Stuck In Traffic: August 2008

Chalk one up for the good guys. The Tulsa World web site is reporting a news story titled, "Shopper stops robber in Batman mask."

Late night. Food Pyramid grocery store. According to the police report, a Mr. Tony Leroy Cleveland walks in wearing a Batman Mask and a red bandanna over his face. Waving a gun around he corrals all of the shoppers and employees to one area of the store and starts demanding money.

One of the customers tries to duck behind a counter and Mr. Cleveland fires at him, missing by inches. Then it appeared that the gun jammed.

The Tulsa World story reported it like this:

The gun then jammed, and Stutzman tackled Cleveland, police said. Store surveillance video shows Stutzman single-handedly fighting to keep a hold on him.

"It took me a few seconds to register that we might have an opportunity here," Stutzman said. "From there, it just happened. It started in the store and ended outside. Everything else was a tumble, a blur."

The struggle continued outside the store until police arrived, even after Stutzman was hit in the head and face with the gun.

Stutzman said Friday evening that he didn't do anything extraordinary: "You know, it just happened," he said. "There's no real big thing about it."

But if you watch this video, you see just how big a deal it really is. He is single handedly taking this guy down. There's one or two other people who try to help a little bit, but this is basically a one man show.

Here's a link to the video:

I think this guy deserves to keep the robber's Batman Mask as a trophy. And maybe he'll start using it more often!

The Olympics opened with much fanfare this week. I didn't get to see the opening ceremonies, but all the buzz I hear from my friends was that it was both impressive and beautiful without getting too cheesy.

By the way, the official Olympics site at NBC forces you to install Microsoft's Silverlight browser plugin in order to watch videos of the Olympics. That is incredibly heavy handed and ridiculous and pure Microsoft. Hold the video hostage until you adopt their software. But that's a rant for a different day.

Meanwhile, I did manage to find one video here, that you can watch without giving in to Microsoft.

I understand that some commentators have even called it a "coming out" party for China taking its place on the world stage. I think that might be pushing it. But I do agree that for many people, possibly millions of people worldwide, the opening ceremonies will be their mew default image of China.

Problem is, the Chinese government still disregards human rights that the rest of the world demands and takes for granted. The beautiful glitz and flash of the opening ceremonies cannot erase the chilling images of Tiananmen Square Massacre.

We still routinely hear of individuals being jailed just for writing things that are critical of the government. We still hear of the oppression of religious practices. The much ballyhooed economic boom benefits the Party cronies more than the average citizen who still, as far as I know, is not allowed to own his own home or farm.

Yes. China is becoming impressively modern, beautiful, and powerful, but they are also brutal and have a lot to learn about how to treat human beings.

And so we have heard the usual hue and cry about boycotting the Olympics. The argument goes that sending athletes to participate in the Olympics sends a message to the Chinese that we don't care about human rights and even tacitly condone their brutal practices.

I believe this is incredibly short sighted and even borderline hypocritical.

First of all, why do we pick on amateur athletes to bear the burden of our protests? These young people have worked and trained all their life, harder than most of us ever will. They aren't a political group and indeed, they really aren't much of a group. Yes they are part of the "US Olympic Team" but there's not much meat to that group. They are mostly individuals competing in a sport they love. And whether they show up or not isn't going to affect the situation in China in any way.

There are far more substantive activities that could be boycotted if we want to use boycotts to try to force change in China. For example, when a US business opens a division in China and begins to do business with the Chinese, why aren't we screaming "How can we possibly do business with China who brutalizes it's citizens?" Why aren't we calling for companies to refuse to do business in China? Why aren't our diplomats raising protest when we hear of another group of Chinese bloggers being rounded up and sent to jail? Why isn't our ambassador to the UN making speeches at the UN about this?

If we really wanted to raise the issue, there are a bunch of more effective ways to make the Chinese uncomfortable about their human rights situation. But no, instead, we focus our desires for protest on a group of kids who just want to play their sports and ask them to sacrifice their life long dreams.

And besides, who said boycotts are effective? I completely agree that we need to bear witness to the practices we believe are inhuman. But I'm not sure boycotts are the right way to do it. And boycotting the Olympics is especially tragic because the Olympics have much better and more important uses.

The Olympics humanize all of us. The literally put us on an equal playing field. The worst thing we can do when trying to bring about favorable change in another country is to demonize them. It's an easy trap to fall into, but the worst thing you can do. The Olympics are one thing we can do to help prevent us from falling into the trap of demonizing people we think are doing bad things.

It would be too easy to fall into a trap and think that the Chinese are somehow "evil" people individually and that there's something different about them that makes them inherently prone to human rights abuse and other evils. If we don't interact with them in human terms in a one-on-one basis, they become an abstraction which can be demonized.

The whole point of the Olympics is for countries to set aside their differences and come together as human beings in good natured competition. My big gripe about the Olympics is that they are too nationalistic. Everyone marches around under their national flag. They play national anthems of the winning athletes. they count medals by country. If I were in charge I'd get rid of all that. I'd treat the athletes as individuals, not as members of a national team.

But even with its imperfections, the Olympics are a good way for us to remember that we're all human beings and they are a chance to build interpersonal relationships across national boundaries. Yes, the Olympics are highly staged. The Chinese in particular have been very heavy handed on the restrictions they put on athletes activities at the Olympics But it's a start. It's better than nothing. .

I saw a recent news story, in which it's been noted that Iranian athletes have been pulling out of events in which they compete directly with Israelis. The most recent case was in swimming, which is discusses in the news story "Iran swimmer avoids Israeli pool showdown in Beijing." The Iranians never give an explanation, but it has happened enough times over the years that the pattern is observable. I have a hard time believing that an amateur athlete would do that. Athletes don't train their entire life to literally pull out at the last second. They live to compete. So someone, someone in the Iranian government, forced them to withdraw to send a message. To try to make a political statement. And what is that statement? That the Israelis are beneath us.

Of course it backfires. Maybe it plays well to the folks within Iran. On the world stage, it makes the Iranians look childish. It makes them look like they are demonizing the Israelis, which by the way, at least seems consistent with their other actions and statements.

I am glad that the US has not done similarly foolish things by boycotting the Olympics. I'm glad that we're reaching out to the Chinese an all the other countries of the world. I'm glad that we're there trying to be good citizens of the world, trying to make some sort of human connection with other countries. And for the same reason, that's why I'm glad we're finding ways to be civilized and do business with them. Business relationships require interpersonal trust.

In the long run, it's only these these sorts of relationships that have any chance of having influence on China's much needed reforms.

Stuck In Traffic

Friday, August 15, 2008

Russia Invades Georgia

Sunday, August 10, 2008

SIT0010: Olympics, Bovine, Batman

Craig Stutzman: Give Him The Batman Mask!

Staying True To The Olympic Spirit

Saturday, August 2, 2008

SIT0009: Airline, Dark, Social