Wow. And I thought I was outspoken. This carefully prepared and amusingly obscene attack against bloggers and blogging makes some interesting points, but manages to miss the key to it all: Some of us like to write and observe the world around us. No one forces anyone to read us. It’s fun, it’s engaging, sometimes you meet spectacular people (as I very recently did), and it’s as valid a hobby as any other. Hey, why do anything in life? Everything’s stupid, considering that death is inevitable, and it’s all vanity and striving after the wind. So why not blog?

It’s still a funny read. Via Hailey Xie, surprisingly.

I have to give Hu and Wen credit. I believe they are truly concerned about the awful pressures on the country’s rural poor, made far worse by corrupt local officials who pocket their wages, over-tax them and treat them with almost unbelievable contempt. Whether this caring is based on concerns for their own survival (labor unrest poses a huge threat to the party) or a higher sense of altruism is hard to say.

An in-depth article in the NY Times looks at how Hu and Wen are using a populist approach to show how much they care — a strategy fraught with risk, since the problem is so immense they simply cannot control it. Not within the present system.

The two men frequently mention the gap between those who have benefited from China’s capitalist-style urban economy and those left behind in the countryside. They have descended coal shafts, toured AIDS and SARS wards and abolished some conspicuous perks of high office.

During trips outside Beijing, Mr. Wen sometimes surprises local officials by halting his motorcade at random villages and inviting peasants to share their grievances, giving him a reputation for earnestness and sensitivity.

But despite a few new programs intended to reduce some rural taxes, Mr. Wen and Mr. Hu are finding that the Communist Party and government apparatus sometimes pay only lip service to their demands.

[….]

“We have gone to the government offices time and time again, and they pay no attention,” said He Diren, a local construction crew chief who said his workers had received less than half of their promised wages last year. “If they don’t listen to the prime minister, are they going to listen to us?”

The article illustrates just how difficult it is for Wen and Hu to succeed with such a monstrous bureaucracy standing in their way. For more than 20 years, the lifeblood of this bureaucracy has been corruption, with local party leaders routinely skimming the cream off the efforts of the peasants. Kissing babies and visiting hospitals won’t make a dent.

Intriguingly, the reporter compares their populist strategy with that of Mikhail Gorbachev, “who tried to overcome widespread corruption and inefficiency with similarly well-publicized meetings purporting to address the needs of ordinary folk. Ultimately, those interventions helped make Mr. Gorbachev popular for a time but failed to arrest the collapse of the apparatus he governed.”

I don’t think the analogy goes very far, since China’s economy is humming far more robustly now than was the USSR’s in 1991. But it underscores how difficult it is to satisfy China’s rural poor with symbolic gestures when the rotten system ensures their continued oppression. And it raises the question, What can the Party do about the growing labor unrest fueled by the emergence of a new middle class and staggering class inequalities?

Paul O’Neill, former Treasury Secretary dumped by Bush in 2002, is certainly rocking the boat, describing his ex-boss as something of a cretin, and claiming he began architecting the invasion of Iraq as soon as he was sworn in.

None of this is new to those whose IQ is above room temperature, but it’s never been the focus of such a media feeding frenzy before.

President George W. Bush’s performance at cabinet meetings resembled that of “a blind man in a room full of deaf people”, according to Paul O’Neill (pictured), who was fired as Treasury secretary in 2002.

The remarkable personal attack is made by Mr O’Neill in a forthcoming book, according to excerpts from a television interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

In the CBS Sixty Minutes interview Mr O’Neill, the former chief executive of the aluminium company Alcoa, says there was little constructive dialogue between officials and the president.

Speaking about his first meeting with Mr Bush, which lasted about an hour, Mr O’Neill says: “I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [him] on.

“I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening . . . It was mostly a monologue.”

The real bombshell is Iraq, though anyone who’s followed Bush closely know Saddam was Public Enemy No. 1 and marked for extinction upon GWB’s arrival at the White House:

The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush’s inauguration in January of 2001 — not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported.

That’s what former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O’Neill talks to CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” he tells Stahl. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a really huge leap.”

O’Neill, fired by the White House for his disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, “The Price of Loyalty,” authored by Ron Suskind.

Suskind says O’Neill and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam’s downfall — including post-war contingencies such as peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq’s oil.

“There are memos,” Suskind tells Stahl, “One of them marked ‘secret’ says ‘Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'”

A Pentagon document, says Suskind, titled “Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” outlines areas of oil exploration. “It talks about contractors around the world from…30, 40 countries, and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq,” Suskind says.

In the book, O’Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. “It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,'” says O’Neill in the book.

At least it’s all out in front of the public now with what sounds like tangible proof. It won’t change anything. Bush is our next president, the main factor that makes me want to keep living overseas. The idea of a Bush-appointed Supreme Court literally makes me sick.

I blame the Democrats as much as I blame the GOP. If only the Dems had a clue as to how to work together to achieve a mutually beneficial objective, they could win. Instead, they come across as infighting, whining, directionless turkeys, even Wes Clark, who for one brief shining moment I thought was going to change the shape of the race. As Dean’s power consolidates, I am far less sanguine, and believe we will look back at this election with the same sense of bewilderment as we did the Nixon-McGovern disaster of 1972.

Sorry for drifting off-topic.

I’ve been reading Conrad’s site for more than a year now, and somehow I never clicked on this link from his sidebar until 10 minutes ago. I have been laughing out loud ever since. Don’t miss it.

A highly outspoken article says that treatment by the UK and the US of its detainees at Guantanamo Bay is serving to “legitimise repression internationally on an ever-increasing scale.” (Keep in mind, its author is the attorney to three Gitmo detainees.)

Two years ago today, Feroz Abbasi, a British citizen arrested in Afghanistan, was one of the first detainees to be transferred hooded, shackled and manacled by the US military to Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay. His mother, Zumrati, who lives in Croydon, was informed about five days later – by the media. It took a further six days for a British government official to contact her. Significantly, she was assured that her son did not need a lawyer.

Two years on, it is clear that the British government has betrayed the most fundamental responsibility that any government assumes – the duty to protect the rule of law. This abnegation of the essence of democratic government goes much further than a failure to protect the nine British citizens who are incarcerated in this legal black hole. It is nothing less than a collusion in an international experiment in inhumanity, which is being repeated and expanded around the world.

I am no lawyer, and I admit I’ve been perplexed by this topic. On the one hand, I think there is justification in calling for military tribunals and prisoner-of-war status for the prisoners, as this clearly was an act of war.

But everything else about Guantanamo Bay appears to be botched — the obvious sneering at habeas corpus, the refusal to allow counsel, the government’s overblown and later discredited accusations of treason and espionage against workers there, and the government’s unwillingness to address this situation with the public. What’s it all about, and is this the way America is supposed to work? (The writer’s main complaint is that the UK is now vigorously replicating this model of alleged injustice.)

This is one of those charged issues, where one has to be wary of arguments on both sides. I do not believe, at least not yet, that these prisoners have been “tortured,” but I also don’t believe this is a smart or effective method of serving justice. I am outspoken on China’s love of detaining people without explanation, and I have to criticize America for it, too. That’s government at its most scary.

I suppose this isn’t so much a post as it is a question. If anyone can explain why it is in our interest to treat these uncharged prisoners like this, I am willing to listen. But something does seem kind of crazy. Is there a method to the madness?

The writer-attorney ends on a melodramatic note, but I suppose she is just doing her job.

What can an ordinary person do about a world turned on its head, where governments that claim to be democratic engage in repression, coercion and even torture on an international scale? Everyone needs to protest – peacefully, but as loudly and as persistently as they are able. Every act counts. And let everyone be certain of this: those who experiment in inhumanity will have no appetite to stop unless there is such protest.

In case you have any doubts, go take a look at the magazine’s latest covers. Incredible.

It sure is tempting. (Steve’s comments, not Stephen’s.)

Everyone who has a blog has to have his own rules, and I try to be democratic. Where I draw the line is people using my site to advocate deranged ideologies / philosophies like Nazism, Maoism, anti-Semitism, racism, etc. If someone wants to sing Hitler’s or Mao’s praises it’s certainly their right, but do I have to give them a platform to do so?

I’ll think about it a bit longer.

There’s no question the Chinese government is reacting far better to SARS this go-round, and the reason is clear: all the pressure it was under last year when it tried to bury the story and lie about it:

Last year, when what would become SARS first appeared, you couldn’t pry information loose from China’s secretive government. Now, as the virus edges back into the spotlight, the country’s leadership has a different message: Operators are standing by.

A Health Ministry hotline that opened this week is one extraordinary indication of a usually unresponsive government’s starkly different public approach as it marshals forces for Round Two of the fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome.

This time, the government has worked hard to appear swift and decisive — and make frequent statements that sound open and informative.

The response reflects an evolution in the way China, long accustomed to burying bad news, is dealing with the press and the public — a change quite probably driven by the blistering overseas reaction to the way it handled things last time.

What I totally reject as nonsense is the lame excuse one health official gives for the initial veil of secrecy.

“Last year, we were at our wit’s end. We didn’t understand or recognize this illness. We didn’t have a lot of knowledge about it, especially when it first emerged,” said Tang Xiaoping, president of Guangzhou’s No. 8 People’s Hospital, where suspected SARS cases are transferred. “This year,” he said, “we were prepared to fight this war.”

This is bollocks. They knew as much as Vietnam and Singapore and Hong Kong did, but while those countries instantly embarked on an aggressive campaign of education, awareness, screening and tight controls, the Chinese did the exact opposite. They said it didn’t exist. They said it had been eradicated. They hid SARS victims from the WHO, sticking them in ambulances. Then for the Party Congress in March, they issued a warning to all the media not to report on SARS in Beijing; can’t spoil the big celebration, can we?

So understanding the intricacies of the disease is a true BS excuse. Imagine a highly contagious lethal new disease spreading in the US and the CDC not saying a word because they didn’t understand it. They had almost no knowledge or understanding of AIDS at first, but the instant it was recognized as something that could be spread from person to person, it was all over the news. Same with SARS in every other country it spread to; only China chose silence.

At least it looks like they’ve learned their lesson, albeit the hard way. I am still waiting for this new-found openness to be extended to AIDS. It’s definitely started to improve, but so slowly, and mainly thanks to influence from figures like Dr. David Ho and Bill Clinton.

Update: For some interesting thoughts on how the latest SARS case was handled in Guandong, be sure to see Adam’s new post.

This is a scary article, coming fast on the heels of news of the brief arrest of Guandong’s Southern Metropolitan News editor for breaking a SARS story and ignoring official channels.

The Communist Party in Guangdong has appointed a new propaganda chief to rein in the province’s freewheeling media and improve Guangzhou’s image as a city beset by Sars and police brutality.

Zhu Xiaodan is the new director of the party’s provincial propaganda department, replacing Cai Dongshi, who was promoted to become deputy provincial party secretary.

Guangdong has been hit by several public relations disasters in the past year, including the Sars outbreak, the fatal beating of graphic designer Sun Zhigang at a detention centre and abuse at the Changzhou drug rehabilitation centre.

The stories were initially broken by Guangdong newspapers, including the aggressive Southern Metropolis News. The paper is said to have angered the local propaganda department by not obtaining clearance to run the controversial material.

Reports on Sun and the drug centre exposed the brutality and corruption of Guangzhou police, who have been waiting for an opportunity for revenge, according to local journalists.

Hey, you reap what you sow. The reputation of Guandong’s police did not arise in a vacuum, and is the result of lots of hard work and dedication. (I still cringe when I think of the police’s inexcusable murder of an innocent young man in Guangzhou last year.) The new propaganda minister may try to put lipstick on a pig, but I can’t imagine anyone with functioning synapses being fooled.

The article hints that this may start something of a chain reaction, bringing “early retirement” to other courageous editors and journalists in other parts of the country. And the great reforms continue….

Jonathan Mirsky, former East Asia editor of The Times of London lets it all hang out when it comes to Mao’s anniversary celebrations, which he equates, correctly, to celebrating the world’ most evil tyrants.

It is impossible to imagine official homage in Germany for Hitler or in Russia for Stalin. And yet Mao was a destroyer of the same class as Hitler and Stalin. He exhibited his taste for killing from the early 1930’s, when, historians now estimate, he had thousands of his political adversaries slaughtered. Ten years later, still before the Communist victory, more were executed at his guerrilla headquarters at Yan’an.

Hundreds of thousands of landlords were exterminated in the early 1950’s. From 1959 to 1961 probably 30 million people died of hunger – the party admits 16 million – when Mao’s economic fantasies were causing peasants to starve and he purged those who warned him of the scale of the disaster.

Many more perished during the Cultural Revolution, when Mao established a special unit, supervised by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, to report to him in detail the sufferings of hundreds of imprisoned leaders who had incurred the chairman’s displeasure.

While there is little in this article we don’t already know, the writer’s passion and eloquence make it a must-read.

In 1973 Mao suggested, apropos of Hitler, that the more people a leader kills, the more people will desire to make revolution. Mao would have approved the killing of unarmed protesters in spring 1989 not only in Tiananmen but in dozens of cities throughout China, and would have hailed the party’s “hate-filled” insistence to this day that the 1989 demonstrators were criminals who deserved what they got.

At a recent American seminar on Mao a professor from Beijing who specializes in Mao studies asked me if I was suggesting that the millions of Chinese who admire and love Mao are revering a mass killer. I replied that such veneration was China’s tragedy.

It’s a great antidote for anyone who wants to romanticize the Great Helmsman and talk about how great he was in terms of womens’ rights and taking care of the peasants. (And yeah, maybe he did do some nice things during his early years, but in the context of his entire reign, such niceties are of little or no consequence.)