Who would have thought that ueber-neocons Chucky Johnson and the man in the funny hat Roger Simon would bring us such a precious gift? From the site of Open Pajamas Media (aka Open Sores Media, aka Open Sewers Media, and sorry, I forget the URL):
Read the whole story over at Chucky’s favorite site.
Chairman Simon, OSM’s Great Helmsman
Update: I see Michael Turton beat me to this one.
It sounds like the Republicans’ woes are just getting started. For all of America’s flaws and warts and sins, it’s good to know that justice can still be blind, and that no one is above the law.
The Justice Department has signaled for the first time in recent weeks that prominent members of Congress could be swept up in the corruption investigation of Jack Abramoff, the former Republican superlobbyist who diverted some of his tens of millions of dollars in fees to provide lavish travel, meals and campaign contributions to the lawmakers whose help he needed most.
The investigation by a federal grand jury, which began more than a year ago, has created alarm on Capitol Hill, especially with the announcement Friday of criminal charges against Michael Scanlon, Mr. Abramoff’s former lobbying partner and a former top House aide to Representative Tom DeLay.
….
Mr. Abramoff, who is under indictment in a separate bank-fraud case in Florida, has not been charged by the federal grand jury here. But Mr. Scanlon’s lawyer says he has agreed to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation, suggesting that Mr. Abramoff’s day in court in Washington is only a matter of time.Scholars who specialize in the history and operations of Congress say that given the brazenness of Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying efforts, as measured by the huge fees he charged clients and the extravagant gifts he showered on friends on Capitol Hill, almost all of them Republicans, the investigation could end up costing several lawmakers their careers, if not their freedom.
The investigation threatens to ensnarl many outside Congress as well, including Interior Department officials and others in the Bush administration who were courted by Mr. Abramoff on behalf of the Indian tribe casinos that were his most lucrative clients.
The inquiry has already reached into the White House; a White House budget official, David H. Safavian, resigned only days before his arrest in September on charges of lying to investigators about his business ties to Mr. Abramoff, a former lobbying partner.
“I think this has the potential to be the biggest scandal in Congress in over a century,” said Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional specialist at the Brookings Institution. “I’ve been around Washington for 35 years, watching Congress, and I’ve never seen anything approaching Abramoff for cynicism and chutzpah in proposing quid pro quos to members of Congress.”
Cynicism and chutzpah. That just about sums up the Age of Bush. It’ll be fun watching these shameless criminals get their comeuppance, but the price they’ve extracted from America over the past five years is surely nothing to laugh about: a bankrupted government, the fucking of the middle class, and the most unworthy companies getting all the breaks at the expense of those who follow honest business ethics. Let the cards fall where they may.
The US is getting annoyed at Japan’s intransigence when it comes to that place.
A top U.S. diplomat voiced frustration with Japan’s strained relationship with its Asian neighbours, saying Tokyo’s spats over history with China and South Korea could undercut American interests in Asia.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s appearance at the Asia-Pacific Economic (APEC) forum was clouded by the historical animosity he rekindled with his repeated visits to a shrine for war dead where convicted war criminals are also honored.
Christopher Hill, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, told university students from APEC countries on Saturday that the chill between American ally Japan and its neighbours had gone on long enough.
“We want Japan to have a good relationship with China,” he said. “And it’s a little frustrating to us, to the U.S., how bad the relationship has become between Japan and China over these historical issues.”
Hill said that while the United States has a deepening relationship with Japan, Tokyo’s strained relationship with its neighbours could spell trouble for Washington as well.
“It doesn’t help us that when we have relations with Japan, people think, ‘aha, that’s an anti-Chinese move’,” he added. “That’s not in our interest.
“So we would like to see that situation between Japan and China, and Japan and Korea, calm down.”
In unusually blunt words, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told Koizumi during a meeting on Friday on the sidelines of APEC that Seoul was not interested in more apologies, but wanted to see visits to Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni shrine cease.
China rebuffed Japanese overtures for a bilateral summit during APEC and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing compared Koizumi’s Yasukuni homages to a German leader’s paying tribute to the Nazis.
This is one of those festering wounds, like Palestinians and Israel, Al Qaeda and non-Moslems, pro-lifers and pro-choicers – the differences seem so irreconcilable, there’s absolutely no sense of hope. The solution can only come when there is one of those “magical moments” in history we occasionally witness (the end of Apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall) when minds open and a true breakthrough occurs. But considering how entrenched the two parties are in their respective positions, I can’t be too optimistic.
I keep hoping Koizumi will have a come-to-Jesus moment when he realizes just how bad a mistake his vists are. Maybe this pressure from America will help expedite his long-awaited epiphany…?
Shenzhen Ren comes up with an excellent post about a subject of which I know quite a lot – the famed soups of Guangdong. Particularly the ones prepared with Chinese medicine:
One of the under-appreciated varieties of Chinese food is the soup they make here in Guangdong. It’s a specialty, and I don’t know all the secrets, but one important point, maybe THE most important, is that they’re made with Chinese “medicine”. Now, I don’t mean bear gallstones or deer penis, nothing exotic like that, but there is a selection of roots, berries, and….substances….added that is actually healthful, and I can tell the difference. Call it a tonic effect, but I do seem to suffer less exhaustion or stomach upset if I eat the Guangdong soups regularly. There’s a gnarly root sort of thing, and something that looks like a thin slice of wood, some little red raisin-like things (I think they’re Chinese wolfberries), and some smaller stalks that are all included.
Guangdong soups are boiled for many hours. Traditionally, in huge soup kettles which usually stood outside of the restaurant, though such a sight is rare these days. The deep meaty flavour of the soups mainly comes from the long boiling of animal bones, as well as the addition of vegetables, roots and herbs. Small blocks of congealed pigs and chickens blood are probably the most common “unidentifiable” floating in the soups.
When in Guangdong, always go for soup – they are consistently excellent. As well as medical soups, also try the medicinal wine – alcohol with traditional medicine added for up to several years. If you have a small medical complaint (upset stomach, tiredness, insomnia etc.) be assured that traditional restaurants will have a remedy. It normally works as well.
Drug addiction is a terrible thing. Mostly with uppers and hallucinogens, it’s easy to form a phychological dependence. Those who regularly use so-called ‘clubbing’ drugs often feel that they can’t enjoy themselves without them. Bad, but that pales in comparison to heroin/opiate addiction. Opiate addiction creeps up on you, quickly develops into a physical dependence and starts to systematically ruin your life as well as your body. Withdrawal from opiate addiction drags you through hell itself (both physically and mentally) making it almost impossible to quit.
China is no stranger to the scourge of heroin addiction. Available throughout the country for around 400 Yuan per gramme (about 8-10 injections, or 2-3 days worth for an addict). Therefore, a few years ago Chinese doctors invented a new treatment for drug addiction. It involved inserting a hot needle through the skull and burning away part of the brain:
A thin surgical needle is slowly inserted deep into the brain, where it is heated to a temperature of up to 80C and kept inside for seven days by use of a surgical clamp applied around the head. The needle is removed, destroying – if all has gone to plan – that part of the brain linked to addictions and cravings.
However, this time last year, and after approximately 500 of the operations, the health ministry banned the procedure citing mixed results. The side effects included loss of memory, weakened sex drive and extreme mood swings. In some cases, the personalities of the patients markedly changed. However, the ‘hole in the head’ operations have now resumed again as part of a controlled experiment at a hospital in Xian.
Chinese drug addicts and their desperate families had been willing to pay thousands of pounds for the treatment – pioneered, but then banned, in Russia – in the belief that it would cure them.
Dr Gao admitted that early attempts at treatment failed – one of his first patients went back on drugs within a week – but said the technique had now been vastly improved.
Read the article for individual reports of successes and failures. The treatment appears to have a positive effect on the cravings of some former addicts, but at a cost. From what I understand, the inner workings of the human brain remain a mystery to science. Therefore, it looks like Chinese doctors are literally poking around in the dark with this one.
I’m all for progress but I can’t help thinking that a monitored programme of oral Methadone solution (an artificial drug that mimicks heroin in the body) remains a far better alternative that this ‘hole in the head’ operation (Methdone programmes are available at all Chinese hospitals). Also, at just a couple of dollars per 10ml bottle, a lot cheaper as well.
They want it that way. Very well done and worth a look. (I read about this weeks ago but only saw it today.)
Thanks to the reader for the tip! I needed a smile this morning.
(cross-posted at the paper tiger)
In general I’ve avoided the topic of anti-Japanese sentiments in China. It’s such a hot-button issue that it’s difficult to have any real debate that doesn’t deteriorate into a lot of shouting and slogans. But these two articles, dealing with Japan’s increasing isolation from the rest of Asia, are worrying on many levels.
First up is an article from the UK Guardian that explores the connection between China’s rise and increasing Japanese nationalism:
When Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese prime minister, secured his dramatic and overwhelming victory in September’s general election, its significance was generally interpreted as a victory for his programme of privatisation and deregulation. This, however, is secondary. Far more important to Japan’s future is Koizumi’s implicit and incipient nationalism. This was demonstrated again on October 17 with his latest visit to the Yasukuni shrine, where class A war criminals are honoured, despite the opposition of China and South Korea and the wave of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China earlier this year.
Little is made too explicit in Japanese society, but the new cabinet, which Koizumi announced last week, spoke volumes about both his intentions and likely future trends in Japan. The two top positions, chief cabinet secretary and foreign minister, were given to Shinzo Abe, the man most likely to succeed Koizumi when his term finishes next September, and Taro Aso respectively. Both are rightwing nationalists and both, like Koizumi, are regular visitors to Yasukuni. This is the first time that the three key positions in the cabinet have been occupied by such figures. The previous cabinet secretary, who had opposed Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni, was dropped from the cabinet and the former foreign minister, who did not visit Yasukuni, lost his position.
One might think that this is to read too much into such visits to the shrine. On the contrary, they are symbolic acts, an expression of how Japan’s past and future should be seen, and as such a deliberate, if coded, signal to the Japanese. Nor are these visits naive or innocent in the message they send to China and South Korea. Koizumi may express the view that they do not give offence to these countries but he knows that they do. And this, indeed, is their very intention. The more these countries protest, the more likely it is that Koizumi will continue to visit the shrine. He is laying down a marker – for the Japanese and to the Chinese and Koreans. Japan’s future is already beginning to take shape.
The causes of growing Japanese nationalism may be diverse, but they are increasingly driven by one overwhelming factor: a fear of the rise of China. That is the only way the behaviour of Koizumi and the other leading lights in the Liberal Democratic party can be understood. It could be different. China, widely credited with having pulled Japan out of its long-running recession, represents an enormous economic opportunity for Japan, and is already Japan’s largest trading partner. But far more powerful forces than mere economics are at work. Ever since the Meiji restoration in 1868, Japan has turned its back on Asia in general and China in particular: its pattern of aggression from 1895 onwards and the colonies that resulted were among the consequences.
To engage with China requires Japan to come to terms with its past, and Koizumi’s visits to the shrine represent a symbolic refusal to do so. Japan is stuck in its past, and its past now threatens to define its future and that of east Asia. Even during the postwar period, when Japan dominated east Asia economically and China was weak and self-absorbed, it never had an influence commensurate with its economic strength. The reason was simple: its failure to atone for its past and embrace a new kind of relationship with its wronged and distrustful neighbours. If Japan could not do it then, it is even less likely to do it in the face of a resurgent China that is rapidly displacing it as the economic and political fulcrum of east Asia.
Even more alarming in this context is the increasingly close alliance that Japan is forming with the United States:
Earlier this year Japan affirmed, for the first time, its willingness to support the US in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. It has also agreed to work with the US to develop and finance a missile-defence system whose intention is clearly the containment of China. It is not difficult to see the early signs of a new cold war in east Asia, with Japan and the US on one side and China on the other.
I think this fear is somewhat overstated. The United States simply has too much of an economic stake in China, and vice-versa. Regardless of neo-con posturing on both sides, China and the US are intertwined in a symbiotic relationship that if broken, will damage both parties (granted, I may be giving too much credit to the power of rational thinking here). And it’s not clear to me what the greatest danger of a nationalistic Japan might be to its Asian neighbors (ideas, anyone? I don’t see Japan invading Manchuria again any time soon). I wonder if the greatest danger of this sort of isolation is to Japan itself, both economically and spiritually. What this New York Times article says about certain strains in Japanese culture is both alarming and deeply sad:
A young Japanese woman in the comic book “Hating the Korean Wave” exclaims, “It’s not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!” In another passage the book states that “there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of.”
In another comic book, “Introduction to China,” which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: “Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There’s nothing attractive.”
The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.
In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan’s fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan’s worsening relations with the rest of Asia.
They also point to Japan’s longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain’s apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan’s history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea’s rise to challenge Japan’s position as Asia’s economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.
There are so many offensive stereotypes and outright falsehoods in these books that I’ll stick to the Chinese volume:
The book describes China as the “world’s prostitution superpower” and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, “I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China.”
The book waves away Japan’s worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in 1937-38, as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment.
The book also says the Japanese Imperial Army’s Unit 731 – which researched biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners – was actually formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese.
So does all this justify the recent, and sometimes violent, anti-Japanese demonstrations in China? A cautionary note: one of the book’s authors, Ko Bunyu, a Taiwan-born writer who has lived in Japan for forty years, credits the demonstrations with boosting his sales to past the one million mark:
“I have to thank China, really,” Mr. Ko said. “But I’m disappointed that the sales of my books could have been more than one or two million if they had continued the demonstrations.”
Thanks to David in the UK for the Guardian article!
What a nightmare. At least they seem to be talking about it.
China said Friday that bird flu is spreading among its poultry flocks despite mammoth efforts to control the disease, while leaders at an Asia-Pacific summit warned that greater vigilance is needed to prevent more human infections….
The near-daily reports of new bird flu outbreaks in China point to the challenges in controlling the virulent virus. Hundreds of millions of birds have been vaccinated, yet the government reported two new poultry outbreaks Friday — bringing to 15 the number of cases it has confirmed since Oct. 19.
In the hard-hit northeastern province of Liaoning, nearly 1 million officials were fanning out to enforce anti-flu controls, which include mandatory poultry vaccinations and twice-daily health checks for all villagers who live near the sites of outbreaks — 72,000 people in all, authorities said at a news conference this week.
Officials have been ordered: “If you get too tired to do your job, close your eyes for a moment and then get back to work,” said Zhou Liwei, a Liaoning government spokesman.
I really hope this doesn’t turn into another SARS scare. Even if the threat to humans is over-rated as some claim, a major scare will devastate China’s economy and bring another round of misery to the region. Then you get the aftershocks (empty hotels, layoffs, recession, fear), and I never want to see China go through that again.
The People’s Daily recently blasted the US media for shaking the “ideological mindsets and cultural foundations” of other countries by exporting US-style values of “freed0m and dem0cracy”. High praise indeed.
Also, a recent edition of the CCP publication ‘Foreign Theoretical Trends’ stated that U.S. had been using “street politics” to push western interests and “c0lour rev0lutions” around the world. “Facing US cultural hegemony’s assaults and infiltration, we must be serious and vigilant” said the official magazine. Soon afterwards, Beijing also scrapped plans to allow foreign newspapers to print in China. Mr. Shi Zongyuan, China’s top press regulator stated: “When I think of the ‘c0lour rev0lutions’, I feel afraid.”
The term “c0lour rev0lutions” refers to the popular protests (so-called because of flower symbols adopted by the masses) that recently toppled authoritarian governments, such as Georgia’s in 2003.
Beijing is taking the threat of “c0lour rev0lutions” as seriously as the 1989 collapse of c0mmunism. Certainly, it doesn’t take much for Beijing to consider something as a threat (quasi-religious elderly Qigong practicioners spring to mind) but to lay the recent “c0lour rev0lutions” at the feet of the U.S. and its values of ‘freed0m and dem0cracy’ (nevermind the U.S. media) can only be wishful thinking. After all, the U.S. and, to a lessor extent, the E.U., can hardly be credited with the ability to whip up large sections of a foreign population against its own government, quite the opposite in fact.
Nevertheless, increased supression of d1ssidents, Internet restrictions, SMS monitoring etc. all continue here in China, and in a clear warning to China’s more liberal-minded officials, the CCP recently announced stricter rules to safeguard “national cultural security” by limiting foreign involvement in the media market.
On a slightly more cheerful note, some media reports have, however, stated that despite the recent increase in domestic political freed0ms, there is little sign that fears of a Chinese “c0lour rev0lution” are changing China’s basic commitment to economic reform and further opening of its economy.
(Apologies for the excessive ‘ed1ting’ of sensitive ‘w0rds’ – Baidu searches for ‘c0lour rev0lution’ are not permitted here).
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