Despite those petitions from Amanda Liu and her goon squad, I am happy to report that TPD is now available just about everywhere in China, according to emails and comments I’m receiving. The blockage occurred literally moments after I put up a post with “T-a-i-$-h-i in the headline, and ended shortly after that post dropped off my homepage. What a coincidence.

Occasionally we will hear of a legal victory for “the little guy” in China that gives us a lot of hope and encouragement. But the odds are still heavily stacked against a fair trial for the defendant, and such happy endings seem to be few and far between. Horror stories are more common. Take this case, for example.

At his most desperate, when he had no more borrowed money for his son’s legal defense, Xie Yujun went to a hospital. He knew of China’s black market in body parts. He wanted to sell his eyes. He was refused.

Xie Yujun said he is obligated to defend his son to protect the reputation of the entire family. “I will appeal for my son until the day I die.”
Articles in this series will periodically examine the struggle in China over the creation of a modern legal system.

Mr. Xie, 60, is no stranger to desperate acts, if by necessity. His son was charged with a savage knife attack here in rural Anhui Province that left a mother and daughter badly wounded. The police suspected the son because of a property dispute between the families. But Mr. Xie believed the case was deeply flawed: the victims never identified the attacker. The only evidence was a questionable shoeprint. Police misconduct was blatant.

Mr. Xie’s problem was convincing a court. His son’s lawyers had no chance to question witnesses or, initially, to examine evidence. At one point, Mr. Xie himself sneaked into a prison to interview a witness. Even a tantalizing appeals court victory proved hollow. The son was tried again and sentenced to life in prison.

“There must be one person in the Communist Party who is honest and who believes in justice,” Mr. Xie said. “If I can’t even find one, then the party is not going to last long.”

China’s authoritarian government once relied on ideology and brute force to bind and regulate society. Now, it is asking citizens like Mr. Xie to have faith in the country’s legal system to resolve disputes and mete out justice.

But Mr. Xie’s plaintive cry poses a fundamental question about China’s promise of rule of law: Is it possible for a criminal defendant to get a fair trial?

This is one of those epic-length stories that still make the NYT the best newspaper in the world. It follows the investigation in painstaking detail, and also looks at the inherent absurdities of China’s legal system: dfefense attorneys can be arrested for defending their clients “too aggressively”; judges can simply ignore evidence and find the defendant guilty if they feel it is for “the greater societal good – in this case, a conviction to soothe public anxiety about a grisly crime”; confessions are routinely coerced.

It won’t make your weekend any more cheerful, but it’s a great article.

An obviously well-versed and diligent blogger writing a book on the development of Taiwan since the KMT’s arrival there offers an extraordinarily detailed and well-documented post on…well, on a lot of things, from the evolution of Chinese nationalism in Taiwan to the dispute with Japan over the Diaoyutai Islands. I’m not sure who this fellow is, but if you are interested in Taiwan history and politics, you will absolutely not want to miss his post. Just a very small sample.

The contrast between the Taiwanese and Chinese nationalist practices in Taiwan over this period, and into the present, says a great deal about the complicated, contested and often inconsistent ways in which identity politics, and identity itself, have been played out. Chinese imperial culture and nationalism retained a rich and viable language which was reinforced and reworked by the KMT and appropriated by students and intellectuals as part of the contestation of Taiwanese politics. At the same time, Taiwanese nationalism was creating its own discourses and sources of legitimacy, borrowing some from Chinese nationalism, and some from political practices around the world, such as samizdat literature and the Wilsonian ideals of self-determination and democracy. Taiwan’s rich and complex identity is the weave of these contesting discourses, with Chinese nationalism being contested almost immediately upon Retrocession and Taiwanese national identity appropriating, creating and legitimizing new ideologies of identity in new ways up to the present.

Definitely “read the whole thing.” Not just the post, but the entire blog. From the few posts I’ve seen, it’s in a class by itself.

The good news is he is still being actively investigated and Fitz is determined to do his job right. The bad news is that it may take years.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald delayed a decision on whether to seek criminal charges against Karl Rove in large part because he wants to determine whether Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, can provide information on Rove’s role in the CIA leak case, according to attorneys involved in the investigation.

Even if Fitzgerald concludes in the near future that he does not have sufficient evidence to charge Rove, the special prosecutor would not rule out bringing charges at a later date and would not finish his inquiry on Rove until he hears whatever information Libby might provide — either incriminating or exculpatory — on Rove’s role, the sources said.

On the last day of its two-year term, the federal grand jury in the leak case indicted Libby on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice as part of an alleged effort to conceal his own role, and perhaps that of other Bush administration officials, in publicly disclosing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Fitzgerald did not seek an indictment of Rove, opting to present any potential new evidence on the White House deputy chief of staff to a new grand jury. In recent days, Fitzgerald has reinterviewed several witnesses with knowledge of Rove’s role in the Plame leak and talked with attorneys of other potential witnesses.

The ongoing investigation means that Rove’s legal status is likely to remain up in the air until the final disposition of Libby’s case. That could be two years from now, or even longer. Rove’s predicament contradicts recent news accounts indicating that Fitzgerald will conclude his probe of Rove in the near future.

I guess that puts an end to the much-repeated meme that Rove was found innocent of all charges and the investigation has wound to a conclusion.

This is really humorous. But not surprising for a presidency whose only weapon is talking points.

(About the title: those of you who like Wordsworth will know what I mean.)

Update: A sublime fisking over here.

A beautiful response to similar administration talking points here.

The question on the table is not whether Bill Clinton was wrong about WMDs in Iraq; nor is the question whether John Kerry or Harry Reid or other top Dems are hypocrites for supporting the war then and criticizing it now.
The question on the table is whether the Bush Administration lied, distorted, exaggerated, and hyped the supposedly “grave and gathering danger” of Iraq in the run-up to the war.

The question on the table is whether the Bush Administration first decided to go to war–without telling America–and then cherry-picked existing intelligence while Cheney muscled and pressured analysts to “find” new “intelligence” by playing up rumors and downplaying objections.

The question on the table is whether Bush & Cheney & Rice & the WHIG committed impeachable offenses, misleading and tricking their fellow citizens into a war of choice, which they falsely portrayed as a war of necessity.

Bush & Co. left themselves wide open with this new meme (“the left is playing revisionist history, making it appear Bush lied about the war”). Prediction: It will backfire, because Bush really did lie, or was at least shamefully dishonest with the information he had, and it can be proven.

Friedman offers a prayer from Shanghai.

Thou Shalt Not Destroy the Center
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Dear God in Heaven: Forgive me my sins, for I have been to China and I have had bad thoughts. Forgive me, Heavenly Father, for I have cast an envious eye on the authoritarian Chinese political system, where leaders can, and do, just order that problems be solved. For instance, Shanghai’s deputy mayor told me that as his city became more polluted, the government simply moved thousands of small

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It isn’t every day that you see a massive number of postings shoot across the blogosphere about a Singapore blogger, even when she’s a “knockout” like Dawn Yang.

Okay, she’s beautiful, but so are lots of bloggers. Why the flurry of posts ricocheting throughout the great city-state? It turns out there have been reports that Dawn’s beauty isn’t the result of nature but of plastic surgery, and this revelation (scroll down to see the photoshoped boobs) triggered a veritable craze of some of the cattiest, nastiest blogging I’ve ever seen. And I thought Singaporeans were docile and complacent.

Is this really the most exciting thing happening in all of Singapore? Having lived there for a year, I don’t find it at all hard to believe.

You wonder what Huang Jingao will be thinking about every day as he wakes up in the prision cell in which he’ll be spending the rest of his life. I wonder if he wishes he’d never spoken out against corruption in China.

A local Communist Party official in southern China who rose to fame last year by denouncing official corruption in a letter on the Internet was sentenced to life in prison Thursday, the culmination of a year-long campaign by party authorities to silence and discredit him.

State media did not report the conviction of Huang Jingao, 53, the whistleblower in Fujian province who captivated the country last year with stories of his attempts to root out corruption in party ranks. But two sources involved in the case confirmed the life sentence handed down by the Nanping Intermediate People’s Court in the provincial capital, Fuzhou.

Huang, who said he wore a bullet-proof vest to protect himself from the subjects of his investigations, was put on trial in September for allegedly accepting about $715,000 in bribes between 1993 and 2004. His supporters say embarrassed party leaders trumped up the charges after he went public with complaints that senior government officials were blocking his efforts to fight corruption.

Huang was serving as party chief of Fujian’s Lianjiang county, located 300 miles south of Shanghai, when he caused a national sensation on Aug. 11, 2004, with an open letter in which he accused colleagues of confiscating land from peasants and selling it at below-market prices to real estate developers in exchange for bribes.

The lengthy missive, featured on the Web site of the People’s Daily, the party’s flagship newspaper, triggered an outpouring of support on the Internet from residents across China, where crooked land deals are common and rampant corruption is a source of deep public anger. Newspapers across the country picked up Huang’s story, and tens of thousands of readers posted messages supporting him on popular Web forums.

In his letter and in interviews with state media, Huang presented himself as an honest party official from the countryside who was just trying to do the right thing. He wrote that he had expected party superiors to support him, but instead “ran into all kinds of obstructions, as if a large, invisible net was trying to cover up this corruption case.”

Most memorably, he described rewriting his will and wearing a bullet-proof vest after receiving death threats.

China’s top leaders, including President Hu Jintao, have repeatedly sought to crack down on corruption, declaring it a threat to the party’s survival. But corruption is so deeply rooted in the political system that the leadership has been reluctant to grant investigators full independence. As a result, influential officials routinely shut down probes that could implicate them.

A few days after Huang posted his letter, the party’s propaganda department ordered all media to stop reporting the story, removed the letter from the Internet and wiped the Web clean of messages supporting his cause. Meanwhile, authorities in Fujian published a rebuttal accusing Huang of violating party discipline and committing a grave political mistake.

“The direct result of his behavior was that it would be used by hostile Western forces, hostile Taiwan forces, democratic movement elements and others, thus leading to social and political instability,” the statement said.

Police placed Huang under a form of house arrest a few months later, and state newspapers began publishing detailed stories portraying him as a corrupt and degenerate official with four mistresses whom he kept in different luxury apartments. The newspapers said he wrote the open letter because his crimes were under investigation and he wanted to blame them on others.

Well, I suppose it could be true that Huang is a corrupt and lustful criminal. But if it were, I can’t imagine why they’d have been so secretive about his trial and sentencing (read the rest of the article for the details). And the timing of his arrest sure raises some questions. Remember, these are the fellows who don’t give a second thought to sentencing a journalist to ten years for revealing the contents of speech a few days before it’s about to be delivered. So they obviously have no qualms about locking a whistleblower up for life if he embarrasses them.

Personal issues have kept me from blogging much, but I had to share this:

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they “voted God out of your city” by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.

All eight Dover, Pa., school board members up for re-election were defeated Tuesday after trying to introduce “intelligent design” — the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power — as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God. You just rejected him from your city,” Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “700 Club.”…

…Later Thursday, Robertson issued a statement saying he was simply trying to point out that “our spiritual actions have consequences.”

“God is tolerant and loving, but we can’t keep sticking our finger in his eye forever,” Robertson said. “If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them.”

Robertson made headlines this summer when he called on his daily show for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

In October 2003, he suggested that the State Department be blown up with a nuclear device. He has also said that feminism encourages women to “kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

While fundamentalist Christianity encourages its followers to become violent, delusional lunatics, apparently…

Will someone please explain to me why this clown is considered a legitimate religious figure while one of the largest Episcopal churches in Southern California is in danger of losing its tax-exempt status because of a sermon in which the rector suggested that an unprovoked war is perhaps not what Jesus would consider a truly Christian activity?

A practical compromise solution?

I think it’s safe to say that if Japanese State visits to Yasukuni ceased Yasukuni were destroyed, Northeast Asia would be a happier place.

But what if Japan’s Class-A war dead (or criminals depending which side of the fence you stand on) were moved into a different facility with a different name bearing a different status?

Such a move would allow figures like the Emperor or Prime Minister to pay their respects without violating Japan’s constitution separating religion and state and it would not be seen as “worshiping” but as remembering.

Would the old wounds begin to heal in other parts of Northeast Asia or is anger toward Japan, its war crimes and such visits destined to live on forever?

Such a move would allow figures like the Emperor or Prime Minister to pay their respects without violating Japan’s constitution separating religion and state and it would not be seen as “worshiping” but as remembering.

Would the old wounds begin to heal in other parts of Northeast Asia or is anger toward Japan, its war crimes and such visits destined to live on forever?

These are questions Japan is attempting to answer as a non-partisan group has been formed with the mission to determine if a new facility should be built to house Yasukuni’s war dead. It is seen as an option that might help ease the dissent that has come from both within and outside of Japan in regards to the Emperor and Prime Minister’s visits to the current place.

As a third party observer with nothing to lose or gain from such a decision, I believe this is a positive move toward opening the door to compromise. (Key word here is compromise.)

Perhaps the name Yasukuni has such a strong stigma attached to it that it might be best to start over from scratch.

Sounds good. My question is, would there be a big group hug and cozy feelings of “let bygones by bygones,” or would another issue quickly supplant Yasukuni and continue to keep the wounds festering? There’s so much invested in fanning this flame. Nearly all arguments on the subject of Chinese anger against Japan come back to the shrine. There will be grudging recognition of the apologies. “But what about the shrine??” If that were taken out of the equation, would it pacify anyone? Or would it quickly be forgotten as the flame-fanners find some other Japanese horror to latch onto?