WhirledView

HOW ABOUT A VIRTUAL PEACE CORPS?

By Guest Contributor Joan Wadelton

(WV editor - Patricia H Kushlis' comment:  It seems to me that many returned Peace Corps volunteers would be delighted to have the opportunity to teach and engage again with people in their countries of service over the Internet whether they be recently returned PCVs whose stays were abruptly cut short because of the COVID-19 pandemic or others who returned years ago.  Joan Wadelton's proposal below is creative, innovative and would be cost effective.  I would hope that the Peace Corps leadership would consider it seriously. )  

The Peace Corps is a wonderful organization that has sent 230,000 Americans as volunteers all over the world since 1961.  I was fortunate to spend three years in Niger as a health worker, in a village away from the capital many years ago.  My Peace Corps service prompted my life-long love of Africa.

The Peace Corps mission is:

• To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Although countries with a Peace Corps presence have changed over the years, and the number of volunteers has fluctuated, this mission is as valid today as it was in 1961.

Generally, volunteers have been young adults just beginning their careers and not yet encumbered by family responsibilities.  Indeed, a look at the official Peace Corps website shows a skew toward this demographic.  A demographic that brings enthusiasm and a willingness to live in new places, get the job done, learn about a new culture and actively engage local populations.

This traditional model – with volunteers living and working in other countries -- has been productive and successful.  It has been refined over decades and should be retained.

But is there another way to accomplish the capacity building that is at the heart of the Peace Corps mission?

Yes, and that is remotely, through the internet.  In this approach, volunteers would remain in the United States and conduct their training and teaching activities online.

The Peace Corps would conduct its overseas and virtual volunteer programs side-by-side. 

How would the virtual volunteer program work?

Virtual volunteers would be hired under the same terms and conditions as the overseas volunteers (taking into account the fact that they would not be working overseas).   That is, they would be expected to work on a regular basis -- but not be paid.  They would need access to the internet and the ability to manage Skype, Zoom or similar programs as teaching tools. 

What would virtual volunteers bring to the table?

A virtual Peace Corps would draw from a broader universe of potential volunteers than the existing in-country programs.  For example:

• People who are older and more advanced in their careers – with more knowledge and experience to share – who would not normally move to another country;
• People whose family commitments prevent them from traveling, but who have a passion for sharing their knowledge;
• People who cannot easily travel, but who have always wanted to teach and learn about other countries and cultures.

Would the virtual program be consistent with the core Peace Corps mission?

Yes, a virtual program would reinforce and amplify the key Peace Corps’ mission goals, noted above.  It would also build collaborative working relationships, drawing on wide ranging expertise.

• Greater numbers of more experienced volunteers would add to the capacity building potential of the Peace Corps.
• A virtual program would widen the pool of Americans who would be interacting with people in other countries, thereby promoting greater understanding of the United States and its values abroad.
• And, exposing more Americans to diverse cultures, situations and peoples would strengthen US understanding of the world and enhance our interactions with it.

How would the virtual program be managed?

The virtual programs would be managed alongside existing in-country programs.  Just as with the in-country programs, Peace Corps offices overseas would work with host country officials to identify programmatic and training needs.  Peace Corps recruiters in Washington – dedicated specifically to the virtual program – would identify appropriate candidates to address those needs. 

What would be the administrative and logistical issues?

To implement a virtual Peace Corps program, Congress would need to appropriate additional funding and staff.  However, as a virtual program would not require volunteer travel and housing expenses, a large amount of new money might not be necessary.

The host countries would be responsible for providing adequate internet access and classroom facilities to support the virtual volunteers’ teaching needs.  They would not be able to charge for any training provided by the US government and would have to absorb all the associated costs.  Host countries would also be responsible for identifying gaps in local capacity that virtual volunteers could fill.

What would the host country get out of the virtual program? 

The universe of volunteers available on a virtual basis is likely to be larger and more experienced than the number of Americans willing to relocate to another country.  Host countries would therefore be able to provide a broader array of training programs to their citizens.  It would also be an opportunity for host countries to forge closer, long-term ties with a wide range of US business, educationa,l civil society and technological entities.

Conclusion

The Peace Corps should transform into a two-track organization.  Peace Corps missions overseas would administer both the in-country and virtual programs.  Peace Corps headquarters in Washington would recruit for, and support, both programs.  In this way, a venerable institution could continue on its successful and traditional path, while simultaneously moving into the 21^st century.

Little Pomp and Less Circumstance

By Patricia H Kushlis

Normally – at least since WWI – an official US Presidential visit to London takes on the trappings of a festive occasion, a time to spread good cheer and camaraderie across the Pond.  Or in more troubled times, for the representatives of the two countries to discuss difficult and complex issues that affect them both:  To shore up the British-American alliance and present a united front to the world.

Not this time.  Just days before the Trumps descent upon the Royals, he was taken off balance by a nine minute very public made-for-television recap of the Mueller report by its chief author.  Mueller’s words did not clear Trump of obstruction of justice and did not state that he and/or his nearest and dearest advisors had not conspired with Moscow to rig the 2016 elections.  What it said was that there were numerous accounts of likely obstruction but that because of a Department of Justice ruling, Mueller could or would not indict him. That was Congress’ job.

What it also said was that simply because the investigation could not connect the conspiracy dots it did not mean that the dots do and did not exist.  Instead, that Mueller had been refused interviews with chief witnesses and that the written statement from Trump – likely written by his lawyers – was inadequate.  Mueller’s recap concluded with a strong warning to the US that the Russian 2016 elections interference was real and substantial and that this country needed to be preparing to better defend against worse foreign (aka Russian) cyberattacks in the future. 

Then less than a day later, a story broke about a planned coverup by US government officials of the USS John McCain at the Yokosuka Naval Base near Tokyo to spare Trump the vision of the destroyer’s name during his visit to the port.  The story, broken in the Wall Street Journal indicated the coverup had, in fact,  happened, but the Journal had jumped the gun.  The Navy brass in Japan and at Indo-Pacific Headquarters in Honolulu had nixed the hair-brained camouflage idea just in time. Trump’s visit occurred but the sailors from the McCain were prevented from attending his talk which took place way below deck of another ship in port.  This decision, in effect, spared the world from having to endure a much-videoed on deck Trump publicity stunt aka George W Bush after the supposed end of hostilities in Iraq, with the US military used as a backdrop.   

What the Navy missed scotching was the fake MAGA patches with Trump’s face on them sported by a contingent of Marines who did take part in the ceremony below deck.  This is not, repeat, not kosher regardless and the Navy needs to deal with this bit of over enthusiasm if it hasn’t already. 

After the USS McCain story had been circulating widely on the Internet and in the media, another East Asia one broke which reported that North Korean diplomats who had earlier been negotiating with Pompeo over a potential nuclear deal – or non-proliferation deal as it were – had been executed by Kim Jong Un, its fearless despot with whom Trump considers or considered his BFF, or best friend.  The reason for the four dead seems to have been their failure to deliver a Summit to Kim on his terms.  Apparently, the chief negotiator originally reported dead has now resurfaced.

With friends like this who needs enemies.

By the time Trump had returned to his golf game in the US and to pick up a change of clothes and maybe a new wig in preparation for his European swing, the advance media reporting had already focused on his London visit which actually began this morning.  This gives the reporters from Asia a bit of a respite.

Yet before his Heathrow arrival, Trump had already hurled insults at the UK’s newest princess and the newest royal baby still less than a month old, the popular Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, and even the beleaguered Theresa May who had issued the invitation in 2017.  Mistake.  But then she didn’t ask me.

At about the same time as his latest round of insults, Trump blundered into British internal politics by strongly backing his buddies Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage for leadership positions and loudly supported Brexit despite its divisive effect on UK politics not to mention the standard admonition that representatives of foreign governments should keep out of another country’s domestic politics especially in the public square. 

Meanwhile, it’s clear that the British government despite its chaotic state, has done its utmost to minimize the Trump family visit whether for security or other reasons.  Trump may think that a helicopter ride from Heathrow to Buckingham Palace is a classy way to go, but in reality, it does three things: 

• it minimizes the visibility of hostile demonstrators –  on camera and as well as to himself – after all his approval rating among the Brits stands at a meager 21% as opposed to that of the far more popular Obama’s 72% when he was president;
• it protects Trump from a terrorist or other kind of less lethal attack - like milkshakes or fish guts - which might mess up his hair;
• and it minimizes the amount of steps required. Of obvious consideration in Trump world.

Smart move.

Tomorrow, of course, is another day. It is one devoted to government niceties, social events and a meeting as well as huge anti-Trump protests scheduled in various cities throughout the country including London, Manchester and Belfast complete with Baby Trump gracing the London skies.

What Asian foreign policy?

By Patricia H Kushlis

Overall the White House did not have a good week the week before the Olympics opened.  After a brief teleprompter read of his State of the Union address which improved his polling numbers in the short run, Trump became Trump again enraging women and many men with his defense of two accused wife beaters who he only reluctantly let go from his troubled staff.  This was compounded by Vice President Pence looking like the uncomfortable midget he is, sitting, rather than standing – like everyone else – for the joint Korean team when it appeared at the Pyeongchang Olympics Opening Ceremony.  That appearance as one team was a big deal and perhaps the first sign of a thaw in years of frozen and dangerous conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

As the Games closed, the President of South Korea indicated that the North Koreans would be interested in talks with the US. And Ivanka Trump, apparently the lone US government representative in the official reviewing section, stood respectfully as she should have upon the entrance of the joint Korean team.    Nevertheless, the fact that the administration has yet to nominate an Ambassador to this important Northeast Asian country sends a different signal. And why the president’s daughter should be meeting with South Korean leaders to discuss substantive sensitive national security issues just makes no sense.  Has this country become some kind of Middle Eastern potentate?    

Yet, for someone who had all too recently self-righteously castigated black athletes who had dropped to their knee at the singing of the Star Spangled Banner to protest this country’s racial policies under the Trump administration, Pence really should take a long hard look at his petty behavior that Friday night.  He needs to understand that pictures often speak louder than words and his disrespectful demeanor came through loud and clear on every television set and video screen at home and abroad.  

Bread and Circuses

Then, don’t forget the fanfare that accompanied Trump’s call for a military parade – presumably with him riding atop the front tank – down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Hill to the White House on July 4^th.  This now several million dollar spectacle seems to have been switched to Veterans Day.  Whether one agrees with the questionable optics or not, its costs of an estimated $30 million would be considerable and unwarranted.  What would be the purpose?  To celebrate what?  Why? The US military certainly should have better uses for the money.    

But then what isn’t new with this dysfunctional and embarrassing White House? 

If anything signaled to the world that America has withdrawn from its multi-century commitment to Asia, then Pence’s appearance at the Olympic Games opening ceremony spoke volumes.  That’s the picture that shot round the world:  a cowering Pence seated in the reviewing stand while everyone else, including Kim’s sister stood nearby and applauded the athletes in respect to the Korean national anthem.

US relations with Asia, in particular the Pacific Rim countries, had been remarkably stable for decades once we figured out that our projection of military might did not include ground intervention on a continent wracked by civil war.  That message got across to administration after administration since the end of the Vietnam war in 1975.  Until this one.  The Trump administration has done much to undermine the policies in place by previous administrations since then and it’s hard to know where to begin or whether they can be undone when this horror of a nightmare government is over.

But let’s start with lasts year’s rejection of TPP or the Trans Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade agreement being negotiated with almost all Asian countries except China.  That gratuitous and small minded decision has provided the Chinese with an easy path to far greater influence in Asia from North to South which a more coherent, nuanced and activist US foreign policy had been countering reasonably successfully.  That is, up until Trump.

Then let’s move on to Trump’s inane Twitter War with Kim Jung Un.  Turns out Kim is as much of a showman as the large Orange One and he certainly out-staged Trump on the world scene in the run-up to the Olympics.   Thank heavens neither were personally there. 

Whether the North Korean Olympics peace offensive will pay off in the long run is anyone’s best guess but Trump’s over-reliance on US military hardware alone to counter the North Koreans has certainly resulted in nothing to show – and is being promulgated at a far too large cost to the American taxpayer not to mention producing the overwrought nerves of American citizens who live in Hawaii and Guam.

But a major question still remains:  what is this administration’s policy towards Asia?  Military games played in Korean waters designed to intimidate the North Korean regime do not a foreign policy make.  The threat of increased sanctions to be applied after the Olympics won’t work either. And China is flexing its muscles over Taiwan yet again which means additional American military expenses to ensure that the island is not forcibly absorbed by its huge neighbor.

Running up American indebtedness through an ill-thought through tax “reform” which benefits the superrich at the expense of everyone else, increasing our trade deficits with China so Ivanka can market a few trinkets on the Mainland is a classic case of shortsighted, selfish transactional behavior that benefits the Chinese economy and Ivanka’s pocket book – but certainly not ours.  Ironically, since Trump took office, the US trade deficit with China has ballooned, not decreased as Trump promised on the campaign trail. and manufacturing jobs have not returned home.

The denigration of Muslins of every stripe to placate a xenophobic and largely ignorant  minority here in the US  also influences the attitudes of Muslim majority nations in Asia – in particular those in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, not to mention Muslim majority Malaysia and a restive Muslim minority in the southern Philippines.  These are island nations with which we have had strong relations for decades.   

In short, a policy singularly reliant upon the 21^st century’s equivalent of gun boat diplomacy is unlikely to succeed in the long run.  If that, in fact, is what American foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific has come to be. I’d like to know.        

The Rohingya Tragedy: Why and Why Now?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Most Western observers have attributed the ongoing tragedy in Myanmar’s Rakhine province to ethnic and religious intolerance: a Buddhist majority zealously reclaiming its land from Muslim interlopers. Is this the whole story? I don’t think so. For reasons that have received more attention in non-Western media, it makes more sense, I believe, to consider economic motives.

First, let’s agree that Myanmar’s military and civilian leaders are guilty of a thoroughgoing ethnic cleansing of the coastal province of Rakhine. Slaughter. Rape. Village burning. The terrified, desperate flight of those left alive to Bangladesh. There’s plenty of evidence for charging Burmese leaders with crimes against humanity, but the applicability of the term genocide is still being debated. Why might it not apply? Because the goal of this horrendous policy is not to wipe out an entire culture, but “only” to clear the land of its long-despised Muslim inhabitants so that big money can be made by the right people, meaning those already running the country: the military brass, drawn largely from the Bamar Buddhist majority. Think of graft and real estate deals on a scale to make even a Donald E.Trump blush.

Anyone accustomed to thinking a nation’s army should exist only for defense against foreign threats needs to understand that the army in Myanmar is very much a business enterprise with a good grip on the national wealth. Lumber, for instance. And the jade trade across the border with China. So far as I know, Rakhine, until recently, offered little of interest to anyone who didn’t live there.

That wasn’t always the case. Historically, this stretch of coastal land with trade-attracting, wealth-creating deep water ports has known Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist rulers, but the openness to the world that commerce requires ended shortly after Myanmar (then Burma) achieved independence from the British. A grim period of military dictatorship ensued. So thoroughly was an increasingly impoverished population sealed away from the world that foreign aid was largely refused even after a high casualty typhoon swept through. Only in recent years has the Army been constrained to allow a carefully limited civilian role in governance and to invite foreign investment.

At that point, Rakhine was back on the map, and soon it was attracting the attention of a rapacious military.

But first, it seems to have attracted the attention of China.

China, as I have noted elsewhere, has been developing a “string of pearls,” investing in harbor-building and port-leasing ventures creeping along the Southern perimeter of Asia and coming mighty close to connecting with—you guessed it!—the South China Sea, to which China strenuously lays claim these days. This has not filled Indian maritime strategists with glee. Rakhine, therefore, has also attracted the attention of India.

Voila! A real estate boom in the making!

So here’s what India has been up to: (1) Having already built and turned over to Myanmar a deep water port at historic Sittwe at the mouth of the Kaladan river, India now plans a Special Economic Zone 60 kilometers upstream. (2) A highway of economic and strategic importance will connect the port to the interior of Myanmar as well as to India’s landlocked, hard-to-reach Northeastern states. ( 3) Finally, there is a proposal to build a 1575 km long pipeline from the Sittwe gas field to Gaya in the North Indian state of Bihar via Mizoram and Assam. Before this vision is wholly realized, there’s much work to do, but if I were a general I’d be grabbing up that increasingly vacant Rakhine land.

As India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman noted this past February, “If Sittwe is connected with our Bay of Bengal ports [like Kolkata], a lot of trade from India can... land in Sittwe and from there go to Myanmar or CLMV.” That’s Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Road building and trade. Oh, the money to be siphoned off from big bucks contracts! Oh, the traffic to be milked for safe, rapid passage!

Meanwhile, here’s what China has been doing just 80 kilometers south of the Indian SEZ: establishing a port and setting up a Chinese Special Economic Zone at Kyaukphyu.  For what purpose? “To provide China with a direct overview of busy shipping lanes of the Indian ocean,” according to the Economic Times. Plus, equally at Kyaukphyu, “an oil and gas pipeline that connects to China’s Yunnan province.”

Thai and Japanese investors are also developing port facilities in Rakhine. And so, as the Economic Times further observes, “A great game is unfolding in the region.”

Noting all these ambitious plans and projects, Atsuko Mizuno, a Japanese scholar from Kyushu University, warned this past spring of inevitable slips between cup and lip as well as another little  obstacle. “Beyond taking a long time, there are other problems lurking for India’s planned SEZ, similar to that of the Chinese," he writes,"such as issues with relocating residents [my emphasis].”

Indeed!

Which is why I’m smelling a rat. The scorched earth retribution for two police station raids by alleged Rohingya terrorists has gone beyond any normal, rational response to such incidents. It’s been collective punishment on an indiscriminate, horrendous scale. SO: What if the “insurgents” weren’t Rohingya? What if the attacks were schemes devised to provide a pretext for seizing valuable lands occupied by politically marginal people? It’s worth considering.

North Korean Nukes: An Essential Catch-up Story

By Patricia Lee Sharpe 

I’ve known this story the way the blind men knew the elephant: generalizing from the feel of the tail, the trunk, the legs. But Jane Perlez has captured the whole animal in a New York Times front-pager entitled “Old, Tangled Alliance Keeps China’s Hands Tied.”  Yet China’s not the whole story. See how Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, the U.S. and India factor in—and, in light of those decades-in-the-making complexities, consider the options for an effective, coherent, non-blustery U.S. policy. We’re not talking deal-making here. We’re talking four-dimensional strategic thinking by serious people who understand that all lives matter.

What more can I say? Read it.  (Note: title was changed on digital edition.)

The Empires Strike Back

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Imagine waking up tomorrow and discovering that Matteo Renzi’s Rome—I mean Italy—had sent several legions—I mean an army—to recapture Brittania—I mean, England—and some triremes—I mean freighters—are heading to Carthage—I mean, Tunis—to confiscate the year’s wheat harvest.

That would seem pretty weird, wouldn’t it?

But isn’t it equally bizarre to find that Turkey is justifying its participation in the effort to drive ISIS out of Mosul not only on the pretext of protecting itself from potential PKK safe havens in the Kurdish Autonomous region of Iraq but on historic grounds. Once upon a time the Ottoman Turks controlled all the Middle East, including Egypt—Watch out, President Sisi!—and much of southeastern Europe. Meanwhile, says Nensur Akgun, director of the Global Political Trends Center in Turkey: “A century ago [Mosul]was Turkey.” But alas! Turkey chose the wrong allies during World War I, leaving France and The U.K to squabble over the territorial spoils that seem to be up for grabs once again.

Meanwhile, China is belligerently devoted to claiming every islet or outcropping of rock in the South China Sea, plus every cove from which a Chinese fishing boat may have brought up a catch over the past several millenia. So watch out, Indonesia! Some Javan rulers once paid tribute to a Chinese emperor. Of course, Beijing is still trying to digest Tibet and Xinjiang, both of which had the misfortune of coming under Chinese control for various discontinuous periods in the past. But maybe Comrade Xi should be a little more circumspect. Some extraordinarily well-preserved, 4000-year-old Caucasian mummies dressed in European textiles have been disinterred from the Taklamatan desert. Surely the European Union can claim rights to this portion of the old Silk Road.

And need I mention Vladimir Putin’s appetite for reclaiming truant SSRs? Perhaps he forgets that Sweden has an earlier claim to the Baltic nations. Finland, too, was Swedish, once, with plenty of Swedes left to testify. Fortunately Sweden prefers cooperation to annexation these days. Russia, meanwhile, has been nibbling away at Georgia and Ukraine with some success, so when Putin dropped in on Tashkent after the Group of 20 meeting in China, he clearly expected Uzbekistan to behave like a Russian fief again. The feedback I got from the locals: no way! They’ve been corrupted by 25 years of independence, as Moscow no doubt perceives it.

There are some other possibilities that haven’t surfaced yet. Brexit may actually happen, but isn’t it time for the sun never to set on the British empire again? Surely India sees the glory in that.  But wait! There’s a prior claim on India. The Timurid descendants of Mongol conquerer Genghis Khan (b.1163) ruled in Delhi for centuries. In fact, the octopus-like Mongol empire encompassed Russia, took in Persia, threatened medieval Europe and controlled China as well.  Has Mr. Xi forgotten this?

And maybe we shouldn’t wait for ISIS to invade Spain. Since Muslims were ruling much of the Iberian peninsula before Ferdinand and Isabella kicked out the Jews, why not get the re-reconquista over without bloodshed? But wait on that, too. The Romans were in Spain before the Moors.

And this is where we began.  Don’t throw away your old maps and globes.

Dirty Old King Coal

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

It was lovely to look at.  A bold white streak caught between blue sky and blue ocean!  A long string of hotels and resorts glimmering in the sun!  We were approaching the Florida coastline, and soon I was gazing down on roofs and terraces as my flight continued due west toward the airport in Fort Lauderdale last week.  

I’m a lover of wild beaches.  Once upon a time my consciousness would have been dominated by thoughts of over-development.  Not last week.  I'd been reading of studies that show how glaciers are melting in Alaska.  Also travel writers’ effusions about a Northwest passage now open to luxury cruises.  Result for Florida: water no longer captured as eternal polar ice has already imposed higher sea levels that Miamians are finding it hard to cope with.

Walking along the beach a few days later, I came upon a yellow earthmover building a little berm in front of one property.  A three foot wall of loose sand!  How long will it last when the next hurricane arrives?  How pathetic!  Like the general response so far to the inexorable warming of the earth.

Florida's Doom

Sadly, it’s hard to imagine what Floridians, who occupy a vast, low-lying sand sprit,  can do about their very real jeopardy.  The challenge of protecting endless hundreds of miles of properties—hotels, resorts, homes, whole cities—makes the task of protecting New Orleans seem like a Legoland game. 

No doubt some of the global warming that’s underway is downright cosmic and beyond human control.  But much has been caused by the industrialization that has so enormously improved our standard of living—and the good news today is that humans can enjoy these benefits without generating the greenhouse gases that warm the earth unnecessarily. (To say nothing of lung-clogging soot.)  Yes, the warming curve can be flattened, and the sooner we humans take that job seriously, the better for the life-sustaining qualities of earth.  Then what’s the obstacle to meaningful action?  Short term political and economic profiteering make it almost impossible to mobilize an effort that is much more effective, locally- and globally-speaking, than the sand-shifting of that poor little bulldozer on the beach at Ft. Lauderdale.

Maybe Floridians can’t protect the entire state from oceanic encroachment, but they can support efforts to save a good bit of the world we love.  It’s in their own interest, after all. Sooner or later, the people of Florida, like the residents of the Pacific isles, are going to need a receptive landscape to move to.  Unfortunately climate issues don’t seem to play the dominant role in Florida politics.

China Wakes Up

At least China seems to have awakened from its smoggy slumber, if only because its own citizens are beginning to demand action and China seeks civic order above all.  Efforts are being made to reduce air and water pollution, and the Chinese have invested so massively in alternative energy that Chinese products dominate the solar power industry even in the U.S.  Doing well by doing good.  Which is not to say that the Chinese don't continue to mine some particularly noxious types of coal.  And cars in Beijing had to be grounded to make the air breathable during President Barack Obama’s visit to China two weeks ago.
 
The highlight of those US-China discussions  was a disingenuously tepid climate accord focused on green house gas emissions.  Critics say it won’t accomplish much  more than what could be expected from existing declarations, treaties and agreements, but (1) it allows China and America to agree about something, which is a good thing, and (2) it forms a useful foundation, a springboard even, for broader negotiations scheduled to begin in Paris next year. Anything on paper is better than nothing.  References to democratic processes in moribund Constitutions have been known to spring alive and unseat autocrats.   

Coal Belt Politics

Among those ridiculing the Obama-Xi accord is the soon-to-be-Senate-Majority-Leader Mitch McConnell, who owes his electoral success to the support of his state’s ultra-powerful coal industry.  If any state is under the thumb of King Coal, it’s Kentucky, though West Virginia comes close.  Coal-mining pollutes rivers and streams; coal-burning pollutes the air with lung-ravaging soot and greenhouse gases, but it’s profitable enough to underwrite supporters’ political campaigns and destroy the electoral chances of environmentally-conscious candidates.  Should the Republicans have gained control of  the White House as well as Congress if and when a climate-protecting treaty is written in Paris, don’t expect the U.S. to sign on, however reasonable or scientifically sound the terms of the accord may be.  

Perhaps Mitch should move to India when he tires (or gets kicked out) of American politics.  King Coal rules happily there, with all the usual ill effects.   Some years ago life in New Delhi was greatly improved when municipal buses emitting enormous clouds of black exhaust gave way to transport powered by natural gas, but it will take a lot more than that to make Delhi’s air salubrious, especially in the winter.  Meanwhile, the forests and waters of Eastern India are being ravaged, thanks to mining permits that are issued with no regard for the environment or the wishes of the surrounding population.  The scale of this politically-corrupt depredation is so enormous that a recent news story merited this title: “Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change.”   Read the article to learn of the horrendous impact of unrestrained mining in the area of Dhanbad in the  state of Jharkhand

Oddly enough. the article failed to mention another, equally calamitous effect of coal mining gone mad: insurrection.   A long-running Marxist rebellion in the Eastern hills of India was sparked and continues to be fed by irresponsible mineral extraction in areas inhabited by tribal peoples who value their hills and forests as essential to a way of life.  Unfortunately these people are poor and politically impotent.  They can’t compete with the coal cartels that pay for votes, influence and contracts. Hence, the seemingly endless and relentlessly expanding rebellion.

Water Wars

So far as that goes,  I am a bit surprised that the people of West Virginia and Kentucky haven’t taken to direct action to protect their beloved natural surroundings from corporate predators and land-levelers that make those bulldozers in St. Lauderdale look like so many tiny ants.  On the other hand, coal belt politicians haven’t done much to modernize these state economies.  Few alternative jobs exist and most people don’t like to starve.  

From time to time, climate experts express concerns about social unrest and violence should food supplies begin to suffer from repeated or extended droughts caused by global warming.  Globe-spanning competition for scarce agricultural resources will make the water wars of the 19th century American West look like child’s play.  It’s time to stage an irreversible coup against King Coal and replace the politicians beholden to the coal industry with representatives who know that it's cool to keep the earth cool.

         

Introverts Aren’t Losers: Re-reading Haruki Murakami’s Latest

A Review Article

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Prisms turn a beam of  colorless light into a full color spectrum. Sunshine in.  Red/orange/yellow/green/blue/violet out.  A rain- bow! No one who learns to do this in junior high science forgets the magic of it.  

Well, hardly anyone forgets, unless they become literary critics, it seems.  None of the reviewers I’ve encountered caught what’s largely at play in Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.  They've tended to see the hero as a pathetic loser, which is almost excusable.  Murakami, in his usual devious way, leads us into this trap.  Even the hero of his tale has difficulty grasping the wonder of his own talent, which takes the  form of engineering efficient railroad stations.  He may be a level-headed, practical man of science, but people depend on him to get where they want to go safely and on time.  What’s pathetic about that?  Especially considering the importance of railroads in Japan.  Bullet trains anyone?

The novel’s set up involves a group of five young people who eventually attend the same public high school in the suburbs of Nagoya.   This group of inseparable friends includes two other boys, one named Akamatsu, which means Red Pine, the other named Oumi or Blue Sea.  The two girls are sisters, Shirane or White Root and Kurono or Black Field.  The latter names seem to be outliers at first, but they are tricks of light as dramatically in tension as the notions of colorful and colorless.  One expects such modulations/complications from Murakami.

As for Tsukuru, he received from his father a curious name that means “create” in Chinese characters or “make/build,” in simpler Japanese characters, the variant deemed by papa to be less “burdensome” as a name for his son, whatever that means.  Looking back at his childhood, Tsukuru isn’t sure.  As a boy and young man, however, he fears that he is “the only one of the group [of friends] without anything special about him.”  Ao is much smarter.  Oumi is a terrific athlete. The girls are talented and beautiful.  As for Tsukuru, he views himself as a colorless,    middling sort of guy, smart but not brilliant, decent-looking yet far from film star handsome, no sportsman but not a klutz either.  Oh yes!  As a child, he liked to play with trains, a boyish obsession that turns into a profession demanding resourcefulness as well as calculation.   

Meanwhile, although the young Tsukuru often wonders why his colorful friends put up with him, he revels in the reliability of their mutual loyalty, which seems to endure even after they graduate from high school, when Tsukuru is the only one to continue his studies.  Leaving the others to do what they can in Nagoro, Tsukuru follows an engineering curriculum in  Tokyo, returning periodically to visit his widowed mother and enjoy his friends.  And then, horrors!  During a routine visit, he’s informed that none of his friends want anything to do with him anymore.  No visits. No phone calls.  No explanations.  The long expected has actually happened.   His colorful friends have  rejected him.  He falls into a debilitating depression, and his social life in Tokyo is too meager to compensate.  

Worse, the one girl who interests him won’t get serious until he returns to Nagoro and solves the  mystery behind the wall of silence.  Forced into a face to face session, Ao spills the beans.  The neurotic “black” girl, having returned from a trip to Tokyo, had told her friends that Tsukuru had raped her.  Ao admits that it was hard to visualize Tsukuru as a rapist, but the girl’s mental health was too fragile for argument.  They had to pamper her, he says, although their loyalty couldn’t protect her from being murdered some time later by an intruder in her own apartment.  This is tragic news for Tsukuru, but it’s also heartening news: he himself hasn’t been rejected—and he has made another important discovery.  His colorful old pals, while succeeding up to a point, aren’t exactly making history.  They certainly aren’t doing any better than he is.

In the closing chapters Murakami tips his hand less ambiguously than usual.  The best scene finds Tsukuru sitting on a bench, one of many along the platform of an important station.  He's watching the arrival and departure of trains, the ebb and flow of people.  Like a poet rereading one of his own very good poems, Tsukuru takes quiet satisfaction in what he does so well.  He also feels the drama and romance of the travel that he makes possible for people with errands and dreams.  No, Tsukuru is not flamboyant.  He’ll never be colorful. But he’s colorless as white light is: complete, integrated, whole.

Realizing this (though never is so many words), he’s ready to pursue the woman who wasn’t ready for him, which doesn’t mean she’ll accept him.  Murakami isn’t going to give us such easy satisfaction.  Nevertheless,  Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage isn’t the story of a dorky sad sack.  It’s a success story.  And his pilgrimage?  It’s a journey to self-understanding and self-acceptance.  

Why did so many American critics fail to see this?   Partly, I think, it’s because Murakami slyly invites the derogatory interpretation.  He depicts Tsukuru as thoroughly brainwashed into believing that only flamingly colorful extroversion is real personality.  But mostly, I believe, the critical blindness stems from the deeply-ingrained American preference for extroverts, a phenomenon that is brilliantly examined by Susan Cain in her recent book entitled  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.  Even in intellectual circles, evidently,  there’s little appreciation for quiet accomplishment.