NOTE: This was posted last month, but will be reposted periodically.

近来有人散布关于北京烤鸭的一些流言蜚语,我觉得有必要澄清一下.

我非常欢迎大家来我的网站浏览，讨论各种话题并留下自己的意见或建议.我希望能提供一个宽松愉快的环境，可以让大家自由发表言论。有许多中国人、Bingfeng, Bing, Henry, Steve, Hui Mao, Jing, JR, Lin, Yi, etc。曾经或至今仍住在中国的外国人，都在我的网站留下了他们对中国的印象、意见及建议。

一些人爱中国一些人则相反，这是不争的事实，但我相信所有来这个网站的人都非常关心并愿意了解中国的真实情况。比如我，我曾经对中国政府的某些政策及做法有相当大的意见，也曾经批评过美国政府及总统，当然这都是按照一个美国人的思维方式进行的，因此我无比欢迎大家来此发表各种不同的见解。请大家关注我的网页左边的内容，里面刊登我自认为所写的最好的文章，它们记录了我在不同时段对中国政府、中国人民及中国社会的不同认识和理解，它们都是我的真实感受，流露了一个美国人对中国的真诚情感。

任何不同见解我都会洗耳恭听，同时也希望大家能理智、冷静地对待不同意见，北京烤鸭不是让某些人发泄私愤的场所，请勿对他人进行人身攻击或做出任何侮辱性的行为。

再一次感谢大家对北京烤鸭的关注及支持，你们在，就是我的动力所在！

Weekend thread time.

A must-read article from Business Week. Every point, from what Mu Zi Mei is up to now to the efforts to control political discussion will be appreciated by readers interested in China.

This one sure sounds different. The villagers were apparently stockpiling arms, resisting efforts to halt illegal mining, and poisoning their own water, with the local government trying to stop them. How’s that for a twist?

About 800 policemen clashed with armed villagers during a pre-dawn raid and arrested 47 people in southern China after residents resisted a crackdown on illegal mining and went on a rampage, a newspaper reported on Friday.

Police raided several villages in Hezhou in Guangxi province at dawn on Thursday and seized firearms, ammunition, explosives, detonators and machetes, the Legal Express said.

It did not say if any policemen or villagers were killed or injured.

The local government launched a crackdown on illegal mining in June after villagers polluted Hejiang river by dumping waste water into it, the newspaper said.

Villagers went on a “beating, smashing and looting” rampage, the newspaper said without elaborating.

Officials were not immediately available for comment.

Land disputes, corruption, abuse of power and a widening gap between the rich and the poor were among the reasons leading to the number of protests shooting up to 74,000 last year from just 10,000 in 1994, a Hong Kong newspaper reported last month.

The number of people involved in those demonstrations jumped to 3.76 million in 2004 from 730,000 a decade earlier, the Beijing-funded Ta Kung Pao quoted Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang as telling parliament’s top advisory body.

Last month, the People’s Daily called for perceived threats to stability to be crushed. “Destabilising factors must be resolved at the grassroots and nipped in the bud,” the mouthpiece of the Communist Party said in an editorial.

I’m aware of the threat that regulation of mining poses for a lot of poor Chinese workers, possibly choking them out of their livelihood. Kind of ironic, that the regultions are designed to protect them. But I understand the fear; it’s how they survive, and safe or unsafe they can’t live without it. It also sounds like these villagers were arming themselves to the teeth. Which makes me wonder, how many other villages are doing the same? Are they preparing for war against the government?

Yet another defector claims China has blood on its hands and networks of spies abroad, many of the agents posing as journalists. And he cites Chen Yonglin as his inspiration for speaking out.

A former Chinese prison supervisor who defected to Canada said Friday said Friday his homeland was responsible for a litany of human rights abuses.

In his first public appearance, Han Guangsheng, a former prison and labor camp supervisor in northeastern China, told an audience of about 100 that he saw political prisoners being subjected to electric shocks and beaten by members of the Chinese Communist party.

“Its hands are soaked with peoples’ blood,” the 52-year old said through a Mandarin interpreter.

No one at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa was immediately available to respond to Han’s allegations, but the embassy has repeatedly denied that the Chinese government condones the abuse of prisoners or engages in espionage.

The government maintains a network of spies abroad, some of whom pose as journalists, and secretly but routinely opens personal mail, he claimed.

Han said he was inspired to come forward by two other Chinese officials who defected to Australia. Both officials in Australia also spoke of a Chinese spy network.

Han also worked for China’s Public Security Bureau, working his way up to the post of deputy head for the agency’s office in Shenyang, capital of the northeastern industrial province of Liaoning.

He left the organization and his country in September 2001 under the guise of a fact-finding mission about a school with links to China.

Han, whose application for political asylum in Canada was rejected in April, fears he will be executed if he is forced to return to China.

Canada’s federal Immigration and Refugee Board ruled him ineligible to stay in Canada because he was a “willing accomplice” in crimes against humanity in his former job. Han plans to appeal the decision.

I’m not sure whether I should root for his staying or being sent back to China. The fact that he defected and spoke out says something, but if Han was indeed a “willing accomplice” in acts of torture and murder…. Of course, he could also be a Chen copycat, hoping if he regurgitates the same stuff as Chen maybe he can pull off in Canada what Chen did in Australia. I don’t know.

Because then I could pray that Fred Phelps and his thugs would burn there forever. Unfortunately, as an agnostic all I can do is hope they lead miserable lives and ultimately get their just dessert.

Members of the Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., are picketing military funerals, KMBC’s Micheal Mahoney reported Friday.

The group has made national headlines for traveling throughout the country to picket gay churches, gay weddings, and the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was murdered in Wyoming in 1998.

Friday, about 15 members of the group — some of them children — picketed the funeral of a St. Joseph soldier who was killed in Iraq. Mahoney reported that the group stood across the road from the Grace Evangelical Church during the funeral of 21-year-old Spc. Edward Myers.

“The first sin was being a part of this military. If this young man had a clue and any fear of God, he would have run, and not walked, from this military,” said protester Shirley Phelps-Roper. “Who would serve a nation that is godless and has flipped off, defiantly defied, defiantly flipped off, the Lord their God?”

One protester had an American flag tied to his belt that draped to the ground. He was holding a sign that read, “Thank God For IEDs,” which are explosive devices used by insurgents to blow up military convoys.

Protesters said America has ignored the word of God, and those who defend the nation must pay a price.

“That’s the first piece of solid evidence that you have that the young man is currently in hell,” Phelps-Roper said.

“The soldier is in hell now, you believe?” Mahoney asked.

“Absolutely,” Phelps-Roper said.

Sometimes strong language is called for, and if it’s okay for Dick Cheney to say it, I can too: Phelps & Co, go fuck yourslves. If hell exists, burn there forever. If there is a hell, it was custom-made for scum like you. And thank you for alerting us all to the dangers of distorting the teachings of Jesus to justify blind festering hatred. Bastards.

Four years to the day that our Codpiece in Chief was handed a piece of paper he chose to ignore, rushing off instead to enjoy what was then the longest presidential vacation in American history (until his latest vacation that started this week). And the rest is history.

After months of house arrest in Beijing, Ching Cheong, chief China correspondent for The Straits Times, has been formally arrested as a spy for Taiwan. China hands see it as further proof that the CCP wants to retain an iron-fist grip on the media (as if we didn’t know).

China said Friday that it had formally arrested a Hong Kong-based newspaper correspondent on charges of spying for Taiwan, the latest in a series of signs that China is tightening controls on the media.

The arrest of Ching Cheong, who was detained April 22 in southern China and has been held incommunicado ever since, came in the same week that the Chinese government released a long list of new regulations limiting foreign investment in everything from book publishing to movie production.

The restrictions also coincide with a surge of local protests across China for reasons ranging from commercial disputes to environmental damage. But there has been no sign that they are centrally organized or pose an immediate threat to China’s political system.

“The government is increasingly worried about social instability and disruption of growth,” said Tom Doctoroff, the chief executive for greater China at the JWT Advertising Agency. “The government is clearly getting very concerned about the flow of information.”

The official Xinhua news agency reported Friday that Ching had been accused of taking millions of Hong Kong dollars, the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of American dollars, in exchange for gathering economic, political and especially military information for Taiwan since 2000. Ching was accused of passing on classified documents labeled “top secret” or “confidential” to Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, and of disguising his work by using an alias, Chen Yuanchun, assigned by the bureau.

Some very interesting opinions as to why Cheong was arrested back in April can be found over at ESWN.

Based on past arrests of journalists like Zhao Yan, I am immediately more suspicious of the accusers rather than the accused. Maybe there is more to this case than the others, some of which are downright embarrassing (like a life sentence for leaking Jiang’s speech a few days before its delivery date). We’ll be watching carefully.

The phone lines are open.

A really strange story. Over a really trivial detail, Novak took deep offense, uttered a profanity and stormed off the set of CNN’s Crossfire today. I was watching the beginning of the show and noticed how drawn and sickly he looked. I’m really sorry I turned off the TV right before he made his dramatic exit. Something’s going on here, and I’m sure the blogs will be going crazy with speculation over the next few days.