Learning From China

The so called "war on terror" is entering a new stark chapter.

According to San Francisco Chronicle's report,

President Barack Obama steered the nation's war machine into uncharted territory Friday when a U.S. drone attacked a convoy in Yemen and killed two American citizens who had become central figures in al-Qaida.

It was believed to be the first instance in which a U.S. citizen was tracked and executed based on secret intelligence and the president's say-so. And it raised major questions about the limitations of presidential power.

Anwar al-Awlaki, the target of the U.S. drone attack, was one of the best-known al-Qaida figures after Osama bin Laden. American intelligence officials had linked him to two nearly catastrophic attacks on U.S.-bound planes, an airliner on Christmas 2009 and cargo planes last year. The second American killed in the drone attack, Samir Kahn, was the editor of Inspire, a slick online magazine aimed at al-Qaida sympathizers in the West.

...

"Anwar al-Awlaki is acting as a regional commander for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in August 2010.

What if the U.S. was wrong, Gibbs was asked, what recourse does a citizen have to save himself? The CIA had misidentified and imprisoned the wrong person before. Gibbs sidestepped the question.

The U.S. has been inconsistent in how it describes al-Awlaki. The Treasury Department called him a leader of al-Qaida in Yemen. FBI Director Robert Mueller called him the leader. On Friday, Obama called him "the leader of external operations," the first time he has been described that way.

When word leaked out that al-Awlaki's name was on the list, his family rushed to court to try to stop the government from killing him, saying he had to be afforded the constitutional right to due process.

The idea of killing an American citizen provided critics with fodder for all sorts of comparisons showing the peculiarities of national security law and policy. The government could not listen to al-Awlaki's phone calls without a judge's approval, for instance, but could kill him on the president's say-so. The Obama administration opposed imprisoning terrorist suspects without due process but supported killing them without due process.

"If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state," ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said Friday.

Indeed, one of the duty of the president is to protect and ensure due process for US citizens.  If according to his own judgement, he could have a US citizen killed, without explicit legal authorization, he is on shaky ground.

In order to be more responsible, the US would do better by learning from China.

After the international outcry against Chinese's secrete detention of high profile artist Ai Weiwei and the like, China now is proposing to overhaul the criminal penal codes, to legalize the secrete arrest and detention and disappearnces.

US and China have more similarities than most people think and we can be more like China, only if we keep pace with them.

Pink and Gray Landscape © Matthew Felix Sun

Herakles, not Hamlet

The first term of the historic Obama presidency has passed its mid-point and now he is gearing up for his re-election.  In those pass year, he has proved extremely ineffective as he was extremely eloquence in his campaign trips.  In last few years, he surrendered again and again before many major battles and then came out declaring victories in the face of humiliating (to himself) and devastating (to us) defeats and squandered hand-own political edges.

He came to the presidency as the personification of great hope.  Yet, now, it looks more like the greatest hype.

I have no doubt of his great intelligence, his noble intentions and his admirable even temper.

Yet, for all those virtues, if he cannot get his agendas, no, our agendas, accomplished, how good this president is he?  Not much.

He has retreated again and again, arguing that all those defeats would be perfect debating points during his re-election campaign and he would deal his opponents a crushing defeat.  That line of argument is not even hopeful; it's delusional.

Let us admit it, that Obama's presidency would not achieve what we deem good for the nation.  He has served the historical purpose by smashing one racial ceiling; for that, we congratulate him and his voters, and thank them all.

Now, it's time for President Obama to accept the bitter reality.  He is not up to the demands of the tough job, facing the opponents with utter contempt for average American people, America and him.

Perhaps, he can still prevail in the general election.  But what's the purpose of that, if his second term is just as ineffective and disastrous as this one?

We need to have someone in the White House who can accomplish what we demand the president to accomplish.  Let's find a warrior who would fight tooth and nail.

We need Herakles; not Hamlet.


Life Drawing © Matthew Felix Sun

Change - Too Fantastic to Be True

I have never been convinced by Obama's vaguely defined, hallucinating and fantastic change mantra during his campaign, therefore, was spared of the rude shock of his two and a quarter year's unsatisfactory presidency, which if has not awakened his eager followers from their collective rose-hued dreams, this new blow reported by Associated Press below, hopefully, would open their eyes, and push them to demand what they want to see.

White House, newspaper clash over protest video

The White House says a San Francisco Chronicle reporter broke the rules when she put down her pen and picked up a video camera to film a protest. The newspaper says the Obama administration needs to join the 21st century.

The conflict hit the newspaper's front page Friday with a story about coverage of the protest during President Barack Obama's speech last week at a private fundraiser.

Reporter Carla Marinucci had White House permission to cover the fundraiser as a so-called "pool" reporter, meaning she could attend as long as she shared her notes with the White House to distribute to other reporters.

Marinucci was covering the event when about a half-dozen protesters who paid a combined $76,000 to attend the breakfast broke into a song chastising Obama for the government's treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst suspected of illegally passing government secrets to the WikiLeaks website.

"We paid our dues, where's our change?" the protesters sang.

Although a print reporter, Marinucci is seldom seen without a small video recorder while covering politicians. She captured video of the protest, which was posted with her written story in the online edition of the Chronicle and on its politics blog.

White House officials say that breached the terms of her access, which stated Marinucci was to provide a print-only report.


Editor Ward Bushee said in the Chronicle's story Friday that the paper acted within its rights to cover the newsworthy incident.

He also said White House officials in off-the-record conversations Thursday threatened to bar Marinucci from pool coverage of future presidential appearances. He added that the officials, whom Bushee did not name, threatened to freeze out Chronicle and other Hearst Newspaper chain reporters if they reported on the threat against Marinucci.

"We expect our reporters to use the reporting tools they have to cover the news, and Carla did," Bushee said in the Chronicle story. The White House rule against print reporters shooting and posting video is "objectionable and just is not in sync with how reporters are doing their jobs these days." he said.

After Josh Earnest, another White House spokesman, told the Politico website that officials had not made such threats, Carney said in a statement Friday that "no reporters have been banned from covering future presidential events."


The protesters' own footage ended up appearing on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

The fundraiser came a day after Obama appeared at the Palo Alto headquarters of Facebook, praising the social media giant for enabling a more open, two-way conversation between citizens and politicians. The president said he was interested in holding the event, billed as a social media town hall, because young people especially were now getting their information through a range of different media.

San Francisco Chronicle's Editorials summarized it eloquently and I'm going to quote it in its entirety:

Administration exercises its control freak streak

The White House that fancies itself as the most transparent in history is not without its control-freak instincts when it comes to media access.

It seems that Team Obama was none too pleased that veteran Chronicle political reporter Carla Marinucci posted a 40-second video of a group of supporters-turned-protesters serenading the president a cappella - "We paid our dues ... where's our change" - at a recent fundraising breakfast at San Francisco's St. Regis Hotel. The protesters' objection: the treatment of Wikileaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning.

The White House threatened that Marinucci would no longer be allowed to serve as a pool reporter during future Obama swings west. Marinucci's apparent offense was shooting video during an event that was closed to broadcast journalism.

Last we checked, this was the 21st century, and Obama was the politician with the comfortable mastery of social networking - at least when it serves his purposes, as in having a cozy town hall at Facebook or soliciting donations for what is expected to be a $1 billion re-election campaign.

The White House appeared to be backing off from its banishment of Marinucci late Thursday. Still, the fact that television and radio reporters are not allowed into most fund-raising events is unacceptable. We also find ourselves disturbed that some print journalists would go along with the administration's attempt to pull an audio and video curtain at fund-raising events.

It seems the White House was reserving amateur broadcast rights for the 200 guests who paid between $5,000 and $38,500 to help re-elect a president who so reveres semi-transparency. Perhaps Obama trusted that his admission-paying admirers would not upload any off-message clips recorded on their cell-phone cameras. Unfortunately for the White House, it didn't work in this case. The protesters who paid $76,000 for their breakfast table also shot video - and it ended up on Jon Stewart's Daily Show.

The administration's overreaction to the protest-song video seems way out of scale with its embarrassment factor. It's hardly on par with candidate Obama's April 2008 remarks about bitter small town folks who cling to "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" that was captured by a blogger.

News happens at fund-raisers. Journalists should be there, with the modern tools of the trade, free to make their own judgments about what is newsworthy.

An administration truly dedicated to transparency would not require journalists to be "in the tank" as a condition of being in the pool.

We Are The Compromise We Are Waiting For

Less than two years after Mr. Barak Obama became president, his audacious mantra has morphed from "We are the change we are waiting for" to "we are the compromise we are waiting for."

It is a sad trajectory.  Many of his wounds were self-inflicted, such as surrendering public options before negotiation for health care reform began, promising to open up gulf for oil exploration therefore before climate bill was debated, dismissing House's early bill to cut taxes for middle class only, and finally agreeing to tax cut for the super rich before any significant fight, and so on so forth.

I'm afraid that at this moment, the paean of "change we can believe in" sounds quite ironic.  The only "change we can believe" is this:



His Hopeness is now His Hopelessness.

I am not trying to be funny.  I weep.

Dagger To the Hearts

After the congress tried to pass tax reduction bills for middle- and lower-class Americans, and provide assistance to unemployed, due to the opposition of Republicans, President Obama didn't stage any press conference to point it out that the Republicans wouldn't help the poor, and would make the tax rate go up in the middle of economic trying time.

Then, behind the back of his Democrats congressional members, he made a secrete deal with the Republicans, with some terms unacceptable to some Democrats legislators, whose opposition to the tax breaks to the super-rich, will be denounced by the Republicans as raising tax in the middle of crisis.

Obama's double dealing handed the Republicans, ironically who are not secrete about destroying him, besides a handsome ransom, a sharpened dagger to plunge into the hearts of congressional Democrats.

Two more years of such bipartisanship would be a harsh punishment to most Americans; four more years after that would be a crime, perhaps a tad better than a Republican's taking back the White House.  He will fight in two years' time, as he promised in his press conference.  But he has proved an unwilling and highly ineffective soldier.  In order to prevent a calamity bigger than 2010 mid-term election, Democrats must find an alternative candidate in presidential bid in 2012.


Division © Matthew Felix Sun

Nancy Pelosi vs Barak Obama

Nancy Pelosi was elected House minority leader for next session.  Someone thought that she ought to make way to moderates.

Wrong.  The voters punished the Democrats not because they did too much, too boldly, rather too timidly, or too quietly.

After eight miserable George W. Bush years, American people were eager to reclaim democracy and human decency in this once great country and that was why Obama's "change" mantel fired up so many people's imagination.  People wanted to resurrect like phoenix.  It was a great opportunity to move the country forward.

Once Obama entered the White House, he could have moved the agenda boldly, with a clear reasoning and articulation.  The Republican congressmen and senators could be called upon to join his then unstoppable bandwagon, or face the fate of eternal irrelevancy.

Obama took the opportunity but flaunted it.

It was due to Nancy Pelosi's skill as House Speaker that Obama could claim any achievement in the first two years of his presidency, but he not only declined to lead, he never lifted a finger to help his fighters, refused to articulate what those agendas could help people.  He instead sat on his hands and waited for a bi-partisanship to emerge, and ceded bully pulpit to his opponents who wanted only his destruction. 

I think President Barak Obama owns House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her congressional colleagues an apology, and above all, an apology to American people who installed him to move the country out of the dark age of George W. Bush.

Someone were upset and blamed Pelosi for losing the majority of the house.  If you don't wield your power, then what was the point of granting you that?

The voters didn't punish Pelosi's actions; the voters punished Obama's (seemingly) inaction.

I am afraid that next two years, we won't be able to see much achievement, even if Obama became a fighter.  The golden opportunity was lost and there was no remedy for that.  Pelosi or anyone else as the House minority leader has been neutered as well.

This poor country will get poorer.

Leisurely

© Matthew Felix Sun

The Tragedy of Our Own Doing

When President Obama wooed the enthusiastic crowd with his change mantra and the chant of "Yes we can", it seemed indeed a new era was to begin.

Alas.  It was not so.  Convinced by his own amazing ability to transform, Obama reached out to his opponent with open arms and weapons laid down.  Unfortunately, his ability to transform the bitter politics, which he obvious had no taste for, was only an illusion.  He could surely inspire but he could not transform.  The country is as divided as never before.

In his first two years as president, he stood aloofly behind Nancy Pelosi and her foot soldiers, who were pushed to make lonely and tough calls, and surrendered many points before his jousting with the Republican began.  Reluctant to criticize the people he wanted to embrace, he didn't use many crises as educational moments, refused to engage the people in the process of any change, kept mum about his plans and ideas and the motivations behind them.  Consequently, he allowed his irresponsible but smart opponents to outmaneuver him in every step and successfully framed the debate in their terms therefore won over many voters who have been conditioned not to have independent thinking of any kind. 

Many people from the left wrung their hands and bemoan the weakness or betrayal of Obama.  No, Obama is exactly what he said he would be during the campaign, the fault lies on the insistence of his enthusiastic supporters seeing through rose-colored lenses.  Now, they are reaping what they sowed.

If laying down one's weapon in front of enemies is the criteria for a hero, Obama won his medal.  If a fighter needed to be our president, the old Obama is not the right person to fit the bill.  He can be a fighter but it seemed all too late.

The failure of Obama to communicate and engage, was as tragic as the personal failure of Bill Clinton.  Both had such promises and both floundered.  This time, tragedy is not Obama's, or even Pelosi and her soldiers, of which many will fall next week.  The tragedy is of our nation's.


Domesticity © Matthew Felix Sun

Sad State of English Education

With the end of George W Bush era, I hoped for a return of reason and correct English. Alas, my hope was dashed by Barak Obama's infamous, wrongly used phrase of "too big to fail". The strangulation of English continued.

Even in my daily life, I was assaulted by such misuse of English constantly. A friend of mine, who has a degree in English from the prestigiousUniversity of California Berkeley, often uses phrases like "more sharp" instead of sharper. I also heard Obama talked about the new nuclear weapon treaty will make our country "safer and more secure". Securer should be used instead of secure.

How sad that even such elites cannot speak proper English.