Prevailing Chinese Attitudes

PREVAILING CHINESE ATTITUDES
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 19, 2011
My interest in history was awakened when I majored in Chinese, and honed when specialized in Chinese international legal relations in law school. Today, all Chinese I know acknowledge that they are citizens of single country with its political center in Beijing, and north capital, and economically in Shanghai, the coastal financial center downriver from Beijing.
Today Chinese president Hu Jintao is the guest of President Obama. Today in the US press, I hear historically blind US spin on US and China today. I invite any reader of this message to teach me and other readers what I’m unaware of, or blind to.
I learned that national identity was established by a northern Chinese ethnic group called the Han about the same time as the birth of Jesus. I continue to conclude that Chinese nationalism has never been expansionist like US nationalism. Once the empire was consolidated in Beijing, the only remaining issue was foreign invasion, which happened in the mid-19th century when Chinese warriors lost to British soldiers who won an “extraterritorial” import exemption for opium. As they overthrew a dynasty and drove their nationalist heirs to occupy Taiwan, Chinese have continued among themselves to debate over whether and how to respond to Western invasion.
History tells me that from dynastic times, Chinese political leaders have not shifted historical focus on national security away from keeping foreign “owners” from exploiting Chinese for international corporate gain, while cementing international relations through economic interdependence. For instance, the Chinese central bank has massively invested its financial “reserves” in buying treasury stock guaranteeing the US national debt. If the Chinese should happen to devalue the dollar in relations to the renminbi, the US consumer price index will rise in order to make goods made with US labor to become cheaper in China. When we hear talk about Greece, Ireland and so forth, I find it an awesome testament to Chinese interdependence that they are the major investor in a US national debt (aka US treasury bonds) that approximately equals the US gdp per year. What makes US so special? On historical and economic reflection, I appreciate the restraining influence of a Chinese nation, that has existed for millennia, in the face of US-centered, shortsighted military/economic pressure and aggression. l&p hal

birthday thanks

BIRTHDAY THANKS ON MY 66TH
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 18, 2011
I and Kevin Costner, ten years my junior, and the 38-year-old national president of the NAACP share birthdays. The Treaty of Paris was signed on our birthday in 1918, setting payment of war debts by Germans to their victors so exorbitant that a German public at the depth of thirties global meltdown voted to make Hitler their chancellor and gave him a whole slew of patriot acts. Such were results of attempts by winners of a war to dictate an end to all wars. This birthright humbles this old astrological goat’s aspirations to pacifying social relations, and leaves me enjoying memories of togetherness in my relations. Thanks for all the inspiration and life support that the sacred spirits of love and compassion have brought our ways. Happy birthday to US—l&p hal

(Dis)robing: veils and the state

(DIS)ROBING: THE VEIL AND STATE RELIGION
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 16, 2011
Rick Steves’ weekend travel hour has just aired on a local npr station, with an apparently married, apparently Muslim, couple of travel guides in Istanbul. Rick got them to talking about silk shops. The woman guide pointed out that the rate of religious observance (as in prayer) in Turkey far exceeds observance in Iran, a theocracy. She talked to how youth are more flamboyant, less protective than their parents so that in a single shop, observant women are either traditional or into more color and less cover, in a scarf that can be pinned in an instant to publicly conservative cover. And I thought to myself: How religiously liberated urban Turks are.
My first chair at Indiana U pointed out that I had never (except in cap and gown, at my 1st advisee’s graduation) dressed for professional appearances in anything but jeans (which I do try to keep clean). This remains my uniform to this day both privately and publicly unless I appear in court or am persuaded that failure of a coat and tie would be disrespectful. My freedom of dress is important to me. Now that I’m on pension and off the payroll, no one is going to change my dress code. Luckily, I was tenured and fully promoted a quarter century earlier without ever have being instructed to change my pants in class. Throughout my teaching career, my wearing the same uniform became a badge of my commitment to giving away my professorial power. I continue to wear jeans. With time jeans have become a virtually sacred part of my public identity.
When Rick Steves started asking the guides about Islam and its effect on state policy, I thought of France. If I might have considered quitting had a court dared tell me to wear a coat and tie at work, suppose Indiana U, on a campus of some 37,000, had ever decided to tell women whose equivalent of a yarmulke is to cover whatever privacy she wants when appearing in public, to take it off? Is a woman whose face is covered on her driver’s license not verifiable in 21st-century technology? There’s no security justification for having one’s face bared. Many are those who do not want their pictures taken for personal reasons having nothing to do with offending anyone.
I feel more honest and comfortable in public when I wear jeans. Wearing jeans has become my form of public worship of powersharing. I figure the same sense of sacred presentation of oneself in public can go for what women wear in or on their heads. Regulation of how we dress in public is as intimate and totalitarian as social control can become. Enforcement of dress codes/uniforms amounts to social assault on the power of individual expression of personal identity and compassion anywhere, anytime. In the case of how women are undressed by law, orders to disrobe amount to sexual assault, and in effect force women in some case to submit to private violence to avoid public assault and degradation. I am continually fascinated and appalled by how seriously we dictate to one another how to robe and disrobe. Love and peace--hal

Jails and Jailing in Monroe County, Indiana

Your e-Offprint PDF-file is now available for downloading
Springer [springerauthorquery@springeronline.com]
You forwarded this message on 1/11/2011 1:54 PM.
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 12:30 AM
To: Pepinsky, Harold E.
Attachments:




Offprint Download 11.01.2011

visit us at springer.com



Your E-Offprint PDF-file




Dear Author,

Your e-Offprint PDF-file is now available for downloading.
Article: Jails and Jailing in Monroe County, Indiana
DOI: 10.1007/s10624-010-9170-1
Please use the following link to start the download:
http://www.springer.com/home?SGWID=0-0-1003-0-0&aqId=1108232&download=1&checkval=0200a0b2af6be8e92856fd3a7be6359d

Please note that your free electronic offprint will be available online for four weeks.

If you have trouble downloading or opening the PDF file please contact golive@springer.com

If you have ordered paper Offprints as well, the printed versions will be shipped soon.

Thank you very much and with best regards

Springer Author Services




What would you like to do next?

MyPublication FAQs springer.com/authors
Answering your questions to all steps of the MyPublication process. Your gateway to all author-related information






Visit other Springer Sites



SpringerLink: Look inside our eJournals and eBooks
SpringerImages: Find all graphics of our publications
SpringerProtocols: Database of reproducible protocols in life & biomedical sciences
SpringerMaterials: Numerical data & functional relationships in science & technology





Service Contacts




Springer Customer Service Center



Haberstr. 7
69129 Heidelberg
Germany
phone: +49 6221 345 0
fax: +49 6221 345 4229
email:
orders-HD-individuals@springer.com
Springer New York, LCC



P.O. Box 2485
Secaucus, NJ 07094-2485
USA
phone: +1 201 348 4505
(Weekdays 8:30am - 5:30pm ET)
fax: +1 201 348 4505
email: journals-ny@springer.com





© Springer 2010, springer.com

sports

SPORTS, WOMEN AND MEDIAS
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 7, 2011
Tonight national public radio has a segment on how women sports reporters are disrespected, and by extension, so are women’s sports. Here’s a case where pro and con, left and right, are beside any political point to me. I can’t understand how so many people can make so many buck and command standard news media time just winning and paying attention to sports, period. Okay, you want to listen to the weather report and gamble on what you clothing you will wear when you go off to work, I can grasp that investment in gambling. I tried playing my granddaughter’s Christmas hi-ho cherrios present with her, and it was fun as long as she paid attention. A friend asked me yesterday how I felt about my daughter’s alma mater, Auburn, playing for the national football championship. (My only rear window sticker in my 1999 car is “Auburn Dad.”) I don’t care, and wonderful as Katy’s Auburn memories are, the sport doesn’t matter to her any more than it does to me. And why should it?
I think it is sick that any sports figure gets paid more than the average stay-at-home parent. I admit to a personal problem: When I managed to letter as a high school wrestler, I lost nearly every match (while winning an occasional wrestle-off to get to the match) imagining that if I beat my opponent, especially a champion, he might carry a grudge enough to meet me in an alley one night and seek revenge. No kidding, that’s how I really thought. I specialized in not getting pinned; I was in great shape; I didn’t want to disgrace my team.
It is said that Roman citizens invested themselves in who would win in wrestling competitions between Christians and lions. It’s okay by me that weather and sports give US something safe to talk about in daily life. It just seems sick to me that people invest themselves further in whether a home team wins or loses. So what? Why isn’t it as simple a game as whether I give my granddaughter revenge in a game of hi-ho cherrios? Aren’t we amazing, incredible creatures? Love and peace--hal

New year's celebration of wiki leaks

A NEW YEAR’S TRIBUTE TO WIKILEAKS
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
December 31, 2010
No one questions that WikiLeaks are genuine, i.e., honest trustworthy. The controversy is over whether the public ought to know what diplomats and military are honestly reporting among themselves. It’s a question of whether the government ought to be allowed to lie to the people, of whether that threatens national security or supports it.
On my third try, I had a faculty who wholeheartedly supported my tenure. The college committee turned me down. I remember coming home to tell Jill the news that I would not become the next chair of the department, but would have to fight to keep my job. Happily, a colleague set me up with her senior husband who walked me through a successful appeal in 1980. Three years later, on appeal while I was in Sheffleid, England on my first sabbatical, I had counseled enough other candidates from dossier preparation through grievances and appeals that a majority of the campus promotion committee voted to give me tenure primarily for service.
I knew I had solid department support for tenure, but not even the chair could see the outside letters the college dean had solicited, let alone his letter of transmittal of the committee’s written recommendations to the campus level. I requested a meeting with the dean. He was very sympathetic and gave me what in writing would have amounted to a paragraph synopsis of the tenure committee’s report. I remain grateful to Howard Spicker for teaching me that the key to appeal was documentation of how my work had been cited, explaining that if my teaching evaluations were low (in evaluations more than one student called me a Communist agent), I was teaching controversial subjects, basically documenting every public activity.
When I got tenure in 1980, ten percent of the Bloomington faculty belonged to a chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. I joined and set up a “promotion and tenure counseling service” to help candidates prepare (or prepare to prepare) their dossiers, and to be their advocates when they appealed being turned down. I was elected to the campus faculty counsel, where I spurred an AFT campaign to open promotion and tenure records to candidates’ inspection. As union local president in 1981, I had a friendly local representative pass on a question to the state attorney general as to whether university financial records were public. The press called me to tell me the ag was on my side. I called him to thank him and he (a Republican) wondered why I thought I needed to ask such a no-brainer. In 1984, the general assembly amended the public records law to grant state employees full access to their own records. For several years, the campus faculty council permitted promotion and tenure candidates to waive access to their records, then repealed the experiment. I count these openings of information as my crowning academic service achievements in my 33 years at Indiana u.
I was on good terms with administrators at the time. I lobbied them for opening p&t records. I specifically remember the campus academic dean’s assurance that confidentially of outside letters and even college recommendations was necessary to keep evaluations honest. Bullshit. For one thing, I knew that asking my name and contact info to journal editors be passed on to authors had/has never inhibited my criticism. Being known to authors has encouraged me to make even my emphatic rejections responsible and constructive. Talking about people behind their backs promotes backbiting and distortion. It promotes covering what you are really doing and feeling in distortion and outright deceit. WikiLeaks draws our attention to the fact that in international affairs, as at home, at work (including academe), confidentiality of social business corrupts our relations at all social levels. Forcing a child to keep secrets about his or her relations with an adult is the essence of child abuse traumatization. At all levels, saying things behind people’s backs about them that you will not say to their face erodes the foundation of trustbuilding and maintenance of trust: open honesty.
My year as AFT local president, I had a slogan that still works for me: Fairness, Openness, Equity, FOE for short. This is the attitude that seems to work for me and mine.
WikiLeaks has revealed that US foreign policy is largely a matter of making fun and degradation of foreigners including publicly proclaimed important allies. The main threat of wiki leaks is not that adversaries find out low-level stuff they probably already have long since know. It is that the US government’s own people stop believing in government spin like, hey, we are winning the war in Afghanistan with the support of our Pakistani brothers.
Fact remains that the US is the world’s leading abuser of power. Fact remains that the greater our abuse by secrecy, the more we all are led further astray from one another. Hope remains that we can study and learn from the openness and honesty of leaks like wiki’s. Love and peace, and happy new year--hal

more on being retired

It happened again more than once when Jill and I were in Durango with our (grand)children over Christmas: I was asked what I was doing in retirement. Now back home in Worthington, here is my answer as of this moment: I enjoy liberation from having to do any thing l&p hal





Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com, 209 St. Pierre St., Worthington, OH 43085-2262, 1-614-433-7386






Paging and Bottom Toolbar