“Liebestod” from Tristan & Isolde by Richard Wagner:
This performance.
Author: Samuel Hooper
American Businessman and Leading Blogger Shown On Chinese State Television in Mao-Like Confession
Jonathan Turley writes an excellent expose and analysis of the terrible forced confession and public shaming of Charles Xue, an American businessman and influential blogger. These public shaming rituals are so difficult to watch, not only because of the tremendous pity one feels for the person involved, but because it makes ones blood boil to think of the abuse of state power taking place. Tea Partiers and others who see tyranny and despotism behind every move that President Obama makes would do well to look at this case and remind themselves what true tyranny and absence of the rule of law looks like. If our occasional polemics on blogs, radio and television were directed against the Chinese leadership rather than the American or British political class, many of us would also be sitting in a prison cell. Though it may not help Xue at all, we can at least take some small measure of comfort from the fact that China’s rising middle class, with their ever greater accustomisation to a high standard of living and their increasing exposure to other cultures, will not tolerate the government’s paranoid meddling in their lives indefinitely.
China appears to be returning to the Cultural Revolution with public confessions of dissidents as a warning to all those who would challenge the ruling party. Chinese viewers were exposed to a truly sad and transparent confession of American businessman and leading Chinese blogger, Charles Xue. The Chinese recognize the Internet as the greatest threat to the totalitarian regime. Xue was therefore rolled out to degrade himself before the Chinese people — begging forgiveness for forgetting his place in objecting to such things as contaminated water. He admits to feeling like the “emperor of the Internet” and apologizes for spreading rumors against the ruling party leaders.
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Best Thing Of The Day
The award for Best Thing Of The Day on this Tuesday, 17th September goes to a television commercial from Thailand that is sure to bring a lump to the throat:
The organisation Americans Against The Tea Party (AATTP), whose political outlook and objectives are clearly not naturally aligned to my own, but on whose website I happened to stumble upon this video, described it thus:
Sometimes you don’t need a two or three-hour movie to tell a story, make a statement and move people. Sometimes you can do it in three minutes with little dialog and a minuscule budget. Sometimes simple imagery does it better than any special effects or big production pieces. Sometimes you find such artistry in the most unexpected places – you know – like maybe within a television commercial.
In a three-minute commercial called “Giving True,” a Thai telecom company does just that and, while it may seem to be a bit crass to put the company out there as some major philanthropic organization, the end product is an excellent morality tale.
It tells the story of a man who does a good deed with no expectation of repayment and, who many years later, is repaid many times over for his kindness. In three minutes this mini movie tells a touching story and elicits a strong emotional response. If it does not move you and, at the very least, bring a lump to the throat then there is something wrong . . . you have no heart.
Those tearjerker commercials will get you every time, though I can’t help thinking that True Move, the company behind the ad, has certainly set the bar very high for themselves in terms of their own behaviour, corporate governance and customer service!
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Music For The Day
A very different feel in today’s Music For The Day, quite a marked contrast from the frenetic and technically challenging piano music of the past few days. Today we feature the finale from Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”, incorporating the well-known Shaker melody “The Gift to be Simple”.
The close harmonies in both the strings and the woodwind are delightful, and of course are so much a part of Copland’s unique American sound.
This recording was performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Bernstein, though my all-time favourite version remains the orchestrally slimmed-down original arrangement in the excellent recording by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer himself.
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More Gun Violence In America
Well, it has happened again, as we all knew it would; another mass shooting in America, this time at a well-secured military facility in the nation’s capital. Twelve people killed this time, not including the gunman, at the Navy Yard in Washington DC. The New York Times reports:
At least 13 people, including one gunman, were killed, and the police were looking for other potential suspects, in a shooting Monday morning at a naval office building not far from Capitol Hill and the White House, police officials said.
One police officer was in surgery after being shot in an exchange of fire with a gunman, said Chief Cathy L. Lanier of the Metropolitan Police Department. The shootings took place at the Washington Navy Yard, in the southeast part of the city.
Senior law enforcement officials identified the gunman as Aaron Alexis, 34. He was identified through his fingerprints. As of Monday night, investigators were operating on the belief that Mr. Alexis acted alone, despite earlier statements from Washington law enforcement officials that there were two other gunmen.
Twitter has once again demonstrated that there is virtually nothing of any use to be said in the immediate aftermath of one of these attacks, at least not in 140 characters. The body count was still not yet confirmed before the first accusations and counter-accusations of blame and responsibility were being made. To this we can also add false flag theories and much more ungrounded speculation besides.
One of the few people to speak eloquently on the subject was the chief medical officer of the trauma centre responsible for treating several of the gunshot victims:
Something has to change. The tired old response of left-wingers demanding stricter gun control laws and being thwarted by the NRA, and right-wingers rallying behind the second amendment and bemoaning the society while doing nothing to improve it is no longer sufficient. There is a massive failure of imagination and political courage at all levels on the topic of gun violence in the United States.
Fourteen months since Aurora, Colorado. Nine months since Sandy Hook. And here we are again.
Semi-Partisan Politics 