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Random Link Dump

Wan Yanhai released: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061127/hl_afp/healthaidschinarights_061127061946

An article from SFgate.com on gay life in rural China. I wonder how it compares to gay life in Idaho.

Some needs to teach the Brits how to apologize.

From the Runway to Hack Day

Although she didn’t make it very far in last season’s Project Runway, Diana Eng is still keeping herself busy, most recently as part of the winning team at Yahoo’s Hack Day. More info at TechCrunch. Go Diana!

Racist Web 2.0

So I came across this web2.0 photo site today: http://www.zingfu.com/. What makes people think that this is OK? Anyone want to join a campaign to populate the site with protest photos?

Tired yet?

My sentiments exactly: http://www.easterwood.org/hmmn/?p=88

Collateral Damage, Terrorism, Laws of War

Just something that has been bouncing around in my head for a while. What is moral difference between targeting civilians and engaging in military actions that you know with a high degree of certainty will result in civilian injuries and death? Shouldn’t the principle be “do no harm”, not “don’t say you’re going to harm”? Here are some articles I dug up on the web:

“Collateral Damage is Murder” by Michael Boldin

“Terrorism and Response: A Moral Inquiry into the Killing of Noncombatants” by Camillo C. Bica, Ph.D.

“Reflections on Kant and Moral Equivalence” by Michael Neumann

If any anyone knows of other writings on this subject, legal or otherwise, please let me know!

السّلام للبنان

The maddening, horrifying orgy of performative violence rages on in Lebanon. A glimmer of hope on Flickr. For Lebanese (and Palestinian) voices on life under siege, check out these blogs:

Save Lebanon

Kerblog

تووت من أجل غزة وبيروت (entries in English)

Recommended Viewing

The movement of Chinese peasants from rural areas to the cities has been called the greatest migration in human history. But not all Chinese peasants are moving to the wealthy eastern coastal provinces in their search of a better life. Han Chinese from Sichuan are also looking for higher wages in China’s far west – Xinjiang and Tibet. Ning Ying’s (寧瀛）documentary Railroad of Hope（希望之路）travels with migrant workers from Sichuan along the 50 hour train ride to the cotton fields of Xinjiang where they can earn more in two months picking cotton than in a whole year at home. The stories and images are searing. I highly recommend it to get a sense of what life under pressure is like in a rapidly globalizing society. The film does not touch upon what happens when these migrant workers get off the train in Xinjiang and come face to face with local non-Han communities. Maybe that is the subject of another documentary.

含羞草 Shy grass

In Taiwan there is this plant that grows all over the place called hanxiucao (the shy plant) Mimosa pudica that folds up when you touch it. I had always thought that it was native to Taiwan, but according to Wikipedia, it actually originates from Brasil. Then I heard on the POV documentary The Tailenders (a disturbing documentary about American missionaries who have made it their mission to bring “the Word” to everyone in the world in their mother tongue – I’ll save my rant against the evangelical impulse for a later post) that during the Pacific War, the US military introduced it to the Solomon Islands as a way to visually track the movements of Japanese soldiers in the forest. Fascinating.

Random Links

The New York Times notices that not all gay folks are into the marriage thing. A lot of straight people aren’t either.

I’m usually predisposed to keeping essential services public, but in this case, things should be kept private.