So good. So painful, but so good.
A child plays with a bottle in a Yunnan village.
Play nice.
ARCHIVE You're viewing everything posted during February 2006
February 20, 2006
February 19, 2006
Stop complaining. Torture’s a good thing. It keeps us safe.
The Torturers Win
By BOB HERBERT
Published: February 20, 2006
Terrible things were done to Maher Arar, and his extreme suffering was set in motion by the United States government. With the awful facts of his case carefully documented, he tried to sue for damages. But last week a federal judge waved the facts aside and told Mr. Arar, in effect, to get lost.
We’re in a new world now and the all-powerful U.S. government apparently has free rein to ruin innocent lives without even a nod in the direction of due process or fair play. Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen who, according to all evidence, has led an exemplary life, was seized and shackled by U.S. authorities at Kennedy Airport in 2002, and then shipped off to Syria, his native country, where he was held in a dungeon for the better part of a year. He was tormented physically and psychologically, and at times tortured.
Genghis Khan Vodka – goes great with Red Bull, I hear
Apparently the Chinese see him as one of their greatest leaders, and as the 800th anniversary of the founding of his empire approaches, get ready for a big Genghis Khan lovefest.
“Many of us are proud of Genghis Khan,” said Wang Youde, a student of forestry science, strolling around the statue.
“It’s no small feat to conquer the entire known world all the way to the Danube from horseback.”
The 800th anniversary of the founding of Genghis Khan’s empire in 1206 will be celebrated this year not just in Mongolia proper but also in Inner Mongolia, historically part of the same culture but now under China’s firm control.
Although the great Khan has been dead for nearly eight centuries, his memory is alive and he remains an important political factor in this part of the world.
China’s communist government is attempting to co-opt him as a great historical figure transcending ethnic barriers.
“He’s become part of the Chinese pantheon of generals and great cultural figures,” said Flemming Christiansen, an expert on Chinese politics at Leeds University.
One group, however, is less than thrilled with what they perceive to be China’s co-opting of a leader who rightfully belongs to them.
The Mongolians themselves, now a small minority accounting for about 20 percent of the total population in their own region, are not impressed.
“For the Mongolians, Genghis Khan is a symbol. It’s because of him that the Mongolian people exists,” said Tengus Bayaryn, an anthropologist at the university.
“The official Chinese view is that Genghis Khan was a Chinese emperor, but Mongolians think he was a Mongolian ruler and had nothing much to do with China,” he said.
In Inner Mongolia today, Genghis Khan is a ubiquitous, Che Guevara-style icon, but local affection runs much deeper than that, and an entire religious cult is built around the great founding father.
In officially atheist China, many Mongolian families worship him as a demi-god, setting up regular shrines to him at home.
So who’s right? Should Genghis khan be celebrated as a hero of China, a hero of Mongolia, or both? Or neither?
“Dick Cheney is not a mensch.” Tell me about it.
The Mensch Gap
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 20, 2006
“Be a mensch,” my parents told me. Literally, a mensch is a person. But by implication, a mensch is an upstanding person who takes responsibility for his actions.
The people now running America aren’t mensches.
I hesitate to resort to a blogging cliche, but Philip Pan’s latest piece in the Washington Post, on how the internet has fundamentally changed political discourse in today’s China, really is a must-read:
The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances.
Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper’s computer system attacking the Communist Party’s propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters’ pay if their stories upset party officials.
No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done.
The chief editor stammered and rushed back to his office, witnesses recalled. But by then, Li’s memo had leaked and was spreading across the Internet in countless e-mails and instant messages. Copies were posted on China’s most popular Web forums, and within hours people across the country were sending Li messages of support.
The government’s Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief’s plan to muzzle his reporters.
The episode illustrated the profound impact of the Internet on political discourse in China, and the challenge that the Web poses to the Communist Party’s ability to control news and shape public opinion, key elements to its hold on power. The incident also set the stage for last month’s decision to suspend publication of Freezing Point, the pioneering weekly supplement that Li edited for the state-run China Youth Daily.
February 18, 2006
How China’s internet police use adorable cartoon icons to intimidate its Netizens. CDT shows the lovable but sinister icons, designed to keep online dissent in check. Repression with a big smile.
Anyone who denies that is blind to facts. Proof positive. He set himself up for the media assault, which was totally justified. Imagine if it had been Clinton (either one).
Kristof was the NY Times correspondent in Beijing during the TS demonstrations, and has been a passionate critic of China’s policy of jailing reporters and doling out harsh sentences for…well, for nothing at all. His condemnation of Yahoo is the strongest I’ve ever heard and is bound to infuriate “certain other bloggers.” I’m still semi-neutral on that matter, as I’ve read so many conflicting reports, I have to admit to serious confusion.
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China’s Cyberdissidents and the Yahoos at Yahoo
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 19, 2006
Suppose that Anne Frank had maintained an e-mail account while in hiding in 1944, and that the Nazis had asked Yahoo for cooperation in tracking her down. It seems, based on Yahoo’s behavior in China, that it might have complied.
Granted, China is not remotely Nazi Germany. But when members of Congress pilloried executives of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems at a hearing about their China operations on Wednesday, there were three important people who couldn’t attend. They were Shi Tao, Li Zhi and Jiang Lijun, three Chinese cyberdissidents whom Yahoo helped send to prison for terms of 10 years, 8 years and 4 years, respectively.
This NYT article on the Washington hearings on Internet companies doing business in China is unlinkable, so I’m posting the entire thing. It pokes some holes in the argument that it’s all okay because the Internet, even with the censorship, still improves freedom of speech. And it concludes that any legislation designed to restrict American businesses’ dealings with China is doomed; it will never, ever be approved because doing business with China is simply too important. Quite riveting.
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Enough Shame to Go Around in China
By JOE NOCERA
Published: February 18, 2006
I have a few simple questions,” the congressman said, scowling at the four witnesses before him. “Can you say, in plain English, that you are ashamed of what you and the other companies have done?”
The witnesses — sacrificial lambs, really — were representing four of the glory names in high technology: Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. They were appearing last Wednesday before a House subcommittee investigating their role in helping the Chinese government suppress free speech on the Internet, censor political content and even turn over data about suspected dissidents. The congressman, Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, had earlier been comparing the companies’ activities in China to the odious work certain companies once did to aid the Nazis.
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