Here ara a few photos from my first days back in Shanghai, courtesy of my new Nokia cellphone camera (my only other camera is a Nikon 35mm, nice but a little inconvenient for today's digital age -- I really must get a proper digi-cam for snapshooting here in China). First is the view from the balcony of my new apartment in the Foreign Experts' Building at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU). This is in leafy old Hongkou District, a section of the former International Settlement on the northern edge of Central Shanghai. The sky is a bit hazy in this early afternoon shot, but clearer and bluer in later shots below (click on photos below for larger image in new window):

Next is a shot from the top floor of Building #1 on the Hongkou campus of SISU, looking east toward downtown Shanghai with the landmark Oriental Pearl Tower in the far distance. This is SISU's older, smaller central campus, most classes (including mine) now held on the newer and much larger campus in suburban Songjiang. Building #1 houses the College of English Language and Literature for which I teach, and which also has a building on the Songjiang campus. Still a little hazy, but with more blue sky than the earlier shot above from the balcony of my apartment:

Another view from the top of Building #1, this time toward the northeast over the campus and the rooftops of neighboring Hongkou District:

...And still another northeasterly view over the campus and its immediate surroundings, extending out to the forest of skyscrapers that is Shanghai:

Here a very hazy view to the west over the campus and down onto the central plaza and fountain where tomorrow I will catch the shuttle out to Songjiang campus for my first day of classes:

Finally, a warning to suicidal passengers on the elevated railway platform at nearby Chifeng Lu station: "NO JUMPING OFF THE PLATFORM AND ONTO THE TRACK":

I really have to feel for those to whom this final warning is directed, but can't help but love the wording: public poetry at its freshest and most surprising. More to come....

SHANGHAI, CHINA-Having arrived in China from the United States just over a week ago, I find it strange watching political news from my own country far back across the Pacific. My apartment for visiting overseas faculty at Shanghai International Studies University is equipped with international cable TV including Al-Jazeera in English, whose world news coverage includes US news stories of interest to international viewers; and via high-speed internet I can watch US domestic news on my laptop as pictured here. Al-Jazeera is clearly the superior product for world news, and I long ago gave up on getting anything of value on US politics from CNN, but I have enjoyed watching MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow from Shanghai on my laptop in addition to my usual daily readings from the Huffington Post, all via standard local broadband service despite all reports that overseas news sites are inaccessible in China. Domestic Chinese media also cover US politics in detail; and in stark contrast to his immediate predecessor, President Barack Obama appears to be quite popular in China, particularly with young people as elsewhere in the world. Obama's anticipated visit to China in November promises to be quite an event.

Among US domestic stories covered in detail by Al-Jazeera and other international media, most prominent is the fight for (and against) health care reform, Al-Jazeera observing like some in our own media the embarrassing fact that the US is the only nation in the industrialized world which does not provide universal health care to its citizens. As I write this, in fact, Al-Jazeera is comparing the US health care system to those in other developed countries around the world, and showing brief clips of shouting Obamaphobes at town hall meetings bent on maintaining our sad status quo. Nothing, however, can compare to Olbermann and Maddow for detailed coverage of the continuing town hall fiasco across the United States. Yesterday I watched video on Olbermann of right-wingers at a town hall in some dark corner of America rudely shouting down a disabled woman in a wheelchair, and I felt ashamed to be from the same country as these ignorant pigs. Lots can be blamed on the health care industry for the opposition to reform, but the ugly behavior of ordinary right-wing Americans at town halls can only be blamed on themselves and their own willful ignorance. These people are a disgrace to civilized human beings everywhere.

I would say the same about those I've also watched on my laptop making stupid Obamaphobic statements about the President's upcoming speech to American schoolchildren. US presidents regularly visit schools and address America's children, yet when this president follows suit these morons naturally assume some dark purpose at work. Professional liars like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter say such things because they are paid to say them. Ordinary Americans who say such things, on the other hand, do so simply out of ignorance and hate. Ignorant people in remote areas of rural China or other developing countries at least have an excuse for their ignorance. In America there is no excuse. If you're ignorant in America it's because you have chosen to be ignorant. I repeat: These fellow citizens of mine are a disgrace, and their absence from my immediate surroundings makes my heart not the least bit fonder of them. Their persistent irrational disregard of the facts makes me feel quite certain that simple racism is at the heart of the matter for many Obamaphobes, whether they admit it or not, and for this in America in 2009 there can be no excuse.

Meanwhile, new US ambassador Jon Huntsman has announced that Obama will visit China in mid-November. Obama's visit is certain to generate excitement among young Chinese as well as among expat Americans like myself, and I would fully expect to see cheering crowds of youthful admirers, souvenir Obama t-shirts, and other trappings of Obamamania here just as we have seen around the world. This will be a great time to be an American in China. With a $61 million US pavilion currently under construction for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, I am hoping that the president will visit here as well as Beijing, but if not I am very tempted to buy an air ticket to the capital so as not to miss the event. My last visit to China was shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and I can tell you that George W. Bush was and remains as unpopular in China as anywhere else in the world. Despite Obama's troubles at home, his stellar popularity around the world makes being an American abroad a much more pleasant proposition than it was only a year ago.

Noticeable particularly on Al-Jazeera is the change in America's tone on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Obama took office, and the resulting change in how America's role in the conflict is portrayed. The new US administration's sharp criticism of continued Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank has, at least on Al-Jazeera, resulted in the US no longer being portrayed merely as a lackey of Israel. Israel now stands alone as the responsible party for its continued violation of international law and Palestinian human rights, and - if only in a spirit of cautious optimism - Obama's America is coming to be regarded as a far more balanced broker for peace. This is nothing but good news for Americans at home and abroad.

Is it because she is fleeing prosecution for knowingly submitting a forged document to a federal court? Is it because she is secretly an Israeli agent working to undermine Barack Obama? Is it because she fears that black men in suits and sunglasses are coming from Washington to kill her?

I don't know the answer, but "birther queen" Orly Taitz was indeed interviewed by MSNBC from Tel Aviv on Aug. 3 - only two days after submitting, to a federal district court in California for "authentication," a document alleged to be Obama's Kenyan birth certificate now pretty conclusively proven to be a forgery. Following her gleeful release of the document on Aug. 1, Taitz must be a little surprised by the speed at which it has been picked apart on the internet and shown to be an almost certain forgery. I don't know what the penalty might be if it is determined that Taitz knowingly submitted a forged document to a federal court for the sole purpose of doing political harm to the President of the United States, but it is the one good reason I can think of why she would so suddenly leave the country at what only two days ago seemed (at least to her and her demented followers) to be her moment of triumph. While she may indeed fear that black Men in Black are coming to kill her, I would seriously question the theory some have suggested that she might be an Israeli agent working to undermine Obama, if only because I assume the Israelis would be smarter than to entrust such a task to such an obvious nutjob as Orly Taitz.

Taitz appears haggard and even more disturbed than usual in her MSNBC interview with David Schuster, who charged in a question at the end of the interview that Taitz refused a ride to MSNBC's affiliate in Tel Aviv that day because the driver appeared to be a Muslim. A Soviet-born holder of dual US/Israeli citizenship, Taitz is on record with the Orange County Register stating that Israel should not merely defeat but "exterminate" its Arab enemies, whatever "collateral damage" may occur among innocent Arab civilians (see also Tablet). Having wondered previously why an immigrant from the former Soviet Union would be as obsessed with Obama's birth certificate as any down-home American redneck, I'm beginning to to think it might just be a case of Transatlantic Islamophobia.

Orly Taitz claims that she is merely a "lawyer," with a purely "legal" interest in the details of Obama's birth, but I obviously suspect there's more to her Obama birth obsession than this or mere insanity. Taitz hails from a milieu of Soviet-born Israelis among whom far-right, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment runs much stronger by most accounts than among the general Israeli population, as numerous Israeli and international sources have observed. Witness the rise of Avigdor Lieberman, Soviet-born leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, made up mostly of other Soviet-born Israelis with strongly anti-Arab views, many of whom live not in Israel itself but in West Bank settlements; and many of whom really, really don't like Barack Hussein Obama.

Taitz has a documented association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby group with close ties to Binyamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, as Allison Hoffman notes in Tablet. I'd be very interested in hearing what sympathies Taitz may have not just for Likud but for Yisrael Beiteinu, and what connections she may have with Soviet-born settlers in the West Bank. As observed above, she is on record saying that Israel's Arab enemies should be "exterminated" rather than merely defeated, and appears to have refused a ride to MSNBC's affiliate in Tel Aviv because she believed the driver to be a Muslim. Like right-wing settlers (see video), Taitz is also fond of calling her critics "nazis" or "brownshirts," as she did with David Schuster in her interview from Tel Aviv. Taitz spoke about her birther activities in a March 1 interview with Israeli National Radio.

Could this be why she has found so much in common with Islamophobic American rednecks who think that Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya? Could it also be that America's best interests are not those she has most at heart in her dogged efforts to undermine our president?

Disruption is emerging as the Right's method of choice for fighting health care reform as the August recess and the ground war for reform begin. Weekend town hall meetings in Philadelphia and Austin were both disrupted by shouting bands of the same basic wingnut type we saw at McCain-Palin rallies in 2008 and at the teabagging events of earlier this year. As previously, video from these events clearly demonstrates just how crazy the grassroots Right has become.

At the Austin event Aug. 1 with Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett (pictured here, see video), the usual suspects showed up shouting "Just Say No" and waving signs that included the usual symbols of communism and fascism worked into statements against "socialized" health care, in addition to an image of Doggett as Satan. The protestors' continued shouting throughout the event was clearly an effort to disrupt it and to prevent any other voices being heard. The same was the case at an Aug. 2 event in Philadelphia with Republican-turned-Democratic Senator Arlen Specter and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (see video). Here, wingnuts with bumber stickers on their heads shouted down speakers to the clear annoyance of others around them trying to listen. One woman held up a copy of the New American Bible and said, "This is the only truth," as though that were somehow an argument against health care reform.

These disruptive actions by Righties are not just an attack on health care reform but also an attack on democracy and open debate, since their express aim is to silence those with whom they disagree. The "me-first" mentality of anti-health care protestors was exemplified by one Carol O'Brien at the Philadelphia event, who told the Philadelphia Inquirer that extending health care coverage to 47 million uninsured Americans might mean that she would no longer be first in line at the doctor. "I don't want to have to wait for care," O'Brien said, clearly unconcerned about the amount of waiting others might have to endure without health care reform. Too bad Carol O'Brien is an unwitting stooge for an insurance industry that would deny care to her just as happily as she would deny it to others. 

On the one hand I would hope that, in a public forum such as this, some rules of order might be enforced to prevent disruption and allow all voices to be heard; and that those who insist on disrupting could simply be removed just as they would be be removed from any other public forum. On the other hand I can't help seeing behavior such as this as an opportunity for progressives to demonstrate the depths of irrationality to which the Right has sunk. Good use was made of video from McCain-Palin events demonstrating all sorts of ugly behavior, and good use has been made of video showing similar behavior at teabagging events. As the long, hot month of August progresses I would only expect the wingnuts to get uglier and more brazen, and if they are going to insist on behaving this way we might as well make sure everyone sees the videos.

(See also: Huffington Post, Think Progress, TPM)

One simple fact unites the "birther" phenomenon, the Sonia Sotomayor and Henry Louis Gates controversies, and the right-wing crusade against health care reform in America: The one hope Republicans have of derailing the Obama presidency and stopping the progressive agenda is by tapping into the ignorance and fear of under-educated and ill-informed white Americans (aka "low-information voters"). Despite America's great wealth and advanced material development as a nation, abject ignorance remains a way of life for many Americans even today, and the rise of Obama has many of our most ignorant fellow citizens scared out of what few wits they possess. Lest I be accused of racism or elitism for my comments, I will mention that I hail from the very same white, working-class, small-town culture that I criticize here.

Consider the "birthers": From where I sit, it seems apparent that only a fool could buy into the theory that Obama is some sort of "Manchurian candidate" spirited into America from darkest Africa by evil leftists bent on turning the good ole USA into some kind of Islamic socialist republic. Obama has provided his Hawaiian birth certificate (the same "certificate of live birth" anyone gets when ordering a copy of one's birth certificate from one's home state), we have seen Obama's original birth announcements from two Hawaiian newspapers, and the Republican governor of Hawaii has stated unreservedly that Obama was indeed born in her state. None of this satisfies the birthers, however, who insist that no such proof has been produced. There is no rational basis whatsoever for birther claims against Obama, yet birther numbers are growing particularly among southern whites, many if not most of whom now believe or suspect that Obama was not born in the United States. If this isn't ignorance, then I'd like to know what is.

The birther controversy is but the latest incarnation of the racial and cultural prejudices that have followed Obama since he began his presidential campaign. No one demanded birth certificates from George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or any previous American president, and no one will demand a birth certificate from our next white president. This is happening to our current president, not because of any missing birth certificate, but because he is black and because his name is Barack Hussein Obama. Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or a fool.

The controversies surrounding Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and his comments on the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates likewise reveal a deep pit of ignorance in the white American populace. Both have been used by a few clever conservatives to convince a lot of not-so-clever conservatives that they are in danger of losing "their" country to militant blacks and Latinos led by Obama. In Sotomayor's case, an obviously moderate judge respectful of the law has been caricatured as a militant racialist out to harm white people. Pandering to a shrinking GOP base composed increasingly of under-educated whites in rural areas of the South, the Midwest, and the mountain states, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee spent far more time in Sotomayor's recent confirmation hearing grilling her on her "wise Latina" remark than studying her judicial record. In the case of Henry Louis Gates, arrested in his own home on charges that have since been dropped, Obama's comments on the matter have likewise been twisted to suggest that he is an "uppity" black man with a chip on his shoulder. As we know, few people are less popular among ignorant white people than "uppity" black people from places like Harvard: a testament not only to the bigotry but also to the gross anti-intellectualism, anti-urbanism, and anti-cosmopolitanism rampant in right-wing circles. You know there's something wrong in America when having a good education is counted against you.

The Republican crusade against Democratic health care reform is likewise based on ignorance and fear. Most blatant recently in these regards is the story currently circulating that health care reform includes a plan to euthanize senior citizens as a form of health care "rationing." This story is a complete falsehood, but has that stopped the less well-informed members of our senior population from believing it? Of course not. Unfortunately, Democrats will have to dedicate considerable resources to battling this fiction; and faced with the truth many of the willfully ignorant will still choose to believe a lie. Even before this particular tale began circulating, Republican propaganda against health care reform was based largely on xenophobic lies about the "socialized" health systems of Canada and Western European countries, eagerly consumed by Americans who really, really want to believe that anything Canadians or Europeans do is inherently evil: Of course they euthanize their grandparents, just as they eat their children, have sex with their pets, and go around socializing things that ought to be privately owned. I fully expect that at some point an obviously racial element will appear in the health care debate just as in others, if indeed it has not done so already (I can see it now: "...Obama wants to give free health care to 'welfare queens' and 'illegal Mexicans'! Obama plans to euthanize white people and send their organs to Kenya...!").

Uniting all right-wing claims against Obama is their dependence on the ignorance and on the racial and cultural fears of under-educated and ill-informed white Americans (aka "Joe Six-Pack"). There is not a single conservative line of attack against Obama that any rational person schooled in critical thinking could possibly take seriously. These are Joe Six-Pack's charges: Obama is not a "real American." He is a secret Muslim. His middle name is Hussein, and the other parts of his name aren't very American, either. He is an angry, uppity black man who hates white people and who got into Columbia and Harvard only because of Affirmative Action. He is a socialist who wants to kill your grandma and grandpa. He is an elitist city-slicker who is coming to take away your guns and your Bibles and replace them with copies of the Holy Quran and The Communist Manifesto. He eats arugula instead of good ole American iceberg lettuce, spicy brown mustard instead of down-home yellow, faggoty French crepes instead of apple pie. He pals around with terrorists and gets secret messages from ACORN through his teleprompter.

If educational levels were equally high across America, the Republican Party would have no base outside the ranks of the very rich and a few twisted souls serving as research fellows in right-wing think tanks. If ignorance were eliminated in America, the GOP as it exists today might not exist at all, and would certainly have little if any hope of ever winning a national election. GOP leaders in Washington are a disgrace for their racist and xenophobic hate-mongering, their crude anti-intellectualism, their wanton disregard of the facts, and their eagerness to exploit the irrational fears of people lacking in the critical thinking skills to recognize lies as lies. Equally at fault are news outlets like Fox News and CNN which, since the 2008 Democratic primaries, have treated the "cultural concerns" (i.e. prejudices) of certain working-class whites as legitimate cause to oppose Obama, and as "concerns" that not they but Obama should feel obligated to address. When the Jeremiah Wright controversy exploded during the primaries, these news outlets behaved as though Obama somehow owed Joe Six-Pack a comforting explanation for Wright's remarks, for Obama's presence at their utterance, and for why after 400 years of slavery and second-class citizenship a black man such as Wright might be a little angry. As African Americans and Americans of all races enjoyed their first-ever opportunity to nominate and elect an African American president, these news outlets fixated instead on poor Joe Six-Pack and his cultural anxieties (i.e. his threatened sense of white entitlement). Today, these same news outlets treat the birther controversy and charges of racism against Obama, not as the gross stupidity that they clearly are, but as legitimate topics of "debate."

Personally, I've grown sick and tired of Joe Six-Pack and his cultural anxieties. Joe Six-Pack's petty prejudices, his willful ignorance, and his paranoid fantasies do not deserve to be treated as legitimate "concerns" or as serious topics of "debate." Given the internet, cable television, free public libraries, and an increasingly diverse America offering many opportunities to learn about different cultures, Joe Six-Pack has run out of excuses for being a low-information voter. Joe Six-Pack needs to grow up, get an education, and come live in the 21st century with the rest of us.