I’m starting to think there’s much less here than meets the eye. Defamer cites an interview with an actual concert attendee, and it sounds far more believable than what I’m hearing over at Fox News and in the blogosphere.

My wife & I were at the Linda Ronstadt performance in question, at the Aladdin in Las Vegas, and quite frankly, Aladdin President Bill Timmins’ account of what happened is complete crap. There was mixed booing and cheering at Ronstadt’s pro-Michael Moore comment, and that was about the extent of the “bedlam” that supposedly broke out.

I saw no posters being torn down or cocktails being thrown in the air, and if people stomped out of the theatre unhappy, it was because 1) that was the last song Ronstadt performed; it was her encore; and 2) she mainly sang her standards repertoire, with the Nelson Riddle orchestrations, and a large part of the crowd wanted to hear more of her rock-‘n’-roll stuff; she got the biggest round of applause for doing a lackadaisical run-through of her version of “Blue Bayou.”

Frankly, my suspicion is that Timmins is way overdramatizing what happened, in order to justify giving Ronstadt the boot. It simply wasn’t that big a deal.

Think about it: Lots of people have endorsed the movie, rightly or wrongly. Have there been riots? Ronstadt has done this at many other performances without a single problem. If there were detractors in the audience, there had to have been some supporters as well. The account of bedlam and property damage is simply overblown and unbelievable.

This isn’t the type of thing I normally would write about, but it struck me as singularly disgusting.

An investigator for an animal rights group captured video of chickens being kicked, stomped and thrown against a wall by workers at a supplier for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The footage, released online Tuesday, was secretly taken at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant in Moorefield, W.Va., by an investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals who worked there from October to May.

PETA said its investigator also obtained eyewitness testimony about employees “ripping birds’ beaks off, spray-painting their faces, twisting their heads off, spitting tobacco into their mouths and eyes, and breaking them in half — all while the birds are still alive.”

After reading just one chapter of Fast Food Nation I’ve never been able to go into a McDonalds again. I go to KFC maybe once a year if I’m desperate, but I’ll probably never do so again if they don’t show a major response to this.

The conservative Heritage Foundation has put up a new article by senior fellow Peter Brookes on why selling arms to the PRC is just as bad as selling them to North Korea or Iran. Brookes sees China as a miitaristic hegemon bent on dominating Asia.

Military Threat. China is engaged in a major military buildup that goes far beyond its defensive needs. In the next few years, China will develop real military options for muscling its democratic neighbor Taiwan (which Beijing considers a renegade province). Down the road, China looks toward dominating Japan and Southeast Asia, too.

And who really knows where Beijing will come down if South and North Korea come to blows? (The last Korean War might be a good indicator . . .)

Ultimately, the PLA’s long-term, military modernization game plan is to deter, delay or deny U.S. intervention in any Asian conflict involving China. Beyond that, the PLA seeks to ultimately replace America as the preeminent military power in the Pacific.

* Weapons Proliferation. China is a notorious weapons proliferator — from weapons of mass destruction to small arms. Its record on export controls is abysmal. Sensitive European technology will surely fall into the hands of China’s roguish friends: Iran, North Korea, Syria and Burma.

So needless to say he is in a tizzy that the EU is actually considering dropping the ban on selling weapons to China, a move he say the Europeans are doing to make money (duh) and to “balance America’s global power.” If the EU sells arms to China, he says, “our government should stop the flow of U.S. military technology to European firms.”

Personally, I’d rather see the ban extended, especially considering its original purpose. I’m all for doing business with China’s companies and encouraging as much trade as possible. But building up Jiang’s army with high-tech weaponry — I just don’t see the justification, considering the country’s history of arms trafficking, not to mention its recent belligerent attitude.

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.