A bit of a look: CNN and BBC

It is often said that American news sources are biased and lack depth. The latter I dispute to a degree, there's often a lot more depth of coverage that people simply ignore, and when you go to some of the more respected newspapers (say The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or go to some of our essayish magazines like Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker, you can find a lot of depth in those sources. But overall I must admit most American news stories, especially on TV are more oriented toward a quick rundown of events along with a debate on popular issues (this is true of even CNN, my perhaps main go-to news source). I actually don't mind that often, since it is really nice to have a wide-ranging skimming of world news, so you can have general idea of what's going on without needing to search and run around. I also believe that even more deeper sources are mainly there to point you into the direction of some news subjects you want to investigate more.

But sometimes a brief summaries of events just leaves you without a full understanding of what the events actually mean, or an understanding of how trustworthy the reports are or the moral standing of the players or the impact of incidents and such (moreover, with a limited number of "breaking" news events or popular issues to debate, things get repetitive fast). Take for example, CNN's coverage of the recent shooting of Uygurs in Xinjiang, which concentrated on the Chinese police reports and attributed the whole thing to an anti-Han holy war as per that report. Thus unlike BBC News, they did not take the rather obvious step of connecting the shooting to the long low-level separatist campaign in Chinese Turkestan, which BBC News on the other hand did so easily. Moreover, while BBC just said the Uygurs were shot dead, CNN said Chinese police killed them in a shootout (which is a questionable way of phrasing things since even the Chinese police say that the Uygurs were armed with knives though they were shot by police, which is justifiable if the case, but not exactly a shootout).

Yet the second usual claim that American news is extra biased is something that I'm going to object to a little more. I'm not saying there aren't biases in American news, or that perfect objectivity is possible (I don't think perfect objectivity is possible and I think that news readers should be aware of that, but I think that reporters should aim toward objectivity), but barring FOX News and personality-centric news shows (like Nancy Grace, Keith Oberman, etc.), I'd say overall American news is a lot less biased than a lot of other countries, especially my old friend CNN. Take again for example BBC, whose coverage of Uygur-shooting was more in depth (hence giving more room and potential for opinion and shaped depiction), had a stronger bias to its article (not that its opinion on the matter was necessarily wrong), and it more pushed an idea of the Chinese gov. being the real bad guy in the picture. CNN's brief coverage was perhaps a little more biased against the Uygur militants, but its lack of depth gave no claim to making an assessment of the whole of the matter, while BBC in its attempt for analysis does.

But if I was to recommend things, well, if it's an update on a news topic I already know about, I'd rather have the more objective, briefer story, but if it's a matter I've heard less about, well the less objective, more-in-depth might be good.

Still, when it comes to news, I always take the point that news sites and shows and papers are just the starting point. The world can't be summarized even in a whole magazine, even if people tried, but the resources are out there, and so I go out investigating and trying to learn and grasp things. After all, I at least have a vote to tilt things around, I can still send letters and complaints, I can still write, and maybe someday I'll be able to have a greater power of things.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Istanbul once Constantinople

Now as that song goes Istanbul was once Constantinople, but although many suppose this happened just when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire, but no, it was only after the Ottoman Empire fell did Istanbul become Constantinople. Why?

Nobody knows but the Turks.

Actually it was probably just a matter of nationalism. Afterall if one force was driving the end of the Ottoman Empire it was an explosion of conflicting nationalist impulses. If there was an inherent difference between the revolutions which doomed the German Empire and Russian Empire and the revolutions that doomed the Chinese Empire and the Ottoman Empire is that G and R rev.s were driven by socialists, while C and O rev.s were primarily nationalist driven. One could say that as a matter of development. But that's far, far too simplistic.

First of all, the socialists in the G and R rev.s were often somewhat nationalistic, even if they hid it. Part of the appeal of socialism is its promise of making your nation the forefront of development and that was very much in the mind of those revolutionaries. Also, there was a far left presence in the Chinese and Ottoman revolutions, especially in the Chinese case. But a good counter-example to the claim that the differences were due to development or perhaps due to geography was the example of the Austro-Hungarian revolutions, which while sometimes Communist (notably in Hungry) were often first and foremost nationalist.

The key point the Chinese, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires shared was their multi-national composition, and unlike the Russian Empire, their diversity was to the point where the ruling ethnicity was far from the majority. This was particularly acute in the case of the Chinese who were ruled by a thin layer of Manchus. This made it easy to direct the revolutionary impulse into a nationalist one, because the struggle to modernize which often drove much of the dissatisfaction in these governments could be portrayed as a struggle between an oppressed nation and a foreign ruler. It is notable that in the Russian rev., the Tsarina was often emphasized as German for a similar effect.

But the difference between the Chinese rev. and all the others is that the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German and Russian empires all collapsed in World War I. Three of the four, minus the Germans, struggled deeply and largely unsuccessfully with modernization. The Germans on the other hand were successful. Yet all had to deal with restive minorities, although the Germans less than most. The fates of the revolutions were different though. Turkey's revolution led to a moderately authoritarian but stable modernizing government, Russia's revolution broke off sections into independent states but most become the USSR, the Austro-Hungarian revolution shattered the empire into small states, each with an unstable mix of nationalism and socialism. And the Germans...

The Germans were left with an unstable democracy which under better circumstances might have stabilized (after all, France had a chronically unstable democracy since 1870, but it remained democratic), but instead spiraled into the hell which was Nazism.

Arting upwards and onwards or my review of the San Francisco Asian Art Museum

So San Francisco is continuing to be awesome. Now basically while I've been on vacation I've been accumulating sessions to post up in the future, and so I have far, far more than I could possibly actually put up. So... Also, I've been thinking about things and such and making plans and such, so... Well, let me put that all aside for a moment and talk about the San Francisco Asian Art Museum (since I visited it today)

Let me hit up just a few main points because I am sleepy:

First of all: The museum is awesome. That's just how it is.

Also:

- There's a massive amount and diversity of cool stuff

- There's a large regional variety (well, let's say there's a large number of art belonging to several distinct regions: China, Japan, Tibetan Buddhist areas, Southeast Asia, and India), and there's even a decent subregional variety (I got to give credit to the fact that the museum makes a distinction between North India and South India).

- Nice thing about Asian art: colors and details (if that seems like an extremely vague description, well, Asia's an extremely big continent).

- Cool building too, the ceilings are often highly decorated and give a nice atmosphere to the whole museum.

- You can just barely take it all in within a day but that if you do your mind will most likely explode (yeah, that happened to me)

- A lot of the highly detailed works lend themselves to repeat viewing, especially the Indian sculptures and Chinese paintings

However:

- The Southwest Asian and Persian Art section (which for some reason includes Muslim Central Asia) is tiny (one very small room), out of the way (I missed it in my first time around), and there's some nice pieces, but only enough to show they really need to expand this section massively.

- The history stuff is kind of weak, some of it is interesting, but most is superficial and some of it is misleading, however that might just be my history snobbery (I'm actually thinking of creating a separate history webpost so I can post more about history, but I'll cover some of my general complaints, which to be fair I have about most popular histories, in another session).

- Mongolia's gets very little love in the Himalayan and Tibetan Buddhist section

- Laos gets no love (although I didn't read all the labels so there might have been some Laotian art) in the Southeast Asia section

- The area's a little ghetto so try to leave there a decent amount before nightfall

Overall pretty awesome stuff. Really gets the brain juices flowing (maybe to the point of overloading) but forget utilitarian arguments the art is just beautiful (especially cool is the jade art exhibits (there's at least both Chinese and Japanese jade art), those exhibits might be temporary though, although they might be permenant, basically I'm not sure on that point. Also, obviously, Indian (or if you want to be politically correct South Asian (which I think, in disagreement with the museum, should include Sri Lanka) Art rocks!!!!)

There's more I could say, but again I'm sleepy so simply: Dude, you should go, dude. Dude.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!