So we are finally on the eve of replacing the worst President in US history. Instead of a message of hope going out from the Democratic candidates, with the help of the media and an American public that has an appetite for filler instead of issues, we watch Senators Clinton and Obama trade barbs. No wonder so many disengage from the political. I am sick of it as well. But to let the nation go to waste... or have our soul and ideals sold out by a corrupt administration... Well, we can't simply shrug it off and say "it can't be helped, it's politics" if we expect any kind of better world.
My friend Olaf is in Africa. His wife works for an NGO. He is German, his wife French. He asked me not long ago about the American presidential race. He said, "You know, there are people everywhere in the world to whom its a question of life or death who rules the WhiteHouse. We all have to live with the US election results but cannot change it: there is actually a 'democracy deficit' on a global level. "
Olaf is right. I am disappointed that the country in which I live has chosen to wreak violence all across the world, while Americans countinue their day to day lives. I had hoped that the terror attacks might have given Americans a different perspective... some introspection and circumspection would be nice. "So this is what it is like to live under a constant threat of random violence..." but no, it became a situation that allowed Bush to use fear and channel it to paranoia so his administration could trample the constitution.
I love my family, and enjoy some simple pleasures in life. I would like others to live without fear as well. How to I help promote that?
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Protest China over Free Tibet? WHY?
Some have asked me to join in protesting China over the Olympic Games. I will NOT. I am not protesting China over Tibet. If we were to choose a topic to protest, it would be MANY of their other policies, but not Tibet. Some may wonder if my position comes from the pages of books like "Chinese Village, Socialist State" that you would find my issue with China in Tibet. They Don't.
Why aren't we protesting China in Manchuria? There used to be a Manchuria and many ethinic Manchurians... infact they dominate China for a time. But the Manchurians have been utterly diluted by the Han Chinese... There is no Manchuria to "Save". So I find it ridiculous to think the same wont happen to Tibet.
The problem with Tibet is the Tibetans themselves and the structure/practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Go to this link and click on "Political" from this link:
http://college.holycross.edu/projects/himalayan_cultures/2004_plans/rdillon/index.htm
OH WAIT... - You can't click on the Political link and read it because it was taken down because it was too hot to handle. Basically, on that former link I challenged a lop-sided documentary called "Red Flag over Tibet" and I also used a video that aired on PBS called "Lost Treasures of Tibet" go to this website and READ my lesson plan - it is the last one on that page.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/ideas/3006_tibet.html
Note that PBS's NOVA editors were so nervous about my challenge to another biased film that they had to add an Editor's Note!
My argument is that Tibet was NEVER FREE - Therefore, "Free Tibet" is an oxymoron. The Tibetan people have lived under the repression and control of the Tibetan Buddhist Monks and about 200 aristocratic families that kept everyone in perpetual servitude prior to the Chinese occupation. In some ways, I believe that the Chinese have freed the Tibetans more than any Tibetan Buddhist has to date, even the Dalai Lama. It was like the Chinese Maoists were the Reformation to a region domintated by religiously-masked rulers... just as the reformation changed Europe and produced the Protestant ethic in Europe, that lead to ideals by the likes of Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu, and ALL of the existentialists... so have the Chinese disrupted the domination and servitude of the average Tibetan by the Lamas. So in my view, the book "The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering" is required reading and an indictment of BOTH the Chinese and the Tibetan regimes and the way both structures exercised power in people's lives. look at that Nova web page... my 4th bullet point about the monastary in Mustang. Who can answer that?
Another question: Where does American self-righteousness come from (Richard Gere)? The domination of anglos over the natives in North America and Australia and New Zealand is just one in successive waves of migration patterns that spread out and dominate... as Arabs from the Arabian penninsula... or today as we see a 'reconquest' of North America by Mexico. I am not saying it is right or wrong. Migration and rises and falls of ethnic groups is human nature and the story of human history.
Why aren't we protesting China in Manchuria? There used to be a Manchuria and many ethinic Manchurians... infact they dominate China for a time. But the Manchurians have been utterly diluted by the Han Chinese... There is no Manchuria to "Save". So I find it ridiculous to think the same wont happen to Tibet.
The problem with Tibet is the Tibetans themselves and the structure/practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Go to this link and click on "Political" from this link:
http://college.holycross.edu/projects/himalayan_cultures/2004_plans/rdillon/index.htm
OH WAIT... - You can't click on the Political link and read it because it was taken down because it was too hot to handle. Basically, on that former link I challenged a lop-sided documentary called "Red Flag over Tibet" and I also used a video that aired on PBS called "Lost Treasures of Tibet" go to this website and READ my lesson plan - it is the last one on that page.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/ideas/3006_tibet.html
Note that PBS's NOVA editors were so nervous about my challenge to another biased film that they had to add an Editor's Note!
My argument is that Tibet was NEVER FREE - Therefore, "Free Tibet" is an oxymoron. The Tibetan people have lived under the repression and control of the Tibetan Buddhist Monks and about 200 aristocratic families that kept everyone in perpetual servitude prior to the Chinese occupation. In some ways, I believe that the Chinese have freed the Tibetans more than any Tibetan Buddhist has to date, even the Dalai Lama. It was like the Chinese Maoists were the Reformation to a region domintated by religiously-masked rulers... just as the reformation changed Europe and produced the Protestant ethic in Europe, that lead to ideals by the likes of Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu, and ALL of the existentialists... so have the Chinese disrupted the domination and servitude of the average Tibetan by the Lamas. So in my view, the book "The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering" is required reading and an indictment of BOTH the Chinese and the Tibetan regimes and the way both structures exercised power in people's lives. look at that Nova web page... my 4th bullet point about the monastary in Mustang. Who can answer that?
Another question: Where does American self-righteousness come from (Richard Gere)? The domination of anglos over the natives in North America and Australia and New Zealand is just one in successive waves of migration patterns that spread out and dominate... as Arabs from the Arabian penninsula... or today as we see a 'reconquest' of North America by Mexico. I am not saying it is right or wrong. Migration and rises and falls of ethnic groups is human nature and the story of human history.
Monday, April 07, 2008
When Diana's mom died I went out to California for the funeral. I stopped by Cal while I was out there to look up one of my professors. I am so sad to hear that my US diplomatic history professor retired from teaching. I wondered who is replacing her? I wondered because it is troubling to know that she is gone when I consider the news-making professors at Cal. I was disgusted to read about John Yoo's position as a faculty member at UC. I wish he'd stayed and taught at his own alma mater (Yale) or Harvard... I wrote the my alumni magazine my feelings on this:
-----Original Message-----From: Dillon, Michael Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 8:48 AMTo: 'californiamag@alumni.berkeley.edu'Subject: Prof. John C. Yoo
As Cal's magazine does annual reviews, I hope we consider UC's most ignoble character of the year as well... kind of a Darwin award for the individual student, alumni or professor with the biggest ethical lapse. This year's release of the memo arguing for torture would then make Cal Law Professor John Woo the singular candidate. I have studied the shift from radical collectivism by the Mormons to their arch-conservatism - a shift that took place over 130 years. Berkeley's shift from the epicenter of radicalism to being part of the machinery of an administration that advocated torture is indeed an interesting reflection on the change in the types of people attracted to Cal or being attracted to teach at Cal. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04fri1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=sloginThis article in the NY Times certainly made me disappointed that the professor is associated with UC Berkeley.
Rex Michael Dillon,'03 (History & Religious Studies)
-----Original Message-----From: Dillon, Michael Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 8:48 AMTo: 'californiamag@alumni.berkeley.edu'Subject: Prof. John C. Yoo
As Cal's magazine does annual reviews, I hope we consider UC's most ignoble character of the year as well... kind of a Darwin award for the individual student, alumni or professor with the biggest ethical lapse. This year's release of the memo arguing for torture would then make Cal Law Professor John Woo the singular candidate. I have studied the shift from radical collectivism by the Mormons to their arch-conservatism - a shift that took place over 130 years. Berkeley's shift from the epicenter of radicalism to being part of the machinery of an administration that advocated torture is indeed an interesting reflection on the change in the types of people attracted to Cal or being attracted to teach at Cal. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04fri1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=sloginThis article in the NY Times certainly made me disappointed that the professor is associated with UC Berkeley.
Rex Michael Dillon,'03 (History & Religious Studies)
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
How Bush is like Chamberlain from
More fun sent to me by the famous Olaf Bachmann:
Why Winston Wouldn't Stand For WGeorge W. Bush always wanted to be like a wartime British prime ministers. He is. But it's not the one he had in mind.
By Lynne Olson - Washington Post Sunday, July 1, 2007; Page B01
President Bush's favorite role model is, famously, Jesus, but Winston Churchill is close behind. The president admires the wartime British prime minister so much that he keeps what he calls "a stern-looking bust" of Churchill in the Oval Office. "He watches my every move," Bush jokes. These days, Churchill would probably not care for much of what he sees.
I've spent a great deal of time thinking about Churchill while working on my book "Troublesome Young Men," a history of the small group of Conservative members of Parliament who defied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler, forced Chamberlain to resign in May 1940 and helped make Churchill his successor. I thought my audience would be largely limited to World War II buffs, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the president has been reading my book. He hasn't let me know what he thinks about it, but it's a safe bet that he's identifying with the book's portrayal of Churchill, not Chamberlain. But I think Bush's hero would be bemused, to say the least, by the president's wrapping himself in the Churchillian cloak. Indeed, the more you understand the historical record, the more the parallels leap out -- but they're between Bush and Chamberlain, not Bush and Churchill. Like Bush and unlike Churchill, Chamberlain came to office with almost no understanding of foreign affairs or experience in dealing with international leaders. Nonetheless, he was convinced that he alone could bring Hitler and Benito Mussolini to heel. He surrounded himself with like-minded advisers and refused to heed anyone who told him otherwise.
In the months leading up to World War II, Chamberlain and his men saw little need to build up a strong coalition of European allies with which to confront Nazi Germany -- ignoring appeals from Churchill and others to fashion a "Grand Alliance" of nations to thwart the threat that Hitler posed to the continent.
Unlike Bush and Chamberlain, Churchill was never in favor of his country going it alone. Throughout the 1930s, while urging Britain to rearm, he also strongly supported using the newborn League of Nations -- the forerunner to today's United Nations -- to provide one-for-all-and-all-for-one security to smaller countries. After the League failed to stop fascism's march, Churchill was adamant that, to beat Hitler, Britain must form a true partnership with France and even reach agreement with the despised Soviet Union, neither of which Chamberlain was willing to do.
Like Bush, Chamberlain also laid claim to unprecedented executive authority, evading the checks and balances that are supposed to constrain the office of prime minister. He scorned dissenting views, both inside and outside government. When Chamberlain arranged his face-to-face meetings with Hitler in 1938 that ended in the catastrophic Munich conference, he did so without consulting his cabinet, which, under the British system, is responsible for making policy. He also bypassed the House of Commons, leading Harold Macmillan, a future Tory prime minister who was then an anti-appeasement MP, to complain that Chamberlain was treating Parliament "like a Reichstag, to meet only to hear the orations and to register the decrees of the government of the day."
As was true of Bush and the Republicans before the 2006 midterm elections, Chamberlain and his Tories had a large majority in the Commons, and, as Macmillan noted, the prime minister tended to treat Parliament like a lapdog legislature, existing only to do his bidding. "I secretly feel he hates the House of Commons," wrote one of Chamberlain's most fervent parliamentary supporters. "Certainly he has a deep contempt for Parliamentary interference."
Churchill, on the other hand, revered Parliament and was appalled by Chamberlain's determination to dominate the Commons in the late 1930s. Churchill considered himself first and foremost "a child" and "servant" of the House of Commons and strongly believed in the legislature's constitutional role to oversee the executive (even when, after becoming prime minister, he often railed against MPs who criticized him). In August 1939, when Chamberlain rammed through a two-month parliamentary adjournment just weeks before the war began, Churchill -- then still a backbencher -- exploded with anger in the House, calling the prime minister's move "disastrous," "pathetic" and shameful." He encouraged his anti-appeasement colleagues to mount similar attacks against Chamberlain, and when one of them, Ronald Cartland, called the prime minister a dictator to his face in the same debate, Churchill congratulated Cartland with an enthusiastic, "Well done, my boy, well done!"
Likewise, Churchill almost certainly would look askance at the Bush administration's years-long campaign to shut down public debate over the "war on terror" and the conflict in Iraq -- tactics markedly similar to Chamberlain's attempts to quiet his opponents. Like Bush and his aides, Chamberlain badgered and intimidated the press, restricted journalists' access to sources and claimed that anyone who dared criticize the government was guilty of disloyalty and damaging the national interest. Just as Bush has done, Chamberlain authorized the wiretapping of citizens without court authorization; Churchill was among those whose phones were tapped by the prime minister's subordinates.
Churchill, by contrast, believed firmly in the sanctity of individual liberties and the need to protect them from government encroachment. That's not to say that he was never guilty of infringing on them himself. In June 1940, when a Nazi invasion of Britain seemed imminent, he ordered the internment of more than 20,000 enemy aliens living on British soil, most of them refugees from Hitler's and Mussolini's fascist regimes. But as the invasion scare abated over the next few months, the vast majority were released, also by his order. "The key word in any understanding of Winston Churchill is the simple word 'Liberty,' " wrote Eric Seal, Churchill's principal private secretary during the early years of the war. "He intensely disliked, and reacted violently against, all attempts to regiment and dictate opinion. . . . He demanded for himself freedom to follow his own star, and he stood out for a like liberty for all men."
Writing about Churchill and Chamberlain, I've discovered, is like administering a Rorschach test to one's readers. People see in Churchill and Chamberlain what they want to see. They draw parallels between the 1930s and the events of today according to their own political philosophy. I've received congratulatory letters and e-mails from people who see similarities between the current U.S. woes in Iraq and Chamberlain's disastrous conduct of the so-called phony war in 1939-40. But I've also gotten fan mail from readers who favorably compare the Tory rebels' courageous fight against Chamberlain to the Bush administration's campaign against those opposing the Iraq war. Among those who've written me in praise of the book are Bush adviser Karl Rove and Howard Wolfson, the communications director of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign.
The president no doubt has his own Churchill. "He was resolute," Bush has remarked. "He was tough. He knew what he believed." But Churchill would snort, I believe, at the administration's equation of "Islamofascism," an amorphous, ill-defined movement of killers forced to resort to terrorism by their lack of military might, to Nazi Germany, a global power that had already conquered several countries before Churchill took office in 1940. Still, key members of the Bush administration have compared critics of the wars on terrorism and in Iraq to the appeasers of the 1930s, thus implicitly equating their boss and themselves to Churchill and the "troublesome young men" who helped bring him to power. During bleak days in Iraq, the administration's hawks can be forgiven for hoping that history will show them to be as far-sighted about a gathering storm as Churchill was in the 1930s.
But history has its own ways, and we cannot make the long-dead titans we admire give us their modern blessing. As the world's two most prominent and powerful democracies, the United States and Britain had a responsibility to serve as exemplars of democracy for the rest of the world, Churchill believed. But to be fitting role models, he argued, both countries had to do their best to ensure that the "title deeds of freedom" were strongly safeguarded within their own boundaries. "Let us preach what we practice," he declared in his 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Mo. "But let us also practice what we preach."
Lynne Olson, a former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, is the author or coauthor of four books of history.
Why Winston Wouldn't Stand For WGeorge W. Bush always wanted to be like a wartime British prime ministers. He is. But it's not the one he had in mind.
By Lynne Olson - Washington Post Sunday, July 1, 2007; Page B01
President Bush's favorite role model is, famously, Jesus, but Winston Churchill is close behind. The president admires the wartime British prime minister so much that he keeps what he calls "a stern-looking bust" of Churchill in the Oval Office. "He watches my every move," Bush jokes. These days, Churchill would probably not care for much of what he sees.
I've spent a great deal of time thinking about Churchill while working on my book "Troublesome Young Men," a history of the small group of Conservative members of Parliament who defied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler, forced Chamberlain to resign in May 1940 and helped make Churchill his successor. I thought my audience would be largely limited to World War II buffs, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the president has been reading my book. He hasn't let me know what he thinks about it, but it's a safe bet that he's identifying with the book's portrayal of Churchill, not Chamberlain. But I think Bush's hero would be bemused, to say the least, by the president's wrapping himself in the Churchillian cloak. Indeed, the more you understand the historical record, the more the parallels leap out -- but they're between Bush and Chamberlain, not Bush and Churchill. Like Bush and unlike Churchill, Chamberlain came to office with almost no understanding of foreign affairs or experience in dealing with international leaders. Nonetheless, he was convinced that he alone could bring Hitler and Benito Mussolini to heel. He surrounded himself with like-minded advisers and refused to heed anyone who told him otherwise.
In the months leading up to World War II, Chamberlain and his men saw little need to build up a strong coalition of European allies with which to confront Nazi Germany -- ignoring appeals from Churchill and others to fashion a "Grand Alliance" of nations to thwart the threat that Hitler posed to the continent.
Unlike Bush and Chamberlain, Churchill was never in favor of his country going it alone. Throughout the 1930s, while urging Britain to rearm, he also strongly supported using the newborn League of Nations -- the forerunner to today's United Nations -- to provide one-for-all-and-all-for-one security to smaller countries. After the League failed to stop fascism's march, Churchill was adamant that, to beat Hitler, Britain must form a true partnership with France and even reach agreement with the despised Soviet Union, neither of which Chamberlain was willing to do.
Like Bush, Chamberlain also laid claim to unprecedented executive authority, evading the checks and balances that are supposed to constrain the office of prime minister. He scorned dissenting views, both inside and outside government. When Chamberlain arranged his face-to-face meetings with Hitler in 1938 that ended in the catastrophic Munich conference, he did so without consulting his cabinet, which, under the British system, is responsible for making policy. He also bypassed the House of Commons, leading Harold Macmillan, a future Tory prime minister who was then an anti-appeasement MP, to complain that Chamberlain was treating Parliament "like a Reichstag, to meet only to hear the orations and to register the decrees of the government of the day."
As was true of Bush and the Republicans before the 2006 midterm elections, Chamberlain and his Tories had a large majority in the Commons, and, as Macmillan noted, the prime minister tended to treat Parliament like a lapdog legislature, existing only to do his bidding. "I secretly feel he hates the House of Commons," wrote one of Chamberlain's most fervent parliamentary supporters. "Certainly he has a deep contempt for Parliamentary interference."
Churchill, on the other hand, revered Parliament and was appalled by Chamberlain's determination to dominate the Commons in the late 1930s. Churchill considered himself first and foremost "a child" and "servant" of the House of Commons and strongly believed in the legislature's constitutional role to oversee the executive (even when, after becoming prime minister, he often railed against MPs who criticized him). In August 1939, when Chamberlain rammed through a two-month parliamentary adjournment just weeks before the war began, Churchill -- then still a backbencher -- exploded with anger in the House, calling the prime minister's move "disastrous," "pathetic" and shameful." He encouraged his anti-appeasement colleagues to mount similar attacks against Chamberlain, and when one of them, Ronald Cartland, called the prime minister a dictator to his face in the same debate, Churchill congratulated Cartland with an enthusiastic, "Well done, my boy, well done!"
Likewise, Churchill almost certainly would look askance at the Bush administration's years-long campaign to shut down public debate over the "war on terror" and the conflict in Iraq -- tactics markedly similar to Chamberlain's attempts to quiet his opponents. Like Bush and his aides, Chamberlain badgered and intimidated the press, restricted journalists' access to sources and claimed that anyone who dared criticize the government was guilty of disloyalty and damaging the national interest. Just as Bush has done, Chamberlain authorized the wiretapping of citizens without court authorization; Churchill was among those whose phones were tapped by the prime minister's subordinates.
Churchill, by contrast, believed firmly in the sanctity of individual liberties and the need to protect them from government encroachment. That's not to say that he was never guilty of infringing on them himself. In June 1940, when a Nazi invasion of Britain seemed imminent, he ordered the internment of more than 20,000 enemy aliens living on British soil, most of them refugees from Hitler's and Mussolini's fascist regimes. But as the invasion scare abated over the next few months, the vast majority were released, also by his order. "The key word in any understanding of Winston Churchill is the simple word 'Liberty,' " wrote Eric Seal, Churchill's principal private secretary during the early years of the war. "He intensely disliked, and reacted violently against, all attempts to regiment and dictate opinion. . . . He demanded for himself freedom to follow his own star, and he stood out for a like liberty for all men."
Writing about Churchill and Chamberlain, I've discovered, is like administering a Rorschach test to one's readers. People see in Churchill and Chamberlain what they want to see. They draw parallels between the 1930s and the events of today according to their own political philosophy. I've received congratulatory letters and e-mails from people who see similarities between the current U.S. woes in Iraq and Chamberlain's disastrous conduct of the so-called phony war in 1939-40. But I've also gotten fan mail from readers who favorably compare the Tory rebels' courageous fight against Chamberlain to the Bush administration's campaign against those opposing the Iraq war. Among those who've written me in praise of the book are Bush adviser Karl Rove and Howard Wolfson, the communications director of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign.
The president no doubt has his own Churchill. "He was resolute," Bush has remarked. "He was tough. He knew what he believed." But Churchill would snort, I believe, at the administration's equation of "Islamofascism," an amorphous, ill-defined movement of killers forced to resort to terrorism by their lack of military might, to Nazi Germany, a global power that had already conquered several countries before Churchill took office in 1940. Still, key members of the Bush administration have compared critics of the wars on terrorism and in Iraq to the appeasers of the 1930s, thus implicitly equating their boss and themselves to Churchill and the "troublesome young men" who helped bring him to power. During bleak days in Iraq, the administration's hawks can be forgiven for hoping that history will show them to be as far-sighted about a gathering storm as Churchill was in the 1930s.
But history has its own ways, and we cannot make the long-dead titans we admire give us their modern blessing. As the world's two most prominent and powerful democracies, the United States and Britain had a responsibility to serve as exemplars of democracy for the rest of the world, Churchill believed. But to be fitting role models, he argued, both countries had to do their best to ensure that the "title deeds of freedom" were strongly safeguarded within their own boundaries. "Let us preach what we practice," he declared in his 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Mo. "But let us also practice what we preach."
Lynne Olson, a former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, is the author or coauthor of four books of history.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Long Absence but let's get back to the Cold War
I am about 180 pages into the new book Legacy of Ashes - The history of the CIA by Tim Weiner. Reading this makes me just frustrated that this small group failed to pursue intelligence, and instead simply went for the excitement of foolhardy covert ops. They failed miserably at both. The history of the CIA should really turn Gaddis' triumphalism on its head! See reviews at
and
On the other hand I am shocked by NY Times Op-Ed piece by guys who saw Iraq as capable of threatening the US back before the invasion... now they say we may "win" the war. Even more astonishing is that they come from the Brookings Institute... well it seems all things I used to place faith in are just not solid. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/opinion/30pollack.html?ex=1186459200&en=612b6e87664c687c&ei=5070
Thursday, October 05, 2006
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