Category Archives for Relay

» CONSIDERING ZOMIA: Elevation & the Art of Not Being Governed

Last year, while traveling in East Asia, I read a fascinating book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, by James C. Scott, a professor of Agrarian Studies at Yale University.

Scott’s book is essentially about  a  very large number of intentional Southeast Asian maroons or refugees–Zomians–and the book is making me re-think a lot of things, about the normal “advance of civilization” narrative and all that it assumes, presupposes, and omits. It’s also made me to recontextualize my understanding of nation-states to include the surprising importance of elevation.

Tibetans are Zomians. They are are, as I think almost everybody knows, long-term resisters against the Han Chinese empire. The Tibetans are fierce and lovely people who wish not to be told where or how to live. Their monks are known for many things, including sparking militant protest, as they did in March 2008 in Lhasa (elevation: 11,450ft) :


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» THE RISING VIOLENCE OF CHINA’S DOMESTIC SECURITY APPARATUS (“GUOBAO”)

Ni Yulan, lawyer charged with “creating a disturbance," taken into detention April 17, 2011.

“For years, rights lawyers and dissidents have played a game of cat and mouse with the mainland authorities, refusing to buckle in the face of harassment, licence revocations, detentions, beatings and, sometimes, brutal torture and imprisonment.

But over the past six months, the feared guobao, or domestic security apparatus, which monitors the activities of activists, has adopted unknown new tactics that have frightened its targets into silence…”

Read Paul Mooney’s “Silence of the Dissidents,” originally published in the South China Morning Post >>

» PEOPLE’S HISTORIAN LIAO YIWU (廖亦武) LEAVES CHINA

Liao Yiwu in Wenjiang, July 2010. Photo (c) Brian Awehali


JULY 2011 | After repeatedly being threatened with imprisonment if he chose to continue publishing his “illegal work” in foreign countries, Liao Yiwu (廖亦武) has fled to asylum in Germany. In the weeks and months following the outbreak of popular revolt in the Arab world, the Chinese government’s repression of critical voices intensified, and Liao had been warned that he would be arrested if he chose to publish the German edition of his forthcoming memoir, Testimonials: The Witness of the 4th of June.

Philip Gourevitch has written a typically solid piece for the New Yorker detailing Liao’s “escape” from China and the reason his work is important enough to be threatening to China’s leadership. The piece includes the following quote from Liao about his status as a political “refugee”:

“I’m excited about political developments in China, and looking forward to a Jasmine Revolution. I am quite sure that Hu Jintao may be a refugee some day, but not Liao Yiwu.”

May this be so. When I had the opportunity to meet and interview Liao several times in 2010, I was deeply inspired by his willingness to take enormous risks in service of truth-telling, free thought, and art. Interested readers can check out the lengthy profile I did of Liao following these interviews, “Drift to Live.” which appeared originally on Counterpunch, then in expanded form here on LOUDCANARY.

Liao was denied permission to visit the U.S. in April of 2010, but he is scheduled to visit New York again this Fall, when there may be considerably less the Chinese Communist Party can do about it.

» CHINESE WRITER AND ACTIVIST RAN RUNFEI (-冉云飞) DETAINED FOR “SUSPICION OF SUBVERSION”

Authorities in China are nervous. Evidence of their unease may be seen in the government’s exaggerated response in February 2011 to fears of a “Jasmine Revolution” inspired by the recent wave of revolt in the Middle East and North Africa. After hearing word of an online call for protests in thirteen Chinese cities, the government arrested more than 100 activists, blocked Internet search terms such as “jasmine,” and disabled mass texting services throughout the country. The protests themselves reportedly drew only a handful of people.

Ran Yunfei at book signing, 2008

One of the activists arrested was Ran Yunfei (冉云飞), a tireless Chengdu-based writer and historian who wrote a strong letter in support of Charter 08 activist Liu Xiaobo in December 8, 2010 for the Guardian. (see *, below, for most recent updates on Ran Yunfei)

I met Ran at a riverside teahouse in Chengdu in May of 2010, and he was energetic and talkative to the point of being garrulous. His shaved head showed the scars of at least several bad beatings, and his speech (in Chinese) was so frantic that I only caught every fourth or fifth of his thoughts or sentences through a translator. Before his detention, he blogged manically, wrote large social history books, and was a “subscriber,” meaning official supporter or signer of, Charter 08.

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» SWEATSHOP-PRODUCED RAINBOW FLAGS & PARTICIPATORY PATRIARCHY: Why the Gay Rights Movement is a Sham

Newly available as part of the online release of Tipping the Sacred Cow – The Best of LiP: Informed Revolt, edited by Brian Awehali (AK Press) [PDF]. From the “Constructively Negative” Sacred Cows issue.

As legends go, San Francisco is the place for sexual debauchery, gender transgression and political deviance (not to mention sexual deviance, gender debauchery and political transgression). The reality is that while San Francisco still shelters outsider queer cultures unimaginable in most other cities, these cultures of resistance have been ravaged by AIDS, drug addiction and gentrification. Direct on-the-street violence by rampaging straights remains rare in comparison to other queer destination cities like New York, Chicago or New Orleans, but a newer threat has emerged. San Francisco, more than any other US city, is the place where a privileged gay (and lesbian) elite has actually succeeded at its goal of becoming part of the power structure. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), members of the gaysbian elite use their newfound influence to oppress less privileged queers in order to secure their status within the status quo. This pattern occurs nationwide, but San Francisco is the place where the violence of this assimilation is most palpable.

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» THE POLITICS OF POOP: Against the Modern Flush Toilet and Sewage System

Newly available as part of the online release of Tipping the Sacred Cow – The Best of LiP: Informed Revolt, edited by Brian Awehali (AK Press) [PDF]

» IF WOMEN RULED THE WORLD, NOTHING WOULD BE DIFFERENT

by Lisa Jervis

Newly available as part of the online release of Tipping the Sacred Cow – The Best of LiP: Informed Revolt, edited by Brian Awehali (AK Press) [PDF]

» WORDS AND MUSIC WITH LIAO YIWU

I’m pleased to share that two versions of my profile of Chinese writer and people’s historian Liao Yiwu have been published this month, in the print edition of The Progressive (also featuring contributions from David Sedaris, Jim Hightower and Dave Zirin), and in expanded online form on Counterpunch.

Liao’s first book to be translated into English, The Corpse Walker, was a collection of 27 startlingly raw and unexpected literary interviews with mostly older people on the margins of Chinese society, who were directly impacted by the horrors of life under Mao Zedong. Several of his other books, including Earthquake Insane Asylum, chronicling the invisible and uncounted following the disastrous 2008 Sichuan earthquake, have been published in Taiwan and Hong Kong. His next book in English, For a Song and a Hundred Songs, will be published in January 2013.

Please do check out my expanded profile of Liao, on LOUDCANARY, here ».

» HOW I LIVED MY LIFE IN THE YEAR 2010: Ran Yunfei (冉云飞)

Earlier I posted about outspoken Chinese writer Ran Yunfei (冉云飞), who was detained by police for “suspicion of subversion” earlier this month in Chengdu, in Sichuan Province. In recent weeks, spooked by the seemingly sudden revolts in the Middle East and North Africa, the Chinese government has rounded up, detained and arrested hundreds of activists and “subversives.”

In the previous LOUDCANARY post, I reprinted a piece by Ran Yunfei, “Where Will the Fear End? A Talk that Could Not Be Delivered,” and in this one I’m posting a translation of another, more recent of Ran’s pieces, “How I Lived My Life in 2010.”

How I Lived My Life in the Year 2010
by Ran Yunfei (冉云飞)

I have the habit of writing a diary and a blog every day. It is how I record everything and practice my writing. What I write on my blog isn’t just for my own benefit. I also hope that it can also help society in some small way. I have no great political ambitions, my attitude towards politics is that of Mr. Hu Shi — “I don’t have any interest in being interested in politics.” I don’t have any moral scruples against getting involved in politics. I am just not interested in it personally. I don’t believe that politics is dirtier than other fields of human endeavor, assuming that the political system is a fairly good one.

In other words, what I like best is to read books, write, travel, drink wine, and enjoying myself — as I said once in an interview with a Danish television station, what I really want to be doing is not criticizing the government. In a free country I would happily spend my life in the library doing research. But I live in a country where I cannot in good conscience merely live such a a life. I feel that I have no alternative. I have to voice my criticisms of our messed up social reality. Otherwise I would be uneasy. I would not be able to sleep well. I would feel that I was not paying my dues.

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» AFRICA IN A CHINESE CENTURY: Radio Open Source interview with Howard French

Photo (c) 2011 by Howard French

In the imagination of many who look primarily to their nightly news, daily papers, or any other corporate US media to inform them, Africa is a disease-ridden hell cursed by a seemingly endless succession of murderous despots. The first two things likely to spring to many Westerner’s minds when they think about the continent, based largely on media coverage, are “aid” and “AIDS.” By contrast, an increasing tide of Chinese immigrants and businesspeople to Africa think: “opportunity.”

Journalist Howard French was recently interviewed on Radio Open Source, and his insights into differences between Western and Chinese attitudes and approaches toward Africa are fascinating and enlightening. Below is some of the introductory text for the interview from Radio Open Source, with a link to the full interview below:

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