Courtesy Calculated Risk

Fortunately, there is some hope. Obama has publicly humiliated Geithner by taking the Strategic Economic Dialog away from him, and giving it to Clinton. I am an optimist, but I want to believe this is part of the unwinding of Geithner’s portfolio.

Full Battle Rattle would be better named The Battle of Medina Wasl. Medina Wasil is not a real town, but rather a simulation at Fort Irwin, “The World’s Premier Trainign Center for the World’s Finest Military.” Bush visited the National Training Center during the production of the film, but after the main filming, allowing clips of this event to be included:

The film concerns a two-week training simulation. The four ‘sides’ are townsfolk, a Blue Force, a Red Force, and controllers able to inject events. Some injected events (such as a Sunni-Shia wedding) go quietly, while another escalates to a massive Red Force assault. As the townsfolk repeat their roles, they develop close relationships, and this adds to the realism of the situation. Moments of levity, such as the Deputy Mayor and Deputy Chief of Police angling for a promotion are balanced with truly spooky scenes, such as a scene where Red Force “Anti-Iraqi Forces” (AIF) boredly play soccer in front of American troops. “It’s just fun to kill people and blow stuff up, you know,” an AIF terrorist says to the camera, simultaneously identifying the fun of playing the world’s most expensive game of laser skirmish and a motivation behind the true terrorists in Iraq.

The filmmaker’s clearly know their subject, and much is referenced through either brief camera shots or short comments. The resolution of a real drama — very real deportation hearings against the fake Deputy Chief of Police — is referenced by a single line. Likewise, a lingering shot shows a Blue Force officer reading Roger Trinquier’s Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency. The scale of the operation allows the Fog of War to control events, as seen after the situation escalates because of the inability of the Deputy Mayor to contact the commander of Blue Force.

Full Battle Rattle effectively captures two layers of events, the outcome of the fake Battle of Medina Wasil. Both of these levels are real, in a way. Google searches also reveal that soldier art (such as condemned by Matt Armstrong) on the National Training Center.

Similarly, a closing scene of the film shows the actors watching a laptop film of a (fake) beheading in Medina Wasl, immediately after viewing photos of (real) visits by the President to the town.

Full Battle Rattle is the best film produced so far of the War in Iraq, and it’s set in the American West.

Strongly recommended.

(If video does not load, Click Here for Episode 1 of the miniseries).

If you’ve read the book or newspaper serialization, or listened to the radio play or watched the TV miniseries, you know some variation of this paragraph

If you love him
Send him to New York
‘Cause that’s where Heaven is.
If you hate him
Send him to New York,
‘Cause that’s where Hell is.

Beijinger In New York (translated as A Native of Beijing in New York in the miniseries) is the story of Wang Qiming, a Beijinger who arrives in New York on a “family visit visa” in 1980 and begins working as a dishwasher the next day. There are two parts of this book, which are dramatically different in tone and purpose. The first, comprised of the first ten chapters, focuses on the establishment of Wang in New York and the founding by him of a small business. As author Guilin “Glen” Cao moved to the United States in 1980, and rapidly founded the C & J Knitwear Company, it is reasonable to assume this half of the book is a veiled autobiography. The second half of the book is a tragedy, best described as a cross between The Good Earth and There Will be Blood.

While the tragic story of Wang Qiming, this Daniel Plainview with a cello, affects the mood of the story, I read it because of its presentation of Chinese views of America during the early part of Deng Xiaoping’s economic revolution. Not only had immigration from mainland China to the United States effectively ceased in 1949, the Cultural Revolution left a shadow that influences how events are interpreted. For example, Wang’s wife interprets a cause of business success as resulting from following Mao’s advice that cadre’s should be assimilated into the masses. Further, many activities are interpreted according to Chinese customs. Bankruptcy (being allowed to not pay one’s debts) is portrayed in the same libertine terms as a drug party, while a child no longer being a dependent on income taxes is viewed with the same horror as if a Neighborhood Committee had suddenly stricken a child from a family’s record.

As a final thought, it is interesting that with one exception (a black who steals the bags of the hero and his wife on their arrival in New York City), every villain is an American Chinese. Some of this is doubtless that the American Chinese population is of more interest to Chinese readers than the general American population, and likewise that Glen Cao doubtless interacted with American Chinese quite a bit during his time here. Still, the dismay at perceived greed and materialism that this novel seems to reflect is interesting.

The book was a quick read. I started it yesterday afternoon and finished it today. Further, it complemented the television series, which replaces much of the drama and tragedy of the books latter half with a more realistic unfolding of events. Beijinger in New York is published by China Books, and available for sale from Amazon.

Laser Skirmish is outdoor laser tag. It is pretty fun. Especially when the other team seizes a golf cart and begins setting off fireworks, thus giving them cavalry and flares.

It is interesting to watch the anti-KMT, anti-CCP tendency in Taiwanese politics move from a coherent argument for self-determination (when they were in charge) to increasingly belligerent and angry.

In this excerpt, Michael Totten (who is normally great on the subject) has a guest post which, among other things, cites Edward Said:

For the colonizer, the role as a “civilizer” is implicit on defining the objects of their civilizing project Said 1979: 44-45. The resulting definitions must contain two exclusive, yet interrelated parts: A convincing demonstration of the people’s inferiority and the people’s ability to become “civilized” under colonial rule. By providing definitions for peripheral people, the civilizer provides the colonized with a set parameter of comparison with the colonizer and a reason they must become “civilized”Harrell 1996: 8-17.Often, the distance between the periphery and the center is imagined, not simply as physical space, but in terms of time. By projecting the “other” in terms of temporal displacement or “denial of coevalness”, the colonizer distances himself from the colonized Fabian 1983.

via The View from Taiwan: More on the ECFA Cartoons: Guest Post.

From Afghanistan to Taiwan, Chinese and American interests are rapidly converging. This is a good thing for those parties (such as the governments of Afghanistan and Taiwan) able to form friendships with both. For the often scattered and marginalized opposition, however, the Sino-American future presents real problems. As China and America are globalizing countries, it is no surprise that the opposition to Sino-American interests in both Afghanistan and Taiwan take up rhetoric that is skeptical of globalization and the west in general.

Today I finished The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey. This book was loaned to me some time ago by a very close friend. In truth, I was hesitant to read it because of the ghastly nature of the crime. The description of taking an X-acto knife to library books to rip out maps made me physically ill.

However, the book was a great read. The meandering narrative gave it a hallucinogenic feel, as did the attempts by the author to understand the map thief, one Gilbert Bland. While Harvey can be quite opinionated on historical questions — his denunciation of cartographic “lies” could be tempered by reading Phantom Islands of the Atlantic or even Lands Beyond — I learned a lot about John C. Fremont, and many other characters besides. Harvey clearly enjoys the world of reading maps, and has a list of cool map links on his personal website.

I love maps, and this story of someone who destroyed them for profit was a fascinating read. Like anything with maps and the unknown, it leaves a sad feeling at the end, because after the last page there is no more of this book to read.

Recommended.

Without comment

H/t to Brendan of I Hate Linux

Hopefully 5GW: A Fifth Generation of War will make at least the splash as What Every Member of the Trade Community Should Know About: Distinguishing Bolts from Screws [PDF].

The Third Writer’s Draft of our edited volume on 5GW was sent out yesterday. If you should have received a copy, but didn’t, email me or comment below. At least one email address bounced back already.

The Economist has a good video on the Nabucco Pipeline, which would circumvent Russia (a violent country in Central Asia). The name references Nebuchadnezzar, that is, Putin.

I previously reference Nabucco in posts about the Eastern Partnership and Supplier Failure.

A Side Note: I had the great pleasure to see a production of Nabucco the play in the Arena di Verona, back in 2000. I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection until now!

Even the question, “Is Taiwan Chinese?,” is deceptive. Does Chinese mean 中国, part of China, or 中华, culturally Chinese?  Recently I noted how the Olympics has dealt with the question. The question is debated in Taiwan, too.

Michael Turton (an anti-KMT, anti-CCP blogger) has two posts which addresses some of the ways the question is coming up nowadays. First, he has a post on The 2/28 Incident, part of the so-called White Terror. According to Taiwanese Nationalists, the 2/28 and the White Terror were part of an invasion of Taiwan by a foreign country at the beginning of the Cold War — an invasion which was then frozen for sixty years. According to the KMT, however, it was a regrettable, sad, but necessary effort to route out Communists and Communist-sympathizers from the last free province of China.  The CCP itself would criticize the KMT for attacking Communists, but note that the KMT’s defense of a  “government of the people” (民族主義) was as patriotic to the Chinese people as the American Civil War was patriotic to the American people.

Likewise, Turton descries naming controversy of the Chiang Kaishek Memorial Hall. Was Chiang a foreigner who grabbed an island occupied by Japan after America liberated it, a hero who kept China’s traditional of Constitutional government alive against impossible odds, or a misguided patriot whose heroic efforts to fight warlordism was undermined by his own paranoia and the corruption of those around him?

These days, the latter two questions both feed into a Chinese nationalist narrative that serves the interests of the KMT (a right-wing, corrupt, pro-market, authoritarian party that rules Taiwan democratically) and the CCP (a right-wing, corrupt, pro-market, authoritarian party that rules China through a collective dictatorship).