Monthly Archives: May 2020

Killings.

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In 2016, 61.3 percent of the population of the United States was white; 12.7 percent of the population was black.[1]

Homicide (2016).

In 2016, there were 6,676 murders in the United States.[2]

Of the perpetrators, 81 percent of whites were killed by other whites and 15 percent were killed by blacks; and 89 percent of blacks were killed by other blacks and 8.4 percent of blacks were killed by whites.  So, we live in a pretty segregated society in this area just as in many others.

Of these killings, 3,499 victims were white; 2,870 victims were black; 221 victim were “other race”; and 86 victims were listed as “unknown race.”  So, 52 percent of the victim were white; and 42 percent of the victims were black.  This means that white suffer about 5/6s or 80 percent of the homicides they “should” suffer if homicide was evenly distributed by race.  In contrast, blacks suffer more than three times as many homicides as they “should” suffer if homicide was evenly distributed.

Killed by police (2019).

In 2019, police officers killed 1,004 people.[3]

Of the killed, 370 were white; 235 were black; 158 were Hispanic; 39 were “other”; and 202 were listed as “Unknown.”  Of the 784 people killed whose race was known, 47.6 percent were white; and 30 percent were black.

Application (2020).

On 23 February 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was shot to death by two white men attempting to make a “citizen’s arrest” because they suspected that he might be a burglar.  Arbery’s death and the failure of the local authorities to take any action triggered widespread protests and criticism.  In addition video of the killing soon went viral.  When I Googled his name just now, I got 10,600,000 results.

On 25 May 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer as bystanders filmed the event.  The video soon went viral.  Demonstrations soon began and have slid into rioting, looting, and arson in some cases.  When I Googled his name just now I got 205,000,000 results.

On 1 May 2020, the son of a disgruntled Dollar Store customer shot to death unarmed security guard Calvin Munerlyn.  Several candle-light vigils appear to have followed.  When I Googled his name just now I got 144,000 results.

This isn’t to argue that police violence isn’t a grave problem for African-Americans.  It is.  It isn’t to argue that the deaths of Arbery and Floyd don’t deserve all the attention they have garnered.  They do.

It’s just to suggest that there are even more grave problems facing African-Americans than deaths at the hands of the police.  But nobody seems interested in drawing that lesson—or in remembering Calvin Munerlyn.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States

[2] See: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls

[3] The Washington Post has been running a data base.  See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-shootings-2019/

Down the Malay Barrier 3.

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The Shan State forms one of Myanmar’s ethnic communities.  Located in the northeastern quadrant of Myanmar, it borders southwestern China (Yunnan), Laos, and Thailand.  Under other circumstances, a bunch of forested hills on the inland edge of a no-account country would be of no interest.  In fact, however, it is an important–and increasingly important—link in the international narcotics supply chain.

For one thing, the many small farms grow both produce and opium poppies.  Poppies grow easily in the poor soil often found in hill regions.  Poor peasants value poppies as a cash crop.  For another thing, part of the anti-Communist Chinese Kuomintang Army retreated from Yunnan into the Shan State after the Communist victory in 1949.  Rather than transit to join the other supporters of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, they settled down in Shan State.  There the refugee army embarked on opium and heroin production.  For yet another thing, since 1962 the central government’s effort to suppress autonomy movements has spawned local resistance groups.  As the old saying goes, “For success in war, three things are necessary: money, more money, and still more money.”[1]  Shan autonomists have relied upon drug sales to build up military forces more than capable of holding off the army of Myanmar on most occasions.[2]

If opium and heroin built the foundations of the Shan State drug trade, the producers have been alert to changes in global market conditions and new product development.  Take, for example methamphetamine and fentanyl.  Methamphetamine is a synthetic stimulant.[3]  “Crystal meth” is an alternative form of methamphetamine.  Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is far stronger than is heroin.[4]  All have become popular “recreational” drugs.  Much of production of the chemical components of both methamphetamine and fentanyl took place in China.  In recent years, pressure from the United States caused the Chinese government to restrict production in China proper.  Producers shifted their facilities outside China, including to Shan State.

New supply chain routes then developed.  Fishing villages dot Myanmar’s long coastline on the Bay of Bengal.  Doubtless the local fishermen feel the same eagerness to profit from the drug trade as do the peasant farmers.  Probably they carry their cargo to ports like Yangon and Singapore, while another route may run down the nearby Mekong River to Ho Chi Minh City.

Myanmar’s war with the ethnic groups has been a murky business.  To offer one example, the Kachin Defense Army, in Shan State, is suspected of having done a deal with the army of Myanmar involving the drug trade.  However, the trouble with criminals—even criminals in uniform—is that they’re dishonest.  The Kachins seem to have been sending some of their product to the Arakan Army on the west coast.  Discovering this betrayal, the army and police launched a series of raids into Kachin territory in Spring 2020.  They hauled in 200 million tabs of meth, 1,100 pounds of crystal meth, 630 pounds of heroin, and almost 1,000 gallons of methyl fentanyl.[5]  The army probably sought to remind the Kachins of the deal, not break the deal.

[1] Attributed variously to Marshal Trivulzio and Raimondo Montecucolli.

[2] You might enjoy and learn from “Proof of Life” (dir. Taylor Hackford, 2000).

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl

[5] Hannah Beech and Saw Nang, “Record Raids in Myanmar Point to Shifting Drug Trade,” NYT, 20 May 2020.

Down the Malay Barrier 2.

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Geography and climate.  Burma is an up-and-down country sandwiched between India and Bangladesh in the northwest, China and Laos in the east, and Malaya in the south.  The Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal create long seaboards.

Just as Egypt is “the gift of the Nile,” Burma is “the gift of the Irrawaddy.”  Burma’s chief river runs most of the length of the country through a wide, lush valley.  Encircling that valley to west, east, and north are ranges of hills and increasingly rugged mountains.

Burma is in Monsoon Asia: there is a wet season and a dry season (October-May); it’s mostly hot and sometimes steamy.  For Western travelers, health dangers abound.[1]

 

The history that matters.  Burma began as a series of city-states in and around the Irrawaddy River valley between 200 and 100 BC.  Larger kingdoms rose and fell through the 800s AD.  All the while, new ethnic groups immigrated from China and India.  Then, during what Europeans would call the High Middle Ages (c. 1000-1500 AD), a succession of still bigger kingdoms emerged to engulf many of the territories surrounding the Irrawaddy valley; and first Buddhism, then Islam spread from India.  All this created an ethnically and religiously diverse Burma.  From the late 1600s to the early 1800s, a series of empires and kingdoms sought to expand the boundaries of Burma and to impose strong central government on outlying ethnic communities.

This worked pretty well until an expanding Burma collided with an expanding British Empire in India.  Three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824-1885) ended in British rule over Burma.

British rule increased the Western impact on the country: Buddhism was disestablished as the state religion; secular schools—largely staffed by Christian missionaries—were created; a fleet of riverboats and ferries sailed the rivers; and a railroad ran the length of the great central valley.  Furthermore, many new immigrants—Indians—settled in Burma, while the mixed race “Anglo-Burmese” later became an important sub-group.  The British administration granted enlarged autonomy to the “tribal” areas containing ethnic minorities.  By the early 20th Century, Burma had become a remarkably diverse multi-ethnic community.[2]

Naturally, British rule inspired a student-led nationalist movement.  Minor British concessions failed to appease nationalist demands before the Second World War.  The Burmese ethnic groups had composed their differences—for the moment—in a 1944 conference.  A war-exhausted Britain granted independence in 1948.

When the civilian government failed to squash demands from the ethnic minorities for greater self-government, the army overthrew the government (1962), then later changed the country’s name to Myanmar.  Burma has been a military dictatorship ever since.  The generals have wrecked the economy through socialist-inspired policies incompetently applied.  They haven’t done much better at either defeating or reconciling the ethnic minorities.  A host of ethnic “National Armies” dominate much of the country.  The recent persecution of the Muslim Rohingyas has attracted much attention, Burma/Myanmar is a cauldron of conflicts.  Prominent among the rebellious areas is the Shan State.

[1] See: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/myanmar-burma

[2] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_Myanmar

Down the Malay Barrier 1.

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When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they simultaneously attacked the Americans in the Philippines, the British in Malaya, and the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies (what is today Indonesia).  Japanese naval air forces also raided Darwin in northern Australia.  Early Japanese victories drove Allied forces back toward Burma in the north, the Dutch East Indies in the west, and northern Australia.  Desperate efforts were made to hold this “Malay Barrier.”

Today the region is home to growing economies, societies under stress, Islamic radicalism, and crime.  What would a traveler see moving from Bangladesh to Darwin?

The city of Jakarta, Indonesia proper has a population of something over 10 million people, but the larger metropolitan area has a population of 30 million people.  A lot of people produce a lot of trash.  Much of the trash from Jakarta—7,000 tons a day–ends up in nearby Bekasi.[1]  A daily stream of 1,000 trucks dump their daily loads onto a 150 acre one-time rice field.  They’ve been at this for thirty years, so the loads have accumulated into a plateau dotted with hills.  Those hills can temporarily rear up as high as 150 feet until bull-dozers working ‘round-the-clock level them down into another layer of the plateau.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and not just for the company that runs the dump.  Many villages surround the mountain of trash.  Most of the villagers are immigrants, farmers who lost their land elsewhere and came to Bekasi in search of work.  They’re here because they had no other choice.  The villagers earn their living by trash-picking for anything that might have resale value.  They scramble up and down the trash piles, dodging around the bull-dozers, and loading their finds into baskets strapped to their backs.  Any plastic, metal, wood, or electronic waste can be sold to someone.  Middle men buy different types of recovered material, paying by weight.  Recycling companies buy what the middlemen purchase from the trash pickers.  Pickers can earn anywhere from $2 to $10 a day.

One kind of economy creates other ones.  Little stands sell cigarettes, and snacks and soda to trash-pickers taking a break.  Drug dealers and prostitutes meet other needs.[2]

The trash stinks, so the hundreds of trash pickers stink and so do the surrounding villages.  Flies are everywhere.  The ground water is polluted.  Working—or, in the case of children too young to work, playing—on trash leads to cuts and scrapes.  Sores, infections, and breathing problems abound.  Poor Indonesians haven’t had much contact with modern medicine.  Folk belief holds that living in these conditions strengthens the body’s immunity to disease.

The Indonesian government doesn’t do much to help to poor.  Muslim charities elsewhere pay for Koran study classes or provide scholarships for the occasional exceptionally good students to continue their education through university.  Non-profits provide other kinds of help, like additional food.

Is this an example of human triumph over difficulty or of complacent rulers ignoring inequality and suffering at their own peril?

[1] Aleasha Bliss, “Bantar Gebang: Trials and Tribulations of Indonesia’s “Trash Heroes”,” Jakarta Globe, 8 February 2019; Adam Dean and Richard C. Paddock, “Picking Plastic, Metal, and Bones from a Trash Tower,” NYT, 28 April 2020.

[2] See: Richard Davies, Extreme Economies: What Life at the World’s Margins Can Teach Us About Our Own Future (2020).

ChiMerica 4 18 May 2020.

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For decades, both foreign policy experts and business leaders saw China in a favorable light.  They expounded their views to American voters.  Opening China to capitalism and world markets would integrate the Asian giant into the global economy to the benefit of all.  At the same time, capitalism would raise billions out of poverty while spawning a middle-class, the historical driver of democratization.

“Outsiders” long dissented from this “elite” view of China.  They claimed that China rigged its domestic market to exclude foreign products, subsidized Chinese companies competing on international markets, and ruthlessly stole intellectual property.  One effect came in the massive out-sourcing of American industrial jobs and manufacturing in the wake of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).  They claimed that China remained a one-party state governed by and for the benefit of the Communist Party.  They pointed out that economic power converts readily to military power, while China advanced supposed “historical” claims to territory beyond its current borders.

Now the “elite” view has lost traction.  American public opinion has taken an increasingly critical view of the Peoples’ Republic of China.[1]  Already in 2019, under the shadow of the tariff war with the United States, the brutal repression of the Uighur minority, and the crack-down on pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong, 57 percent of Americans took an unfavorable view of China.  In February 2020, the unfavorable view had risen to 67 percent.  There is little difference between the political parties in their perception of China as a threat to American interests: 62 percent of Democrats see it that way, leaving little daylight between them and the 68 percent of Republicans who feel the same way.

As a candidate, Donald Trump loudly expounded the anti-China “outsider” view.  As President, he followed his campaign words with presidential action by slamming severe tariffs on China and harshly criticizing it behavior.  Now the United States is in the midst of a coronavirus-induced economic collapse that has undone all the progress that took place during the first Trump administration.  Now the country is desperately short of the personal protective equipment that American companies produced at home in days of yore.  Now many countries, and not merely the United States, are criticizing China for a lack of transparency in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak.

 

How vulnerable is China to external pressure?  China faces grave economic problems.   Its drive for industrialization overshot even the huge demands of domestic and export markets, leaving it saddled with excess productive capacity.  Its long construction boom has achieved the same thing in terms of office space and housing, leaving a property bubble.  Both were financed by excessive government credit channeled through banks that are now on the verge of insolvency.

As the early response to the coronavirus in Wuhan showed, the Chinese central government is hard-put to respond to a crisis because of the autonomy actually exercised by—often corrupt–local authorities.  Moreover, the claim of the Communist Party to sole authority requires that its failures be covered up.  Finally, China’s flawed economic progress has enriched the Party elite and their cronies.  Fixing problems would require painful sacrifice.[2]  For all these reasons, China is vulnerable to external pressure.

 

How wise or idiotic would it be to exert such pressure?  Anything that triggered a severe economic crisis in China would send shock waves around the globe.  Slumping Chinese production would lead to falling demand for raw materials from many countries.  For example, in 2018, China imported more than $60 billion worth of iron ore, gas, coal, agricultural, forestry and fisheries products.[3]  China is deeply entangled in global supply chains for many goods, so the markets for many Chinese products would also start to strangle.  Finally, the global financial system would suffer from the resulting global slowdown.  Thus, in the interlocked global economy, trouble in China will mean trouble everywhere else.  Furthermore, as history has shown time and again, severe economic problems have comparable political effects.  Sometimes the effects create important reforms.  Sometimes they create turmoil and crisis.  All in all, it seems better to seek a co-operative solution that addresses both the immediate crisis and the underlying problems.  That might appeal to the risk-averse, but they aren’t the only ones making decisions.

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Trump’s Best Re-election Bet: Run Against Beijing,” WSJ, 23 April 2020.

[2] Walter Russell Mead, “China Is the Sick Man of Asia,” WSJ, 4 February 2020.

[3] See: https://asialinkbusiness.com.au/china/getting-started-in-china/chinas-imports-and-exports?doNothing=1

The Logan Act.

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Early modern European politics focused on the competition of “factions” organized around powerful individuals, rather than on “parties” organized around competing ideologies.  Hence, the Founding Fathers did not expect political parties to occupy the political system created by the Constitution.  Things didn’t work out as expected.[1]

Early National American politics quickly polarized into Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.  The two parties reflected different strands of the American Revolution in terms of attitudes to the power of the central government and of social groups.  However, the party competition also incited a degree of personal animus that challenged the generally desired rationality of the time.

In a further surprise, although the Patriots had sought to separate themselves from Europe, foreign affairs repeatedly intruded into the political life of the Early Republic.  An anti-monarchical revolution in France initially won broad support in America, then took a radical turn that divided Americans.  Opinion quickly swung from “Oh, they’re like us” to “What if that could happen here?”  Then war broke out between the new French Republic and, well, almost everyone.  Most important to the United States of all the combatants was Britain because of the Royal Navy’s control of the seas and of the trade that used those seas.  Federalists came to loathe the French Revolution and see a natural alignment with Britain, while the Democratic-Republicans sympathized with the aspirations of the sister-republic and put down its excesses to a temporary war expedient.

The debates on these matters between the two parties quickly soured.  Since the Federalists held the White House from 1789 to 1801, they had charge of American foreign policy.  Three things then happened: the Americans and the French fell into a naval Quasi-War (1798-1800)[2]; the Democratic-Republican press made the Federalists the butt of withering attacks[3]; and the Federalists rammed through a battery of “Alien and Sedition Acts” intended to stifle opposition voices.[4]  The Alien and Sedition Acts contributed to a revulsion against the Federalists that brought the Democratic-Republicans into power in 1801.

Although not normally lumped with the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Logan Act (1799) fits well with the general Federalist effort to squash political opposition.  George Logan,[5] a Democratic-Republican with a lifetime of poor judgement behind him, had made a purely personal visit to France during the Quasi-War in hopes of patching things up.   The Logan Act criminalized private individuals interfering in relations between the United States and other countries.  Unlike the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Logan Act neither sunsetted nor was repealed.

 

How has the Logan Act been applied?  Citing the Logan Act is wrapping oneself in the flag to harass political opponents.

In 1803, France controlled the mouth of the Mississippi river and obstructed American trade through the port of New Orleans.  Western farmers became exasperated with the barrier to getting their crops to market.  A farmer gave public voice to what must have been common tavern conversation after the second mug of rye.  He wrote a letter to a newspaper arguing that Kentucky should secede from the Union and form an alliance with France.  The newspaper published it.  The outraged United States Attorney in Kentucky—a Federalist hold-over from the Adams administration–got a grand jury to indict the farmer.  It never went any further than that.  Would have had to put him in front of a jury of locals.[6]

After service with the U.S. Navy in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the Philadelphia-born Jewish-American merchant and sea captain Jonas Levy (1807-1883) stayed on in Mexico.  He came from a family of enterprising people and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.  Looking for business opportunities, he proposed to the Mexican government to build a railroad from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.  The isthmus is the narrowest point of Mexico and the Pacific end passes through a gap in the Sierra Madre.  Lots of people wanted to build a railroad there, but one group was in Washington and had the ear of Secretary of State Daniel Webster.  But Levy was on the ground, spoke Spanish, and was very go-ahead.  In 1852, Levy pitched it to the Mexican government.  The Mexicans seemed inclined to go with Levy’s plan, so Webster exerted pressure on behalf of the “American” plan.  Levy wrote to the president of Mexico arguing for his own proposal.  When American diplomats reported this to Washington, Webster got Levy indicted.  The trouble was he didn’t have any evidence, just hearsay.  The indictment went nowhere.

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) made a fortune as a mining engineer, did a fantastic job organizing American civilian relief aid for Europe in the First World War, served as Secretary of Commerce, and won election as President in 1928.  Then the Depression hit and he got creamed in the 1932 election.  Hoover stomped off into retirement to sulk and fulminate against Franklin D. Roosevelt and all his works.  When the Second World War first broke out, Roosevelt offered Hoover an olive branch in the form of co-ordinating American relief for European civilians.  Hoover turned down the offer, but only because he hated Roosevelt.  He got busy organizing his own program of relief for Poland and then for Belgium.  By mid-1940, the situation had changed.  Poland and France had been defeated, Britain stood alone, and Britain’s naval blockade of Continental Europe offered an important source of pressure on Germany.  Nevertheless, Hoover pressed ahead.  In February 1941, Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles publically warned that Hoover might be in violation of the Logan Act.

More recently, a chain of people have been described as violating the Logan Act.  Some were Democrats: George McGovern, Jesse Jackson, Nancy Pelosi, and John Kerry.  Some were Republicans: 47 Senators, candidate Donald Trump, and Rudi Giuliani.  None have been prosecuted.

In December 2017, as they prepared to interview National Security Advisor-designate Michael Flynn, FBI agents discussed trying to get Flynn to admit he had violated the Logan Act.

[1] Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (1969).

[2] See: Alexander De Conde, The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797-1801 (1966).  An oldie, but a goody.

[3] See, for example James Callender.  Michael Durey, With the Hammer of Truth, James Thomson Callender (1990). 

[4] John Miller, Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (1951).  Same as De Conde.  The point here is that if the necessary documents are available and a good historian gives them a careful analysis, then most of the subsequent scholarly literature is just an elaboration.

[5] Frederick B. Tolles, George Logan of Philadelphia (1953).

[6] In much political theory, Senators serving six-year terms and appointed officials are supposed to have a braking effect on “populist” impulsiveness and passion.  However, the opposite may also be true.