This has been discussed here before, and it’s good to see that Amnesty International is giving it greater play.

China is using the global war on terror to justify repression of its Uighur community who face torture and execution when forcibly returned from neighbouring countries, Amnesty International said.

“China has repackaged its repression of Uighurs as a fight against ‘terrorism,'” Amnesty said in a new report.

“Since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the USA, the Chinese government has been using ‘anti-terrorism’ as a pretext to increase its crackdown on all forms of political or religious dissent in the region.”

The rights watchdog said many Uighurs have fled to neighbouring countries, but growing numbers “were being forcibly returned to China where they face torture and execution”.

Read the whole horrifying article to see just how acute the Uygurs’ plight is; it’s not pretty.

I was lucky to find this slender little book; I’ve been taking it with me everywhere I go, reading and re-reading it in restaurants or while standing in line at the supermarket. Lewis H. Lapham is the editor of Harper’s, a prolific writer and a sort of 21st century Tom Paine. His new book, Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy is his first in 10 years. My guess is that he was so appalled at the course on which America had embarked after 2001 that he simply had no choice — he had to write this book. You can tell with every paragraph, Lapham is a man who is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it any more.

Lapham is a reporter of the old school — brash, skeptical, cynical and not satisfied with political hacks who say, “Trust me.” The sheer energy and passion with which he has infused this short but weighty book is remarkable. With ruthless logic he exposes how the Bush Administration has indoctrinated the nation on a diet of fear and pseudo-patriotism, creating a sheepish, dissent-averse populace the likes of which would have made our Founding Fathers wince.

Lapham is masterful at delivering his points with blunt eloquence. He is obviously exasperated, furious, and he can’t quite fathom what he is seeing. I take that back; he can fathom it, and that’s why he’s so upset. He is witnessing, live and in color, a nation that is giving up its critical faculties and acquiescing to its leaders’ demands to surrender its freedoms in the name of a “war on terror,” a war on a noun that no one can even define.

An example of Latham’s pithy wisdom:

“President Bush likes to tell his military and civilian audiences that, as Americans, ‘we refuse to live in fear,’ and of all lies told by the government’s faith healers and gun salesmen, I know of none so cowardly. Where else does the Bush administration ask the American people to live except in fear? On what grounds does it justify its destruction of the nation’s civil liberties? Ever since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, no week has passed in which th government had failed to issue warnings of a sequel. Sometimes it’s the director of the FBI, sometimes the attorney general or an unnamed source in the CIA or the Department of Homeland Security, but always it’s the same message: Suspect your neighbor and watch the sky, buy duct tape, avoid the Washington Monument, hide the children. Let too many citizens begin to ask impertinent questions about the shambles of the federal budget or the disappearance of a forest in Montana, and the government sends another law-enforcement officer to a microphone with a story about a missing tube of plutonium or a newly discovered nerve gas.”

My favorite part of the book is Lapham’s description of how journalism in America changed over the past 45 years. He traces the beginnings of our “new journalism” back to President Kennedy, when journalists ascended their traditional role of cynical observers to become celebrities, and even to participate in government. As we all know, many attain rock-star status, and the TV talking heads can earn as much money in a single day on the lecture circuit as many of us make in a year. Lapham’s not happy about this — and if you read the book, you won’t be either. (How can you be a good journalist when you are so beholden to corporate interests? Answer: You can’t.)

Gag Rule is a jewel, and I am delighted I found it. While it’s certainly a polemic, it’s also a page-turner. Lapham’s style has a bite to it, but it’s always engaging and often downright poetic. I can’t recommend it strongly enough. A sublime antidote to Fox News.

From George Orwell’s 1984:

“In accordance with the principles of double-think it does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

These are also the closing lines of Fahrenheit 9/11, read aloud by Michael Moore.

Only a couple of posts so far, but definitely looks promising!

Things have gotten better — but not much. Victims are still stigmatized, even by the medical community, which treats them almost as if they were SARS patients. After a flurry of good news this year about Bill Clinton and Dr. David Ho helping to stimulate awareness, this article is a grim reminder of just how uphill China’s battle against AIDS really is.

An outrage, I tell you! Blatant, shameless duplicity and deceit. Rep. Henry Waxman in today’s WaPo:

Republican leaders in Congress have refused to investigate who exposed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration’s claims that Iraq sought nuclear weapons. They have held virtually no public hearings on the hundreds of misleading claims made by administration officials about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda.

They have failed to probe allegations that administration officials misled Congress about the costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill. And they have ignored the ethical lapses of administration officials, such as the senior Medicare official who negotiated future employment representing drug companies while drafting the prescription drug bill.

The House is even refusing to investigate the horrific Iraq prison abuses. One Republican chairman argued, “America’s reputation has been dealt a serious blow around the world by the actions of a select few. The last thing our nation needs now is for others to enflame this hatred by providing fodder and sound bites for our enemies.”

Compare the following: Republicans in the House took more than 140 hours of testimony to investigate whether the Clinton White House misused its holiday card database but less than five hours of testimony regarding how the Bush administration treated Iraqi detainees.

Of course, my Republican friends will find a way to justify this. But we all know something’s simply wrong with the US government as it now stands, and that there’s got to be a change. A fundamental overhaul. A major recalibration.

Via Tapped.

That sure didn’t take long. Kerry named Edwards as his running mate a few hours ago and entire new websites dedicated to slandering the guy are up and running.

You have to check this site yourself — it was obviously all set up in advance. They are slick, and they are mean. A mean, mean slime machine.

Politics is a dirty, ugly business. But how come those awful libruls play so much nicer than their conservative brethren? Whatever happened to Bush Sr.’s vision of “a kinder, gentler nation” and “a thousand points of light”? Do they think they look better going into instant smear mode, when they had the opportunity to congratulate Edwards and appear just a bit gracious, if only for a few seconds?

But no, we’ll have none of that in this election, at least not on the Republican side. It’s kill or be killed, a vicious, no-holds-barrred fight to the bloody finish, in which any trace of sportsmanship or geniality may be misconstrued as a sign of weakness. So go straight for the jugular.

It’s going to be a long 4 months. But now that Kerry has shown he can make the right decision, I’m more energized and optimistic than ever. Smear away, Karl and Karen — it says a lot more about you than it does Kerry or Edwards.

What do you expect — it’s the New York Post.

Update: My friend Jeremy writes on his blog today about watching Fox News’ coverage of the Edwards pick:

So, watching Neil Cavuoto, waiting for his repartee on the events that had unfolded. So, Cavuoto goes right to how the market opened and gauges his comments with “not that I’m being partisan, but this is historically true” that the market drops because of Democrats. Okay, the market opens lower today, and three more times Cavuoto says that he’s not being partisan, but …

Okay, the market could have opened lower today because: three Marines were killed, oil is at $40 / barrel, it’s earnings week for a few companies. Any of these are pretty good indications for a drop in the market.

The “not being partisan” was said about two many times, bringing it to a total of oh, about 20 times he said it (exaggeration). It’s like the great joke, “I’m not a racist, but I hate (any ethnic minority will work).” He protested too much.

What does he expect — it’s Fox News. And what a coincidence, that Rupert Murdoch owns both Fox news and the NY Post….

I wasn’t in Hong Kong during the 2003 SARS epidemic so I can’t say whether this article is based on fact or fantasy.

What I can do is quote the emailer who brought this article to my attention: “Is it any coincidence that this praise comes out after a weekend that saw over half a million Hong Kong citizens take to the streets to denounce him and the party for which he is a puppet?”

I suspect the emailer is on the right track, and that the article is a crock.

it’s just been announced that McCain will be appearing in at least one Bush campaign ad:

President Bush’s re-election campaign has a television ad in the works featuring former Republican rival John McCain and advisers are weighing whether to air it when Democrat John Kerry announces his vice presidential pick.

McCain, the Arizona senator who rejected Kerry’s overtures to be No. 2 on the Democratic ticket, campaigned with Bush in Fort Lewis, Wash., last month. Bush’s admakers filmed the appearance and the footage is being included in an ad, according to GOP sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans remain incomplete.

Yeah, McCain is a Republican and maybe you can argue he should be doing all he can for his party. But after what Bush did to him in 2000, an act of pure character assassination founded on a big lie (that McCain was opposed to funding breast cancer research), and after more than 20 years of friendship with John Kerry, I wish he had politely refused to appear in the Bush ads.

McCain was tossed a bone for being a good mascot, and will be delivering the keynote speech at the Republican convention. I want to think that McCain will be the maverick I know and respect, and spice up his speech with some honest thoughts about how his party can make the world a better place (maybe by dissolving itself?). But after seeing his toadying of the past few weeks, I’m not at all optimistic.