Job Discussion Forums

[Leondys]

Good stuff movie magic. Is good to see replies from someone who knows their history and more importantly understands it.

It's a real shame that one of the major imports from the West these days seems to be brainwashed souls. I say have them attend re-education centres before they are allowed to teach students incorrect information.

Also, I think that if people want to come to China and start getting political they should at least understand the subject.

Myself I can't understand why anyone would come to China and start trying to impose their own political viewpoints in a class or teaching environment. Teachers should teach fact, not their own opinions.

[rickinbeijing]

Premier Wen is misinformed--as are most visitors to the White House--about the Lincoln office. Actually, it was Abe's bedroom and it was known to be frequented by ghosts (another taboo subject in Chinese middle school classrooms, I might add, as part of a never-ending but futile CCP effort to rid Chinese of their superstitions). For more on this interesting story, please see my article (which may or may not be so interesting) in the Extensive Reading for SEFC, Book 2B (a new series from People's Education Press, for which I am the sole author).

If you'd really like to know what drives the current Bush Administration policy from those who both articulate it well and advocate it, you must read award-winning journalist Charles Krauthammer's speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute (posted via link from the official White House page). He was introduced by VP Cheney. I might add that I agree with his rationale about the new direction in American foreign policy 100%. Go Chuck

[rickinbeijing]

Uh, yeah, Leon, send me to a reeducation camp so I can be indoctrinated into socialist claptrap.

Show me where my post reply reveals ignorance of historical fact and I'll pay for a bus ride for you and a significant other to Shangri-La.

The MAIN point of my original post on this thread was just that: to dissuade newcomers from using their lecturns as soapboxes, i.e. avoid becoming idealogues themselves in a land where ideology at the top levels still prevails.

Think hard...press fingers to forehead...think hard again.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

R.I.B.
I've read the AEI speech, and I--as well as perhaps 90% or more of the planet's population--don't share those "democratic globalism" values/ perspectives.
For an alternative perspective, check out another speech--to the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations). With US having a massive international debt, requiring a daily dose of foreign investment/loans, and nations/investors increasingly shifting their foreign currency savings from unstable US dollars to the Euro...I fail to see how the US can maintain its uni-polar militarized "benign hegemony"...especially when much of the world--unfortunately--no longer sees US power as benign, but as a greater threat to the peace than Ben Laden etc.
==============================================
AEI

http://aei.org/publications/pubID.19912,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

But that, you see, is the whole point of the multilateral enterprise: To reduce American freedom of action by making it subservient to, dependent on, constricted by the will--and interests--of other nations. To tie down Gulliver with a thousand strings. To domesticate the most undomesticated, most outsized, national interest on the planet--ours.
...Historically, multilateralism is a way for weak countries to multiply their power by attaching themselves to stronger ones. But multilateralism imposed on Great Powers, and particularly on a unipolar power, is intended to restrain that power. Which is precisely why France is an ardent multilateralist. But why should America be?

Why, in the end, does liberal internationalism want to tie down Gulliver, to blunt the pursuit of American national interests by making them subordinate to a myriad of other interests?....
===============================================
CFR
http://www.cfr.org/pub6005/charles_a_kupchan/new_world_order_not_only_one_will_win.php

New World Order: Not Only One Will Win

By Charles A. Kupchan

Die Zeit, May 22, 2003

America against the rest of the world -- that cannot go well. Europe sets the limits of the United States.
Translation in German.



From one perspective, the United States demonstrated its overwhelming military might and its willingness to use it - with clear lessons. Germany, France, and Russia had better do what they can to make up with the world's only superpower. Rogue nations had better prepare for the worst. A new American century is poised to unfold.

From another perspective, the war seems to mark just the opposite - the end of the American era. The United States may have unfurled its new doctrine of preemption and preeminence. But in doing so, it also has acted against the court of world opinion, compromising its international legitimacy. America's benign hegemony is no longer so benign. From here on out, countries may well resist rather than rally behind U.S. leadership.

This second vision is far more likely to be the accurate one. The war over Iraq was a symptom, not a cause, of the rift that has divided America from much of the world. Most members of the U.N. Security Council were prepared to resist Washington's rush to war because they had already come to believe that the United States posed a greater threat to international stability than Iraq. American unilateralism, strengthened by the vulnerability and anger left behind by September 11, is tearing away at the fabric of the international community.

Although America's military supremacy will remain uncontested for decades to come, this fundamental change in the perception of U.S. power and purpose will quietly erode America's unipolar moment. Many countries are now distancing themselves from the United States, expediting the transition to a world of multiple centers of power. The return of a multipolar landscape will reawaken the competitive instincts that have been held in abeyance by U.S. primacy. Preparing for this transition is one of the central challenges facing the global community.
=============================================
Realism

AEI

This vision is all very nice. All very noble. And all very crazy. Which brings us to the third great foreign policy school: realism.

The realist looks at this great liberal project and sees a hopeless illusion. Because turning the Hobbesian world that has existed since long before the Peloponnesian Wars into a Lockean world, turning a jungle into a suburban subdivision, requires a revolution in human nature. Not just an erector set of new institutions, but a revolution in human nature. And realists do not believe in revolutions in human nature, much less stake their future, and the future of their nation, on them.
---------------------------------------------------
The realist believes the definition of peace Ambrose Bierce offered in The Devil's Dictionary: Peace: noun, in international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.?/P>

Hence the realist axiom: The international community is a fiction. It is not a community, it is a cacophony--of straining ambitions, disparate values and contending power.

What does hold the international system together? What keeps it from degenerating into total anarchy? Not the phony security of treaties, not the best of goodwill among the nicer nations. In the unipolar world we inhabit, what stability we do enjoy today is owed to the overwhelming power and deterrent threat of the United States.==============================================

CFR

As the second decade of this century unfolds, the geopolitical axis is likely to shift to the Pacific, with China gradually emerging as a world-class economic power - perhaps with a military to match. Japan will eventually climb out of recession, adding to Asia's rise. A multipolar world thus looms on the horizon. This century will not belong to America, Europe, or East Asia - it will belong to no one.

The world is thus entering an era of geopolitical transformation, not one of continued U.S. hegemony. Transitions in the international system have always been fraught with danger - hence the urgent need to recognize that change is afoot and map out a strategy for managing it peacefully.
===============================================

AEI

What is the unipolar power to do?

Four schools, four answers.

The isolationists want simply to ignore unipolarity, pull up the drawbridge, and defend Fortress America. Alas, the Fortress has no moat--not after the airplane, the submarine, the ballistic missile--and as for the drawbridge, it was blown up on 9/11.

Then there are the liberal internationalists. They like to dream, and to the extent they are aware of our unipolar power, they don抰 like it. They see its use for anything other than humanitarianism or reflexive self-defense as an expression of national selfishness. And they don抰 just want us to ignore our unique power, they want us to yield it piece by piece, by subsuming ourselves in a new global architecture in which America becomes not the arbiter of international events, but a good and tame international citizen.

Then there is realism, which has the clearest understanding of the new unipolarity and its uses--unilateral and preemptive if necessary. But in the end, it fails because it offers no vision. It is all means and no ends. It cannot adequately define our mission.

Hence, the fourth school: democratic globalism. It has, in this decade, rallied the American people to a struggle over values. It seeks to vindicate the American idea by making the spread of democracy, the success of liberty, the ends and means of American foreign policy.

I support that. I applaud that. But I believe it must be tempered in its universalistic aspirations and rhetoric from a democratic globalism to a democratic realism. It must be targeted, focused and limited. We are friends to all, but we come ashore only where it really counts. And where it counts today is that Islamic crescent stretching from North Africa to Afghanistan.

===============================================
CFR

An effective strategy for dealing with the challenges ahead has three critical ingredients. First, Americans must rediscover that multilateralism has at least some merits. Otherwise, the international system will collapse as America and Europe head for a nasty divorce rather than an amicable separation. Perhaps voices of reason will eventually make themselves heard in the United States - even amid a politics still tinged with anxiety about terrorism. If such self-correcting mechanisms fail to operate, then it will be up to others - Europeans in particular - to restrain America.
A Europe that redoubles efforts to build a union capable of acting collectively on the international stage is the second key ingredient of a new strategy. The EU is currently in a no-man's-land. It is too strong to be America's lackey, but too weak and divided to be either an effective partner or a formidable counterweight - inviting Washington's disdain. If the United States faces a strong and coherent EU, however, it will at least have the option of eventually striking a more balanced and mature partnership with Europe. The EU, whether or not America has the good sense to rekindle multilateralism, will at least emerge as a responsible center of power helping to anchor an uncertain world.

Collective efforts to integrate China and other developing regions into global markets and institutions are the final ingredient of a strategy for managing the return to multipolarity. Doing so will help ensure that China aligns its power with rather than against Europe and America. It will also alleviate the underlying conditions that lead to instability, arms proliferation, and terrorism. This task is an onerous one - underscoring the ultimate need for a tamed America and a collective Europe to approach it together.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/SpecialCollections/AEI.aspx

Expose the American Enterprise Institute:
Too Much Influence, Not Enough Facts
A collection of links and articles on the dual role of the AEI as corporate lobbyist and neo-con media propagandist


The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), formed in 1943, is a supposedly non-partisan, right-wing think tank employing 50 fellows. Many of these fellows are former Republican government officials and corporate executives, and many more have left AEI to join Republican administrations and the private sector. The current Bush administration alone employs 20 former AEI fellows, and AEI currently houses the likes of Newt Gingrich, failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, Lynne Cheney (the Vice-President's wife), and ultra-hawk Richard Perle. Former AEI associates included Dick Cheney, former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Treasury Secretary John Snow.
AEI researches, publishes books and papers, holds seminars, and testifies before Congress on a wide variety of issues. Upon Examination, AEI reveals itself as little more than a corporate lobbying group and conservative government breeding ground in academic clothing. With an annual budget of over $20 million, the vast majority of which comes either directly from corporations or from corporate-controlled interests, its priorities are clear and it wields tremendous influence over the Bush administration and essentially provides the intellectual justification for if not the substance of its policies. AEI's dominance of mainstream corporate media, as correspondents, op-ed columnists, and editors, serves as a bullhorn for Bush administration policies and a platform for unchallenged indoctrination of the American public with neo-liberal and neo-imperial viewpoints.

[rickinbeijing]

MM,

You've posted a lot for me to digest and respond to when I have more time.

But let me make a few quips here and now:

The AEI is a conservative leaning think tank similar to the Hoover Institute at Stanford. Liberal think tanks abound, most notably the Brookings Institute. But liberals, in their infinite arrogance, would never deign to acknowledge the ideological biases of their think tanks. I know, in my youth I was also a clueless liberal who graduated from a rather militant but reputable university.

As for Europe being opposed to our unilateralism, I'd like to know just when France and Germany began to constitute Europe? The emerging republics in the former Warsaw Pact don't count? Britain, despite its angry midwives that get off while reading The Guardian's leftist editorials, is with us nonetheless. Neither was Spain until recently and Italy still by and large back us although its commies always get their say. And since when should we give a rat's buttocks what Russia thinks? When has Russia ever had any moral legitimacy in world affairs? Russia likes to think of itself as European but in my estimation it is more Asian (with the notable exception of St. Petersburg from whence, ironically, Putin hails).

I'd like you to rebut yourself Krauthammer's speech point for point, thank you very much, rather than defer to another journalist.

P.S. This thread is now officially off-topic. I will shift it to the correct forum. FYI.

_______________

"What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?"
-Harry Truman

[ProfessorBob77]

china movie majic,

What will Canada do?? Taiwan taking all of our beloved immigrants!
But on a serious note.... As a man married to a Chinese national I believe that it is silly to have these conversations about what "Chinese students" think (i.e. they hate Japanese people). Any nation that is fed an onslaught of propaganda is going to begin to believe it. All this talk about a war with Taiwan makes me want to go somewhere safe, perhaps The Middle East!

professorbob77

[ProfessorBob77]

sorry, i spelled majic with a "j".
I must admit my brutal typing mistake before i well..uh make another one.

come on bob it's Magic! Either way in the mainland you shouldn't believe in either majic or magic!!

professorbob77

[ChinaMovieMagic]

Bob:
RE:>>"Magic" Yes, "movie magic" doesn't translate weel into Chinese. But...I don't "believe" in magic...nor in "God." Rather...I practice....

Any nation that is fed an onslaught of propaganda is going to begin to believe it.>>

In my experience in China many-many folks do NOT believe the propaganda/political education classes...even when the INFO is true!!! Unlike folks in the US, for example, Chinese students are generally quite aware of the role of the govt./Party in news programs.

BUT---consider this...recently a Prof. told his university students in his political education class that the book of MaoZiDong Thought is only useful for cleaning babies' bottoms.

Such hyperbole, and the (discrete) Free Speech practiced in English Corners, suggest to me that in China there is NOT:

* the culture of fear described BELOW----in Cuba

* the more effective/un-noticed US-style propaganda, as developed by the Pentagon for/upon Hollywood films, as described BELOW

=================================
For tips about effective Dialogue, check out:
www.civicreflection.org
================================
For Cuba comparison, check out:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/11084203.htm

"It's a culture of fear. It's like a system of anticipated paralysis, in which people are not capable of expressing themselves or having conflicting attitudes."

Those who dare to speak out against the government can lose their jobs, be given the cold shoulder in their neighborhoods, or wind up in prison, Paya said. Their children can face exclusion and discrimination at school or at work, he added.


Many adult volunteers who participated in Paya's Varela Project � a democracy drive that brought international acclaim to the activist � are now behind bars.




Paya said his latest pursuit, the National Dialogue, is even more threatening to the Cuban government. It goes to the heart of the regime, he said, by prompting people to voice their concerns and complaints and actively create a blueprint for change in Cuba's centralized political and economic systems.


"When Cubans are capable of saying that, beyond our fear, we want change, that hits the nucleus of power," he said. "If the people don't have fear, the regime no longer exists."

Under the project, thousands of Cubans on the island and abroad have formed small groups to discuss reform. The project includes outspoken opponents of President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) as well as supporters of the current system who favor some changes.
===============================================
In China, I don't sense there's a culture of fear. At English Corners, in contrast to the typical classroom, people talk freely---with DISCRETION (a China-valuable element often lacking in our POSTERS' flaming of China in this Forum)
===============================================
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/holl-m14.shtml

Military interference in American film production
Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon shapes and censors the movies by David L. Robb
By Mile Klindo and Richard Phillips
14 March 2005


Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon shapes and censors the movies by David L. Robb, a former journalist for Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, is a timely work. Published in 2004, a year after the US-led occupation of Iraq, it exposes one of the dark secrets of American movies�military interference in film production and Hollywood�s acquiescence to it.

While collaboration between the US military and Hollywood, of course, is not a new phenomenon, few moviegoers realise how much control the Pentagon has over the American film industry. Citing letters, internal memos and interviews with producers, writers and directors, Robb�s book contains valuable information about its insidious and destructive influence on American cinema.
===============================================

[rickinbeijing]

Movie,

Yes, you're right. The Pentagon has a special department in its basement which screens all pre-releases of Hollywood films in which any American military hardware, lingo, or organizational structure is mentioned and then sends its goons to La-La Land to investigate. It is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy so often noted in the mainstream American press.

Of course, one must wonder how successful this censorship has been given how any number of Hollywood films depict the top brass as bungling idiots and American G.I.'s as little more than mindless corporate mercenaries and gung-ho machete wielding maniacs.

Time to get off that caffeine rush, dude.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

<<Of course, one must wonder how successful this censorship has been... >>


Capitulation to Pentagon demands

Windtalkers also ran into trouble with the Pentagon over its portrayal of the Code Talkers story. Code Talkers were Navajo Indians who joined the US Marines during WWII and used their native language as a code that the Japanese were unable to break.

Marine sergeant Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage) is assigned to protect a Code Talker, with orders to kill him in the event of his capture by the Japanese. This became a major point of contention with the Pentagon.

Captain Matt Morgan of the Marine film liaison office claimed that the movie�s portrayals were �un-Marine� and demanded changes. He claimed that the orders to Enders �to take your guy out� were a �fiction� and had to be removed. Contrary to Morgan�s claims, however, Marines were given just such orders. This has been verified by surviving Code Talkers and the US Congress.

In contrast to Thirteen Days, however, the producers of Windtalkers agreed to change this aspect of the script. But this was not enough; Strub and Morgan wanted an entire character, The Dentist, deleted. The Dentist was a deranged and brutalised soldier who removed gold teeth from dead Japanese soldiers. Morgan claimed the portrayal was �un-Marine�.

The military also demanded another scene, where Cage kills a surrendering Japanese soldier with a flamethrower, be excised. Director John Woo shamelessly caved in to all these demands, despite the fact that the original script was based on the historical record. When Windtalkers was finally released, a Marine Corp news release triumphantly claimed that Woo�s movie, not only �has it all� but is �accurate down to the smallest detail�.

Pentagon interference has not been limited to war movies. Screwball comedy Stripes (1981), starring Bill Murray as a misfit army recruit, was drastically changed in pre-production, and children�s television shows such as �Lassie� and �The Mickey Mouse Club� had some of their scripts rewritten in order to make the US armed forces more palatable to children.

Dan Goldberg, the producer and co-writer of Stripes, assured the Pentagon that he planned to make a comedy with �patriotic overtones that would hopefully have a positive effect on Army recruiting�. But the Army ordered Stripes to be rewritten from beginning to end.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Griffitts, chief of the army�s Policy and Plans Division, did not agree with the depiction of drug use in the barracks and Drill Sergeant Hulka (Warren Oates), he claimed, was too sadistic. In fact, Hulka was a relatively mild practioner of the brutal methods used in army boot camps.

On Pentagon orders, all references to the US Army deployments in Latin America or Mexico were scrapped; jokes about rape and pillage deleted; and various characters toned down or eliminated entirely. In exchange for access to a Fort Knox location and permission to use tanks and a C-140 transport plane, Goldberg capitulated to every Pentagon demand.

[rickinbeijing]

Movie,

I don't have time to respond to your litany of complaints against the American military, government, culture, etc. You sound quite disenchanted. Perhaps a PRC citizenship application is in order?

Yes, I know all about the Wind Talkers. There ARE conflicting reports from the survivors about this which tells me that maybe some were and some were not threatened. Remember: it was a time of war and those men, brave as they were, retained valuable information that could risk the lives of many more soldiers.

Can you blame the Pentagon for wanting to project a better image what with the spate of anti-military movies out of Hollywood in recent years? Only Gibson's is an exception, although I at least give "Good Morning, Vietnam" credit for showing some decent soldiers and officers as well.

I saw Wind Talkers and found it incredibly boring--and I'm a WWII movie aficiondo. That's its worst sin.

The hard fact, which most liberals like you don't get, is that the military is a sub-culture seldom understood by those outside it. Unfortunately, the mostly liberal mainstream media has never really TRIED to understand it, either. And there lies the crux of the problem.

Any effort by the Pentagon to sharpen its PR is met with open hostility or suspicion. Have they always been fairly motivated? Probably not, but then name me an institution that is? Are the liberal universities inviting Ward Churchill to speak fair-minded in upholding freedom of speech? Do they invite David Horowitz or Ward Connelly? I think not. But I digress. Time for bed.

Your prosaic anti-military writings are going to waste. You should apply to be a screenwriter with Oliver Stone, my friend.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

BTW...a "liberal" is NOT myself...but protector of Mother Earth/Earthlings
===============================================
RE: China citizenship...here in China, my self-identity is as a Johnny-Appleseed...and I believe I have a good record w/the powers-that-be here (whereas the US "Patriot Act" may have me on a list, qualified for anal cavity examination at the airport).

I am CERTAIN that China has many new/interesting/open-minded seed-souls/institutions increasingly sprouting in the future. I regret to say that I no longer feel this way about my own country. This is not meant in the spirit of bashing, but with regret...for the US citizens...and for the world's citizens, who suffer from the US military-industrial Shadow dynamics.
===============================================
The SHADOW is--unfortunately--a psychic dynamic which remains relevant in these (post-)modern times...
for individuals/groups/nations...
and neither US/China, nor yourself, are an exception.

TABOO is related to the SHADOW.
I would question your vile/bile p*ssing-in-the-wind logic ...
...your inflammatory use of Sarcasm
in (humorously) describing these TABOO subjects
(BTW, my students do NOT agree w/you on SOME of those listed)

Such sarcasm certainly can PROVOKE some readers of your words, e.g.:
(1)sensitive Chinese souls and/or
(2)powerful Party/govt. officials.

I sense your own sensitive Shadow-spirit perceives my words as being an ATTACK upon cherished beliefs/institutions etc.

You wrote:
<<I don't have time to respond to your litany of complaints against the American military, government, culture, etc. You sound quite disenchanted. Perhaps a PRC citizenship application is in order?>>

You called my words "America-bashing." For myself, I view myself as a QC sort-of-guy...telling folks, you can/must do better...as when the US QC rate for computer chips was abysmally low compared to Japan's. Since then, many US Corporate systems have generally improved their QC/competitiveness systems. But the US political/social/cultural system is low-quality, cannibalized by the corruption of corporatism...which Jefferson was worrying about 200 years ago.

Deepplanet Magazine
... The great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called it the "shadow. ... Zweig: These issues were in the collective shadow, they were taboo, forbidden topics, ...
www.deepplanet.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=28 - 27k - Cached - Similar pages

In psychology, the dark side of human nature is often described as the alter ego, the id, or the lower self. The great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called it the "shadow." By shadow, he meant the negative side of the personality, the sum total of all those unpleasant qualities that we would prefer to hide.

[goman72]

ChinaMovieMagic said:

[goman72]

Surely the fact that a foreigner is in China to teach English and it's culture (be it form US Canada Aussie or UK) demonstrates a slight degree of openness from the hiring institution? Do Chinese authorities expect teachers to leave all their beliefs at the door and JUST teach English ?
What were Universities created for in the first place? To encourage discussion and debate on a wide range of topics and hopefully come up with theories, recommendations, etc, etc, etc...
With the market Economy that China is embracing there has to be some discussion of this kind to open up a few minds, no?

CG