Category Archives: International

Updated — Chinese flag on Washington capitol campus

On Friday some activists got on their iPhones and agreed that on Saturday they’d throw on their Wolverine work boots to beat tracks down to Olympia to protest the “communist” Chinese flag flying on the capitol campus.

I first learned of the controversy from a Facebook thread started by Mason County Republican Party Chairman Travis Couture, who asked, “So can someone please explain to me why the hell we are flying a communist Chinese flag at our capitol? (Rhetorical) We cant have a ‘Christmas’ tree or a Gadson flag but we can have a communist flag?”

As for the tree question, that call is made by the Association of Washington Business, because it’s their tree and it’s part of a fundraiser they’ve been doing for kids for 26 years, according to this story from the (Spokane) Spokesman-Review.

Gateway Pundit and Fox News declared that “patriots” removed the flag.

The governor’s office answered that the flag was up because there was a delegation visiting from China and that the flag was removed after they left. The same was done earlier this year when delegations from Austria and Finland were here. On Monday the flag of Scotland was raised in honor of Tartan Day.

The video in one of the links above shows the flag being lowered, with a couple of Gadsden-flag bearing witnesses and a voice on one of the videos saying, “This is what happens when America speaks.” That the activists had anything to do with the flag’s removal is questionable, but not completely clear to me. First of all, it looks to me that the state staff removed it, not some roving gang of patriots. The guy has a specific tool to lower the thing. It all looks quite orderly. Jaime Smith, a spokeswoman for the governor, said it was state personnel that removed it. But she also told Huffington Post, “Our state’s Department of Enterprise Services was going to lower the flag shortly after that anyway.” The “anyway” in that statement makes me wonder if even if the protesters didn’t remove it themselves, if the lowering was expedited by the complaints. She clarified in an email to me later that, “The flag would have been lowered anyhow, was my point to HuffPo.”

China makes products we use, like boots, phones, most of our shoes, other clothing and even, according to one Amazon reviewer, Gadsden flags. (That’s the one with the snake and the “Don’t Tread on Me” mantra.) We as a nation also owe China, or the Chinese, a lot of money. I can’t argue whether it’s a good idea to fly any other nation’s flag at our capitol campus, but if you’re going to, how do you decide which nation to exclude?

And obviously I don’t know what kind of phones the protesters use or the boots they wore, but they might want to check the labels, even on those flags.

UPDATE: I asked state officials from the governor’s office and from the Department of Enterprise Services some additional info. Some on Facebook are asking about flag protocol.

Smith sent me a list of other nations’ flags that have flown in the same place for the same reasons. Here they are.

Austria 2015
Finland 2015
Germany 2014
Peru 2014
United Kingdom 2014
Japan 2013 and 2014
India 2013
Italy 2013
Canada 2013

We also received a detailed explanation from Smith on the flag’s placement and the criteria for when a foreign flag gets raised.

“We fly the flag of a foreign country in the Flag Circle when a high level government representative of a country recognized by our government meets with a statewide official. Countries like Iran and North Korea are not recognized and we would not fly their national flag under any circumstance.

“The US government formally recognizes countries. A state does not. In 1980 the United States formally recognized the People’s Republic of China.

“International flag standards and the flag code of the United States specifically state that the flags of sovereign nations need to be flown from separate staffs and at equal height. No national flag should be higher than any other national flag. State flags and banners are different.

“When the US and other national flags are flown together, the U.S. flag should be in the position of honor and to the right of other flags. We orient our flags to the north steps of the Legislative building as the prominent feature of the most significant building. So looking at the flags from the steps, the U.S. flag is always to the right and a foreign flag is to its left. If you look at the flags from the Temple of Justice, however, it looks backwards. The flags have been oriented in this way for more than 20 years. With the flags in the conference room they are oriented to whomever is speaking at the podium, so to the speaker’s right, but audience’s left.”

Regarding the lowering of the flag, I’ve got a second person saying it was state staff that removed the flag during a normal course of duty. Linda Kent from DES sent the following.

“DES received an email Friday afternoon from the Governor’s office informing us that the Chinese ambassador had departed, and that the flag could be taken down. The email also contained a reminder that the Scottish flag should be put up by Monday morning.

“In the past, there has not been a specific time frame for flags to come down. Basically the building and grounds crew works the changing of flags in between other duties on the Capitol Campus.”

I agree with one critic who said we have bigger issues to worry about. My reason for diving in has much to do with Fox News’ coverage, which was shown Monday on the show “Fox and Friends.” The coverage obviously involves no original reporting and seems to rely solely on the accounts offered on sites like Gateway Pundit. Somehow I expect more from the news organization with the tagline “Fair & Balanced,” and the one that can legitimately brag that it is the most trusted news network in the nation.

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Audio: Norm Dicks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Stimulus, Anthony Weiner

I recorded the conversation with U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, for the Sunday story on his position on U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. He is among Democrats and a few Republicans calling for a quicker withdrawal of U.S. troops.

I also asked him about Libya, Iraq and whether Anthony Weiner should resign. I cut about a minute and a half from the recording, but it’s still a bit more than 19 minutes long.

Norm Dicks on Afghanistan

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Considering our nuclear future

If you wonder whether what is happening at Fukushima in Japan is having an impact on the future of nuclear power, it is, at least in terms of how people are talking about nuclear power.

I just found a story that highlights the hurdles nuclear energy was having anyway. Surprisingly, most of its problems are not political. They may be a question of economics.

That’s why some outside experts have long thought the nuclear renaissance was overblown, even before Fukushima. In a 2007 report for the Council on Foreign Relations, Charles Ferguson noted that all of the 104 reactors currently operating in the United States will likely need to be decommissioned by mid-century. Replacing those reactors (so simply preserving the status quo) would mean building a new reactor every four or five months for 50 years—already a “daunting” pace.

The New Republic has the goods on a nuclear future, written by Bradford Plummer.

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Keep your eyes on Tiananmen Square

If all this government-overthrowing going on in Africa has had you wondering how it all might be playing in China, William J. Dobson writes in the New Republic of one experience he had there recently after he got to his hotel room in Beijing.

“Listening to CNN as I unpacked my suitcase, the anchor interviewed an analyst on the deteriorating situation in Libya. As soon as the anchor asked how Beijing might be viewing events, my television went dark. Roughly 60 seconds later, the TV screen came back, just in time for the anchor to thank the guest for his analysis.”

Stop whatever it is you’re doing right now and read the rest of this piece if you want to feel like you have a heads up on the news of the future.

I think China is on notice.

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Writer says Bush’s interpretation was correct; No judgment on the method he used

From an editorial in the New York Times:

President George W. Bush’s decision to build democracy in Iraq seemed so lame to many people because it appeared, at best, to be another example of American idealism run amok — the forceful implantation of a complex Western idea into infertile authoritarian soil. But Mr. Bush, whose faith in self-government mirrors that of a frontiersman in Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” saw truths that more worldly men missed: the idea of democracy had become a potent force among Muslims, and authoritarianism had become the midwife to Islamic extremism.

Whether this means a war was the right way to support Iraqis in gaining freedom from Sadam Hussein is still open for your debate, and the author does not address that. This really is not a piece about Bush.

What it is about is the notion that people in Islamic countries are more favorable toward democracy than we might realize, and that could lessen some of our concerns about what happens in Egypt once Mubarak leaves.

The piece is also interesting in that it points out that the people we thought were the “liberals” in many of these nations were only liberal enough to not anger the rulers. The author calls them “court liberals.” The real liberals were out there, in exile or in jail, writing in Persian language, which you and I were not reading.

This is an alternative take on what our hopes and expectations could be in the Middle East.

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