This story sickens me.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Iraqis visiting on a civil rights tour were barred from city hall after the city council chairman said it was too dangerous to let them in.

The seven Iraqi civic and community leaders are in the midst of a three-week American tour, sponsored by the State Department to learn more about the process of government. The trip also includes stops in Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The Iraqis were scheduled to meet with a city council member, but Joe Brown, the council chair, said he feared the group was dangerous.

“We don’t know exactly what’s going on. Who knows about the delegation, and has the FBI been informed?” Brown said. “We must secure and protect all the employees in that building.”

Elisabeth Silverman, the group’s host and head of the Memphis Council for International Visitors, said Brown told her he would “evacuate the building and bring in the bomb squads” if the group entered.

“They are in charge of setting up processes in their country. They have to educate themselves about how it works in this country,” Silverman said.

This is symptomatic of the Annie Jacobsen mentality so prevalent in America today. It makes me ashamed to be an American. Why don’t we simply outlaw Muslims altogether, and round them up, Michelle Malkin-style? While we’re at it, we might as well go for all dark-skinned people. (Be sure to visit that last link; it is priceless.)

No doubt the LGF crowd will cheer the Memphis councilmen as heroes. I have a more intimate word for them, and it begins with “a.”

There’s more great commentary, photographs and translations over at ESWN, this time in regard to police cracking down on peasants in Henan province. Their crime: petitioning the government because their land is being stolen from them. For this, the police surrounded their village before dawn and beat them, shot them with rubber bullets and used tear gas against them. The story got out on the Internet, which is the best thing that could have happened.

Fate so often plays strange tricks. This is an intriguing story of how Pu Yi’s cousin learned the value of silence during the Cultural Revolution, and how he ended up working in, of all places, the Summer Palace, as a clerk in the complaints department. For anyone following the Manchu lineage, this article is a must-read.

Well, why not?

China is giving the beauty pageant a surgical makeover with plans to anoint its first Miss Plastic Surgery this October, state media said on Tuesday.

Open to women from any country, the only requirement in the made-to-order competition is proof of inauthenticity – in the form of a doctor’s certificate of cosmetic surgery, the China Daily said.

The idea for the pageant came after one woman was barred from a traditional beauty contest because she had spent more than ¥110 000 yuan (R82 000) on plastic surgery that gave her a whole new face, it said.

Don’t forget, just last year China barred transexual Chen Lili from the Miss Universe contest. Does this mean they’ll soon have the first Miss Sex Change Pageant ?

Via the inimitable Patriot Boy

Now we all know: those terror warnings, so dire that press conferences were called and the terror level raised to “orange” in NYC and DC, were based on evidence that was years old.

More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.

“There is nothing right now that we’re hearing that is new,” said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. “Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don’t know that.”

Looking at that article, Billmon opines in an absolutely magnificent post:

Ordinarily, that kind of talk would make me wonder whether the Bush administration isn’t shamelessly manipulating dubious intelligence data in order to score a few political points and stampede the voters into supporting the GOP agenda.

But of course, we know this administration never does things like that.

I’m sure the threats were real, that the data wasn’t manufactured. But considering they were from years ago, they were not so urgent that Re-election Security Minister Tom Ridge had to hold a press conference saying the new threats were uncovered as a result of bush’s war on terror. Nor did they merit Andy Card holding another press confrence at which he constantly referred to bush’s “bold leadership.”

It’s all part of Karl Rove’s winning formula for bush: keep the war on terror top of people’s mind, especially when it appears Kerry is making headway in the race. We’ll be hearing more and more about threats like this in the weeks ahead, and also about more captures of “high-ranking Al Qaida operatives.” It’s bush’s only hope; if he can’t perpetuate the myth that he’s winning his war on terror, there’s nothing else to point to.

God forbid there’s ever a real threat they need to warn us about. By using national security for political advantage, bush has forced us to view the warnings with extreme cynicism, if we even notice them at all.

UPDATE: This is precious. Tom Ridge, then and now:

Now:

“We don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security,” he told reporters. “This is not about politics.

Then:

Administration sources tell TIME that employees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration’s efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.”

Via Pandagon.

I don’t know why, but for the past 24 hours or so I’ve been gripped by the worst case of writer’s block I’ve ever experienced. Ever. Maybe it’s my current work: I have in front of me a deadline project that I find so difficult and uninspiring, I’m practically at wit’s end. For the first time, I may have to call a client and tell them I just can’t do it. (I suspect that won’t happen; knowing me, I’ll probably find enough to work with come the 11th hour, and I’ll pound something out minutes before the deadline — 24 hours from now.)

I mean, how can I write thrilling copy about a photography business? The one thing that speaks to the reader are the photographs, not copy that describes the photographs. Pure torture.

There is so much to blog about — the new bad news about Abu Ghraib and the charge that the military’s covering it up, the audacity of Tom Ridge raising the threat level to orange based on evidence that’s 4 years old, the forgotten war in Iraq, complaints that Chen is provoking war with China…. But all I can think about is this brochure and how I can possibly fill up four pages with copy about how great a photographer is.

Work brain, work. You’ve had more difficult assignments in your life. You can do it….

This week National Public Radio is presenting reporter Rob Gifford’s observations on life in China as he travels across the country in a bus. This is something Sinophiles will definitely want to listen to. A new program will be broadcast every morning, and there’s also a photo gallery, with pictures of those Gifford interviews.

Can you read that? It’s from a GOP flyer telling Florida Republicans that electronic voting machines are unreliable because they don’t leave a paper trail. Never mind that jeb bush and his cronies are assuring voters that the machines are safe and there’s no cause for alarm. Never mind that they’re promising Democrats the machines are foolproof, while mailing Republicans to tell them the machines might lose their ballot!

Something here smells really bad. How can they now argue the machines are reliable? How can they claim the election is fair if they themselves are saying beforehand that the votes can’t be accurately counted?

It should be obvious now to everyone that we are heading toward a major train wreck in Florida yet again, and it may be even worse than last time.

Photo and story via All Spin Zone, which also has some good commentary on this bleak situation.

Hu Jintao was so irritated over bush selling $18 billion ins weapons systems to Taiwan that he picked up the phone yesterday and gave bush a personal call, sure proof of just how hot and bothered this issue is making him.

Chinese president Hu Jintao has phoned President George W Bush to warn the US against selling more military technology to Taiwan.

Washington is negotiating a deal to sell missiles and other weapons systems worth $18bn to the island – which China regards as a renegade province.

Mr Hu said Beijing would do its utmost to resolve the Taiwan issue peacefully. But he said China would never tolerate the island’s independence, or allow anyone to split it from China.

Spokesmen in Washington and Beijing said Mr Bush reaffirmed his backing for the one-China policy – which does not support Taiwanese independence – while reasserting America’s commitment to help Taiwan defend itself…..

President Bush says he opposes Taiwan independence. But from China’s point of view, his willingness to sell the island such advanced weapons is sending a very different message, our correspondent says.

I’d love to know what bush said to reassure Hu that there’s no cause for alarm. Actually, I suspect there was nothing bush could say, and that this has the potential to become yet another festering wound. Every day, a new source of fuel seems to be added to this bonfire.

The reader who clued me into this article sent me his own observations on why Chen continues to get under Hu Jintao’s skin:

President Chen wants a new constitution by 2008 – why? Unless
planning to go independent!

· Aims to modernise political institutions, increase efficiency,
enshrine human rights and review role of National Assembly – is a completely new constitution necessary?

· Though China says plan is the ‘biggest threat to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait’, Chen insists the changes will not touch sovereignty issues – is he double-talking again?

These seem like valid questions, and they reinforce my own belief that, however much I’d like to see an independent Taiwan, Chen is being provocative to the point of playing with dynamite. I mean, what’s his strategy, and where does he really think this will all lead?

The earlier thread on this topic got more comments than just about any other post in the history of this site. Hopefully we can pick up the discussion here.

This movie comes to us from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and judging from the trailer, it’s going to offend absolutely everyone, the way Parker and Stone always do. Kerry, bush, Kim Jong-Il, al Qaida — all are victims of the satirists’ sword. (Matt Drudge is already telling us how furious the White House is over the movie, so we know it must be good.)

I know, I know, it’s in terrible taste — but everything they do is in terrible taste, which makes them so wonderful. Political correctness goes out the window, and it’s no-holds-barred parody, at least if this movie follows the usual Parker-Stone pattern. We’ll see, but it sure looks like Bush has yet another thorn in his side to deal with in the movie theaters this summer.