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Aug 17 2008

Ирыстон, საქართველო and Россия: America’s “Free Press” strikes again

Posted by: 阿偉 in Current Events, History

Recently, those in the English-speaking world, particularly America, have been hearing about the supposed “aggression” of the Russians against the Ossetians in the Republic of Georgia. In the opening hours of the Olympic Games, the controlled American media took no time to denounce both Russian P.M. Vladimir Putin and President Dimitriy Medvedev, saying that the Russian Federation has reverted to “Stalinist” tactics.

Ethnic conflict in the region goes back to the days of the Soviet Union, where the ad-hoc Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was created in 1918. Despite the existence of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast, an enclave of ethnic Ossetians within the GSSR, tensions continued to rise. South Ossetians increasingly felt sympathetic with their counterparts in North Ossetia, but the South Ossetians were not able to secede from Georgia after Georgia gained independence. In November of 2006, South Ossetians voted in a referendum regarding the region’s independence from the Republic of Georgia. An overwhelming majority of the region’s 70,000 people voted in favor of independence. Many Ossetians took Russian citizenship as Georgia refused to recognize the referendum.

The American media, however, conveniently omits historical data. Perhaps even more shocking, they also omitted stories of Georgian troops who destroyed Tskhinvali, a city of 100,000, killing over 2,000 Russian citizens. In general, the American media has been overwhelmingly and unquestioningly pro-Georgian, not even questioning the Georgian government’s censorship of “pro-Russian” sources. At a time when the same media coverage criticizes China over lack of media transparency, they hypocritcally defend Georgian media censorship. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 severely damageing Lebanese civil infrastructure, and displacing approximately one million Lebanese, the media cited this as an internal affair of Israel, and claimed the act was in self-defense, and perhaps rightly so, as the Lebanese were said to have fired the first shots. When comparing these two incidents, the hypocrisy comes through even with the media’s attempts to portray the Georgians as the victims.

The media was very sympathetic to the secessionists in the Serbian region of Kosovo, and currently displays deep affections for the Tibetan secessionist movement in China. While this is a legitimate concern, one can easily apply the same logic to the case of Ossetia and their sympathies for Russia. But, Ossetia, a tiny region in the Caucasus, virtually unknown in the English-speaking world until very recently, does not have the same appeal as does Kosovo or Tibet. People may remember that the left-wing Clinton regime, in their loathing of Serbia, not only bombed the country, but devoted much airtime to vilify Slobodan Milošević. That hate and false sense of sympathy towards Kosovo lingered until the time when the US recognized Kosovo’s independence. Meanwhile, Tibet, as I alluded to before, is predominantly a non-Christian nation with “dark-skinned indegenous people” fighting a “light-skinned” super power. The Ossetians have none of this.

However, the main interest for the media and American government more than likely likes in Russia’s business partnership with Iran, which Israel sees as a threat.

If the truth could be told, Russia deployed troops into South Ossetia, an autonomous territory populated with Russians. It is the Georgians who have gone on the offensive against Russia, and Russia which is protecting their own citizens, as an eyewitness interviewed on American news reported (before being cut off by the host). This is not a conflict between Georgia and Russia, but rather between Ossetians and Georgians. The Georgians are not victims, nor are the Russians the aggressors.

This entry used information from: A Free Press? Not This Time

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Jul 04 2008

What is AmeriKwa?

Posted by: 阿偉 in History, The Modern World

On this day in 993 AD, St. Ulrich of Augsburg was canonized. A German monk of Alamanni and Swabian descent, he lived a devout life of celibacy and simplicity before becoming Bishop of Augsburg. He would later become a general in the dfense of Augsburg against the Magyars.

In 1054, Chinese and Arab astronomers recorded a supernova in the region of ζ-Tauri, making the Crab Supernova the first to be recorded in human history.

In 1359, Gil de Albornoz, supported by the Malatesta of Rimini, defeated Francesco II Ordelaffi, securing the northern Italian city for the Papacy.

In the United States, this otherwise uneventful day is known as Independence Day. But what is America? From its beginnings, America has always represented the false idol of progress, and Americans worshipped this idol more above all else, Chistianity included. Wherever there was an old idea to be overturned, Americans were the first to embrace such ideas, and thus gave rise to the disease we now label ‘liberalism’. As a result, America has become a cultural wasteland, in which the only products of creativity are mass-marketed items such as rap music, Hollywood movies, and the like. In modern times, internally and externally, America represents the other side of the Bolshevist coin. The most dangerous strain of Bolshevism may only take root through the ruthless uprising of the masses, and establish the so-called ‘worker’s state,’ and deprive the people of their material well-being in the process. Americanism, though it does not value dialectal materialism is just as dangerous in being advocates of its unmasked opposite. Furthermore, as an economic system, Bolshevism can co-exist and protect certain aspects of culture; the Soviet Union, for example, was far more resistant to cultural degeneracy than America. In this respect, Americanism is the far more dangerous beast, for while uttering the false spell of ‘liberal democracy’, and with the standardization so commonplace through mass indoctrination in the media, begins the crumbling of higher culture.

In a previous entry, I discussed the concept of Eurasianism and Atlanticism. Having defined the character of Americans, it is now much clearer when we speak of the kulturkampf of the Eurasian and Atlantic worldviews. To put it concisely: the former is the world of being, while the latter is the world of ceaseless becoming.

I leave the gentle reader with some famous quotations and food for thought:

“America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilization.” - Oscar Wilde, English author

“The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, ‘I think, therefore I am’: Americans do not think, yet they are. The American ‘mind’, puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardisation.” - Julius Evola, Italian philosopher in ”Civiltà Americana“

“Everything about the behavior of American society reveals that it’s half Judaized, and the other half negrified. How can one expect a State like that to hold together?” - Adolf Hitler, German politician

“[The Americans]…are enterprising, defiant, and touchy; impatient of authority; furious politicians; very tolerant of fraud and violence; possessing much high and generous spirit, and some true religious feeling, but strongly addicted to cant.” - Francis Galton, English naturalist

“[Their] preferred music…is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires” -Sayyid Qutb, Egyptian scholar, in Amrika allati Ra’aytu

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Jun 21 2008

Coffee Culture in Taiwan 台灣咖啡文化

Posted by: 阿偉 in Food and Drink, History

Yesterday, I went to the National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館) here in Taipei with my uncle to see some paintings by the French painter Jean-François Millet and his contemporaries. Since you can see those paintings in the Musée d’Orsay in France, I won’t be writing about those today. Instead, I’ll be bringing you a short segment on early ‘coffee culture’ in Taiwan. Originally, I had planned to write my second installment regarding Jihad in various traditions, and we’ll return to this regularly scheduled program after this is over.

Today, Starbucks Coffee franchises are a rather common site in Taiwanese cities, and the popularity of coffee is increasing, but for much of Chinese and Taiwanese history, it was cha, tea, which held prestige has the favored drink of commoners and literati alike. This began to change with trade contacts with the West. Coffee might have arrived as early as 1624, when Dutch traders first brought it to satisfy their tastes. The coffee crop was later re-introduced by the British in 1884, coffee production reached nearly 1,000 hectares by 1940’s. Coffee is grown in the mountainous regions in the South of Taiwan, where the climate is suitable for cultivation. Some notable places for coffee production in Taiwan are the Huisun Forest Farm in Nantou County, Hepao Mountain in Kukeng township, Yunlin County, and the Tungshan township of Tainan.

In 1895, the Qing Dynasty was forced to cede the island of Taiwan in the Treaty of Maguan (馬關條約). The Japanese, in the midst of the Meiji Restoration (明治時代) which had frustrated them towards their more tradtional Chinese and Korean neighbors, had recently become acquainted with all things Western, including the consumption of coffee. It was in fact the Japanese who set up the first coffeehouses in Taiwan, called kahuē (カフエー) in the Japanese language. During this time, it was mainly Japanese living in Taiwan, or Taiwanese who had studied abroad who frequented these establishments. Eventually, coffeehouses because the place where educated Taiwanese familiar with Western knowledge met and exchanged ideas, strengthening the integration of coffeehouses into Taiwanese society.

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Jun 09 2008

Map Shows America’s Original Post WW2 Plans

Posted by: 阿偉 in History

Today’s entry presents an interesting map containing one version of the American post-war plan for the world.

According to information found by Google Search, the map was discovered by Helen Somers, a Philadeplhia native during World War II. It lists Maurice Gomberg as an author, but was supposedly completed in concept in October of 1941, three months before the entry of the United States into World War II, and presumably presents the American take on how the world should be re-ordered once the fighting had stopped. At least a few original copies are still in existence, including one in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

There is little information on Maurice Gomberg, or the map itself. According to the same google.com source, Gomberg is merely the publisher. However according to an examination of numerous documents of the period relating to the “new world order” indicate that the source must have been individuals related to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and/or the U.S. State Department.

Of particular note is the size of the United States, occupying all of North America, Greenland, the Carribean, and most of the Pacific. The Soviet Union occupies territory as far West

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Archive for the History Category

Ирыстон, საქართველო and Россия: America’s “Free Press” strikes again

What is AmeriKwa?

Coffee Culture in Taiwan 台灣咖啡文化

Map Shows America’s Original Post WW2 Plans