Score One for Obama

I never thought I’d find myself working the phones in the Barack Obama headquarters, especially on a night the president was set to give an important address to the nation about the financial crisis. But there I was, and I had little other option.

I had gone running that night, and as I was listening to Chinese lessons on my mp3 player and pounding the pavement, I somehow lost my key. This was stupid on a variety of levels. For one, it was completely avoidable. I could have left the key under the mat at my house. I could have tucked it inside the little key pocket in my brand new running shorts. Instead, I chose to hold it in my right hand, along with my mp3 player, both of them swinging by the pendulum of my arm as I jogged.

That’s not to say this type of stupidity is completely uncharacteristic of me. I’ve been known to have a clumsy, idiotic streak. Once in China, I padlocked myself inside a house that had no indoor plumbing. As you can imagine, without getting into detail, the consequences were less than pleasant.

With no key, phone, or wallet, it was almost like being stranded in the wild and left for survival, only with concrete and cars all around. Katy wasn’t due home for two more hours, so I decided that I’d retrace the mile and see if by chance I could see the key gleaming in the streetlights. By now the sun had dipped behind the earth’s curve, and darkness was falling fast.

I figured I couldn’t lose in this situation. If I found the key, I performed a miracle. If I made the loop again with no luck, I had at least gotten another mile’s worth of exercise, which was the point of this whole thing in the first place.

I’ve always felt sympathy for the homeless, but I found a new empathy for them that night. I was scouring the pavement for the tool to give me entry into a nice apartment where Katy and I joke - and I emphasize joke - that we enjoy the luxury life. They often make a similar search for throwaway food scraps to simply keep them alive.

You feel a lot of new emotions when you’re powerless, but that’s a blog post for another day. I’m sure if you’ve read this blog before, you’ve noticed that God often strips me of pride to teach me humility, only to watch me later go after the same self-sufficiency again.

I walked by the railroad tracks and listened to the harsh, metal-on-metal squeal of the MARTA train’s brakes as it pulled into a station near my house. I watched the sun fade completely, and streetlights became beacons to get me home.

Then it occurred to me that Katy might worry about me if I didn’t answer her nightly call as she left work. This realization came to me at the same time I had walked into a parking lot to check out an old tire shop that has been redeveloped into loft space for businesses. In the window of one of the two occupied spaces, a huge blue O with red and white stripes taking up its bottom half was painted on the glass.

People were sitting in a circle in a room plastered with posters in red, white and blue. A Barack Obama quote was written in cursive on the wall. I had found the Illinois senator’s Decatur campaign headquarters.

These folks are doing a fantastic job for their candidate. If you could empirically predict margin of victory by yard signs, Obama would be leading by something like a 98 percent in Decatur. The reason I knew the sign of the O stood for Obama is because I pass a homemade one nailed to a tree on my route to work. On that same street, I was recently following a car with an Obama bumper sticker written in Hebrew.

Despite my political differences, I needed a phone. I tapped on the glass, and a lady opened the door. I explained my situation.

“Only if you vote for Barack Obama,” she said with a wry smile.

She probably thought that was a safe bet in Decatur.

“I can’t guarantee that, but I hope you’ll let an enemy into your camp for a moment,” I said.

I made the call, and Katy was relieved. As I walked home, I thought this was a bit ironic: I had no change, and I went to Barack Obama. He won’t get my vote, but he gets my gratitude.

Bush Finds Diplomatic Middle Way With China

A few days ago I made a post about the mixed signals China often gives us about its human rights picture, especially in relation to Christian persecution. While in many ways the situation has drastically improved, the sterilized and whitewashed view of China that the government would like us to see at the Olympics has not erased the all-too-obvious blots on the its recent record.

That said, President Bush has a difficult tight-rope to walk in attending this week's Olympic opening ceremonies. Ironically, in a country where Buddhism thrives, Bush has had to take a sort of "middle way" of his own.

The balancing act he'll undertake is typical and necessary in dealing with the Chinese conundrum. The leader of the free world has said repeatedly that he will not stop urging the government to use the Olympics and events beyond as a chance to recognize the religious rights of all its citizens. At the same time, he's come under fire from some human rights activists and even the highest officials of the Democratic Party, who believe he should've boycotted the games altogether.

Somewhere on the line the president is straddling is the right approach. A conciliatory tone toward the government would be deadly to his legitimacy as an advocate for China's persecuted Christians and a step back from the tough line he's already taken. Antagonistic rhetoric could lead him into an equally undesirable quagmire. The Chinese authorities would suffer serious embarassment if Bush were to insult their progress on the eve of their big party. As anyone who knows anything about Chinese culture knows, it's hard to gain the trust of someone there when you've made them lose face.

For all the fiery comments by the Democrats during the primary season, Bush has taken the right tack. He stuck it to the Chinese government when he awarded a congressional medal to the Dalai Lama last October, despite their childish insults and noisy opposition to the gesture. The action turned out to foreshadow of a much more intense conflict that would break out in March of this year, when violent acts of vandalism committed by Tibetans against Han Chinese in the province escalated into weeks of protests and subsequent crackdowns by the government in western China.

On July 29, a little more than a week before Air Force One is scheduled to touch down in Beijing, Bush made another very crafty move. He hosted five high-profile human rights activists at the White House. Among these were Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp; Rebiya Kadeer, the foremost activist in the U.S. for the Muslim Turkic Uighur people in China; Bob Fu, a former persecuted pastor and head of China Aid Association; Wei Jingsheng, a prominent political dissident and Sasha Gong, a dissident and writer.

Bush's message was clear. “These are very high profile people. These are people designed to get the Chinese’s attention. It was not just a political move to provide cover at home. It was an important move to let Chinese leaders know that he’s not satisfied with the progress,” the New York Times quotes Michael Green, an Asia expert and former White House adviser as saying.

Christian activists are urging Bush to do even more during his trip. In a conference call Tuesday night, Bob Fu of China Aid and Todd Nettleton, director of media development for Voice of the Martyrs, a Christian group that ministers to the persecuted church, both urged Bush to attend a unregistered house church while in China. Mr. Fu gave Mr. Bush "Pray for China" bracelets during the meeting at the White House and gave the president coordinates of four different house churches in Beijing where Fu assured him he would be welcomed.

Bush attended a registered church during a 2005 trip to China and held a press conference afterwards. Fu said a return visit to the government-sanctioned church could be seen by some as validating the Chinese government's policies of hosting religion on its own terms. This would be disheartening to see for pastors who have been ousted from Beijing to keep them from talking to foreign media during the games, Fu said.

Some 80 percent of Chinese Christians worship in house churches, he added.

"By choosing to worship in a government-sanctioned church again, it will further validate" the government's stance on persecution, Fu told listeners from around the world who had tuned in for a Webcast and conference call with Charisma magazine. Listen here to the complete interview. You might have to log in or return to the Web site at a later time.

It remains to be seen what the president's legacy will be with regard to China. However it turns out, he's taken as right an approach as his position and its many responsibilities will allow.

Photo: A gate in the Forbidden City. Beijing. Copyright Trevor Williams, 2006.

I know a guy...

...who knows the president of Taiwan.

Sometimes the connectivity that comes with my job amazes me. I wrote an article last year about my hometown of Columbus formalizing sister city relationship with Taichung City in Taiwan. I met the mayor of that city, Jason Hu, at a shabby little Chinese restaurant in Atlanta. Mr. Hu is a Cambridge-educated former foreign minister of Taiwan and a member of the Taiwan's Nationalist Party.

His party, called the Kuomintang, KMT, or Guomin Dang (using another romanization), took back the presidency of Taiwan in today's elections. Ma Ying-Jeou, a former mayor of Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, ran on a platform of closer relations with China, a breath of fresh air for some citizens of Taiwan who were weary of current President Chen Shui-bian's tendency to rock the boat with China.

Mr. Hu and Mr. Ma were classmates at Cambridge and are great friends. Mr. Ma, also educated at Harvard, is a handsome, charismatic guy that was popular with the ladies, Mr. Hu told me. He also told me that Mr. Ma would be running for the presidency this year and that his election could catapult the KMT back to power the Democratic Progressive Party had taken in recent elections.

The KMT that stems from the Nationalist army that was forced off the Chinese mainland when the Communists won the civil war raging there in the late 1940s. Mao Zedong inaugurated the People's Republic of China in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, while the Nationalist army fled to the island, then called Formosa, to regroup.

That conflict still simmers across the Taiwan Strait. Almost 60 years later, it was a main issue in the Taiwan presidential elections, and I'm now just a few degrees away from the president. I'm still baffled at the opportunities journalism provides.

The Green They're After

Environmentalists have been pushing biofuels - those derived from carbon-based, recently living matter like trees and grass - as the alternative to fossil fuels, which have been charged with causing the greenhouse gas emissions supposedly responsible for warming the earth.

Many tout biofuels as unequivocally better than fossil fuels because they are "renewable" and emit less greenhouse gases when burned.

I'm no expert on biofuels or alternative energy in general, but since the global warming fad caught on, I've been skeptical, trying to look at the whole picture even as global warming activists, led by patron saint and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, try to slam the door shut on earnest inquiry into what these fuels and other environmental measures empirically accomplish.

Although the debate still rages, an article in today's International Herald Tribune seems to validate the idea that it's okay to question whether biofuels result in a net reduction in greenhouse gases, a drop in the guilt of groups who think we're slow-cooking ourselves or just an earnings spike in the bank accounts of those who have us fooled into paying for a big scam.

The article takes biofuels to task, citing two studies as saying that, taking account the fossil fuels expended and the land cleared to produce biofuels on a commercial scale, there's "probably" a net increase in greenhouse gases wafting into the atmosphere.

It's particularly encouraging to see this study being publicized because it bolsters those of us who would question the environmentalist orthodoxy. I don't mind people espousing opinions, and I don't claim to know whether global warming is a man-made catastrophe or a sensationalist fairy tale. I just want people to back up their claims with reason rather than emotion and with pure motives rather than a lust for profits. And I want people to look at the whole gamut of potential consequences, not just the ones beneficial to their own interests.

As a reporter, I've written articles about Germans pushing for legislation that would make wind and solar energy sources more economically viable in the U.S., and I've interviewed a top water technology official from Israel. Throughout those discussions, I've come to the conclusion that as many supposed environmental crusaders as there are out there, companies will not and cannot operate at a loss, no matter how strong their ideology.

In light of these studies, we should take a serious look at the economic (and now environmental) implications for government-mandated biofuel consumption, and when we hear green crusaders spouting their relentless rhetoric, we should do our best to figure out which kind of "green" they're after.

Photo by Trevor Williams in Xinjiang province, China. Copyright 2006.

How Not to Vote

I realize the inconsistency in writing about the primary elections simply to say that you're sick of hearing about them, but I feel like I need to get something off my chest about this election season.

Although it's not an empirical fact, the pundits, candidates and news services have speculated that Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee have been splitting the anti-John McCain conservative vote, meaning that either would be able to defeat him if the other would bow out of the race. Some have used this scenario as justification for their supporting one candidate over the other, reasoning that if they don't want McCain, they shouldn't "waste" their vote on someone with "no chance" to beat him.

It seems that most often, this scenario has hurt Huckabee, whom the media has painted as unelectable, possibly because of his heritage as a Baptist pastor. Romney, who has already spent loads of cash and has a magazine-full of monetary weapons at his disposal, at least before today has been seen as a more viable option for voters who see themselves as ideologically right of McCain and hoping to block his ascension. In fact, Romney was quoted as smugly saying, "In a two-person race, I like my chances," apparently totally ignoring Huckabee's strong support among evangelicals in the South.

My point is to say that especially in this accelerated primary season, the crazy whirlwind of media coverage threatens to have a inappropriate impact on the race. Like it or not, visibility is a big deal in deciding how people vote. A New York Times blog entry today said that John McCain had gotten 75 percent more news coverage than Mitt Romney in a week where 51 percent of total news coverage had to do with the elections. If Romney's coverage was that low, think of where Huckabee's must have been.

Although it's next to impossible to totally insulate ourselves from the media, we need to be smarter and more patriotic than to let it, or the candidates' manipulation of it, decide our vote for us. I have to admit that I was almost swayed by such political posturing, but I made a firm decision to vote for the person who I thought was the better candidate, regardless of empty projections about my vote's implications for the race as a whole. Ideally, I hope I would take this approach to the next level, voting for a candidate that had virtually no chance of winning if I truly thought he was the best person out of the available choices.

What I'm saying is that votes made only to block a certain candidate are unfounded if you believe there's someone better for the job. Casting such a vote means the pundits have convinced you to sacrifice your beliefs for their projections and that your voice isn't important for what it is.

Granted, in the general election, it may be necessary to vote for someone who wasn't your ideal candidate. But in that case, though you may not have voted for that person in the primary, you'll at least be voting on the principle that this person is better for the job than the alternative.

It can be confusing, and voting often comes down to the lesser of two evils. Just make sure that you don't vote for an intermediate evil to block a great evil when you could have put your support behind an underdog you don't think is an evil at all. Don't shortchange your voice. However twisted our democratic process is, it's all we've got. And hey, we could live in Russia.

Chuck Norris Hearts Huckabee

It might be a bit too early for me to endorse a candidate, but as a Republican, right now I'm liking Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor and Arkansas governor. He seems like a genuine social conservative, unlike many of the front-runners in the Republican field, and although inexperience in foreign policy may prove to be one of his weaknesses, he exudes humble confidence and likeability, two characteristics that are in very high demand in the coming presidential campaign.

Like other Republicans, I fear another, albeit estrogen-charged, Clinton administration, but I have a bit more faith in the democratic process than some conservatives. What I mean is that with Giuliani leading most Republican polls (and good ole Pat Robertson endorsing a pro-choice candidate), it seems that we're basing our decision on the candidate's likelihood of beating Hillary rather than their real stance on issues. For one, Hillary has not yet won the Dems' nomination, and also, I think that to cast a vote as a defensive measure is to misuse our freedoms and shortchange the dark horses in the upcoming primaries. It's obvious that a third-party will never win under the current system, but let's at least let non-celebrities compete if they have good ideas.

Huckabee, because he's a cellar-dweller with regard to fundraising, plays the underdog card well, and I think his recent success in the Iowa polls suggests that we really do live in a democracy and that it's not all about the Benjamins when it comes to politics. Campaign contributions drain money that could have been invested elsewhere, and if Huckabee had all the support in the world, he wouldn't have had to come up with the innovative Chuck Norris ad. With his shrewd use of currently limited resources, the pastor might earn trust in potential contributors and could eventually prove Jesus' words that he who is faithful with a little will be given more.

Another Sonny Day in Georgia

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue's decision to hold a prayer service outside the state Capitol yesterday petitioning to God for relief from the state's record drought was met with mixed reviews.

Although Sonny followed the politically correct protocol by inviting members of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu faiths to participate, his attempt at inclusiveness still wasn't good enough for some of Georgia's self-proclaimed "non-theistic" citizens.

Members of the ironically named Atlanta Free Thought Society believe that Sonny overstepped his Constitutional bounds as an elected official by endorsing religion in his official capacity.

Various organizations protested at the Capitol, carrying sarcastic signs that read, "Is it raining yet?" and "All hail Sonny Perdue!" press reports indicated.

I must admit that I probably wouldn't be too excited if Sonny organized some kind of animistic sacrifice on the Capitol steps, but what these Free Thoughters forget is that governors are citizens too, and that elected officials are not legally required to check their faith at the door to the gold-domed Capitol.

For those who haven't had civics class in awhile, here's the text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. See if you can find here a reason to prohibit a state governor for practicing his faith in public:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Now, I realize that there is a very long and complex history of Supreme Court decisions that have brought legal interpretations to where they are today, but I can't help looking back at my free speech in wartime class from last year and second-guessing the Supreme Court's competency in handling complicated matters relating to free speech. (It's interesting how the same people that preach Supreme Court historical precedent on issues like Roe v. Wade would condemn the actions of the very same court during wartime repression of dissenting voices). And I also can't help but think that anti-religious zealots simply use events like this just to further their own antagonistic agendas.

The truth is, those who claim agnosticism hold to a worldview that brings its own premises of faith to the table. Every belief, whether scientific or not, is only as true as the epistemological source it comes from. Some get their beliefs from science textbooks, some from holy books. Some believe what their preacher says, others their professor, therapist or guru. I'm not preaching some postmodern mumbo-jumbo that everyone's truth is equally valid. Far from it. I'm saying that everyone's perception of the truth is influenced by some facts that are not empirically verifiable, meaning that everyone carries some degree of faith, whether it be in God or in their own logic.

So free-thoughters, lighten up. No one's interrupting your enlightened little thinking parties, and the same Bill of Rights that gives you the ability to stand on the steps with your inconsiderate signs gives Sonny the right to ask the One who gives rain to send it a-pourin'.

Note: I'm not debating the efficacy of prayer in this context, only trying to give credence to Sonny's right do it. Why God has allowed this drought to go on is unclear, but the faithful will certainly pray, and they will also certainly accept God's decision to bring rain or let us run dry.
---

On a more personal note, I had to defend ole Sonny today in two different contexts.

At a conference on solar energy, a guy told me that he thought it was a bit ridiculous that the only thing the governor is doing about the drought is organizing a prayer vigil. For one, I said, that's not the only thing he's doing. Well, I wish he would've done something nine months ago, came the response.

But in the context of prayer, Sonny humbly admitted the government's inadequacy in the area of conservation, I answered. The man didn't really respond. It seems his desire to criticize was greater than his desire to think. And if Sonny, by some feat of divination, got a premonition about the drought before it happened and enacted measures to prevent it, I'm sure that these same sort of folks would be questioning his use of spiritual sources.

My second defense of Sonny was a bit less entertaining. Someone challenged his handling of the drought, and I simply pointed out that the governor is receiving the brunt of the criticism because the crisis is happening under his watch. Unpreparedness is a team effort where government is concerned.

To end, I just have one question and its candid answer:

Did you invite representatives from various faiths to petition the Lord for rain, and then receive a lot of crap about it?

Sonny did.

For one of my newest articles on the governor and a great picture of Sonny at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, go to www.globalatlanta.com.

Baseball Trip 2-Why I Love This Country

As if our plan to see three baseball games wasn’t American enough, our free lodging trail ended in a suburb of Washington D.C., staying with a friend’s mom whose husband was in the FBI. A 30-minute bus ride and a subway train of the same length took us into the capital city, where we would quickly tour the limestone and marble buildings that tell the story of our nation’s history.

With time so short, we knew we had to prioritize. Our main goal was to get a tour of the Capitol, no matter what the cost. Okay, so if there was a cover charge, we probably wouldn’t have gone, but that’s one of the reasons I love this country. The museums in Washington that house our nation’s most precious treasures are free admission, and we’re probably the only country where the people throw around the word “constituent” like it gives us some entitlement.

And that’s exactly what we did: We called the Georgia congressmen from the Athens, Columbus and even Hartwell districts, asking for a guided tour. When none of them came through, we went for the Senate. In 2000, I did eight hours of volunteer work for Saxby Chambliss’ Senate campaign, and I was determined to use the hard time I served making signs and doing phone surveys as leverage if Mr. Chambliss happened to be too busy to get us in.

The Senate was nearing its annual recess, and the Sax was not in the office, but he had a full staff of interns who were more than happy to accommodate us, even though we arrived just 30 minutes before they stopped giving hour-long tours.

Strangely enough, we finished our tour with plenty of time to spare. Our three-man group wove through droves of hapless tourists, and our fast-talking guides (one of which was from Columbus and knew Evan) led us to many interesting sights.

Here’s a very abridged version of what we saw at the Capitol:

-Apparently, this Italian guy named Brumidi did a bunch of the craftsmanship in the Capitol. He worked on the smoky gray mural (the frieze) that circles the rotunda, and to thumb his nose at his overseers, he added his own face to the picture. Speaking of the rotunda, can you guess who is the person most pictured there besides George Washington? Pocahontas. Disney fans rejoice.

-In one of the halls where the Senate used to meet, there are gilded ceilings, and there’s one spot where the acoustics are so perfect you can hear a whisper from the other side of the room. One of the senators eavesdropped on the others while they were preparing their arguments, and they could never figure out why he made such great rebuttals (John Adams?)

-There’s a little starry, circular design on the floor in the catacombs beneath the rotunda. Washington D.C. was built around that very circle.

-Speaking of catacombs, a sweet little underground train takes the Senators to the Capitol, and to get on it you have to pass by a life-sized replica of the statue that stands atop the Capitol.

-It’s a little disappointing, but just about everything in the Capitol was made in Europe. The floor tiles were imported from England, and all the marble was brought in as well. Even the architecture was stolen from ancient civilizations. It’s kind of like how the Statue of Liberty was made by the French. I guess you can save face if you call your country a "melting pot."

By the way, the game that night was pretty dull. The Nationals did please the RFK Stadium crowd by getting an extra-inning victory. The guy behind us said that it was the best game they’d played all year, so apparently we got lucky. I hope that’s not true. If so, I would have to cry on behalf of Washington baseball fans. One more stadium down, two to go.

What's in a Name?

Xenophobia should never dominate the public sphere.

Yes, I just used the word xenophobia, and if I'm honest, that's probably the only reason I'm writing this post. Without quoting Webster, the word--usually put to use in a cultural context--basically means "the fear or hatred of anything foreign."

As I was reading the paper today, I came across an alarming statement that indicated the racial polarization and xenophobia that some Americans harbor. The two-sentence blurb, printed in the "Sound Off!" section of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer's opinion page, read like this:

Did you know that one of our presidential hopefuls is named Barack Hussein Obama? How does this sound--President Barack Hussein Obama?

Of course, the statement implies that an American president shouldn't have a middle name reminiscent of the deposed dictator of Iraq or a last name only one letter away from matching the first name the most notorious Arab terrorist in the world.

While I'm not a democrat or a supporter of Obama, I take issue with this statement because of the obvious fear and disrespect it fosters. It's understandable that Americans would have qualms about a name like this because we're fighting a difficult war against terrorists with predominately Arab names, but it's certainly not excusable.

This semester I took a class solely devoted to the question of free speech during wartime. While our country talks a big game about the liberties embedded in our Constitution, the reality is that the courts have a very spotty record when it comes to supporting these liberties during times of duress. Members of the Socialist party, a viable political institution at the time, were stripped of their liberties during the WWI era. Because of xenophobia, scores of Japanese-Americans were taken from their homes and shipped off to internment camps during WWII.

I could name many other offenses, but the obvious point is that for some reason, especially during wartime, we tend to have an irrational fear of the "other." Our country has come a long way in the past few decades, and it's good to note that violence toward Muslim-Americans has been minimal in the post-9/11 era. But we should go further by realizing that someone's name has nothing to do with their patriotism or their ability to serve faithfully in public office.

If Obama wins the democratic nomination, I'm not going to vote for him. But it will be policies and principles, not fear of the foreign, that guide my decision.