appointed and to stop Liberals from appointing activist judges who will reinterpret the Constitution to give Liberals everything they fail to get through the democratic process and call it a "civil right." The two best things President Bush did in his eight years in office was to appoint John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Obama defiantly will try to appoint activist judges. I do not think he will be able to too much damage. The only justice who is likely to step down over the next four years is John Paul Stevens, one of the courts most liberal members. We can assume that, one way or another, we will still have our four conservative judges (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito) and one judge (Kennedy) who usually can be relied upon.

Hopefully, Obama can be relied upon to do something stupid that will not do too much damage but will help bring about a Republican comeback in 2010 and even allow them to take back the White House in 2012. I am thinking along the lines of him going back on his campaign pledge not to raise the taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. I am really keen for him to fulfill his campaign promises to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which will enshrine Roe vs. Wade into Federal law, and support equal pay laws for women. These things should be enough to alienate the American center over the next few years, particularly as their anger toward Republicans cools.

Meanwhile, the Republicans can take the opportunity of this well-deserved defeat to take stock of their situation. This defeat may serve as a badly needed intervention to save them from themselves and maybe get them back to things like small government. I think there is little chance that the Republicans could ever have changed on their own without some disaster of Obama proportions. Of all the disasters that may have struck the Republican Party, I could imagine worse than an Obama presidency.

Hopefully over the next few years we can put together a Republican Party that we can be proud of.