2005.4.21=4[#111]:4703.3.13[#60+11/60]: [Catholic,Security,Moon,EcoFreedom,Climate...] Jung Air dates, Shot, TV 1)US Militarism 2)China Mummies.

[Catholic New Schism] http://www.alternet.org/rights/21826/ [Post-911 US Security] http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=569619 [Swiftboating Hillary] http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21830/ [US House Pollution Bill?] http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21824/ [Korean Rev. Moon's Dance] http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21821/ [US Armageddon Lobby] http://www.againstbombing.com/ArmageddonUpdates.htm [US Time's Cloud] http://tinyurl.com/7c3ph [Economic Freedom Index]http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002247730_harrop21.html [Climate Change] http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/contacts-6-129.jsp http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-129-2435.jsp http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-129-2439.jsp# [Carbon Counter] http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-129-2434.jsp# http://www.opendemocracy.net/blogs/page/climateChange Clear up mildly cool: Up 4:30? Back for a little nap, Jyun calls me up, drive him to station right away then back. Lung up early just for today, bath then out to teach. Mei back and goes. Early breakfast & emails & "Winter Sonata", getting Caucasians reaching China earlier than Chinese brings me here, now 9:51am. Then 2 very heavy topics of "American Militarism" & "Caucasians before Chinese to W. China", and many [Climate]. Late lunch, to hospital for 2nd Twinrix [should be 1 week earlier], then 3rd 1 week later [should be 2 weeks later]. But, Jung tel back and back to Taipei with mom on 5.2=1 & 6.13=1 with UA, should check mom's passport. 6-7pm "Winter Sonata" now. Almost 7pm, also finally answered Hsinchu Hi alumni email. Now for mails and documents. 7-8pm "Blue Fog(?)"#8, not just about the love between a much grown up man and a young girl, but ALSO among family members, especially between fathers and daughters. 8-9pm also a Korean tv drama, "Stairway to Heaven"#1: different family background living as a family with a bad stepmother and sister. & documents & snack, too hungry. 9-10pm "Warriors of the Yang Family"#15 or "Winter Sonata"#10 again, tending to the latter, the beauty is very tasteful and new discovery of the meaning even hidden or somehow structured within the context of the whole story is rewarding. Mei home 9:15?, 9:30 tel United Mileage Plus, 800-421-4655 for my no. 00619702255. But not enough miles. Wait Jung for exact time and price (also insufficient miles), tel mom and her passport has passed! Perhaps Saturday at San Jose instead of San Francisco. 10-11pm also Korean, "Lovers over Snow(?)", elder sis' hus teaches young sis rather harshly, yes still about family members love & soon dinner. Just over the "Lovers", with original Korean language pieces as ending, which sounds particularly attractive, both Chinese and Japanese just do not make it. Jyun still out. 11:00-:30 China Crosstalk, now 11:30-12:00 NHK Japanese News. Finish now 11:53pm, Lung out to print, Mei bed with drama of lady teacher and student love hardship story in Korean (sound better and more real) with Chinese subtitle from DVD? bed 1:20. 1) New American Militarism: (0) A Comprehensive Survey: "Re-examining the War We Have", from ""Tomgram: Which War Is This Anyway? Are We in World War IV?"", by Tom Engelhardt [[ who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War ]]; Tomgram: a project of the Nation Institute [[ "Founded in 1966, The Nation Institute has a fundamental commitment to the values of free speech and open discourse. The Institute places particular importance on strengthening the independent press in the face of America's increasingly corporate-controlled flow of information, and through its programs the Institute promotes progressive values on a variety of media platforms. The Institute sponsors a number of projects including conferences, seminars, televised town hall-style meetings, e-mail and web communications, book publishing, syndicated public affairs radio programming, film production, fellowships and internships" ]]; compiled and edited by Tom Engelhardt: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2251 (1) "The Normalization of War", by Andrew J. Bacevich [[ Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran, he has a doctorate in history from Princeton and was a Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is the author of several books, including the just published The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War. ]] [[ "" Andrew J. Bacevich has written a book on militarism, American-style, of surpassing interest. Just published, "The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War" would be critical reading no matter who wrote it. But coming from Bacevich, a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, former contributor to such magazines as the Weekly Standard and the National Review, and former Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, it has special resonance. Bacevich, a self-professed conservative, has clearly been a man on a journey. He writes that he still situates himself "culturally on the right. And I continue to view the remedies proffered by mainstream liberalism with skepticism. But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering foreign policy, a disregard for the Constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values. On this score my views have come to coincide with the critique long offered by the radical left: it is the mainstream itself, the professional liberals as well as the professional conservatives who define the problem." "" -: http://www.alternet.org/story/21827/ ]]: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2334 "" At the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The skepticism about arms and armies that pervaded the American experiment from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamored with military might. The ensuing affair had and continues to have a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue. Few in power have openly considered whether valuing military power for its own sake or cultivating permanent global military superiority might be at odds with American principles. Indeed, one striking aspect of America's drift toward militarism has been the absence of dissent offered by any political figure of genuine stature. "" (2) "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War", by Andrew Bacevich: http://tinyurl.com/brfwb (3) "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)", by Chalmers Johnson; Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/a2j8p "" Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Since September 2001, the United States has "undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible," writes Chalmers Johnson. Unlike past global powers, however, America has built an empire of bases rather than colonies, creating in the process a government that is obsessed with maintaining absolute military dominance over the world, Johnson claims. The Department of Defense currently lists 725 official U.S. military bases outside of the country and 969 within the 50 states (not to mention numerous secret bases). According to the author, these bases are proof that the "United States prefers to deal with other nations through the use or threat of force rather than negotiations, commerce, or cultural interaction." This rise of American militarism, along with the corresponding layers of bureaucracy and secrecy that are created to circumvent scrutiny, signals a shift in power from the populace to the Pentagon: "A revolution would be required to bring the Pentagon back under democratic control," he writes. In Sorrows of Empire, Johnson discusses the roots of American militarism, the rise and extent of the military-industrial complex, and the close ties between arms industry executives and high-level politicians. He also looks closely at how the military has extended the boundaries of what constitutes national security in order to centralize intelligence agencies under their control and how statesmen have been replaced by career soldiers on the front lines of foreign policy--a shift that naturally increases the frequency with which we go to war. Though his conclusions are sure to be controversial, Johnson is a skilled and experienced historian who backs up his claims with copious research and persuasive arguments. His important book adds much to a debate about the realities and direction of U.S. influence in the world. --Shawn Carkonen From Publishers Weekly In his prescient 2000 bestseller, Blowback, East Asia scholar Johnson predicted dire consequences for a U.S. foreign policy that had run roughshod over Asia. Now he joins a chorus of Bush critics in this provocative, detailed tour of what he sees as America's entrenched culture of militarism, its "private army" of special forces and its worldwide archipelago of military "colonies." According to Johnson, before a mute public and Congress, oil and arms barons have displaced the State Department, secretly creating "a military juggernaut intent on world domination" and are exercising "preemptive intervention" for "oil, Israel, and... to fulfill our self-perceived destiny as a New Rome." Johnson admits that Bill Clinton, who disguised his policies as globalization, was a "much more effective imperialist," but most of the book assails "the boy emperor" Bush and his cronies with one of the most startling and engrossing accounts of exotic defense capabilities, operations and spending in print, though these assertions are not new and not always assiduously sourced. Fans of Blowback will be pleased despite Johnson's lack of remedies other than "a revolution" in which "the people could retake control of Congress... and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved "" (4) "Andrew Bacevich on the New American Militarism", Tomgram: a project of the Nation Institute; compiled and edited by Tom Engelhardt: http://www.tomdispatch.com/ "" We are now in an America where it's a commonplace for our President, wearing a "jacket with ARMY printed over his heart and 'Commander in Chief' printed on his right front," to address vast assemblages of American troops on the virtues of bringing democracy to foreign lands at the point of a missile. As Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post puts it: "Increasingly, the president uses speeches to troops to praise American ideals and send a signal to other nations the administration is targeting for democratic change." As it happens, the Bush administration has other, no less militarized ways of signaling "change" that are even blunter. We already have, for instance, hundreds and hundreds of military bases, large and small, spread around the world, but never enough, never deeply enough embedded in the former borderlands of the Soviet Union and the energy heartlands of our planet. The military budget soars; planning for high-tech weaponry for the near (and distant) future -- like the Common Aero Vehicle, a suborbital space capsule capable of delivering "conventional" munitions anywhere on the planet within 2 hours and due to come on line by 2010 -- is the normal order of business in Pentagonized Washington. War, in fact, is increasingly the American way of life and, to a certain extent, it's almost as if no one notices. "" 2) Caucasians Earlier than Chinese to Western China: (0) "Mummy News: MUMMY SCIENCE: CHINA", Last Updated 21 April 2005: http://www.mummytombs.com/main.news.htm (1) "Genetic testing reveals awkward truth about Xinjiang famous mummies (AFP)", Khaleej Times [[ "the No.1 English language daily newspaper published from Dubai, United Arab Emirates" ]], 19 April 2005 http://tinyurl.com/b2f8s http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw1113884462293B255 "" URUMQI, China - After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China's Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived. The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades. It is unfortunate that the issue has been so politicized because it has created a lot of difficulties,?Victor Mair, a specialist in the ancient corpses and co-author of Mummies of the Tarim Basin? told AFP. It would be better for everyone to approach this from a purely scientific and historical perspective.?o:p> The discoveries in the 1980s of the undisturbed 4,000-year-old eauty of Loulan?and the younger 3,000-year-old body of the harchan Man?are legendary in world archaeological circles for the fine state of their preservation and for the wealth of knowledge they bring to modern research. "" "" in the second millennium BC, the oldest mummies, like the Loulan Beauty, were the earliest settlers in the Tarim Basin. rom the evidence available, we have found that during the first 1,000 years after the Loulan Beauty, the only settlers in the Tarim Basin were Caucasoid.?o:p> East Asian peoples only began showing up in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago, Mair said, while the Uighur peoples arrived after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom, largely based in modern day Mongolia, around the year 842. odern DNA and ancient DNA show that Uighurs, Kazaks, Krygyzs, the peoples of Central Asia are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian. The modern and ancient DNA tell the same story,?he said. "" "" Meanwhile, Yingpan Man, a nearly perfectly preserved 2,000-year-old Caucasoid mummy, was only this month allowed to leave China for the first time, and is being displayed at the Tokyo Edo Museum. The Yingpan Man, discovered in 1995 in the region that bears his name, has been seen as the best preserved of all the undisturbed mummies that have so far been found. Yingpan Man not only had a gold foil death mask -- a Greek tradition -- covering his blonde bearded face, but also wore elaborate golden embroidered red and maroon garments with seemingly Western European designs. His nearly 2.00 meter (six-foot, six-inch) long body is the tallest of all the mummies found so far and the clothes and artifacts discovered in the surrounding tombs suggest the highest level of Caucasoid civilization in the ancient Tarim Basin region. "" (2) "The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West", by J. P. Mallory, Victor H. Mair; Publisher: Thames & Hudson (June, 2000) : http://tinyurl.com/eyyxg "" Most of it's book scholarship, not field investigation. It tries to show how various populations in China got where they did "" "" What this is, mainly, is a discussion about the cultural name and the language of the mummies might be. This is fine, and should occupy a chapter, but half the book is specifically related to trying to pin down a name out of Chinese and European sources and where they came from from archaeological and linguistic knowledge. "" (3) "The Mummies of Urumchi", by Elizabeth Wayland Barber; Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April, 2000): http://tinyurl.com/b38nj "" From Publishers Weekly In 1994, a most astonishing discovery was made in Western China. Incredibly well-preserved mummies dating back 2000 years were unearthed in this remote region?mummies with large, colorful wardrobes, mummies that were distinctively Caucasian. The mystery of what six-foot-tall, fair-haired people were doing in China at the time took Barber, an expert on ancient textiles at Occidental College in L.A., to the desert city of Urumchi in 1995, where archeologists at the site hoped that her expertise might help them understand what these unlikely people were doing there. She had excellent material to work with: the mummies were in such remarkable condition that they still had full heads of hair and beards, and their skin was only slightly weathered. Most had been buried with plenty of brightly colored clothes to wear (one man was buried with 10 hats, each a different style), which gave Barber a treasure-trove of textiles with which to work. Barber structures her tale as a mystery, revealing information piecemeal until she presents her conclusions about the origin of the mummies. In the process, she treats readers to a lively story about the ebb and flow of ancient cultures, a story largely deduced from the development of weaving, dyeing, embroidery and fashion. Barber's hypothesis about how Caucasian mummies wound up in Urumchi, which has something to do with the Silk Road, is so clear and logical that readers will be satisfied that all relevant possibilities have been thoroughly examined. "" (4) "Xinjiang Mummies, also called 鈜chi mummies", Last Updated 20 April 2005: http://www.mummytombs.com/mummylocator/group/urumchi.htm "" The mummies of the Xinjiang region were found in the driest, saltiest part of Central Asia--in Chinese Turkestan (wedged between Kazakhstan and Mongolia)--around the towns of Cherchen and Loulan. Sometimes they are called 鈜chi mummies, and sometimes Tarim mummies. All come from the same general area. Dating as far back as 4,000 years, they were made by accident--naturally--by the dry climate in the salty Tarim basin. The oldest mummies from Cherchen found so far died about 3,000 years ago, while the oldest mummies found near Loulan died about 4,000 years ago. "" (5) "China's Mystery Mummies", Mummies Unwrapped [http://library.thinkquest.org/J003409/index.htm]: http://library.thinkquest.org/J003409/china.htm