It isn’t everyday that we get to see a North Korean rock video, let alone one in which Bush is portrayed first as Satan and then as a chimp-monster while the band chants furiously, “Fucking USA!” So I found this clip bizarre, disconcerting and totally surreal. Certainly unique.

(Also from boingboing)

Update: A commenter says it’s from South Korea, and I am sure he is correct.

22 pregnant cows met their maker yesterday when a single bolt of lightning struck the oak tree under which the doomed cows were hanging out.

Florida, the lightning capital of the nation, lived up to its reputation when 20 prized, pregnant cows were killed by a bolt that hit an oak tree they were huddled under at a north Florida farm, police said. Two others were euthanized.

“The hole in the tree was the size of a watermelon,” said Rose Mary Cameron of Clover Leaf Farm. “The ones that were under the tree did not move. They just fell over each other. They were all tangled up.”

She said two others appeared brain dead, “so the manager put them down.”

(Link via boingboing)

China is going to amend its constitution to protect private property rights and acknowledge the equal rights of all of its citizens. On paper, anyway.

The latest proposed amendments are significant in that they will remove some of the last vestiges of a communist society, which does not recognise private ownership of property and places peasants and workers, the proletariat, above all other groups.

It sounds good, and it can only be seen as a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the changes are more a formality than anything else; it doesn’t look like they open any new doors for meamingful change or reform:

While the proposed changes are generally applauded, advocates of democracy and other political reforms are disappointed that nothing is being done to overhaul the creaky and outdated political system itself.

According to Mr Cao Siyuan, an independent consultant pioneering in research in constitutional reforms, the current proposals merely rectify the incongruity between reality as it exists and what the Constitution says it should be.

Yet in terms of protecting civil rights and limiting the power of officials, there is little progress, he told The Straits Times. Similarly, he said, the political leadership has also not addressed the many calls for greater administrative transparency and free dissemination of information.

These have become important concerns following the Chinese government’s initial mishandling of the Sars outbreak earlier this year.

Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. The corrupt officials remain protected, and the poor people being thrown out of their homes uncompensated to make way for shiny new malls and high-rises will not be anymore protected than they were before. Let’s hope that all these baby steps eventually result in change that really means something.

Cheerleader Bush is donning his pom-poms and launching a massive public relations campaign to convince us how swell things are in Iraq:

In the face of growing doubts about postwar Iraq, Bush is leading a new public-relations offensive to highlight positive developments.

Thursday, in the speech to troops, Bush was emphasizing signs of progress in Iraq, what Bush calls “the central front in the war on terrorism,” and what the events mean for “the safety and security of the American people,” White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.

He warmed up Wednesday night with a speech at a fund-raiser in Washington sponsored by the Republican National Convention.

“Since the liberation of Iraq, our investigators have found evidence of a clandestine network of biological laboratories, the advance design work on prohibited long-range missiles, elaborate campaign to hide these illegal programs,” Bush said.

“Design work”?? I remember Powell at the UN crying out that war was necessary right away because Saddam refused to disarm. He said Saddam had WMDs. He didn’t say we were going to war because Saddam had design work.

As to how great things are going in Iraq: I hated the Saddam regime and wondered at time, albeit hesitantly, whether the invasion might be justified purely on humanitarian grounds. I sure got rid of that attitude quickly. Now I can only laugh at Bush’s feeble attempts to turn chicken shit into chicken salad.

I’m sure there are a lot of good things happening in Iraq and that many Iraqis still welcome us. But with the daily picking off and bombing of our soldiers, with the refusal of most of our allies to support us, and with ever-growing demands for our money and men, you don’t have to be a genius to know that things are not on track over there.

As a PR person myself, I can safely say Bush is now practicing what we call crisis management, which is something of a misnomer. He cannot manage the crisis, as it has taken on a life of its own. What he can try to do is manage the perception of the crisis, and based on this article he’s doing a pretty poor job.

First rule in crisis management is acknowledging the problem and being up-front about it (you know, the way the Chinese have been with AIDS and SARS). Denying the problem, trying to paint it as something it isn’t, and trying to prop things up with false expectations — those are the ingredients for implosion and ultimately a total loss of credibility. Again, China’s handling of SARS is a classic example.

So I hope W knows what he’s doing.

I read a story like this and I feel an odd combination of anger, bewilderment and embarrassment (for being from a country in which such inanities can happen):

Two teens, both asthma sufferers, are together when one commits a henious crime:

Ferguson said she forgot to bring her medication to their school, Caney Creek High School, on Sept. 24. When she had trouble breathing, she went to the nurse’s office.

Out of concern, Kivi let her use his inhaler.

“I was trying to save her life. I didn’t want her to die on me right there because the nurse’s office (doesn’t) have breathing machines,” Kivi said.

“It made a big difference. It did save my life. It was a Good Samaritan act,” Ferguson said.

But the school nurse said it was a violation of the district’s no-tolerance drug policy, and reported Kivi to the campus police.

The next day, he was arrested and accused of delivering a dangerous drug. Kivi was also suspended from school for three days. He could face expulsion and sent to juvenile detention on juvenile drug charges.

Can’t a country as great as America get its priorities straight and get shit like this out of our clogged legal system? Is this what we really want to pay our police and our courts to do?

I recently posted an ad that North Korea ran in a local newspaper in which the country refers to itself as a “utopia.”

That may be. But that description doesn’t mesh with this wrenching, agonized article about life in the real North Korea, and what happens to those who in desperation try to flee. Horrifying. And definitely a reminder of how we should be more thankful for the things we take for granted. (Like food.)

NK is definitely a charter member of the Axis of Evil, perhaps even a candidate for Honorary Lifetime Membership.

(Link via Adam)

If this is true, if this guy really is going to win, the neocons will go utterly apoplectic. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

(Via CalPundit)

UPDATE: Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

I just noticed I somehow ended up on the blogroll of super-blogger Eschaton (aka Atrios) and I am brimming with self-importance.

Seriously, his is my favorite of the “lefty” blogs and I am just surprised that I’d be on his radar screen. What a feeling!

John Pomfret has written an in-depth article on the arrest of the health official who blew the whistle on China’s cover-up of the Henan AIDS debacle.

Read between the lines, and the entire tragedy becomes clear:

The AIDS epidemic in Henan was touched off in the early 1990s when provincial health officials began to push a plan encouraging peasants to sell their blood. Dealers bought blood from villagers and pooled it, mixing healthy blood with HIV-infected blood. They extracted plasma, a blood component with medical uses, and re-injected the rest of the blood back into the farmers’ arms. AIDS spread quickly through the poor communities.

Henan’s authorities tried for years to repress all reporting about the disease. Ma’s arrest appears to be connected to the case of Wan Yanhai, a prominent AIDS activist who was detained for a month last summer after he received the document. Officials accused Ma, who prepared the document, of passing it to Wan; Wan said he did not know who e-mailed him the document. After AIDS activists and international organizations condemned Wan’s detention, he was released and allowed to travel to the United States.

Chinese sources described Ma’s arrest as a move by Liu Quanxi, the former director of Henan’s health department and the man widely blamed for presiding over Henan’s AIDS epidemic. Liu has remained a force in Henan politics and has avoided taking any responsibility for the epidemic, the sources said. Liu lobbied strongly for Ma’s arrest, the sources added, as a way to warn anyone who might consider exposing his role in the epidemic there.

According to the classified document, Liu’s department was “caught up in the get-rich craze” of the early 1990s as blood sales skyrocketed. Liu ordered the local medical center to focus on blood collection to earn revenue. He also led a blood-selling delegation to the United States in 1993-94, with the message that “there isn’t any HIV in Henan province and the blood is cheap,” the document said. He now holds a senior post in the province’s legislature.

This fellow Liu sounds like a real role model. He infects thousands of peasants with AIDS, he gets rich selling their blood, he moves up the ranks of the CCP and goes unpunished, he successfully lobbies for the arrest of the good guy….

My guess is that the CCP will have to let Ma Shiwen out of jail, and soon. The uproar that is beginning to well is only going to crescendo, and that could have repercussions for China’s economy. (If anything talks in the PRC, it’s money.) This is one of those human rights stories that isn’t going to just go away. It’s simply too terrible. And it will hurt China in more ways than one:

Ma’s arrest is likely to further hurt China’s efforts to win nearly $100 million in funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The fund has rejected two previous applications, partly because of China’s attempts to hide the scale of the epidemic.

An interesting profile of Hong Kong’s “Goddess of Ddemocracy” Audrey Eu appears in today’s Scotsman. She sounds like a true leader, despite being a lawyer:

Articulate and plain-speaking, Ms Eu has distinguished herself in the past year by highlighting to ordinary Hong Kong people the dangers of the planned law [Article 23] in clear, simple terms.

“They prefer people at the end of the day who perhaps listen to reason and would be prepared to be fair,” the former chairwoman of the Hong Kong Bar Association said during a recent interview at her office.

The article also notes the aftermath of Eu’s efforts, which has the CCP in a total tizzy:

In a sign the China-backed administration remains acutely worried about potential public unrest, a government official yesterday said it would scale back preliminary work on a huge reclamation project which conservation groups fear will ruin the city’s stunning harbour, to allow more time to discuss the plan with its opponents.

The outpouring of anger at the China-backed government rattled leaders in both Hong Kong and Beijing, who feared it may spark similar expressions of unrest elsewhere in the country.