I’m not being cynical for once. I’m well aware that we are going to lose a huge percentage of the world’s species over the next few decades, so it is, of course, arbitrary to choose certain species that we find more beautiful for whatever reasons, and save them. But so what? Cheetah’s are so cool. Let’s save them. And if we need a scientific excuse to let ourselves off off the perverbial Sophie’s Hook, I’m sure the cheetah qualifies as a keystone species anyway. But, let’s save them because they’re so cool. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to put the graphic on this here blog.
My friend used to ask, ‘Why doesn’t anyone ever want to save the krill?’ My other friend used to get enraged over the tactics Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd used to (still does perhaps) go to to save seal pups just because they were cute. His words, not mine. But I’ll say this: seal pups can never hold a candle to cheetahs in my universe. I mean, come on. Tasmanian devils are cuter than seal pups, and at least they’re endangered.
That’s what I like to call it. Remember when the teacher would punish the whole class because some punk wouldn’t admit to smacking gum? Every kid knew it was wrong - of the teacher, that is. Here’s a letter I wrote to the Taipei Times yesterday. I’m not sure they’ll print it, but I’ll stick it here too.
To the editors:
Thank you for writing a timely and sensible editorial on the escalating situation in the Middle East.
Clearly, most, but not all, people in the world find Israel’s approach to conflict offensive. The question is why. I believe that these things come down to what might be called doctrines. Israel deals with affronts to its standards in a way that is different from most other countries. As spoken in the recent film, Munich, the basic goal seems to be sending a specific message: “Don’t f**k with Israel.” But while hunting down specific terrorists might be acceptable in many people’s eyes, Israel has broadened this approach considerably since the seventies, using some pretty extreme rationalization in my opinion. Israel’s doctrine now seems to be a simple and blunt one that can be summed up in two words: collective punishment. Israel’s attitude seems to be that a crime committed by one Palestinian is a crime committed by all Palestinians. This allows Israel to rationalize helicopter gunship attacks on apartment buildings in retaliation for primitive rocket lobbings or attacks on small groups of Israeli soldiers.
To be fair, it must be said that the Palestinians also seem to follow the doctrine of collective punishment. The suicide bombings are an obvious example. Either one side or the other needs to take the moral high ground in this conflict and stop punishing a whole population for the crimes of a few. Doubtlessly, a majority of people on both sides of the dispute would prefer to live in peace. After all, both Palestinians and Jews are Semetic people who have co-mingled in this part of the world for thousands of years.
Since Israel has so much money and technology, I feel the moral onus is on that country to raise its standards and make a visible effort to avoid collective punishment when engaging in conflict. But Israel currently appears to be doing the opposite: favouring blatant collective punishment, still dreaming that this will somehow make the Palestinians wake up and realize the simple solution that is, “Don’t f**k with Israel.” Such an approach is obviously stupid and invites escalation. But few are willing to label the situation accurately, so this horrible situation keeps getting worse.
Apparently this video is being suppressed. Fox has been pressuring Web sites to remove it. They, of course, did a while back. I haven’t looked too far into it, but I hope it’s one of those conspiracy theories that isn’t true. I often think we should all be surprised at how much freedom of the press is actually extended to us (and to Americans especially). I saw Chomsky lecture once at McGill, and he said something like, the secret tactic of the American military-industrial-complex is to tolerate dissent so that true dissidents can be written off as crackpots while the elite screw everybody.
But if they’re really going to go ahead and make a move toward rewriting history a la Orwell…. well, perhaps that will bring a turning point, or perhaps they will be successful, and people will start the process of getting used to having their memorable history (the stuff they lived through) recreated right before their eyes.
But, at least for now, we still have our Chomskys, our Michael Moores, and - bless his needy soul - our Charlie Sheens.
I just got around to uploading some old photos of the Hand-in-Hand rally to protest China’s passing of an “anti-seccession law.” It was March 23, 2004. The Taiwan election was coming. This event proved to be a key factor helping Chen gain a second victory. The plan was to form a chain of people holding hands from one end of the island to the other. The actual link-up didn’t go off too well, as no one seemed to be looking after the synchronization issue. But hold hands we did, for a good minute or two when it became obvious the time had arrived. The whole event was very pleasant and peaceful. It seemed to mean a lot to all who participated, and even many of those just driving by. As a response to the negative election campaigning by the KMT and PFP parties, it was perfect. I think we need to do it again next year.
