UPDATE: A lot of visitors are coming here for information on the latest beheadings in Iraq (September 2004). You can find those videos and photos here.

Another decapitation. Photos here. The media shouldn’t “protect” us from the photos and videos, as they are doing. We need to all see for ourselves what the murderers are capable of. The media showed us Abu Ghraib and there’s no reason to shield us from images of terrorist butchery.

The terrorists are certainly living up to their carefully cultivated reputation. So what do we do? Has anything been accomplished as a result of our war on terror? Are we any safer? I really don’t know, but it seemed we were making some progress while we were focused on Afghanistan, and then everything seemed to deteriorate with Iraq and Abu Ghraib. It’s too soon to make sense out of this puzzle, but I see absolutely no reason for any optimism.

Update: I just heard Cheney and then Bush speak briefly about the murder, with the usual, “We will track each and every one of the killers down. This will not stand….” But isn’t that just what we heard about Bin Laden and al Qaeda after 911 — and don’t they seem, in an odd way, to have been made even more dangerous in their diaspora? And hasn’t it been two and a half years? With new mini-bin Ladens being created daily by the militant Islam hatred mill, are we caught forever in a black hole, with no way out, ever?

Sorry for all the questions, but my febrile brain is on overdrive.

I heard someone on the news last night put forward what seemed like the most ridiculous and impossible notion: We must, he said, meet with the terrorists and negotiate in some way.

Treason! Impossible! They butchered 3,000 Americans and beheaded Nick Berg and America never negotiates with terrorists!

He acknowledged this, but said it still has to be done, and that is the only way nightmares like this are ever resolved. He pointed to Israel finally talking with Yasser Arafat — a disaster in the end but an important step nevertheless. Under Reagan, of course, we negotiated secretly with Iranian terrorists to free American hostages. This fellow said there’s simply no other way, and that the odds are right now behind the scenes someone in the US government is communicating with someone either in al Qaeda or with connections to them.

I am as sickened as anyone else at the thought of ever, ever talking with al Qaeda. And judging from the way they talk about the US, it’d be hard to believe they’re that hot to talk with us. And besides, could we ever trust a thing they say? Don’t they make Kim Jong Il and Mao look like little darlings?

But all that said, is there any other practical way to really “win”? Is this the kind of war where we can simply shoot our way to victory, considering that the enemy has fanned out across the globe — and considering that we are bogged down in a stupid and failed effort in the one country al Qaeda isn’t. (And yeah, I know about al Zarkawi, America’s new bogey man and source of all evil, a Jordanian with no proven ties to either bin Laden or Saddam.)

Well, I seem to have veered off topic a bit, but it was healthy to get all those thoughts down on “paper.” Now, let’s get on with our splendid war on terror. Onward, Christian soldiers.

Oh, how sweet it is.

I almost threw a book at the TV set last night when Hannity insisted we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, just as Bush said we would. This great article walks you through his lies one by one.

Stephen Frost does the English-speaking world a great service with his summary of a Chinese article on a tale of real badness.

Under the guise of helping the poor, a school offering free courses for impoverished students from Hubei instead contracted them to Guangdong hotels where they worked in manual jobs.

The Huanggang Commercial and Hotel Management School pretended to help impoverished families in Hubei by providing free courses to 120 students aged 14 and above. Instead it teamed up with a company offering hotel consultancy services in the southern city of Dongguan to provide cheap labour to good quality hotels.

Students were promised a two-year course, but after four months on campus in Hubei they were sent to Dongguan on “internships”. In reality, the students learnt nothing about management and spent their time cleaning and in other manual tasks….

The hotels punished students more harshly for failing to obey regulations than regular staff, which often resulted in them working longer hours. Several students tried to escape but because the company held their household registration permits and contracts they were effectively imprisoned.

I am really curious — what is the definition of slave labor? Does this qualify? It seems to me the one thing that differentiates it is that the slaves workers at least were paid something, albeit next to nothing. But if you are trapped, if you cannot flee, and you are forced to do work against your will, are you a slave?

The article says this is going on at several “good hotels.” I wonder if that means 5-stars, like the Marriott, Hilton or St. Regis. I hope we get to hear more about this story, with all the details. It sounds like a scandal waiting to be told.

Thanks to Conrad for pointing me to this.

Ross Terrill’s a brilliant historian and his look at Taiwan’s election and its ramifications offers a condensed primer on Taiwan politics. Anyone interested in what’s going on over there has to read it.

I enjoyed especially his closing paragraphs.

Beyond Chen’s second term, many possibilities will arise. Taiwan will never depart from China. Geography dictates it; to a degree cultural roots also dictate it. To be independent of China is not necessarily to be hostile to China.

For the moment, however, a regime exists in Beijing that is myopic about democracy. It says “Hitler was produced by democracy” and this led to the destruction of the Jews. It hints that Russia’s turn toward democracy is regrettable.

To all this there is one answer, which, alas, no party-state has ever accepted. Democracy is a method for a free people to handle its differences. It doesn’t guarantee a fully happy outcome each time. But the self-realization of the individual — the highest value in politics — can ask nothing less than just that freedom to choose.

Fifty years ahead no one can say where China’s boundaries will lie. One China can live on as a gleam in the eye for some. Washington must say Taiwan’s future is an open question subject to the free choice of all the people involved. I believe it should add that for now the extension of Beijing’s party-state rule to Taiwan is not feasible or in America’s or East Asia’s interests.

I hope we all agree.

I suppose in a country going through the horrors of a never-ending famine, it’s not surprising that it points to pine needles as a wonderful source of nutrition.

Only in “The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.” Via my nemesis, James Taranto.

This article (which is more like a long string of quotes)l ooks into this controversial question and concludes that companies like Nortel can’t shrug off such charges by saying the technology they sell to China is no different from what they sell elsewhere. The writer obviously finds them guilty as charged.

“Nortel’s position on this is criminal from a moral perspective..it is absolutely scandalous,” lawyer Clive Ansley, a Vancouver Island-based expert on Chinese legal issues, told The Asian Pacific Post.

“What this company is doing is basically telling China that we at Nortel can help you track down activists and free speech advocates,” said Ansley, a former professor of Chinese studies and Chinese law in Canada, who was the first foreign lawyer to open a law office in Shanghai.

“Instead of implementing laws to control the export of such technology that results in scores being rounded up, jailed and even killed, the Liberal government has been handing out tax dollars to companies like Nortel.

“This is indicative of the close links the Liberals have with China’s trade and corporate community and human rights is not part of the deal.

“The Liberal government believes that this process of engagement which leads to millions of tax dollars going to China will help the communist regime become more democratic and respect human rights.

“That is like trying to teach a tiger to be a vegetarian,” said Ansley, who spent the last 20 years in China and Taiwan.

The article has heaps of quotes from others, all condemning Canada’s Liberal government for its tax breaks to Nortel, but the reader needs to beware: the article appears to be quite political, at moments reading as though it were campaign literature for the Conservative party.

It would have been a much better article if it took a practical look at what exactly the Nortel technology does, and if it’s any more sinister than what it offers to everybody in other countries.

Oh shit.

If it happens, I’ll still campaign for him. But I will be extremely, painfully disappointed. Not fatally. But almost.

This story has all kinds of implications, none of them pretty, about how big corporations screw the American public, and how the government goes way out of its way to protect them. It’s highway robbery, dressed up in suits and ties.

And guess what company used to provide the Bush campaign with its corporate jet back in 2000?

Update: Go here now to hear the funny/depressing Enron song, made up of lines from the notorious Enron tapes spliced into rock song “I’ve Got the Power (along with a line or two from George Bush). Via BoingBoing.

It’s an amazing story. A stubby, unshaven guy who wears a baseball cap pulls off one of the greatest public relations coups in the history of the film industry. Michael Moore managed, by dumb luck or Machiavellian cunning or a combination of the two, to win front-page headlines for Fahrenheit 9/11 again and again and again, week after week after week. This is an amazing story, and a case study of how to achieve maximum publicity for your movie. College communications courses will be pointing to this story for years to come.

While I realize this idiotic story has been way oveplayed, and even though I just posted about it a little while ago, I couldn’t resist citing this Pravda article, which doesn’t display a lot of love toward China.

Chinese leaders just love criticizing the “American imperialists”, despite the fact that the trade with the USA bring China billions of dollars every year.
Although, the “imperialists” are constantly giving Beijing the grounds for exercising their criticism.

In May Pentagon submitted to the US Congress its annual report on the state and perspectives of the Chinese military. Beijing probably would not pay much attention to the report, but the US military experts touched such painful issues for the Chinese as Taiwan and hydroelectric power station “Three Ravines” which is under construction.

The Chinese leaders were indignant with the advice Pentagon was giving to Taiwan in case of possible war with China: to blow up the constructed hydroelectric power station “Three Ravines” on the Yangtze River.

The Chinese leaders started cursing at the USA in anger. Lieutenant-General Lyu Yan called Washington the “whore posing itself like a gentleman” in his comment on the Pentagon’s report, Reuters wrote. According to the general, Americans are not better than Osam binLaden as they admit the possibility of such operations.

I didn’t even know Pravda existed anymore. They’d be well served hiring a good English proofreader.