[PHOTO] Lin Zexu, Chatham Square, New York City

Pointed out to me by satyadasa, next to the Kimlau Memorial Arch in New York City I blogged about last week, also on Chatham Square on the Lower East Side in what is now one of the city's several Chinatowns, was a statue to Lin Zexu.



Who was Lin Zexu? A Fujian-born bureaucrat empire of the Qing in the first half of the 19th century, as Wikipedia points out he was the man whose campaign against Britain's opium trade with China started the Opium Wars.

A formidable bureaucrat known for his competence and high moral standards, Lin was sent to Guangdong as imperial commissioner by the emperor in late 1838 to halt the illegal importation of opium by the British. He arrived in March 1839 and made a huge impact on the opium trade within a matter of months. He arrested more than 1,700 Chinese opium dealers and confiscated over 70,000 opium pipes. He initially attempted to get foreign companies to forfeit their opium stores in exchange for tea, but this ultimately failed and Lin resorted to using force in the western merchants' enclave. It took Lin a month and a half before the merchants gave up nearly 1.2 million kilograms (2.6 million pounds) of opium. Beginning 3 June 1839, 500 workers laboured for 23 days in order to destroy all of it, mixing the opium with lime and salt and throwing it into the ocean outside of Humen Town. 26 June is now the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in honour of Lin Zexu's work.

Lin also wrote an extraordinary "memorial" by way of an open letter published in Canton, to Queen Victoria of Great Britain in 1839 urging her to end the opium trade. The letter is filled with Confucian concepts of morality and spirituality. As a representative of the Imperial court, Lin adopts a position of superiority and his tone is condescending, despite the British clearly having the upper hand, military-wise, when the event is examined with hindsight. His primary line of argument is that China is providing Britain with valuable commodities such as tea, porcelain, spices and silk, while Britain sends only "poison" in return. He accuses the "barbarians" (i.e. private merchants) of coveting profit and lacking morality. His memorial expressed a desire that Victoria would act "in accordance with decent feeling" and support his efforts.

Denigrated in his time, of late Lin Zexu has become a bit of a hero in China as one man who resisted Western imperialism, apparently the hero of no less than three movies.

Why a statue of Lin Zexu on Chatham Square? The place, satyadasa pointed out, is important, since this general area became a major centre for Fujianese immigrants from the 1980s on, gradually replacing the originally Cantonese-speaking migrants who first settled this Chinatown as these latter suburbanize. Having a statue of a Fujianese folk hero in an area with a large Fujianese population makes sense.

Too, the timing matters. Look at the inscription on the statue's plinth.



The English text reads as follows:

LIN ZE XU
1785-1850

PIONEER IN THE WAR
AGAINST DRUGS

Yes, the statue was put up during Rudolph Guiliani's tenure as mayor.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Crooked Timber's John Quiggin notes a NPR interview with conservative legal writer Richard Posner who is very critical of the anti-intellectual turn in Republican thought.


• Extraordinary Observation's Rob Pitingolo notes that in Cleveland, the quality of the jobs created at a newly-opened casino is such that apparently workers are quitting in droves.


• Far Outliers has two interesting extended quotes, one comparing the positions of Prussia in pre-unification Germany with Piedmont in pre-unification Italy, the other examining the ways in which Bismarck subverted the stereotype of the junker lord.


• GNXP's Razib Khan argues that coverage of Muslim iconoclastic radicals in the Wahhabi, like the ones who are currently destroying Timbuktu's architectural heritage, doesn't get the extent to which this reaction is common.


• In a guest posting at the Planetary Society blog, space scientist Marc Rayman talks about the Dawn probe's ongoing studies of asteroid/possible dwarf planet Vesta.


• Registan's Casey Michel writes about the ambiguities and questions associated with the claim of an attempted plane hijacking in western China by Uighurs. What actually happened, it seems, is less important than what people think happened.


• Supernova Condensate's [Unknown site tag] links to an article of his written about the Square Kilometre Array, a radio telescope array scattered across Australia and South Africa.

[ISL] "Why Did Medvedev Go to the Kurils Again?"

RIA Novosti's Fyodor Lukyanov has some interesting analysis of the import of the visit several days ago of Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev to the Kuril Islands, Japanese until 1945 when the island chain was annexed by the Soviet Union and retained by post-Communist Russia. He's probably right to conclude that the Russian-Japanese dispute over these islands is preventing the sort of cooperation that might be useful in counterbalancing China, and that only an authoritarian government in Russia would have the ability to cede Russian territory (though it's open to question to me whether it would have the legitimacy to do so).

I've multiple posts over the dispute, and my opinion remains that Japan should get over the territorial losses. Other Axis powers suffered much greater territorial losses to their neighbours--to Russia, to Poland, to Yugoslavia, to their own liberated colonies--and have yet managed to move beyond these losses and develop profitable and peaceful relations with these beneficiairies of the Second World War. If Japan wanted to, I think it could follow suit.

The situation has not improved since [Medvedev]'s previous visit in 2010, so he can make similar statements on the results of his visit. As for urging ministers to visit the region, he has done that before and besides, as prime minister he can simply order them to go there. Instead of indicating the region’s importance, his second visit merely highlights how little has been done there in the last two years. Japan’s reaction is predictable: no government is going to ignore such actions, which means that Medvedev’s visit will complicate bilateral relations. On the other hand, this result could be a deliberate part of policy, though the reason for it remains unclear. Two years ago the reason was understood, but not this time.

Russian-Japanese relations are heavily dependent on this territorial dispute, and there are no prospects on the horizon for resolving it. The heaps of historical documents substantiating their claims to ownership of the islands that both sides have accumulated offer no realistic solution to the conflict. If the dispute is to be resolved at all, it must come through a political deal (both parties will need to find historical arguments to justify their decision in the eyes of the public, but that is a technicality). But a deal of this kind is highly unlikely, since it is a matter of national prestige for both Russia and Japan, and those types of issues are the most painful to resolve.

But if we admit that a compromise is possible, its timeframe will be limited by two factors: the political situation in Russia and in the Pacific region, which hinges on changes in China’s geopolitical weight.

In terms of domestic policy, a compromise with Japan, which will entail giving up some of the islands, is more likely when the authorities do not have to take public opinion into account. In other words, this kind of decision can be taken by an authoritarian government. If the choice is made in favor of a democratic expression of will (Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has mentioned the possibility of a referendum on the issue of the Kuril Islands), the result is almost certain to be a resolute ‘no’: people are unlikely to vote for giving anything up. The situation was most favorable eight years ago when Putin hinted at the possibility of a compromise because the Russian authorities were sufficiently authoritarian then and also confident of their standing in the foreseeable future. The situation is less certain now, but there is still a chance.

The second factor concerns China. The balance of forces and influence in Russian-Chinese relations is not in Russia’s favor. If current trends persist, in five to seven years’ time Russia’s foreign policy, at least in the Asia-Pacific region, will have to take much more account of China’s opinion. In other words, Russia’s ability to make decisions which China could interpret as infringing on its sphere of interests will be limited. And China is unlikely to be pleased with a Russian-Japanese compromise on the territorial issue, which would create a precedent (China has territorial disputes with nearly all of its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia) and also indicate rapprochement between two major regional powers.

By all objective indicators, economic, geopolitical and security-based, Russia and Japan need good relations. The territorial dispute is the biggest obstacle in this respect. It cannot be resolved now, but at least the two sides could abstain from fueling tensions without good reason.

[LINK] "In Cajun land, a reveille to French heritage"

Sean Cockerham's widely-syndicated article--available here at the Sacramento Bee--makes a compelling argument that the French language in Louisiana faces at best a dire fate. Language transmission to younger generations has collapsed, at least in part because there is no longer much of an economic incentive to speak French: the English language is clearly dominant in Louisiana as it is in the United States as a whole; the number of people in Louisiana who prefer to speak French to English continues to drop sharply; it's unlikely that you can get enough sustained migration from Francophone areas of the world to keep French afloat as a language of Louisiana communities; and, the French dialects spoken in Louisiana differ significantly from standard French. Language shift has gone too far.

I disagree with the people interviewed who suggest Cajun culture couldn't survive a definitive language shift to English. Ireland is still Irish despite being overwhelmingly Anglophone, right? Cajun (and other French-related) cultural identities will just mutate, that's all.

It's 9:30 a.m. and the drinking and dancing already are raging at Fred's Lounge, a fais do-do of Cajun French music, waltzes and two-steps, with cans of Miller Lite the breakfast of choice in this joint down a winding road past rice fields and crawfish ponds. The Saturday morning party from the windowless, 66-year-old bar is broadcast live throughout the South Louisiana prairie on 1050 AM out of Ville Platte, and the music has been credited with helping to sustain the Cajun French culture since just after World War II.

But Fred's 81-year-old manager, Sue Vasseur, known as Tante Sue de Mamou, worries about the survival of the Louisiana French culture. The current generation, she said, isn't picking up the French language, which is part of the soul of the Acadian people who settled in Louisiana in the mid-1700s, when they were expelled from the present-day Canadian province of Nova Scotia after refusing to swear their allegiance to the British crown.

"I'm hoping it's going to continue. They are teaching French in our schools here now in Mamou and Evangeline Parish. So I think possibly some of it will rub off on our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren," said Vasseur, wearing a pistol holster of cinnamon schnapps on her hip as dancers whirled to a rollicking 10-button accordion and a singer belting out a love song in French.

There's a major effort in Louisiana, a state named for the French king Louis XIV, to reverse the trend and restore the French language. It's part of a resurgence in cultural pride, and there are signs that the decline in French speakers has slowed. Among the last hopes is the nation's largest French immersion program, in which every subject except English is being taught in French to kindergarteners through eighth-graders. Just under 4,000 students in nine parishes are in the program, typically with teachers imported from France, Belgium, Quebec and French-speaking African nations.

[. . .]

Louisiana French advocates are fighting an uphill battle. There are economics at play, the fact that Louisiana is a poor state that doesn't have a lot of jobs in which speaking French is an asset. There also are politics. Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal used his veto power last month to slash 40 percent of the budget of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana. That state agency is charged with, among other things, helping to recruit immersion teachers from French-speaking countries. The agency is left with a budget of $150,000 and two employees, a situation that director Joseph Dunn suggested in a recent interview might allow it just to "keep the lights on and do the absolute bare minimum."

Language revolution comes slowly in a place such as Butte La Rose, a town of 800 accessible by a narrow pontoon bridge, where locals for generations have harvested crawfish and catfish from the Atchafalaya River and the surrounding swamp. It's a beautiful, muddy world of cypress trees and Spanish moss, of bullfrogs, alligators and snakes.

At Doucet's Grocery, the only retail outlet in town, Jack Doucet sat behind the counter shooting the breeze with his customers as he's done every day while running the place for 47 of his 83 years, closing only for Christmas and New Year's. Gwen Duplechin stopped in for a leisurely chat, and reflected on the survival of Cajun French. "Our older people are dying off, our people that talk French are dying off," Duplechin said.
Duplechin said her granddaughter took French immersion in school and learned "the good French" (as opposed to the Cajun French dialect) from the teachers imported from Quebec and France. "But she doesn't speak it; you have to keep it up or it doesn't work," Duplechin said.

[LINK] "The Dismal Failure of Union, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Articles of Conf

At the conservative/libertarian Volokh Conspiracy, David Post argues that the current flaws of the European Union are the flaws of the Articles of Confederation that preceded the current constitution of the United States, that just as the first American constitution gave too much power to the states and too little to the central government, so is power in the European Union distributed too overwhelmingly to the member-states to deal with the problems facing all Europeans.

As it happened, we had a lecture scheduled that day by Isabella Bufacchi, the financial reporter at one of the daily newspapers in Rome (Il Sole24Ore), on the developing Euro crisis. At her lecture, she starts talking about the fundamental problems, in her opinion, afflicting the structure of the European Union and the Eurozone that have contributed to (and become the focus of attention because of) the current Euro crisis. And damned if her list didn’t look a lot like Hamilton’s list! It was actually quite astonishing – a couple of students asked me afterwards if it had all been planned out that way (it hadn’t). The European Union, too, legislates (primarily) “for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist”; it has no power “to employ the arm of the ordinary magistrate to execute its own resolutions”; there is a “want of SANCTION to its laws”; it has no taxing authority for the purpose of raising its own revenue; on fundamental questions is gives each State equal suffrage; its judiciary power is crabbed and circumscribed; and it has “never had a ratification by the PEOPLE[, r]esting on no better foundation than the consent of the several legislatures.”

It made me think: Perhaps the Europeans who are trying to envision what “Europe” should look like would take comfort from knowing that our first try at Union was a failure, too. And that the Federalist should be better known, and more widely read, in Europe. Europe needs its Publius, right about now: A fresh start; a catalog of the flaws of the current system, and a plan for a new way forward, to be submitted to the people of Europe for them to accept or reject.

I've heard the analogy raised before by people of various nationalities and ideological stances. The analogy sounds plausible enough to me, but I lack the background in American history to feel comfortable making any definitive conclusions. Does Post's argument make sense?

[URBAN NOTE] "The fate of OneCity"

Steve Munro thinks that the ambitious OneCity plan for mass transit needs a lot more work to fulfill its promise. Sample perspective:

If Council simply “receives” OneCity but does not send it for detailed review, it will squander an opportunity to become much better informed about transit options. People spend far too much time drawing lines on maps without having to answer difficult questions about cost-effectiveness or constructability, about the value of lines on a city-wide or regional basis, not just to their own wards and electoral prospects.

“OneCity” by name and intent is supposed to move Toronto past that sort of planning, and yet it includes a troubling number of dubious proposals meant to keep various Councillors happy. That’s fine, but only up to a point. A day will come, and fairly soon, when we should learn which of these schemes are actually worthwhile and which, though sounding good, contribute little or even draw attention and resources away from more deserving routes.

That review needs to be honest, not pander to individual Councillors even though we now live in a city where independent wisdom and advice are less than welcome. We cannot ask Torontonians to pay new, higher taxes for pet projects that serve few. That would only confirm the common suspicion that all taxes are wasted.