…go here right now. You will be laughing for the rest of the night!

(Thanks for this, Duncan.)

Interesting. I’m impressed at how prescient the analysts were in assessing Mao’s influence, and how with this death the country would return to sanity.

“As long as Mao is capable of political command, China’s situation will probably be tense and inherently unstable,” it said; a “disorderly and contentious” struggle would follow, and eventually a move away from “discredited” policies to “secure modest economic growth.”

In an introduction to the collection of 71 documents, which are on the agency’s Web site at www.cia.gov and will be released by the Government Printing Office on compact disc, Robert L. Suettinger, a career intelligence analyst and China scholar, says that “unfortunately, the collection provides only a few examples of this kind of cogent analysis on China’s leadership situation.” But Mr. Suettinger described the record as “nonetheless an impressive one” in which “the fundamentals are consistently right.”

Among the most important judgments, Mr. Suettinger wrote, was a consistently accurate assessment that the Communist Party in China was never challenged from 1948 on in its predominance of power on the Chinese mainland.

For true Sinophiles this will be a must-read. For those interested only in US politics, pardon the digression, but China is always on my mind.

Jasper Becker, whom I trust, and Daniel Howden say it will.

In the shadow of the Jade Dragon Snow Peak, deep inside the Tiger Leaping Gorge, Chinese developers are operating in secret to push through a massive dam project that will wash away the section of the Yangtze river valley thought to have been the real location for the fictional Shangri-La.

Local tribesmen have revealed that work is already under way on a massive project that would flood a Unesco world heritage site, displace more than 100,000 people and destroy the way of life of the unique Naxi people, one of the world’s only surviving matriarchal societies. It would also bring an abrupt end to the nascent tourism industry in the remote southwestern Yunnan province.

The battle to save the gorge, one of the deepest in the world, has pitted a David-like alliance of green groups and local tribespeople against the Goliath of the Huaneng Group, China”s biggest independent power producer, working with the Yunnan provincial government. The company is run by Li Xiaopeng, son of the hardline former prime minister Li Peng, who oversaw the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Mr Li was at the forefront of the controversial Three Gorges Dam project that was pushed through in the teeth of strident opposition from environmentalists and residents.

“The stakes are extremely high. Chinese environmentalists have decided to make this their next major campaign,” says Ma Jun, a consultant who was the first to produce a study on the dam’s implications. “I’m optimistic they will succeed because this case is a touch-stone of all the big talks on balancing environmental preservation with development”.

Opponents say the reservoir will devastate local cultures, robbing people of their farms and livelihood, and leave tens of thousands of mostly Tibetans, Miao, Yi, Bai, Lisu and Naxi minorities homeless. It would also consign ancient villages with distinctive architectural styles. Concerns are mounting over the fate of the Naxi with their unusual matriarchal tradition, which has drawn an increasing number of visitors to the area.

This would be a tragedy beyond description. It’s all thanks to the tireless and enterprising Li Peng, architect of the June 4, 1989 massacre at and around Tiananmen Square and a mastermind of the Three Gorges Dam project, which thus far has wreaked unimaginable havoc on China’s environment. Ah, progress.

Shrub completely ignored the warnings in 2003 that we were heading into disaster. This is certainly a bombshell.

“The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious,” warned an Army War College report that was completed in February 2003, a month before the invasion.

Without an “overwhelming” effort to prepare for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the report warned: “The United States may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America’s own making.”

A half-dozen intelligence reports also warned that American troops could face significant postwar resistance. This foot-high stack of material was distributed at White House meetings of Bush’s top foreign policy advisers, but there’s no evidence that anyone ever acted on it.

“It was disseminated. And ignored,” said a former senior intelligence official.

Did you get that? Foot-high stacks of intelligence reports saying we had a serious chance of losing the war were given out at the White House – while we were being told it would be a piece of cake. And the reports were simply dismissed. That amounts to gross negligence.

This administration wins the gold star when it comes to ignoring dire warnings. Remember, for example, Richard Clarke’s security brief, “Osama Bin Laden Intends to Attack America”? The one Condi called a mere “historical document”? And yet bush can’t think of a single mistake — not even one — aside from appointing a few officials who weren’t loyal enough to him. Oh, the hubris, the vanity, the stupidity; but then, why should he listen to intelligence reports when God speaks through him?

Via Andrew Sullivan, who sees this as proof of “the appalling amateurism” with which our leaders conducted their dirty little war.

Ouch.

Down 7.81 percent today alone.

UPDATE: You can make yourself heard at this hilarious Sinclair message board! Via Atrios, who says “I haven’t had this much fun reading a stock message board since Enron was in free fall…”

Here’s why.

Anyone following this lurid sex scandal (and who isn’t?) will enjoy this funny analysis of how Bill has only made his messy situation worse by firing the producer making the charges against him.

I am not a lawyer, but I can read. Even my non-legal mind knows you don’t fire someone who sues you. Because now she has unfair termination as an additional cause.

Let me explain this slowly, so even the simple among us can understand it:

Bill, the word is deposition. It is what Benedict Morelli will conduct this winter. It will involve every senior person at Fox, every staff member and every bed partner you had there. Your wife will read the details of your extramarital affairs and may well decide to file for divorce.

He will not only ask, but will find every woman you hit on, not only on Fox, but at every other job you had. Boston, ABC, whatever the fuck that other show was, all of them. We’re talking a long witness list. In fact, he may well try to establish that a culture of concubinage existed at Fox. What does that mean? It means that senior Fox execuitives pick sexual partners from the people they supervise. (See the Texas Prison Rape story for grim details). This is like letting the FBI into your cocaine filled warehouse.

Being the dumb Irish bully that you are, you’re going to provide me with days of copy and amusement.

But because seeing evident stupidity makes me ill, here’s a suggestion: SETTLE THIS FUCKING THING MONDAY. Because, you just made Fox compound your stupidity with their stupidity and this will go before a Fox-hating, Post-hating Manhattan jury. Ms. Mackris will enjoy her summers on the Cote D’Azure, her winter vacation in Gstaad, and a Palm Beach condo because of your uncontrolled anger and rage. She will be RICH, as in seven figure plus rich.

If it were anyone but Bill O’Reilly I would probably feel a touch of sympathy, as it’s part of my bleeding-heart nature to feel bad for people in trouble. But since it’s Bill, I can scarcely conceal the schadenfreude — in fact, there’s a lot more freude than schaden. After all, this is the self-anointed pope of morality, the paternalistic critic of all things improper. He is wiser than we mortals, and he knows what’s good and bad, right and wrong.

Of course, anyone with minimal grey matter has known all along it’s a sham. It’s nice that the rest of the world now knows, too.

More great pics and articles from Iraq, from the best of the China bloggers.

Now this is noteworthy. The man who said the following is no flaming liberal. To the contrary, he is a former Reagan aide and a writer for National Review Online, one Bruce Bartlett:

Just in the past few months, I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do. This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can’t be persuaded, that they’re extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he’s just like them. This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts. He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence. But you can’t run the world on faith.

So bush is just like an Al Qaeda terrorist, wild-eyed and ready to kill. He is on a mission from God, and there’s no stopping him. He’s kickin’ butt and takin’ names cuz, you know, freedom’s on the march. We know that — but hearing it from someone on the other side is interesting. It’s one of many interesting revelations from an absolutely astounding article by Ron Suskind, which is going to be the talk of the town over the next few days.

What you’ll come away with after reading this massive piece is just how seriously shrub’s followers are when they equate him with Jesus Christ — and how he actively encourages such adulation.

George W. Bush and his team have constructed a high-performance electoral engine. The soul of this new machine is the support of millions of likely voters, who judge his worth based on intangibles — character, certainty, fortitude and godliness — rather than on what he says or does. The deeper the darkness, the brighter this filament of faith glows, a faith in the president and the just God who affirms him.

The leader of the free world is clearly comfortable with this calculus and artfully encourages it. In the series of televised, carefully choreographed ”Ask President Bush” events with supporters around the country, sessions filled with prayers and blessings, one questioner recently summed up the feelings of so many Christian conservatives, the core of the Bush army. ”I’ve voted Republican from the very first time I could vote,” said Gary Walby, a retired jeweler from Destin, Fla., as he stood before the president in a crowded college gym. ”And I also want to say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House.” Bush simply said ”thank you” as a wave of raucous applause rose from the assembled.

Every few months, a report surfaces of the president using strikingly Messianic language, only to be dismissed by the White House. Three months ago, for instance, in a private meeting with Amish farmers in Lancaster County, Pa., Bush was reported to have said, ”I trust God speaks through me.” In this ongoing game of winks and nods, a White House spokesman denied the president had specifically spoken those words, but noted that ”his faith helps him in his service to people.”

God speaks to him. So how can he ever do something wrong or make a mistake?

I’ve read a lot of stuff on our president, but this takes its place at the top of the Scariest Articles list. I have a deep aversion to cults of any kind, and I honestly never thought I’d see the day America would be in the throes of a cult leader. You can get away with anything once you’ve established a personality cult, as Mao and Stalin and others learned. No, he’s not Mao or Stalin (yet), but that sense of infallibility, that providence has brought him to this place of leadership so he can carry out the will of a higher being — that’s well documented.

The artilce is loaded with mind-blowing soundbites, things that would have seemed flat-out bizarre in other times, but in bushworld it’s simply the way followers talk.

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Us against them. Like the Bolsheviks against the Kulaks, like Mao against the Rightists. I really don’t like it, and I hope this creepy and important article serves as a wake-up call, a splash of ice water in the face of the moderate Republicans who want to believe that, just as the moderates did in 1933, that the crazy little man on a mission will just be a passing fad, soon to be replaced by more moderate and sane politicians. Only by the time they realize just how serious the crazed little man really is, it may well be too late.

Via Mark Kleiman.

Angry Chinese Blogger has a fine post on this depressing topic. It’s not looked upon in China as it is here. Just as with AIDS patients, attempted suicides are stigmatized and forced into greater desperation. (That’s changing, of course, in the case of AIDS, slowly but steadily.) Reading it brought back to me a lot of memories of the sharp differrences between Asian and Western perspectives. Very poignant.