I’m glad the elections brought Iraq peace and stability and freedom, as one commenter claimed last week.

A suicide bomber killed 32 mourners and injured dozens at a funeral for the nephew of a Shiite politician, one of several attacks Wednesday across Iraq that killed a total of 52 people — making it the deadliest day since the Dec. 15 elections….

More than 100 mourners were standing in a cemetery in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, for the burial of a nephew of Ahmed al-Bakka when the bomber struck, the Diyala provincial police said. The cemetery was strewn with body parts and the tombstones were stained with blood.

At least 32 people were killed and 42 injured, said Dr. Firas al-Nida of the Muqdadiyah hospital.

Al-Bakka had survived an assassination attempt Tuesday that killed his nephew. Al-Bakka is the head of the local Dawa party, led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and a main partner in the country’s largest Shiite political coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance.

Things are now worse than everas bad as they were before. Only now, no one’s watching. The wiretap smokescreen continues to transfix the media and the blogosphere, and ironically strengthens Bush’s tough-guy image. Meanwhile, our precious little war rages on, and the elections bring us one step closer to all-out civil war.

Nice.

Update: While I’m at it, here’s what Classical Values has to say:

Why is it that Microsoft isn’t too busy to censor Chinese bloggers, but still can’t find the time to fix Windows’ worst security horror yet, affecting all Windows operating systems? (The flaw allows computers to be infected by merely viewing a web site, and the only patch available had to be written by a Russian programmer.)

Is the company too busy compromising human rights abroad to take care of its own compromised operating systems?

The whole thing stinks, and even though I’ve been loyal to Microsoft for many years, I’m glad to see that Google may soon be offering an alternative operating system.

(Might be time to get back to basics, Bill.)

Wicked, but unlinkable. This is Dowd at her best; don’t miss the paragraph about Bush “joking” with amputee war veterans. What a schmuck.

It’s Not Personal, Jack, It’s Strictly Business
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 4, 2006

The sight of Jack Abramoff striding out of federal court here yesterday, looking like a stocky gangster from a 40’s movie in black fedora and trench coat, may seem like the strongest evidence so far of how graft and hubris have overwhelmed the capital.

It could have been a scene from “The Godfather,” a favorite film of the felonious lobbyist. The Washington Post reported that he “did business with people linked to the underworld,” bilked Indian tribes

(more…)

At first it sounds like just another case of alleged plagiarism, but this one has deep-reaching implications because the material in question lies at the foundation of the CCP’s obsession with a “harmonious society.”

A Chinese professor adopted as the intellectual poster boy of the Communist party has come under fire for plagiarising the work of a dissident jailed by the government in the early 1990s.

Zhou Ye Zhong, a professor at Wuhan University, is credited with much of the inspiration behind the current leadership’s new ideological approach, with its emphasis on the “harmonious society”.

He has lectured the Politburo and Communist party chief Hu Jintao and has been at the centre of the party’s efforts to square its ideology with formerly taboo topics such as human rights, the rule of law and constitutional government.

But his position as Beijing’s golden boy has started to tarnish after he was accused of plagiarism by Wang Tiancheng, a former Beijing University professor who was jailed for five years in 1992 for attempting to form a rival political party.

Mr Wang used an internet discussion board to denounce Mr Zhou’s work, and has threatened to take legal action against him if an explanation is not forthcoming.

He told Reuters that his book, The Constitutional Interpretation of Republicanism, was quoted “word for word” in Mr Zhou’s recently published works.

“He’s risen to the top by repackaging fashionable terms – human rights, democracy, rule of law – for the party’s ends,” Mr Wang said. “But he reflects the emptiness of the party’s ideology. They’ve got nothing and so he needs to raid the opposition camp for any new ideas.”

This story actually saw some play in the reforming PRC – at least for a while. But before we celebrate more signs of openness and transparency, let’s get the whole picture.

The Youth Daily, a newspaper given leeway to report stories suppressed by the rest of China’s tightly controlled media, further publicised Mr Wang’s claim of plagiarism. But that debate has now been muted following an order from propaganda officials to end further discussion of the matter in the domestic media…

The propaganda department last week ordered Youth Daily to suppress a dissection of Mr Zhou’s book by a liberal law professor, He Weifang, but discussions of the case have spread on the internet.

As the article points out, “harmonious society” has become Hu’s catchphrase. How ironic, if its real source is an anti-CCP dissident.

Thanks to the scholarly reader who sent me the link.

What an amazing post. Go right now and read the whole thing. So much incriminating evidence of Microsoft’s sucking up to the censors!

Microsoft’s MSN Spaces continues to censor its Chinese language blogs, and has become more aggressive and thorough at censorship since I first checked out MSN’s censorship system last summer. On New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the popular blog written by Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti. Now all you get when you attempt to visit his blog at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/mranti/ is the error message pictured above. (You can see the Google cache of his blog up until Dec.22nd here.)

Note, his blog was TAKEN DOWN by MSN people. Not blocked by the Chinese government.

There’s a lot more to this story (and I mean a lot), and once again ESWN does a great service translating relevant Chinese articles.

Prediction: This is going to ignite a firestorm of Microsoft denunciations from the left and the right in America. If MacKinnon’s sleuthing is on-target, they’re in deep shit. Thanks Rebecca. Thanks Roland. As I said, go there now.

Update: Evil right-wing blogger La Shawn Barber appears to be one of the first out of the gate to savage Bill Gates. Prepare for the domino effect.

Update II: Don’t miss all the comments and trackbacks to Rebecca’s post. Microsoft ueber-blogger Scoble is mad as hell, and offering Anti a free space to blog to his heart’s content (though Rebecca says in an update that he’s already back online using another service). He writes:

Why is this so important to me? Well, you ignore the voices of individual people at your peril. And, I’ve been raised by people who taught me the value of standing up for the little guy. My mom grew up in Germany. Her mom stood up to the Nazis (and got a lot of scorn from family and friends for doing so).

I do believe in a slippery slope. If they come after you today, maybe they’ll come after me tomorrow. Gotta stop this kind of stuff while we’re still talking about you.

Oh, and to: Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti I’d like to offer you a guest blog here on my blog. I won’t censor you and you can write whatever you’d like.

Guys over at MSN: sorry, I don’t agree with your being used as a state-run thug.

The comments to Scoble’s post are bountiful and seething. If anything propels China’s censorship into the limelight it’ll be this story. It’s far more damning than last year’s Yahoo scandal, where Yahoo appeared to have little or no choice. Here, it appears MS’s cooperation was zealous and total.

The following email, reproduced in full with the actual names (per the request of the emailer) comes from a personal friend of Lisa’s, so I am pretty certain it is not a hoax. I have forwarded it to some newspaper reporters I know and am hoping they will do something with it. Maybe if you are a blogger (or a reporter) you’ll consider helping as well.
———————————————————————

The following is the story happening recently:

My brother’s name is Si Fuqiang. He is a vice director general of the Bureau of Food of Jiao Cheng, Shanxi Province, China. It happened at the night of Dec. 23, 2005. My brother sent a message to Wang Shengzhang, the Secretary of the Communist Party in Jiao Cheng County, Shanxi, China, to criticise him for his villanous behaviors. On 24 morning, Si Fuqiang was inpounded by the Beaurau of Public Security of Jiaocheng using the name of “Crime of Insult”. I asked many lawyers. They all said even according to Chinese Law, my brother’s behavior is neither a crime, nor an illegal behavior. However, Because Wang Shengzhang is the highest authority of Jiao Cheng County. No body else in the County dare to argue against him, thougn most citizens hate Wang Shengzhang very much.

When I went back my hometown to rescue my brother. Some kind people told me the truth secretly. Wang Shengzhang has many political defauts when he works in Jiao Cheng County. There are several great accidents in Mine explode. As an example, in 2005’s “3.9” accident, 30 miners died. According to related policy, Wang Shengzhang should take the resposibility for it and he should be punished. However, he ordered the people who handled the accident affair to lie and made faulse reports by saying that there are 28 miners died in the accident and by rewrote the documents. Because according to China’s Policy, the Secretary of the local government must be punished if the figure is above 30…….

His daughter is a university student. He uses his power to put his daughter ‘s name down as a staff of the Bureau of the Security and take the salary every month. However, few staffs in the Bureau met her, because she did nothing there.

He takes money from the people who want to be promoted and repayed them by taking the advantage of his position to promote them.

……

Actually the examples above just a very small part of his defauts and there are many of others that many citizens know but dare not to speak out.

Wang also take the advantage of his power to play with girls and in the everning of Dec. 23, two drivers saw Wang’s bad behavior in Taiyuan and told my brother. My brother then wrote a message to criticise Wang. As a result, Wang is mad and ordered the Bureau of the Public Security of Jiaocheng to run my brother in……

People in Jiao Cheng feel terrible and they dare not to say anything related the security…….

Furthermore, some of the staffs flatter the security by using all kinds of means. For example, there is a bad guy named Er Wei ( I don’t know his full name, Er wei is his nick name) summonsed my brother’s wife and insulted her by force her to drink water…… His behavior is a crime according to Chinese law, but nobody punish him and he is still handling my brother’s affair.

There are more I will report later.

I feel terrible and angry about the situation. I promise I will struggle agaist for it.

One can not believe it, most people in Jiao Cheng county even stoped me to wrote in internet or newspaper when I am in Jiao Cheng, because they think if I write something, probabely I will be in troubles.

Now, my brother Si Fuqiang is still in the prison, and perhaps he will be punished more. Now I am writing to you asking for your help. Could you please spread my words in your website? Or do you have any good suggestions for it?

Thank you very much for reading my letter.

Best wishes,

Susan

Beijing Language and Culture University
Beijing, China.

This speaks for itself.

Early on Aug. 3, 2005, we heard that 14 Marines had been killed in Haditha, Iraq. Our son, Lance Cpl. Edward “Augie” Schroeder II, was stationed there. At 10:45 a.m. two Marines showed up at our door. After collecting himself for what was clearly painful duty, the lieutenant colonel said, “Your son is a true American hero.”

Since then, two reactions to Augie’s death have compounded the sadness.

At times like this, people say, “He died a hero.” I know this is meant with great sincerity. We appreciate the many condolences we have received and how helpful they have been. But when heard repeatedly, the phrases “he died a hero” or “he died a patriot” or “he died for his country” rub raw.

“People think that if they say that, somehow it makes it okay that he died,” our daughter, Amanda, has said. “He was a hero before he died, not just because he went to Iraq. I was proud of him before, and being a patriot doesn’t make his death okay. I’m glad he got so much respect at his funeral, but that didn’t make it okay either.”

The words “hero” and “patriot” focus on the death, not the life. They are a flag-draped mask covering the truth that few want to acknowledge openly: Death in battle is tragic no matter what the reasons for the war. The tragedy is the life that was lost, not the manner of death. Families of dead soldiers on both sides of the battle line know this. Those without family in the war don’t appreciate the difference.

This leads to the second reaction. Since August we have witnessed growing opposition to the Iraq war, but it is often whispered, hands covering mouths, as if it is dangerous to speak too loudly. Others discuss the never-ending cycle of death in places such as Haditha in academic and sometimes clinical fashion, as in “the increasing lethality of improvised explosive devices.”

Listen to the kinds of things that most Americans don’t have to experience: The day Augie’s unit returned from Iraq to Camp Lejeune, we received a box with his notebooks, DVDs and clothes from his locker in Iraq. The day his unit returned home to waiting families, we received the second urn of ashes. This lad of promise, of easy charm and readiness to help, whose highest high was saving someone using CPR as a first aid squad volunteer, came home in one coffin and two urns. We buried him in three places that he loved, a fitting irony, I suppose, but just as rough each time.

I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi towns, there aren’t enough troops to do that.

In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was “less and less worth it,” because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can’t hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha.

At Augie’s grave, the lieutenant colonel knelt in front of my wife and, with tears in his eyes, handed her the folded flag. He said the only thing he could say openly: “Your son was a true American hero.” Perhaps. But I felt no glory, no honor. Doing your duty when you don’t know whether you will see the end of the day is certainly heroic. But even more, being a hero comes from respecting your parents and all others, from helping your neighbors and strangers, from loving your spouse, your children, your neighbors and your enemies, from honesty and integrity, from knowing when to fight and when to walk away, and from understanding and respecting the differences among the people of the world.

Two painful questions remain for all of us. Are the lives of Americans being killed in Iraq wasted? Are they dying in vain? President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead. That is twisted logic: honor the fallen by killing another 2,000 troops in a broken policy?

I choose to honor our fallen hero by remembering who he was in life, not how he died. A picture of a smiling Augie in Iraq, sunglasses turned upside down, shows his essence — a joyous kid who could use any prop to make others feel the same way.

Though it hurts, I believe that his death — and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq — was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator — a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires. They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation — a careless disregard for professional military counsel.

But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.

This is very painful to acknowledge, and I have to live with it. So does President Bush.

As Wilfred Owen wrote so poignantly, it is “an old lie” that “Dulce et decrorum est pro patria mori” (“it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country”). Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Here.

2005 was the year that the president of the United States declared proudly that he had broken the law repeatedly and with full intention, that he had the power to do so whenever he wanted to, and that he would continue to do so whenever he determined it to be desirable. This declaration was met with basic approval from much of the beltway chattering classes, prominent libertarian bloggers, and just about every small government conservative.

The issue is simple: Bush has declared that one man has the right to make the law whenever, in his determination, national security warrants it. While even I can understand the necessity of broad executive powers in emergency situations, we aren’t anywhere close to being in one of those. If Bush decides that personally shooting dissident bloggers or pesky journalists in the head is in fact necessary for national security, then no one can object. The fact that he has not, as far as we know, done any such thing does not matter in the slightest. By conferring dictatorial authority on himself Bush has declared that this is, in fact, a dictatorship even if he hasn’t (yet) bothered using such authorities to the fullest of his claimed ability.

It’s a mystery why Russert and the gang can giggle over their little roundtables, essentially ignoring what amounts to a military coup by our own president. He’s asserted the authority of commander in chief over the entire country, and not just the military to which the constitution grants him such authority. Yes, we hope and generally assume that this temper tantrum by our boy king will pass in 3 years, that the his overreach will not have long lasting effects, that the crisis will pass.

2005 was the year the president declared he was the law, and few of our elite opinion makers and shapers bothered to notice, or care.

I wanted to go there for New Year’s but now I think I made the right choice.

China, already enduring its coldest winter in 20 years, is preparing for a cold snap that will see temperatures drop by as much as 16 degrees Centigrade (29 degrees Fahrenheit).

Northern China, where temperatures are already as low as minus 15-20 degrees Celsius, will feel the strongest effects of the cold front, which is sweeping in from Mongolia and western Siberia, the China Daily reported.

In the capital of Beijing, which enjoyed a relatively warm start to the New Year with temperatures just above freezing, the thermometer is expected to plunge 10 degrees on Monday night, according to the paper.

The Beijing News advised the city’s residents to return home from New Year holidays early on Monday to avoid expected overnight snowfalls.

Even in the warmer southern regions, the temperatures are expected to drop sharply.

“Upon the heels of the cold front … more snowfall can be expected in the north with rain or snow flurries possible in the south,” the paper quoted Yang Guiming, a senior official with the Central Meteorological Office, as saying.

The weather was probably my No. 1. difficulty in Beijing; I hate to be cold, and even Taipei’s relatively mild winter has caused me a few days of anguish. I’ll see you all in the spring. (Late spring, like May or June.)

Again, I have good news to report about the compassionate nature of the CCP. In Chengdu, political activist Zhao Xin was recently beaten, and Party members treated him with love and kindness.

[T]he attack on Zhao, which occurred in a remote corner of Sichuan province on Nov. 17, also opened a window on Communist Party officialdom as the country follows an uncertain road toward economic and political change. On Dec. 12, as Zhao lay in his bed at Bayi Orthopedics Hospital here in the provincial capital, four senior party and government officials showed up unannounced to offer their apologies — along with flowers, fruit and a promise to pay his medical bills.

The gesture, soon followed by others, came as a total surprise, Zhao said in an interview in the hospital room, and was the result of orders from high levels of the party bureaucracy. The visit cheered him up, Zhao said with a laugh, but he did not take it to mean that President Hu Jintao’s government had experienced a change of heart about his political activism.

Well, maybe not, but it’s at least a good sign that the officials took the time and effort to lend a helping hand. Unfortunately, if you read the article, you’ll see it was most likely the government that was behind the brutal attack in the first place – another examle of the increasingly popular tactic of local governments to employ hired thugs to do their dirty work.

Two assailants wearing black leather jackets repeatedly slammed him with lead pipes, Zhao Xin recalled, while a third swiped at his groin with a switchblade. Soon they were joined by four more toughs, also armed with pipes, and all seven pounded away. By the time they stopped, Zhao said, they had opened four head wounds, broken two ribs, ripped his calf muscles and shattered his right knee.

Zhao, a veteran political activist based in Beijing, was paying the price for advising Chinese farmers on how to fight back against local officials seizing their fields for economic development, according to his assessment and those of other activists. Increasingly, they said, China’s provincial, city and county governments are turning to small-time hoodlums to carry out violent repression without directly involving uniformed policemen or agents of the Public Security Ministry.

Zhao Xin remains hospitalized in Chengdu, China, after a Nov. 17 beating by armed thugs. He had been advising farmers on how to resist officials taking their land for development and giving me flowers,” he said. “But on the other, they keep trying to block my work. They send viruses into my computer, for instance, and interrupt my mobile phone conversations.”

Computer viruses were the least of Zhao’s worries; he very nearly got killed. This is another of those excellent articles that shines a spotlight on the dark side of the world’s superpower-in-the-ascendant. It’s also grimmer than coal dust.