Update: For more on Yanyong’s arrest, see this post.

If true, this sounds totally despicable:

Chinese police have ordered the family of 30-year-old Hu Jia, the AIDS campaigner, to place him in a psychiatric institution for evaluation and treatment or said that they would forcibly do so, said Human Rights in China, which is based in New York and Hong Kong.

“Hu Jia is facing the prospect of China’s dreaded ‘judicial psychiatry,’ a means of persecuting dissidents and removing them from public circulation, sometimes permanently,” the group said.

“This constitutes using psychiatric treatment as a form of torture and political persecution.”

Hu’s parents saw no sign of mental abnormality in him and were aware that psychiatric treatment had been forced upon a number of dissidents and religious practitioners, sometimes resulting in them becoming mentally unstable, it said.

The same article says that Human Rights Watch is demanding that China free Dr. Jiang Yanyong, the famous SARS whistleblower who was arrested along with his wife last week and held incommunicado ever since.

“Chinese authorities should immediately release Dr. Jiang Yanyong,” the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement. Jiang was detained along with his wife, Hua Zhongwei, while en route to the U.S. Embassy on June 1 to get a visa, it said.

In February, Jiang wrote a letter to China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress, and other leaders giving details of what he witnessed in 1989 when the army shot its way into the center of Beijing to clear protesters off Tiananmen Square.

“China wants to project an image of progress and rule of law, but Dr. Jiang’s arbitrary detention shows that this government is not bound by constraints – save protecting itself,” said Sam Zarifi, deputy head of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

Zarifi’s point is well taken, and it’s a shame. It’s even a deeper shame that in recent weeks America’s government has shown that under Bush, sometimes we’re not much better, at least in terms of our government’s ruthlessness in quashing criticism.

It’s really too bad, because it makes it very hard for the US to point fingers at human rights violators without having the charge thrown back in its face, with evidence provided by the Bush administration.

It appears only one of the many conservative pundits out there is stepping up to the plate and condemning the incredible beating of a US soldier by other US soldiers, as well as John Ashcroft’s refusal to give Congress the Justice Department’s famous memo on torture.

Andrew Sullivan lashes out at Bush and Ashcroft today, obviously outraged at their willingness to evade and deceive. If you haven’t read of the beating of Sean Baker, see Sullivan’s account. In fact, even if you have read about it, go read Sullivan. Tell me if it doesn’t make your blood boil. I hate to say this and I know it sounds simplistic, but it really does seem that we can never believe what our government and military tell us. How can one read the post and think otherwise?

Where are the other conservatives? How come all they can talk about is Ronad Reagan? There are crimes being committed that should have true conservatives apoplectic with rage.

This sounds beyond belief. Absolutely horrifying.

Billmon is the smartest liberal blogger, right alongside Josh Marshall, and by far the best writer. I just read his brilliant post about John Ashcroft’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I asked myself, Are the American people aware of what’s going on here? Do they have any idea just how unaccountable the present administration is, how anything they decide to do can be justified under the mantra “We’re at war”?

I kept getting angrier and angrier as I read it. It was at this point that I finally stopped reading and called Kerry’s office in Arizona to volunteer:

The very worst bit, though, the one that really drove home the potential consequences of our brave new legal world, was Ashcroft’s response to Russ Feingold’s question about the Brandon Mayfield case. Mayfield, you may recall, is the Oregon attorney who was arrested by the FBI on suspicion of involvement in the Madrid bombing – only to be (grudgingly) released when the Spanish police rejected the bureau’s fingerprint match.

To be sure, Ashcroft apologized profusely for the error. But Feingold’s question went right to the heart of why apologies are not an adequate substitute for due process:

FEINGOLD: “But for the fact that he had access to counsel and judicial review, Mr. Mayfield might still be in jail today. Held as an enemy combatant, Mr. Mayfield would be in a military jail without the right to an attorney. And his truthful statements of innocence would be taken simply as failure of his interrogators.”

The AG’s answer, roughly:

ASHCROFT: (crickets chirping)

He didn’t even bother to respond to the point. How could he?

In the end, the AG’s arguments really all came down to a single point – that is, unless “we’re in power and you’re not” is also a point. America is at war, he repeatedly intoned, to a chorus of GOP amens. And in war time what the president says goes – at least as far as the legislative branch is concerned.

We’ve simply never seen anything like it. And it’s tolerated. We should all be shouting with rage. Ashcroft even reserves for himself the right to classify documents retroactively — after they have been made public, if it is in “the nation’s interest,” which always means if it will help prevent embarrassing the government. Read Billmon’s post; it’s all there. Just be prepared to feel very angry.

Ashcroft prays; it won’t do him any good

UPDATE: I just came across Patrick Leahy’s remarks to Ashcroft at today’s hearing, and am citing the entire thing here for the record. How refreshing, to see Ashcroft exposed as the miserable failure he is. Magnificent.

Mr. Attorney General, welcome. It’s been, I believe, about 15 months to pass since your last very brief appearance in March last year. Your testimony here comes today about 1,000 days after the September 11th attacks, and the subsequent launch of your efforts against terrorism.

As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged in her testimony before the 9/11 commission, the terrorist threat to our nation did not begin in September 2001. But the preliminary findings of the 9/11 commission suggest that counterterrorism simply was not a priority of your Justice Department prior to September 11th.

Problems ranged in your department from an understaffed foreign translation program, woefully inadequate information systems, cultural attitudes that frustrated information sharing across agencies. Just one day before the attacks, on September 10th, you rejected the FBIs request to include more money for counterterrorism in your budget proposal.

And while you have recently been critical of the so-called wall between criminal investigators and intelligence agencies, you did nothing to lower it during your first seven full months in office.

In fact, you put up exactly the same wall in your administration.

The president is fond of saying that September 11th changed everything, as if to wipe out all missteps and misplaced priorities of the first year of this administration. After the attacks, you promised a stunned nation that its government would expend every effort and devote all necessary resources to bring the people responsible for these crimes to justice. Certainly the American people would expect no less.

So a thousand days later and it is time to ask for the fulfillment of the promise you made.

Mr. Attorney General, your statement lists accomplishments of the Department of Justice since 9/11, but you leave out a number of things.

For example, of course the obvious, Osama bin Laden remains at large.

At least three senior Al Qaida operatives who helped plan the 9/11 attacks are in U.S. custody, but there has been no attempt to bring them to justice.

The Moussaoui prosecution has bogged down before any trial.

A German court acquitted two 9/11 co-conspirators, in part because the U.S. government and Justice Department and others refused to provide evidence to them.

Three defendants who you said had knowledge of the 9/11 attacks did not have such knowledge. The department retracted your statement and then you had to apologize to the court because you violated a gag order in the case.

The man you claimed was about to explode a dirty bomb in the U.S. had no such intention or capability, and because he’s been held for two years without access to counsel, any crimes he did commit might never be prosecuted.

Terrorist attacks on Capitol Hill and elsewhere involving the deadly bioterror agent anthrax have yet to be solved, and the department is defending itself in a civil rights action brought by a man who you probably identified as a person of interest in the anthrax investigation.

U.S. citizens with no connection to terrorism have been in prison as material witnesses for chunks of time, and then, “Oops, I’m sorry,” when what the Justice Department announced was a 100 percent positive fingerprint match turned out to be 100 percent wrong.

Non-citizens with no connection to terrorism have been rounded up seemingly on the basis of their religion or ethnicity, held for months without charges, and in some cases physically abused.

Interrogation techniques approved by the Department of Justice have led to abuses that have tarnished our nation’s reputation and driven hundreds, if not thousands, of new recruits to our enemies to terrorism.

Your department turned a Canadian citizen over to Syria to be tortured. And then your department deported another individual to Syria over the objection of experienced prosecutors and agents who thought he was a terrorist and wanted to prosecute him.

And one of the most amazing things, your department, under your direction, has worked to deny compensation to American victims of terrorism, including former POWs tortured by Saddam Hussein’s regime. You have tried to stop former POWs tortured by Saddam Hussein — Americans — you tried to stop them from getting compensation.

And documents have been classified, unclassified, reclassified, to score political points rather than for legitimate national security reasons.

Statistics have been manipulated to exaggerate the department’s success in fighting terrorism. The threat of another attack on U.S. soil remains high, although how high depends primarily on who within the administration is talking.

Mr. Attorney General, you spent much of the past two years increasing secrecy, lessening accountability and touting the government’s intelligence-gathering powers.

The threshold issue, of course, is — and I believe you would agree with me on this — what good is having intelligence if we can’t use it intelligently. Identifying suspected terrorist is only a first step. To be safer we have to follow through.

Instead of declining tough prosecutions, we need to bring the people who are seeking to harm us to justice. That’s how our system works. Instead, your practices seem to be built on secret detentions and overblown press releases.

Our country is made no safer through the self-congratulatory press conferences when we’re facing serious security threats.

The government agency that bears the name of justice has yet to deliver the justice for the victims of the worst mass murder in this nation’s history.

The 9/11 commission is working hard to answer important questions about the attacks and how the vulnerabilities in our system that allowed them to occur, but it can’t mete out justice to those involved. Neither the 9/11 commission nor this committee can do the work of your Department of Justice.

Mr. Attorney General, since September 11th, you blamed former administration officials for intelligence failures that happened on your watch. You’ve used a tar brush to attack the patriotism of the Americans who dared to express legitimate concerns about constitutional freedoms. You refused to acknowledge serious problems, even after the Justice Department’s own inspector general exposed widespread violations of the civil liberties of immigrants caught up in your post-September 11th dragnets.

Secretary Rumsfeld recently went before the Armed Services Committee to say that he, he Secretary Rumsfeld, should be held responsible for the abuses of Iraqi prisoners on his watch.

Director Tenet is resigning from the Central Intelligence Agency. Richard Clark went before the 9/11 commission and began with his admission of the failure that this administration bears for the tragedy that consumed us on 9/11.

And I’m reminded this week, as we mourn the passing of President Reagan, that one of the acts for which he will be remembered is that he conceded, that while his heart told him that the weapons for hostages and unlawful funding of insurgent forces in Nicaragua should not have been acts of his administration, his head convinced him that they were, and he took personal responsibility.

We need checks and balances. As much as gone wrong that you stubbornly refuse to admit. For this democratic republic to work, we need openness and accountability.

Now, Mr. Attorney General, your style is often to come to attack. You came before this committee shortly after 9/11 to question our patriotism when we sought to conduct a congressional oversight and ask questions.

You went before the 9/11 commission to attack a commissioner by brandishing a conveniently declassified memo and so unfairly slanted a presentation that President Bush himself disavowed your actions.

So I challenge you today to abandon any such plans for the session. Begin it instead by doing that which you have yet to do: talk plainly with us and with the American people, about not only what’s going right in the war on terrorism — and there are those things that are going right — but also about the growing list of things that are going wrong, so we can work together to fix them.

Let’s get about the business of working together to do our job, a better job of protecting the American people and making sure that the wrongdoers are brought to justice, are brought to trial and are given the justice that this country can mete out.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Definitely time for regime change.

You think I’m kidding? It’s all in this very strange article:

Security experts in Taiwan have dismissed a US Pentagon report which suggested the island bomb China’s Three Gorges Dam to deter a possible invasion by its political rival.

While the government did not respond to the report, Taiwan’s Deputy Defence Minister Tsai Ming-shian on Wednesday urged parliament to approve a budget to boost its military might, saying it is likely Taiwan will be attacked in the next two to four years.

In a recent report, the US Defense Department warned that China was developing military tools to prevent Taiwan from achieving independence, including preventing the United States from going to the island’s aid should a war break out.

The report went so far as to suggest that since Taipei cannot match Beijing’s ability in field offensive systems, it could instead attack China’s urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam, to deter a military coercion.

But security analysts in Taiwan said such a scenario is unlikely to happen, as the risk is too high and the damage too limited.

Back to the drawing board.

I had no idea Taiwan was seriously thinking of attacking China anytime soon. According to the article, Taiwan intelligence indicates “China may launch small-scale attacks against Taiwan in 2006 or 2008.” You’d think at that point China would have its hands full dealing with the Olympics.

By a bizarre accident, I stumbled onto a Singapore professor’s bio and I’m a bit blown away. It has to be a joke — or is it? If it is, it looks like an amazingly elaborate hoax. If it’s not, I have the deepest sympathy for the poor professor who has to go through life with that name. (I’ve heard a lot of Chinese names, and “Shit” isn’t one of them.) Would someone go to all this trouble for a laugh? Very bizarre.

This is sweet: “The poll finds Kerry leading Bush in the presidential contest by 49% to 44% among registered voters, and 50% to 44% among likely voters.”

The nasty part is yet to come, and Bush/Rove will be pulling all the stops to smear Kerry and anyone who stands up for him. They are doing one hell of a job on George Soros already. But I think the people are looking for more substance this year and less BS. Bush’s record speaks for itself. If the only kind of ads he can run are attack ads, and none that speak to his achievements, the conclusion is inevitable: he hasn’t achieved anything.

These figures for a sitting president are abysmal, and there’s no way the Bushies aren’t panicking. With the Valerie Plame case on the horizon, the 911 commission’s report set to come out, Michael Moore’s movie hitting the theaters on June 25 and, of course, the Abu Ghraib story barely even getting started yet, Bush will have a lot to deal with.

[Note about Fahrenheil 9/11: I take Michael Moore with a big grain of salt, but I do believe the film is poised to do considerable damage. For the polarized voters it won’t have much if any effect. But it’s sure to be a big hit among college students, and from what I’ve seen in the trailer, it’s a damned powerful movie and I won’t be surprised to see it boost student voter registration. It certainly won’t help Bush in any way.]

This has been out for a week or so but I just came across it, and haven’t laughed so hard in days. You’ve got to hear it. It brings back all sorts of old Monty Python memories, while reminding us of just what an asshole John Ashcroft is (not that any of us would forget). If you’re at work, use headphones.

Brilliant.

America has been reduced to a giant gush-a-thon as everyone who ever knew Ronald Reagan is wheeled out to recall some nostalgic anecdote about the great prevaricator. The footage seems endless. Yesterday Fox News viewers were treated with a helicopter view of the hearse driving up to the Reagan mansion to pick up the corpse as though it were stunning breaking news, like the OJ Bronco ride. Hugh Sidey and George Will and Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite are pulled out of the closet, the mothballs dusted off, as they recall one tedious story after another that no one wants to hear about. At times, the “coverage” is so stultifyingly dull that even the little flies on the wall tuck in their wings and go to sleep.

Reagan was likeable. He had a folksy charm — but he was first and foremost an actor. What lay beneath was far less delightful. His powers of oratory were real. I still tremble a bit when I hear him say, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” It was one of the great moments in 20th Century oratory. But that aside, there is little else I can say I admired or will miss. (See Joseph Bosco’s post about this topic.)

Now, in an article on Reagan that is as biting and savage as it is funny, the great and powerful Christopher Hitchens goes for the jugular and takes no prisoners. This is one of his kinder paragraphs:

He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn’t like him all that much. He met his second wife—the one that you remember—because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see. Year in and year out in Washington, I could not believe that such a man had even been a poor governor of California in a bad year, let alone that such a smart country would put up with such an obvious phony and loon.

Nostalgia and the passing years play tricks on the memory, and many of us have idealized Reagan into something he most certainly was not. Grillparzer put it well when he wrote that “Death is like a bolt of lightning, transfiguring that which it consumes.” Ronald Reagan, who stutterred like an idiot when confronted with the outrageously illegal and vile Iran-contra plan, has indeed been transfigured, and the media will play up the grief and sorrow to the hilt. It’s going to be a weepy week here in America. Too bad, that so much of this grief is either manufactured or based on a fallacy.

Dai Tou Laam Diary has added yet another lengthy excerpt from William Hinton’s book and given us a biography of the man, describing his close ties and lengthy relationship with China and its leaders. And he gives us more of Hinton’s eyewitness descriptions of the Tiananmen Square massacre which I would put in the must-read category.

If the “Nightline” program I saw was typical of the television coverage, that showed personnel carriers on fire arriving in the square and being attacked by people, which gives a completely wrong impression of the sequence of events. It looked as though the people were on the offensive and the army was on the defensive. Actually, by the time these vehicles got to the square, they had shot their way through barricade after barricade and had killed probably close to 2,000 people. Arriving in the square was the end of the assault, not the beginning of it. Once the army began to shoot down people they got very angry and became active and counterattacked in any way they could. The Chinese television programs followed the same pattern; they showed the end first. They took scenes from Sunday afternoon where the people were burning tanks and weapons carriers and put them at the beginning. They said, “This is Saturday afternoon and this is the way people treated our poor soldiers. So our soldiers had no choice but to hit back.” Actually they reversed the days, and made out that the soldiers were the victims of the people, which was a complete lie. The army came in shooting and they killed people all the way down the avenue. And they kept killing people even after they secured the square.

That’s just a sample; be sure to read the entire post.