I’ve now received three separate emails asking if I got mad at Bingfeng over our recent spat on the FLG and, in revenge, threw him off my blogroll. No, never. Bingfeng has always been one of my favorite commenters – smart, funny and unafraid to speak his mind, even if he is usually wrong (kidding!). We disagree violently on many issues, but that’s what makes our sparring worth reading. So why did he get bounced from my blogroll? Simple: He has shut his blog down, and I go through my blogroll every few days to weed out sites that have gone dark. I will miss him, and hope he reconsiders.

Nary a single world we were told in the build-up to our illegal war in Iraq was true. Worse, the truth was known and willfully repressed. John Cole’sTim F’s exquisite wrap-up of recent revelations about what the CIA knew and when they knew is absolutely must reading, and you have to keep in mind he was totally pro-war and pro-Bush. This post is the perfect antidote for fools who continue to insist Bush declared war on Iraq in good faith and with the best intelligence available. Rubbish. These people really belong in jail. If we were to apply their insistence back in 1999 that Clinton’s crime – lying about a blowjob – merited impeachment, then by their logic Bush’s crimes would merit the chair. (Of course, I reject their “logic,” and would be satisifed if Bush were sentenced to, oh, I don’t know, maybe 20 to 30 years hard labor.)

Update: Damn, Cole Tim is in fine form today.

Congratulations to Mary McCarthy, this week’s rightwing hate magnet. Whether or not she committed a crime remains to be seen, but you can practically smell the flopsweat as the rightwing blogosphere dances chanting around her burning effigy in an effort to drive away unpleasant visions of a fading party and a presidency sunk beyond repair….

Apparently among other crimes McCarthy gave money to the Democratic party. Score one for the Partisan Activist smear. By the same logic convicted spy Larry Franklin must damn the entire neoconservative circle in which he ran, correct? The Wolfowitzes and Perles who feted Franklin and treated him like a cherished pal must answer for their questionable connections. Hearings, I say, we need hearings! Or not. You see, Larry Franklin was a Republican so what he did was ok, and even if it somehow hurt America it certainly does not say anything bad about Republicans even though he was tightly knit into their leading circle. Just one low-ranking bad apple. It makes no sense to exonerate Franklin’s friends and indict McCarthy’s, but good luck telling that to someone when they have a good simmering hate on.

The foaming-at-the-mouth right wing bloggers kicking her to death in the public square provide a particularly ugly picture of just how desperate the Republicans now are. Cole does say McCarthy probably broke the law and probably should be punished; but the reaction on the right is hypocritical beyond words.

Kind of funny, watching the world’s next great superpower, a land of 1.3 billion people, getting all apoplectic over a cult of 70 million followers or so. Of course, the more apoplectic they get, the better it is for the Wheelers, who thrive on publicity demonstrating the CCP’s irrational rage against them.

China condemned the Falun Gong spiritual group as an “anti-China political group” on Tuesday but spared Washington criticism over a heckler from the movement who disrupted Chinese President Hu Jintao’s White House appearance.

Hu’s visit to Washington last Thursday was choreographed to highlight his statesman status and Beijing’s hopes to subdue trade tensions with the United States. But a follower of Falun Gong — banned as a cult in 1999 — entered the White House grounds as a reporter and yelled at Hu and President George W. Bush as they stood before reporters.

A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Qin Gang, said on Tuesday that China had made representations to Washington about the embarrassing incident. But official Chinese anger was focused on Falun Gong, which staged protests against Hu throughout his four-day U.S. visit.

“This demonstrates once again that Falun Gong is not only a cult but also an anti-China political organization with base political intentions,” Qin told a regular news briefing.

Falun Gong wanted to wreck China-U.S. relations by any means, Qin said, urging Washington to take concrete and effective measures to rein in its “anti-China” activities.

Sorry Mr. Qin, but anti-China activities are legal in the US, as are pro-China activities. I fully agree that the FLG are a big pain and the heckler’s performance at the White House was yet another creepy publicity stunt. But have you ever asked why in the US life goes on as always, even though the Falun Gong are free to do as they choose? In fact, that seems to be the case in every other country except China. As distasteful and yucky as the FLG practitioners are, they now have a presence in several other countries and no one’s gone hysterical over them or seen fit to arrest and torture them. Only China. Now, why is that? Could it stem from the government’s fundamental insecurity in the face of a group that has proven its ability to organize masses of followers at will. Nothing freaks out the CCP more than an ability to gather the masses, which is why all religions and all media and all clubs have to be blessed and overseen (if only indirectly) by the Party. A group that can draw tens of thousands together in almost no time at all without permission from the party – nothing could be more threatening to the party than that. The whole thing says way more about the CCP than it does about the FLG.

Sorry for that long digression. It just sort of wrote itself.

Finally, the nightmare of the registration system is fixed. Let’s see if we can compete with the Duck Pond and maintain an open thread once more.

I rarely post Tierney’s columns, but he’s finally written one with which I agree. America is way too zealous with its failed and idiotic “war on drugs.”

Potheads and Sudafed
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: April 25, 2006

Police officers in the 1960’s were fond of bumper stickers reading: “The next time you get mugged, call a hippie.” Doctors today could use a variation: “The next time you’re in pain, call a narc.”

Washington’s latest prescription for patients in pain is the statement issued last week by the Food and Drug Administration on the supposed evils of medical marijuana. The F.D.A. is being lambasted, rightly, by scientists for ignoring some evidence that marijuana can help severely ill patients. But it’s the kind of statement given by a hostage trying to please his captors, who in this case are a coalition of Republican narcs on Capitol Hill, in the White House and at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

(more…)

Everything Kristof wants to do is noble and good and should have been done long ago. And Osama’s evil calls for jihadists to head over to Sudan is…well, evil. But the Darfur story has no sex appeal. It’s the kind of story that makes people feel uncomfortable when it comes on the news; they hope it’ll move off the screen quickly. I hope Osama’s call for jihad helps by at least focusing our attention on the battered country. But my guess is it’ll be forgotten by the weekend, and big media will do all they can to avoid a story no one wnats to hear.

Osama in Darfur
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 25, 2006

Those of us who want a more forceful response to genocide in Darfur should be sobered by Osama bin Laden’s latest tape.

In that tape, released on Sunday, Osama rails against the agreement that ended Sudan’s civil war with its Christian and animist south and accuses the U.S. of plotting to dispatch “Crusader troops” to occupy Darfur “and steal its oil wealth under the pretext of peacekeeping.” Osama calls on good Muslims to go to Sudan and stockpile land mines and rocket-propelled grenades in preparation for “a long-term war” against U.N. peacekeepers and other infidels.

(more…)

Three separate readers emailed me this article from a few days ago, which can only be read if you’re registered. It’s definitely worthy of comments (and is exceptionally well written), so I’m reproducing the whole thing. It really all goes back to the same question raised by John Pomfret in this post: How can China be a true superpower and lead the world in the 21st century when most of its people are dirt-poor and the poitical system is mired in corruption? A very fair question. As impressed as I am with Hu’s diplomatic prowess, this same question is always there. I used to believe the answer was simple: No, China can never be a superpower and can never overcome its incredibly complex and difficult problems. Now I’m more inclined to say that it’s a very long shot, but slow, steady progress might put them in the running. Someday.

They love capitalism, but not elections
Boris Johnson

It was towards the end of my trip to China that the tall, beautiful communist-party girl turned and asked the killer question. ‘So, Mr Boris Johnson,’ she said, ‘have you changed your mind about anything?’ And I was forced to reply that, yes, I had. Darned right I had.

I had completely changed my mind about the chances of democracy in China. Before flying to Beijing I had naively presumed that the place was not just exhibiting hysterical economic growth, but was about to enter a ferment of political change. I had assumed that Tony Blair was right when, in 2005, he went there and announced that the 1.3 billion Chinese were on an ‘unstoppable march’ towards multi-party politics. I now know that he was talking twaddle, and, what is more, that his Foreign Office advisers knew it.

(more…)

Okay; I’m impressed with Kerry and his slow journey toward finding himself. I admire him on several levels. But please, please – tell him he shouldn’t run for president again in 2008.

35 Years Later
By BOB HERBERT
Published: April 24, 2006

Presidents and politicians may worry about losing face, or losing votes, or losing their legacy; it is time to think about young Americans and innocent civilians who are losing their lives.

Saturday was the 35th anniversary of John Kerry’s appearance as a young Vietnam veteran before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During his testimony, Mr. Kerry called for an end to the war in Vietnam and famously inquired: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

(more…)

A little arcane (does anyone really understand deficits ad trade balances?) and none too uplifting.

CSI: Trade Deficit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 24, 2006

Forensics are in. If you turn on the TV during prime time, you’re likely to find yourself watching people sorting through clues from a crime scene, trying to figure out what really happened.

That’s more or less what’s going on right now among international finance experts. The crime in question is the U.S. trade deficit, which according to the broadest measure reached an amazing $805 billion last year. The mystery is how we’ve been able to run huge deficits, year after year, with so few visible adverse consequences. And the future of the U.S. economy depends on which of two proposed solutions to the mystery is right.

(more…)

Yes. As predicted, Hu is cementing his image as the tolerant, benevolent dictator who reached out to the Dalai Lama and the Catholic Church, breaking a half-century tradition of reeking of intolerance and celebrating persecution. It’s a marriage made in heaven, and the jilted suitor is Taiwan.

After more than half a century of hostility, China and the Roman Catholic Church have inched within reach of normal relations, a historic shift aimed at improving the lives of 10 million Chinese who regularly practice the faith, according to leaders and analysts on both sides of the divide.

The irregular contacts, often made at meetings in Rome between Vatican diplomats and Chinese Communist Party officials, remain clouded by mutual suspicion, they said. Party elders particularly fear that the church could become a rallying point for anti-government agitation as it did in Eastern Europe.

But the process has overcome a major stumbling block with recent signals from the Vatican that it is willing to break with Taiwan and set up diplomatic relations with Beijing as part of an overall accord guaranteeing the church’s role in China.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong, the senior Roman Catholic cleric in China, said the Vatican’s readiness to drop ties with Taiwan represents a major gain for the Chinese government and is the main motive for Beijing’s decision to soften hostility toward the church. Other analysts noted that the reconciliation talks also fit into a broad effort by China to establish normal trade and other relations with countries around the world, including heavily Catholic nations in Central America whose diplomatic loyalties now lie with Taiwan.

Definitely read the whole thing.

All that matters at the end of the day is perception, and the perception of “Red China” is changing in front of our eyes, from the prickly, paranoid, North Korea-like xenophobes to a softer, kinder, gentler, more lovable police state. As said in my earlier post on Hu’s diplomatic finesse, this hardly means Hu can now claim sainthood. But it does mean he’s winning massive victories on the public relations front, solidfying his image as the star in the ascendant, leader of a more tolerant nation and “friend to all the earht,” as the sign at the Beijing airport tells all newly arriving tourists. And it is at the expense of the US, increasingly seen (thanks in large part to man-child Bush) as the intolerant, volatile, vituperative out-of-control jingoist state that threatens the safety of everyone on the planet. How is that for role reversal? How is that for a coup? Chalk one up for Hu. And yes, it’s of little consolation to poor Hao Wu and countless other victims of the Party’s magnanimity. But their voices are small and weak, and most of the world hardly knows they exist. And Hu understands that. Shrewd, shrewd.