China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun.

Here's the link to Song Binbin's writing:

http://cnd.org/my/modules/wfsection/article.php%3Farticleid=31501

China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun.

If you google Song Binbin the fifth text entry and the first five images are from Public Occurrences.  Because Song has occupied so much time and space here I publish the following email now pending the details:

Hi, Benjamin:

I've noticed and read the article Song Binbin published in 2012 Rememberance "Words I've Waited for More than 40 Years to Say". She apologizes for what happened during the Cultural Revolution. I would say her apology is sincere but not in depth. When I find time, I'll translate the last part of her apology. Mainly she tried to make understood her complicated and contradictory thoughts all these years including being used on the anniversary of her alma mater.

“Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mix a powerful imagination with a logic in absurdum, and the result will be either a paradox or an Irishman. If it is an Irishman, you will get the paradox into the bargain. Even the Nobel Prize in Literature is sometimes divided. Paradoxically, this has happened in 1969, a single award being addressed to one man, two languages and a third nation, itself divided.”

What brilliant use of language by Karl Ragnar of the Swedish Academy in his presentation address at the Nobel ceremony.

Alejandrina Cabrera

The Arizona Supreme Court today upheld Judge John Nelson's ruling that Ms. Cabrera is ineligible to appear on the ballot for City Council in San Luis because of her lack of fluency in English. See post here January 28. 

To:  B.H.

From: B.H.

To Do:


1. call shrink, ask for prescription for "uppers."
2. google "painless ways to commit suicide."

To: B.H.

From: B.H.

To Do:


1. google "painless ways to commit suicide."
2. call shrink, ask for prescription for "uppers."

"We are alone.  We cannot know and we cannot be known."
                                                                               -Samuel Beckett

Boy oh boy there seem to be a lot of women not getting raped in Manhattan.

Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.  No writer in the English language was more attuned to the misery caused by the Industrial Revolution, no writer could describe it as he could.  It was the alloy of humor that he added to every story that separates Dickens from other chroniclers of woe. It is a distinctive, irresistible English humor.

To Charles Dickens.

Chula Vista

Chula Vista won the Little League World Series!

The town I grew up in was so small it didn't have Little League baseball. They called it "midget" league. I think that has scarred me.

Chula Vista

Beautiful.

Chula Vista

Holy mackerel, Chula Vista looks pretty nice.

Now if you add Chula Vista to the job gains in November and December 2011 then you get up to 603,000, more than the population of Washington D.C.*

*Changed Feb. 4 based on the Labor Department's revised increases for November and December.

Continuing our series "Popular Economics" the United States Department of Labor released its monthly jobs figures today.  The unemployment rate fell to 8.3%, the third straight month of job gains.

8.4 million jobs had been lost since the beginning of the recession in 2007, more than the entire population of New York City. Last month 243,000 jobs were added.  That's the size of Chula Vista, California. 

China.

I wrote extensively about “Arab Spring” throughout the first half of 2011 and as can be seen in the sidebar some of those posts are among the ten most-read since Google began providing stats in 2009.  I never received one email from an Arab or Arab-American.

Six years ago I began writing on China. Some of those posts are also among the most-read.  I have received many emails from people in the PRC, from Chinese-Americans, from Chinese in the Diaspora.

It seems to me the Chinese people want to know, they want to be heard, and if the vessel for communication is foreign-registered so be it. When Public Occurrences was blocked in the PRC I still heard from people there, although not as much.  In the last half of 2011 however, as the Chinese regime began clamping down on the internet, and on dissidents, things have noticeably dried up.  When I wrote here offering to help Ai Weiwei I was told “It is hard to find someone who will write to you” from China. Hu Jintao has made purifying Chinese culture of foreign influence his project for his last year in office. More dissidents and activists have been arrested; microblog users must now register using their real names. Chinese governments have shown again and again throughout three thousand years of rule that there are no limits to their efforts at repression.  Time and again, as in Tiananmen, they have won.  They are winning now.

Imgage: "Sorrow while Traveling," Ni Zan (1301-1374).

"Get on board, dick!"

The above phrase is taken from the infuriating-comic conversation between Italian Coast Guard official Gregorio De Falco and Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino the night of the disaster.  An audio recording of the conversation, released in the days afterward, riveted people worldwide, especially in Italy. Almost immediately Italians began printing tee shirts emblazoned with the phrase.

The phrase has become metaphor for Italians.  Embarrassed by their economic plight, by the comic disaster of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's tenure, even by World War II, some Italians see the better angel of their soul in De Falco and the worser in Schettino.  Vada a bordo, cazzo! means to Italians, let's clean up our economic act, let's get on board with new "technocrat" Prime Minister Mario Monti, let's act responsibly as De Falco did, not cowardly as Schettino did, and as we did in World War II.

The Italian people are seeking their collective soul in the aftermath of the Costa Concordia.  Good for them.

The American state of Arizona has, since statehood, had an “arm’s-length” relationship with immigrants from Mexico.  Illegal immigration is as contentious a political issue there as anywhere.

Arizona’s state constitution requires, as do the laws in many other states, official state business be conducted in the English language. American law, whether state or federal, of course requires non-English speakers be afforded access to basic governmental functions: children must be taught in a language they can understand in public schools; those accused of crimes must be provided interpreters in court. For example.

Comes now Alejandrina Cabrera, American citizen, City Council candidate:

“I speak little English, but my English is fine for San Luis.”

                                                             -Alejandrina Cabrera.

The bird in the air-pump for Ms. Cabrera is that San Luis is located in Arizona in the United States of America where official business, like City Council business, must be conducted in the language which Ms. Cabrera speaks little, and where state law requires elected officials read, speak and understand same. 

In America, this is the stuff of which lawsuits are made.

Ms. Cabrera’s access to the ballot was challenged by some of the burghers of San Luis on the basis of English proficiency. Lawyers were obtained. A hearing was held before a judge:

By Mr. Minore, counsel for Alejandrina Cabrera:

Q:  Where did you go to high school?

We interrupt to reflect upon an adage of American court practice: “A lawyer should never ask a question to which he does not know the answer.” 

A:  

Thus was birthed the “Alejandrina Cabrera codicil:"  “A lawyer should never ask a question his client does not understand.”

A legal frisson was birthed a twin to the codicil and the judge immediately halted the proceedings.  An Expert was appointed.

The expert's opinion was that Ms. Cabrera did not understand English well enough to conduct City Council business.

That wasn’t the end.

The expert was from Australia via Brigham Young University (How? By what conspiracy of the gods did this happen?) and spoke in the distinctive Down Under patois. Ms. Cabrera averred that the expert’s accent caused her to not understand.  This was an imperfect defense. Ms. Cabrera’s in-court non-answer to her lawyer’s question evinced unfamiliarity with American English. She was now conceding the same with the Australian variant.  An expert from Canada, eh?

No expert from Canada. Judge John Nelson ruled that Alejandrina Cabrera’s name be taken off the ballot.

La causa Cabrera pushes several buttons among Americanos.  For those of us with impressive criminal rap sheets it is chastening reminder to lie down and take a powder.  For normal people it is also aggravation: why can’t she learn English well enough? It seems apodictic to most Americans that all Americans, City Council candidates or deliverers of pizza, should speak, write and understand English.

For abogados though…Ohhh:

1. Is ballot access a fundamental American right? Sort of?
2. If the English-challenged can become American citizens how can they be denied access to the ballot…for being English-challenged?
3. How is it legal for the English-challenged to be permitted to vote for candidates but not be candidates themselves?
4. Has the constitutionality of that Arizona law requiring office-holders to be English proficient ever been challenged?
5. How English-challenged is too English-challenged under the Arizona law?  The Constitution?
6. Does the Arizona law apply to office-holders and office-seekers?
7. Would Ms. Cabrera still be afoul of the law if she were allowed to appear on the ballot, got elected, took a crash course in English and became proficient before being sworn in?  Ohhh.
8. If the Arizona law is unconstitutional--even if only “as applied” to Ms. Cabrera’a situation, can the law be changed (and changed it would have to be if it were found to be unconstitutional) and still accomplish its intent to require English proficiency? 

Counsel for Ms. Cabrera said he didn't know if he would appeal. 

China

"Murder:"  The email yesterday is one of the few times that term has been used, other than here, to characterize what was done to Bian Zhongyun. Weili Ye for example titled her article "The Death of Bing* Zhongyun."   "Killing" is a more common term. Baby steps.

*Weili is a big fan of American crooner Bing Crosby and was being playful with the title in tribute.**

**I do have a talent for making enemies.

China

A Chinese-American friend sent me a photo of former NBA player Yao Ming at the Chinese National Parliamentary Conference, which my friend describes as "a rubber-stamp of the Communist Party."  Rubber-stamping can't be too exciting and an inordinate number (in yellow by undersigned) of conferees are "resting their eyes."  Yao appears ready to join them momentarily. 

China

I am shunned like a leper by many--many--people in the U.S. and China and while it is good to have enemies, it is also good to have friends and to receive appreciative emails, as I did today from a person I did not know previously:

Hi Harris,

This is [name withheld] writing from [ditto location]. As a Chinese American, I wanted to say thank you for all you have done related to Bian Zhongyun's murder.