Reactions to a Half-White President; SE Asian dominos
Not all Americans are happy or peacably discontent. But some students were thrilled.
* Cats have crappy livers.
* Another Chinese philosopher you probably haven't heard of. Zhuangzi, relativist and anarchist.
* The Wire -- best show I'm not watching?
* Iceland economics and sagas.
* Hazards of nuclear waste.
* Michael Pollan to the President.
* [ETA: Clarke's "A Walk in the Dark". Spoileriferous.]
Current reading in my SE Asia history book is the 1920s and 1930s, and growing nationalism. I get the impression that 1960s concerns about Vietnam causing a general domino effect of Communism were profoundly ignorant and uncomprehending of what had been going on in Asia. What was going on was nationalism, around various seed philosophies, and in the case of Vietnam, with the collapse of Confucianism, extreme repression by the French, and Ho Chi Minh's personal life, the successful seed was Communism. In Burma it was Buddhism, in Indonesia it was Islam and "unity in diversity", in Malaysia Islam and Malayness. Thailand was always nominally independent but had its own evolution of a constitutional monarchy. None of these would be ripe for Communism. The places it did spread to, Laos and Cambodia, were coincidentally enough also part of the French sphere. From what little I know, I get the impression that the disruptions of the anti-independence struggle helped Communism take hold in those places. So perhaps a limited domino effect, limited to places adjacent to Vietnam and part of its colonial history, which were something of an ideological vacuum (especially Laos), and further socially disrupted by the Vietnam wars.
ETA: forgot a bit, the question of the role of colonialism in the prosperity of the West. I've generally been of the opinion that the wealth of knowledge, tools, and social capital are more important than the plundered resources, and I'm still of that opinion. Pepper doesn't breed wealth. Still, reading about the extensive tin mining and rubber plantations, such things seem more important. That explosion of automobiles in the 1920s? Running on tires from rubber plantations created by colonial command and harvested by forced labor.
* Cats have crappy livers.
* Another Chinese philosopher you probably haven't heard of. Zhuangzi, relativist and anarchist.
* The Wire -- best show I'm not watching?
* Iceland economics and sagas.
* Hazards of nuclear waste.
* Michael Pollan to the President.
* [ETA: Clarke's "A Walk in the Dark". Spoileriferous.]
Current reading in my SE Asia history book is the 1920s and 1930s, and growing nationalism. I get the impression that 1960s concerns about Vietnam causing a general domino effect of Communism were profoundly ignorant and uncomprehending of what had been going on in Asia. What was going on was nationalism, around various seed philosophies, and in the case of Vietnam, with the collapse of Confucianism, extreme repression by the French, and Ho Chi Minh's personal life, the successful seed was Communism. In Burma it was Buddhism, in Indonesia it was Islam and "unity in diversity", in Malaysia Islam and Malayness. Thailand was always nominally independent but had its own evolution of a constitutional monarchy. None of these would be ripe for Communism. The places it did spread to, Laos and Cambodia, were coincidentally enough also part of the French sphere. From what little I know, I get the impression that the disruptions of the anti-independence struggle helped Communism take hold in those places. So perhaps a limited domino effect, limited to places adjacent to Vietnam and part of its colonial history, which were something of an ideological vacuum (especially Laos), and further socially disrupted by the Vietnam wars.
ETA: forgot a bit, the question of the role of colonialism in the prosperity of the West. I've generally been of the opinion that the wealth of knowledge, tools, and social capital are more important than the plundered resources, and I'm still of that opinion. Pepper doesn't breed wealth. Still, reading about the extensive tin mining and rubber plantations, such things seem more important. That explosion of automobiles in the 1920s? Running on tires from rubber plantations created by colonial command and harvested by forced labor.