To those following the up-and-down saga of press censorship in China, this is an amazing story. China Digital News has done a great job reporting it and translating a large portion of Lu Yuegang’s historic letter. It’s reminiscent of Jiao Guobiao’s recent outspokenness and it will be fascinating to see where it leads. According to CDN, the story is already tearing across the Chinese blogosphere.

Not surprisingly, the Berger scandal is dominating Fox news today, with wild speculation that maybe he was doing it for Kerry, and that maybe when Kerry spoke about terrorism last week he was briefed with the stolen documents. Couldn’t Kerry be just as guilty as Berger? Doesn’t this implicate every Democrat, and didn’t Bill Clinton have to be involved in some way?

The Republicans must be dancing in the streets. Berger handed them the perfect distraction just a few days before the 9/11 commission report is due out. It was very obviously a strategically planned leak (the investigation started six months ago!), and it’s doing exactly what the leakers hoped: the airwaves are jammed with the message, “Kerry’s advisor steals classified information.”

And there’s no one to blame but Berger. Karl Rove is just doing what he’s paid to do, and Sean Hannity will be shrieking about it for the next three months, a perfect smokescreen for what really matters, like Iraq and all the other Bush failures. (Yes, what Berger did is serious and stupid; but it is not of such magnitude that it should dominate the news.)

Just one more headache for Kerry, as Fox pedals hard to find some connection, any connection. If he’s smart, JFK will publicly and firmly distance himself from Berger and make it clear he condemns any tampering with classified documents, especially those related to al Qaeda. Do it now, okay John?

Frank Yu, who once wrote the excellent but sadly defunct China Weblog, has written an amusing article about how a little story in the Chna blogosphere evolves into something larger. He uses as his example the recent flurry of attacks over at China Daily in regard to my use of the the scornful name “Peking Duck.” According to the formula in Yu’s article, it’s only a matter of time before CNN is banging on my door for an exclusive interview.

Phillip Pan, in a great article in the Washington Post says he was set free yesterday.

A person close to the family said Jiang succeeded in resisting the demands of his jailers and refused to back down during seven weeks of intense indoctrination sessions. The closest he came to expressing regret was a statement in which he conceded that others might have used his letter for their own purposes, but Jiang also wrote that he should not be held responsible for their actions, the person said.

The doctor’s release, which came amid rising international and domestic criticism, represented a remarkable retreat by the most senior leaders of China’s ruling Communist Party, and a victory of personal will for a man who had already challenged this nation’s authoritarian political system and forced it to back down once.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese government. Jiang was never charged with a crime, and the government had said only that the military was “helping and educating him” because he had violated military discipline.

It’s funny, that when the Western media (and even Western bloggers) write about human rights issues in China, such as the arrest of cyber-dissidents Liu Di and Du Daobin, or of AIDS activist Ma Shiwen, or the supression of information on SARS, there arises a spontaneous chorus of denunciation along the lines of “Why are you meddling in China’s internal affairs?” and “You don’t understand China! Let them do things their own way.” And yet, in each of those examples, the international outcry appeared to play a significant role in helping the decision-makers inthe CCP see the light and ultimately do the right thing. Its almost certainly the case with Dr. Jiang.

When Hua was allowed to visit her husband on June 30, he told her he had been writing the same statement every day for the past month and would not change his view of the Tiananmen massacre, a person close to the family said. Earlier, in a note delivered to his family, Jiang had vowed to continue “seeking truth from facts.”

But on July 7, two officials with the military’s General Logistics Department visited Hua and told her the investigation of her husband was nearing an end, sources close to the family said. The visit came two days after a front-page report about Jiang’s detention was published in The Washington Post and shown on Phoenix Television, a Hong Kong station that enjoys close ties to Beijing and is available in many mainland offices and homes. China’s state media have not reported Jiang’s detention.

So keeping up the decibel level seems to be a more productive strategy than giving the jailers the “space” to be who they are, and room to learn and grow and blah blah blah. Media coverage works; bad press equals tarnished national image equals less business. That was a major lesson from the SARS debacle.

Dr. Jiang now stands as a greater hero than ever. He never gave in to his brainwashersjailers, who graciously and tirelessly worked to “educate” him about what the Tianamen Square Massacre was really about, and it sounds to me like he outsmarted and outmaneuvered them.

During the visit, the military officials described Jiang as politically naive but a good, honest man, indicated he had finally made progress in his thought reports, and showed Hua a seven-page document in Jiang’s handwriting, the sources said.

But Jiang did not disavow his Tiananmen letter in the statement, the sources said. Instead, he acknowledged that his jailers had helped him realize that the Chinese Communist Party in 1989 was “like a patient with complicated colorectal cancer” who faced imminent death without emergency surgery, one person close to the family said.

Jiang, a longtime party member, wrote that surgery might prolong the patient’s life, and he discussed the condition and the consequences of surgery in great detail in the statement. But he never said whether the patient — in this case, the party — deserved to live, and he never condoned the military crackdown, the person said.

“It was a very calculated, measured statement,” the person said. “He was very precise.”

This is a great story, and a classic example of how, when the CCP crosses fundamental lines of human decency, the last thing we should do is coddle them, “understand” them and remain silent.

UPDATE: The NYT’s Joseph Kahn, who like his counterpart Phillip Pan, is just about always right, has a fine piece on the release of Jiang Yanyong, saying upfront that informed sources say the CCP was “apparently bowing to the doctor’s status as a hero in China and to international pressure to free him, people informed about his case said.” Very good article.

How could someone so smart throw away a lifetime’s reputation like this? How could Sandy Berger be so stupid? Tragic, but he brought it on himself. The sharks are already going for him, and he’s fair game.

I always admired him, and I can’t comprehend how he could destroy himself for so little reason.

Now this is an intriguing story. Could it be that some unknown mysterious string puller — perhaps Hu Jintao? — is giving his secret blessing to highly outspoken Chinese web sites criticizing the CCP at decibel levels that would usually qualify them for a hasty crackdown?

And could it all be part of Hu’s defense aginst his nemesis Jiang Zemin? The authors speculate that Hu is using these sites strategically to get his humanitarian, reformist messages out to the people. If so, Jiang must be mighty pissed.

Censorship is second-nature to Chinese authorities, but surprisingly, at least two highly critical websites appear to be sanctioned, despite – or because of – their harsh criticism of official corruption and malfeasance. There is widespread speculation that reformist President Hu Jintao is encouraging freedom of speech in cyberspace in order to build public support and consensus for his views and to discredit his opponents. He has been pushing greater democracy, accountability and transparency within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the Internet may well be helping him. His major opponent is former president Jiang Zemin and his Shanghai Clique who resist the idea of discipline within the party and prefer traditional Chinese autocracy.

This is a rich, fascinating article that takes you into a web of intrigue; I sure hope Hu knows with whom he’s dealing. (I was taught at an early age never to mess with the guy who controls the army.)

One note of caution: This is Asia Times, and some commenters have questioned its credibility here in the past.

Link via CDN; let’s always try to acknowledge where we get our links from. 🙂

And he says that for a damned good reason:

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency for two Republican presidents criticized President Bush’s record on Monday, calling it a “polluter protection” policy.

Russell E. Train, who headed the EPA from September 1973 to January 1977 – part of the Nixon and Ford administrations – said Bush’s record on the environment was so dismal that he would cast his vote for Democrat John Kerry.

“It’s almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection,” Train said. “I find this deeply disturbing.”

In 1988, Train was co-chairman of Conservationists for Bush, an organization that backed the candidacy of George W. Bush’s father.

Wonderful. It’s so sweet when solid Republicans like Train and Lee Iacocca, not to mention Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke, see the light. It’s plain as day: Bush is the most dreadful president of our lifetimes and must be stopped. Even Republicans think so!

Now, I’m just waiting for Conrad to come around. It can’t be long now.

Link via Eschaton.

Somehow I must have deleted by mistake an entire post praising Zona Europa (ESWN) for his translation of Chapter 30 0f the Chinese Peasant Survey. (If someone can remind me how to retrieve an old post via google’s cache, I’d appreciate it.)

Whether I can recover it or not, please be sure to see his translation. It reminds us that there are true reformers in China, though whether they have any clout to create meaningful change is certainly anyone’s guess. (Especially after the book was banned — a fairly meaningless gesture in terms of the book’s availability, but not a good sign for those delighted at the government’s original endorsement.)

Thinking of Wen’s efforts to make a real difference for China’s rural poor made me recall someting I wrote in a post not that long ago:

I believe now that the CCP is not monolithically evil. I know there’s a number of CCP members who truly hold a vision of a free and democratic China. Such reform-minded individuals have always been a part of the CCP. Unfortunately, they are up against a formidable entourage of party dinosaurs who cannot simply be swept under the carpet. Nice guys in the CCP always seem to finish last.

That’s what I kept thinking as I read ESWN’s great translation: The decent reformers are there, at least in terms of economics, but so often it seems the reform itself doesn’t materialize. (As far as political reform, I’ve given up for now; as we know, it’s either stalled or moving backwards, with Jiang Yanyong’s arrest just the latest painful example.)

Okay, later. Really bummed that I lost that entire post.

I’m serious — these book reviews are wildly funny. There’s a couple of stupid ones, but there are several gems. I’d go soon, because Amazon is certainly going to delete these as soon as they find out.

The author sure owes Michael Moore a debt of gratitude for searing the book’s title on the psyche of the nation.

UPDATE: As predicted, Amazon has deleted them all. Three new ones are up, but they’ll surely be zapped shortly.

UPDATE 2: As the commenters have poionted out, all the reviews have been archived here.

Tim Blair seems ready to dismiss the story that emerged yesterday of Iraq’s new PM Allawi shooting 6 prisoners to death as nothing more than a silly rumor. And it may be.

However, The Age is sticking to its story, and if they aren’t telling outright lies, I have to believe the story is credible (not certifiably true, but definitely worth learning more about). Is the following an outright lie?

The witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In interviews with The Age they enthusiastically supported Dr Allawi for the killings. One justified the alleged killings and said: “These criminals were terrorists. They are the ones who plant the bombs. Allawi said they deserved worse than death; that they didn’t need to be sent to court.”

The two witnesses were independently and separately found by The Age; neither approached the newspaper. Nor were they put forward by, or through, others. They were interviewed on different days in a private home in Baghdad, without being told that the other had spoken.

A condition of the co-operation of each man was that no personal information would be published, but others known to The Age have vouched for their credibility. Both interviews lasted more than 90 minutes and were conducted through an interpreter – with another journalist in the room for one of the meetings. The witnesses were not paid for the interviews.

….

Neither witness could give a specific date for the killings. But the number of days that each said had lapsed since the shootings narrowed the time frame to on or around the third weekend in June – about a week before the rushed handover of power in Iraq and more than three weeks after Dr Allawi was named interim Prime Minister.

They said that as many as five of the dead were Iraqis, two of whom came from Samarra, a volatile town to the north of the capital, where an insurgency attack on the home of the Interior Minister had killed four of Mr Naqib’s bodyguards on June 19.

I really don’t know. It’s certainly very specific, but it may turn out ot be a well-orchestrated deception. But the question I need to ask is this:

How come some conservative bloggers seem so eager to swallow Blair’s explanation and write it all off as a rumor, while just yesterday they were standing up and declaring Annie Jacobsen a national hero for telling her “frightening story” of watching possible Syrian hijackers/bombers as they….went to the toilet? If any story qualifies for the rumor award, it’s Annie’s.

InstaPunidt posted an email he received from a pilot that provides some clarity:

There are a lot of details in the article such as those involving crew actions that are either flat out wrong or that she couldn’t possibly have known enough about to assess things as she did. Based on subsequent news (like Malkin’s confirmation of some aspects of the incident), I’ll accept that the gist of her story is valid but embellished with uninformed speculation and conventional wisdom.

And it was the many speculations that made the story so maddening.

Maybe it says something about our willingness to accept what we want to and reject what we don’t. But it seemed so flat-out obvious to me that the Jacobsen story was fishy, I was dumbfounded that it gained so much traction. The Allawi story may turn out also to be an invention, but it at least appeared to provide enough evidence to make the story believable. Whether that evidence was all a hoax remains to be seen.